Herald of Steel

The three garrisoned officers quickly understood that if Lord Macht was truly as skilled as they were giving him credit for, then they were truly in for a hard fight.

The subtleness of the entire plan and how it was so cleverly hidden right in plain sight for all to see was a fantastic marvel to behold for any man.

Lord Macht had shown his worth in salt with just that single move.

Realizing this thus made both the officers feel a trail of sweat flowing down their spine, as they then almost simultaneously turned to give their commander Scorpyo a very flattering look.

If it had been them in charge of the camp, doubtless they would have been completely blind to the ploy, and been most certainly caught in the trap.

"..... If we had chosen to be in our camp and just defend, we would have been attacked for hours relentlessly… dammit… we are only a small force here… if even the walls of Thesalie can be overwhelmed, ... then what about ours?"

One of the officers hence could not help but clench through teeth what might have well been, the fear in his voice palpable.

"*Tsk*, even if we could have repelled them, our supplies are very limited. We would not have been able to outlast them."

His colleague was quick to also add this statement, his hands curling up into a fist.

The men had to thank their lucky stars that they had someone as experienced as Commander Scorpyo to lead them.

Becoming convinced of Scorpyo's tactic, they then finally turned on their heels, shouting,

"We should go ask for reinforcements immediately. There is very little time left. Or we will really have to consider running."

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One of the officers then hurriedly rushed out to inform RR of their state, while his colleague got to work arranging the garrison and preparing the men to march out at a moment's notice.

As Alexander's garrison mobilized themselves like so, Lord Macht continued to steadily approach the island, with a stoic facade on the outside but an expectant heart inside.

Calm and collected, the man was feeling quite confident of his chances, not complacent but also not too worried.

Of course, this assessment would have certainly changed if he had been able to sense that his bait had been so easily fished out, and would have likely been in quite a hurry to change plans.

But he did not.

And even if he had, some would have argued that this was still the best course of action for them.

This was because there was indeed a reason why the man had chosen to attack the island in this manner.

Because most of the alternative routes such as those listed by the legionary officers were actually not suitable to be used in the current circumstances.

The man knew that because he had already thought about most of them.

For instance, the first idea asked for using a double pronged attack to distract the garrison to land a secondary force elsewhere.

However this would have only worked if there was already a force on the island in the first place, kind of like Alexander had, so that they could attack and pin the garrison before they had a chance to mobilize.

However, if Lord Macht tried and replicated the tactic, the only thing he would end up accomplishing would be dividing his forces into two thus making the groups very vulnerable while disembarking.

They would risk getting surrounded, isolated, and then destroyed separately.

This would be like Lord Macht delivering two fully cooked meals straight to the enemy's mouth.

As for trying to make this work by landing the two forces far away from each other, so that the smaller first force became the bait thus letting the larger, secondary force come up from the rear and open up a new front, well this too was not suitable.

For the simple reason problem of geography.

Phyrross Island was really small, tiny

It was so small that even if Lord Macht tried to land his forces on either of the sides of the island that were farthest from each other- the east and the west simultaneously, to try and split the defenders, the garrisoned forces would still likely be able to comfortably engage one of them and then quickly finishing their 'meal' come back for seconds.

The problem was large enough to even make Lord Macht unable to use his cavalry.

Or else, if he had been able to use his horses, he might have been still able to make the two pronged attack work, using the unit's great speed to take advantage of this time gap and quickly smash into the rear of the garrisoned forces while they were dealing with the first contingent.

But alas, the tiny size of the island made that quite impossible.

Cavalry needed flat wide open spaces to effectively operate where they could make large, swinging maneuvers.

But a tiny island that had its grounds strewn with all kinds of broken stone and battered house debris from the tsunami hardly had such ideal conditions.

Leaving Lord Macht without his most precious units.

Otherwise, given cavalry was the Heeat family's most prized possession and something Lord Macht was very familiar with commanding, he would have deployed them here despite the immense hassle of transporting and disembarking horses from ship to land.

Usually, such fickle beasts needed a long time and specialized equipment to load and unload, something that was needless to say hard to do during a contested landing

But if he could have used them, Lord Macht would not have cared.

Now however, the lack of available space on the island appeared so acute that as Lord Macht approached the island, he was half glad that he had only brought with him two and a half thousand men.

Any more and he feared the men would have to line themselves up end to end on the island and still not fit.

As for using fog to try and fool the enemy, just like Alexander had done at night, well in the young pasha's case, it was perhaps not the fog that had been the decisive factor, but much more so the complete surprise with which he had managed to take the garrisoned forces.

The fog sure helped no doubt about that, but at the end of the day, it merely helped them hide their advances.

The true hero was the Heeat family's complete ignorance of the attack, and it not even being within their realm of possibility.

The men on the island did not even know the enemy had made a beachhead on their island for more than half the night, which let the legionnaires create a very strong foothold by daybreak.

Hence by the time the Heeat family noticed this, they were forced to send a majority of their troop to meet this threat or risk the enemy getting ever larger and simply overwhelming them.

That however unfortunately left their camp mostly undefended.

Only then was Alexander able to exploit the happenings and snatch the island.

Such a thing was hardly going to work with Alexander's garrison here, who very well knew an attack was coming, and imminently at that.

They also were far better organized and supplied than their counterpart, with properly built watchtowers and lookouts equipped with warm clothes, keeping a vigilant eye

Thus trying to use the winter fog to try and fool such sharp eyes would certainly not have worked.

The only real thing it would have realistically done was cause the attacking ships to lose their sights and bearings and smash into each other, and the disembarking soldiers to get confused and lost on the beach after being unable to see their unit's standards.

Hence Lord Macht wisely decided to avoid such complex strategies and tried to just use his huge numbers to try and bulldoze his way through.

He hoped the mere sight of his numbers would be enough to scare the garrison into holing themselves in and let him proceed unimpeded.

That hopeful optimism was unfortunately shattered almost the moment the ships came into range of the island, as Scorpyo leading the formation shouted at the top of his lungs,

"Men! Shoot! Shoot with everything you got. Do not let a single bastard step ashore! Kill them before they can kill you!"

The hail of arrow fire immediately following this command was withering and it greeted the attacking soldier with relentless malice.

And because the men had to jump from the ship to disembark, they were not only able to maintain any sort of coherent formation, but they even had to keep their shields to their backs, allowing many of the bolts to easily find their marks.

And accompanying these shots were the far scarier catapults, whose stone throws were able to make accurate hits on the moored ships, smashing into them and cracking the body.

Some even landed on the deck and bounced around a few times, making multiple contacts and dealing severe casualties.

But perhaps its most damaging effect was in its novelty as most having never seen such a weapon, panicked.

Even Lord Macht's aide ran up to the general who was standing at the stern and urged him to go below deck.

The man's face however only produced a gloomy look.

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