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| ===Chapter 7 - Unified Assault===
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| (unfinished save)
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| "Over the past week, we have intercepted six columns of Skagen forces above battalion-size, thirty-three smaller detachments, and razed nineteen outposts and blockhouses. The 2nd Echelon also crossed into Skagen three days ago, adding one major interception to the count and mounting a successful night assault on their army encampment at Kajana. In total, we have inflicted between ten to thirteen thousand losses, including those who surrendered and were let go. This accounts for over half of the enemy's mobilized forces in the peninsula..."
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| The single-room 'mobile command center' had been expanded to full size from its shrunken, crate-sized form. Within it packed over thirty individuals, ranging from eighteen company commanders to a foreign Princess. They all crowded around a three-dimensional topographic projection which highlighted the known movements of both friend and foe. Meanwhile, Lieutenant-Colonel Hans-Canaris Oster continued his operational analysis:
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| "--Our own casualties in the 1st Echelon amount to thirty percent, albeit heavily skewed towards our regular cavalry. This includes 446 dead and 87 other irrecoverable injuries..."
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| Given the wonders of modern healing magic, irrecoverable injuries usually meant one thing: loss of limbs to mages. Despite the availability of ''Regeneration'' spells, their high complexity made it difficult if not impossible to overcome the ether resistance of other spellcasters. Any severed appendages that were not quickly recovered and reconnected by a medical professional risked permanent maiming.
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| "--This drops our frontline cavalry strength to just over fifty percent. In the meantime, we have received the cadet-boosted ''Black Lancers'' as reinforcements, bringing our Phantom complement of two companies to full."
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| The Lieutenant-Colonel might be prematurely balding with entrenched brow wrinkles, but the blue gaze he swept across the room was still full of youthful energy. His lips then widened into a broad, congratulatory smile as he formally announced:
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| "As of today, the first phase of Operation ''White Typhoon'' has reached a successful conclusion."
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| But General von Manteuffel didn't even give the assembled officers an opportunity to cheer before following up.
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| "However, that doesn't imply we can afford complacency. By now, our advantages in surprise and momentum have completely expired, and I want all troops back in action after today's rest. According to intelligence from our scouts and the ''Black Eagles'', Skagen forces have consolidated to their nearest fortified towns, with likely orders to hold out until the arrival of main forces from Fimbulmark Isle. That means no more easy victories for us in the open field."
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| Some of the commanders began to talk quietly among themselves. The biggest weakness of an all-cavalry army is their inability to tackle strong fortifications. Sure, the Reiters and Phantoms could bombard town walls while the rest dismounted to assault; but they had neither the ammunition endurance of proper siege artillery, nor the massed numbers of infantry for such a meat grinder battle.
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| "Which is precisely why we're going to force them to come out," the General said with a faint smirk. For a man whose expressions lay as unperturbed as stone for weeks on end, it made a truly devilish smile worthy of the name 'Manteuffel'.
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| "Captain, please explain the plan as we have detailed."
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| "Yes Sir," Captain Sir Pascal von Moltewitz, Tactical Officer of the 1st Echelon, confirmed as he expanded the rod in his hand into a retractable metal stick.
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| "As you all know, our current forces are poorly suited to launching an urban assault. Therefore, it is imperative that we provoke our enemies into offering us battle by threatening their most strategic position..."
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| With a swish of his pointer, Pascal directed everyone's attention to a port town in the northwestern tip of the peninsula:
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| "Nordkapp is the only target we deem worthy for this effort. It is not only the primary transit link between the the peninsula with Skagen's interests on Fimbulmark Isle, but also the only fortified port of sufficient size to anchor the full strength of Skagen's fleet. In other words, Nordkapp is the only location where their main army can land and still keep their ships relatively protected -- or at least, as well as they can manage against our marauding Phantoms."
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| A few sinister chuckles followed that comment. The King arrived in Nordkreuz two days ago under the escort of ''North Wind'', a Knight Phantom company that specialized in coastal patrol and naval destruction.
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| "Therefore, we will lay siege to Nordkapp with only a portion of our forces," Pascal continued on in his resolute tone. "We will neither fully invest the fortification nor assault its walls, but simply chip away at their numbers and the walls. We will feed them the false assumption that they face but a few hundred troops -- perhaps the remnants of 1st Echelon after sustaining much heavier casualties. With 2nd Echelon advancing north towards us, it will be apparent that unless they boost the garrison, we will assault it once our reinforcements arrive. Given the importance of Nordkapp to the Jarls of the peninsula, they will likely do so, and possibly even seize the opportunity to recover their honor by eliminating our weakened units with a converging attack."
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| "Colonel von Konopacki and I will break camp and head towards Nordkapp after nightfall with the Nordkreuz 1st and 3rd cavalry companies, plus the Nordkreuz and Kostradan Reiters. We will erect besieging fortifications under the cover of darkness. By tomorrow morning, we shall begin a shootout with the town's defenders. As our Phantoms and Princess Sylviane remain unaccounted for, the enemy will have to assume that they are still independently hunting smaller units -- compelling any aid they send to be dispatched in battalion-size or greater."
