The Foolhardies - Chapter 193 The Blazing Cannon

“Commander, We’re nearing the drop-off point!” Shanks called from the front end of our sand glider.

“Alright,” I turned my gaze on the other soldiers in the glider. “Get ready to disembark quickly. We don’t want to alert the enemy.”

“Yes, sir!” they all said together.

Ten minutes later and our glider had stopped at our designated rally point.

As everyone jumped off our glider onto the sands below, I glanced behind me and saw that the other gliders were dropping off more and more soldiers. Now that most of the gliders had been returned to us by the units we’d lent them to, we were able to bring a total of four hundred soldiers along on this one trip.

I raised four fingers high in the air, signalling for everyone to form four squad lines. These squads were Edo’s Bastards, Thom’s Hazy Moon, Thor’s unnamed squad, and Azuma’s Immortals.

The squad leaders readied their men while I waited with my map in hand. If all was going according to plan, Luca and Aura were already in position.

I’d split my squad into three for this battle. The first, led by me, had taken our gliders and ridden the winds west from our position south of the southern battlefront. This brought us as close to the enemy’s flank as we could get without detection.

“Everyone’s ready, Dean,” Edo said as he moved to my side.

Azuma, Thom, and Thor arrived shortly afterward with Shanks bringing up the rear and acting as my personal bodyguard at Aura’s insistence.

“We can’t have you dying on us now,” she said when she pushed Shanks onto me earlier that night.

I flattened my map down on the sand and pointed to our current location which was right behind a line of tall sand dunes.

“These ridges of sand dunes will keep us out of sight long enough for us to circle around to the enemy,” I explained. “We’ll need to be extra quiet now as I expect they’ll have lookouts covering their rear…”

“Four hundred men against the enemy general’s defensive formations sounds like suicide, Dean,” Azuma argued.

“Don’t worry about the enemy’s formations,” I said, smiling wryly at them. “Redbull will draw them forward… I expect only a thousand soldiers will remain stationed close to their general.”

“Only a thousand… we’ve faced worse odds,” Edo said, smiling back at me right before he nodded toward Azuma. “I don’t think they’ll give us as much trouble as you did.”

Azuma returned Edo’s smirk with one of his owns. “True…”

“Well, now that we’re all smiling like idiots at each other, perhaps the Commander would like to fill us in on what the other two teams are doing?” Thom asked in his usual mocking tone.

“Don’t worry about them… Just know that we’re the hammer to Aura’s anvil,” I answered cryptically.

“And Luca?” Edo asked.

“Luca’s the spear,” I replied. “Alright, let’s go… and remind your squads that we’re going stealth.”

And with that vote of confidence on our teamwork, we began our slow march around the sand dunes.

Now, I wasn’t about to attempt this daring plan without having a clear picture of the southern battlefield, and so I often had to stop while the unit moved onward so that I could send my sight above us.

It made having Shanks around sort of useful as he’d often pick me up and carry me over his back so that I wouldn’t get left behind, which in hindsight was pretty shameful for a commander. Not that I cared. Whatever works, I always say.

With Fool’s Insight giving me a birds-eye-view of the battlefield, I could clearly see how the flow of battle was going, and so far, the situation was as I predicted.

General Redbull understood his part well. He positioned his left army further back than originally planned in order to pull the Dominion’s right army forward.

Once their lines had stabilized, both armies sent out their infantry vanguard to test the other’s defenses, and while the enemy general was known for his defensive tactics, it was Redbull who seemed to be playing the defensive role in this battle.

His vanguard of five thousand soldiers would feint and pull back over and over to prevent too many casualties while at the same time driving the enemy of ten thousand to push forward even more.

Of course, Redbull didn’t want it to be too obvious, so he’d sent his cavalry of five thousand out early to help his vanguard out. This resulted in thousands dying on both sides but Redbull stood firm. His opponent, the so-called Shield of Rah seemed impatient to get the ball rolling.

