They arrived exactly on time.
“Go.”
I gave the hand signal, took the lead at the vanguard, and charged.
Roughly twenty kilometers northeast of the Octagonal Crossroads in the Royal Capital, there was a river and a ford.
Ancient Imperial bridges still stood in use over both the river and the ford, and we could ambush the enemy vanguard as it crossed them.
The bastards were not fools, so they had sent several scouting units.
However, I knew where the scouting units were coming from. I merely had to annihilate them first or maneuver around them without their noticing.
Our main force was cavalry as well, and we knew the roads, so maneuvering past each other was not difficult.
The enemy would only realize our presence when the heavy hoofbeats of armored cavalry shook the ground......
“Guhhh!?”
“Gaaah!”
The moment they sounded alarm horns to prepare themselves, our lances pierced the enemy vanguard and front ranks.
Since nomad cavalry formations included many archers, the cavalry archers in the rear would normally draw their bowstrings to harass us after seeing this. However, there was more than one ford.
The enemy main force was positioned on slightly raised ground, with two fords lying one behind the other like rungs on a ladder. They had to cross two bridges.
In other words, the enemy was currently split into three.
“Second Cavalry Unit!”
After announcing the start of battle with a single charge, I pulled the vanguard echelon back and launched the second charge.
Before the black-haired nomad cavalry mercenary force, ambushed without warning, could even attempt a counterattack, the second charge followed.
“NEEEIGH!”
The steppe horses that raced across the vast grasslands were lightly built.
Perhaps because of that, they were now being flung away like motorcycles struck by trucks.
Of course, the strength of our knights was no small matter either.
The Duke of the East pierced a horse and rider with his lance, then lifted the pair whole as though raising a flag before hurling them away. I even thought he was insane.
‘Their armor was light.’
It was not as though the nomad cavalry wore no lances or heavy armor at all, but their horses were breeds poorly suited to carrying heavy cavalry. Moreover, as a mercenary force, their standardized equipment varied greatly.
They had devised a lightning campaign against the capital and had been given a clear run all the way here without a single army blocking them.
I had expected their armament to be light, and in truth, they had come lightly equipped.
They might have possessed sufficient training to have their cavalry archers form a screen of arrows while retreating and buy time to ready their lancers.
But not now.
The two waterways had split their forces into three.
“NEEEIGH! NEEEEIGH!”
The horses in the enemy camp saw our warhorses and were severely agitated, as though they had encountered tigers.
There was nearly as much difference in size as between ponies and rhinoceroses.
Just as people would be shaken by a legion of giants charging at them, horses were no different.
In the meantime, I divided the fifteen hundred cavalry into five cavalry units and had roughly three hundred charges in sequence. As the Third Cavalry Unit began its charge, I shouted to the Duke of the East.
“We will break through the bridge!”
“The bridge?! Over there...... Ah, I do not know. Let us go!”
One good thing about him was that he obeyed immediately without thinking.
If the bastards blocked the bridge and re-formed their ranks, then aside from the initial damage we had inflicted, the engagement would not achieve any great result.
However, we had human weapons that could be used tactically.
Warriors are capable of extending their swords through forces such as divine power or magic, thereby protecting their blades and increasing their cutting power to the extreme.
Two such rare knights stood at the vanguard.
The ambush appeared to have thrown them into confusion, but the commanders among the troops beyond the ford were shouting to calm them down.
The horses were agitated as well, but their riders desperately tightened their reins.
Then the First Cavalry Unit, with the Duke of the East and me at its front, charged at the bridge where the bastards had gathered.
The lances had been used almost as one-use weapons, so our men had now drawn their secondary armaments.
The bridge could barely accommodate five cavalrymen abreast.
“Gaaah!”
“Aaah!”
At the same time, the entire five-man formation of nomad cavalry blocking the bridge had its torsos severed, spraying blood and adding red to the river.
They probably did not even know what had killed them.
The sword strikes wielded by the Duke of the East and me had far greater reach than ordinary arming swords.
