Second Battle Of Vextoi
Introduction
The Second Battle of Vextoi marked the end of the Heir's War and the victory of House Orsinian. It was the most decisive result of the war, destroying much of the Aversarian army and its command structure.
Course of the Battle
The battle of converging fates, as a great host of Kodaxes soldiers marched north in a last ditch effort to save the war. Twenty-four thousand men from the colonies, battered and weary yet formidable, marched alongside the great Primean legions of Houses Kodaxes and Atronius. The latter two faced inner tensions, as they had just fought not a month or so before. Large war elephants lumbered alongside their handlers, and among them a noteworthy rank of Sadafi raiders who lived in Southern Primea.
The large anti-Orsinian coalition marched toward Vextoi with renewed morale, even as the first of the vanguard suffered cannonfire from all directions. Indeed, the Orsinian army had taken a defensive position, laying stakes and other defensive constructions around their artillery positions. Their artillery crews were still catching up in discipline, firing volley after volley in cyclical shifts. Among their ranks stood not the Prince, but the Emperor himself. He wore a pressed uniform with an armored chest plate over top of it, and his head was covered by his notable lion helm. Lord Caius Thul rode with the rank of commanders chosen for the battle, arriving at the frontlines to join the foray of fusiliers, vanguard, and other infantrymen.
Lord Atronius and Lord Kodaxes rode at the front, surrounded by colonial commanders who pledged to his cause. Cannonballs screamed across the sky, striking the ground and obliterating flesh unfortunate enough to find itself in their way. Lord Katakaloan rode at the head of his cataphracts, riding at breakneck speed to prepare for an assault on the riflemen, who were concentrated in the center of the Emperor’s army. As the Primeans marched from Castellazi, the Visegrad army marched from the flanks, basing from Pearford. The scouts were late in tracking their movement, and by the time the pieces were moved into place, it was too late. A large Dornovan host reached Brie by the time the first infantry ranks clashed together.
From the northeast, marching from Coinautum, a brigade of five thousand peasant riflemen marched under the command of Prince Bessarion, with an escort of infantrymen and cataphracts to keep them under guard. Such firepower had hardly been mustered, but even with their superiority of arms, these were not trained professionals. Many had been plucked from their homesteads, handed a new weapon, and told to march southward. Only a select few managed to learn the proper way to hold or fire the weapon at all.
Veterans of prior battles lost their own glory to the cause. The dead weighed upon their minds, intent now on surviving for the sake of their families rather than achieving the ends of their delusion.
All the talk of tales and stories faded, only the determined instinct and desire to kill prevailed.
The Primeans were on the clock, and they knew it. The first of the legions marched forward, meeting the gunpowder-powered weapons of the fusiliers head on. Men fell upon the grass, lifeless or screaming. Musketballs had finally proven the great equalizer, as the great swordsmen of yesteryear were stopped immediately by the percussion of rigid formation and disciplined volleys.
Lythander and Nicononaeus were among them, with Ludovicus and his guard not far behind. Their blades carved through loyal Orsinian flesh, meeting challenge after challenge and overcoming it, until the first setback. A pull of the index finger, the strike of flint against the plate of the rifle, and the musket ball screamed across the battlefield until it borrowed its way into Lythander’s right shoulder, decimating his armor and knocking him flat against the field’s grass. As the physicians and medics dragged his bleeding body away from further danger, Ludovicus and Nicononaeus were alone to cut through the deluge of man and beast.
Despite the early challenges, the Primeans proved victorious on the field, and quickly. Their sheer quantity, the quality of their legions, and the mettle of their command structure proved decisive. Lord Caius Thul crossed blades with Lord Zeno Katakaloan as the latter led his cataphracts into the flank of the fusilier ranks. The two danced in what would be remembered as a notable duel in the course of the war, the men clearing out to allow the two titans of swordsmanship and training to fight honorably. Trading blow for blow, it was the southern Ephetros discipline versus the northern Dornovan training from Imperius. A mix of spear and sword against the twin blades of a seasoned Bloodsworn. Nearby, Raynar Visegrad fought off a pair of Ephetros zealots who cornered him against a stack of corpses, just missing the swipe of a spear that would have taken his eye.
