ACT 2
Cla-Clack, Cla-Clack...
The carriage’s wheels clacked and clunked in semi-rhythm as it rolled quickly through the arid wasteland, pulled by a team of three horses.
The surrounding landscape was littered with rocks, large and small, not the kind of route a horse-drawn cart would normally be able to take. But though the carriage swayed this way and that, the wheels held together and kept on rolling.
They were iron wheels, much more hard and resilient than their wooden counterparts, so a bit of bad ground didn’t really present much of a problem for them.
However, in this particular era of history, there were only a very small handful of nations in the world with the ability to refine iron.
One was the Hittite empire of central Asia, supposedly the earliest civilization in history to develop iron-refining technology.
Aside from that, perhaps the only others were the Steel Clan and Flame Clan of Yggdrasil, both nations ruled by clan patriarchs who were travelers from far in the future.
“Zzz...”
And as for the ruler of the Steel Clan, the person addressed by the title of Reginarch (“Great Lord”) by his subjects, he was comfortably asleep, using the body of a giant white wolf as his pillow.
He was a young man with smooth, dark black hair and a face that still retained a bit of boyish youth in its features.
Looking at his sleeping face, one might be hard-pressed to believe that he was a conquering hero-king, who within the span of two years had built up the foundations of a superpower nation that ruled the lands from Bifröst in the east to Álfheimr in the west.
“I can’t believe he is able to sleep so soundly in this situation... There are so few people traveling with him for protection.”
The girl who whispered those words half in exasperation, half in admiration, was Hildegard.
A young girl with her hair tied in cute braided pigtails, she was an Einherjar bearing the rune Úlfhéðinn, the Wolfskin.
She was a new member of the Múspell Special Forces, the Steel Clan’s most elite fighting force which served directly under Yuuto. Not many days had passed since she’d been admitted to the Múspell, and so she was very much a rookie, but she’d been picked to be part of Yuuto’s escort this time on account of her extraordinary senses of smell and hearing.
“I suppose this is what I should expect from someone so great; ‘unflappable’ is one way to put it, I guess? Though, that’s also why he was able to stand toe-to-toe with that monster back then.”
Hildegard shivered at the recollection.
The “monster” she spoke of was the patriarch of the Flame Clan, Nobunaga—that is, the Oda Nobunaga, who had been summoned to Yggdrasil from Japan’s Sengoku period.
His aura had been so overwhelmingly powerful that even just thinking back on it now sent a chill of terror down her spine and threatened to loosen her bladder.
Currently, Yuuto’s entourage was traveling back home to Steel Clan territory after Yuuto’s meeting and negotiations with Nobunaga.
“He truly was a man of unthinkable strength,” Felicia replied, a bitter smile touching her lips as she drooped her shoulders. “For now, at least, I am honestly just relieved that we were able to prevent making him our enemy.”
Felicia was a woman in her prime with golden hair and bright blue eyes, and such was her alluring beauty that even Hildegard, a fellow woman, had gasped upon first seeing her.
And not only that, Felicia had extensive knowledge in a wide variety of subjects, and no one else seemed to come close to measuring up to her combination of intelligence and beauty. Besides her position as one of the Steel Clan’s highest ranking officers, she was also Yuuto’s adjutant, someone he personally trusted a great deal.
To Hildegard, Felicia was someone so far above her, in so many ways, she might as well be living in a different world. And yet, even she had been stricken with a deep fear in response to Nobunaga’s overwhelming presence.
“Still, because of the imperial subjugation order that was issued against the Steel Clan, our neighboring nations have already begun to take action as the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance. We cannot afford to be optimistic in this situation...”
“Lord Reginarch! Lord Reginarch!”
Just as Felicia’s worry for the future had begun to cloud over her expression, a messenger soldier on a horse rode up to them, as if to confirm her feelings then and there.
Judging by his panicked body language, there was no mistake that his report was something urgent.
“I take it somebody finally made their move?” Yuuto said, sitting up. Apparently he had sensed that something was amiss.
The traces of innocent youth that could be seen on his sleeping face mere moments earlier had vanished, leaving only the face of an army commander.
“M-M-My lord, it’s an emergency situation!” The messenger stammered, his voice shrill and cracking. “We’ve received word that the surrounding clans have all made formal declarations of war against us and started invasions, and that they all did so simultaneously, as if they’d prearranged it with each other!”
He seemed to have really lost his composure, but that was quite understandable.
Yuuto’s prediction that the surrounding clans would conspire to attack the Steel Clan all at once was something he’d only shared with the executive officers in his administration, so there was no way a soldier at the bottom of the chain of command would know anything about it.
For someone without that foreknowledge, suddenly encountering this situation with no time to mentally prepare for it and not losing one’s cool whatsoever would be far stranger.
“I see.” Yuuto was, by contrast, utterly calm.
And that was, perhaps, only natural.
After all, to begin with, the punitive campaign into Lightning Clan territory was in fact a trap Yuuto had set with the aim of luring his enemies into open action. There wasn’t a single thing surprising to him about this news.
However, from the perspective of the young soldier serving as messenger, the fact that such a terrible and unprecedented crisis did absolutely nothing to disturb Yuuto’s composure was proof anew of his greatness as the reginarch.
