Herald of Steel

Alexander was notified of Amenheraft's coming about a week in advance, just like he wanted.

This was in part due to Grahtos's scouting, and also due in part due to Amenheraft not bothering to hide his approach, hoping to scare and exert some kind of physiological control ober Ptolomy.

Alexander was given the size of the opposing army to be around seventy thousand with almost all infantry, just like Ptolomy had said, with all the cavalry horses being used up by the slingers in the battle a month ago.

Fifteen thousand heavy cavalry was an enormous number, as it is estimated that even the mighty Roman army only wielded ten thousand cavalry, and if Amenheraft had that many horses, Alexander could have only hidden behind the city walls and hoped that Amenheraft would starve first.

It would have then been a brutal contest of willpower and Alexander let out heavy sighs of relief that he would not have to deal with a brutal siege but instead could come out of the city and defeat the former king in a pitched battle.

Amenheraft led his army straight down the road, intent on reaching Adhan as fast as possible and this made Alexander deploy his skirmishers, as he sent all his three thousand cavalry (fifteen hundred horses were obtained from the nobles) to harass and disrupt the huge, lumbering army.

Under Grahtos and other similar Sycarians' leadership, they chose to attack the baggage trains, the supply wagons, and the pack animals, launching lightning-fast attacks out of the woods bordering the road and then promptly disappearing into them after killing a few.

This tactic continued for two weeks, turning Amenheraft's seven-day march into fourteen days and buying precious time for Alexander.

Alexander kept up the pressure constantly, dividing his cavalry into small teams and rotating the skirmishers into day and night assault troopers.

Aided by the Adhanians who knew the terrain, and the absence of Amenheraft's own cavalry meant the huge army was not able to chase off these annoying bugs and although this harassment had negligible casualties for the huge army on the whole, at best a few hundred dead and wounded, it achieved its intended effect- to slow them down and keep the entire opposing forces on edge.

By the last few days, the nerves of the soldiers had been frayed to a breaking point by thoughts of the sudden arrival of opposing horsemen and their rain of javelins.

The appearance of ghost-riding horses had occupied their thoughts as they marched, as they eat, and even as they slept, leaving them tired and panic-prone.

Alexander's night attack had even involved some flaming javelins that managed to set fire to a few tents and spread chaos and confusion throughout the army, meaning the soldiers got little sleep and rest before the fated battle.

"Who's leading the rebel army? Ptolomy? Barzan? No, such cowardly tactics are not their style," Manuk, currently, the apple in Amenheraft's eyes, and the leader of his army, asked in frustration.

The best way to deal with skirmishers was to ignore them, as they were rarely capable of dealing any real damage to the army on their own and could only annoy the opponent.

But being annoyed for two weeks meant Manuk's forces were not in the best shape.

Though, even then, Manuk and Amenheraft, while being concerned, were not beating their heads over this.

They were instead busy being surprised and then rejoicing over the fact that Ptolomy's forces had come out of the city to meet them in open combat, meaning that they would not have to engage in a lengthy siege.

"It must be that mercenary leader," Amenheraft replied from the side to Manuk's question, still recalling those cool, azure eyes.

Then he sneered, "The lowly mongrel thinks he can beat my divine army outnumbered and using a rabble of peasants? Heh. fat chance."

Manuk too shared this sentiment, as he could see no way to defeat these battle-hardened veterans with green recruits.

While he had lost his contacts with the spies in the city, but even then he reasoned that Ptolomy had likely not gotten any significant new armies from any of the surrounding nobles and likely had built it from the raw citizenry.

This produced a trace of disdain in Manuk's heart for Alexander, as he felt that using such people against a properly trained army in open combat was suicide.

And credit where due is due, Manuk was correct in thinking this, assuming that Alexander did intend to challenge them head-on.

So, where was Alexander currently?

He was camped atop a hill, around ten kilometers from the city.

He had marched out the day before and unlike his opponents, his soldiers were rested and ready for battle.

The city was left in the hands of Ptolomy, with two thousand of Alexander's men left behind to guard the city, along with five hundred to guard or more accurately keep Ptolomy hostage.

The leader of the palace guards was Cambyses, who had Alexander's secret orders to kill Ptolomy and his family if a revolt occurred and then light the palace on fire as a smoke signal.

With such guarantees in place, Alexander led his army flanked on both sides by the cavalry down the valley and into the open field, initiating the contact.

"Men! The devil rebel has appeared! Are you ready?" Alexander asked while riding his horse up and down the front lines, trying to motivate the men.

"Yes!" Came a thunderous roar.

"Good, show them what you got. God is with us," Alexander kept his speech short.

And the battle began shortly after, at around midday, as Amenheraft's army crossed a deep river to meet Alexander's forces head-on, shaking the sky with the cries of close to a hundred and fifty thousand men.

The centers and the wings fought each other head-on, as Manuk's tactic was simple- to use his experienced and battle-hardened warriors to snap the center of the enemy army and cause a rout.

To do this, Manuk, having the superior force number in addition to possessing the better-trained army, thinned out his flanks, with just enough soldiers to hold the flanks, and started to strengthen his center.

Alexander's center was around forty thousand strong and the wings an even ten thousand on both sides, while Manuk had fifty-five to sixty thousand in the center, while each of his two flanks were held by his most experienced veterans of five to seven thousand each.

The idea was to use his much thicker center to ram into Alexander's mostly evenly sized center, breaking it, and causing his army to be split in two, forming two unguarded flanks and thus initiating a rout.

And till now, the battle was developing exactly like that.

Although Alexander's novel creation the pilum caused some confusion and death during the first few minutes of the fight, Amenheraft's experienced troops soon understood that the opponents needed some distance to throw his new kind of javelin and so ran quickly to close the distance and initiate the hand to hand melee.

Amenheraft's forces decisively proved to be the better at this, as even when many soldiers were deprived of their shields, they still proved to present a deadly challenge to the fully shielded green recruit.

If Alexander hadn't sent his cavalry to reinforce his wings, thus forcing Manuk to move some soldiers from the center to strengthen his own flanks, the battle might have been over even before Alexander could have put his plan into action.

But even with the help of the cavalry, with was only enough to slow down the eventual defeat, not stop or reverse it.

This brutal contest stabbing contest quickly passed its two-hour mark, with Alexander's forces being pushed further and further behind.

And instead of standing their ground and fighting, Alexander's forces let themselves be pushed around, letting the enemy ever closer to their camp.

No one, not even Manuk found this strange and in hindsight, if Alexander was in his shoes, he would not have either.

After all, it was only natural for an army of green, outnumbered soldiers to be defeated by a much, larger, experienced force.

Alexander too did not seem concerned by the approaching defeat he allowed, as he freely allowed his soldiers to retreat to the hilly, mountainous terrain behind.

This was his plan, and to make it easier for the royalist army to press on the attack, he even began to recall his cavalry and thus thinning out the flanks.

As Alexander's forces retreat towards the hills, the royalist army naturally followed, eager to color their spear tips in the blood of the rebels.

And then it happened!

The phenomenon that Alexander had described and asked the stratos and captains to look out for had begun to manifest itself in the opposing army, especially on the sparely manned flanks, which contained Amenheraft's finest.

These were the cream of the crop of Amenheraft's army, consisting mainly of nobles and heavy cavalrymen who had lost their horses and were being forced to fight as infantry.

They were highly skilled and extremely motivated, and in their zeal to stamp out this rebellion once and for all, they soon began to recklessly chase the flanks of the enemy that seemed to be returning.

And this was the phenomenon Alexander tasked his officers to look out for.

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