Continue to let the priests buff the Northumbrian infantry?
no! The Viking warriors had remained standing long enough to prevent the enemy from delaying the start of the battle by engaging in pre-battle rituals.
Rurik, standing high up, ordered all the torsion slingshot operators: "Maximum range! Look at my flag!"
He looked down at the matrix of bull trebuchets that had been deployed: "Press the lever to the lowest position and install the stone! Look at the flag!"
Seeing that they were all ready, Rurik ordered the flag bearer to rush forward and press down the white-on-blue-striped Ross flag.
When shooting with this probability, the torsion slingshot and trebuchet can reach their maximum range. Cast iron bullets and stone bullets are ejected ferociously, especially the trebuchet. Its powerful back jump is like a bull kicking someone.
The projectiles smashed through silently, just as the enemy was within the maximum firing range.
Three hundred meters between the two armies was already a very long distance. Eynred could not imagine whether there could be any kind of arrow that could fly such a long distance.
Indeed, what flew over was not arrows, but stones and iron bullets!
Fatal stones fell from the sky and directly hit the lined-up soldiers, causing tragic death on the spot.
Although this round of shooting caused eight casualties in the Northumbria Military District, most of the projectiles missed their positions, and it still caused a horrific psychological shock to them.
Eynred's view of war has been rewritten, and a place that was supposed to be absolutely safe is now filled with dangers.
He suddenly thought of escaping, but now the team began to commotion. Even the elite infantry soldiers were shocked when faced with the sudden tragic death of their comrades.
The most fearful thing for a soldier is the unexplained death of his comrades around him. Because of empathy, a soldier who has been trained in professional fighting is faced with a sudden and unnecessary death. Who can guarantee that he will not be the next unlucky person?
Just as the Northumbrian army was in chaos, a pile of stones came crashing down. This time there were only three casualties, but farmers were already starting to escape.
Eynred was furious, and he finally gave the order: "Fighters of Northumbria! Charge! Kill the enemy!"
If you continue to stay here, you will just sit back and wait for death. After receiving the order to attack, those elite kingdom warriors with kite shields no longer bothered to accept the blessing of the holy water and began to attack in an unorganized way. The farmers who followed were carrying scythes, dung forks, and even iron flails for threshing, and followed the infantry with roars.
For those who tried to escape were overtaken by the cavalry who had received orders from the king, and their arrows killed them. Those humble farmers knew that their retreat had been cut off by the king, and they could not complain about why the noble king and the noble cavalry were spectators. In order to survive, they could only follow the infantry and roar like mountains and tsunamis to boost their momentum. Join the fight.
On the Vikings' side, there was no need for Rurik himself to shout at the top of his lungs about what happened next.
Rurik stood on the high platform where all the torsion slingshots were placed. He arched his back slightly and stretched out his right hand to signal the Shetlander behind him to throw arrows into the sky.
The wooden bows of the entire team were hit by the Shetlanders in this battle. They could not participate in the frontal fighting but wounded people by shooting arrows. Many Balmoq warriors on the front line did not feel that their allies were honorable.
However, the soldiers of Balmok had no time to care about those people. Their sharp eyes were pressed against the corners of their bucklers, and the sword-holding hands were trembling subconsciously.
The people holding crossbows, including Biyongni, were half-kneeling at the center's spear formation. He temporarily transformed into an infantryman and obeyed Jevlo's orders to shoot arrows.
"Steady! Don't be nervous!"
"Get them closer and shoot."
"Aim for their necks, their faces! Shoot their eyes out!"
Jevlo shouted rhythmically, and the soldiers around him were speechless. This situation even moved him very much, as if the fishermen standing behind him were not the fishermen of Balmok, but the fishermen who stood behind him during the decisive battle on Gotland last year. Novgorod spearman in superb performance.
The arrows thrown by the short wooden bow began to show their power. The arrows did not cause an overwhelming rain of arrows, but they did cause casualties to the charging enemies.
