Of course they would. There was a limit to how far a person could attack on foot since a human fully loaded down by heavy armor and weapons could only run so far. If the mercenaries were like Ark, and had trained themselves to run with such a burden, they might have gone farther, but normal soldiers and mercenaries wouldn’t push themselves so hard. Orders to charge, therefore, usually came when one was much closer to their target.
But Balthazar, with his lack of experience and high spirits, had given the order while his army was much too far away for their charge to reach the enemy. The reason the mercenaries had looked at each other and had moved so slowly at first was because they were uncertain about the order. But when the horn blew to emphasize it, they could only accept that the order was real.
That was why they charged, half desperate.
Perhaps, if their fighting spirit had been properly stoked for the charge, then they might have made it without losing momentum. But they were only hired mercenaries, so it was rather difficult to make them care about anything other than the job.
Balthazar may have gotten them to march smoothly, but there were two ways to view such a thing. A positive spin would have argued that the mercenaries had mobilized because Balthazar’s actions were logical. A negative view—and the more accurate one, in this case—would have stated that not only was Balthazar indifferent and businesslike with his men, he treated them as if they were inferior, giving orders from on high rather than genuinely interacting with them. In doing so, his behavior guaranteed that any single soldier would only do what they were paid to do and no more. The only reasons why they had listened to him, therefore, were because he paid on time and provided enough food.
But that wasn’t the only mistake Balthazar and his men had made.
“Now that I think about it, I seem to recall a number of mercenaries coughing and claiming fatigue,” one of the toadies murmured, only for all eyes to fall on him. And that was not because they noticed the importance of the reports.
“What?! How could they work as mercenaries if they were so gutless?!”
It was because everyone present thought the same way as the knight who had raised his voice; their fury was completely off the mark.
It was true that, while their progress this time had been done on a tight schedule, they had given their troops plenty of breaks and food to help them recover from their fatigue. You could say that Balthazar was skilled with that sort of thing, and that his toadies were exasperated because they knew that.
But that was also unfortunate. It was because the situation was what it was that they didn’t think they were at all at fault. And since they tended to play the blame game rather than take accountability, they also ended up blaming the mercenaries they looked down on.
And that was how they overlooked the fact that there may have been another reason for their troops to feel unwell.
“Goodness! And here we had given them the honor of serving at the lowest rank of our glorious army, only for them to spout the same sort of whining that the farmers here did!” one of the knights harping on the mercenaries said. He had been to the province of Stonegaze back when it had been part of the Kingdom of Sylvario.
Balthazar gave that knight a puzzled look. “Hm? You’ve been to Stonegaze before?”
“Yes, a few years ago. Back when Your Highness skillfully brought an end to the disputes here.”
“Oh yes, that did happen. I see, so that’s why you know.”
“Your management back then was truly superb, Your Highness!”
“Ha ha ha, of course it was! And you worked well too!”
Balthazar cackled proudly. He made sure not to forget to praise his subordinates as he boasted about his achievements, in order to bask in his belief that he was truly suited to rule. And the knights themselves were playing it up too, so it wasn’t much different.
Incidentally, both Balthazar and the knight had half-assed the situation, and it had been Princess Sonia who finally resolved the problem. Though, of course, the two didn’t realize that. But you could say it was because of that that they were missing the main point.
The reason why the farmers had claimed to be fatigued was, in fact, because of the area’s local endemic, which the mercenaries had ended up catching. If even one of the individuals among their company had been familiar with the area, they would have realized what had happened with their troops immediately. But there was no one. Not one. Because Balthazar stayed away from those people, calling them hicks.
To Balthazar, not only was he not cognizant of the fact that the area was now enemy territory, but he also was unaware of the true significance of intelligence in a battle.
On the battlefield, the situation was constantly changing, and one had to always be aware of what was happening. That would have been obvious to anyone with a bit of experience, but it is important to again note that he lacked that. That was why he didn’t notice and couldn’t react.
“It seems that the vanguard has begun to get confused?”
“No, they’ve suddenly started splitting up.”
“Goodness, can they not even advance as a group?!”
In front of their eyes, the vanguard who had lost momentum had begun to lose cohesion. From the perspective of the toadies amusing themselves by disparaging the mercenaries, they could only see it as laziness on the part of the help. But they were laboring under a fundamental misunderstanding. It was, in the first place, difficult to advance as a group. Even soldiers who had strong bonds among each other and as a collective could only pull such a thing off after multiple marching drills. For mercenaries who had been scraped together from all over, it was next to impossible.
Neither Balthazar nor his underling knights realized this. All of the soldiers they had seen had already been through those steady drills.
Things might have been a bit different if they had a commander with both experience and charisma on the front lines, but unfortunately, Balthazar didn’t have anyone like that working for him. They wouldn’t have followed his orders, and the prince himself hadn’t thought at all that he would need someone like that.
Balthazar gave orders, and the people around him listened. The only ones who didn’t were those whom the first prince Elmer had influence over. This was why Balthazar had made the mercenaries he’d gathered the main force of his invasion instead of the royal army, which was under Elmer’s control. Though, of course, another reason for Balthazar to use mercenaries was because the royal army hadn’t recovered their fighting power after losing so much of it in their loss in the previous war.
And now, Balthazar had been able to march his gathered mercenaries this far without any major problems. Such a thing could arguably be considered a success, which only served to feed his ego and further cloud his vision.
He had the skill to send the necessary people where they needed to go, and he wasn’t completely lacking in the aptitude to become a competent strategist. His problem was that he needed a teacher to calmly bash a levelheaded third-person perspective into his brain to make that aptitude bloom, but no one like that had appeared before him. Not only that, but his aptitude as a battlefield tactician was fatally lacking.
“The enemy has begun volleying arrows!”
“Ignore them and keep on charging! The fact that our soldiers have split up is actually to our advantage. It will lessen the effect of their volley!”
In response to the report from a knight watching the battle, Balthazar clucked his tongue and shot out orders.
“The vanguard have made contact with the enemy...! No, they’re being wiped out, one after the other!”
“They’ve finally made contact, and now this?! So they were nothing but lowborn mercenaries in the end!” Balthazar was lamenting with his rage out in the open, but the reality was that everything that was occurring was the result of his orders, which, while technically sound, were only temporary measures poorly suited for actual victory. “S-Send in the knights! Have them reprimand the mercenaries and regain command!”
Balthazar raised his voice, trying to defuse the situation. But this was the moment the battle’s outcome was decided.