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Chapter 421: A Good Start

Leon’s forces crashed into those of Duke Duronius and Prince Octavius with tremendous force. Leon himself was in the lead, and as such he couldn’t tell how the entire line was doing, but around him, Octavius’ levied troops were dying in droves.

He’d killed the knight who led their left wing easily enough. The knight had only been a fifth-tier mage—magically weak, but since they were in the rear and dealing with a much smaller force, Leon could understand leaving the command of this area to magically inferior knights. But those greater numbers hadn’t helped the knight any; after Leon killed his horse out from under him, he was unable to recover in time to prevent Anzu from sinking his front claws into his armor and his beak into the knight’s exposed throat.

Leon had been momentarily surprised that the knight had gone down so quickly; he assumed a fifth-tier mage would’ve put up more of a fight, but he didn’t have the time to dwell on it. He simply chalked it up to inexperience and lack of killing intent and then moved on.

He urged Anzu onward as he tossed a quick bolt of lightning into the crowd of levies in front of him, disrupting their spear wall enough for Anzu to slip in. Once they were passed the spears, they began to tear into the levies with abandon. Leon’s sword flashed and sparked with lightning as he swung it this way and that, killing at least one peasant soldier with every swing. Anzu got into the action as well, rending and ripping any unfortunate soul who got in his way with his claws and beak, and if they were about to be surrounded, he would beat his wings and a great burst of wind magic would push their enemies back.

And Leon wasn’t the only one causing immense damage; the giants had reached the spear wall just after he did, brushing aside the spears like grass before hitting the Octavian lines like a hundred meteors. Just behind them, the noble light cavalry rode into the gap they made, taking advantage of the giants’ attack to cut as deeply into the Octavian lines as they could reach.

Beside Leon were Alix and Valeria. They had fallen behind a bit as Leon and Anzu had charged, but once Leon hit the spear wall, they easily caught up. Both acquitted themselves admirably, with Alix killing almost as many Octavian troops with her blade as Leon did with his—the levies, being mostly just a massed group of peasants, were almost entirely under the second-tier, letting Alix’s relatively modest third-tier strength cut through them like a hot knife through butter. Valeria’s fourth-tier power and the glaive in her hand, meanwhile, sliced clean through so many levies that Leon was certain if he wasn’t using his magic, Valeria would outpace him in kills.

The levies proved themselves completely unable to stop Leon and his forces. If they had more discipline, better gear, more motivation, or even just a proper reason to be there, they might’ve given Leon’s force more trouble. As it was, all they had going for them were numbers, and once Leon hit their lines, the Octavian levies weren’t able to swing the momentum back in their favor.

But that wasn’t for lack of trying. A few pushes were made that could’ve put Leon and the others in danger, but with the support of the giants helping to keep them from being surrounded and pulled off their mounts, they repelled those counter-attacks and pushed onward.

It was over in a matter of twenty minutes. The rest of Leon’s charge had been halted relatively well everywhere else down the line, but with Leon himself, the cavalry, and the giants wreaking havoc, the Octavian lines quickly collapsed as the peasant levies lost heart and began retreating.

As the lines began to break, Leon shouted, “Keep on them!” His sixth-tier voice boomed over the field, answered by the war cries of three thousand or so of his own troops and, more terrifyingly, the sound of a hundred giants roaring with the sound of a collapsing mountain. Any semblance of order in the Octavian ranks disintegrated as Leon pushed his people onward. Even in the parts of the line that had held against his unit’s charge, the levies began breaking and running, regardless of their bellowing commanders urging them to hold their ground.

One such commander, frustrated at the levies under his command, began pushing his way through the crowds toward Leon. The two were quite close together, and as he got within range, he stabbed toward Anzu’s flank in the moment that it was exposed when the griffin attacked someone closer.

However, before his blade landed, it was deflected by a slash from Valeria, and the knight was so surprised and thrown off balance that a quick follow-up strike from Valeria was enough to make him a head shorter.

When he realized what had just happened and that Valeria had prevented Anzu from a potentially serious wound, Leon nodded to Valeria. That one gesture communicated everything that needed to be shared, and given how she’d been looking at him recently, he wasn’t too keen on prolonging their interactions.

Valeria nodded back. Leon couldn’t see her face behind her helmet, but from her eyes alone he could tell she was smiling.

Taking that as a challenge, Leon launched himself back into battle, but the fight was over quickly. Half an hour after their charge, his unit had taken the hill and routed the Octavian force holding it.

“Rally!” Leon began to shout as he rode up and down the line in an attempt to keep his people from pursuing the routed Octavian force too far. He repeated his command several dozen times until most of his unit had come back under his control. A few select units, however, completely ignored his orders, chief among which was Baron Mettius Gellius, the man who had begun the charge in the first place without waiting for Leon’s order.

“What should we do, Sir?” Alix asked him as Gellius’ knights and men-at-arms continued to push against the faltering rearguard of their routing enemy.

Leon scowled behind his helmet. Their enemy had been driven from the field, and he doubted that they would return. It was their job now to swing around eastward to support the rest of the army, not to pursue a single shattered unit, if that unit was still thousands strong.

Leon began shouting for the rest of the subordinate commanders to assemble. It took a few excruciatingly long minutes for the rest of the nobles to ride to him during which Leon stared at the back of Gellius’ people, none of whom turned back to rejoin his forces.