Torsion slingshots and trebuchets have caused death to the enemy.
The minds of the charging infantry of Northumbria have gone blank, and any insignificant warrior is swept away by the torrent. Fear? It doesn't matter anymore.
The companion beside him suddenly fell to the ground for unknown reasons. He might have been shot by an arrow or stoned to death.
Any long-range weapon can prevent the crowd from attacking, and a close-quarters fight is about to happen.
"Now! Shoot!" Yevluo seized the opportunity, and a dozen people suddenly fired crossbows.
At least eight enemies were fatally struck instantly, while Yevluo and others hurriedly picked up their crossbows and rushed back to the spear formation. He still shouted: "Brothers, follow me to the highlands."
Just as more than a dozen of them left, the collision between the infantry began.
The formation of every Viking shield wall is that the warrior protects almost the entire torso with the shield, with the left leg in front and the right leg behind in an anti-collision posture. The sword and ax naturally rest on the shield, waiting for the opportunity to stab.
The combination of shield and iron helmet made the Vikings' line strong enough. The round shield collided with the opponent's kite shield, almost inevitably withstanding the opponent's collision.
Suddenly, the battlefield was filled with blood and flesh!
The Viking swords began to stab wildly, and the battle axes waved wantonly. Many Viking warriors huddled behind their shields, hacking and stabbing indiscriminately at a position roughly in front of them.
The Vikings in the back row also carried long-handled weapons, either stabbing or falling from the sky and smashing them.
"This doesn't look like a flesh-and-blood fight. Why does it sound like a group fight?" Rurik from the highlands had a sullen face. Since the occupation was completely within his own prediction, he was not nervous at all.
At this moment, Yevro and his men were all waiting for the foundation of the earth and wood construction. Although its terrain was relatively cramped and the height was only about one meter, it was actually a strategic commanding height.
Without saying anything, the strong mercenary immediately used his strong arms to forcefully wind the steel-armed crossbow. After they finished winding the strings, they immediately inserted arrows into the arrow trough and fired at random at the densely packed enemy lines.
Beside them, the Shetlanders were still firing arrows into the air desperately. They threw the captured arrows at a great angle and shot the Northumbrian farmers with Northumbrian arrows. .
The craziest battle was in the center of the Viking army. The wall of spears built by Biyoni's men became an insurmountable barrier.
The armored infantry of Northumbria holding a kite shield could possibly use the shield to block the thrusts of multiple spears. However, facing two hundred spears, the warriors faced fundamental despair.
There are Northumbria's own spears mixed in here. Various styles of spearheads, even just sharpened wooden poles, can cause huge damage.
More than ten people managed to rush to the front of the formation. They were aware of the situation. However, under the push of the soldiers from behind, their shields were poked and pushed aside, their bodies were smashed by spearheads, and their chainmail had almost no effect.
It didn't take long to see whether the two sides were fighting. The Vikings also began to suffer losses. Some people were stabbed by the swords of the Northumbrian warriors and fell to the ground. The warriors behind them pulled the injured brothers away and immediately replenished the front line.
More and more casualties were being pulled to the rear, but the Viking line stood firm.
A large number of Northumbrian corpses appeared at the front line, and the infantry could not break through the Viking line.
King Aynred was watching the battle from a distance. He imagined that his large number of infantry could use this advantage to overwhelm the enemy formation like a mudslide with just one charge.
However, the enemy's formation was stronger and stronger than imagined.
"Why? Why haven't you defeated the enemy yet?" He stood on the saddle, leaning his head and shouting in confusion.
The cavalry captain Aston was holding his breath. Seeing this anxious situation, he hoped to make a swift flank attack to overwhelm the enemy's formation. But he didn't want to remonstrate because the king had just told him to shut up.
King Aynred was still watching the anxious occupation. He squinted and saw that some farmers carrying wooden sticks were actually fleeing.
"Damn traitors! Why are you running away! Others are obviously fighting!"
