The fighting mentality of the steppe people is very different from that of the sedentary peoples. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

A typical war between the West Coasters is best described as a battle between you and me, where the armies of both sides form a formation and rush towards each other, and the frontal formations often reach a stalemate after the first onslaught, so that either side tries to bypass the opponent's flank and crush the other on the weak flank, resulting in the flank stretching longer and longer, as long as the number of people allows, the line will extend indefinitely to both sides.

Whether the main army is cavalry or infantry, the armies of the West Coast are built for the collision between frontal armies and armies, and their tactical philosophy is to defeat the enemy by head-on encounters, and any other small details are just developed to achieve this goal.

We can't say that they were wrong on this point, in fact, the way the West Coast fought came from the invincible heavy infantry legions of the Lamanites, and even today, when any infantry or cavalry formed in a well-formed formation and struck in a certain direction with an earth-shattering battle cry, they still possessed unrivaled form.

The formation of unified action ensures both survivability and combat effectiveness, and the ten scattered infantry and the ten infantry who form a shield wall can almost be said to be different existences, and the battle style of the frontal phalanx that has passed the test of time and pushes against each other and fights steadily and steadily is like an old wine, rich, classic, and endlessly aftertaste - but it is not without weaknesses.

Whether it is the east coast where the Laman civilization was born, or the west coast where the kingdoms are divided, the mountains, forests, river plains, towns and villages, the terrain of the fertile land where these settled peoples live is extremely suitable for such legion warfare, as long as they can seize the advantage of a certain terrain and use a certain building or forest as a flank cover, and set up a formation to face the enemy, they can exert their full combat power.

We often say that the most common mistake made by the victors of the previous war is to simply apply the experience to the next war. For the people of the west coast except in the Soradin Heights, and for the Lamanites who had migrated westward, this simple application of experience was rewarded in the worst way when they encountered the endless environment of Absera, which had no cover and no natural hazards to exploit, and which were accustomed to mounted archery and ambushes and agile warfare.

Due to the vast terrain, the flanks could not be effectively arranged, otherwise the front would be stretched too long and too sparse, resulting in a decrease in combat power. The fact that everyone on horseback further exacerbated the difficulty, and had to resort to an all-round defense, but this formation greatly reduced the speed of movement and the ability to push the line to attack. Life lies in movement, and so is war, so can only stay where you are and be beaten, and the nomadic people with their horses, strong mobility and short bows with range, left behind a very painful and bloody lesson.

Although the heavy shield can give enough defense area, the Lamanite legions, which are mainly infantry, are simply unable to catch up with the opponent, and the steppe horses with amazing endurance can continue to run for a long time without resting. Unable to catch up and unable to catch up, they were annoyed by being harassed back and forth, and in the end the retaliatory actions of the Lamanites, who came from the so-called civilized empire, were as primitive as those savage and inferior people on the West Coast who they still looked down on.

The steppe warriors who came out to raid and raid rode lightly on their horses, carrying nothing but food, water, and weapons, but the same could not be said in the camp where their families were located. The Lamanites completely destroyed the nomadic camps full of children and the elderly by burning the steppes at fixed points, poisoned the drinking water of people and animals, and littered the fields with the corpses of children waiting to be fed and the young girls who kept their cattle and sheep to take care of them.

The best way to deal with these nomads is to be by the team of another nomad. On the fourth day, when Henry and his party finally arrived near the target area, the scene of the cannibalism of the steppe people witnessed from a distance confirmed the existence of this existence.

For the nomadic people who shoot nimble rabbits and fawns and antelopes on horseback all year round, targets of the size of humans and war horses can be shot with their eyes closed, and when one group of steppe people, who clearly has the advantage in numbers, meets another group of their kind who have just returned from a full load, the sharp and deadly rain of arrows pierces the weak skin of human beings in this way.

Coincidentally, it happened to be windy when a group of seventy or so people came, and the sound of "Xiu Xiu" covered up the sound of battle in the distance that was not earth-shattering, so when they saw the grassland team of about forty people slaughtering the other team, the other party had already seen them. At this time, it was too late to escape, and although their group seemed to be outnumbered, the long line drawn out by the dozen or so carriages also proved the fact that not all of them were warriors.