Once everyone had arrived, though, Leon ignored their questions and had only a single order for them, “Reform the lines and begin marching east! I’ll get Baron Gellius’ people back under control!”

With that, he waited for no one else, riding after Gellius with only Valeria, Alix, and a handful of giants with him. He kept an eye on his people with his magic senses, though, and he was grateful to see that his order was being followed, albeit frustratingly slowly. Now he just had to deal with Gellius.

He and Anzu rode hard, outpacing the others with them as they raced to catch up to Gellius’ troops before they pursued the Octavian force too far. Anzu even flapped his wings and took off at one point, allowing Leon to quickly close with Gellius.

“HOLD!” Leon roared, his towering sixth-tier aura capturing the attention of Gellius’ troops, along with a significant portion of the Octavian levies who were fleeing. It proved enough of a distraction that Gellius’ people lost a bit of their momentum, allowing the fleeing levies to put more distance between themselves and their Augustine pursuers.

As he flew over Gellius’ ranks, he finally located the man himself standing over his dead horse and a pair of dead Octavian levies, surrounded by his knights and men-at-arms. Leon wasn’t sure what killed his horse, but fighting on foot didn’t seem to be dampening his fighting spirit in the slightest. The Baron still radiated killing intent, and Leon knew before the man opened his mouth that he wasn’t going to follow Leon’s order.

Proving Leon’s guess correct, Gellius shouted, “Keep going! We have them on the run, we can’t let them get away!”

Some of his knights began to pursue again, but Leon’s aura was a heavy thing, and it only grew heavier as the giants caught up, adding their own immense presence to Leon’s.

“I SAID HOLD!” Leon bellowed again, this time allowing his own prodigious killing intent to pervade his aura. Normally, even his potent killing intent would barely be felt in such a large-scale battle, but now that the Octavian forces were pulling away, it allowed just enough room for Leon’s killing intent to be felt by just about all of Gellius’ knights and men-at-arms, freezing them all in place. “Lord Gellius, I am ordering you and your subordinates to fall back! You have advanced too far without support!”

“To the hells with your asinine orders, savage!” Gellius roared back as he pulled his blade out from the torso of one of the Octavian levies at his feet. “If you haven’t the will to strike the killing blow against your enemies, then fine! More glory for me!”

With that, Gellius began pushing his way toward the front of his force, shouting the entire way for his knights to follow him. Many of them did, but others remained standing in place. With Leon and Anzu flying over them and the giants at their backs, they were a bit apprehensive about disobeying Leon’s order. Besides, these particular knights could see that Leon had a point: they were advancing too far away from the rest of Leon’s forces, and that would make them vulnerable to a potential Octavian counter-attack.

About half of Gellius’ troops remained standing where they were, their eyes flickering between Leon in the air and Gellius like they were watching a game of catch.

Leon, however, didn’t verbally respond to Gellius. Instead, he sheathed his blade and then, without missing a beat, conjured a brilliant golden lightning spear and hurled it with as much force as he could manage from Anzu’s back. He didn’t aim directly at Gellius, but when the bolt exploded fifteen feet in front of the fifth-tier Lord, the message was received anyway—Leon wouldn’t hesitate to use force to get him to comply, and that wasn’t something Gellius was used to. The Baron couldn’t help but come to a halt for a moment.

Taking advantage of the Baron’s momentary hesitation, Leon directed Anzu to land just in front of Gellius, putting himself between the Lord and the broken Octavian troops, who were now beginning to disappear into the dense forests to their south.

“This is not our job, Lord Gellius!” Leon said, his voice quiet but intense and dripping with fury. “They’re broken, now it’s time to see to our actual mission!”

As he spoke, the half dozen giants that had accompanied him pushed their way to stand with Leon, and Valeria and Alix came riding around the flanks of the five hundred or so of Gellius’ troops. They made it clear with their body language that further pursuit of the Octavian forces would necessitate going through them.

Baron Gellius was insubordinate and disrespectful, but that was still a bit much.

“Whoever heard of a barbarian too scared to fight?” he wondered aloud, blatantly loud enough to ensure that Leon heard him. Leon was sorely tempted to punctuate the Baron’s question with a bolt of lightning, but Gellius sheathed his blade and said, “Let’s go back, then. Just let these inbred bastards reform and strike us in the rear.”

Leon glanced over his shoulder and, after seeing no sign of the army that had opposed their attempts to take the hill, he projected his magic senses. As they washed over the retreating peasants, he saw that they were still running away as fast as they could, completely disregarding the commands of what few knights remained in charge of them. They were broken, with hundreds lying dead or dying behind them. They weren’t a threat anymore.

“Turn back,” Leon growled at Gellius. “We have bigger enemies to kill right now than a bunch of scared peasants armed with little more than sharp sticks.”

Gellius spat on the ground in Leon’s direction and grunted in displeasure, but he did as Leon ordered, turning his knights and men-at-arms around and began making his way back to the rest of Leon’s unit, which was still forming back up to make a push eastward into Duronius’ flank.

Leon breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t have to resort to violence, but he wasn’t about to forget or forgive Gellius’ insubordination. But, for the moment, he could set it aside.

Besides, regardless of the Baron’s actions, they had still taken the hill with relatively little cost, as far as Leon could estimate. He wasn’t going to take the time for a proper headcount, putting his trust in the Lords and knights to keep an eye on their people, but it at least seemed to him that they had won this fight, at least.

It was a good start. Now it was time to win the rest of the battle, which Leon could still hear raging in the distance.