Chapter 3 – Story 61: The Humiliation of Sunomuta 1 – Battle Start

<– Previous Chapter | ToC | Glossary | Next Chapter –>

The Battle of Sunomuta went down in history as 「Humiliation of Sunomuta」. It was a major stand-off between Holmea and the infamous 「Divine Son of Destruction」, which would have a huge impact on the West.

And as if to prove that, this battle also found its way into several historic documents and books such as 「History of the West」, 「A Report of Hearsay by Philosoper Senes」, 「Ramitez’s Epic Poems」, and many more.

However, all of these documents contain many inaccurate parts when it comes to the question as to what sort of battle it was. On top of that, the various books have clear disparities in their descriptions, and depending on your referential points, you can end up with two completely opposite explanations of the same event.

Because of that, it was necessary to use a multitude of investigative methods, such as comparing several documents against each other, to get a good grasp on the Battle of Sunomuta.

However, for all their differing descriptions and views, all the documents mentioning that battle share a single, common point: Holmea’s royal army vastly outnumbered the forces of the 「Divine Son of Destruction」 in the Battle of Sunomuta.

So, how much of a difference in army strength are we talking about here?

I shall use the 「Memorandum of Hyporios」 as a reference for the combat strength of Holmea’s royal army. According to the memorandum, Holmea fielded something between 30,000 and 40,000 soldiers in this engagement. The author Hyporios was on Holmea’s side, but it’s hard to imagine that he would write down lies in his own notes. For this reason, it’d probably not be wrong to say that he assumed Holmea fielded that sort of force.

However, accepting this figure at its base value would be mistaken.

Back then it was common practice to spread falsified data on your army to rally your allies and coerce your foes. Even if Hyporios wrote what he believed, we should regard this number as an inflated, official count of Holmea.

It’s said that it was normal to increase the number of your forces by something between 50 to 100% during that era. If we add this as a modifier to Hyporios’s figure, it would be valid to believe that Holmea’s army was about half as big as publicly announced. If you further take into account things like the length of Holmea’s lines and the records of the supply units, which have been discovered in other documents, you can assume the total number of soldiers to range between 15,000 and 20,000. This is almost the same number as the estimate of the army having around half as many soldiers as publicly announced, which becomes an endorsement for the veracity of the figure being correct within a certain error margin.

In contrast to Holmea’s army, such estimates are difficult to make when it comes to the army of the 「Divine Son of Destruction」. That’s because of Soma Kisaki. Just as he sometimes exaggerated his own army’s numbers by as much as ten-fold, he also announced his army’s strength to be less than half of its true force to lure the enemy into a false feeling of safety. And because he always changed his approach depending on the circumstances, it naturally lacked a consistent principle to it either.

The 「Memorandum of Hyporios」 records that the 「Divine Son of Destruction」 publicly announced to have 5,000 soldiers at hand, but it’s hard to say whether that’s an exaggeration or an understatement.

Even when you try to reference other documents, the number of soldiers used by the 「Divine Son of Destruction」 during the Battle of Sunomuta changes depending on the author. Those on the upper scale put his forces at almost the same number as Holmea with 15,000 soldiers while those at the lower scale even claim that he fought with 1,000 soldiers.

This discrepancy led to many decades of heated debates between historians about the true figure of soldiers the 「Divine Son of Destruction」 threw into this battle. However, 「Shyemul’s Notes」, which have been discovered in recent years, shed light on the real numbers as it recorded her talk with Soma Kisaki right before the battle.

According to those notes, the army consisted of 4,000 zoan, their main force, 400 elves, slightly more than a thousand humans and dwarves each, and 100 people when lumping harpyians and dinosaurians together. If you added it all up, the army of the 「Divine Son of Destruction」 had roughly 7,000 to 8,000 soldiers.