The messenger was filled with a sense of great reverence for his lord, and his eyes were sparkling as he continued making his report. “At present, the Panther, Wheat, and Ash Clans are under attack. In particular, the Ash Clan is being invaded by a massive combined army made up of soldiers from the Sword, Fang, Cloud, Helm, and Spear Clans. They number thirty thousand!”
“Really, now?” Yuuto’s eyes widened slightly. “It sounds like our bait pulled in quite the big catch.”
It greatly exceeded his initial predictions, which had estimated a force of at most twenty thousand or so.
He’d been hoping that one or two clans would fail to coordinate well with the others, but it seemed that had been little more than wishful thinking.
Even still, before this all started, Yuuto had originally been planning to invade the imperial capital, Glaðsheimr, by the year’s end. These were all opponents he would have eventually had to fight anyway.
He was certain that there wasn’t much time left before Yggdrasil began to sink into the ocean, so getting the chance to eliminate these obstacles now worked just fine for him.
“This contains all of the particulars, my lord.” The messenger held out a document to Yuuto.
“Ah, please allow me,” Felicia interjected. “I shall read it aloud.”
“Thanks. Please do,” Yuuto said.
In truth, Yuuto had been joining in on Mitsuki’s study sessions, and he’d already reached the point where he could read and write the language of Yggdrasil—that was in large part thanks to the fact that Yggdrasilian used phonetic characters in its writing—but he knew that Felicia enjoyed doing things like this for him, and he didn’t want to take that away from her.
And so, he’d decided not to say anything, and let her continue reading and writing for him.
“‘Inform Lord Yuuto, reginarch of the Steel Clan. I am Hrymr, Leader of Sibling Subordinates of the Ash Clan and the master of Dauwe Castle.’” Felicia began to recite aloud the contents of the report.
The size and composition of the enemy’s army, the state of morale in Hrymr’s soldiers, and other pertinent aspects of the military situation were all recorded in great detail.
The report was dated from two days ago.
In this era, the standard for speedy delivery of detailed information across long distances was still a messenger driving a horse-drawn cart—which would have taken at least ten full days to bring him this same document. Taking that into consideration, two days was exceptionally fast. Abnormally so, in fact.
However, two days old was still two days old.
Yuuto was only human, and thus he had no way of knowing that, at that very moment, Dauwe Castle had fallen to the enemy.
Yuuto quickly made his way back to the main formation of his army, where Sigrún’s delighted voice was one of the first things that greeted him.
“Ah...! Welcome back, Father!”
She was a woman possessed of such surpassing beauty that it left those who saw her breathless, a beauty that could rightly be called one-of-a-kind.
Her figure was slim and elegant, and her slender arms looked so beautifully delicate that one might assume she would have difficulty even holding a sword, but she was in fact the Steel Clan’s most powerful warrior, and one of its most valiant generals.
“I am sure you must have already heard the news from one of my men, but...”
“Yeah, our enemies have all started their invasions, at exactly the same time.”
“Indeed, it is just as you predicted, Father. I never cease to be amazed by how keenly and wisely you perceive things.”
“That’s enough flattery. More importantly, how are preparations coming along? Are we ready to begin the return trip?”
“Yes, Father. Also, I took the liberty of ordering the rear guard and support units to march early, so they are already on the move.”
“Nice! You did a great job.” Yuuto patted Sigrún on the head, ruffling her hair.
Dauwe Castle was being threatened by a massive army thirty thousand strong, so reinforcements needed to reach them as quickly as possible.
Every minute of time saved was precious.
“I did nothing special,” said Sigrún. However, in spite of her words, she was smiling happily.
To Sigrún, there was no greater reward than a pat on the head from Yuuto.
As Yuuto’s hand finally pulled back, Sigrún looked sad for a short moment, then quickly assumed a more serious expression and asked, “So, then, what of the request to swear the Oath of the Chalice with the Flame Clan patriarch? How did the negotiations go?”
“Hm? Oh, right. We didn’t end up swearing the Oath of the Chalice, but I was at least able to get him to agree to mutual non-aggression with us for the time being.”
“That is good to hear.” Sigrún let out a small sigh of relief.
Sigrún may well have been young in her years, but she was, in fact, a very highly accomplished military general—a hardened veteran of many, many violent conflicts.
There was no way she wouldn’t know exactly how dangerous it would be for the Steel Clan right now, beset by invasions on three fronts, if the powerful Flame Clan were to become their enemy too.
A retreat march in particular was one of the most dangerous times for an army on the move. She must surely have been relieved to learn that they wouldn’t have to worry about being attacked from behind while they were making their way back home.
“By the way, what sort of person was the Flame Clan patriarch?”
Sigrún wasn’t one to mince her words, and she rarely made any conversation beyond what was necessary. This sort of question was rare from her. Ordinarily for her, hearing about the promise of non-aggression would have been enough to satisfy her on the subject.
However, the Flame Clan patriarch had been responsible for the death of the peerless warrior Steinþórr, the Battle-Hungry Tiger. She was interested in what sort of person could have possibly dispatched the Dólgþrasir with such ease.
“In a word, unbelievable. I absolutely do not want to make that guy our enemy.” Yuuto’s words came straight from his heart, unqualified and unembellished.
He truly was the man who had risen above all others during the Sengoku period of Japan, a time and place in history awash with legendary figures, and who had nearly brought all of Japan together under his rule. He was different from ordinary people. Just the mere force of his presence had been titanic; practically overwhelming.
