The new King Souma and Army General Georg Carmine.
People believed it was only a matter of time before the two came into conflict.
“Listen, Souma,” Liscia told me. “In this world’s wars, it’s coordination between the land and air forces that’s important.”
It was a day that, with things gradually growing chilly, you could really feel that it was now autumn. On this day, I was having Liscia teach me about wars in this world. As the inevitable conflict with Georg, who was sheltering corrupt nobles, and Amidonia, who were maneuvering in the shadows, drew ever closer, I wanted to at least have a sense for what the flow of battle would be like.
Of course, as a total amateur, I wouldn’t be commanding troops. When the war came, I would probably end up leaving control of my personal forces, the Forbidden Army, to the Captain of the Royal Guard, Ludwin. Even so, as the king, and thus the one who had to decide whether or not to open hostilities, I felt I should know these things, and so I was having Liscia teach me.
Though she was royalty, she had graduated from the Officers’ Academy and was knowledgeable enough on military matters that Ludwin had said of her, “While she lacks the experience to lead a large army, she has courage, and would have no trouble leading a smaller army.”
…Honestly, I just wanted a rough outline of how a skirmish would go, so she could have kept it simple, but Liscia was too serious for that. She had even prepared a blackboard to draw diagrams on as she explained things, turning this into something like a lecture at officers’ school.
Liscia drew two circles on the board, labeling them “Our Army” and “Enemy Army.” She also wrote the words “land force” and “air force” in both circles.
Here, I should caution you about one thing. What was meant by a “land force” or “air force” here was different from what you would expect on Earth. The wars in this world were still fought by knights in armor, so if you were looking at just the style, it was similar to the Hundred Years’ War. However, in this world, there was magic and there were fantastic creatures like wyverns.
In the land forces there weren’t just infantry, cavalry, and archers, there were also mages. And as for the air force, it wasn’t made up of fighter planes, it was made up of wyvern knights, who fought on the backs of great flying lizards. Because of that, the flow of battle naturally ended up being different than on Earth.
“I’m not familiar with naval battles, so this will only cover land battles, okay?” Liscia said. “First, in a field battle, the air and land forces of both camps will begin to fight at practically the same time.”
Liscia first drew arrows from the two land forces and had them ram into one another.
“The battle between land forces is orthodox. It starts with long-range fire from archers and mages, and then, when the enemy formation breaks, infantry advance and push in. Knights and cavalry look for openings, charging in small numbers to disrupt the enemy’s formation, or massing in larger numbers to charge the enemy, followed by infantry, in order to tear the enemy unit apart. We call the former tactic ‘cutting,’ and the latter ‘breaking.’ That’s probably pretty similar to the battles in your world, right?”
“…Well, we don’t hurl spells back and forth, but aside from that, I think it’s the same,” I said.
Somehow, it called to mind memories of watching the battle scenes in the Taiga drama series.
It started with an exchange of fire using the matchlock rifle and bow and arrow. Then, when the ashigaru foot soldiers were given the order to charge, they advanced through rifle fire, even as they were shot down, to reach the enemy’s fence. Because it was hard to use ranged weapons to deal with enemies once they were allowed to close in, the defenders would send out their own unit of ashigaru soldiers, and from there the two units of ashigaru would slug it out. Because this world hadn’t developed firearms, it might be easiest to think of magic as a replacement for matchlocks.
Next, Liscia drew arrows from the two air forces, having them ram into one another, too.
“And, at the same time as the two land forces are colliding, the air forces will crash into one another, too. If they can seize the airspace over the battlefield, the wyvern cavalry can fly at altitudes that arrows can’t reach to drop gunpowder barrels (a sort of bomb), after all.”
“That’s… brutal,” I said.
It was like… the fear and the pain that came from being punched, with no way to fight back.
“In that case, is the key to victory or defeat in battle held by the air force, then?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “The battle between air forces almost never decides the outcome of a battle.”
“Huh? But, just now, you said if you can gain control of the air, you can attack without there being any way for them to fight back…”
“Yes, I did. Which is precisely why the primary goal of the air battle is not to gain control of the air, but to keep the other side from gaining control of the air.”
Next, Liscia wrote “1,000” next to the air force of our army and “500” next to the enemy’s.
“Wyvern knights are only a small fraction of the overall army. In the Elfrieden Kingdom, there are 1,000 knights, and in the Principality of Amidonia, around 500 knights. Now, hearing that, you might think in a straight up fight, our side would win, but the enemy know they’re at a numerical disadvantage. They won’t actively try to go on the offensive: they’re going to stick purely to defense. If we try to force the attack, we’ll take heavier losses. It takes a lot of time to raise a single wyvern knight, so we don’t want to take those losses.”
“Ah, I think I’ve got a sense of it. Basically, in a field battle, the air force’s job is to guard the air until the battle between the two land forces is decided, right?”
“You’ve got it…Well, if our air force is considerably more powerful than the other country’s, there are times when things can be decided by just the air battle, though.”
Liscia turned to the map of the continent on the blackboard and pointed to the big country on the western edge, the Gran Chaos Empire. Then she pointed to the Star Dragon Mountain Range in the center, and to the Nothung Dragon Knight Kingdom in the north.
“The Gran Chaos Empire has air force units that are organized not around wyverns, but another type of mount called griffons.”
“When you say Griffons… they’re the ones with the head of an eagle, and a body that’s like a lion with wings, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “They can’t fly continuously for as long as wyverns do, but they can make tight turns in mid-air, and they can overpower wyverns in a fight. On top of that, the Empire has a large number of wyverns, too. That makes them dangerous.”
From what I was hearing, wyverns were like bombers, while griffons were like fighters. Both had strengths and weaknesses depending on how they were used, but when it came to a battle, fighters, which could make tighter turns, would be the stronger of the two. While I was sitting there satisfied with my own explanation, Liscia continued on.
“Next, the Star Dragon Mountain Range and Nothung Dragon Knight Kingdom have dragons.”
“Now that you mention it… I think I heard about them when we found the dragon bones at the sedimentation pool,” I said.
Dragons had a degree of magical power that was incomparably higher than what wyverns had, they were intelligent, they understood human language, and apparently they could even take on human form. While they didn’t fall under the classification of mankind, they had a pact of mutual non-aggression with mankind and had built a country of their own in the Star Dragon Mountain Range. In terms of appearance, while wyverns had wings in place of their forelegs, like pterosaurs, dragons had wings, but they also had front legs and back legs, looking more like the Western conception of dragons on Earth.