ACT 3
At around the same time the Independent Cavalry Regiment was decorating its young history with its first victory, Yuuto was arriving at the Steel Clan capital Gimlé on horseback.
He had been traveling at full speed day and night, and reached Gimlé just before his soldiers did.
It was in the middle of the night, and so despite the fact that the reginarch who ruled over seven clans had made his homecoming, there was no one waiting to greet him. The guards at the city gate had been wide-eyed with shock at his sudden, unexpected arrival.
Of course, one could say that was only natural, for Yuuto had arrived ahead of any messengers that would announce his return.
Yuuto had been keeping up with his daily physical training, but the majority of his time was still spent on deskwork.
After forcing himself to travel in a day and a half over a distance that would take infantry seven days’ march to cover, he was completely worn out. Despite that, he used his willpower to keep himself going, and after dismounting, he and Felicia hurried into the palace.
“L-Lord Reginarch?!”
“P-Please wait, my lord. Mother is currently asleep...”
“It’s urgent, and there’s no time. Let me through!”
Yuuto didn’t have time to explain or answer questions.
He pushed his way past the guards at the door and entered the bedroom.
“Linnea!”
“Zzz... Zzz...”
Even when he shouted her name, her gentle breathing was the only response.
Every day, she woke up earlier than most to begin her work, and stayed up later than most each night as well. It only made sense she’d be a deep sleeper.
Yuuto would have liked nothing more than to let her rest peacefully, but he didn’t have that luxury right now.
“Sorry, Linnea, you’ve gotta wake up.”
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
“Nn. Nn...”
“You awake now?”
“Mm... Hehe, Father... Oh, I love you so very much.”
“Bwuh?”
The romantic confession was so abrupt that it stunned Yuuto, and for a short moment he forgot the reason that he was in such a hurry.
He felt his face flush with heat.
Of course, it wasn’t as if Linnea’s feelings for him were a surprise. Her attraction to him was something he already understood all too well.
But the fact that she was murmuring this while half-asleep told him just how deeply and fully she held those feelings in her heart, and it was a lot to take in.
“Hmph...” Next to him, Felicia sullenly puffed out her cheeks. “Just so you know, Big Brother, I am always thinking of you when I am asleep, too!”
Why are you acting like that when you’re the one who set me and Linnea up? Yuuto thought to himself. Apparently, she’d felt the need to get competitive after seeing Yuuto’s face turning bashfully red in reaction to Linnea.
“W-We don’t have time for that kind of talk right now! Hey, Linnea, wake up already!”
Unable to stand the embarrassment, Yuuto hurriedly started shaking Linnea again.
At last, it seemed to pay off, for Linnea slowly opened her eyes.
“Nn... Father...?”
“Hey, sorry to wake you up. The thing is—mmph?!”
The moment his eyes met hers, she pulled him into an embrace and covered his lips with hers.
And once she’d released his lips, this time she began nuzzling her cheek against his.
“Hehe. Father... ?”
Apparently, she was still half-asleep.
In a way, this was a lot harder to take than the confession.
With the soft sensation of her body against his... the way it communicated her feelings of adoration for him... he couldn’t keep his body from reacting.
“Hmph! Well, if you are going to show off like that right in front of me, then I will just have to join in myself and show you that—”
“This isn’t a competition!”
Unfortunately for Yuuto, he was stuck in a losing battle, one that continued for a while until Linnea was, finally, fully awake.
“P-Please forgive me, Father. I was so certain that I was still dreaming, and...!”
Linnea prostrated herself towards Yuuto in apology.
Yuuto held out a hand to stop her. “No, it’s—it’s fine. I’m the one at fault for barging in here and waking you up in the middle of the night like this. But more importantly, what’s the war situation like?!” His voice grew urgent again as he went right to the subject he’d come here to discuss.
He’d already lost some time over what just happened. He didn’t intend to waste one second more on anything else.
Linnea had a bit of difficulty dealing with unexpected surprises, but her mind worked incredibly fast. In no time flat, her expression changed from that of a normal girl to that of a national leader, the young woman who ran the administration of a powerful nation.
