Chapter 112: Battle of Eagle City (Part 3)

Naimen Moor’s blue cloak was the easiest thing to track across the field.

Timothy watched from the hill as his Cold Wind Knight drove into the rear of Garcia’s retreating column like a blade pushed through soft cloth. The crowd broke — always the same, always the same split second between order and panic — and people went down under hooves before they understood they had fallen. A few pulled weapons and turned. Naimen’s sword came down, and they stopped turning.

One hour to bypass the city. One hour on the road. And now this.

The timing had held. Duke Frances’s advice had held. The three columns cycling in short strikes at the flanks, never engaging the center, never letting a single team exhaust itself — Timothy had run the plan exactly as designed, and it had worked exactly as designed. Garcia’s three thousand were shedding cohesion at the edges. He counted a hundred casualties already among her forces. His own: negligible.

He let himself, very briefly, consider that the hardest part was done.

Naimen came back at a trot, his face smeared with blood that wasn’t his.

Timothy handed him a handkerchief without comment.

“Their formation’s about to go,” Naimen said, pressing the cloth to his forehead.

“Rest.” Timothy lifted a hand toward the field. “The deathblow is ours to give.”

But Garcia’s troops had noticed what he had noticed — that the shock waves had stopped, that the cavalry was drawn back. They didn’t break. Instead they compressed, pulling inward until the outer ring bristled with wooden pikes, the shafts angled outward, points at horse-chest height. No barricades. No armor beyond what they’d carried out of Eagle City. Just bodies and timber and the decision to stop running.

Timothy scoffed. A last stand with pike infantry. Without cavalry of their own, without fortifications, this was what the final card looked like. He almost felt something like pity.

Then he lifted his binocular.

The green banner with the sailing crown was still up. And behind the warriors holding it — gray hair, catching the afternoon light, the figure giving orders without any visible urgency.

Garcia had not run.

Timothy lowered the binocular. He breathed once, deliberately.

Then she dies here.

He raised his arm and signaled the main assault. Eight hundred knights — his own guard and the squires, the full force he’d been holding — formed up under the Cold Wind Knight and began to move.

They appeared at the edges of the horizon without flags.

Timothy saw them first as a shimmer, a thickening of the treeline on both flanks. Then the treeline moved. The war cries came a moment later — strange cadences he didn’t recognize, voices shaped by a language that wasn’t Graycastle’s — and then he understood what he was seeing.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Carrying weapons unlike anything his knights trained against.

Sandpeople.

The fury arrived before the strategic calculation — a hot, particular rage at the transgression of it, that she had brought outsiders into a succession dispute, that she had sold something of Graycastle to win. He opened his mouth to recall Naimen.

Too late. Eight hundred knights in full charge do not stop on a signal. The forward mass was already inside Garcia’s line, cutting toward the banner, and on both flanks the Sandpeople — a thousand on each side, two thousand in total, giving Garcia five thousand bodies where she should have had three — were closing the gap.

Kill her, he thought, staring at the banner. Cut the pole. Let it fall. One death could still end this, could break the Sandpeople’s contract and scatter Garcia’s desperate rearguard. One death—

The banner swayed. Naimen’s blue cloak was visible at the point of the thrust, still driving toward it.

The banner steadied.

The cloak disappeared into the mass.

He waited for it to reappear.

The horns were blowing retreat. Knights at the outer edges were fighting free and streaming back toward the hill, their horses blown, some riderless. The circle around the banner thickened. The Sandpeople had turned from flank attacks to encirclement, and the knights still inside — the ones who had ridden too deep, chasing the flag — were being swallowed.

Timothy watched the field and counted.

The blue cloak did not reappear.

Half an hour later, when the Sandpeople began to move toward his hill and there was no longer any question of what the field held, he gave the order he had never expected to give: withdraw. North. Away from Eagle City, away from the road to Clearwater, away from the banner still flying above Garcia’s surviving troops.

