They were running out of room...
After another charge that trampled through the enemy infantry formation, Xu Ning pulled back with a few minor wounds where his mail had been torn open. The weak point they had attacked had become a hell on earth. Shattered limbs and torn entrails lay heaped there in a small mountain.
Three armored warhorses lay on the ground, whinnying pitifully, their bodies bristling with broken spears. Their riders had long since disappeared into the densely packed enemy ranks.
Having successfully formed up, the heavy infantry used their shields and spears to withstand one assault after another. The room left for the cavalry to maneuver was shrinking. If this went on, they would lose any chance of escape, like butterflies caught in a spider's web...
Xu Ning, who was called Tesolys, did not know why he understood these things. Yet he could always find the weak points and gaps in coordination within the enemy formations. Again and again, he led his cavalry in an assault, relying on the heavy armor they wore to inflict tremendous losses on the enemy each time.
But they could no longer act as freely as they had at first. He did not know why the other units were failing to tie down the enemy's forces. Several thousand heavy infantry had now come to surround them, and those rigid, upraised spears posed an enormous threat to their charges. Whenever he failed to pull the unit out in time, a few unlucky, slow-reacting men would be left there forever.
The reason they still had the confidence to fight was that they had accomplished their mission perfectly. The Hols archers had been wiped out, and they had defeated infantry numbering at least three times their own strength. That was enough to give their side an enormous advantage.
Unless the consul was a complete and utter fool, he ought to launch an all-out attack. The Hols would certainly be unable to hold. Then, striking from inside and outside together, they could easily seize victory.
And that was the moment they were waiting for...
But something troubled Xu Ning. The sounds of fighting that had filled heaven and earth had suddenly begun to fade. By now, almost all the sounds peculiar to a battlefield were coming from their position alone. Everywhere else had fallen into an unnerving silence...
This was not a good sign at all, and his heart rose into his throat again. Once more, he drove the cataphracts, formed into a wedge, into an infantry formation. Under their assault, this section visibly wavered. He recognized the opportunity.
Sure enough, this formation was the weakest link. At the cost of more than ten cavalrymen's lives, they pushed the Hols there beyond what they could endure. Unable to bear the appalling casualties any longer, the infantry began to give ground under the riders' deliberate intimidation and attacks.
Their previously orderly line became a complete shambles. Spears tilted every which way, no longer able to form a threatening spear wall. Soon, the soldiers were nothing but corpses being trampled beneath the horses' hooves. The entire formation broke, its men fleeing in all directions.
Every Hols officer with any common sense knew these cataphracts would eventually be wiped out here. The infantry only had to keep their formations intact and advance slowly, securing the ground at every step. After all, the riders were hemmed in on every side. They could no longer make use of the cavalry's outstanding mobility.
But a cataphract charge was simply too terrifying! Even with only these few hundred meters in which to charge, every time they drove into an infantry formation, flesh and blood still flew everywhere. Lives were snuffed out at an appalling speed, as if they were worth nothing. The tremendous noise alone was enough to shatter a man's courage.
Those heavy infantrymen were flung away like rag dolls, then trampled beneath warhorses weighing more than a ton. They never had another chance to stand.
Under these repeated, hammerlike assaults, the encirclement closed painfully slowly. Whenever one unit advanced even a little too quickly, the enemy immediately singled it out, massing their finest troops to strike it head-on.
Every infantry formation they pierced was like a short dagger driven into a man's flesh. It tore away a little flesh and blood, while morale and courage drained out as swiftly as blood from a wound.
After witnessing this terrifying sight, the other Hols naturally shrank from advancing. Even when their officers shouted and cursed at them, they still crept forward at the slowest possible pace.
The infantry square that had just been completely routed also had disastrous consequences. Fleeing infantry crowded into the other formations, disrupting their ranks and dealing a tremendous blow to morale. Although these deserters were soon seized and executed, they had allowed the human cataphracts to reach a dangerously advanced position. The riders had almost broken through the encirclement.
Now the enemy was forming up again. Rain washed their coldly gleaming spears bright, almost seeming to chill the hearts of the Hols around them as well.
Every unit of Hols was praying that the enemy would not choose them. But as the horn sounded, the great black standard swept once more toward the corner that had just broken, exactly as expected.
Gleaming with the light of steel, the cavalry plunged straight in like heavy war chariots forged from iron, all but unstoppable. In an instant, cries of agony filled the field again. At least a hundred men were killed or wounded.
All the commanders watched that sector with their hearts in their mouths. Only when those terrifying riders withdrew once more did almost everyone let out a relieved sigh.
However elite these cavalrymen might be, there were simply too few of them. Only about seven or eight hundred remained now. Their own side had suffered far heavier losses. At least several thousand archers, crossbowmen, infantry, and light cavalry had been trampled and mauled by the enemy. But as long as they could keep these riders here, it would not be a complete failure. It might even be called a great success.
Aifas, protect us!!
* * *
Xu Ning's face was ashen. He could scarcely believe what he had seen. The sight just now had turned his world upside down, though some instinct had made him struggle to maintain his calm and composure.
Even so, such fierce anger and humiliation gripped him that the reins creaked in his clenched fist...
They had only seen it when they pushed that far forward just now. The army that had been fighting these Hols had withdrawn to a position more than one gari away. The two armies' formations were now completely separated. That was why the Hols could use their entire strength to surround and destroy them...
It was a shameful betrayal!!! They had been utterly abandoned!!
How could Xu Ning fail to understand? He had been set up from the very beginning... Perhaps, at the very instant he had actually charged the enemy line, the consul had already reached an agreement with the Hols general. He had slowly withdrawn with his army, leaving Xu Ning and his cataphracts stranded deep inside the enemy formations!! They had been marked for abandonment from the start.
Worse still, word of what they had just seen was already spreading among his cavalry. They had been on the verge of punching through that formation and escaping, only for all their efforts to come to nothing almost at the very last moment!! His rage was so fierce that he nearly ground his teeth to pieces...
Unrest was already spreading through his formation. Faced with the fact that they had been abandoned, the cavalrymen were beginning to panic. Xu Ning knew he had to do something...
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