What You Lost, What You Forgot (2)
“I am reassured, for we have Sir Alloy.”
“Yes, I heard you had achieved a great deal of late. Congratulations.”
The nobles and knights were complimenting one another with golden praise.
“The parade ceremony of the Rose Throne Heavy Infantry of your family is quite spectacular, am I correct?”
“Yes, and aren’t your county’s Iron Hawk archers some of the most elite marksmen in the kingdom?”
The nobles laughed as they raised their glasses. Maximilian brought his hand to his face upon seeing them speak so idly. It was difficult to determine whether this was a war room where commanders gathered or a banquet hall for the nobility.
The prince studied the faces of the gathered nobles, recognizing a few of them. There was a middle-aged man with a scar across his cheek; he was a well-known knight. A young man with broad shoulders was a promising soldier who had recently gained fame through his actions. All these men had reputations and noble postings, and all they did here was to boast about their abilities and the quality of the troops they commanded.
Somehow, this farce was called a war council.
It was radically different from the council in which the northern lords had died screeching under Adrian’s blade. At that meeting, there had at least been strategic discussions, though far less nutritious snacks. There wasn’t even a sentence of strategy or tactics to be heard among all these nobles.
“Wouldn’t this be the ideal time to plan our countermeasures against the orcs?” Maximilian asked all the lords who were strolling through the flower garden, discussing varieties of orchids, and so forth.
“Before Your Highness’s arrival, the competent commanders had stayed up entire nights to create our defenses, and the wise nobles and knights have already inspected their work to fix their shortcomings.”
The commander’s answer, spoken as to appease a child, did not impress Maximilian in the slightest. No, the prince already knew how lax the defenses were, even if the commander said that late nights were spent fixing them.
The strategy took advantage of the geographical features of the Rhinethes, focusing on creating a line of fire over the bridge and funneling the orcs onto it. Against a conventional enemy, it was a sound plan, yet it exhibited a single glaring error. The orcs, and especially their stronger units, did not fear death.
Maximilian recalled the words his brother had spoken to him when he had arrived at Winter Castle: ‘If they charge over a plain, they shall die in their hordes just to taste your flesh. If they face walls, they will throw themselves against them, taking your fortress by climbing over the heaped corpses of their comrades.’
Maximilian did not believe him at first, thinking his brother just wanted to scare him. It was no joke; after the first battle, Adrian’s words had been proved many times over. Even now, Maximilian didn’t know how he had survived. He considered their current situation. Winter Castle had had high walls and competent rangers. Here there were neither walls nor the rangers of Balahard.
These nobles and elite commanders who boasted so much would piss their breeches the moment they came face to face with orcs. They would, despite their strong bodies, see themselves torn limb from limb as their consciousness faded into oblivion.
Their battle lines would break in an instant, and tasting their fear; the Orcs would become even more savage and bloodthirsty. Hell would unfold its bloody wings in front of these men’s eyes. Maximilian could even now imagine the sundered lines of defense and the ruined, desolate cities. He could see the people chased by orcs like rabbits and the tattered banners of the kingdom flying over nothing but empty fields and skeletons.
The Second Prince decided then and there that he had to prevent such carnage.
That was why he had led the refugees. Once more, his brother’s request came to his mind:
‘Don’t let the line falter. The barren and harsh mountains of the north have made these beasts fierce indeed. If they gain entry to the warm and bountiful south, their rampaging hordes shall wreak irreversible carnage.’
Maximilian looked about himself, listening to the nobles speaking.
“Twenty-two noble families are gathered, and this amounts to a force of 9,723 soldiers. Four-hundred of these are prominent knights, thirty-three of which are the best in the kingdom.”
“Yes, we have a wide range of forces, and the enemy has to strike in narrow formations. We have an overwhelming geographical advantage. Funneling them over the bridge means that, in theory, we double the effectiveness of our soldiers, so even if 20,000 and not 10,000 orcs storm our lines, we shall easily prevail.”
All these men were speaking as if they already had the victory well within their hands. Both the nobles and commanders believed this. The soldiers themselves were even sad that not all of them would show off their prowess, and the knights were blinded by vanity. The commanders greatly underestimated the enemy and were overconfident in their abilities.
No one considered the true face of the coming disaster; all they saw were the flowers sprouting behind them as they gained a victory. They all seemed to forget that Winter Castle had collapsed and that the northern kingdom had become naught but empty fields of death.
I can do this, Maximilian told himself. He cleared his mind as he touched the scars the orcs had inflicted upon him.
“I propose that we reconsider our deployment of the troops, and review their readiness for facing the monster horde,” Maximilian said energetically. The expression of all those gathered hardened. Maximilian smiled gently, as not to offend these men but rather win them to his side.
“It is an effective layout devised by renowned commanders and knights. Arguably, no better strategy than this one exists.” Maximilian chuckled under his breath, for these men had no idea how poor these fine arrangements that they had made were. Even if the noble families had brought their elite troops by royal decree, all these troops, as well as the knights, have been placed in the rear. It reflected the aristocrats’ selfishness, who only worried that their special troops would come to harm. The troops that would face the first wave of orcs were from small families, and most of them have been branded as conscripts. Maximilian had not been taken seriously. He studied the room once more.
“My soldiers’ inspection ceremony has been excellent, Your Highness,” said one of the great lords of the realm.
