Though famous knights displayed formidable martial skill in duels, knightly orders were, in a sense, groups renowned for fighting as a team.
Balancing the strength of powerful knights and ordinary knights, turning individuals into a whole—this was the tactic of a knightly order.
Knights and warhorses, armor and lances, orderly ranks, unified roars, charges of steel, a torrent of trampling hooves.
That was a knightly order.
All knightly orders, including those within the Chalk Knights, operated this way.
Except for the Knights of the Round Table Order. Rather than calling the Knights of the Round Table Order a "knightly order," it would be more accurate to call it an honor and a status. Only powerful knights who passed the trials and earned the king's recognition could sit at that table.
"When do we charge?"
Pindo had put on his armor and was leading his horse when he asked Tomash.
War at that time was unlike what it would become later. More precisely, battles between knightly orders had only one method.
A formal challenge.
The commanders of both sides would issue challenges to one another, settle on a time and place for the battle, then deploy their forces there at the appointed time. Both knightly orders would take up their positions, then decide victory or defeat with a charge.
It was that simple.
"This way of fighting is truly idiotic." Anno gave this method of warfare high praise.
Yet no matter how dissatisfied he was, he still had to follow those rules. But Anno had not made no changes at all. At the very least, after he established the Chalk Knights, the number of charges had clearly decreased, while flanking maneuvers, encirclements, and forced sieges had become far more common.
Because of this "untraditional" style of warfare, Anno had long been