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Thus, in order to realign ourselves with the shift in circumstances, we convened another military council.
“I would suggest our forces be arranged as follows,” Deputy General Bourgault-Ducoudray proposed. It was his lead we’d be following for our armies’ formation.
Following convention, as the defensive party, we would complete our deployment first, after which the attacking party would deploy reactively. Attempting the reverse would only lead to the possibility of us scrambling to get into position against a prepared enemy, which could result in gaps in our defenses.
Conversely, the enemy probably thought that since we were on the defensive, it was unlikely that we’d attack them while they were forming up. Which was true. Partly.
“The Atúr will remain on standby to the north,” the deputy general continued. “If the enemy heads there, rather than south as we’re anticipating, they’ll use their mobility to buy us time. Our goal will be to use that window to break through the enemy’s left flank with our primary forces.”
For reference, our front faced east, meaning the south was our right flank and the north was our left, and vice versa for the enemy. As for our primary forces, it went without saying, but those were the armies of my lords. Their domain would be the southern side of the hill.
The question at hand was where the enemy would deploy their strongest force—left flank, right flank, or center? If they followed convention, they would deploy it on their left flank, to match ours. But there was no guarantee they would choose to follow convention, which meant the best we could do was make an educated guess.
As per our initial strategy, the basic idea was to lure the enemy to deploy at our southern side. If they refused to take the bait and concentrated their forces at our left flank—the hill’s north—then the Atúr cavalry would buy us enough time with their retreating fire tactics for our right flank to go on the offense. That was the gist of it, at least. Though, with this strategy, the sheer difference in numbers would make it a difficult fight.
“That would be more than possible, if they were given enough open ground to work with,” Viscount Cédolin said. “But they’ll be restricted by the geography near Mifeux Hill. Isn’t it somewhat unrealistic to expect them to divert the enemy alone?”
It was Salomon who provided a solution. Although he was Belvérian, he was playing a proactive part in this council as an allied commander. “What if we deployed Count Nunvalle’s army to the north, then?”
“Count Nunvalle’s army... So you mean to use the archers?”
Count Nunvalle’s army, led by Arnoul de Nunvalle, only numbered a thousand. However, it was notable for being composed almost entirely of archers. Apparently, while House Nunvalle was more known for their civil officials than their military exploits and had few skilled cavalry or pikemen in their service, they had something of a specialization in the art of the bow.
There were probably some people of the opinion that bows were just an inferior, outdated version of guns, but that simply wasn’t true in this world. After all, firearms had a number of glaring shortcomings.
To begin with, sudum guns and archers had roughly the same effective range—that being the maximum distance at which you could expect to hit an enemy and actually cause some damage. The matchlocks of Earth had been good up to around two hundred meters, if I remembered correctly, but I was fairly sure sudums couldn’t boast the same. I couldn’t give you an exact number, since the units of measurement were different, but let’s say ballpark one hundred and fifty.
In other words, firing a sudum gun from any range over 150 meters was likely to be pretty ineffective. And this was after technological improvements and such—this world’s last generation of guns had been far inferior to bows in terms of effective range. If we were simply talking maximum range, then the sudum’s numbers tripled, but that didn’t mean much, since the bullets would lose a great deal of potency the further out you got.
Then we came to the biggest shortcoming of matchlock firearms, sudum included: their inability to perform repeated fire. Compensating for this was the precise reason why volleyed fire was a fundamental technique for musketeers to learn. The idea was that a platoon would fire all at once, and then allied pikemen would buy enough time until the next volley was ready. As such, when it came to battles on open ground, you needed pikemen robust enough to withstand the enemy’s offense, or your musketeers wouldn’t be able to exhibit their true value.
Archers, on the other hand, were capable of continuous fire. Moreover, due to the curved trajectory of their fire, standing on elevated ground could extend their effective range to beyond that of sudums—and thanks to gravity, the potency of the arrows wouldn’t diminish much either. All in all, it was no wonder why so many people still believed archers to be superior to musketeers.
Of course, that begged the question: Why, then, had firearms become so widespread? Well, it was a matter of skill. Bows were more difficult to use, and archers took more time to train than musketeers. Far more time. To give you an idea, the list in that regard went battle mages, cavalry, then archers.
