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Tanya, Queen of the Tanaoi.

A battle line is more of a mutually agreed upon delusion between two enemy armies than a tangible reality. Even in an era where a battle line would stretch a few miles or so at most. For a pitched battle, establishing a battle line is rather simple. At least for the tribal conflicts I had been engaged with before Zorzals campaign.

About a dozen women would form a warband, these were often sisters who would fight together, share a tent and supplies, a cooking pot. They would delegate responsibilities between each other and look after each other if one is wounded. It was the Lepus way that when marching across the steppe they would form a long line with the oldest walking to the right of the group and the two best fighters standing in the front and the back with the rest between the two of them.

When presented with an enemy the oldest person in the warband and the best fighter standing at the front would turn and walk to the right until stopping, then the entire group would turn left, presenting a simple line to the enemy. The Lepus did not, for some reason, employ the use of multiple ranks, when more then one warband operated together they would just line themselves up next to each other making one long line that could wrap around any enemy formations.

The hight of Lepus tactical sophistication would involve some Queens who would have a bodyguard or would have some of the warbands wait for a while before they joined the battle as a sort of 'reserve'. Often when a battle was joined however the reserve warbands would ignore their orders to wait and join the battle wherever they could.

It was a simple system and manifestly effective for the purposes of tribal conflicts and raiding as a Lepus army would practically organise itself. But it offered no tactical flexibility. If one part of the line was breached then it would be up to any reserve warbands to respond to that breach, or for parts of the line to turn around and fight the forces trying to encircle them. Something Zorzals Legions had taken advantage of in the Campaign against Tyuul.

The fact of the matter was that learning how to move a group of people from one position on a battlefield to another was very much a lifelong vocation and effective strategies in doing that very thing had taken centuries of experimentation to become established. Then, once you had the knowledge on how to march about where you wanted you had to train officers in how to do it, what to look out for and how to communicate with the people who were marching. The more sophisticated the tactical manoeuvre the more likely it was to break down and how to regain control should that happen.

Then you had to train the soldiers themselves. When you have to do something more complicated than following the person in front of you things like the length of step you took, where you are moving your arms, how you are holding your equipment, where your head is pointing at, who you are listening to and the distance between yourself and the people around you. All of these elements factor in as to why my Army looked like a scattered mess.

Reducing the size of a warband to just ten persons and organising them into companies had seemed like a rather simple administrative adjustment. At first it had indeed seemed like it was. But there were hundreds of small problems the Lepus had adjusting to even this small change.

I sighed, only barely able to keep my forces in view with nothing but the moon to illuminate the rolling hills I was trying to march an army over. It was a mess, my entire army looked like one big snake wiggling this way and that across the grasslands as companies tried to bypass other companies that seemed to have some sort of delay or issue walking in a straight line while officers ran about trying to keep the entire thing moving in the right direction.

With the children of the Tanaoi, it was a simple matter of making a routine where the older girls would be 'responsible' for waking up all of the younger ones and getting them to all stand in a block at an arm's length apart before they would be marched to the breakfast tent. They did not question why they were being told to stand in a line and wait to be told to walk forwards the same way many older warriors did.

It was one of the many strategies I was employing to build up the competence of the Tanaoi. From the lessons on literacy and mathematics presented by Cato and some of the other slaves to drill and basic training presented as a game, the Children of the Tanaoi were, day by day, becoming more knowledgeable, disciplined and educated than their elders.

I found myself smiling despite the utter state of my army at the moment.

Quite frankly it was galling that if my army had been made up of children we would have already reached the Imperial Campsite. As it stood I would have to stop well before we reached the Imperials in order to reorganise the lines, each moment making my forces more tired and putting us at risk of discovery.

I should be used to it honestly, any movement of people larger than a company functioned with the grace of a trainwreck. It was quite frankly miraculous that no one had been injured yet, or the Company commanders were keeping any injuries incurred from our nighttime march quiet.

A runner approached me and presented a note to my bodyguards who in turn presented it to me. I pried open the wax sealed velum and squinted at the abysmal handwriting as I held it up to the moonlight.

'Twenty thousand, Wyverns missing.'