Considering the fact that most of the mercenaries are in a melee configuration, the two sides should actually be considered evenly matched - and this has become a major factor in the quarrel in the team at this critical juncture.

As we mentioned at the beginning, there is a considerable gap between the way these nomads of the steppe think about war and war and the sedentary peoples. Although the Soladins have been dealing with them as mercenaries for centuries, they are not natives of the steppe after all, and the customs here and the folklore here determine the vigorous and active nature of the people born and raised here, and in the face of the enemy army that is not absolutely suppressed here, as the leader of the steppe people's side, the youngest son of the patriarch of the Aries clan who is ready to communicate with the small clan when the time comes, Khaled, directly shouted that he wanted to attack first.

His judgment was correct and in line with the Prairie people's idea of striking first, the team in front of him had just consumed a lot of arrows to annihilate the other team, and in this case, it was right to rush forward before the opponent reacted and not give them a chance to resupply the arrows from the defeated opponent's body. But as with so many other things, there is often not only one right answer, and each person has his own standard of judgment and measurement, and it turns into a quarrel.

The mercenaries were hired to protect the convoy, they weren't here to annihilate any steppe warriors they saw. Therefore, in their opinion, if everyone leaves at this time, leaving the vulnerable convoy is obviously against the original intention, so the correct thing to do is to surround the convoy and intimidate the other party, they have just completed a raid, as long as the other party understands that this side is a hard bone to gnaw, they will inevitably leave obediently.

The different opinions of the two parties eventually led to a quarrel, and the stubborn Khalid has never been a person who is good at listening to other people's opinions and following other people's ideas, seeing that the mercenaries did not step forward with him, he directly dropped a sentence of "coward" in the strangely pronounced Lamani language, and then rushed out with his steppe warriors, including Barrett, it was too late to stop him, and it was obviously not a wise choice for more than 20 people to fight more than 40 people, even if they were all elites, Therefore, as a last resort, a dozen or so well-equipped blue-card mercenaries in the team, including Henry and Mira, borrowed a round shield from others and immediately chased after them.

The people left behind quickly changed the formation of the slave carriage that was still empty at the moment to form a temporary defense, although these fences were empty but could always provide a little protection, with this temporary "city wall" as a basis, the merchants were surrounded by the remaining twenty or so mercenaries to protect it, and Khalid, who rushed out first, quickly opened his bow and arrow, and after a short aiming, an arrow was already fired.

"Whoa—" The direction of the wind is in their favor, and it is precisely because they are upwind that they can't hear the sound below, Khaled's arrow showed a level quite in line with his aristocratic status, and directly hit the arm of a person in the distance, the man shook dullly and then covered his arm, several people next to him raised their short bows and opened them to this side, but a middle-aged strong man with a goatee who seemed to be the leader immediately waved his hand and motioned for these people to put away, obviously he was concerned about the direction of the wind and did not want to do useless work。

"Bang-" The twenty or so steppe warriors beside Khalid also drew their bows and arrows one after another, and seeing that the people here were all murderous, the team of more than forty people quickly tore off the quiver from the horses of the people in front of the master's death and stood in place, and then quickly left in two ways.

"Chase, don't let any of them go, they'll bring more people. Knowing that once the battle is left alive, it will be immortal, Khalid decisively gave the order, and the warriors under his command quickly divided into two groups and chased the enemy troops who ran out in both directions, the capricious wind on the Absera grassland showed their power at this time, and the group that had just occupied the upper hand position just opened their bows and arrows, and the wind direction immediately changed from right to left, and the samurai who decisively loosened the strings saved this arrow, and the enemies who turned around and shot in front were blown away by the wind and did not know where。

"Stop them!" Khaled, who was familiar with the tactics of the steppemen, understood that they were going to come back in a circle, and rushed face to face each other to help his allies get rid of the tail that followed him, that is, his own group - these guys were really not weak hands, he thought so, and stepped on the stirrups with both feet, released the reins, and let the horses run free, and then opened his bow and arrows again.