Incidentally, the trade-off with a crossbow was that it was far easier to handle at the cost of a shorter effective range. Essentially, in this world, bows beat guns for range, which themselves beat crossbows, but for ease of use, crossbows beat guns and guns beat bows.
Getting back on topic, the point was that a detachment of archers was both valuable and costly. The idea of using the high ground to further leverage the advantage provided by bows was worth considering.
“Word of the Nunvalle mage archer corps reached even my ears during my time in Belvére,” Salomon said. “Their philosophy differs from ours in that they are a coordinated unit of ‘individuals.’”
Salomon went on to explain that the mage archers used magic to enhance the potency and effective range of their bows. This was done with spells that affected the wind, spells that hardened their arrowheads, or a personal favorite of mine, infusion magic, just to name a few. Each individual mage archer had their own forte, but the end result was the same: a more powerful bow.
That was indeed a different approach from Salomon’s mages, who were split according to their specialties. Perhaps that was why he had an interest in them.
Only a fraction of Nunvalle’s archers were mages, of course, but their ability to fire from what the enemy would assume was beyond an archer’s effective range would be a formidable asset nonetheless.
“But magic will be—” I began, before cutting myself off. “Ah, no. We suppose it will be no issue.”
“Indeed,” Salomon said. “Our test firing from the other day revealed that the barrel will break before the...‘magical device’ is exhausted. The surplus should allow us to make full use of its capabilities.”
“Very well.” I nodded, then moved on to another major concern. “Then, what of the area between the Byner and Ginaugh hills?”
There was a valley between the aforementioned hills where we’d dug a ditch and erected chevaux-de-frise akin to the rest of our defenses, but hadn’t added earthen walls or trenches because it hadn’t seemed necessary. The narrow breadth of the valley and exposure to projectile fire from both hillsides meant that the enemy wouldn’t be able to develop a significant portion of their forces through it, and even if they did, all that awaited them was a patch of low ground surrounded by the higher elevation of the hills.
From the Raul army’s point of view, that meant the valley was a choke point that could have any number of enemies on the other side. Coupled with how easy it would be to surround them, it was unlikely that they’d put much focus on attacking the valley.
In reality, it represented a weak point for us. If they broke through there, we simply wouldn’t have the numbers to stop them; every one of our soldiers was needed elsewhere. Should the Raul army take the valley, it would mean they’d be able to flank around to the rear of my lords’ armies deployed outside of the hills. But while such a pincer attack would mean certain defeat for us, we also couldn’t leave men in there. It was a good thing the likelihood of the enemy attacking it seemed fairly low.
“What of the mercenaries?” Salomon suggested. “They should be capable enough of defending a stationary position.”
The mercenaries? Right, Fabio had supplemented the numerically lacking Ramitead army by contracting a thousand sellswords. Mind you, that wasn’t a single mercenary band of a thousand, but a thousand scraped together out of a few different crews. In plainer terms, unity of command would be difficult to ensure, making the mercenaries a real grab bag of skill.
That didn’t exactly make them the most reassuring force to watch our backs, but we couldn’t spare any of my lords’ forces for a location where the enemy only might show up. I supposed our hands were tied.
“Will we be able to lure the enemy to our south?” I asked.
“We will have eight thousand men total deployed—the enemy will find it difficult to justify not committing their main force there. It’s the limit of what we can muster, especially if we also wish to account for Dozran.”
The Dozran army was approaching from the south, and since we didn’t know whether they would be friend or foe yet, we had to prepare for the worst. Quite honestly, it was extremely annoying of them.
However, in the event that the enemy saw Dozran the same way, they would likely deploy the bulk of their forces at the south too, in order to avoid showing any openings.
“Very well,” I said. “Then this shall be our formation. We have placed our trust in you all. Ensure you deliver us—all of us—a victory.”
“Victory for the Empire!” came a chorus of voices. “Victory for His Majesty the Emperor!”
And with that oath spoken, the formation of the emperor’s faction armies was finalized.
✦ ✦ ✦
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Two days later, the Raul army arrived with the coming of daybreak.