Reincarnated to the Past 11: Clash (1) (Patreon)

My first battle. Not a skirmish. Not a brief contact conflict. Not a minor dispute. A real battle. 

In the overall scheme of things, it would be classified as a minor skirmish between raiders and a minor tribe. Depending on who won, the winner would gain a temporary dominance over the region - or none at all if the damage to either side was too much. There were a dozen different ways that this fight would resolve. Maybe Ghigari would die in the midst of battle, and that would demoralize the tribe, causing a rout. Maybe someone in the tribe would strike the Scythian leader down by accident (there were enough crossbows and bows in the tribe that it might certainly happen) and the Scythians would flee. 

In the end, such what-if’s didn’t matter, because that kind of historian and strategician’s perspective of things? They didn’t matter, not to the warrior, crossbow-women, and myself facing down the raiders who would burn the tribe. We were in a kill-or-be-killed scenario not as a third party but as those directly involved. 

We will bleed, cry, and die. The question was … which side would survive?

I walked out of the town along with hundreds of other men and women. There were already hundreds of others out on the rye field. Under the mid-morning sun, the situation didn’t feel as stuffy as it could be. My walk took me to where the big honchos of the tribe were. 

“Chief.” Today, I called Ghigari by his title. It was a battlefield, and I needed to respect the chain of command present. “Where do you need me?” I asked solemnly. 

Ghigari, decked out in heavily furred armor and wielding a battle axe and a wooden shield, looked to me. Surrounded by his most elite warriors, he and they made for a menacing entourage. 

I wondered briefly how I would fare against them. 

Taking a deep breath, I waited for Ghigari’s command. 

“Go to the left flank. I need you to kill as many raiders as you can. You are the commander there.”

I looked and saw that there was indeed a rough formation in place. There was left flank, center, and right flank, but no more than that. 

I blinked, but nodded. Even as I turned around to carry out the command, I felt my hands shake in a sudden bout of nervousness. 

Me? Command? I didn’t know most of the warriors of the tribe! Would they even respect me enough to follow my lead on the basis that I made one barely successful raid? God, what was Ghigari thinking?! But I couldn’t refuse the command, not in front of his own elites and lieutenants. Depending on who they were and not what I said, I would be challenging Ghigari’s command. That could lead to conflict right before a battle, but at the same time …

Command? Me? 

I shuddered in apprehension. As I walked down the rows of warriors all readying themselves for battle… I saw who I was told to command. Barely armored yet lethal nonetheless, the left flank was composed of the very crossbow women I’ve trained in crossbow usage - all sixty of them - and all of the six dozen spearmen Ghigari trained. 

‘Shit…’ 

Ghigari expected me to be able to command them because I knew about how to counter a standard cavalry charge, which the Scythians were supposed to be. 

They saw me approach, and from how they came towards me, they must have been told about who they were to be commanded under. 

I wanted to panic… but didn’t.

Instead of staying rooted and thinking without end about the how, I decided that an action was needed if not for me to gather my thoughts than to help these people maintain morale before the battle. 

“Who are the leaders?” I asked.

Twelve people stepped up, five from the spearmen and the rest from the women - and few adolescent - crossbowers. 

“Wiseman Alan,” one of the spearmen leaders spoke up. Just like the rest of the spearmen, he was barely armored - regular work clothes were in no way armor, but it was better than being naked - and armed with a long spear I helped make on top of his personal bronze shortsword. “You are our commander?”

I nodded. “I am.” I tried not to show nervousness. Not too stiff. Not too loose. 

To my surprise, they began to shift uncomfortably. “A-Are we really going to fight the horse fuckers head on?” one of them asked. This one didn’t move, staring directly at me with hard eyes. It was clear what he wanted.

“Yes,” I replied. “We’ll take them head-on, and we will win.”

Maybe it was my conviction or the way I said, but it calmed the rest of the leaders down.

“And for that, I need you all to tell me everything you’ve done and then listen to my instructions very carefully…”

-VB-

They came. 

Heralded by a light dust storm their horses and footmen kicked up, their march to our tribe was a slow and steady one. 

