“The whole idea of taking a fortified location by storm is both audacious and foolish at the same time. It is audacious when one succeeds, often at relatively low cost, since few people expected such a foolhardy move to be pulled off in actuality. It is foolish in the rest of the cases where the attempt failed, often at horrific costs to the attacker.” - Gregorian Aurelius Secundus, famed general and later Second Emperor of the Elmaiya Empire.

An hour after the Podovnian forces clashed against the Levainian reinforcements, Alycea decided that it was the time for her people to make their move.

Despite their being outnumbered and how they were fatigued from the long march, the elites of Levain and Caroma showed their skill and coordination in battle regardless. They pushed hard against the Podovnian lines and even broke through on several locations, which forced the Podovnians to commit their reserves into the battle within the first hour of the fight.

At the moment, the battle had sort of settled down into a stalemate, where neither side could get an advantage against the other. The Podovnians had more people and deeper battle lines, but they were also forced to divert some of their forces to guard their flanks since the Caromans brought their large contingent of cavalry with them. As such, their riders harassed the Podovnian flanks all too eagerly.

Neither side seemed to have other reserves to commit further into the fight, as the Podovnians had even pulled a small contingent – probably a couple thousand people – from the fort behind them to join the fight. Alycea felt that the fort was likely as poorly defended as it would ever get that day, so she decisively gave the command to make the move.

The first to move from the mercenaries’ side were their own cavalry contingent, as six hundred riders under Soledad and Ze’phane’s lead rushed towards the rear of the enemy formation, cutting right between the fort and the main body of the Podovnian soldiers. They did not engage directly, and only hurled javelins into the enemy rear as they galloped past, but their interruption – and the dust cloud they left behind – temporarily obscured the fort from view.

That became the cover the rest of Alycea’s people used as they boiled out from the forest and rushed towards the fort itself. Across the battlefield, on the north-western side, a similar scene took place as another group of mercenaries and volunteers charged directly towards the Podovnian fort, Reinhardt coordinating their assault as he promised to Alycea.

Alycea had ordered the volunteers to rush on the left flank, so that if the Podovnian army noticed them and sent some people their way, they would be positioned to hold them off. If things went as planned, they would not need to hold their ground for long at all, so she hoped they were up to the task. Her own platoon – as well as the rest of the mercenaries headed towards the fort’s palisades as fast as their legs could take them.

Unlike the walls of Levain where the outermost layer alone was built out of solid stones and measured a good ten meters tall, the fort that the Podovnians had built in the past week was far less fortified. Its walls only consisted of five meter tall wooden palisades, the solid logs just directly planted into the ground to form the walls of said fort.

Even a five meter wall would be a problem for most attackers unless they brought siege equipment – which the mercenaries lacked – but Alycea had come up with a risky yet effective answer to that problem.

The first members amongst the mercenaries to reach the palisades were their shieldbearers, which was to be expected, as these men and women were running in the front while holding their large shields up to cover not only themselves, but also those behind them. What the fort’s defenders had not expected was for some of these shieldbearers to get right next to the palisades, even resting their backs on it, and continuing to hold their shields above their heads.

An action that effectively turned them into a giant stepping stool.

Normally that would not have posed much of a problem. Even if a tall person were to raise themselves to their maximum height and stretched out their arm, they would maybe reach as high as half the wall’s height, but very few people would be able to support the weight of another person standing on top of their shield, much less with fully outstretched arms.

Alycea had Irma and Macen – both of them adopted children of Niko and Yuri’s, whose late parents were also part of Mischka’s troops in the past – play that role. Both of the youngsters were large-breed therians, Irma’s features resembling that of a crocodile’s while Macen’s resembling a Rhinoceros. Even though they were young, both of them were already nearly two and a half meters tall and were built extremely solidly.

The two squatted down as they held their tower shields close to their heads, lowering it to a height closer to one and a half meters, which allowed Alycea, Larissa, Ciel, and Leece to climb on top of their shields, similarly crouching down once they stepped on the shields. The reason they crouched down atop the shields were twofold. One was to stabilize themselves as Irma and Macen exploded into motion.

While the other reason was to gain even more height as they themselves jumped up towards the palisade’s top.

Irma and Macen rose to their full heights in one smooth motion, their arms pushing the shields they held – along with its occupants upwards to a height of nearly three and a half meters. Just as they reached the top of the arc, Alycea and the others kicked off against the shield and leapt the rest of the way towards the walkways at the top of the palisades, while Irma and Macen returned to a squatting position, waiting for the next group of people to step up.

Similar scenes took place along both the eastern and western side of the fort as the other mercenary platoons did the same and sent their people straight to the top of the palisades in one fell swoop.