“He must truly be incredible to inspire words like that from you, Father.”
“Yeah. Even just imagining what would’ve happened if the Flame Clan were against us, too... It makes my blood run cold. Honestly, I think that would be the end for us.”
“Even so, I am sure you still would find some way to save us, Father.”
“And I’m sure you give me way too much credit.”
With a wry grin, Yuuto shrugged.
Sigrún had always had a tendency to overestimate Yuuto’s ability, but recently, Yuuto got the feeling it was getting even more extreme.
He felt such a large gap between that and his own assessment of himself that it was honestly a little disorienting.
“Well, either way, we may have avoided the absolute worst-case scenario, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a pretty bad situation for us.”
With a severe expression, Sigrún nodded. “Yes. I myself doubted my ears when I first heard the number thirty thousand.”
The Steel Clan had mobilized a total of sixteen thousand soldiers for the campaign against the Lightning Clan—the largest number they’d ever managed so far—but the enemy still had almost twice that number.
And that was just the army attacking from the east. Currently, their western territories were under attack from two other clan armies: the Hoof Clan and the Northern Panther Clan.
While the absolute worst potential situation had been avoided, there was no question that this was still the most dangerous and threatening scenario Yuuto had ever faced, even including his early days as patriarch of the Wolf Clan.
“Yeah, Dauwe Castle might be famous for being impossible to capture, but against a force that size, it’s possible they might not last very long. And on that note, there’s an important mission I’d like to assign to you, Rún.”
“Yes, Father! Just name your orders! Would I be correct in assuming you will have me ride ahead of everyone else, and perform hit-and-run disturbance operations on the enemy?”
“Disturbance operations” consisted of racing on horseback past enemy lookout patrols to launch surprise attacks on their camp before the lookouts could alert them, then fleeing quick as the wind right as the enemy soldiers regained order and prepared their counterattack.
This was just one of the battlefield tactics Sigrún’s Múspell Special Forces were proficient in, and it had been used to great effect during the war against the Hoof Clan a year ago, sowing chaos among the enemy army and delaying their advance.
As the situation right now bore some similarities to back then, it was reasonable that she’d assumed that would be her mission.
However, Yuuto shook his head. “No, the mission I have for you this time doesn’t involve battle.”
“Huh?” Sigrún stared back at him in stark puzzlement, her eyes wide.
She wasn’t someone who often let her emotions show on her face, often looking as expressionless as a statue, so it was a rare sight from her.
The Múspell Special Forces were acknowledged from both within and without as the Steel Clan’s strongest elite battlefield unit, and they always fought on the front lines.
Sigrún hadn’t imagined they would be given a mission that didn’t involve riding into battle.
“This is something that only you guys can do. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that the outcome of this war completely depends on whether you’ll be able to get this done.”
Yuuto’s lips curled up into a mischievous grin.
It was the face he always made when he had come up with a particularly clever scheme.
“D-Dauwe Castle has fallen?!”
Upon receiving the terrible news, the Ash Clan patriarch Douglas momentarily forgot that he was in the middle of formally hosting a guest in his capacity as patriarch and raised his voice in a panicked shout, with no sense of shame or propriety.
The enemy was attacking with a massive army of thirty thousand. He had of course considered the possibility that, at worst, the fortress might get captured. However...
“No matter how you look at it, it happened way too quickly!”
It was only two days ago that he’d learned that the enemy was approaching the stronghold.
Even with the use of messenger pigeons and deliverymen on horseback between post stations, rapid communication methods unavailable to other nations, that report would only just now have traveled far enough to reach the Steel Clan’s main army.
From Gimlé to the Ash Clan capital Víðríðr, standard travel by horse-drawn wagon would take ten days. For marching infantry loaded down by the added weight of weapons and armor, it would take twice as long.
Not to mention, the main body of the Steel Clan army was currently over the border within Lightning Clan territory, even further west than Gimlé.
In other words, a normal estimate of how long it would take for reinforcements to arrive would be somewhere around thirty days.
Now that the protection of Dauwe Castle was gone, that was a number that evoked only feelings of hopelessness.
“What in the world happened?! Just what sort of scheme did the enemy use to do this?!”
Jumping up from his chair, Douglas grabbed the shoulders of the soldier who’d brought the message and began shaking him as he interrogated him.
Douglas knew all about Dauwe Castle’s resilience, and he also knew just how skilled and respected Hrymr was—a hero to his men, and a force to be reckoned with as a strategist.
He couldn’t imagine that either of them could be defeated by anything resembling normal, rational methods of warfare.
“They used a head-on frontal assault, my lord.”
“Whaaat?!” Douglas’ jaw dropped.
After another moment, his whole body began to tremble, and he screamed, “Don’t be ridiculous! Even if they did have thirty thousand men, there’s no way that would work against that fortress, and especially not against old Hrymr!”
“Yes. It would be one thing if they had that contraption Father invented, the... it was called the ‘trebuchet,’ I think? But I find it hard to believe you if you say they toppled Dauwe without anything of that sort.”
The voice that cut into the conversation came from a slightly portly man with a puzzled frown, seated across the table from where Douglas had been sitting.
He was Botvid, the patriarch of the Ash Clan’s neighboring nation, the Claw Clan.
