“History noted many, many instances of cavalry charges breaking through enemy lines and turning the tides of battle. What many neglected to notice, however, was how for each such successful occasion, there were several that failed and did not make its mark in the history books.” - Excerpt from “The Evolution of Warfare” by Tomas Lancaster, military historian from Levain, circa 592 FP.

“They’re mostly knights, typical human-style heavy cavalry, you all know what to do,” instructed Reinhardt through his artifact to the various platoon commanders of the Free Lances. Indeed, methods to deal with heavy cavalry was one that they had drilled to do regularly, and immediately the platoons with the strongest shieldbearers and unit cohesion – Mischka’s first strike platoon, Arne’s third strike platoon, and Alvaro’s Warforged platoon – stepped to the front of the mercenary formation.

The three platoons lined up next to each other and had their respective shieldbearers step in front, where they formed a solid, interlocking shield wall. Others supported those shieldbearers physically from right behind them, while in the third line, those armed with spears and polearms laid their weapons atop the interlocked shields, forming a menacing spear wall pointed towards the approaching enemy cavalry.

With a wedge-shaped layout, the shield-and-spear wall formation was designed to force the enemy cavalry charge to split or be crushed against the wall. Naturally, the pressure would be the highest for the people at the tip of the wedge, but Reinhardt had confidence that Mischka’s platoon was up to the task and would hold their ground.

When the vanguard of the enemy knights arrived, the hundred-strong force of knights dressed in the livery of a minor state under Podovniy’s rule made the poor choice to charge straight towards the shield wall. The knights probably had an overinflated sense of superiority and confidence in themselves, as they had run over several shield wall formations during the battles Podovniy experienced during its expansion.

That arrogance proved to be their undoing as their steeds and lances struck against the shield wall, right at the tip, where Mischka’s best held the line, and was found wanting.

While the impact caused by the force from over half a ton’s worth of horse, rider, and armor would have easily barreled over an average shield wall, even the ones who held the shield was supported by others behind them, that does not apply when the being holding the shield was heavier than the rider and horse put together to begin with.

Instead of barreling over their opponents and trampling them beneath their hooves as expected, the foremost knight felt as if he had slammed headlong into a solid wall as his horse crumpled beneath him, the momentum of the charge crushing the poor steed’s bones against the solid metal shield it ran into. The knight himself was hurled headfirst against said shield with enough force that his helmet crumpled beneath the impact and his neck broke in several places as it was unable to handle the forces applied to it.

The first line of knights met the same fate. Some of those in the second line were unable to turn their steeds to the side in time and crashed headlong into the dead bodies of their compatriots, their horses often stumbling over the corpses and collapsing, sending them unceremoniously to the ground as well. Those that managed to turn their steeds to the side only saw more large shields and spears pointed towards them along the entire mercenary frontline.

To make things worse, once they finally moved past the shield wall, they found themselves immediately under assault.

Reinhardt had positioned Erycea’s and Alycea’s respective platoons at the flanks of the formation, where they were to strike against the riders who skirted around the shieldwall. As such, the knights on horseback, used to enemy infantry giving way to them in fear, found themselves under sudden assault from far more fearless mercenaries who only saw them as bags of coins on a horse.

A couple of the higher-ranking knights tried to rally their forces to face the enemy, but all they managed to do was to make a target for themselves. Mere moments after they raised their swords and yelled at their compatriots, one of the knights fell off his horse with a crossbow bolt in his throat, courtesy of Aurora. At such close distance even her relatively weak crossbow could hit with enough force to pierce through the weaker parts of a knight’s armor.

The other knight was still surprised at his comrade’s fall when Erycea directly leapt onto his steed and bashed his face in with her truncheon, knocking the knight unconscious on the spot. Similar sights could be seen all around her, as daring mercenaries would leap directly at the passing horses to wrestle or strike their occupants down from their saddles.

Alycea’s side treated the knights they faced the same way. Some were directly smashed off their horses by the larger-bodied members of the platoon or those who wielded polearms, while others wrestled and dragged knights off their horses in more daring ways. The knights were caught unprepared to face a foe that were so eager to take them on and was unable to fight them off properly as a result.

Meanwhile, the shield line marched forward to intercept the incoming second wave of cavalry in order to buy time for the platoons at the side to digest the first wave. Archers and slingers from the forest rained down projectiles towards the onrushing knights. While those knights well-off enough to equip their horses with barding were pretty much unaffected, they were but a minority amongst the riders.

More knights had their horses felled by arrows, while others were hurled off the back of their horses when small urns filled with intense-smelling fluids shattered near their steeds’ noses and made them rear back in surprise. The fallen and panicked horses caused chaos to disrupt the formation of the onrushing cavalry, which rendered them ill-prepared for the clash with the mercenaries’ shield wall.

Then the scene of the cavalry’s vanguard crushing themselves against unmoving shields repeated itself.