Herald of Steel

Remus, from his top vantage point, was able to easily spot Lord Parker’s very eye catching entourage running for the boats with all they had, scrambling onto the vessel as quickly as they could before hurriedly setting sail.

"Dammit! They are escaping!" The sight instantly caused the young general to curse as such.

"Laykash, have your men take control of the camp. The rest come with me!" So turning to his unit, the man then decided to split his forces, a part of him still wishing to give chase.

Even if the chances of him catching up to Lord Parker were slim, Remus still had to try and hoped that perhaps a miracle would grace him.

Perhaps the boat would face some kind of problem and be forced to make landfall somewhere nearby.

Unfortunately for him, such prayers however would ultimately go unanswered as the quarry would escape his clutches and the man would be forced to be satisfied with catching only those unlucky few left behind.

The crowd of hopeful escapees were a mixed batch, ranging from very good, trained horsemen who had fled when Remus broke through the lines, to free men hired from Caira as temporary camp servants, to lowly servile slaves that Lord Parker had brought from his home city.

’Well, some ransom is better than nothing!’ But given the choice, Remus was not going to say no to any of them.

"Surrender! And you will live." He thus imperiously shouted.

Remus’s domineering appearance and loud order were enough to cower all of the present men into submission.

Looking at the roughly six to seven hundred armed to the teeth menacing men in front of them, they understood their escape path had just been cut off.

The sailors could no longer make for their boats while those already lucky enough to have gotten on one chose to cleverly set sail without further ado, leaving behind the crowd on the banks that were waiting for them like thirty crows to their own devices.

As Remus brought the camp under his complete control under the threat of absolute slaughter otherwise,

"Lord Kite! The camp! Look at our camp! It’s on fire!"

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It did not take too long for the Heeat army fighting in the frontlines to also spot the enemy penetration of their rear, especially since Laykash had set fire to the walls and many of the empty tents as a type of menacing smoke message.

"Oh no!"

And the fighting Heeat men instantly panicked, their morale falling into a new nadir.

"....." The sight was enough to even leave the experienced Lord Kite paralyzed, struggling to fathom even what had happened, much less how.

’Did we somehow get attacked? Or was there some kind of large fire accident?’ The nobleman asked to himself, praying with all his heart that it was the latter.

But deep down even he knew that was a fool’s dream. There was no way such a large fire could have been allowed to spread if everything was alright.

With a few thousand men and servants present, Lord Kite believed they were enough to be able to stomp out even a volcano if they really wanted.

So the only reason Lord Kite could think of why their headquarters was on fire was undoubtedly because something major had happened.

His true fears were soon affirmed when one of his messengers brought forth a panicking soldier, the man first identifying himself as someone from Lord Parker’s close guard units.

"My lord enemy riders have breached our camp! The lord has fled!

Those three short, succinct sentences smashed into Lord Kite’s ears like a dreadful gong, seeming to him as if he was hearing his death sentence being read out.

No, perhaps he would have preferred dying over experiencing the shock that was reverberating across his whole body, shaking him to his core.

The poor man’s face went so visibly pale that it could be even seen through his full face helmet, and his eyes… rather than bulging outward in terror, instead turned very small and dim, as if all hope had been sucked out.

"...." While next to him, all the other officers also found themselves lost for words, their lips quivering in horror and despair.

Some of the more angry ones even wanted to snap at the screaming and hysterical reporting soldier, court martialing him for spreading panic and false information.

But the man quickly defended himself by succinctly describing how a thousand riders had slipped through the gaps created by the shifting lines and smashed into their unprepared lines, completely decimating their rear.

The report at first sounded incredulous to the officers since they could believe they had let not one or two, but a thousand riders go past them without being none the wiser. It was a level of incompetence that demanded a great blood debt to be repaid.

But no matter how fearful they were of losing their head, they just needed to take one look at the back of their shoulder to find the veracity of the news- by now a tide of black clothed men were screaming down the hills, disorderly and very distressed.

The officers had not detected even this disturbance till now since they were too busy, concentrating on leading the fight against Alexander.

But now that their focus had been drawn on them….

"What do you command, my lord?"

Sadly, the query was largely moot as they very well understood the battle was lost.

Even if they somehow could discount the fact that the enemy had a thousand cavalrymen ready to snap their necks from the rear, perhaps the far more damaging news was their lord’s escape from the battlefield.

Hearing Lord Parker had left the battlefield, not only the general soldiers, but even many of the officers felt a complete collapse of their will to fight.

".... Surrender."

Hence Lord Kite’s order came hardly as a surprise to any of them, although that did not mean it hurt any less.

Even for the man himself, the bitterness behind that single word might have been enough to drown all the seas in the world.

While in the case of Alexander’s side, the sudden and almost spontaneous destruction of the enemy lines was naturally cause for enormous joy and jubilation.

To them, it appeared as if one moment the officers were shouting and urging their men to keep fighting with all they had and not slack in any way, yet, the next second, the enemy before them was crumbling like a loose pile of wet sand.

The sight was such that many of them even doubted what they were seeing, exclaiming to themselves in incredulity, happiness, and for some even suspicion,

"What? They are breaking? So quickly?"

"Right! They did not show any such signs before.. their lines were solid. How can they crumble so easily!"

"Are they trying to trick us? Is this a fake retreat?"

"Hah hah, how cares why… the thing that only matters is that they are breaking! Charge men! Charge!"

"That’s right! Don’t overthink it! All that matters is they are running! Now attack!"

"Mmmm! Their morale must have been lower than we thought! Now stop yapping and attack! Break them!"

"Hah hah, go, go! Victory is ours! Victory is ours!"

The behavior of many of Alexander’s officers unfortunately showed that if they were presented with a large enough bait, they too were willing to give up all logic and go madly after the prey, just like the Heeats had.

So it was good that the enemy’s retreat was a genuine one.

...

As the retreating trumpet bells began to ring out across the Heeat front, its once tight formation began to buckle and disintegrate like dew under the sunlight.

And for the legionaries, this was as if the floodgates had been opened, letting them ’flow’ into the enemy ranks effortlessly like flood water, hacking, killing, and capturing their way forward.

While for the Heeat soldiers, now, it was every man for himself, each taking his destiny into their own hands.

Some predictably ran, by themselves or in small groups, while shouting various panicked and even useful tidbits:

"Run! The battle is lost! Run brothers!"

"To me brothers! Stick to me and let us run together. There is strength in numbers!"

"Don’t clump together! Spread out! Spread out! It’s too easy for the enemy to catch you if you lump together! Run away in every direction."

Others, receiving such contradictory information, felt overwhelmed and simply stood there like they had gone dumb.

And these men were actually in the majority as they were also accompanied by many of their brothers, by men who understood the true extent of their loss and thus found trying to escape futile.

Rather than taking their chances trying to survive in the cold, damp wilderness with nothing to their names, in a land whose language they barely understood, being actively hounded by a furious scouting party, these men found it far more clever to simply drop their spears and shields, and surrender.

Raising their arms high into the air or even laying down on the ground, they thus made themselves as easy as possible for Alexander’s men to gather and tie them up.

Among them were Lord Kite and his officers, who were soon taken to have an audience with Alexander.

Let us say no to piracy! Don’t take part in a crime! Don’t patronize thieves!

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