In accordance with an arrangement they’d made beforehand, once the attack began, Botvid had come here along with three thousand troops as reinforcements for the Ash Clan.
“Th-That may be the case, but this is the truth of the matter... No matter how many volleys of arrows we rained down on them; even after we surrounded them on three sides and skewered them with our spears... they just wouldn’t stop. Even after sustaining what should have been fatal wounds, they threw themselves at us and slaughtered everyone. It was like they didn’t fear death, or even care—like they were an army of men possessed by spirits, or an army of the dead... they pushed forward with such vigor that we were simply overwhelmed...”
The soldier’s face drained of color, and he began shaking—he was probably flashing back to what he’d witnessed when the fortress was captured.
Apparently, it had been quite a frightening experience.
“Hmm... Brother Douglas, it doesn’t look to me like he’s lying.”
“So it would seem. Still, an ‘army of the dead,’ is it? That phrase has quite the terrifying ring to it.”
“Hmm,” Botvid thought to himself for a second. “Hearing his description, I cannot help but be reminded of that man.”
“‘That man’?” Douglas asked, unaware of to whom Botvid was referring.
Botvid gave a wry chuckle and shrugged his shoulders. “I mean the Dólgþrasir, Steinþórr.”
“Ah, the late Lightning Clan patriarch who was killed in battle some days ago?”
Douglas had never met Steinþórr face-to-face, much less faced him on the battlefield, but he was all too familiar with the name.
Steinþórr had been a man of such absurd strength that no one else, however great a warrior, could ever hope to match him in combat, and on the battlefield, he was regarded as invincible.
It was said that when Steinþórr led a charge, nothing could stop it.
And also...
“Right, it was said that the soldiers led by the Dólgþrasir would turn into a pack of battle-crazed berserkers,” Douglas recalled. “Hm, I see, there certainly is a similarity.”
“Yes. Though I get the sense that there’s an even more powerful zealotry at work behind these soldiers. The problem is, if our foes have turned into such monsters, there’s little we can do to stop them between the two of us.”
“Nngrh...” Douglas’ face scrunched up in a glower, and he let out a frustrated growl like a cornered beast.
He had stationed most of his soldiers in Dauwe Castle, so he only had around one thousand men remaining at his disposal. With the three thousand from the Claw Clan, they were barely scraping a grand total of four thousand.
He assumed that eventually some of the survivors who escaped Dauwe Castle would make their way back to him. But the messenger soldier just now was an example as such, and going by how deeply the fear and trauma from his experiences had penetrated him to his core, it was questionable whether any of the other survivors would be useful in battle going forward.
If his soldiers couldn’t match up to the enemy in terms of individual strength, and he also couldn’t come close to matching his enemy’s numbers, then it wasn’t just a problem of not being able to defeat them. It was going to be nearly impossible to even merely hold out until Yuuto and the main army arrived.
But just as the feelings of despair had started to swallow up his heart, another man’s voice slipped its way into their conversation from the direction of the room’s entrance.
“Heh. So, I heard you need some extra soldiers?”
Douglas and Botvid turned towards the owner of the voice and saw a man they had never seen before. However, he was also someone they both recognized instantly.
“Ohh, Uncle Hveðrungr!” Douglas stood up from his chair again and threw open his arms wide in a gesture of welcome.
The massacre he committed at Nóatún, and the scorched-earth strategy he used to ravage his own lands... this man’s reputation was built upon acts that could hardly be called good.
However, that same reputation also came from his successes. He had taken the Panther Clan and transformed it from nothing more than a smallish nomadic clan into one of the most powerful clans in the realm in the space of one year. And, at the Battle of Gashina, he had managed to corner Suoh-Yuuto, the “war god” himself, and had come close to completely defeating and wiping out Yuuto’s forces.
The nomadic riders who fought as armed cavalry under Hveðrungr were also said to be high-quality, expert fighters on par with the Steel Clan’s elite Múspell Special Forces.
In a situation like this one, there was no more reliable ally one could hope to ask for.
“It seems that the gods have decided to give us the perfect opportunity to show what we’re capable of!”
Upon returning to the Regiment’s encampment, Hveðrungr fired off those excited words to his subordinates.
However, no one answered him. Despite the fact that their leader had returned, none of his men even rose to greet him. They were all lying on the ground, flat on their backs, their chests rising and falling in a slow rhythm.
Ordinarily, Hveðrungr would have never forgiven such a lack of respect from subordinates towards their master, but in today’s case, he made a special exception.
They had all ridden straight here from Gimlé non-stop, with nearly zero sleep or breaks to rest.
Even for the highly-trained, elite riders of the Independent Cavalry Regiment, it stood to reason that such a high-speed forced march would completely deplete their stamina.
Actually, one could instead say that it was only because they were so strong that they had been able to force themselves to ride all the way here in just three days.
“I’ll explain the current situation. You can keep resting, but listen well, and pay close attention.”
Hveðrungr proceeded to tell his men what he’d learned from Douglas and Botvid.
They were all originally from lands far away from here, in the western half of the northern Miðgarðr region, so they couldn’t really understand how significant it was that Dauwe Castle had fallen. However, when he described enemy soldiers who fought like the living dead, he could see they’d all taken interest, and several of them started to speak up.