The officer who wrote the message had failed to write their name on it but I had a good idea as to who it was. Regardless, the Wyverns not being at the campsite were a problem. With air mobile assets I very much wanted to keep track of them but if they had relocated overnight there was genuinely no way to spot them moving in the darkness and they could rapidly strike a target since they flew silently.

I set aside my trepidation, even if the Wyverns had moved I could not do anything about that, I had dedicated myself to the nighttime strike now and had to commit. That the campsite had roughly twenty thousand people in it was concerning. A legion did not normally have an excessively large Cavalry element unless they could raise a Cavalry Auxilia, with my raids against Centaur settlements on the way to Kontia raising that Auxilia would be very difficult. So where exactly was Zorzal getting so much cavalry?

I knew he had brought roughly three hundred thousand men from three legions to battle as well as roughly three hundred thousand more auxiliaries. This force had met Tyuul expectedly slapdash response as tribes and armies trickled in slowly never affording Tyuul an army of more than eighty thousand at most in every battle she gave. Nor was the woman willing to retreat from the battle unless her army was mostly dead. But despite Tyuul's pathetic excuse for tactical acumen the Imperials had suffered considerable casualties before they had caused the Lepus to surrender outside of the Pomi tribe hillfort.

After Tyuul's surrender many camp followers, veterans and the wounded were released from service with only the core of each legion remaining deployed to collect slaves and loot from the Steppe. Already hundreds of thousands of Lepus had been marched towards the Augustine wall, a fortification that extended two hundred and fifty miles from the Glauci mountains to the glass river.

There were also encampments to secure the Lepus who had not faded away to the north and the east to escape Zorzal. All of these factors served to diminish the operational capacity of Zorzals legions. The fact of the matter was that twenty thousand horsemen was a huge number for him to amass and deploy when the vigour of the campaign had already begun to fade with the expectation of easy victory.

Regardless of how improbable I had to act as if I was approaching a force more than twice my size and utterly crush them. My timetable for Kontia was slim and any delays could cascade into an inglorious defeat.

I directed several runners forwards and gave them orders they were to deliver to my scouting parties. I wanted the Wyverns found. They, like Kontia, were a priority objective. With the Wyvern Knights in the field my ability to direct the campaign was restricted. Frankly it was uncomfortable, I felt like a Dacian commander just waiting for air power to destroy my forces.

With that I had my temporary headquarters disassembled in a few moments by my attendants, girls no older than fourteen who had taken to reading and writing better than most. A modern nation would have dismissed them as close to illiterate but I did not have the luxury of being so discerning.

The last object to be packed away was wrapped in goblin weave cloth with only its handle sticking out. Not trusting it with my subordinates I grasped the handle and slung the almost forty stone weight over my shoulder once more marvelling at the prestigious strength this body offered me.

With a nod to my bodyguards I joined my army as we marched upon the Imperial's forward campsite.

One hundred and thirty miles north of Kontia

Rei of the Tanaoi, Cadet Corporal

"Wake up! Get up idiot!" I grabbed my sister's ears and yanked on them as she let out a squeal and pushed me back as she tried to pull the warm furs back over her body. But I refused to give in. Eventually she stopped being such an idiot and got out of her bed and got her shirt, spear and sling ready with the rest of our squad.

"Attention!" I snapped at the nine girls assembled in front of me and was quite pleased when they all presented their spears and stood up straight. Even if Lily was still blinking sleep out of her eyes.

Asuka was just glaring at me, probably for yanking on her ears, but she deserved it.

Probably.

"Motoko, Lilly, you will be dismantling our tent and preparing everyone's packs for tomorrow, everyone else, we will be baking bread for tomorrow's march from now until sunrise." I informed my sisters. Earning a round of stupid and insubordinate groans that I ignored. "I spoke to one of the grown ups and they told me that we should be at Kotea by the day after tomorrow or maybe the day after that so we only have a few more days of marching and we can play with the other squads." I informed them with a nod.

"Kontia." Asuka grumbled at me and I scrunched up my face at her.

