Amidst the blare of military music filling the sky, the Reach Cavalry's pace began to shift from "running" to "charging." As their speed rose with the closing distance, the intensity and frequency of the hoofbeats quickly surpassed the violent thumping of the soldiers' hearts. With less than a mile remaining, following the commander's gestures and flag signals, the first wave of cavalry finally spurred their horses to peak speed, formally entering a charge and sweeping forward with a rumble more muffled but denser than cannon fire.
In stark contrast to the enemy's astonishing momentum was the silence of Daenerys's army formation.
The trapezoidal formation closely surrounding the command post received and carried out orders so quickly that it produced the awkward result of doing too much. After the frequency of orders reached its peak when they first saw the Reach Cavalry begin to move, they quickly fell into a state where there was nothing left to do but wait, having already completed their preparations for engagement. Worse still, the artillery positions, which should have been roaring and unleashing firepower on the enemy at this moment, had somehow fallen silent.
It was not that they had run out of ammunition, nor had anything unexpected happened. Rather, they could not be fast, and they had no intention of being fast.
There was quite a bit for the artillery to do. The compact structure of the trapezoidal formation and the excellent placement of the artillery emplacements had been carefully chosen, with one important criterion or objective being to ensure that the artillery could strike any incoming enemy from the southeast, southwest, northeast, or northwest without having to relocate their positions.
But not having to move positions was one thing, while the arrangement and distribution of the cannons was another. If the artillery directly turned their guns from bombarding the main force of the Reach infantry in the west to firing south, the cannons that had originally been side by side would become stacked one behind another. With the distance unchanged, the muzzle flash and shockwave from a rear cannon would severely affect, or even injure, the operators of the one in front.
They had to increase the distance between front and rear, move more than half of the cannons a short distance, and change the entire artillery position from vertical to horizontal to face the incoming Reach Cavalry before they could begin loading and enter a ready-to-fire state.
Although they had made all the necessary preparations, psychological, physical, and even material, for this series of operations, moving these large metal lumps cast from copper and iron simply could not be done quickly. By the time the entire artillery position had finished turning, the enemy cavalry had gone from being far on the horizon to being within charging distance right before their eyes.
Theoretically, the artillery had time to fire a round of solid shot first and then quickly switch to grapeshot for a second strike. However, after comprehensively considering factors such as accuracy, reliability, and ammunition supply, Aegor ultimately abandoned the risky plan and conservatively chose to load grapeshot directly, allowing the Reach Cavalry to enter optimal range before delivering a decisive strike at full strength.
On the west side of the battlefield, the deliberately created gunpowder smoke gradually dispersed, and the fake Reach troops Daenerys's army had used to impersonate the enemy were about to be exposed. At this critical juncture, when the battle was about to begin but the collision had yet to occur, a wave of attack signals, even more intense and dense, echoed from the main formation of the Reach Army. Following closely behind the vanguard troops impersonating the enemy, the Reach Army had actually launched a full-scale attack!
Aegor's heart briefly skipped a beat, then immediately returned to calm.
In his plan, the ideal scenario was, of course, to defeat them one by one. The Reach Cavalry would first be tricked into charging forward and taking a heavy beating, then their main infantry force would slowly react, scrambling to figure out how to respond. If the enemy chose to attack, it would play right into his hands. Even if they remained unmoved and continued to defend their formation, he would take advantage of the enemy cavalry's inability to quickly fight back after a failed attack and actively charge their formation under the cover of reloaded artillery.
Who would have thought the enemy commander would decisively choose to double down and go all in, resulting in the Reach Army's infantry and cavalry arriving almost simultaneously to form a pincer attack? His wonderful wish of using artillery to repel the enemy cavalry first and then turning back to continue bombarding the infantry was completely ruined. Things were unpredictable, and it was impossible for every part of the plan to develop according to his expectations. Wringing his hands now was useless. He could only seize the defensive advantage he had finally managed to trick out, fight well through every wave of attack and defense, and piece together countless minor advantages to achieve the final strategic victory!
...
Amidst the shouts of charging coming from all directions, it was a more primitive ranged unit that began the attack first.
The effective range of grapeshot was half that of solid shot, but it still held a clear advantage over ordinary bows and crossbows. However, there was a problem. The artillery position was located inside the trapezoidal formation, protected by infantry squares on all sides. Although its range was far, little was left after subtracting the "distance to friendly infantry" and the "depth of the protective squares." This meant that the Reach Army cavalry actually had to enter the range of the outer infantry archers first before it was the artillery's turn to fire grapeshot.
Before the booming sound rang out, amid loud shouts and commands, the Westerlands longbowmen, who had been fully incorporated by Aegor, were the first to launch a ranged attack.
Unlike the Gift Army, which had already begun using artillery and even planned to directly develop musketeers as ranged units later, the Westerlands army was a purely authentic army from the age of cold weapons. With ample military funds, their combat effectiveness might not be top-notch, but their equipment level was second to none across the Seven Kingdoms, surpassing all others. At the command "Loose!", hundreds of archers who had drawn their bows taut several seconds earlier simultaneously released the fingers holding their arrows. A dense, dark cloud of high-quality arrows flew out in response, falling into the formation of the approaching Reach Army cavalry.
Clang, thud...
Sporadic sounds of arrows striking armor and flesh rang out. Facing this attack pattern, which could not have been more familiar to them, the Reach Cavalry remained unmoved. Ignoring the few mounts and soldiers who had fallen or been thrown from the saddle, they continued to advance relentlessly. Amidst shouted commands, they gradually narrowed the distance between themselves according to the previous plan, contracting and gathering their broad, loose horizontal formation.
They had spread out at first because they feared the ranged artillery strike of the Western Expeditionary Army. But a cavalry charge, after all, needed greater density to create sufficient deterrence and impact.
"Kill!"
Hoarse shouts of killing accompanied the tidal wave of cavalry surging forward like a mountain torrent. From the direction of the artillery position, which had been quiet for a while, the deafening sound of a volley finally rang out again amid the anticipation of both friend and foe.
Limited by casting and forging technology, as well as considerations such as ease of training and instruction, convenience of transport, and field operations, the Western Expeditionary Army's current artillery consisted entirely of small-caliber cannons that fell short of the six-pounder standard on Earth. With a small caliber, the shells they could fire were naturally not large. The so-called grapeshot fired by over thirty cannons at this moment was actually just cylinders filled with thirty to forty small pellets each. Both their power and quantity would have been enough to make any military enthusiast witnessing it on the spot let out a kindly chuckle and say, "That looks really pathetic."
But for the Reach Cavalry, who were still riding flesh-and-blood mounts and using cold steel weapons, those thirty-odd small cannons were truly thirty-odd grim reapers.
Amidst the loud bang, the projectiles left the barrels, propelled by the pressure of gunpowder gases. They cracked and shattered completely near the muzzles, and the pellets inside burst out. Their trajectories painted more than thirty approximate cones in the air, with the muzzles as their vertices. They spread, merged, and, though fired from behind, arrived first, overtaking the second wave of arrows rapidly released by the archers ahead. Together, they formed a barrage of both cold and hot weapons, shrieking toward the cavalry line of the Reach Army.
(To be continued.)