“I’ve seen something like that before.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Back at Gashina, when Lord Yuuto the Lion-Heart rode out onto the Wolf Clan’s front lines, the Wolf Clan soldiers got like that, right?”
“Right, right, exactly. I remember how they were fighting with that crazy strength, like they’d been possessed, and it spooked me.”
“Actually, yeah, me too.”
As the nomads all began confirming their experiences with each other, they grimaced as they recalled those unpleasant moments.
Soldiers who could get pierced by arrows, or slashed with a sword, and they’d still keep coming after you, unconcerned with anything else other than ending your life.
No one wanted to fight against foes like that a second time, but they were settling on the conclusion that the people they were going to be fighting here were much the same.
“No, apparently the ones this time are even more crazed,” Hveðrungr added, refusing to spare his men from the cruel truth.
“You’re kidding...”
“Well, that sure sends a chill down my spine.”
The nomads grimaced again, fear and loathing written all over their faces. Hveðrungr, on the other hand, was smiling broadly, his teeth showing.
His lips were twisted into a confident, evil sneer, in fact.
“What are you all saying? That just means they’ll serve all the better as our prey.”
It was deep in the dead of night when a loud rumbling began to sound throughout the area surrounding Dauwe Castle. It was so loud, and so sudden, that the Anti-Steel Clan army soldiers camped in the area were forcibly roused from their sleep.
“Wh-What’s going on?!”
“Is it an enemy attack?”
Fwip-fwip-fwip!
A huge number of arrows began falling from the sky, despite the fact that nobody had ordered them to prepare for any battle.
“Uwagh!”
“Aagh?!”
“An attack out of nowhere?! No one’s sounded any of the warning gongs!”
“Damn it! What the hell are the lookouts doing?!”
Panicked screams and confused shouting rose up all around them.
And their torment only continued to increase. Shadowy figures were racing towards their camp at a frightening speed, firing a hail of arrows all the while.
“What? H-H-Horses?!”
“Oh no, they’re coming so fast! W-Wait, wait-wait-wait!”
“I’m not ready to—gyaghh!”
“N-No, I don’t want to die... ggh...!”
“Save me... gaah!”
Before the soldiers had been given the chance to do anything more than panic, the man leading the band of armed horsemen charged right into them, mercilessly striking them down left and right with the blade of his spear.
He was a strange and sinister-looking man, half of his face obscured by a jet-black mask.
“Perfect, they’ve been swept completely off their feet!” the masked man shouted. “Now don’t waste this opportunity—ravage them!” He raised his spear, dripping with blood, high into the air.
“Rraaaaghh!” The riders behind him bellowed a war cry and charged past him on either side.
They were like a pack of ferocious beasts.
For what it was worth, the Anti-Steel Clan soldiers had been told that there was a unit of soldiers within the Steel Clan who could fight while riding on horseback, so they had known they needed to be mentally prepared to fight them.
However, now that they were facing such riders in the flesh, that sense of preparedness was swiftly crushed underfoot.
For one thing, they were all so big.
With the combined height and weight of the horse and rider, they made for a truly sizable foe. It was like being attacked by the members of the race of giants from right out of the old stories about the time the world was made.
And yet something so large was coming at them at more than twice the speed a human could run.
And what was even worse, they even had weapons that were strange and frightening.
They were able to break a man’s sword in a single blow, or pierce right through his shield and armor as easily as skewering cheese.
How was someone supposed to fight against something like this?!
Faced with an absolutely overwhelming difference in power, the Anti-Steel Clan army soldiers felt their hearts being crushed by despair.
“Enemy attack! Enemy attack!”
The shrill cries filled the air, along with the loud, metallic sound of bronze war gongs.
“Hm... Huh? What’s thiiis?”
Bára, who had been sleeping in her chair, slowly opened her eyes and, like always, spoke with a tone that conveyed no tension at all.
No matter the situation, she never seemed to falter from this overly easygoing attitude.
Put another way, it meant that no matter what happened, she never panicked.
That aspect of her personality was something the Sword Clan patriarch Fagrahvél had recognized in her, and was part of why she had been entrusted with the important positions of adjutant and chief military advisor.
“An enemy attack? ...Ngh!”
Lying in bed nearby, Fagrahvél realized what was happening and immediately tried to get up, but lacked the strength to remain standing and collapsed to the floor...
...Or would have, if not for the fact that Bára had already predicted this exact turn of events occurring and quickly moved in to catch Fagrahvél in one flowing motion.
“Now, nooow, no pushing yourself. You need to stay in beeed.” Bára spoke as if gently chiding a small child.
Bára was often troubled by the fact that her patriarch had a bad habit of taking on so much responsibility alone that it often ended up being too much to handle.
“We’re being attacked right now. I’m the commander of this army—how could I be absent?”
Fagrahvél’s words were steadfast and courageous, but the lamplight showed a face that was still sickly and pale, clearly still exhausted from the strain incurred during the last battle.
“Who do you think you’re fooling with that taaalk? You can’t even stand on your own two feet right nooow.”
“Ngh, no, this is nothing...”
Fagrahvél pushed Bára’s body away and tried to stand unassisted.
However, that only led to another fall, backwards this time, and another graceful catch from Bára.
“There you gooo. See, you can’t do it at aaall.”