"Do you want me to increase taxes before you dare to return to the front line?!"
Eynred was just yelling and cursing from behind, and his men really made no progress. These barbarians on the sea showed themselves to be masters of land warfare, and they were formidable enemies that were difficult to defeat.
This is indeed the case, because Rurik taught the Balmoks the method of "air-ground integrated strike" in this battle.
In the trebuchet matrix in the safe zone, each trebuchet only needs to charge a mere 30% of its power. It can hit the enemy by throwing the stone fifty or sixty meters away. As a result, its launch efficiency is extremely high.
The torque slingshot itself does not need to be fully charged. It can crush the skull of an enemy not far away by installing projectiles after half of the charge.
Northumbria's advantage of having more troops now became a disadvantage. They spontaneously wanted to outflank the Vikings' right wing (the left wing was the sea), only to find that the right wing was already on guard. Anyone who tried to outflank would be stabbed to death and driven away by Geiger's spearmen who were waiting.
The Vikings even started a front push!
The Northumbrian army had very few bow-wielding warriors, and their bows naturally tried to hit heavy weapons at high altitudes first. Rurik was standing on the high ground. From his perspective, the enemy's arrows could not hurt him at all. On the contrary, the archers were brutally killed by Yevlo and others holding crossbows because they posed a real threat.
The Vikings on the front line have been suffering casualties, and their opponents have suffered greater losses in comparison.
Our own casualties were completely within the acceptable range, and the battlefield situation was under Rurik's control. He just waited for his opponent to collapse due to the high casualties.
It's just that the situation is a little strange.
"Weird thing! Shouldn't the ancient peasant team flee if they lose 5%? Are these guys really going to burn down the monastery for me and fight with me to the last drop of blood?" Rurik muttered, looking around. , there were clearly men wearing simple coarse cloths running away, and those people were clearly farmers.
The flight of the armed peasants had clearly occurred.
Alas! Are there any farmers who escaped and returned to the front line? !
Rurik quickly understood the situation.
It was the cavalry, and the Northumbrian cavalry were being ordered to kill the fleeing men.
"You actually have a war team? Idiot, you have only a cavalry team, and you have never fought against the wall until now." Rurik himself was speechless to the enemy. He didn't know that the King of Northumbria was watching the battle at the edge of the forest. , not to mention that in order to preserve the strength of the cavalry, the king deliberately ordered the cavalry to serve as a supervisory team.
"Supervise the battle? I'll let you supervise the battle! If this continues, all your orange warriors will die, and the remaining farmers will be sheep waiting to be slaughtered."
Rurik keenly noticed those soldiers whose main color was orange, because these people had a stronger will to fight. As for those people dressed in various colors, it is not an exaggeration to say that they are just spectators holding wooden sticks and wandering around. The farmers were unable to help. If the farmers were forced to flee en masse, would the cavalry supervising the battle have to kill all of their own people?
The cries of killing on the battlefield never stopped, and fifty Viking warriors were seriously injured or killed from the front lines to the rear.
The Balmok Vikings, this group of fishermen, have developed strong bodies through daily fighting games, cutting wood and transporting rocks. However, the lack of armor to protect them made them suffer. At least the battle still maintains a relatively stable front. If the occupation turns into a chaotic battle with thousands of people killing each other, Rurik cannot guarantee that the advantage of the Viking warriors will remain.
The shield wall is not only a means of protecting the lives of individuals in the team, but also allows the entire team to form a fighting group. Compared to the beginning of the battle, the Viking shield wall had advanced ten steps. The dead bodies that were not pulled away behind him were all Northumbrian warriors who died tragically.
Suddenly, a sailor who was ordered to operate the trebuchet threw it onto the platform and shouted to Rurik: "Sir! The reserved pebble projectiles have been smashed. There are still some on the big ship, we..."
"Are you stupid? There is still time to go to Avora to get the projectiles?!"
"But, our..."
