Chapter 684: Battle for a crown(5)
The Yarzat lines descended like a black tide, no gallant trumpet, no soaring banners, just the sheer, dreadful rhythm of boots on earth and the grim silence of men who knew their trade.
The First , the most veteran of the legions, led the charge with mechanical purpose, their formations fluid and coiled like a serpent about to strike.
Just paces before contact, a sudden cry broke from their line, not a war-cry but an order.
"First volley!"
Like breath expelled from a great beast, hundreds of javelins snapped through the air with a low, buzzing hum. They did not scatter wildly but flew in precise arcs. The Herculeian front, still patching gaps and elbowing into vague positions, received the volley not with shields raised and braced—but with disjointed chaos.
The sounds soon revealed the effectiveness of the attack: meat punched through with iron, wooden shafts cracking on bone, screams shrill and sputtering as men dropped with weapons still half-lowered. Dozens fell before their feet could dig into the ground, dropped by missiles they had not expected, nor were prepared to answer.
A lord’s banner sagged as its bearer’s throat was opened mid-yell , his only duty falling onto the grass, being stepped on by hundreds of feet; two brothers, barely armored levy, clutched each other as one of them bled out with a javelin lodged in his guts.
Then the Yarzat lines collided.
They didn’t just hit the Herculeans. They entered them—like a blade into soft flesh. There was no clashing of valorous knights or grand duels beneath fluttering standards. There was screaming. There was a wet sound, the kind that sticks behind the ears long after the battle’s done—the slapping of blood-soaked steel on open torsos, the crunch of iron-capped boots stomping down on hands and faces and ribs.
Halberdiers from the Third moved like threshers in a wheat field. Their long, blades hacked in downward arcs that didn’t just kill, but unmade anything in their path.
A levy who raised his spear too high had it torn from his grip, and his jaw smashed in by the flat of a halberd. Another tried to turn and flee—only to feel a hook behind his knee and the world turn sideways as the ground rushed up to meet his face, and the next moment tore his neck open with a gurgling spray, like a spring coming out of a rock, the water being , however,crimson red.
The Herculeian right wasn’t broken all at once, but it was clear where the advantage was held.