“Kh... Such a trifling bit of fatigue, and yet my body won’t do as I say... Such weakness...!” Fagrahvél spat bitterly.
“What are you saaaying, it wasn’t ‘trifling’ at aaall.” Bára gave a wry chuckle at Fagrahvél’s reaction.
Fagrahvél’s rune, Gjallarhorn, had the power to raise an ally’s morale to its absolute limit and draw out the full latent strength that person possessed.
One could certainly say that it was the strongest possible rune in the hands of a talented commander, but it also came with one powerful and unavoidable drawback.
The larger the number of people its power was applied to, the more valuable the effect was, but the physical toll it extracted from its user increased in proportion.
Until now, Fagrahvél would normally use it only on the soldiers of the Sword Clan Army, who numbered around ten thousand. Even that was enough to drain Fagrahvél to the point of being barely able to stand for a while. This time, the target for the effect had been an army three times that size.
Fagrahvél was lucky to even have the remaining strength to be conscious right now.
“You just sit baaack, and leave this to the rest of us, okaaay?”
“B-But, that’s—”
“Just relaaax. Hárbarth said that when we started our attaaack, the Steel Clan was still at Gashina, remeeember? In other wooords, this can’t be their armyyy.”
“W-Well, now that you mention it...”
Fagrahvél’s eyes widened at the realization that Bára was right.
Ordinarily, something like that would not have escaped the Sword Clan patriarch’s thinking. Fagrahvél really was completely drained in body and mind.
“Our real enemy in this war is the ‘war god’ Suoh-Yuuto, riiight? You need to save your strength for the time when you face hiiim. In the meantime, leave cleaning up the battlefield to meee.”
“...Right.”
At last, Fagrahvél seemed to accept this and nodded in assent.
Bára carried Fagrahvél back to bed, then left the room. Once she was outside, she placed her pointer finger thoughtfully on her lip and, nonchalantly as always, whispered to herself.
“I hear the Steel Clan has a group of people who fight on horsebaaack. These must be theeem. Now, I wonder if Erna is taking care of things like she was ordered tooo?”
“Now, this is odd.”
From atop his horse, Hveðrungr looked down at the enemy soldiers fleeing in all directions in utter desperation, suspicion in his eyes.
According to the briefing he’d been given, these men were supposed to be strong foes, indomitable and without fear of death... but they’d broken easily.
Far too easily, in fact.
By comparison, even the soldiers of the Hoof Clan army he’d once defeated had put up a far stronger resistance than this.
With the way things were going now, it seemed as if he and the Regiment would be able to completely rout them here with no assistance whatsoever.
“A trap, then?”
The first thing he suspected was that this was a ploy: Feign weakness to make one’s enemy overconfident and tempt them to move in too deep, then surround them completely and wipe them out.
With the powers of observation that Yuuto so highly valued, Hveðrungr’s eyes scanned the battle playing out around him.
However, he saw no signs that such a tactic was currently being employed.
If it were, there would be a bit more consistency in the movements and actions of the individual soldiers. Their expressions of total fear were unmistakably the real thing.
“That being said, the fact remains that they captured this castle in the space of a single day. We can’t let our guard down.”
As the area west of Dauwe Castle was Ash Clan territory, there were no defensive structures on this side, which made infiltrating the enemy camp out here rather easy. But in the event they’d been behind those high castle walls, even Hveðrungr would have been stopped dead in his tracks.
The account of soldiers who fought like the living dead was probably exaggerated to an extent, but he found it hard to believe it a complete lie.
“Pushing further into their ranks would be a bit dangerous, then. But letting go of such a good opportunity is also—?!”
All of a sudden, Hveðrungr sensed an intense feeling of murderous intent coming from his right, and immediately afterward a flurry of arrows came flying at him.
He turned and swung his spear around to deflect them, and in the opening created by that action, a small figure darted in close to him, moving low as if sliding along the ground.
“Got you!” Hveðrungr quickly twirled his spear in midair and thrust downwards at the shadowy figure.
But the figure easily dodged his attack, came all the way up to his horse and, without a second’s pause, sliced right through its front leg.
With the support of one of its legs suddenly gone, the horse collapsed, and Hveðrungr was carried along with it, colliding violently with the ground.
“Khh!” A shockwave of pain rushed through his body, but he didn’t have a moment to spare thinking about that.
A blade swung down at him from overhead, which he managed to dodge by rolling to the side.
He used the momentum of his roll to bring himself back onto his feet, and as he stood up, he got a good look at his foe.
It was a woman, and a rather young one at that.
However, the intensity of the air around her, the pressure he felt coming off of her, and above all, the skillful movements she’d displayed just a second ago—all of it told him that she was anything but ordinary.
“Take heed! I am Erna, commander of the Sword Clan’s Special Assault Force! You are the leader of these forces, aren’t you?! I shall now take your head!”
As she finished announcing herself, she kicked off the ground and dashed towards him.
“What?!” Hveðrungr yelled in astonishment, his eyes going wide.
She was so fast! Her leg strength and footwork were extraordinary.
He’d faced other Einherjar in battle a number of times before, but this was the first time he’d ever seen an opponent close in towards him in such a sharp, swift motion.
“Haaah!”
“Gh...!”
She unleashed a slashing attack aimed right at his neck, and he felt his blood run cold.
He didn’t have enough time to block it.