For someone not involved with strategies, Soma Kisaki was known to be very precise when it came to numbers. And it’s completely unthinkable that Soma Kisaki would deliberately lie to Shyemul whom he trusted as his other half. Going by these two facts, I dare say that it’s set for these numbers to be fairly accurate.

In other words, the Battle of Sunomuta was an engagement where the forces of the 「Divine Son of Destruction」 were outnumbered by about twice as many Holmean soldiers.

The time when both armies finished setting up their battle formations and squared off against each other was said to be the 「Period before the Sun’s Burning would Reach its Height」. If you translate this into modern time units, it’d be the time period from 9 – 11 a.m.

In this era, the soldiers would rise with the sun, and because they had to get into formation after eating their breakfast, it would take time for a battle to start in the morning. But, even then, this took way too long.

The reason for the delay on this occasion was to be found with Alexius, the commander of the subjugation force. Alexius granted the soldiers a lavish breakfast with the provisions, and on top of that, even allowed them to take a rest afterwards. The army’s recorder praised this as 「Generosity of a Ruler」.

Then again I guess you could only regard it as normal that Holmea’s army with its numerical superiority would be clad in an air of composure, feeling like they had already won the battle, as you could sense from the remaining reports of the army recorder.

However, nowadays everyone knows the outcome of this battle.

◆◇◆◇◆

Standing on a hill with a slight elevation, Alexius revealed a face full of delight. What sprawled out in front of him was his army that had completed taking up positions. The sight of more than 15,000 fully armored soldiers forming orderly ranks was something that would make anyone’s heart flutter, not only Alexius’.

The prince raised his face somewhat. This allowed him to take a peek at the revolting slaves taking up positions in the far distance in order to courageously oppose his army. The slaves had apparently split their army into five divisions, matching Holmea’s deployment.

It wasn’t clear because they were so far away, but it looked as though a unit of a few hundred elven archers stood in front. Behind them waited what was likely the revolting slaves’ main force ― the zoan. Their numbers seemed to be seizable as they easily reached several thousands. However, because the zoan were at most a loose gathering of individuals who would do whatever they liked, you couldn’t describe that group as a battle formation.

Aren’t these brutes at the same level of a bandit gang? Alexius snickered.

In addition, the zoan were flanked on either side by a unit consisting of humans and dwarves. However, both units had only around a thousand soldiers. Alexius suspected that they wouldn’t pose much of a threat to Holmea’s chariot units.

And what made him laugh in ridicule above all that was the enemy stronghold. A black flag, so huge that he could actually tell its size from all the way back here, was fluttering in front of a fortress that looked as hastily built as he’d heard in the rumors.

The prince guessed this flag to be the general’s banner of the rumored 「Divine Son of Destruction」. He had no doubt that he’d be able to find the boss of these revolting slaves underneath that banner. However, as far as he could tell, only a hundred or two hundred soldiers were stationed at the general’s banner, despite this being the headquarters with the enemy army’s commander.

Very likely some enemy soldiers are also hiding out inside the fort, but that structure is far too shabby to count for anything.

“Your Highness, what might be amusing you?”

As Alexius gazed at the enemy lineup while snickering in scorn, an officer in black armor called out to him. The prince lightly frowned at that.

This officer was a man he hadn’t seen before, but considering how he wore black armor, he appeared to belong to the 「Black Wall」. However, up until now Hiakis had always been the only officer of the 「Black Wall」 staying by the prince’s side.

“What happened to Hiakis?”

The officer answered with a face pretending indifference, “Sir Hiakis said that this battle would be crucial to regain the dignity of our country and as such he would personally command the 『Black Wall』. He has now taken command of the Second Division.”

The officer removed his helmet, and saluted while holding the steel hat under his arm.

“For today alone I, Adomius, shall stay by your side in Sir Hiakis’s stead.”

Yesterday evening Hiakis had asked Adomius to remain with the Fifth Division led by Alexius. Due to the sudden request, Adomius had asked with a laugh, “Did you finally get tired of babysitting?”

