Herald of Steel

Chapter 711  Alexander VS Lord Ponticus (Part-2)

Alexander had originally planned to attack Lord Ponticus's flanking force in a head on charge, like he had done during the battle with Faziz.

But then thought better of it.

Because he figured the amount of time it would take for all the cavalry units to slowly do a 180 in this confined space would be too long.

So he came up with something better.

The grounds east of them were open and free, one where it was easy to turn one's horses.

So why not use all that empty space?

And Alexander decided to do just that.

But instead of relaying this order to all the units through word of mouth via heralds, for he knew it would take too long, Alexander simply decided to carry out the order by leading by example, using the horn and his standard to direct all the men's attention and have them follow him.

Hence, with Alexander dashing out towards the open planes in mere minutes, most of the rear of his army was gone with him, leaving only a few, slower in the head, cavalrymen behind, who were unable to react quickly enough and so found themselves facing Lord Ponticus's phalanx all alone!

While Lord Ponticus himself, seeing the enemy's rear disintegrate in his opinion, both cheered and felt a bit sour, because he saw it as his prey escaping.

He had really wanted to capture Alexander, for being able to parade a pasha throughout the capital, perhaps even across the country would have been glory enough to last generations.

But there was little he could he could do about that now.

So losing focus of the cavalrymen he thought were running away, he now only urged his men to march faster and crash into the remaining enemy, cutting off the snake now that the head had run away.

As Lord Ponticus was doing so, and as Alexander was in the midst of reforming his cavalry lines for an attack on the unsuspecting man's weak flanks, the other forces were facing their own tribulations.

First was Remus's legion.

The boy had left pretty scant orders to his adjutant- Piseus on what to do, and so it was quite hard for the second in commander to convince the other captains of all the six battalions to obey him.

In fact, it was hard for him to even meet them as he did not even properly know them, and just finding them in this darkness proved challenging.

All of that ate up a lot of very precious minutes.

And even when he found them and relayed the order, the group was split on what to do.

"Our orders are to stand and defend these siege towers." One claimed adamantly.

"Mmmm, we cannot just leave. The wall also needs men to see it. And we have crossbowmen on, They also need our protection." A second voice chimed more reasonably.

"Yes! Our command to protect this place came from Lord Alexander himself! Who does he think your commander is! We are not leaving" The third voice was very gruff in his retort, making Piseus shrink a bit.

Many of these men did not like the fact that they had been skipped over by a young brat like Remus for the position of the legion commander hence this harsh rejection.

Lastly, a more amicable officer pointed out,

"Boy, listen to them. Without these siege towers, our win here will mean nothing. And even if we wanted to leave, look, the main bulk of the enemy still threatens us!"

The man said as he placed his fingers towards Lord Theony's forces who all seemed ready and poised to strike.

Many officers feared that if they moved to attack the flank of Lord Ponticus's forces, their own rear would get decimated by Lord Theony's men.

And the latter would not need to even send a large force to do so.

Just a thousand men might be enough.

Due to all these reasons, the officers seemed reluctant to follow Remus's order.

And facing all these much more senior men and their well thought out logic, Piseus found it hard to retaliate.

He was not the most oratorily gifted and was unable to make a good case for himself.

If he had just said that if they did not attack now, their entire army was going to be destroyed and none of the things they were worrying about would matter, then this entire discussion could have been avoided.

But he was unable to think of saying that.

And as for why the officers were unable to see this simple truth, and why even upon seeing the flanking force they did not take the initiative to go attack them and try and stop the inevitable disaster, well it was actually not due to malicious infighting, or even just plain old incompetence.

It was more because doing things out of one's own urgency was simply not the military culture of the time.

Soldiers were always instructed to wait for the order from the higher up before doing anything and so they never moved unless expressively told.

In that way, the armies of this time were more like the Soviet armies, who too placed a great deal of importance on hierarchical orders.

But though that culture came into being due to political reasons, mostly because Stalin was deathly afraid of any competent soldier gaining any sort of influence in the military, the cultural norm here was fostered primarily due to the type of society of the time.

Because this was a feudal system, where nobles controlled everything.

And when one group controlled everything, it meant the other groups obeyed.

And the best way to keep that status quo and keep them obedient was to suppress any free thought.

Hence most of the people at the time were always told not to think too much and simply do what their lords told them to do, and never do anything they forbade.

And this tactic mostly worked just as the policymakers intended, both in civilian and even in military cases.

For instance, in the latter case, when levies were called and conscripted, the peasants responded without complaining, even dying most of the time without rebelling.

Because it was ingrained into their bones that they should follow orders and never do anything on their own.

This mentality was certainly useful for the army, where the commanders, who were almost always nobles, very much preferred blind, stupid loyalty, and abhorred almost all critical thinking, for that risked posing a threat of their own jobs.

Hence, due to such a culture, the officers in Remus's legion felt it was far safer to stand their ground and do what they were told to do, rather than make decisions on their own.

Because in their mind the risk of doing the latter was far too great.

In their mind, the scenario played like hits,

'Say we do disobey orders and leave our posts, going off to attack the enemy. And then we actually manage to do it, thus saving the Lord Alexander's life. That's great! We will surely be rewarded'

'But what if we are wrong! What if we are accused of disobeying command and were found of leaving our posts?'

'Then what?'

'No, it is far safer to stay here and do as we are told. That way no one can blame us.'

'After all, we can just say that we received no order to attack that enemy.'

This was the type of thinking the officers were having in their heads and their fear of the punishment outweighed the potential rewards.

A mindset that was in fact totally normal.

And it could be argued that it was Remus who was the abnormal one, one who was free spirited enough and knew Alexander intimately enough to understand that Alexander would never punish something like that.

But Remus was not here.

And even if he were, he might have lacked the necessary pedagogy.

After all, Remus was made the commander of this legion by Alexander in a very hasty, ad-hoc manner.

Many of these officers had not even heard of Remus before, and so it was little wonder they were reluctant to act

Most people would be.

Thus facing this situation, Piseus for a moment did not know what to say.

Hence after a moment of silence, he simply went red faced and then blew his top, bellowing at the top of his voice.

"Fine! If you do not want to obey the captain's orders, then don't!"

"I will attack with only my own men!"

"And if I manage to live through this, I will surely have the captain tell the lord all about it."

"About how you refused to help even when the lord was about to be attacked."

And then saying so, without waiting for the response, immediately turned his horse around and was off with a sprint.

No amount of shouts was enough to make him look back.

In that way, Remus's adjutant was really like his captain.

And then within minutes, the 300 cavalrymen that were directly under Remus, and now under Piseus were off galloping out into the night.

'If the others did not join then fine, we will attack the enemy with only ourselves!'

This was the general consensus among the riders.

And they were even confident about their victory because they knew they were about to hit the enemy in his soft belly without him being nary aware.

So they charged fearlessly.

And it was the dust cloud from this charge that Alexander had initially noticed.