Herald of Steel



Faruq deliberated on Sunash's hopeful suggestion for a bit.

It was this or going with his own plan where he would be just stopping the incoming collapse.

But that could not win the battle.

And thus ultimately decided to follow Sunaash, gambling everything on this dice roll.

Faruq knew that the battle could now be only won if the enemy made some major mistakes, and not by his own skill.

Hence, soon, the 2nd legion started to see camels in front of them, followed by a shower of javelins and spear attacks.

"Hold! Hold! Just a bit longer hold!" Seeing this Heliptos and most of the officers under him cried, encouraging and boasting the men.

These men had been going at it from the morning and most had lost their throats, sounding hoarse and gravely from the day-long shouting and urging.

While the men under them were scraping the bottom of the barrel to stay in the fight.

The men here had been fighting for close to 9 hours by now, and given that even just standing continuously for 9 hours would be tiring for anyone, the fact that these men were still able to lift a shield and thrust s sword proved their mettle.

Alexander could ask little more of them.

And this was not even mentioning that in the last few hours, they had been fighting double their numbers.

Thus some could say Sunash might actually have a chance there as even the toughest of warriors had their breaking point.

But those people were to be disappointed, as at last Alexander decided to commit his reserves there, commanding Grahtos, "Grahtos, go help Heliptos. The 2nd legion must hold! Fight hard man!"

The men and horses in the back had managed to recover some stamina in the meantime, and thus they were able to be deployed into battle, so soon 1,500 heavy cavalry was there to counter the camels.

"Hahaha, see boys, the cavalry is here. What are you afraid of? Hahaha," Heliptos loudly cheered while breathing a sigh of relief at the alleviation of pressure on his men, and then urged them with the single word, "Fight!"

And for the experienced veterans, that single word was enough, who did not need long speeches like the green peasants.

Thus both sides engaged in brutal melee, with the Jahal mercenaries being especially reckless against Grahtos and his men in order to try and avenge their fallen comrades.

But the heavy armor of Grahtos's men proved to be a hard target, and it seemed it would take some time for the mercenaries to work through them.

Time that they did not have as Alexander's 7,000 men had already struck the left flank and were pressuring them there.

The result of that collision was as one would expect.

The phalanx was far too vulnerable on the sides and the legionaries were able to through them that side like a hot knife through butter, as the phalangites proved themselves incapable of turning their spears around to effectively counter the threat.

Hence the death count was rapidly shooting up in that sector, and that side seemed minutes away from a collapse.

After all, neither the men nor the leadership there wanted to win at all costs.

Thus, as soon as the good news of Sunash hitting the 2nd legion reached Faruq, pleas for help from the right also began to haunt him, as the nobles informed him of their desire to retreat and save their men.

And Faruq had little answer to their pleas because his reserves were already committed elsewhere, who were busy engaging Alexander's men.

So even if he could move some men to temporarily buttress the situation, Alexander could do the same, balancing the equation once again.

Hence the man could only plea, order, and urge the lords to hold on a bit longer, promising them he needed just a few more minutes to break the enemy and win.

Meanwhile, he also sent messenger after messenger to Sanush to try harder to break the enemy, but the temporary mercenary leader was already doing the best he could.

The main thing was that it just naturally took a while to grind through six and a half thousand men (6,500), even if one outnumbered the other 2 to 1.

Thus Faruq's few minutes never arrived and the promised time then turned to tens of minutes and then close to an hour.

By which point the sun was already close to setting, and dusk seemed to be apidly encroaching upon the day.

Soon the day would end, and so if the battle was not decided within the next half an hour, it might as well drag into tomorrow.

Which would be a nightmare for both sides.

Alexander due to his arrow shortage, and Faruq due to his loss of morale in today's battle, which would make it hard, if not impossible for him to convince the various nobles to mount another attack tomorrow.

But just as things were starting to look like it would go that way,

*Blare!*, *Blare!*, *Blare!*

Alas for Faruq, his center-right column was ultimately unable to hold, as trumpets blared out to signal the retreat.

This was done arbitrarily by the officers and nobles in the front without consulting Faruq, not that it would have mattered anyway because the men in those formations had already begun to ignore their officers' orders to stay and fight, and had begun to rout.

"No! Stay! Don't run!"

"Strenght! Show strength!"

"Just a bit more. Endure a bit more!"

"The sun! Look at the sun! We can win!"

"Bastards. I will hang all of you fucking traitors,"

"Traitors! All of you are fucking traitors,"

The various officers and nobles began to try all kinds of different techniques to convince the peasants to stay, from pleading, to urging, to ordering to threatening.

But all such coercion proved to be too ineffective against the might of the sword and shield of the legionary.

The average peasant did not really care who won or lost.

They only came here or were forced to come here under the orders of their lords

And thus, when the fear for their lives ultimately reached a critical point, they had no concern about the overall situation on the battlefield, i.e- whether the sun was setting, rising or even being eaten by a giant serpent.

They only cared about surviving right now, at this moment.

And thus the peasants ran, starting from around the infantry unit whose flank was under attack from the 6th legion, the panic then spreading to the back units, and then to the sides, until ultimately the entire center was no more.

And the routing of around thirty thousand (30,000) men was a scene to behold.

Viewed from above it would have looked like a fall of dominos, where at first only a tiny phalanx square disintegrated into a trickle of tiny, black dots, and that trickle then spread to other phalanx units, and then other, and then other, until the trickle turned to a pond, then a river, and then turning to a full fledge sea of people all running for their lives in all directions In panic.

This was because the sight of one panicked man urged the others who saw him to do the same, which in turn made more people follow that group, and then even more, until everyone broke formation and dropped everything to run away in fear.

This was called a rout and it was happening right in front of Alexander, as each man fought for himself, pushing, shoving, and even tackling others in an effort to be the first one to escape into the safety of their camp.

In fact, there was so much confusion and chaos on the battlefield that some nobles and offices were even killed by their own forces, either by being pushed down and then trampled to death or even by being mistaken as the opposing forces and being struck down.

There was even one noble whose own standard bearer somehow mistook him for the enemy through all the dust and charged him with the pointed part of the pole.

But Fortunately for the noble, one of his bodyguards managed to get between the two and managed to promptly cut off the attacker's hand, thus saving his master's life.

Similar scenarios played out all along the one-and-a-half kilometer (1.5km) front, as the retreating soldiers caused more death and damage to their own forces in the few minutes it took to reach their own camp than Alexander's men had been able to inflict in the close to 10-hour struggle.

But this was the norm as it was really hard to cause much death when the soldiers fought in formation, which was why they fought in formations.

And the real casualties were death only when the enemy was running away, where one could catch them off guard and vulnerable.

As the peasants ran, Alexander's forces for their part also showed no mercy to these feeling cowards, running ahead to try and catch as many as possible

But all of them were tired as dogs to give any meaningful chase, and besides, the entire solid ground had been long ago turned to mud by the trampling of so many feet.

So, many were able to escape by the grace of it, while many others slipped and fell down into the mud, before being stamped to death by the panicking men.

Or they broke his legs or simply got stuck in the knee-high mud, which many might mistake as quicksand.

Thus the mud giveth and the mud taketh away.

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