193 The Blazing Cannon (1/2)

”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.