“Dauwe Castle has fallen,” she answered frankly.
“Wha?! Wait, seriously?! That happened way too fast!”
Upon hearing such horrible news, even Yuuto couldn’t keep from expressing open shock at it.
The campaign he’d been conducting against the Lightning Clan had been part of a plan to draw out his enemies, and the fortress at Dauwe had been the cornerstone of that plan.
“What were the enemy numbers, and what methods did they use?”
The first questions that came to Yuuto’s mind were the same that the Ash Clan patriarch Douglas had asked. After all, Dauwe Castle’s reputation as a solid, impregnable fortress was something Yuuto had heard often.
Just before holding his wedding ceremony, he’d secretly taken a trip there to get a good look at it for himself.
“While I find it hard to believe, the account is that it was captured by force alone, through a frontal assault.”
“...Hmm. But even if they’ve got a huge army, that wasn’t the kind of fortress they should have been able to capture so easily.”
Dauwe Castle was constructed making full use of the geography of the land it was on, such that even an extremely large army shouldn’t have been able to leverage the advantage their numbers gave them.
It was so well fortified that if Yuuto were tasked with capturing it without the use of the trebuchet, he’d honestly throw up his hands and call it a lost cause.
That was exactly why he had been counting on it as part of his plan. Knowing that the group of Anti-Steel Clan forces attacking from the east would be the largest, he’d presumed that Dauwe would be able to hold them in place for a good while.
That it would fall to the enemy in the span of only a few days was something he ordinarily would never have considered.
In other words, looking at this situation from the other end, there was something beyond the ordinary at work here.
“So it looks like they’re not going to be an easy bunch to deal with after all, huh? ...What about the strongholds in other areas?”
The east border wasn’t the only area under attack.
He’d learned that the western territories were being attacked by the remnants of the old Panther Clan, as well as the Hoof Clan army. He wanted to find out more about that, too.
“The Wheat Clan looks to be in a very difficult situation as well. They’ve sent a message pleading for aid as soon as possible. Currently, I’ve sent the Horn Clan assistant second-in-command Haugspori in their direction with reinforcements.”
“I see. That was a good call.” Yuuto nodded.
Haugspori was known to be a bit flighty in terms of personality, and an unrepentant playboy when it came to women, but he was perhaps the most fitting choice for this sort of case.
The main objective here in the short term was not driving off the enemy, but holding out against them.
Putting a more hot-blooded man in charge of the troops could lead to a situation where he impatiently pushed for an advantage, only to suffer unnecessary casualties in the process. In contrast, Haugspori could be counted on to make cool-headed decisions.
“As for Brother Ská, I’ve received a message from him that read, ‘You need not worry about the Panther Clan. Send soldiers to other areas that need them.’”
“Heh. Sounds like him, all right.”
After a steady string of intelligence that spoke only of the difficulties they faced, getting a message that sounded so dependable made Yuuto naturally crack a smile.
Skáviðr was the patriarch of the current Panther Clan under the rule of the Steel Clan, and while his strength and accomplishments as a warrior were many, he was mainly known throughout the Bifröst region as someone who excelled at defensive warfare.
In his previous service as the general in charge of protecting the western city of Myrkviðr, he’d also become accustomed to fighting against armed cavalry. If that man said there was no reason to worry, then it should be fine to leave things to him and focus attention elsewhere.
“In which case, we end up coming back to the eastern problem. Hmm...” Yuuto frowned.
The loss of Dauwe Castle was a really painful blow—there were no two ways about it.
It was said that Einherjar were as rare as one in ten thousand. And right now, just on the eastern front, the armies of the Sword, Cloud, Fang, Helm, and Spear Clans were all working in tandem. It wasn’t hard to imagine that, in addition to the combined number of their normal soldiers, they would surely have a number of powerful Einherjar in proportion to that.
It was probable that among them was an Einherjar with powers that Yuuto didn’t know about, something equivalent to the unstoppable strength that Steinþórr had.
However, they weren’t the only ones with power that defied the ordinary. The Steel Clan could match them in that respect.