At this moment, Yevluo also hurriedly joined in: "We made a misjudgment. We didn't expect that the arrow consumption would be so large."
"Have you run out of arrows?" Rurik asked.
"Running out. Even spiked iron bullets without fins."
Rurik finally got a little impatient and stamped his feet vigorously, blaming himself for underestimating the enemy's will to fight and resulting in low ammunition reserves.
Suddenly, looking at the small stones in the earth platform under his feet, he had a flash of inspiration.
"There are pellets! There are pellets everywhere in here."
Rurik’s tiny face as he crouched down was really puzzling.
He dug out a stone smaller than a ping-pong ball from the soil and threw it to the sailors on standby.
"Go! Find such stones from the ground, pile them in the trebuchet's leather bag and launch them."
"Ah! This... Sir, with all due respect, such stones can only hurt people, but cannot kill the enemy at all."
"It's just to hurt people! Put thirty small stones in a leather pocket and you can hurt thirty enemies. If you hit them until they are dizzy, bruised and bruised, they will have no energy to continue fighting."
The sailor said no more, and did not want to understand the subtlety of the boss's decision.
As for the bull trebuchet, its original design intention was that anything that could fit in the leather pocket could be thrown out.
This is on the beach, where you can see small rocks mixed in with the gravel. The leather pockets of each trebuchet are filled with these stones with no lethality, but the operation of the ten trebuchets is to rain bullets on the enemy.
The trebuchet fires cannonballs! Targets enemies 60 meters away and deals damage with a radius of about two meters.
Of course, these stones couldn't hit anyone, but they gave the peasant soldiers behind the Northumbrian army a head-on blow.
Some people's heads were smashed so hard that blood spurted out, and they even fainted with stars in their eyes. Others had their noses broken, their faces scratched, and one eye was blinded. He was hit in the arms and chest, causing minor but painful internal bleeding. These farmers only had small makeshift shields made of wooden boards, and they did not even have any protective weapons.
Even denser than the thrown arrows are the slugs fired by the trebuchets! If they fire a salvo, the ten trebuchets will surely hit more than 400 stones the size of table tennis balls.
Perhaps after three rounds of shotgun blasts, the Northumbrian farmers fled backwards. They did not break away from the line, they just covered their wounded faces and arms and retreated out of the range of the trebuchets.
The farmers did not dare to retreat. They were afraid that their own cavalry would kill them as traitors. But they withdrew from the line anyway, making defeat seem inevitable to the warriors who were fighting to kill in the face of extremely anxious risks. Many people have died, but the sea barbarian front is still as hard as a stone wall. Strength advantage? Those farmers have escaped! The brothers have consumed a lot of energy and if they continue to stay here, they will only end up exhausted and killed by the enemy!
The farmer's action of dodging the shotgun caused a chain reaction beyond Rurik's expectation. He was excited to see the enemy's orange infantry. Those sharp and tenacious men finally couldn't stand it anymore and began to flee.
"They are running away! The enemy is running away!" Rurik shouted immediately, and then asked everyone standing on the high ground to shout that the enemy was fleeing.
The morale of the Balmok Viking warriors, who also kept fighting and felt extremely anxious about this battle, was greatly boosted, and they all let out thunderous Viking war cries.
King Aenred in the distance, what exactly happened to this person who was so far away that he couldn't see him clearly, but the scene of failure was already highlighted.
Although the kingdom's war horses are very precious, so are the cavalry. But if his two thousand troops were defeated here, his reputation would be damaged, and the strength of the kingdom would also be damaged.
At this point, a decision that he had rejected now seemed to be implemented by force at the critical juncture.
Perhaps, that is the only way to save the war situation that is one step away from collapse.
Eynred suddenly shouted: "Aston!"
"I'm here!"
"Listen to the order! Order all cavalry!"
The king's eyes showed resoluteness, and his eyes had already said it. Aston was overjoyed: "I will rectify the cavalry now."
