Herald of Steel

"Lord Commander! Reinforcements! We plea for reinforcements!"

Lord Macht was just done quipping out a joyous roar as his units' amazing progress in hounding the enemy when suddenly a frightened runner came to him beg him as such.

"Hmmmm?" And at first even this experienced general was caught slightly off guard hearing so, thus appearing puzzled.

'Reinforcements? What reinforcements? Where send reinforcements? We are just about to push these bastards into the sea!' He thought to himself, and then even turned to look at Remus's units to make sure he was not just dreaming.

And sure enough, he could see the entire enemy contingent of five hundred men had been pushed nearly a kilometer, to the point, the vague outline of the sails of the ships docks near the coast was starting to become visible.

And the abject state of the legionaries who were forced to retreat like beaten dogs while doing this was not something someone as experienced as Lord Macht would ever mistake.

He even could subtly hear the enemy officers roaring and loudly urging his men to hold on, while the most eye catching of them all, a tall man dressed in shiny golden armor and wearing a large red plumb feather, could seen rushing to and fro the frontlines on his horse, trying to boost morale as best as he could.

There was no way to fake such desperation.

Thus Lord Macht easily determined the enemy was on his last legs, and just a few more strong push from utterly disintegrating.

Hence the man that was leading from the front felt what this runner said made little sense.

"There my lord! Send help there!"

It was only when he was forced by the runner's pointing arm to crane his neck behind him that he realized the predicament he was in and nearly had a heart attack.

"Wha… Wh…when did this happen?" Lord Macht could not help but cry out with an incredulous shout upon seeing the unfolding disaster, using a tone that he could not remember when he had last used.

His brain was instantly filled with an incredible amount of thoughts and quickly realizing he had been baited, he wished to instantly give his army the order to turn around, even intending to fully abandon the current enemy in front of him.

This was of course because Lord Macht saw through that whether these men lived or died was a moot point by now. Their only job was to tie him down.

And even if they were destroyed, Lord Macht's rear would still be vulnerable to an attack from a much larger force.

A force that Lord Macht, due to leading from the front had completely missed.

There was also the fact that the general never expected his good units would fall so easily, causing him to curse out into the open air,

"*Bah! Those incompetent curs! How could they allow themselves to get pushed around like this? The enemy is not even that many! Aghhhh…. I will hang all those responsible for this!"

Lord Macht still being unaware of the friction between the Margraves and Heeat and given that Scorpyo only had a slight manpower advantage over the Heeat forces, the general naturally came to the conclusion that his men were cowards. He vowed to make all of them an example once he managed to rescue them.

For now, though, he quickly began to order some of the rear units to detach themselves from the rest of the army and turn around.

However, as already said earlier, such complete 180 degree maneuvers were quite slow and cumbersome at the best of times.

And now that they were in the middle of the battlefield, even in the best case scenario, it would still take Lord Macht quite some time to come to his distressed units' rescue.

Especially when Lord Macht did not dare to turn a large part of his units at once, fearing the enemy in the front would detect it and launch a desperate attack to try and stop this.

Lord Macht had no true basis for such a thought and even he thought he was being a bit paranoid, but given these 500 men had chosen to be basically martyrs here, the general could never discount that possibility in good conscience.

Even if the enemy in front of him looked absolutely battered and was like a flickering lamp threatening to go out any second, there was always the small possibility of them bursting forth like a blazing sun for one last hurrah.

And if that were to happen and if the enemy commander was smart enough to time his push well enough, well then Lord Macht would run a real risk of his formation snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The old man would not have anywhere left to hide his tears if such a tragic thing were to happen.

Hence the prudent veteran did the most sensible thing for the moment.

He ordered the frontlines to stop chasing the enemy and simply block them, while those units in the rear started to turn around one by one.

However despite the men's best efforts, the congested formations and rough terrain of the island made the entire thing appear like a slow, crawling worm to Lord Macht, making him far from being satisfied with the progress.

This was way too slow when compared to the speed he was used to back in his own territory, and the frustration even made him wonder if these men had been properly trained or whether Achillas had been skimping money on the side by swallowing the training allowances.

Things were made worse by the fact that many Margrave's troops were mixed into the Heeat formations.

And since these men obviously did not have the time to learn the unique signal orders and battle cries of the Heeat family, they naturally found it hard to execute the many complicated sets of maneuvers that were being asked of them.

These men had no problem obeying simple instructions like marching forward, attacking, and chasing a fleeing enemy.

But when they were asked to commit rapid turns and quick marches from their heavily accented new superiors, many began to fumble and tumble, going in the wrong directions and getting in each other's way.

Which in turn dragged the speed of the turning even more, to the point Lord Macht even slapped his forehead in irritation, grinding his teeth his frustration,

"Dammit! Useless pieces of junk! I should have left these wastes back in the camp to clean the latrine pits!"

He was fully regretting bringing the Margraves to the fight right now. And more than that, he was regretting mixing units like he had now, putting one force right into the lines of another.

Usually, he would have created entire units composed of homogenous forces and then mixed these 'packets' of men together. This would have let him control the entire army much better.

But as stated earlier- due to a lack of competent officers, and fearing the Margraves rebelling once they were all banded together in a coherent formation under a weak outside inept leader, Lord Macht had to take this unorthodox approach.

Continue your saga on m-vl-e-mpyr

But at the end of the day, this was not really as big a deal as one might make of it… as long as Lord Macht could keep winning.

And since the general was very confident about his chances, he did not bother to think about it too much.

Until now that is.

The Margraves unintentionally clamping his feet at this critical moment meant that Lord Macht would require almost triple the normal time to turn his men around. Time that he was desperately running out.

But unfortunately, no matter how much tried to think of a way to speed up the movement, he could do nothing.

The Margraves were very deeply 'woven' into the formation. Lord Macht had personally seen to it that they were so squash any chance of mutiny.

Thus all he could curse his bad luck and then curse the enemy commander, mumbling to himself,

"Shit! This Alexander is too tricky! Is he the reincarnation of a war god? Young master seems to have poked a hornet's nest!"

Unfortunately for Lord Macht, it was not Alexander he was facing. But the sentiment engraved in the frustrated cuss still stood.

The fact was unless he could have guessed Remus's exact plan ahead of time, Lord Macht could have never foreseen his current set of circumstances.

All his mistakes up until now had been fairly innocuous with little plotholes, made with all the best intentions for his family.

Which perhaps made it all the more brilliant - how such an airtight plan was suddenly made into his greatest Achilles's Heel at the drop of a hat.

Remus really showed his brilliance here by deciding to play to his men's strength of mobility, taking advantage of the terrain, and most of all, personally taking huge amounts of risks.

"Run! We have lost! Run!"

"To the ships! Make to the ships! Save yourself!"

"Our flanks are destroyed! There is nothing we can do! Retreat! Retreat!"

And the young general's gamble appeared to have paid off, the first part at the very least.

Because Scorpyo's had succeeded in their mission- to cause an utter rout!

It happened when taking advantage of the gap opened up between them and the main army, some of the much more mobile legionnaires units from the rear were able to swing to their right and attack the defenseless flanks of the retreating Heeat formation, easily destroying them.