“I’m counting on you, Brother. You’ve got to hold things down until I make it there.”
From Hveðrungr’s perspective, finding out he’d fallen for an enemy’s deception had meant his first battle as commander of the Regiment had ended as a bitter experience for him.
However, from the perspective of the Anti-Steel Clan army, it had been much the same.
The riders that attacked them had run roughshod through their ranks, and then had easily broken through the trap that had been set for them, escaping completely.
The army camp had suffered casualties numbering several hundreds, with only a couple dozen for the enemy. Any way you looked at it, this was a total defeat.
One could say that frustration over the events of the battle was much higher on this side, as well.
“This is completely beyond what I’d imaaagined...”
It was the morning after the attack, and Bára was crouched down examining one of the charred barricades, grumbling to herself in disappointment.
This sort of barrier was something horses should not have been able to get past, but the enemy had used some type of unknown weapon to blow the barriers out of the way. That truly was something she couldn’t have imagined.
Even though her ploy had worked as intended and initially trapped the enemy, they’d turned the tables on her anyway. This was a first for her.
“I see nooow. This really is a serious threeeat.”
However, she wasn’t talking about the strange weapon, which had made a terrible sound like thunder and produced enough force to blow these posts aside.
Of course, the weapon itself was indeed a threat in its own right. But once she learned about it, she’d be able to counter it.
The most terrifying threat was the fact that the enemy was steadily creating novel weapons like this.
“It’s true, theeen. If we don’t crush them sooon, they’ll be too strong for us to haaandle.”
This time alone, there had been armed cavalry that trampled their way across the battlefield, and the strange iron blade that had broken Erna’s favored sword, and then these so-called “thunder bombs,” tiny but destructive projectile weapons. Any one of those was enough on its own to sway the tide of a battle.
Did the Steel Clan have even more than this at their disposal, too?
Just as Yuuto had felt the threat of the unknown in the power that had toppled Dauwe Castle, so too did Bára feel a great fear when she considered just what Yuuto might have in store for their future battles...
“I’m sorry, Bára. If only I’d been able to kill their general back then...!”
Erna apologized profusely, her face scrunched up as if her anger at herself put her in terrible pain.
Bára waved a hand, dismissing the apology. “Don’t be sorry about thaaat. That’s not your fauuult. After all, the person you fought was also really strong, riiight?”
Erna was not as bright as Bára would prefer her to be, but when it came to combat ability, she was, without a doubt, the most capable among the Maidens of the Waves.
The rune Erna carried channeled all of her divine power—her ásmegin—into her legs, so that when she dashed forward to attack, it was like lightning streaking across the sky. It was no easy matter to dodge a sword strike delivered on the edge of such swift footwork.
Bára was an Einherjar as well, and certainly more talented with the sword than an average soldier, but she’d never managed to block such an attack from Erna even once.
Not only had this enemy leader seen through and then blocked Erna’s initial attack, he’d done so in his very first encounter with her. Enemy or not, that was worthy of praise.
“Actually, about that, there was something odd I noticed.”
“Hmm?”
“From what we knew, the general commanding the enemy cavalry was supposed to be a woman with silver hair, and an icy personality. However, the one actually giving the orders was a man wearing a strange mask. And the soldiers on horseback were wearing clothing made from soft leather and fur pelts... They looked a lot like nomads, I guess.”
“A maaask?” Bára asked suspiciously, tilting her head to one side.
If one were talking about a masked man together with nomads, the first man who sprang to mind was the former patriarch of the Panther Clan, Hveðrungr—the man known as Grímnir, the Masked Lord.
However, she’d heard that he’d been captured and imprisoned by the Steel Clan during their previous campaign against the Panther Clan...
“And to begin with, the Steel Clan’s mounted fighters, the Múspell, were only supposed to have around five hundred men in their ranks at most, but the riders who attacked us this time definitely numbered at least two thousand.”
“I think I have an idea about what’s up with that.” A third voice cut into their conversation.
It was the Cloud Clan patriarch, Gerhard.