He rode north with three hundred people at his back.

He had arrived with nearly a thousand.

Chapter 112 Battle of Eagle City (Part 3)

It seemed as if the King’s knights were holding a sharp silver blade when they cut into the rear of Garcia’s retreating troops.

The crowd broke into chaos and a lot of people fell to the ground while they were trying to flee, only to end up getting trampled to death by the horses.

Occasionally some of them pulled out weapons and tried to resist the attackers, but against the superior knights they were soon cut into pieces. Leading this kind of unstoppable flood was an elite knight from the camp in the Cold Wind Ridge. It was Knight Naimen who served as the spear point for this attack. Furthermore, his blue cloak which danced in the wind behind him was particularly eye-catching, wherever he went, the enemy would try to flee. Every time after his sword cut down, it would be covered in blood.

Timothy Wimbledon instead stood in the distance on a small hill, overlooking the whole battlefield. At this point, the three thousand people of Garcia’s troops were no longer able to hold together their formation, instead with every second they were falling further and further apart, which brought them to almost completely halting their march.

They won’t last much longer, Timothy thought, the moment when the second of my three teams attacks they will collapse. These people simply cannot resist the assault of Graycastle’s elite knights. Most of them aren’t even wearing any armor, the moment a sharp blade comes close to them, they immediately start losing their will to fight.

Everything happened almost exactly as he had expected, after spending one hour to bypass Eagle City, they had turned over and rode through a sparse forest, finally reaching the road. Back on the road, Timothy ordered his knights to start rushing, and finally, one hour later they were able to catch up with Garcia.

According to the advice of Duke Frances, Timothy divided his troop into three teams of around three hundred knights, and let them take turns in attacking the different sides of the enemy. Like this, he was able to hold some troops back and was always ready to send in reinforcements when it was needed. In order to avoid the possibility that they might get surrounded, his knights were not allowed to attack the center of the enemy’s formation and instead they should attack its flanks. With short speedy dashes, they only cut off the leftovers, with each charge killing only dozens of people.

This tactic was obviously very successful, after a few runs the enemy already had more than a hundred casualties, while still being unable to even retaliate. They even tried to organize a counterattack with their own cavalry, but the gap between their equipment and training was just too far off. Compared to the Knights of the King, the momentary patchwork of cavalry was nothing more than a group of horseback-riding infantry. The moment when they came face to face, those “cavalry” made of the men that had been brave enough to charge into battle were simply killed, or if they were lucky they were able to scatter in all directions.

This unilateral massacre was a great blow to the enemy’s morale, and soon Timothy noticed some of Garcia’s troops begun to break away from the formation and flee in all directions.

The time has finally come for us to launch our main offensive, he thought. When the Cold Wind Knight came back from leading his attack, Timothy didn’t order him to start the next round of shock tactics, instead, he signaled him to come over to his side.

“Your Majesty, their formation will soon come falling apart,” Naimen wiped the sweat from his forehead away, whilst leaving some bloody marks on his face as he did – naturally it was the blood of his enemies, until now he hadn’t received any injuries during the whole battle.

Seeing this, Timothy took his own handkerchief and handed it to him. “Well done, you can take a break now, it’s finally time to deliver the deathblow.”

Seeing that the next round of shook attack wasn’t coming in, Garcia’s troops also realized that the decisive moment was coming. Her large group

completely stopped their forward march, instead, they unhurriedly gathered, until they had formed a tight formation. Every outermost soldier was holding a wooden pike, and held it up, waiting for the impact.

Discovering this, Timothy only scoffed, in his eyes, it was nothing more than an already dying man’s last struggle. Without barricades, without armor, only with flesh and blood alone you want to resist the mighty impact of my knights? This can only end in disaster for you. No matter which cards you have left my dear younger sister, you won’t be able to change the outcome. Naturally, it could also be true that you have already departed long ago, leaving this group to die and buying time for yourself to flee.