"Whatever, dismissed, you have until I get back from the Quartermistress with our flour and salt to use the cesspit and then wash up your hands and face. If you get me in trouble I will punch you." With that I stomped my foot and saluted my sisters and they did the same and then I left the tent at a jog hoping to see the Quartermistress first before any of the other Cadet Corporals could and take the good stuff.

I rushed through the camp as it was starting to wake up with some of the tents being taken down and a lot of the people up overnight climbing into wagons so they could sleep on the move. I hated sleeping on the move because you could never actually sleep because the sun was stupid.

I saw Pellia leave her squad's tent with a big yawn and waved at her as I ran past and she gave me a wave back before heading off to the cesspits. I giggled at how slow she was, I bet her squad was not even awake yet.

I was just at the tent when the hew and cry sounded out in the camp and everyone started running around and shouting. All of the slaves were shouting at each other and rushed over to the pretty tents and started carrying everything out of them and I bounced on my feet as I thought about rushing over and seeing if I could get some nice food in the chaos, but I did not want to get my squad in trouble so I just kept going to the Quartermistress.

I was just about to reach the tent when a giant dragon started breathing fire all over the street and burning up all the tents.

I bolted away from the line of fire as grown up squads bounded across the camp and started to sling at the dragon and the person sat on top of it but they flew up into the sky and got away. A goblin rushed over and hit me with a bucket and began shouting at me and I wanted to cry but a corporal never cries or lets anyone know they were sad or scared so I joined him and a bunch of other people carrying water from the river to the tents and throwing it at the fire.

Even though I was very hungry and got up before all of my squad, I still got so many buckets and threw them at so many fires. Eventually the fires were all killed and everyone had started to calm down even if we had not killed any of the dragons.

And then the sun started to wake up too even when my squad had not even started to bake any bread.

But even still I did not cry, the Queen told us that if we wanted to be officers we could never cry in front of our girls even when we wanted to. Especially when we still had work to do. And I had to get flour and salt.

I gave my bucket back to the goblin and rushed off to find the Quartermistress and gave a little prayer to Miritta so that I would find some flour. I then looked around to make sure no one was looking and gave a prayer to Emroy too just to be very sure I got to eat bread today. And so my squad could eat food today too.

Just as I opened my eyes I saw a bird falling from the sky in the east, landing behind a hill.

I

I am also experimenting with a public discord.

Tanya, Queen of the Tanaoi

The sun had begun to peak over the horizon as we crested a hill and beheld the body of the Imperial forces just a scant half a mile away. It ran for roughly three miles in a loose formation as I could see with my naked eye the edges of their formation at the far north and south. They were positioned at the top of a hill with a dry valley between us and them and due to my army's slow movement overnight they were prepared to meet us.

I had wanted to engage in a night time raid but if I had pushed my forces forwards with every delay I would have ended up strung out across the countryside. Even with the clear moon augmenting the Lepus' natural night vision, reforming my army in the darkness would take just as long but would have left us vulnerable to a counter attack. Thus I had been forced to delay and delay to keep my army together on the march. I sighed and looked at the Imperial forces arrayed against me.

They were horsemen, clad in armour that radiated enough magic from various enchantments that they would dull any attempt at magical detection I made. Not that I had needed to carefully sense the application of magic much in this life. Imperial magic was, generally, predictable and effective. Focused mainly on deflecting arrows and other missile weapons allowing the units equipped with the monstrously expensive enchanted equipment to operate unmolested until the battle was joined.

But such enchantments were a double edged sword. Unlike the magical defences of my second life they were 'dumb' in that they would activate when any object was moving fast enough within a small distance from the armour itself preventing anyone using the equipment from employing the use of ranged weapons.

They were also rather weak, unable to take advantage of any magical potential of the person using it and instead relying upon mana stored in gemstones that would seep magic from the atmosphere slowly over time. Two or three sling bullets were all the enchantments could resist before failing. Some pieces could not even manage that.

There were other enchantments but none so effective, so practical and as widespread as the deflection runes. With so many present within the cavalry formation before me they would be more than capable of closing the gap between us before my slingers could put in the work to whittle their forces down.

