Miguel, having rushed into the fray alongside the war procession, entered the battle. The first thing he saw was nearly a hundred enemies in various positions within the village, watching with looks of total astonishment as the vanguard charged their positions. The night was cold, illuminated only by the torches hanging from the poles and the sparks flying from the clash of steel. The roar of the horses breaking through the palisade still echoed against the walls of the houses.
The man who appeared to be the leader of the enemies within the village reacted quickly to the sudden situation:
—Form up, form up, form up! Continuous line in the rear! —he shouted.
Miguel, on the other hand, directed his troops:
—Fernández! Lead the men into the fray. Look to take the flanks, use our numbers to your advantage!
—I was thinking the same, young strategist. At your command! —the lieutenant said. —Men, with me!
While Fernández maneuvered to outflank the enemy and assert their numerical superiority, Miguel headed with his guards toward the local church, where his personal mission was to control the high ground to harass the enemy with his weapon.
—Guards, with me. Everyone else, find high ground. We will concentrate around the church area to avoid being so vulnerable.
Running through the battle and firing his crossbow from time to time, Miguel reached the church bell tower with the Carmine brothers.
—Clayton, give me the toy, —Miguel said, and the guard handed him the arquebus his father had assigned to him.
Where there used to be a completely smooth barrel, there were now two small protrusions at the beginning and the end of the barrel. Inside, there was the secret improvement Miguel had asked Julián to work on all the way here, setting aside any non-essential repairs for the troops or the civilians.
...
—Julián, I need you to do a special job. I need you to rifle this barrel, —Miguel said when he approached the supply wagon where Julián was traveling.
—Of course, young master... What is a rifle? —Julián responded, confused.
—Oh, yes, of course, —Miguel managed to say. —I need you to wear down the inside of the barrel following a pattern that is a straight line, but with a slight twist. At least six of those.
—Like something like this? —Julián tried to say, repeating the hand gesture Miguel had made.
—Yes, something like that, —Miguel said. —Just make sure they are equivalent and equidistant from each other.
...
From the height of the bell tower, Miguel had a full view of the entire battlefield, and what he saw surprised him—for the worse. The enemy troops had reacted faster than anticipated, forming a shield wall to counter Fernández's advance.
That is competent leadership, and it must be eliminated, he thought, aiming his weapon at the person he saw giving orders, about 80 meters from his position.
With skill, Miguel blew on the match near him to verify it was burning properly. He reached into his pouch to grab an "apostle," pouring the charge down the barrel. He inserted the ramrod to pack it all down, took aim at the enemy leader, who was conveniently positioned in the center of the formation, and rested the arquebus on the tower wall. Holding his breath between heartbeats, he pulled the trigger.
The maximum effective range of standard arquebuses was generally believed to be 50 meters, and even then without much accuracy. Yet, Miguel managed to hit the enemy leader directly in the chest from 80 meters away. After the smoke cleared, the lifeless body of the enemy commander lay on the ground, and as his main aides desperately tried to aid him, the battlefield seemed to freeze for both sides.
Feeling a deep, overwhelming wave of nausea, Miguel could only double over and vomit everything in his stomach, leaving him temporarily incapacitated.
Taking the initiative from the bell tower, Benjamin Carmine shouted at the top of his lungs:
—The enemy leader has fallen! The Strategist has eliminated him personally!
—Victory! —shouted the Count's men, pressing forward until the defenders made a mistake. A single breach in the shield line was all the attackers needed to use their numbers to their advantage. While they kept pressure on the line, the rest of the soldiers slipped through the opening and began to flank the enemy.
Deprived of its central command, the defenders' initial confusion turned into disorganized panic, which the county commanders quickly exploited. The veterans, acting as an implacable force, used the narrow spaces of the village to cut off the enemy's retreat. The pikes and shields of the commoner volunteers, organized by the guard veterans, formed a wall of iron that blocked any attempt at reorganization. In a matter of minutes, what began as a night skirmish turned into a complete encirclement of the hostile forces, demonstrating the effectiveness of discipline over fear.
—With me, charge! —shouted Iván, who, amidst the heat of the battle, had become the leader of the assault vanguard.
—Sound the horn, soldier, —Fernández ordered, just a few steps behind, coordinating the battle's efforts.
Receiving the order, the soldier blew the horn to signal the troops in the front to shift from a defensive posture to an aggressive one, pressing the enemy troops back at the gate. What followed was a massacre of those who resisted, and the capture of those who accepted their fate, realizing they had lost the position.
...
Miguel, meanwhile, was just recovering from the vomiting and making his way down from the church.
—One moment, —he said to the brothers. —Let me catch my breath, drink some water, and adjust my uniform.
I must use this situation to legitimize myself among the soldiers, he thought. Make my sacrifice of dignity worth it.
A little while later, looking more composed, Miguel went down completely to meet his troops, who were already disarming the captives and sweeping the battlefield for any remaining hidden enemies.
—The Strategist! —one of the soldiers shouted as soon as he saw him.
—Hurrah! —the rest of the soldiers shouted around him.
—The Strategist!
—Hurrah!
—The Strategist!
—Hurrah!
...
—Report on the situation, Fernández, —Miguel said.
—Yes, young master, —the lieutenant replied. —Allied casualties: 20 men killed and seriously wounded. The enemy suffered 60 casualties, including dead and seriously wounded; the rest have been captured and separated into small groups, guarded by both the hunters and the men-at-arms.
—Damn... They had a competent leader; luckily he wasn't in command during the battle at the walls, —Miguel said. —And the pincer attack was fast enough that the enemy defenses weren't able to fully mobilize, otherwise it would have been a different story.
—Very true, my lord, —Fernández agreed.
—One of our most pressing priorities is a good spy network, —Miguel said. —We cannot keep giving away the strategic initiative or falling into traps due to bad intelligence.
—It is also one of the Count's objectives, to the best of my knowledge, but other priorities have taken precedence, —Fernández said.
—Well, now we have to make it a priority among priorities, —Miguel replied.