Herald of Steel

The style of how the Helvati, and the natives in general fought had been studied by the Margraves and their allies for centuries, and by now they had cracked the code down on how to deal with them to the tee.

Thus even though it looked like Metztil was making great progress and seemed to have his foot firmly on the pedal, suddenly, in almost the blink of an eye, the tempo began to rapidly change!

Lord Bakerfield had decided to turn the tables on the Helvait chief.

Hence the suppressed Margraves who appeared to be squarely on the retreat suddenly got their act and charged, and the result of the counterattack was greater than what should have been theoretically possible on paper.

The Margraves and Helvati were similarly numbered so any change in the lines should have been slow and steady.

Yet now, despite the latter's advantage, the fearless Helvati appeared to crack and buckle under the latter's great new push.

"Darn brutes… They are more an armed mob than an army!"

While observing all this from the back, Alexander let out this mutter of annoyance.

He had been of course observing how the natives fought all this time and quickly found the fault, The individualistic style of fighting made it so that it was quite hard for them to obey any complex instructions.

It was little wonder that they were beaten by the Margraves so soundly each and every time.

The Marquis family followed the much better path of- The whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

Now, to be fair to the natives, the reason for their style of fighting was not entirely due to them being foolish glory hunting hogs or egotistical maniacs.

There was a touch of pragmatism too.

That was that their environment pushed them towards such an outcome.

Living in poor, barren lands, the natives hardly had the resources to gather large groups of young men and teach them proper battle tactics for any length of time. These men were much more needed to tend to the fields lest all of them starve.

Furthermore, a lot of the individual tribes had their own distinct way of fighting. So it was hard for all of them to properly coordinate in the heat of battle.

Just see how much the NATO armies have to train and frequently rehearse what they had been trained just to make sure all of them were on the same page when the time came.

The same applied here.

It was just that these poor tribal folks did not perhaps have even a fraction of the advantages the world's greatest military alliance had.

Hence instead of trying to execute complex maneuvering orders that half the time would likely not even be understood and half the time only work to get in their own way, it was found to be far more pragmatic for the natives to just charge the enemy and break them using sheer power and ferocity.

And if there was something the natives were not lacking, it was sheer power and ferocity.

Indeed, there were many times when armies broke simply seeing the mass of huge, lumbering barbarians fearlessly charging at them with that distinct, ear splitting roar, a spear or axe raised high above their heads.

Their gaze, their body language, the loud, ritualistic songs they chanted before battle and their sheer presence was sometimes enough to break the army even before they fought.

The problem was this type of brute force and psychological scare tactic only really worked with untrained levies who had little courage to stand their ground and give fight.

When they faced an army that was well trained and knew how to plant their feet firmly on the ground and fight in coherent formation, the result was far less glamorous.

Caught out of formation and without support from their allies, the natives usually racked up quite a lot of dead bodies.

This was mainly how the Margraves and the other outside forces had pushed the natives largely out of their own island.

And currently, the same history appeared to be about to repeat itself.... until the legionaries step in!

They had finally finished expanding the pontoon bridge enough to allow one legion to charge ahead and as the 5,000 men surged with great gusto, the collapse at the front suddenly halted, almost as if someone had pressed on the breaks.

"Whew! Made it on time!" Seeing the result, Alexander who had given the order breathed a little sigh of relief.

Without his men, the lines might have not necessarily collapsed since Metztil's men had almost a martyr like aura to them and would rather die than surrender, but it would have certainly made things develop in an unpredictable way, the fate of the battle entering a seesaw state.

"Dammit!" While seeing that exact desired result halted, Lord Bakerfield cursed under his breath.

5,000 new men joining the fray would have been already bad enough in such a tense situation, but as time went on, the experienced lord soon began to notice these men did not fight nearly as badly as those 'barbarians'.

In fact, they fought just as well if not better than his own men… if he said so himself!

The fighting by now had mostly moved into the river banks after the Helvati had successfully pushed the lines several hundred meters back, and so these heavily armored men could firmly plant their feet on solid ground and kept themselves in good formation, fighting shoulder to shoulder with their brothers.

Without having to worry about crossing the rickety, wobbling pontoon bridge under duress, the legionaries were even able to launch two volleys of javelins during their initial charge, peppering the unprepared Margraves men with hundreds of deadly projectiles.

The rain of death from above was so sudden that if not for Lord Bakerfield and some of the senior officers taking immediate charge to rally the men, their army might have fractured then and there.

And even when the threat was contained, the scars it had inflicted remained bright as evidenced by the numerous scattered corpses with javelins sticking out of their bodies.

Lord Bakerfield estimated he had lost close to fifty men in that single attack and it made his heart bleed.

Although the number might not sound like a lot when compared to the 15,000 present, but in reality, such sudden instances of a large number of deaths were sometimes enough to break the army right then and there.

There were even records of such things happening, both here and in Alexander's previous world.

For instance, there was a record of an Ottoman force once besieging a small town in central Europe. And by all accounts, be it manpower or siege equipment victory appeared assured.

However that small town had a genius blacksmith who tied about a hundred kilos of gunpowder to a waterwheel and set it rolling down the hill towards the Ottoman ranks.

When that thing exploded, it supposedly took out tens of Ottoman troops and injured close to a hundred resulting in them lifting the siege.

And Lord Bakerfield could sense such a similar thing waiting to happen here.

"Do not let up! These barbarians are close to breaking. Push! Avenge your brothers! Avenge your family! Slaughter these barbarians.

They are close to breaking! Do not let up now!"

He yelled repeating the words, still clinging onto the hope that Metztil would be too greedy for life and loot, thus not willing to fight too hard here.

And this did somewhat perk up the faltering Margraves army.

The problem was the grassroots Margraves troops did not have high morale to begin with, and expected that the loot laden Helvati would run the moment they found them to be a tough nut to crack.

So they were not ready to fight tooth and nail like them.

And they were especially not ready to fight them when supported by an even scarier contingent of 5,000 fresh men who fought even better than them.

'Who are these blue uniformed freaks? They seem even more heavily armored than us!' Many even cried as such, finding it very hard for their spears thrust to go through all the layers of the legionary's armor.

Compared to them, the naked natives seemed like they were made of butter.

Even compared to the Margraves men who considered themselves to be already lavishly equipped, Alexander's men appeared to be on a level of their own.

The short, lightweight spears wielded by them could not pose a true threat to the heavy legionaries, with a lot of the thrusts getting stopped by the chainmail before the surprised attacker was unceremoniously stabbed by the opponent's sharp, short sword and killed.

The Margraves did not strictly use the phalanx formation, with their huge, several-meter-long spears like the Adhanian forces. but preferred much shorter, agile weapons and shields.

The advantage of this type of fighting was it allowed them to be much more flexible, a boon when fighting a sneaky enemy like the natives who preferred hit and run tactics instead of directly meeting them head on.

The bane however was facing a heavily armored infantry formation head on… such as now.

And that was how Margraves had their counterattacks basically stopped...

Then Remus happened!

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