We swung our swords in cutting attacks, but the radius they could reach exceeded even that of long spears.
During the day, they could not even be seen beneath the sunlight.
Only in night battles did their true forms appear as light.
It was not particularly difficult for me to charge at the very front and break through alone, but now I had another warrior of this caliber with me.
As the enemies blocking the bridge were instantly broken apart and died to inexplicable sword strikes, they began to back away.
“Die, die!" "Die!"
‘He is excited......’
The Duke of the East, who had been acting like a cringing nobody since coming to the Royal Castle, had finally reached a battlefield where he could display his specialty. He was cutting them down with great enthusiasm.
After breaking through every bastard blocking the bridge, we met the main force, which had crossed only one bridge and was preparing to cross the river without even managing to assume a battle formation.
“Go.”
To make room to maneuver among them, I launched another charge.
The fifteen hundred elite Northern Cavalry were divided into five cavalry units and operated in groups of three hundred.
I issued their orders through five differently colored flags.
When, as now, battlefield selection and even time calculations had been made properly, tactics were simple.
Break through the center of the enemy formation and split the enemy apart like Moses parting the sea.
Divide the fifteen hundred cavalry into five units of three hundred, then maneuver two units each to the flanks and keep encircling the divided enemies.
At the center, the First Cavalry Unit, an ultra-elite force, and I would engage the enemy directly and crush them with overwhelming martial power. The rest would attempt continuous encirclement and annihilation as they had been trained beforehand.
Of course, since most of the enemy were cavalry as well, it was not impossible for them to escape the encirclement through maneuvering.
“Fourth Cavalry Unit! That way.”
I could maintain the encirclement in a ‘ㄱ’ shape.
Naturally, the ‘ㄱ’-shaped encirclement was incomplete because its left and lower sides were open, but the river became a natural encirclement.
When the enemy attempted maneuvers to escape the encirclement or counterattack, the First Cavalry Unit, made up of elites among elites, dealt with the enemy commanders through its combat strength.
“Fifth Cavalry Unit, maneuver!”
It was not difficult to surround them in a ‘ㄴ’ shape as well.
Continuously attempting two-directional and four-directional encirclements to break the enemy’s battle lines was my specialty.
Were the enemies fools?
Would they not maneuver in the meantime?
Could they not evade?
They were cavalry, and they had horses. Were they not at an advantage in maneuvering?
They could not.
The movements of thousands, even tens of thousands, of soldiers......
Were visible.
Normally, I should only see the enemies directly in front of me in a flat plane, but I saw them from above.
As though I were looking down from the sky.
I could see where they were coming from, their state of rest, their armament, and choose the optimal moment to ambush them.
Where they would maneuver to escape the encirclement, where the vulnerable branches of their forces were concentrated, how their current formations and dispositions stood, which point would be most vulnerable if a melee broke out, and where I could rally my own forces......
“We should not have listened to a woman. Leave them and run. They are coming. They are coming. They are com—guh?!”
Even the location of the enemy commander was visible.
The gap in numbers was great, and even though the terrain helped us and the soldiers were divided into three, a complete encirclement and annihilation was difficult.
Even so, I attempted encirclement because I could detect command movements intended to break out of the encirclement or launch a counterattack.
I could see, as if floating in the air, the places where enemy soldiers gathered to receive orders. I broke through those places with penetrating force and martial power.
Then I stabbed the nomad cavalry commander, who had been responding as best he could amid the chaos.
And then.
“We can charge too. Strengthen the battle lines, you fool mercenary bastards. We can do what the bastards do as well. Mercenaries? Shoot them all. Ah?”
“Nice to meet you.”
It was already too late to say goodbye, because his body and head had gone their separate ways.
“Is this the mixed-blood Grand Duke with black hair and blue eyes?”
“Ugh, uaaah!”
“Yaaah!”
I had cut down one general, and he appeared to be Grand Duke of Feltkirch, Elined’s new husband.
The knights accompanying him all roared at once, rushed at me with their eyes clouded by rage and their openings exposed, then died. That was why.