When they finally broke through the trees and appeared on the other side of the large grain fields surrounding the tribe… I couldn’t help but feel both disappointed and elated. 

Disappointed because despite my own conscious beliefs and words I’ve spoken to others, I was beginning to enjoy fighting because I just excelled in it (thanks to my powers). And I was elated because what I saw on the other side was nothing like what I expected. 

I expected a great horde of at least five hundred veteran raiders, well fed and watered. Maybe it was my romanced version of horse riding raiders (Mongols) but … what I saw on the other side? 

Not the kind of raiders I expected. 

First off, more than half of the enemy weren’t horse riders. Second, they didn’t look any more armed, armored, or trained than the people I was commanding. Third, more than a few of the horse riders looked wounded and covered in bandages. 

I looked to Ghigari and saw that he looked pleasantly surprised. I looked back to the raiders and saw them cursing up a storm even as they tried to get themselves re-organized. Were they not expecting to meet us in battle? Didn’t they have scouts? 

No, wait. Ghigari had scouts but that’s because he was expecting to meet Scythians in battle - or at the very least, evacuate his tribe from the path of the raiders. Scythians, on the other hand, weren’t expecting to meet much opposition, if any, if the terror and horror they spread affected the decentralized region. 

They weren’t expecting resistance. 

Ghigari saw this, too. “Warriors of Kettin! Our enemy is before us, unprepared! They think you unworthy of being faced with respect!” The warriors in the center and right flank roared out, and the few warriors who were with me - not the spearmen or the crossbowers - roared with them. “They pillage our land! It is time we send them back to their homes in retribution! CHARGE!”

We all charged, but this was where the first step came into play. My men didn’t charge so much as marching very quickly, holding formation, spears out, shields out, and crossbowers at the center of the formation. 

It took only a minute before our center and right flank smashed into the numerically superior (only slightly) Scythians. Their right flank (the flank facing my command) tried to engulf the center… but that’s when I came in.

“Spears, forward!” 

My spearmen pushed forward, thrusting their spears quickly. The onslaught of spears stopped the Scythians, still disorganized and encumbered with their baggage. 

Then -. “FIRE!” I roared.

A hail of crossbow bolts, each thick as a sturdy branch, shot over the spearmen and into the enemy no more than a hundred yards away. Unprepared and unarmored, they fell like wheat before the scythe. The Scythians screamed when the bolts missed their head and chest, and some squealed when stray bolts struck their family jewels.They crumpled from the first wave, but it was only the first wave with thirty bolts. 

“Reload!” 

Seeing that there were no more arrows coming towards them, the Scythians gathered themselves and charged at us rather than the center army.

Glaring at the rebounding raiders, I roared again.

“FIRE!”

Thirty more bolts flew over the heads of the spearmen, myself among them, with some arrows being no more than a foot above the heads of the spearmen, and slammed into the renewed charge of the raiders.

The raiders saw the bolts, screamed, and died as the bolts slammed into them. 

“Spearmen, slow push! HOLD FORMATION!” 

Unlike the rest of the Kettin warriors, my spearmen, drilled exactly how I told Ghigari about how spearmen were supposed to be used, moved with discipline. It wasn’t exactly matching steps or perfect formation, but they held formation. It was far more than I expected out of them.

The first set of crossbowers finished reloading.

“Fire at will! Spearmen, keep the enemies at bay!” 

The scythians came charging, but backed off at the thrusting spears and the shields behind it. From behind the two rows of spearmen, I watched a particularly brute-looking raider try his hand at charging in… only to get speared by the second row of spearmen’s spears. 

The horse riders that the Scythians brought with them tried to flank us, but there were too few of them compared to my crossbowers and spearmen. And on top of that, they weren’t moving as one unit but many split squads attacking all points of the Kettin army.

My left flank marched over the dead bodies in unison, my crossbowers fired continuously in two volleys. I watched a squad of ten Scythians, underfed and barely armored, try further flank on us, but the crossbow bolts made short work of them.

“OOOOOHHHH!”

My head snapped to the center and watched in disbelief as the tribe’s center folded and began to rout.

“...WHAT?!”