The arrow that hit the back of a man in front of him was probably pierced through the heart, for the man stretched his neck and shook it, and immediately he fell off his horse and fell into the weeds. "Drink!" Khalid reacted quickly, holding the bow in one hand and grasping the reins with the other, bowing his body and directing his horse to leap away from the rolling enemy corpses, and the ten steppe warriors behind him also avoided the obstacle one by one.

"Huh-" Another arrow clicked past his ear, and Khalid couldn't help but feel a little anxious when he saw that the team on the other side was about to meet the enemy army in front of him—but it was also at this time that Henry, who came behind them, and a group of more civilized heavy cavalry, with a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, rushed directly from the middle with an astonishing momentum.

"Ora!!Ora!!" The point of the spear was none other than Henry and Mira, who were riding the Avenella horses, which were one size larger than the others. The samurai led by the enemy army shouted loudly and turned around, but the horses could not be stopped so easily when they galloped, and many of them gritted their teeth and thought that they would help their teammates survive even if they sacrificed themselves, so they let go of the reins and drew their short bows and shot at Henry and them, but the mercenaries who extended their shields outwards easily blocked the few arrows that were sparsely pulled - what happened after that was just as we had predicted.

"Boom-boom-boom!" The dirt and weeds rolled and flew out under the horse's hooves, and the dozen or so heavy horsemen killed in the oblique stab directly knocked the beginning of the enemy's two teams into pieces, and the iron ore on the grassland was scarce, and it was also used to make knives, shoes, and arrowheads, so basically these nomads were wearing rattan armor and leather armor, these things faced with ordinary or even poor sharp weapon slashes, blocking the sharp blades to avoid skin and flesh bleeding to death, and it was okay to encounter a long sword made of stainless steel, a sharp blade, and a powerful force of war horse sprinting.

Blood splattered, and the impact of the feedback to the palm of her hand made Mira almost unable to hold her long sword, she quickly adjusted her posture and pulled out the weapon in her hand, and the person who was stabbed was then knocked to the ground by the others behind him, and the horse's hooves splashed and he was immediately trampled into flesh and blood. The white-haired girl didn't hesitate too much, now that the battle was still going on, this was not a good time for her to sigh because she had killed someone, the mercenaries rushed directly from this side without stopping, their attack caused a total of only five or six deaths, but the leader still managed to cause a lot of chaos to the enemy army.

"Yara, Yara!" the goatee-bearded steppe warrior who had escaped the disaster rode away at high speed, shouting loudly for the group to regroup, and the archers of the place quickly dispersed again to meet again because of the arrival of Henry and their party, who had given up the opportunity to attack Khaled. The mercenaries slowed down in the distance and began to turn their heads, but to be honest, they couldn't be of much use at this point.

This first assault was successful because the enemy was only a short distance away from the team, and Khalid's impatient preemptive attack made them exhausted, and they were only thinking about cooperating with each other to attack and kill the tail chasing behind, ignoring the dozen or so mercenaries who ran out on the other side, so they were seized by the group, and now they reorganized their formation, wore heavy armor, held shields, and carried heavier loads, and the mercenaries with higher loads did not have any means of attack even if they chased after them.

"We also separated, went around to the front and blocked them. The people, who were a little confused about what to do next, found their backbone under Henry's words, and they quickly divided into two squads of only a few men as the sage said, and hurried forward in an attempt to at least interfere and force the other party to be attacked by Khalid.

The young steppe nobleman noticed this, and although he was stubborn and depressed in the group, he was not a fool, and immediately noticed Henry's tendency to intercept them, and he shouted that his team would be the first to open the distance, not following the enemy's tail straight, but also outflanking them from the outside—to cooperate with Henry and their team, to flank the enemy in both directions.

"La-" The steppe warrior in the enemy formation looked anxiously left and right, and on the other side, Khalid, who had been outflanked from the outside, and a dozen or so warriors under his command spread their bows and arrows.

And then.

The wind stopped.

"Bang-huh-" (To be continued.) )