“Ah, yes, that reminds me, Lord Gerhard, you seemed as if you were acquainted with that masked man...”
“I am. He’s the former Panther Clan patriarch, Hveðrungr. A little over a year ago, I met him in person once, when the two of us got together to swear a non-aggression pact.”
“Ohh, so it waaas hiiim. I see nooow.” Bára placed one hand on her cheek and let out a sigh.
It seemed that her bad premonition had been on the mark. In short, the Steel Clan’s Múspell Special Forces Unit, their strongest warriors, were totally separate from the ones who attacked the previous night.
This battle had been enough to showcase all too well just how much of an overwhelming combat advantage mounted fighters had. And now it was confirmed the enemy had five times more of those cavalry than the initial estimates.
And then, of course, there was that weapon the enemy had used.
“This might turn out to be real trouble for uuus.”
It would not be long before Bára’s words became reality.
And so, the following day...
“Ha ha ha! Steel Clan cowards. To think you’d run from me without even putting up a fight. How pathetic.”
...
......
“So, you’ve come back. Haven’t learned your lesson, have you? Now, don’t turn your tails and run from me this time, all right?”
...
......
“Dammit, they got away again!”
Erna spat out the words in bitter frustration as she stamped the ground hard.
The impact was heavy enough to send shockwaves through the ground, as if a giant bear was on a rampage. The soldiers in the area around her all reflexively tensed up.
“Erna, just calm dooown.” said Bára gently.
“How can I be calm about this?!” Erna howled furiously in response.
It wasn’t as if Bára didn’t understand her feelings.
Over the course of yesterday and today, that same group of cavalry had come and attacked them a number of times now, and each time, they’d gotten away again.
What’s more, yesterday the army had at least managed to deal some amount of damage to them, but today all of the casualties were on this side alone. It was a real mess.
And the reason for that was singular.
“Damn them, damn those filthy cowards! They fire arrows at us from farther away than we can shoot back, and then when we try to approach them, they run away while shooting us even more. I can’t stand it!”
“And this time, I was so close to catching them! Curse them... I swear it, next time I’ll catch them for sure and pay them back for everything they’ve done!”
Erna slammed her clenched fist into the palm of her other hand, positively burning with fighting spirit.
It seemed she’d let that fire go to her head completely.
Bára poked her sharply with a finger.
“Like I saaaid, you need to calm dooown. Erna, don’t you seee, you’re falling right into the enemy’s traaap?”
“Huuh?!”
Erna turned to Bára, looking astonished.
Bára shrugged her shoulders. “Thinking about it normally, people running on foot could never catch up to horses at full speed. That’s even with people riding them, riiight?”
“Huh... Yeah, now that you mention it...” Erna sounded as if she’d only realized this just now.
The fact was that with this girl in particular, catching up might actually be possible, so she’d probably failed to consider it.
“They’ve been slowing dooown, and letting you get close on puuurpose. That’s so they can shoot lots of arrooows, and also so they can tire our soldiers ooout.”
The most effective way to thoroughly exhaust someone was to get them to spend their energy in wasted effort.
If the enemy riders fled too quickly, the Anti-Steel Clan army soldiers wouldn’t chase them in the first place. But instead, the army soldiers were tricked into always feeling like they were just about to catch up, then were forced to run on and on at that pace, only to fail to defeat a single enemy rider and stagger their way back to camp completely drained.
If this kept up for several more days, the Anti-Steel Clan army troops would be exhausted in both body and spirit, and rendered worthless as battlefield assets before the main body of the Steel Clan army arrived for their decisive battle.
“Dammit!” Erna shouted again. “In that case, I should just run out ahead of everyone and try to stop the enemy from—”
Bára gave a pained smile at Erna’s attitude and vigor, but cut her off. “I know how strong you aaare, but you’d be too far outnumbered to surviiive.”
Erna was one of the important pillars of the Sword Clan. Bára couldn’t allow her to go out and die such a wasteful, inglorious death.
“But at this rate, we’ll keep losing men and morale thanks to their dirty tricks!”