Babysitting was the cynic term used by the officers of the 「Black Wall」 for serving as Alexius’s adjutant. Ever since Alexius had become the commandant of the 「Black Wall」, Hiakis’s colleagues had always teased him as 「Babysitter」 since he was the one always taking care of that duty.

“Well, something like that.”

Hiakis kept his answer ambiguous, but Adomius knew. Even within the 「Black Wall」, Hiakis was the officer with the closest relationship to General Darius. His deep feelings of loyalty and respect toward Darius were broadly accepted by all the other officers.

The reason why Hiakis had always served as the prince’s adjutant, who was not only known for hating Darius, but actually trash-talked Darius on every opportunity, stemmed from him earnestly abiding Darius’s command to serve Holmea. However, Adomius was sure that this must have been a daily ordeal for Hiakis, even if those were the words of his idol.

For Hiakis the opponent they would be fighting from now on was the detestable cause for General Darius’s honor and reputation being dragged through the mud. As such, Adomius could painfully understand Hiakis’s feeling of wanting to put that enemy to the sword with his very own hands.

However, Adomius deliberately pretended to not have realized Hiakis’s intention, and replied in a joking manner, “Well, why not. It’s not that bad to play babysitter every once in a while.”

Of course, the prince didn’t know anything about this conversation. He allowed Adomius to stay by his side while lightly laughing and stating that it’d be fine to not take this so serious since it’d be a simple slave subjugation anyway. Adomius expressed his gratitude for the permission by bowing once.

“Your Highness, our soldiers are ready. We are now waiting for your signal.”

Alexius nodded deeply at that so as to look as regal as possible. And then he climbed on the exclusive chariot of the commander. That vehicle was a huge construct that was pulled by six horses. Alexius purposely choosing this sort of chariot, which allowed two soldiers, one drummer, and a driver in addition to the commander, was his secret stab at Darius.

However, compared to Darius’s large chariot, this one came with a commander’s seat positioned atop a wooden stage that had been built up to a height of approximately four melt. This would allow Alexius to overlook the whole battlefield while sitting on his chariot.

Naturally Alexius didn’t know that the officers of the 「Black Wall」 scoffed at that thing being an 「Audience Seat」 behind his back.

“Alright! Drum the signal to start the battle!”

Receiving the order from Alexius, who had sat down on his chair, the gigantic drummer, whose upper half was exposed to the sun, made the muscles in his arms bulge and began to hit the big drum with all his might. In accordance with the drumming which was so loud that it seemed to shake one’s organs, all the soldiers of the subjugation force made noise with their weapons or hit the ground with the butt ends of their spears while furiously cheering.

Those sounds even reached Souma’s place which was actually quite a distance away.

Souma revealed a slightly bitter smile and said to Shyemul behind him on the right, “It looks like there won’t be any truce bearer before the battle begins.”

In this era it was common practice for truce bearers of both sides to advocate their own side’s legitimacy and the injustice of the other side in case two forces were to fight each other. The absence of this meant that Holmea didn’t recognize Souma’s side as proper enemies, but instead intended to subjugate them as common, revolting slaves.

After agreeing with Shyemul who flew into a rage over Holmea completely looking down on them, Souma raised his voice, “Let’s have our men make some noise as well.”

Shyemul curtly nodded at that and hit the drum hanging at her waist. Following that, you could hear the zoan on messenger duty beginning to drum the same rhythm as Shyemul from all over their battle formation. In accordance with the signal, the zoan began to raise their voices, soon to be followed by the other races.

And then, Alexius and Souma, who had waited for the cheering of their soldiers to reach its climax, shouted at almost the same moment, “”March onwards!””

This spelled the beginning of the Battle of Sunomuta ― also known as 「Humiliation of Sunomuta」.

<– Previous Chapter | ToC | Glossary | Next Chapter –>

Translation Notes: