Imperial Campsite, Eighty Miles from Kontia
Tanya, Queen of the Tanaoi
The sun had begun to peak over the horizon as we crested a hill and beheld the body of the Imperial forces just a scant half a mile away. It ran for roughly three miles in a loose formation as I could see with my naked eye the edges of their formation at the far north and south. They were positioned at the top of a hill with a dry valley between us and them and due to my army's slow movement overnight they were prepared to meet us.
I had wanted to engage in a night time raid but if I had pushed my forces forwards with every delay I would have ended up strung out across the countryside. Even with the clear moon augmenting the Lepus' natural night vision, reforming my army in the darkness would take just as long but would have left us vulnerable to a counter attack. Thus I had been forced to delay and delay to keep my army together on the march. I sighed and looked at the Imperial forces arrayed against me.
They were horsemen, clad in armour that radiated enough magic from various enchantments that they would dull any attempt at magical detection I made. Not that I had needed to carefully sense the application of magic much in this life. Imperial magic was, generally, predictable and effective. Focused mainly on deflecting arrows and other missile weapons allowing the units equipped with the monstrously expensive enchanted equipment to operate unmolested until the battle was joined.
But such enchantments were a double edged sword. Unlike the magical defences of my second life they were 'dumb' in that they would activate when any object was moving fast enough within a small distance from the armour itself preventing anyone using the equipment from employing the use of ranged weapons.
They were also rather weak, unable to take advantage of any magical potential of the person using it and instead relying upon mana stored in gemstones that would seep magic from the atmosphere slowly over time. Two or three sling bullets were all the enchantments could resist before failing. Some pieces could not even manage that.
There were other enchantments but none so effective, so practical and as widespread as the deflection runes. With so many present within the cavalry formation before me they would be more than capable of closing the gap between us before my slingers could put in the work to whittle their forces down.
The Empire did have other mages, from Auxiliary goblin shamans who commanded surprisingly deadly magics to schools of philosopher mages that swore an oath to the Emperor Molt Augustas himself and studied at the legendary city of Rondal, home of mages the world over.
I had applied, during my brief exile, for a scholarship at the Imperial City of Rondal. But I was hardly the mage I was in my second life and had been rejected from the academic institution. It was egoistic perhaps to believe myself worthy of becoming a student at such a renowned institution merely because I had been a passable magic user in a past life.
As I began to arrange my forces upon and behind the hill I strode forwards to examine the battlefield closer and found it rather strange how few cavalry were arrayed against me. At the estimates of my scouts and I they stood at roughly just six to seven thousand men running a considerable distance up and down the hill overlooking the valley. With perhaps more at the rear but none in a position to extend the lines overmuch.
A reasonable commander would match the length of their formation, with the eight Battalions of roughly one thousand women each I was quite capable of doing that and more, creating an envelopment that could extend with ease five miles wide and roll up their entire force with the speed of my infantry's advance.
I had little doubt that the Saderans would expect us to march into the valley and begin to skirmish with them as a prelude to such a strategy. Should our skirmishing prove ineffective with the sheer amount of deflection runes they had amassed and the steel armour they were clad in aside we would form a spear wall and march up the hill towards them and they would charge down the hill, devastating my forces and breaking through my lines in places. When the battle was joined they would deploy their Wyverns and rake along my lines with their fire breath, shattering my formation and sending my army into retreat. As they shattered the battalions I sent to flank them one by one.
Whomever commanded this force they had chosen their field of battle well, picking a site that was just outside of the range of my slingers I could not fault them for such a strategy and in truth should I push forwards into the valley there was little doubt that regardless of what I did I would take heavy losses.
Considering the problem carefully I began to send out runners to the various commanders of my Battalions, many of the runners being young girls. It was not uncommon for well renowned, or simply richer Lepus warriors to go to battle with a young girl to act as sort of a squire and learn from them. Such girls had to have been old enough to have hunted a medium sized game and drank its blood as a write of passage into adulthood, however some had instead reached adulthood by partaking in a raid and killing some farmer or goblin tribesman.
I had attempted to reform the practice but the system did provide valuable experience for young women to learn how to engage in warfare and the requirements for survival on the steppe outside of the few permanent Lepus settlements. It was only warriors or cattle herders who travelled alone or in small groups regularly after all, most women only left their homes in large warbands to find a husband and thus did not know everything that was required for survival and fewer still knew anything about leadership or organisation.
This was by design of course, knowledge was valuable and it was seen as foolish to just give it away as that would reduce the value you had to your tribe or warband. Making yourself replaceable just meant you were going to be replaced in the eyes of many Lepus.
I was beginning to change that view with my mandatory lectures and lesson plans for officers but I still required something of an apprenticeship program for promising young women to work with and learn from older seasoned warriors. Thus my reforms had resulted in only officers being allowed to bring along a woman younger than fifteen but older than twelve as an assistant. But that still meant there were hundreds of them with the army even if they were forbidden to join the battle line.
