With a quick swipe that turned into a thrust suddenly, Sir Isaac plunges his sword into the ant's shoulder. The ant, who had raised its spear to block Sir Isaac's strike only to find the maneuvre pointless, instinctively lunges forward with their lower arms and their mandibles. The former waved around pointlessly, the claws previously severed by his sword and the latter unable to reach him because of the sword that was holding back the whole upper body.
Sir Isaac kicks the ant in the left knee, causing it to buckle over. This allowed him to easily pull out his sword and grab the spear with his other hand. Stepping back and pulling the flatfooted ant along by his spear, Sir Isaac opened the more vulnerable back of the insectoid to the spears of the soldiers behind him. As planned, they quickly stabbed into it.
The ant writhes in agony and a squire quickly grabs the dying insect to drag it away. The spear is quickly pulled out of its hands by one of the spearmen, whose broken spear was now lodged in the ant's back. This better-crafted insect spear wouldn't break as easily, and pierce their carapace more easily.
Sir Isaac takes two seconds to breathe and then steps forward again. He could pull the manoeuvre another two or three times before his movements would grow too sluggish. His moustache flashes a bright holy light to blind the ant in front of him and the temporarily stunned creature holds up their spear in defense. Without the weapon with the superior reach taking the opportunity of striking at Sir Isaac first, he strikes at the claws that were holding on to the lower part of the spear. A quick strike severs the right arm, and the left arm clutches around the spear more tightly as a reflex. Expecting this, Sir Isaac quickly lobs it off too.
The ant, no longer blinded, quickly lowers their spear again and thrusts it at Sir Isaac. He slaps it to the side with his armoured glove and the spear grinds on his shoulder plate without dealing any damage other than scratching the polish. And as there were a dozen spear scratches there already, it didn't matter at all. The spearman to Sir Isaac's back right grabs the spear with both hands and pulls to prevent the ant from pulling it back. In the second that it wastes on this tugging match, Sir Isaac raises his sword above his head in a way that left him very vulnerable to attacks but which yielded better slashes.
The ant pulls the spear out of the spearman's hands and quickly rises it to block Sir Isaac's slash with, knowing that there was too little time to attack Sir Isaac's vulnerable defenses instead. Just like the last one, they weres surprised as the sword instead stabbed into their shoulder.
A few seconds later, their corpse too was being dragged back. Sir Isaac turns to the next ant in line, flashing a sunburst and repeating the manoeuvre. Flash, lob, parry, swing, lunge, kick, pull, spear stabs, kill, repeat. Over and over again. The same maneuvre with the same result and the same success every time.
A rather dull and unhonourable method, but one that worked here real well. As these were all hive mind creatures with identical nature and minimal nurture, they all reacted virtually identical to the next when confronted with the same situation and stimulus. Combined with the deity Zanar's provided knowledge of the insect's weak spots and the way that one could coordinate to kill an insect with multiple soldiers this way, the regular soldiers were actually standing a chance.
And they needed it. These creatures were incredible potent with their mastercrafted weapons, natural armour, unbreakable morale and special living siege armaments. Not to mention the six arms. A regular fighter wouldn't understand just how dangerous an additional set of arms was in close combat. They didn't realise that they were completely exposed to these lower arms when their weapon or shield was needed to block or parry the attack of the upper set of arms.
If the regular soldiers wouldn't have some exploitable combo of attacks to defeat these creatures with, they'd be but mere cannon fodder to slow down the insects advance. They'd be but sacrifices, and morale would shatter once that would become clear to the soldiers themselves. They were not alike the war elephants, the royal army, Sviet soldiers, Aestas nomads or Flidais soldiers, who could weather these opponents on their own virtue. These were regular conscripts and militia soldiers.
Sir Isaac steps back more than one step after killing another one of the ants. The spearmen look grim but nod at him as they quickly fill the gap that he leaves. They know he has to rest, lest he too were to fall in battle.
Sir Isaac quickly turns to a few of the wounded that were just behind the front lines, healing the ones that could quickly be fixed to return to the fray. Others that were too severely wounded to be healed without lots of magical energy were given a prayer and their burial rites while they still lived. Sir Isaac also kept and eye on the soldiers. As the ants were fortunately a bit broader than them, they could face each ant two against one to compensate for their lack of skill and training. Instead of using sunburst, they used their round shields to stop the ant's initial strike. If the spear pierced through, both frontline soldiers would use this to pull the now stuck spear towards them so that the back spearmen could stab at the ant. If not, the shieldbearer would try to push the blocked spear upwards. The second soldier would then move in to slash at the ant's lower arms with their sword or short sword. Block a spear thrust again and try to pull them in by their spear or hands this time. Simple enough for these guys to do.