The Empire did have other mages, from Auxiliary goblin shamans who commanded surprisingly deadly magics to schools of philosopher mages that swore an oath to the Emperor Molt Augustas himself and studied at the legendary city of Rondal, home of mages the world over.

I had applied, during my brief exile, for a scholarship at the Imperial City of Rondal. But I was hardly the mage I was in my second life and had been rejected from the academic institution. It was egoistic perhaps to believe myself worthy of becoming a student at such a renowned institution merely because I had been a passable magic user in a past life.

As I began to arrange my forces upon and behind the hill I strode forwards to examine the battlefield closer and found it rather strange how few cavalry were arrayed against me. At the estimates of my scouts and I they stood at roughly just six to seven thousand men running a considerable distance up and down the hill overlooking the valley. With perhaps more at the rear but none in a position to extend the lines overmuch.

A reasonable commander would match the length of their formation, with the eight Battalions of roughly one thousand women each I was quite capable of doing that and more, creating an envelopment that could extend with ease five miles wide and roll up their entire force with the speed of my infantry's advance.

I had little doubt that the Saderans would expect us to march into the valley and begin to skirmish with them as a prelude to such a strategy. Should our skirmishing prove ineffective with the sheer amount of deflection runes they had amassed and the steel armour they were clad in aside we would form a spear wall and march up the hill towards them and they would charge down the hill, devastating my forces and breaking through my lines in places. When the battle was joined they would deploy their Wyverns and rake along my lines with their fire breath, shattering my formation and sending my army into retreat. As they shattered the battalions I sent to flank them one by one.

Whomever commanded this force they had chosen their field of battle well, picking a site that was just outside of the range of my slingers I could not fault them for such a strategy and in truth should I push forwards into the valley there was little doubt that regardless of what I did I would take heavy losses.

Considering the problem carefully I began to send out runners to the various commanders of my Battalions, many of the runners being young girls. It was not uncommon for well renowned, or simply richer Lepus warriors to go to battle with a young girl to act as sort of a squire and learn from them. Such girls had to have been old enough to have hunted a medium sized game and drank its blood as a write of passage into adulthood, however some had instead reached adulthood by partaking in a raid and killing some farmer or goblin tribesman.

I had attempted to reform the practice but the system did provide valuable experience for young women to learn how to engage in warfare and the requirements for survival on the steppe outside of the few permanent Lepus settlements. It was only warriors or cattle herders who travelled alone or in small groups regularly after all, most women only left their homes in large warbands to find a husband and thus did not know everything that was required for survival and fewer still knew anything about leadership or organisation.

This was by design of course, knowledge was valuable and it was seen as foolish to just give it away as that would reduce the value you had to your tribe or warband. Making yourself replaceable just meant you were going to be replaced in the eyes of many Lepus.

I was beginning to change that view with my mandatory lectures and lesson plans for officers but I still required something of an apprenticeship program for promising young women to work with and learn from older seasoned warriors. Thus my reforms had resulted in only officers being allowed to bring along a woman younger than fifteen but older than twelve as an assistant. But that still meant there were hundreds of them with the army even if they were forbidden to join the battle line.

I sent two of them forwards with white flags inviting the enemy commander to talk, but was met only by the Imperials sending their standards forwards to present them at the front of their army.

There would be no negotiations today.

My scouts had been skirmishing with Imperial scouts overnight but despite several runners arriving to inform me of Imperial movements no sign had been found of the Wyverns and I suspected that they were being held in reserve and would arrive once the battle was joined. With the sheer size of the battlefield, if I were to engage with this battle traditionally I would take perhaps half an hour up to an hour to move a company from one end of the battlefield to the other. While the Wyverns could be at any point of the battlefield in moments and would have a commanding view to know where they would be required most.

I would have no way to respond to them, I would have no way to resist them. Fighting this battle effectively meant that every move I made had to be done to counter the enemy air assets first and foremost. Everything else was a distraction.

I did not bother to match the length of their formation, surrendering utterly my flanks. My battalions instead were arrayed in a two rank formation, with spears levied forwards in a poor approximation of a pike formation given my inability to field longer spears at the moment.

