The morning sun rose higher over the horizon, its harsh rays gleaming brilliantly against the iron helmets and polished cuirasses of Prince Vikramaditya's reformed army. The morale of the troops had reached a fever pitch; their trust in the young prince's capabilities had ascended to a greater, almost religious height. He had transformed raw, oppressed peasants into a force that had just shattered a legendary sultanate vanguard with minimal casualties.
Colonel Virendra had already deployed advanced scouts from the Tritiya Netra to track the oncoming enemy forces. As the scouts rode back to report, the sheer tactical incompetence of Count Almar Durani became laughably clear.
The foolish count had split his ten-thousand-man force. Leaving his slower, heavily armored infantry behind, Durani had taken a massive vanguard of seven thousand cavalrymen, racing ahead like a mad bull. His brilliant plan had been to catch the prince from behind while Vikramaditya was hopelessly engaged with the Bengal Sultanate. He had covered three-quarters of the distance, completely oblivious to the fact that the Bengal army had already been erased from existence.
Vikramaditya watched the dust cloud of the oncoming 7,000 cavalrymen through his spyglass. "This is what happens when you choose incompetent people as commanders based on birth, faith, and flattery instead of substance," the prince remarked coldly to Virendra. "They do not even pause to wonder why our lines are facing them, or where their allies have gone."
Colonel Virendra smiled grimly, ordering the deployment. This time, he interspersed the musketeer companies directly with the pikemen companies, creating an unbroken checkerboard of steel and black powder, heavily supported by the rapid-fire repeating crossbowmen.
When Durani's cavalry rushed within range, the prince gave the command. Once again, the one hundred Vajrastras roared alongside the remaining Varshastra rocket batteries. The sky filled with the terrifying, serpentine scream of bounding iron rockets. The outcome was predictably devastating. Whole rows of horses and riders were thrown into the air, whittled down relentlessly by the explosive fragmentation and bounding iron tubes.
As the bleeding, confused remnants of the cavalry closed to within a few meters of the line infantry, Colonel Virendra issued a sharp sequence of drumbeats.
"Fix bayonets! Form squares!"
In a seamless, automatic motion drilled into their very bones, the musketeers slid their ring bayonets over their muzzles and locked into a series of rigid, hollow four-rank squares. The outermost ranks knelt, bracing their weapons against the earth to form an impenetrable wall of razor-sharp steel and long pikes pointed outward. Within the hollow center of these human fortresses, the repeating crossbowmen stood calmly, continuously working their levers to rain poison bolts into the fray.
The remaining enemy cavalry rammed directly into the vanguard. It was not a battle; it was a slaughter. Horses impaled themselves on the pikes and bayonets, while the riders were picked off at point-blank range by musket fire and crossbow bolts. Within thirty minutes, the entire seven-thousand-strong cavalry force—including the elite cavalry and the General—was utterly annihilated.
Leaving behind a small squad of soldier's to bury the dead, tend to the wounded, and coordinate their transport toward the local branch location of the Rudradev Khurda Company, Vikramaditya ordered the army to march on.
The remaining three thousand infantrymen of Count Durani's treasonous army were caught completely unawares in the open plains. Using the classic Crescent Moon Strategy, Vikramaditya's forces rapidly surrounded the traitors on three sides, intentionally leaving a single, narrow avenue open to manipulate their escape. A brutal combination of synchronized musket volleys, missile artillery, and a devastating flanking cavalry charge by Suresh's royal guards shattered the infantry's lines. The traitors broke, were relentlessly pursued, and were completely wiped out.
As twilight began to paint the sky in shades of bruised purple, the multiple battles finally came to an end. Vikramaditya ordered his exhausted but victorious troops to pitch camp and take a well-earned rest.
Once the command tent was securely set up, the prince immediately called a high-level meeting. He sat at the head of the sand table, his expression unreadable, as Colonel Virendra and Suresh, the commander of the royal cavalry guards, stepped inside and took their seats.
A moment later, a figure slipped into the tent from the shadows. It was a senior field agent of the Third Eye—the very operative who had delivered the initial warnings of the ambush.
"Your Highness," the agent said, bowing deeply. "My alias for this theater is Vasuki."
The two military officers and the spy nodded in mutual respect, introducing themselves briefly before turning their collective, intense gaze toward the young prince. Vikramaditya looked down at the maps of the northern territories. He had already dispatched an official courier to his father, King Mahendra, detailing the total victory. But his work here was far from finished.
"The vanguard is broken," Vikramaditya whispered, his eyes flashing with a predatory, futuristic resolve. "But Count Amir Durani's main strongholds remain. We will not stop until his entire lineage is uprooted, his forces are wiped out, and the count himself hangs from the highest tower for treason. Vasuki, give us the layout of Duranabad."
The meeting began, the shadows of the tent lengthening as the blueprints for total conquest were laid bare.