My sight could not pierce through places without gaps, such as the inside of tents, so I had never seen his face directly. Still, he seemed to be the right man, so I cut down the knights around him as well.
Once I disrupted their battle lines through mobility, all I had to do was use overwhelming penetrative force to target key points and enemy commanders. The battle would end.
And I possessed swordsmanship capable of doing exactly that.
When the two command structures of the mercenary force and the Knights of Feltkirch collapsed in an instant, the units that had still been trying to maneuver and do something fell apart immediately.
“NEEEIGH!”
SPLASH!
“Gaaah!”
The bridges were narrow, creating a bottleneck. In the end, more and more men abandoned their horses and jumped into the water.
“We have won.”
It might have seemed like an easy victory, but I was not without excitement at winning.
It was exhilarating.
All the more so because there had been so many bastards who opposed this and insisted that we would have to wage a siege.
Victory was not something gained merely by seeing.
The mobility of the troops was what allowed me to follow the battlefield as it changed in real time, so I focused on cavalry and paid attention to improving horses.
From the point when I could exercise mobility with this broad field of vision—in other words, from the point when the elite Northern Cavalry were complete—I had never been defeated.
Unfailingly effective surprise attacks, an understanding of terrain useful for battle and the ability to lure enemies there, tactics using a fraudulent special ability, ultra-elite soldiers to execute those tactics, and the martial power of a vanguard commander who could make those tactics real and handle unexpected variables.
Once preparations of this degree were complete, war was no different from a strategy game.
With a little action added.
“Grand Duke, please issue the order to pursue.”
“Of course. We must capture that mad bitch and Princess Aisia.”
“You will close your eyes, will you not?”
“Hmm? Ah...... I should. Give me a moment.”
In truth, it did not matter if I left them open, but if I did not close my eyes, the scene looked like a low-resolution image made of pixels.
There were still enemies in the rear who had not crossed the bridges at all. Among the collapsing main force, a single carriage crossed the bridge ahead of the other fleeing troops and escaped.
It even cut down its own soldiers who blocked its path.
‘That is obviously a VIP.’
At the same time, the nomad cavalry had riderless horses that they had brought as replacement mounts. The bastards released those horses and sent them running toward our side.
Horses were extremely valuable assets. It was a ploy intended to arouse greed and draw our soldiers’ attention.
“Do they think I brought peasant soldiers?”
Only mercenaries or poor conscripts would lose their heads over cattle or horses.
Most of the Northern Cavalry followed me in battles we always won, filling themselves with dopamine to the point where they enjoyed battle itself.
I was keeping them from reaching the point of enjoying slaughter, but they were bastards who enjoyed war regardless. They trained and drilled on their own, invested generously in armor and barding, and did not spare the expense.
They invested almost all the production from the fiefs they had been granted into their lives of war, becoming more elite by the day.
As expected, they did not even blink. They merely hunted down the fleeing bastards exactly as ordered.
“The First Cavalry Unit will follow me no matter what. The rest will crush the enemy. Relay to the Fifth Cavalry Unit that they are to send one squad to the Royal Castle and report our victory in advance.”
I pursued the carriage that was presumed to contain Princess Aisia or the Deposed Queen Elined.
This was not difficult either.
“No.”
“Yes?”
I brought the knights to a halt.
From what I could see, men who seemed to be mid-ranking officers of the nomad cavalry mercenary force had stopped the carriage, killed the Duchy’s knights and coachmen escorting it, and were roughly dragging women out.
“It does not matter. Do not cut down those who surrender. We will capture them and use them as slaves.”
The Kingdom needed maritime trade.
Therefore, it also needed oarsmen, labor among the most grueling of the 3D jobs.
“Let go of me, you bastards. Ah.”
In the end, Elined and an unfamiliar young girl were captured by the black-haired mercenary force and placed before me as bargaining conditions.
I looked at them, gave a short laugh, and spoke.
“We meet often.”
“Ugh, ugh, uaaah!”
The Deposed Queen screamed as she tore at her hair.