Chapter Twenty: The Final Duel of the Age of Cold Steel

“Warriors of the beastmen, let your blades and swords show the humans across from us the terror of our kind—attack!” At the command of the minotaur general, Wild Bull, more than thirty thousand goblin conscripts surged forward in tight formation, shouting as they charged the human ranks. Behind them, beastman shamans stood ready to unleash their bloodlust spell the moment the goblins began to falter, sustaining the fight and draining the strength of the human forces.

At the heart of the beastman host, ten thousand elite minotaurs stood in iron armor, perfectly arrayed and poised to strike the instant the human lines showed the slightest weakness. Beside them waited the wolf cavalry and beastman archers, held in reserve; the pitiful range of the beastman bows made Wild Bull reluctant to let them exchange volleys with the humans, so their role was reduced to token support during the minotaur charge.

Though Sun Li's army was small—with just over eight thousand men arrayed on the field—they stood in solid, square tortoise-shell formations reminiscent of the hollow squares from Earth’s modern history, though these were solid through and through. The first rank was not glittering with bayonets, but bristled with shields over two meters tall, each forged from refined steel: unless struck squarely by firearms, no weapon could hope to break them quickly.

Behind the shield-bearers stood three lines of spearmen, each wielding a prodigiously long iron spear that jutted through the gaps and above the shields, making the formation look like a hedgehog encased in steel. Each formation also contained its share of ranged troops—archers and crossbowmen—who could unleash their volleys from within the iron protection of the squares.

As the thunderous war drums sounded, Sun Li’s tortoise-shell formations spread out across the battlefield, their unyielding faces turned toward the charging goblin horde. In the spaces between each formation, torsion-powered catapults and ballistae had already been calibrated and waited in silence, ready to let the beastmen taste the agony of mechanical slaughter.

“Catapults, ready—fire!” At the officer’s command, each catapult hurled two or three millstone-sized rocks with every shot. The ballistae were not to be outdone; with a taut twang, three bolts flew forth from each, their improved design tripling their killing efficiency.

The dense goblin ranks, which nearly blanketed the open field, were suddenly pocked with irregular gaps amid short screams—here, a hole opened in the center; there, a breach torn open. Yet the hundreds of killing machines, pitted against tens of thousands, did not deter the goblins; they pressed forward undaunted.

When the massed ranks closed within two hundred meters, the air filled with a hail of arrows, and at last the goblin charge crumbled. After just two volleys, the goblin cannon fodder—so different from the brave warriors of the main tribes—could no longer maintain their formation. The bold still ran forward; the timid wept and fled, while the witless wandered the field, grinning in confusion.

It was clear that one more volley would break the charge in humiliating defeat before the enemy was even touched. Fortunately for the beastmen, they had their secret weapon: the bloodlust spell. As the shamans chanted, every goblin’s eyes turned red, and in a frenzy of suicidal desperation, they hurled themselves at the human lines, ignoring the corpses of over ten thousand of their kin strewn across their path.

The engineers retreated quickly, abandoning their catapults and ballistae on the field—there was little chance the mindless beastmen would know how to use them. Behind the shields, the archers and crossbowmen withdrew, while three rows of spears thrust from the gaps, poised at an angle to brace against the oncoming beastmen’s momentum.

Amid the sickening crunch of impact and the wet sound of weapons piercing flesh, rank after rank of goblins died without meaning, accomplishing nothing but exhausting the humans. Not a single one so much as touched a human body—for these short-legged, short-armed little wretches, breaking through the forest of spears was as impossible as scaling the sky.

Wild Bull seemed unmoved by the one-sided slaughter of his goblins. Perhaps his aim was simply to sap the humans’ arrows and strength. As the goblin ranks thinned, more waves of expendable reserves were thrown into the bottomless pit of the front.

After half a day of bitter fighting, Sun Li’s army had slaughtered countless goblins. Every soldier but the cavalry had taken a turn at the front, and the toll was severe—longbowmen’s arms were spent, many crossbows had snapped, and exhaustion weighed heavy. Sun Li cursed the beastmen’s shamelessness; by sacrificing countless lives, they had ground his force’s combat strength to less than half its former might.

Perhaps the humans’ dwindling firepower gave the signal, or perhaps the goblin fodder was nearly spent. At the blare of a resonant horn, the true warriors of the beastmen—the minotaur phalanx—marched forward, each step shaking the ground. Ahead of them came the half-orc archers, rested after the long wait, emboldened to at last exchange volleys with their human counterparts, whose strength was nearly spent. To the flanks, the wolf cavalry flexed their claws, ready to pounce as soon as the minotaurs breached the lines.

Sun Li, standing atop a raised platform, saw the beastman general finally reveal his trump card. A victorious smile played at his lips. “Now let’s see if a horde of ironclad beastmen infantry can withstand a heavy cavalry charge. Infantry without long weapons—no matter how fierce—cannot stand against such an assault. Pass my order: Heavy cavalry, form up and charge the half-orc archers. Scatter them, then hit the minotaur heavy infantry. The two-handed axe shock infantry will follow and exploit the breach. I want to shatter the beastman main force in one stroke!”

The war drums thundered once more. The heavy cavalry, fully armored and mounted on iron-clad steeds, formed ranks like a line of moving fortresses and thundered towards the half-orc archers. At the same time, the shock infantry, wielding great two-handed axes, mustered and advanced behind them.

The poor half-orc archers, having waited so long for a chance to shine once the human archers were spent, suddenly found themselves facing a phalanx of ironclad juggernauts. Their first volley was answered with nothing but the ringing of arrows on steel. In a single charge, their ranks broke, and the shock infantry fell upon them, cutting them down mercilessly. Thus the half-orc archers were utterly annihilated without having left a mark on the battle.

Watching his half-orc archers wiped out without effect, Wild Bull was not angered. He knew this was the last fully-rested human force; once they were spent, the ten thousand fresh troops at his back could sweep aside the exhausted humans with ease.

Thus began a brutal and bloody melee.