I sent two of them forwards with white flags inviting the enemy commander to talk, but was met only by the Imperials sending their standards forwards to present them at the front of their army.
There would be no negotiations today.
My scouts had been skirmishing with Imperial scouts overnight but despite several runners arriving to inform me of Imperial movements no sign had been found of the Wyverns and I suspected that they were being held in reserve and would arrive once the battle was joined. With the sheer size of the battlefield, if I were to engage with this battle traditionally I would take perhaps half an hour up to an hour to move a company from one end of the battlefield to the other. While the Wyverns could be at any point of the battlefield in moments and would have a commanding view to know where they would be required most.
I would have no way to respond to them, I would have no way to resist them. Fighting this battle effectively meant that every move I made had to be done to counter the enemy air assets first and foremost. Everything else was a distraction.
I did not bother to match the length of their formation, surrendering utterly my flanks. My battalions instead were arrayed in a two rank formation, with spears levied forwards in a poor approximation of a pike formation given my inability to field longer spears at the moment.
They were arrayed two battalions aside each other with fifty feet between them in a line stretching back. I arrayed the second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth battalions like this with the second and the fourth as the frontmost battalions and the seventh and eighth as the rearmost.
The first and third battalions were more ordered then the others and thus I selected them to break apart into company sized formations that would be placed on the side of my forces making the frontal width of my army less than three hundred feet total. It took an hour to order my army as I wanted it and in that time I had my scouts walk up the hill on our side of the valley up to five miles away to give the impression that I was arranging my army outside of the view of the imperials behind the hill.
Once my army was in some semblance of a formation I placed our baggage train in the middle between the two lines of battalions and placed myself at the very front of the army with my bodyguards plugging the gap between the two battalions. But before I ordered my forces forwards I had to set out a clear and unambiguous objective for the women under my command.
"Good morning ladies!" I cast my voice out drawing upon a rather simple spell that nevertheless strained my ability to process the precise magical theorem without the aid of a computational device. "I am sure you are tired! I know that I am! My feet hurt, my belly is empty and I am cold too! What about you? Are you tired?!" I asked the stunned mass of bodies before me. "Well? ARE YOU?"
There was a slight delay before voices began to call out ascent, thousands of my soldiers standing before their commander to shout that yes, in fact they were tired, cold, hungry and miserable.
Serves them right honestly, should have marched faster.
"Of course you are!" I channelled my magic to make sure even the people far in the back could hear me. "But fortunately for all of us we don't have to set up camp! We don't have to dig latrines! We don't have to cook for ourselves before we fill our bellies! Why is that you ask? Because the Saderans have done it all for us!" I marched up the hill slightly so that all of my army could get a better look at me even if I would be barely a speck for the people at the back.
"That's right! The Imperials have taken the time to make camp for us! And I have it on good authority that they have enough wine to float a boat! All for you! Sadly for the Imperials, they foolishly believe that the camp belongs to them! But you will debuse them of that notion! The Imperials believe that this is a battle! Show them how wrong they are! The Imperials are nothing but a distraction before your might. Upon my signal you will walk to YOUR camp and you will cast aside anyone foolish enough to get between you and a warm bed! You will march, spear forwards and YOU WILL NOT STOP UNTIL WE REACH OUR CAMP!" There was a roar of ascent, real or not. The women understood it was time to cheer and roar and thus they did so.
I turned about, still carrying the heavy weight on my back as I did so as my bodyguards waved the officers forwards. Soon the air was filled with the sound of an army marching as we crested the hill and I held up a fist to slow and eventually stop the formation.
The Imperials were indeed out of range of my slingers from this hill to theirs and once we were close enough to pelt them with stones we would be too close to disengage. But only my rearmost Battalions had slings ready and they would not be using them upon the Imperial horse or foot.
Having waited an hour the Imperials suddenly perked up as we rose over the hill but looked unsettled at how they could see only a tiny part of my army. I walked forwards and unslung the weight and pulled aside the cloth covering exposing the shiny brass to the world. I delighted in the polish for a moment before calling forwards a pair of girls, one holding wax sealed cups with pre measured grains and other carrying an iron ball.
They moved with reverence as they poured the grains into its mouth and then hammered in the iron ball. As they worked I looked out over the Imperial army that could likely see little but the way the sun caught the bronze. For a moment I mourned the warfare that had defined the Imperial Age of Falmart and then I lit the fuse and killed it.
I held the two handles that the cannon hung from in a firm stance but I did not allow myself to become too stiff lest I be thrown to the floor or pull a muscle from the recoil. I let the heavy implement of war kick and I turned my body and let my arms sway back to arrest the force marvelling at the ease of employing such a weapon.
What would Nobunaga, Motonari or Napoleon have given to have such weapons be carried about the battlefield upon the backs of the infantry. To have the ability for a single person to shoulder a gun and carry it across the battlefield wherever it was required.
With a thunderous boom that echoed out across the valley, the age of artillery was born.