Sir Isaac estimated the success rate of this tactic to be around 40%, against a 30% chance of both frontline soldiers dying. Which was a lot better than the 3% vs 82% chance that the soldiers stood elsewhere. In fact, they were managing to replace their dying soldiers with new ones fast enough to not lose ground, and could even replace the worn out soldiers with fresh ones sometimes.
Sir Isaac walks back to the command tent. He had been appointed to this quarter-mile strip of the battlefield upon arriving, as a temporarily assigned field officer. He had quickly deduced this repeatable tactic against the ants by facing them himself at much more risky odds. The ants were much more potent and fearsome foes when you didn't have a good strategy and knew their every move. He had then taught the other officers this quickly so they could teach it to the soldiers. It wasn't optimal, but more than these soldiers would get elsewhere.
Sir Isaac looks at the bright streak of red to his left, accompanied by screams of humans before turning into the wails of these insects. At other parts of the front line, the officers were rolling hay bales down the hill and setting them on fire when the insects were threatening to break through, probably killing twice as much of their soldiers than invaders.
Sir Isaac sighs. The resources that he had at his disposal too were suggesting that this part of the battlefield was the one that the higher-ups didn't care for. These were untrained conscripts from the lower districts, protecting the wall before the invaders could reach it. They were facing a severe lack of archers, who were being kept in reserve for the wall siege. There were no royal guards of even city guards around here either, they too were waiting at the wall. And magic was nearly absent here, at least on our side.
The only real reason that the king was sending people out to fight on the hills was to utilise his war elephants. He had declared that he would, only to later hear the issue of using a siege and battlefield unit in a siege defense. They had to fight on the hills to use them, and he thus had to send tons of soldiers out to die. What a waste.
As Sir Isaac walks into the tent, apprentice Valige of the mage's guild and ranger-sniper Heger of the Flidais rangers look up. The former was the closest thing to a mage that they had here, and he concerned himself more with using sending spells to report and alarm spells in case that a powerful mantis bug would appear on their turf. And he could write, which was a surprisingly sparse and useful feat around here.
The latter was a lot more useful. This ranger was one of the many troops that Zanar brought with him and troops that had spread across the battlefield instead of sticking to the walls like the city's own finest. He was a sharpshooter, outfitted with arrows of dispelling, miscast and breach. Once one of those very problematic mantis bugs would appear and they wouldn't be a virtuose beyond the local resistance's ability to handle, Heger would snipe the creature. His dispelling arrows were giving the insects a taste of their own protection-nullifying medicine, curtesy of the mighty Mage Masher. Preferably before the mantis could fireball their frontlines.
"You've reported about our new strategy and its success, have you not? Have we heard back from HQ?" Sir Isaac asks. Valige shakes his head no, and Sir Isaac sighs. "Send messages to the other field commanders, then. Written ones, sent by delivery boys. If HQ is too focussed on the battles they can win and can't be bothered to concern themselves with the losing ones, we have to take the solution to the others ourselves. Lest we want ourselves be caught in a pincer attack when the insects conquer our left and right flanks, that is."
Valige doesn't answer and instead grabs a stack of paper to get to writing.
"Saw another one of those mage bugs?" Heger asks. Sir Isaac shakes his head no, and the ranger shrugs. it was for the best, probably. If he only had to keep his eye on the battlefield for Valige's sake and tell the mage when to cast the alarm signal, his arrows would last a lot longer. And he'd have more time to study the sky for the strange bolts of energy that occassionally struck their enemies from above when they used their alarm spells. Seems that someone was looking out for the regular soldiers up there.
"The trenches?"
"Going well. It's a good way to separate the cowards from the soldiers, and to give the wounded something to do." Heger answers. Sir Isaac looks back, at the trenches that were indeed being dug quickly. They were more like latrines than trenches, being large squares with the ground piled up like a barrier uphill, and the soldiers were quickly running through the strips of land between the trenches.
Once the enemy would push them back far enough, they'd be able to force them into bottlenecks while having some really good defensive positions behind the trenches. But the real purpose of these trenches were actually to deal with the tank beetles. Those behemoths could just bulldozer over their frontlines and allow the ants to pour in behind them. Once one would appear, they'd have to force these creatures into one of the trenches to immobilise them and then roll one of those hay bales on top of them to burn them alive. With the weapons that they had available to them, that was pretty much the only option available to take out the big creatures. Well, other than Sir Isaac using Conclave's might on them.
"Any word on whether there's going to be elephants marching through this area soon enough?" Sir Isaac asks, only for Valige to nod no again. "Figures, they're focussing those creatures at the places where they're either losing ground too fast or winning already."
"Gods preserve us. And your god in particular, Heger. May Zanar grant us favour on our hunt." Sir Isaac says, walking out of the tent again to return to the battlefield. Their soldiers needed the morale boost.