The knowledge of his coming death shot through his mind. However, his enemy’s attack suddenly slowed.
No. The enemy hadn’t gotten slower.
His own mind was speeding up.
By focusing on the threat of impending death, he had opened the door to the Realm of Godspeed, the ultimate technique he’d stolen from Sigrún.
“Grrggh!”
Hveðrungr forced his body to move through air that felt as heavy as if he was underwater. He directed the blade of his weapon to slip into the trajectory of his foe’s sword.
With his sense of time slowed, his own movements felt incredibly sluggish in a way that made him anxious and impatient, but even so, his opponent was even slower.
He felt a small twinge of pain as her sword was forced to a halt.
He’d just barely blocked the attack in time.
“Wha?!”
This time, it was his opponent’s turn to be astonished.
Erna stared blankly as a crack formed and ran its way down the blade she held in her hand. In the next instant, it split clean in two.
Hveðrungr’s sword was a nihontou, with a blade made from iron that had been refined by adding just the right amount of processed carbon, and tempered over and over until it had been forged into steel.
The strength and hardness of that steel was such that the ordinary bronze weapons and armor of this era could not even begin to compare to it. By striking it with as much force as she had, it was only reasonable that her sword would break in the way that it did.
Of course, even though it was only reasonable, there was no way that she could have known that.
Her sword was a weapon she knew well and had entrusted her life to. For it to suddenly break apart in the midst of combat was something that should never happen.
For just a split second, she froze up from the shock.
Hveðrungr was not the sort of man who would miss such an opening.
“Hhn!”
He counterattacked with an overhead diagonal strike, aimed at his foe’s right shoulder.
I’ve got you! He thought, certain of his victory. However...
“Khh!”
His foe kicked the ground with all her strength and leapt backwards.
Despite his opponent’s attempts at evasion, Hveðrungr followed through on his swing, and soon after...
He felt the telltale resistance of his blade connecting with and slicing through something hard. He’d put a deep gash into her chest armor—but there was no blood spurting out.
“Tch. Too shallow.”
Clicking his tongue in irritation, Hveðrungr stepped in towards her and launched a follow-up thrust attack.
However, his opponent leapt backwards once again, and his blade didn’t even graze her.
Hveðdrungr’s string of attacks just now had all been made in the Realm of Godspeed, a heightened state which allowed him to exceed the usual limits of his body. By his judgment, they were the fastest and most powerful attacks he had made in his entire life.
And his enemy’s movement had still easily surpassed them.
“I’d say that means she’s an Einherjar with powers focused on enhancing the strength of her legs.”
The arm strength she’d displayed thus far hadn’t been anything unusually special, but her leg strength was possibly even on par with that monster Steinþórr, the Battle-Hungry Tiger.
If Hveðrungr hadn’t possessed the Realm of Godspeed, he would most certainly be a corpse right now.
She was without a doubt a powerful foe.
“Yeaaaaah! The Maidens of the Waves are here!”
“We’re saved! The Maidens of the Waves are worth a hundred soldiers! No, a thousand!”
“Everyone, attack at once and drive them back!”
All of a sudden, jubilant cheers began to rise up from the enemy troops around him. It was as if life and energy had suddenly returned to them.
Hveðrungr watched, wide-eyed, as one of his riders was pierced by a spear and toppled from his horse, then another, and another.
He chuckled bitterly to himself. “Keh-heh, I have to admit, thinking we could take all of them out ourselves truly was underestimating them.”
He searched through the data he’d meticulously filed away in his brain, pulling up the relevant information.
The Maidens of the Waves... If he recalled correctly, they were nine elite Einherjar warriors, the pride of the Sword Clan.
Judging by the fact that they were on foot, taking down cavalry that should have a massive advantage over them from fighting mounted, their reputation was deserved.
He heard the shrill scream of a horse from his left side, along with the heavy dull thud of its large body falling to the ground.
“Oho, here’s someone I haven’t seen in a while.”
The owner of the voice appeared, a man with wild features, dressed in gray furs made from the pelts of wolves.
He had a large, muscular frame, but there was also a sense of toned balance and symmetry to his physique. A single glance was enough to tell that this man had both impressive muscle strength and honed agility.
He looked perhaps a bit past his prime, somewhere from in his latter thirties to forty or so, but he carried a huge spear longer than his own height, wielding it with apparent ease. It didn’t seem that age had dampened his strength.
“True, it has been some time, Gerhard.”
“Hmph, I thought you’d died after your defeat at the hands of that Steel Clan brat, and now I find out you actually bowed your head to him and became his loyal dog instead. Looks like you’ve come a long way—down, that is!”
The Cloud Clan patriarch sneered.
However, Hveðrungr wasn’t about to fall for such a cheap taunt. He calmly assessed his current situation.
The enemy had pulled themselves out of their state of panic and had regained their will to fight.
At this point, even if the members of the Independent Cavalry Regiment had an overwhelming advantage over them in terms of individual combat skill, the difference in numbers was too great.
Now was the time to withdraw.
“Father!”
“Heh, you’ve come at the perfect time.”
Hveðrungr’s subordinate had hurriedly ridden up to him on horseback. Hveðrungr grabbed his outstretched hand, kicked off the ground, and deftly pulled himself up onto the horse behind him.
“We’re retreating, Narfi!”
