Herald of Steel



Lady Margaret and her grandfather talked a few more times in the following days.

But though the old earl was full of praises of all the stuff Alxx had invented, saying things such as:

"This new 'paper' will certainly replace the papyrus."

"The soaps will be a hit with all kinds of nobility."

"These glasswares must be made by the gods," and

"This 'sugar' will likely start wars,"

He still refused to entertain the idea.

To him, this Alexander seemed to have too many good things with too little to protect himself.

But finally, after hearing a lot of whining from Margaret, the old man at last promised that he would consider it his Margaret could become Mother Earl.

This basically meant if Margaret gave birth to a boy, then the earl could consider naming the child his heir.

And then, being the Earl regent, it would give Margaret a lot of privileges, as she would be able to rule on her son's behalf until he came of age and was ready to take the family seat.

And this selection was likely to be held soon, for the old earl was very possibly on this earth not for long.

But if she could not, well then tough luck, the Margrave family had a lot of candidates for that position, ranging from the old earl's other sons to even some of his great-grandsons.

But before anything like that could happen, they would have to first win the upcoming battle.

So each busied themselves with their own business in preparation for that.

Margaret focused on learning the family business, after a while of which she fell ill, experiencing stomach cramps as the end of her pregnancy drew near, and decided to rest.

While the Earl gave himself no such luxury as he busied himself in bolstering the city's defenses with the help of Janus.

And as they called up the levies and prepared the weapons and armor, they also remembered to particularly focus on the crossbows, which they marveled at and praised to the high heavens.

It was truly a revolutionary weapon for those with the eyes to discern it.

And with that intention, the Margrave family certainly lived up to their pedigree as a weapons family, as even Hamson, a city that was not at the core of their territory still had a pretty robust blacksmithing industry which, along with its nearby settlements gave them the ability to churn these bad boys out very quickly.

And once the weapons were ready, they were moved to train the peasantry on their use, a task the average Joe took little time to master.

In this way, the bows were built, arrows fletched, levies called up, and defense plans made, as the Margrave family trained and bolstered itself, until after around two months, the big day finally came.

The Margrave scouts had detected Governor Straus's troops some days ago, who numbered close to 100,000 and after crossing the countryside, soon this huge force was staring down the walls of Hamson.

"Let's move out,"

In response, Lord Janus, who was given overall command of the army given the aged Earl's deteriorating health, gave the order for his troops to sally out of the city and take defensive positions behind a wide trench dug out outside the city, as he intended to make their stand there, not in the confines of the walls, but immediately in front of it.

His main reason for not using the city walls as bulwarks was due to them being too short and thin.

The reason for this was because Hamson was not a big city prior to the disaster, as it was relatively in the center of the Margrave territory, and so it never had any great reason to develop a robust set of fortifications.

And it was simply not possible to build a great wall in two short months unless you had cement like Alexander's.

Thus, Lord Janus felt that it would be simply better for them to have a long deep, ditch on all three sides outside the city rather than defend a flimsy wall.

With this thought, once the Margraves were out of the city, Lord Janus arranged his phalanx in a kind of hollow square formation, minus the back line because the city was to the back of them, and had five rows of spears spreading out in three directions.

The idea seemed to be to make the enemy face an impenetrable wall of spears and an impassable terrain, which would force them to give up.

Or that was what it seemed to be the Margrave's plan from the enemy's perspective.

First Governor Straus rode out of the front of the army and gave his standard ultimatum to stand down and urged the soldiers to hand over the traitors, following the failure of which he ordered his own phalanx to charge, intending to make the opponent rout using brute force and overcome the obstacles that way.

But it was upon this order that the Marquiss was greeted with the surprise Margraves had set up for him, as when Straus's soldiers approached the defending men, they were quickly greeted with a shower of arrows that came from the walls.

Yes, Lord Janus had placed his crossbowmen above the city walls, giving them extra range and reach, not to mention the safety of the walls, from which they would launch volley after volley of deadly, accurate projectiles, with little fear of being hit back.

"Fuck! When did they have such good archers? Mercenaries?" And once the casualties in Straus's army began to rise, he began to gaze at the walls hatefully.

But that was all he could do.

For the higher elevation of the archers gave them a range advantage he was simply unable to match.

So the Marquiss could only ask his phalanx units to repeatedly charged at the entrenches troops, hoping to break the formation that way.

But the Margraves held, partly bolstered by the defensive structures, but more importantly, by the sight of their enemies dying in front of them from what seemed to them like judgment from the heavens.

This scene seemed to really energize the men.

So much so that even cavalry charges seemed to have little effect, as the men held tightly and firmly.

Instead, it was Straus who appeared to lose considerable men in those attacks, as the bunched-up light cavalry units, who provided a bigger target area due to the steeds they rode, revealed themselves as perfect targets for concentrated arrow fire.

An attack that was made much deadlier as Lord Janus had placed some of his most experienced men at the walls, who were there to act as leaders and commanders, tasked with guiding the inexperienced peasants on where to aim and where to concentrate fire.

Thus those charges proved to be very bloody for Straus, so much so that he had to call back all his riders till the end of the battle.

And that was how the first day ended.

After which he tried again the next day, now with just his infantry.

Or it would seem, as his real plan was to use only a thin line to hold the frontlines while diverting most of his forces to attack the other unguarded portions of the walls.

In this way, he intended to get a breakthrough there, or at least lure the Margraves out of their trenches for a decisive battle in the open.

But that plan also failed.

He had grossly underestimated the power of the crossbow, and the fire Straus's men faced was withering.

The simple ladder rushes were easily repelled, and Straus had no other siege options as he had not brought heavy siege equipment like siege engines in the fight, thinking it would be a cakewalk.

And even if he had, it was unlikely he would have been able to deploy it in battle because the Margrave army was still present, and they would have certainly attacked the structure when it was being built.

So, the second day's attempt failed as well.

But Governor Straus was anything if not a determined man.

And so he thinned out his frontlines even more the next day, and committed much more men to the headlong rush, intending to simply overcome the incoming arrow fire by just absorbing it using the bodies of his men.

And for some time it seemed to be working.

The walls seemed to be under serious pressure, and sections of the rampart appeared to be on the verge of being lost.

And it appeared Governor Straus would have his long-awaited victory.

But alas, then the counterattack came.

For Governor Straus, either in his hubris or negligence, had pulled too many troops away from the frontlines, giving Lord Janus a rare opportunity to counterattack.

And the experienced general instantly grasped it by the neck, breaking out of his defensive position to attack the thinly defended first lines, easily routing it through a simple frontline charge, and then swinging his entire army around to hit the flanks of the preoccupied wall attacks.

And all this while, Straus, who had momentarily lost contact and communication with his units as he preoccupied himself with his imminent victory, simply had no idea what hit him until Janus was already attacking.

This general was able to create a kind of hammer and anvil pincher attack using the flanking attack, the hammer being him and the anvil the city walls, and the resulting managed to deal large casualties to the army and inflicting great morale loss, which culminated in a full fledge rout.

Thus the battle of Hamson was over.

[Author's Note: Comment if you want to know about such secondary battles, or not.]