House Orsinian stood to lose many men that day, with their fusilier brigade utterly crushed. It wasn’t until the arrival of reinforcements that the battle began to shift. From Pearford and Brie, the combined force of Visegrad and Rykovite troops looked to hammer the backside of the Primean formation. Chants among the janissaries, molded into the cold steel of their armor under the dreaded leadership of Lord Drakth Klinokpavla. Khudaks had not marched to war with such force and power since the Demontide, and under General Drakth’s leadership they would show their worth. Lord Kazimir similarly, untested in months past as Dornova saw a period of peace, now thrust into a bloody melee that would decide the future of the Empire. His army would come to blows with the soldiers of Houses Philes and Katakaloan.
Prince Bessarion was the first to arrive, heralding his arrival with the gunfire of thousands of untrained peasant riflemen. While friendly fire was a concern, the flanks of the Primeans were exposed and exploited. Hundreds of legionaries and cataphracts were downed, and it was recorded that a single musket ball grazed the armor of Zeno Katakaloan as he rode past. Clutching the wound given to him by the Lord Commander, he returned to the safety of camp just before the Prince could reach him. House Kodaxes was safe from a second volley, as the peasant fusiliers struggled to figure out their own ordinance. This allowed a crucial regrouping to pass just as the Dornovan and Rykovite armies smashed into their rear. Thousands of Knightsbane, Khudak janissaries, and rangers streamed through the medical camps of the Aversarians, butchering the wounded and slaying physicians where they stood. Lythander was fortunate, saved by his own men and taken away from the field to safe territory in Serjax.
Total chaos ensued. As House Orsinian licked their wounds and began a reformation of their own, the Kodaxes host made up of a diverse array of soldiers was thrown into utter disarray. Primean legionaries were able to escape in many cases, as were the fast horsemen, but the traitor Reveian legions were subdued or massacred. A second reload heralded the end of Nicononaeus’ command at Vextoi, as his men began to retreat. However, the sight of a lion’s helm granted one last chance at reprieve.
To spare but a brief moment to describe the duel is to undersell its importance. Nicononaeus and Alexios clashed blades with such fervor and passion that the whole of battle seemed to draw to a quiet stillness in response to it. With a swipe to the Emperor’s neck, Alexios responded by leaning on his back foot and retaliating with a quicker thrust, met with a tactful push from the Aversarian. A sound of metal mixed with the spirited shout of two men fighting to the death, the two demonstrated the true brutality of the war with every swing. Finally, as Alexios surged to swing for a killing blow, the Aversarian Autokrat pushed aside the swing with a gentle push of momentum, spinning off his pivot foot and driving his blade up into the neck of the Emperor of Reveia. Blood sprayed from the wound, coating the Aversarian Lord in a thick crimson liquid. A still silence befell the field, as the lifeless body of Alexios struck the grass with a loud thud, a pool forming at his neck. Nicononaues stood above him, his boot now covering the neck of his foe even as his army behind him was butchered and routed to the hills.
Lord Kazimir had just finished slaying another legionary when his sight found his dead liege, and the bloodlusted vision of Prince Bessarion nearby. It would be Lord Visegrad and Prince Bessarion who restored order to the field, as Nicononaeus was allowed to honorably depart the field with the shattered remains of his Primean army. That day, thousands of Reveian traitors were executed, the first use of flintlock rifles for such a purpose. When the smoke cleared, the Kodaxes army had been reduced to less than twenty thousand men, with the armies of Atronius and the other Primeans utterly neutralized. As the executions concluded, the Reveian traitor legion had been utterly wiped out to a man.
Prince Bessarion, Lord Kazimir Visegrad, and General Drakth were remembered for their prowess that day, earning Alexios in his dying remains the moniker of “the Forgotten”. His often detached style of ruling, his focus on the war to the detriment of meeting with nobility, had earned him a poor place in the annals of history.