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| "And that is when the rest of us will ride out... and crush them," the General took his mantle back with a symbolic squeeze of his large fist, granite fingers every bit as hard as his stony face.
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| <nowiki>----- * * * -----</nowiki>
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| Kaede suppressed a yawn as she raised a pair of binoculars to her eyes. The magnification was nowhere up to modern standards. But from her vantage point atop the battery-tower on the rightmost flank, it was enough to survey the town's defenders atop its fieldstone walls.
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| More precisely, she was watching an artillery crew load their weapon -- a swivel-mounted heavy scorpio. They worked atop a bulwark merely two hundred paces away, yet barely visible due to the thin mist that covered the entire area.
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| "FIRE!" yelled the Lieutenant on her tower.
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| A volley of multicolored ether bolts then crashed into artillery bulwark. Most were stopped short by the battlements, where they dissipated harmlessly against the ''Guard Screen'' ward which stretched across the walls' exterior. But three bolt found their mark.
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| The loader was struck twice on his back. The telekinesis magic must have broke his spine; he fell over backwards, through the firing gap before plummeting three stories to the ground below.
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| But his comrade met a far more gruesome fate. The bolt struck right below the helmet, penetrating through the ears and opening a hole in his skull. The unfortunate militiaman was dead before his body even hit the ground.
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| "LOOK OUT!"
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| Kaede swung her binoculars toward her left. The shout came from Weichsel's side this time. Two rune-inscribed catapult shots crashed hard into the second battery-tower to her left before shattering into jagged rock shrapnel. Constructed from alchemy by transmuting packed snow into ice, the battery-tower slowly tilted as its compromised structural integrity worsened by the second. The squad of dismounted Reiters on top jumped off and glided through the air to safety, mere seconds before the cracking ice finally gave away.
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| The frozen tower toppled onto the ground like a massive hammer, smashing a gap in the ice wall built to protect the snow trenches from the defender's fire. Yet along other lengths of the trench, dismounted Reiters and cavalrymen continued firing spells and crossbows against the walls' defenders.
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| This inefficient fire exchange had gone on all morning. With two full companies of Noble Reiters, Weichsel forces could overpower the ''Guard Screen'' ward protecting the walls and breach the fortification. But such high powered spellcasting would also leave the mages drained. Given the lack of forces for a proper assault, Colonel von Konopacki gave strict orders to rely on 'sustainable' magic -- low tiered spells with easily-replenished ether needs.
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| Protected by a misty breeze and icy walls, Weichsel's magic superiority showed its strength yet again. Bolts of pure ether obeyed neither gravity nor wind, offering higher accuracy with lethal damage. Meanwhile, the defenders' artillery -- designed to hit massed formations -- had trouble striking man-sized targets. Their fragmentation shots claimed countless injuries, but few that could not be patched up through healing.
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| ''Even so... we can't win a battle of attrition,'' Kaede thought. ''If their reinforcements don't come out, then this is all for nothing.''
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| She wished Pascal could keep her updated on the command network's communications, but he had better things to do than repeat messages.
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| Meanwhile, the defenders wheeled another scorpio artillery into sight; the third on the same bulwark, with a fourth following close behind...
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| "<u>Kaede, tell the lieutenant to take out that battery. Standard anti-fortification combination spell,</u>" Pascal's voice rang through her mind.
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| "Lieutenant, command from HQ: eliminate the scorpio battery, standard anti-fortification combo," Kaede repeated to the squad of mages on the same battery-tower.
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| A young nobleman who appeared to be in his 'twenties', the lieutenant cocked a raised eyebrow before he nodded somewhat hesitantly: "understood."
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| He then turned towards his 'squad', an assembly of mages pulled from the cavalry company: "rest of you just gas them. I'll ignite."
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| The others nodded back before changing their aura magic stance to one suitable for high-output, low-precision spellcasting.
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| "''Aura Bombardment!''"
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| Given Pascal's suggestion, Kaede had been practicing her magic sensitivity. But even she didn't have to focus to feel the push of their aura expansion.
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| "''Cloudkill Field!''" seven of them called out, their extended gloves sending arcing rays of crafted ether towards their target.
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| "''Ignition Bolt!''" The Lieutenant then followed suite.
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| The first seven rays reached over the walls and scattered into the air like the veins of leaves. They left no visible effect, except for the coughing of garrison militiamen. Through the distance, Kaede's keen ears picked up complaining words she didn't understand, followed by a pitched shout -- which apparently meant something like 'disperse' or 'run'.
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| But they never had a chance.
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| The last spell shot in, and the very air over the bulwark exploded into flames and burning atmosphere. The force of the blast crushed the artillery engines like twig models, while hurling out pieces of men and battlements alike as though toy blocks thrown by a tantrum-stricken child.
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| By transmuting impurities in the air into dense cloud of methane and other highly flammable gases, then followed with a simple fire spell, Weichsel mages imitated the nature of a coal dust explosion. The power was equivalent to that of a modern thermobaric weapon -- the fuel-air bomb.
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| Even from three-hundred paces away, Kaede still felt herself pushed a step back by the heat wave of the powerful blast.
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| <nowiki>----- * * * -----</nowiki>
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