But he soon discovered he had been wrong.

Within the crowd, they once again put up the banner of the Queen of Clearwater. Seeing this green banner with the sailing boat and the crown fluttering in the wind, made Timothy frown. So he lifted his binocular and took a closer look at the enemy. He soon discovered standing behind the warriors who had raised the flag was the blurred figure of a woman who seemed to be shouting some orders. Even so, he couldn’t clearly see the other one’s face, yet her gray hair flowing in the wind gave her identity away.

Garcia Wimbledon, had not run.

Timothy took a deep breath, well, this only means that this farce will come to an end here. I don’t have to follow her to Clearwater Port.

After waiting for the horses to be fully rested, the new King gave the signal to start the main attack.

The cavalry formed from the knights and squires was around eight-hundred strong, and under the leadership of the King’s own knights, started the attack against the enemy. It was once more the Cold Wind Knight who was at the tip of the attack – Naimen Moor.

Just at the moment when the attack would finally hit, suddenly on both sides of the horizon, a huge numbers of troops appeared. After sending out strange war cries, they immediately began to rush into the direction of the battle.

Timothy couldn’t believe what his eyes were showing him.

Without raising any flags or wearing any emblems, the suddenly emerged troops didn’t resemble any known force of the kingdom. After a closer observation, Timothy saw that they were all wearing different armors and weapons. But with their high-stature and weird faces, Timothy knew, they could only be from one place.

The Sandpeople from the Extreme South!

He didn’t need to guess any longer if they were friend or foe, without a doubt, Garcia was able to make a deal with them. Leading this group of damn foreigners into the Kingdom of Graycastle. Only the thought of what this meant made Timothy burn with rage, he immediately shouted: “Give the signal, break off the attack!”

But it was already too late, such a high-speed assault was impossible to be broken up with such a short notice. His knights were directly impaling into the heart of Garcia’s troops, cutting through them like a hot knife through butter, with only one goal, reaching the Queen of Clearwater.

Timothy eagerly looked into the direction of the flying banner, hoping that it would break – the troops of the Sandpeople coming from both sides were each around one thousand men strong, making Garcia’s forces five thousand people strong. This was a size that Timothy was unable to face. Furthermore, the Sandpeople had a strong build and were always warring against each other which had turned them into a great threat even to his knights. Only by killing the enemy’s leader, cutting off their flagpole and breaking Garcia’s forces, would he have still a chance of winning.

However, even so, the flagpole swayed a bit but it was still standing straight.

Finally, the Sandpeople were able to close the circle, blocking the knight’s last way out and started joining the battle.

Without these reinforcements, Garcia’s three thousand desperados would have been defeated long ago. But at the moment, they were still persisting, and just like a swamp, swallowing one knight after another.

Hearing the horns blowing to retreat, the knights who were closer to the edge were trying to free themselves came rushing back to the King. But many of them had riden too deep into the enemy’s forces and were now trapped, including the Cold Wind Knight.

Currently, he was fighting against a nine feet tall warrior of the Sandpeople while breathing heavily. The other side was waving around a wooden stick as long as two men causing a small area to open up around their fight. Unfortunately, Naimen’s mount had already been crushed to death, and it was only thanks to his extraordinary reaction and agility that he was able to stay alive. But without a mount, his heavy armor lead to a rapid consumption of his physical strength. And when he once more stepped sideways trying to dodge, his foot slipped and he was hit by the stick in the middle of his chest. The strength of the attack that came hitting against his armor was so huge that it broke into two pieces.

His blue cloak swayed once more through the wind before he finally disappeared in the crowd.

Half an hour later, the knights who were still left fighting had become less and less and when the Sandpeople turned in the direction of Timothy’s hill, he grit his teeth and gave the order to withdraw. His entire group of people began their retreat northward. Compared with the huge force he had previously led into battle, the new King now merely had three hundred people still left around him.