Bára folded her arms and frowned. “Mm, that’s truuue. I wonder what we should dooo. This is troubliiing.”
Her “stretched” way of talking made it seem like she wasn’t troubled by anything in the slightest, but she was in fact mulling over this issue quite seriously.
Even just approaching these enemies was impossibly hard. Even though Bára was known throughout the nations in her region as a genius strategist, frankly speaking, she couldn’t see a solution.
Up to this point, the Sword Clan had been invincible on the battlefield thanks to Fagrahvél’s trump card—the rune Gjallarhorn, the Call to War, which imbued soldiers with the power to overtake any foe, no matter how strong.
However, that power would likely prove futile against these particular opponents.
Honestly, she was still struck with amazement at the novelty of waging battle the way they did.
The one counter-strategy she could be sure of was to build earthen ditches and embankments, along with more anti-horse wooden barriers, so that the horses couldn’t approach in the first place.
But her side was the one conducting an invasion; hardening their defenses and digging in here went against that objective entirely.
And it would take far longer than another day and night to build those sorts of defenses anyway, during which she was sure they’d be the victims of further attacks and sabotage.
Either way, the men would be driven to exhaustion eventually, at which point the Steel Clan army proper would arrive. That was something she couldn’t allow to happen.
“It really makes me realiiize just how much it hurts uuus that we couldn’t kill that man the first niiight.”
Thanks to that failure, the enemy general had learned to be more wary of her and no longer launched attacks without ample precaution.
Even if she were to deliberately show an opening, they most surely wouldn’t take the bait again.
They weren’t going to try and deal her side any heavy damage in one attack anymore. Instead, they were going to stick to dealing them modest casualties from long range, over and over.
“Uugh. I’m sorry.”
“Ohh, that’s not what I meeeant. I wasn’t blaming youuu.”
“But still...”
“Hm, it looks like something is troubling you.”
As the two of them brooded together, an altogether sunny and confident voice broke in on them.
It belonged to a slightly pudgy man with a rather impressive beard, wearing clothes made from rare silken thread that indicated he was someone of rather high status.
“It’s yooou...” Bára began.
“Lord Alexis!” Erna finished.
The imperial priest, Alexis—a man whom both of them knew well, and the man whom both of them were most wary around.
On the surface, he was a goði, a priest who also served as an official representative of the authority of the þjóðann. He traveled on diplomatic missions to many different clans, serving as the mediator for their most important Oath of the Chalice rituals.
However, they’d discovered that, behind the scenes, he was connected directly to the Spear Clan patriarch Hárbarth.
Alexis was accompanying the Anti-Steel Clan army on its campaign, serving as Hárbarth’s “eyes” here.
“What business do you have with us?”
“Hee hee, oh, I wish you wouldn’t be so hostile with me. After all, I’m here with some information I think you’ll find quite welcome to hear.”
“Informatiooon?” Bára narrowed her eyes at Alexis.
This man was the loyal servant of Hárbarth, the man who had been jockeying for political control of the empire behind the scenes for some time now. It was only fair to suspect there was an ulterior motive at play here.
Alexis seemed to silently acknowledge that aspect of the situation, maintaining his friendly smile and allowing her overt suspicion to slide off of him rather than protest.
“Yes, that’s right. Lord Hárbarth would like to offer you his cooperation.”
“You came to the wrong place. You’ll find nothing to feed on here.”
Hveðrungr’s remarks were addressed to the crows trotting about through the dew-soaked grass at his feet.
Crows were carrion birds—scavengers that fed on the flesh of the dead—a familiar sight on the fields of war.
Drawn by the scent of blood, they would gather at the sites of battles, often coming from seemingly out of nowhere.
Because of this, they were viewed as harbingers of misfortune and regarded with loathing. However, Hveðrungr found little to dislike about such shrewd, opportunistic creatures.
After all, were those not attributes considered most essential in patriarchs and generals?
He spent a few moments mulling these thoughts over, telling himself that he wanted to be known and feared for those same traits, just as the crows were.