“Yes, sir!”
Narfi gave him a brisk reply and pulled back on the reins, turning the horse around in place.
It was magnificent horsemanship, enough to impress even Hveðrungr—but it was also an opening, one the Cloud Clan patriarch wasn’t so green as to overlook.
“I don’t think so!” he yelled, and unleashed a thrusting attack aimed at the horse’s side with the force of a lightning bolt.
But Hveðrungr had seen that coming.
His blade cut through the air quick as a flash and sliced through the tip of the incoming spear.
“Ngh?!”
Gerhard was dumbstruck as he saw his beloved weapon broken with apparent ease.
Hveðrungr sneered down at him from his seat atop the horse, returning the attitude he’d been subjected to just a moment ago.
“Heh heh, you’ll be bowing to that Steel Clan brat yourself, sooner than you think. I look forward to when next we meet! Farewell! Now, Narfi, go!”
“Yes, sir!”
Narfi kicked the sides of his horse, and it broke into a run.
At the same time, Hveðrungr grabbed the war horn he kept strapped at his waist and sounded a loud note.
It was the signal for his men to retreat.
The elite soldiers of the Independent Cavalry Regiment responded immediately, breaking from combat and fleeing the battlefield at top speed.
It was truly a splendid example of a well-practiced and cohesive withdrawal.
“I won’t let you get away!”
“Don’t think we’ll just stand by and let you run off after everything you did to us!”
Of course, the Anti-Steel Clan army soldiers who’d been so thoroughly tormented by the surprise attack were livid, and they quickly pursued the Regiment riders, their faces twisted with murderous rage.
“Heh, just like moths to a flame,” Hveðrungr chuckled. He raised his hand. “Now!”
While still driving their horses onward at a gallop, the Regiment riders turned their upper bodies around and began launching arrows back at the enemy soldiers chasing them.
The arrows struck home, and a number of pursuing foot soldiers flailed and toppled over face down in the dirt.
This only served to fan the flames of anger in the rest of the Anti-Steel Clan soldiers, who continued the chase.
“Kill them! KILL THEM!” They screamed in fury as they charged forward, at which Hveðrungr found himself letting out a wry chuckle.
“Well, men,” he shouted, “it looks like these fellows are hungry for another round of arrows! Better let them have it!”
“Aye, sir!” His men shouted back in a vigorous chorus.
With wild hoots and hollers, the riders opened up a second volley.
This was the Parthian Shot: a technique in which one shoots backwards at pursuers while retreating from them on horseback.
It was the prized archery technique of several horse-riding nomadic warrior clans throughout history—future history, that is.
Ordinarily, a formation of soldiers who were this motivated by anger were extremely strong, and it was better to avoid engaging them in combat. But for the Regiment riders, who could use the Parthian Shot, such soldiers who kept on pursuing no matter how many of them were shot down made for the perfect prey.
Indeed, that was how it should have been...
Without warning, the horse Hveðrungr was on came to a sudden stop.
“What’s going on?!”
“My lord, it’s...”
Narfi was staring ahead, his face frozen in shock. As Hveðrungr directed his gaze in that same area, he saw that a barrier of thick wooden posts had been erected. They were lined up in rows of twenty, blocking their path.
Additionally, the ends of the posts were sharpened like speartips, angled with those tips pointed directly at them in a rather vicious arrangement.
The posts weren’t all that high, but there were a lot of them. And they’d surely been placed here with the understanding that horses by instinct were averse to trying to jump over fences, even low ones.
“When did they do this?! And how could they put in place such a bold counter to cavalry when they’ve never even seen us before?!”
Hveðrungr spat out the words bitterly.
The enemy hadn’t used these barriers to defend against an attack from mounted soldiers, but instead had baited the attack and then placed them on the escape route. It showed they had every intent to trap his riders and wipe them out completely.
Apparently they had a strategist of fearsome cunning on their side.
If he were leading a retreat of infantry, it wouldn’t be difficult to move the barriers out of the way, but since they were mounted, they’d first need to dismount before anything else.
And, of course, they didn’t exactly have the time to spare for that.
Their pursuers were catching up, and farther past the barriers were more soldiers waiting for them—presumably the ones who set these up—already nocking their arrows.
“Damn it! I didn’t think I’d be forced to use my trump card this early...”
Spitting the words out bitterly, Hveðrungr reached into his pocket and pulled out several small objects—tetsuhau bombs.
Yuuto had given these to him to use in case of an emergency, as a last resort.
He used his lighter to light the fuses of five of them, and threw them all at once.
They exploded in quick succession, the loud concussive sound from the blasts filling the air.
Thankfully, the barrier posts weren’t buried in the earth, but merely sitting on the ground itself.
As you would expect from barriers made to stop horses, they were constructed solidly enough that they were scorched by the blast, but held mostly together. However, the force of the shockwave from the explosions was enough to blow them off the ground and out of the way.
The group of soldiers who’d set up the barrier were so startled by the sudden, ear-splitting noise that they stood there in a daze, having forgotten to attack.
The path was open. If they were going to escape, it had to be right now.
Hveðrungr frowned to himself. “Hmph. Good grief, I can’t believe I’ve already ended up owing him one. That’s not what I was hoping for.”
And so, the Independent Cavalry Regiment came close to meeting its end, but narrowly made their escape.
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