They were arrayed two battalions aside each other with fifty feet between them in a line stretching back. I arrayed the second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth battalions like this with the second and the fourth as the frontmost battalions and the seventh and eighth as the rearmost.

The first and third battalions were more ordered then the others and thus I selected them to break apart into company sized formations that would be placed on the side of my forces making the frontal width of my army less than three hundred feet total. It took an hour to order my army as I wanted it and in that time I had my scouts walk up the hill on our side of the valley up to five miles away to give the impression that I was arranging my army outside of the view of the imperials behind the hill.

Once my army was in some semblance of a formation I placed our baggage train in the middle between the two lines of battalions and placed myself at the very front of the army with my bodyguards plugging the gap between the two battalions. But before I ordered my forces forwards I had to set out a clear and unambiguous objective for the women under my command.

"Good morning ladies!" I cast my voice out drawing upon a rather simple spell that nevertheless strained my ability to process the precise magical theorem without the aid of a computational device. "I am sure you are tired! I know that I am! My feet hurt, my belly is empty and I am cold too! What about you? Are you tired?!" I asked the stunned mass of bodies before me. "Well? ARE YOU?"

There was a slight delay before voices began to call out ascent, thousands of my soldiers standing before their commander to shout that yes, in fact they were tired, cold, hungry and miserable.

Serves them right honestly, should have marched faster.

"Of course you are!" I channelled my magic to make sure even the people far in the back could hear me. "But fortunately for all of us we don't have to set up camp! We don't have to dig latrines! We don't have to cook for ourselves before we fill our bellies! Why is that you ask? Because the Saderans have done it all for us!" I marched up the hill slightly so that all of my army could get a better look at me even if I would be barely a speck for the people at the back.

"That's right! The Imperials have taken the time to make camp for us! And I have it on good authority that they have enough wine to float a boat! All for you! Sadly for the Imperials, they foolishly believe that the camp belongs to them! But you will debuse them of that notion! The Imperials believe that this is a battle! Show them how wrong they are! The Imperials are nothing but a distraction before your might. Upon my signal you will walk to YOUR camp and you will cast aside anyone foolish enough to get between you and a warm bed! You will march, spear forwards and YOU WILL NOT STOP UNTIL WE REACH OUR CAMP!" There was a roar of ascent, real or not. The women understood it was time to cheer and roar and thus they did so.

I turned about, still carrying the heavy weight on my back as I did so as my bodyguards waved the officers forwards. Soon the air was filled with the sound of an army marching as we crested the hill and I held up a fist to slow and eventually stop the formation.

The Imperials were indeed out of range of my slingers from this hill to theirs and once we were close enough to pelt them with stones we would be too close to disengage. But only my rearmost Battalions had slings ready and they would not be using them upon the Imperial horse or foot.

Having waited an hour the Imperials suddenly perked up as we rose over the hill but looked unsettled at how they could see only a tiny part of my army. I walked forwards and unslung the weight and pulled aside the cloth covering exposing the shiny brass to the world. I delighted in the polish for a moment before calling forwards a pair of girls, one holding wax sealed cups with pre measured grains and other carrying an iron ball.

They moved with reverence as they poured the grains into its mouth and then hammered in the iron ball. As they worked I looked out over the Imperial army that could likely see little but the way the sun caught the bronze. For a moment I mourned the warfare that had defined the Imperial Age of Falmart and then I lit the fuse and killed it.

I held the two handles that the cannon hung from in a firm stance but I did not allow myself to become too stiff lest I be thrown to the floor or pull a muscle from the recoil. I let the heavy implement of war kick and I turned my body and let my arms sway back to arrest the force marvelling at the ease of employing such a weapon.

What would Nobunaga, Motonari or Napoleon have given to have such weapons be carried about the battlefield upon the backs of the infantry. To have the ability for a single person to shoulder a gun and carry it across the battlefield wherever it was required.

With a thunderous boom that echoed out across the valley, the age of artillery was born.

AN: There is an alternative Universe where Tanya went on a University Adventure in the city of Rondal.

I want to give a special thank you to my supporters:

Mackenzie Buckle, Alexander Bose, Afforess, Embarrassed Astronaut, CommanderBrunch, Dr.D, Kale Da