Herald of Steel

Chapter 423 An Uneasy Stalemate (Part-1)

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The battle ranged on from the morning till midday, with no end in sight.

The soft glow of the spring sun turned harsh and hot by this time, making both sides sweat profusely as many a parched throat cried over for a sip of water, but was immediately squashed by the neverending bloodlust to not give the enemy an inch.

For the moment, neither side appeared to show any sign of budging.

In the meantime, Alexander's left flank had been almost drowned out in arrows, with the surrounding soil looking like it had been planted with wooden arrows like it was some kind of cash crop.

But even through all the blizzard of hailfire, the crossbowmen still held, taking refuge behind their pavises most of the time and only sneaking their head out to launch their shots, before quickly again ducking behind their protective screen to rest and reload.

The whole thing appeared like a game of cat and mouse, as the mercenaries and the archers tried to catch the crossbowmen between their transitions, timing their volleys accordingly, while the crossbowmen would try to aim, fire, and duck as quickly and with as much accuracy as they could.

But still, for both sides, most of the arrows they fired missed.

While in Alexander's case, many were stopped by embedding themselves into the large shields in front of the crossbowmen, until there were a few with so many arrows stuck to them that when the lines were rotated, the fresh new men would come up with their own pavises to replace the ones in the frontlines because they would look more like wooden porcupines rather than solid defensible shields.

The fact that a solid slab of wood, plated with copper could be basically destroyed using just arrows was a phenomenon that had to be seen to be believed.

But even with this impressive display of lethality, still, when some arrows did manage to find their target, especially on Alexander's side, it was not like it was not an instant kill.

Because arrows were not bullets.

They were primarily meant as a suppressive weapon, used to make the enemies kept their heads down, while the other parts of the army could do their job unhindered.

The primary reason for this was because by the time the arrow managed to penetrate the chainmail and linen thorax of the crossbowmen, there was little penetrating power left over to deal much damage, most time dealing flesh wounds, or at best a broken bone.

Certainly painful, but usually not deadly, and many times not even enough to stop the man from continuing to fight.

But while the heavily armored crossbowmen took these blows quite well, and the lightly armored but mobile Jahal mercenaries had no problem holding the line, the archers under Lord Liakit were not so lucky.

Because they were lightly armored, had only small shields, and stationary units.

Lord Liakit had not bothered to equip his men properly to save on cost, and it was coming back to bite him now.

The accurate, long-ranged crossbow attacks proved very deadly for his men, and even though only 2,000 crossbowmen engaged 5,000 of them, it was the outnumbering archers who were put on the back foot, unable to provide a proper response and thus forced to simply weather the arrow storm.

It appeared it was only a matter of time since these archers broke and ran.

That was the situation update for the left flank.

Now for the center units.

The fighting there was still going strong, though the intensity did seem to have slowed down a bit as time passed, with both sides beginning to tire after 4 hours of brutal melee. though the tiredness of the phalangites was becoming much more noticeable.

Many were seen visibly huffing and puffing and their thrusts appeared weaker and sluggish, and they much preferred to take refuge behind their large sheilds when attacked, rather than actively parry and answer back.

"Darm this strange formation. The enemy might be able to fight for weeks," One of the phalanx captains cursed under his breath looking at the smooth rotation of Alexander's troops, and seeing that the ferocity of the enemy's attack had really decrease even after so long, while they themselves were close to their breaking point.

Fights longer than 4 hours were possible for phalanxes, but usually there would be a rest in between for both of the equally exhausted sides to catch some breath, making it a contest of which side had the better trained and physically fit soldiers and see who could regain their stamina quickly.

They never faced anything like the continuous meat grinder currently being lobbed against them.

But what could they do except grit their teeth and hope that the enemy broke first?

Or that other sections of the army was performing better.

And while the second hope had yet to manifest, the first hope was surprisingly closer than they thought.

Because just like they were cursing the rotation system, Alexander's commanders in the front lines were rejoicing about it.

"Darm, if we did not have this rotation system, we might not have lasted this long. Our casualties are really heavy." Was the consensus of the vast majority of frontline officers.

This was because in terms of sheer attacking power, a phalanx was really unparalleled, and even when Alexander tried to even the playing field using the pilum and taking some of their shields, it was still not enough.

Because there were rows after rows of the spear which the legionaries found it hard to penetrate, and hence the ratio of casualties was actually still on Faruq's side.

Thus if Alexander had not managed to distribute the number of wounded throughout his entire army, and if Alexander's units did not have much deeper lines (20 rows as opposed to the phalanx's 16) which made them believe they had more backup and thus gave them more courage, perhaps the lines would have still held, but they would never have been able to weaken the enemy enough to commence their plan.

Of course, it is important to state that a phalanx might also be not able to do critical damage to the legionary.

Because that was not the primary job of a phalanx.

A phalanx's job was not to cause a mass route by killing enough enemies.

But it was either to poke and prod them enough and make them believe they could not hurt the opposing side and they were just delaying the inevitable by choosing to resist, which could cause them to scatter.

Or to use their spears to keep pushing the enemy back until they were up against a natural barrier, or their own camp, at which point they would have nowhere to go and scatter.

Or to keep the enemy pinned down until the allied cavalry could outflank the enemy in the classic hammer and anvil strategy most famously used by Alexander.

And thus a kind of stalemate was reached in the center, Alexander's men working to weaken and erode the opposing side while trying to minimize casualties for themselves until the higher-ups decided it was time to deal the final blow.

Lastly, there was the right flank, where things were going about as well as in the left flank.

Melodias was in charge of this sector, and he faced half of the mercenaries and 4,000 slingers.

These slingers of Lord Nyantim were his pride and joy, soldiers who were not trained but bought up in that lifestyle from birth, and they were one of Adhania's deadliest fighting force.

These people wore little to no armor, and used lead balls as their projectiles, giving them vastly greater range than the weak bows of this time, at around 300 to 400 meters.

And they were highly accurate adding to that, the most experienced ones able to make his shot go through a small ring at a range of 150 meters, with a rate of fire of seven times a minute, making them one of the most feared units of the battlefield.

A shot from them would get your teeth knocked out, eyes smashed, and if one was really unluckyeven the throat punchered.

These slinges carried three slings, one around their head, one around their waist, and the third in their hands, with different slings being used to hit targets at different distances.

The longer the sling, the larger distance it could cover.

And their ammunation was stone, clay and in this battle lead, with some even having holes drilled in them to give off a buzzing sound, reminiscent of an agitated wasp, making it one of the earliest form of psychological warfare.

And often, these bullets contained inscriptions and images.

The most common were the images of a lightning bolt, a snake, or a scorpion.

While some bullets also had inscriptions such as: "Take this", "Catch", "Ouch", or "Get pregnant with this."

The only drawback of the slingers were their long training time, requiring literally decades to master the art, making each loss a heart-rendering one.

And Lord Nyantim was experiencing that pain very frequently, as some lucky crossbow shots were managing to slowly whittle the armorless slingers, as the two weapons had similar range.

And slowly over time, Alexander's armor, pavises. and the general greater lethality of the bolts was starting to eke out a lead while at the same time, the slingers were experiencing a shortage of projectiles because the cheap stake lord did not think they would be such a long, drawn-out showdown.

In this way things were overall going pretty well for Alexander.