He’d sent out more of his soldiers forward along with their cavalry and several war machines I’d never seen before, but based on their designs — several large and round disks of clear glass lined up one by one over a long wooden wagon with each disk getting smaller and smaller at the front end — I could guess at their function.

For an old experiment, I’d once used a magnifying glass to channel the sun’s rays in hopes of burning a box of tinder in my backyard. It took me several tries to get it done, but I did manage to light a small fire this way.

The design of the machines I saw now told me they had a similar function with much more devastating results.

As soon as these war machines rolled out onto the battlefield, at least half of the enemy army followed. This slowly created a wide gap of empty space between the half of the army moving forward and the half that had remained on their side of the battlefield.

Although this was great news for me and my plan, I knew that this was a dire warning for Redbull’s left army because it meant the enemy was extremely confident in their war machines.

“This Amon isn’t planning to stay defensive,” I suddenly realized.

“Isn’t he called the Shield of Rah?” Shanks asked. “Why would he change up his style now?”

I shook my head. “I think it’s because everyone knows he’s a defense-oriented strategic-type general, and he’s taking advantage of that fact to try and overwhelm Redbull’s left army early in the battle…”

“Isn’t that good for us, then?” Shanks wondered aloud.

“Good for us, yeah,” I answered. “But it might turn out bad for our left army…”

I watched as the first sign of trouble appeared.

Redbull had kept his forces back as promised, and it was working to drive the enemy army forward, but now that the unknown machines had come into play, things suddenly took a turn for the worst.

The giant magnifier at the center of their formation — yeah, I gave it a name because war machine sounded too weak a descriptor for these devices of death — was the first to activate.

Firstly, the formations in front of this magnifier split apart to create a wide corridor between the magnifier and our left army’s vanguard. Then, a small group of enemy magicians gathered at the back end of the magnifier. Together, they spent a great amount of time casting an unknown fire spell which they then channeled into the magnifier’s rear disk.

If you can’t imagine what happened next then allow me to put it in pop-culture terms everyone can visualize.

Basically, the fire spell passed through one disk after another, with each disk focusing the flames tighter and tighter, until at last it reached the final disk and just exploded outward in a discharge that was akin to Iron Man’s Repulsor Blasts if it had been fired from a giant Iron Man’s glove.

Even from where we were in the rear of the enemy, the beam-like sound of an explosion reached my ears. And as this beam of flames reached our vanguard, well, even from my view up in the clouds I could see the massive explosion almost as if it was right in front of me.

After the smoke cleared, it was clear that our vanguard survived, although it was equally clear that a single shot from the magnifier had devastated our side for I could see hundreds of charred corpses littering the ground, and I could only imagine that many more had been vaporized into nothingness.

“What kind of sci-fi bullsh** was that?!” I snarled.

“You saw it?” Shanks asked, his voice carrying a hint of nervousness. “What kind of weapon did the enemy just unleashed?”

“I saw it alright,” I answered. “I wish I could un-see it… damn…”

I quickly explained the details to Shanks and whoever else was close by, and I could hear the anxious murmurs that followed.

“How many more times can they fire that thing?” It was Edo’s voice that asked this question.

“I don’t know… the spell they cast that the magnifier amplified took about ten to twelve minutes… but Edo,” my voice was almost a whisper at this point, “they’ve got three more of those things…”

“If they used them in succession…” Edo began.

“Then our side won’t stand a chance,” Azuma finished.

As if in answer to Azuma’s and Edo’s prediction, Redbull’s cavalry charged forward in what looked like desperate act to reach the magnifier and prevent it from firing a second time.

That wasn’t all, the entire front line of our left army suddenly moved forward, and I could tell they wanted to bridge the distance as quickly as possible. But they wouldn’t nearly have enough time as Redbull had feinted well enough.

No, they wouldn’t make it in time, I realized. So it was up to me and mine to ensure our victory before we lose. It was a race against time, but thankfully, we were prepared.

“Edo, send out the signal to Aura’s and April’s troops,” I ordered. “It’s time we started our own fire.”