Chapter 14 - 2-4
"That guy might be able to do it."
Astai declared.
Tenge Wolf, perhaps overwhelmed with emotion upon hearing of his younger brother's safety, had closed his eyes and was looking up at the sky, but
"Do it?" he asked, moving his face.
"Geraha. He has good intuition."
Astai recounted the details of the battle.
"What's surprising is that it was all done by the book. Always taking the initiative. Always maintaining the advantage. Running freely across the battlefield, not fearing to show his back to the enemy. It was a victory like a miracle, but it wasn't through odd tricks or strange strategies. Geraha won by doing the obvious things. It was a battle I'd want to clip out and use as a model. Thinking back now, we always felt the wind at our backs. The reason our arrows hit so exceptionally well wasn't because our archery skills were sharp. The arrows rode the wind. Geraha led us toward the tailwind. He has good intuition. He might be a genius."
When he happened to look up, Tenge was trembling.
"Is it true?"
"What is?"
"Is he truly a genius?"
"No, I—"
Without listening to Astai's answer, Tenge flushed as if ignited, his body shaking,
"O Udowa! I have surely received the proof from the heavens!"
he shouted something divine. Suddenly, tears burst forth, tracing down his gentle cheeks.
Udowa is the ancestral god of the Kosa people.
Tenge might be seeing the form of the god through his younger brother. Having seen Geraha's brilliant fighting style himself, Astai understood that feeling to some extent. However, there was no need for sobbing.
"Calm down," he said, for the time being patting the back of his sobbing best friend. "Tenge, we can still fight. I want to try a shifting campaign."
"A shifting campaign?"
"I want to try advancing the troops."
Astai added that it would be a good experience for Geraha.
Tenge rubbed his nose, took a map, and spread it over the mats of the headquarters.
"Since we are penetrating deep into the Ishma territory, I want you to assume there will be no supplies. Here and here are settlements of the Nabla tribe. Seize their sheep and move quickly, and if we go down the tributary of the Amta River..."
"The enemy's heart, then."
"Exactly. There, coordinate with the main force and I ask for an attack from the flank. I'll give you another two hundred riders."
Keeping Tenge's instructions in mind, Astai returned to Geraha with the two hundred reserve riders.
"Your Big Brother wept with joy."
When he told him this, the tension that had been filling Geraha's hideous face crumbled away. Tears blurred his eyes slightly.
"I see. Hearing that puts my mind at ease as well."
These brothers were similar in strange ways.
Astai spoke about the shifting campaign.
"Understood. If Tenge-nii says so, I'll do it."
Geraha answered with an innocent expression.
A meeting was held at night, and they departed the next day. The small and medium company commanders, the ten-household heads and hundred-household heads, were beginning to look at Geraha with different eyes. Excluding the dead and wounded, Geraha's unit had increased to over six hundred riders, and food, water, bows, and arrows were replenished. The unit was brimming with high spirits. Along the way, they wandered for about three days while raiding Nabla tribe settlements before reaching the battlefield.
The battle was just at its peak.
Geraha's unit dismounted and began to cross a tributary of the Amta River. It was a small stream, with water levels that didn't even reach the chest.
After finishing the crossing, Geraha mounted his horse. Right before their eyes was a battlefield of bloodshed and screams. Geraha's unit approached the enemy's rear at a relaxed walk, devoid of tension. After getting quite close, Geraha suddenly urged his horse forward,
"Charge!"
he ordered the assault.
By the time the enemy noticed, there was no time to nock arrows; while they fumbled to turn their horses around, they were swept into melee combat with Geraha's unit. Taking advantage of that opening, the allied soldiers facing them also began their attack. The enemy was effectively caught in a pincer attack, and the battle situation overturned almost in an instant.
"Fall back!"
Shortly after, Geraha's thick voice pressed against their eardrums. He was saying to leave this place to the main force and move to the next. Combat was taking place simultaneously all around.
Geraha returned his horse to a walk. Astai and the other soldiers followed suit. In a battlefield where cavalry clashed, the group walked their horses elegantly. It was bizarre.
It wasn't to make the enemy let their guard down. Astai sensed that he wanted to rest the horses. It was autumn. The horses' chests were fat. Their recovery of strength was fast. With horses that had regained their power, they would fiercely smash through the flanks of the Ishma soldiers.
Using that method, Geraha's unit intervened in local battles one after another, throwing the enemy into confusion.
What was strange was why the Ishma tribe people didn't notice Geraha's unit approaching. To the enemy, their appearance seemed to be like ghosts appearing and disappearing. Every enemy was thrown into a panic.
Geraha might have an eye that could see through the enemy's blind spots.
It could also be said that Tenge's plan worked. Tenge had used Geraha's unit as a "hidden piece." That much was clear. However, whether Tenge had considered it would work to this extent was another matter. Regardless, a battle this satisfying was a first for Astai and the other soldiers.
Astai even had a premonition that this war would completely change Kosa tactics. As would be known later, it did indeed change them completely.
The Kosa army was the strongest army in the world. They took pride in not retreating a single step even when exposed to a rain of arrows. They were a military group of immovability and pressure.
Geraha's fighting was different. Light and agile, fierce, rich in mobility, and catching the enemy off guard. In practice, that was achieving success and was rewriting the battlefield.
This guy might actually... Astai recalled Tenge's divine outburst.