“Yes, did you say that they were the Gassian Heavy Armored Infantry? Your soldiers are so brave. With them at the front line, the morale of our allied forces is sure to increase significantly,” said Maximilian.
The Highlord looked at the commanders with a confused face, seeming to ask them to mediate the prince’s statement that his soldiers were to join the rabble at the front.
“And Sir Alloy, I have been told that you achieved great deeds of late. Congratulations! With your famous sword among them, I am sure the soldiers in the advanced ranks shall not be shaken,” Maximilian quickly said, the cynicism almost dripping from his face. He almost resembled his brother then, though he was unconscious of this fact.
“Your Highness, His Majesty, the king, has not ordered Sir Alloy to fight on the front lines!”
“Indeed, there is already an order of battle as arranged by the competent command staff. And besides, as drunk as I am now, wouldn’t it be foolish of me to go prance around like a private greedy for glory?”
Some of the nobles that Maximilian had pointed out were made fun of by veterans. A few knights were overflowing with mana resonance, so they quite liked the prince’s proposals. The nobles themselves, afraid of losing the investments that were their elite troops, expressed their reasons as to why they and their men could not stand on the front lines.
“Your Highness’s witty advice surely deserves attention, but, unfortunately, it cannot be followed. As Your Highness has said, the enemy is almost up to our nostrils already, so if we reposition our forces now, we will only cause needless confusion,” the overall commander said, wishing to put a stop to the prince.
“Had the enemy been up to your nostrils, as you say, would all of you be sipping wine and admiring flowers? To me, it seems that there is plenty of time to enact my suggested changes.”
The nobles looked at one another with embarrassed faces. Some of them knew Maximilian, and a few had only spoken to the prince on occasion. These were even more embarrassed. They had known the Second Prince as a gentle and dignified man, always kind and polite to everyone, even if he was widely acclaimed as the Second Coming of the Founding King, Gruhorn Leonberger. He had never been an imperious personage who never showed his displeasure at the nobles, or even mock them as he had just done.
“Your Highness, this is a military camp, and we all respect the dignity of the military structure and hierarchy, as is right. Just as we respect Your Highness’s dignity in turn,” the commander said gently, obviously trying to defuse the tense atmosphere. “We are glad that you are here.” Maximilian understood the message but pressed on nonetheless.
“Well, I once more propose that our best forces and the knights of the high lords are placed at the very front, and that they be supported by everything we can throw or fire at the orcs.”
“Your Highness-“
“This is an official proposal that I make to all gathered here. I do this not in my capacity as the Second Prince, but as commander of the Northern Reinforcement Legions, as appointed by His Majesty the King.”
Maximilian, now having confirmed his authority in the command structure without any doubt, once more proposed the troops’ redeployment. This time the nobles and commanders could not ignore his words, so they had no choice but to review his plan.
Maximilian sighed his relief, for the meeting finally felt like the military council that it should have been. He still maintained his cold exterior, however.
* * *
Maximilian had sat through several days of meetings by now. He had quietly stimulated or questioned the pride of the high lords as was needed. He wanted them to no longer disgrace themselves by keeping away from the fighting. Even those nobles who had vehemently tried to keep their forces in reserve were forced to obey his commands in the end. The prince was not fully satisfied, for he now focused on the lower lords, pointing out those who did not wish to cooperate. If the high lords had acceded to his will, so too should these lesser nobles.
Once the meetings were over, the order of the defensive lines was completely reversed.
All the elite troops in the rear had been placed on the front lines, while the smaller noble families’ weaker forces took up the rear.
“I am humbled by the initiative and the modesty shown by the nobles toward my suggestions. The royal family will never forget your righteous actions.”
Maximilian gently smiled as he said this, though the nobles trembled under his gaze,
They had been exhausted by the Second Prince’s demands, feeling that they had been obliged to follow them, risking to lose his courtesy had they rejected him. Even though they trembled under his gaze, they still evinced a new level of admiration toward Maximilian.
The political guile of the Second Prince had paid off, for he had played upon the nobles’ fear of disgrace, a thing they feared almost as much as death. He had stimulated their fears until all their resistance to his plans flowed away like dust in the wind. They no longer saw him as a fifteen-year-old boy but rather a ruler in his own right.
The nobles exchanged glances and reached an unspoken agreement: The next king was among them; they were convinced of this. The succession was still a long way away, and their present concern was to prove their prestige and might by repulsing the army of orcs headed their way. They were motivated now, believing it to be a good political move if they were responsible for the victory.
Their resolve did not last long.
“The orcs are coming! The orcs are coming!”
The moment they saw the vast horde of orcs flocking to the bridge, the ambition that had been burning in the hearts of the nobles was so quickly extinguished. There were so many orcs, these nobles thought, and they were so big. Weren’t these monsters supposed to be a trivial threat?
The nobles swallowed, their throats dry with fear. These monsters were twice as big as fully armored heavy infantrymen.
“The orcs are chasing someone!” an archer with keen eyes shouted.
The nobles all stared with amazed faces, for as the archer has said, people were indeed fleeing before the army of monsters. One wore a helmet and iron armor, but with the distinct lines of a slender woman’s figure. A man in white ran next to her, followed by three ghostlike cavalrymen who followed with fluttering capes.
“Aaaah! Loose your arrows, fire, fire!” a noble, who had recognized one of the men, shouted with wide eyes.
“Who is over there?” inquired the other nobles.
“That man is the eldest son of Count Eli!”
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