As he was doing so, however, a scout he had sent out arrived back at the Regiment’s forward camp looking rather worse for wear.
“Father!” he shouted. “The Anti-Steel Clan Alliance troops camped around Dauwe Castle have formed up and begun marching west!”
“So, that’s the choice they made...” Hveðrungr nodded thoughtfully, placing a hand to his chin. “It seems they really do have a sharp mind among them.”
Hveðrungr had calculated that, in response to his cavalry’s hit-and-run tactics, his enemy would most likely take one of two courses of action.
Either they would fortify themselves over time so that they could be ready to receive and retaliate against the Regiment’s attacks at maximum strength, or they would advance, eventually drawing him and his riders out by creating a situation where they would have no choice but to attack.
The former option would have been the more convenient of the two for Hveðrungr’s needs.
His objective was not to defeat and drive off the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance Army, but rather to obstruct their advance, holding them in this area for however much time it took for the Steel Clan’s main army to arrive, making their best effort to wear them down in the meanwhile.
If the enemy army had instead chosen to dig in here and prepare themselves to better counter his attacks, that would have been far more ideal.
Learning of and then taking the course of action one’s enemy would least want was a core principle of warfare. In that sense, Hveðrungr’s opponent had made an excellent decision.
“Naturally, they’ve got to be headed for Víðríðr.”
Víðríðr was the Ash Clan capital. If one counted the many small farming villages surrounding it, there were tens of thousands of people living in the area.
The enemy strategist had likely surmised that if the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance Army were to attack there, the cavalry that had thus far tormented them with repeated hit-and-run attacks would instead be forced to fight them without the option to flee.
All things considered, that line of thought was by and large correct.
The clan system of Yggdrasil’s society was built on the bonds formed by the Oath of the Chalice.
A child subordinate swore an oath of absolute loyalty to a sworn parent, and in exchange, the parent swore to provide support and protection to their sworn children.
If the Ash Clan capital Víðríðr fell to the enemy, the Steel Clan would have failed to uphold its vow to protect its subordinate child clan, and would suffer a great blow to its honor.
“This is turning into something of a headache,” Hveðrungr muttered.
It was three days’ march on foot from Dauwe to Víðríðr, and even if he kept up the Regiment’s hit-and-run tactics to slow them down, he could likely only double that at most. Meanwhile, it’d still be at least twenty days until the Steel Clan’s main army arrived.
These were also the forces that captured the famously-impregnable Dauwe Castle in the course of one day. By any normal estimation, there was no way he could hold them back long enough.
“Still, I suppose I have no choice other than to make it happen, somehow...”
Hveðrungr had his own personal reasons for needing to prevent the capture of Víðríðr.
It wasn’t out of concern for the people. This man had once set fire to his own lands, burning the homes of his subjects to delay his own defeat—He didn’t care in the slightest about what happened to some region he’d only set foot in a scant few days ago.
However, right now he wanted to do everything possible to avoid allowing anything to occur that would lower his reputation within the ranks of the Steel Clan.
He wasn’t going to retire and spend the rest of his days living a modest, quiet life. He was still young. He wanted to take advantage of the freedom that came with his new rank and status.
He also wanted to witness the path taken by the man who had defeated and surpassed him.
“Heh... All I can do right now is give this everything I’ve got.”
Hveðrungr stood up, his cape catching the air as he turned.
He still had time left to think of something, and there was no harm in slowing the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance Army’s movements as much as possible in the meantime.
“All right, men! We’re moving out!”
As Hveðrungr shouted the order, he mounted his own horse and spurred it into a gallop. The rest of the Independent Cavalry Regiment followed behind him.
After an hour of riding, they spotted the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance Army on the march.
...And as soon as they did, the high-pitched sound of bronze war gongs came echoing from that direction. It seemed that, after the numerous attacks they’d suffered over the past several days, the enemy were wary enough of surprise attacks now to spot the Regiment coming.
However, that didn’t present any major problem.
“Fire all arrows!”
At Hveðrungr’s command, the Regiment riders all unleashed their arrows at once.
The Steel Clan had supplied them with composite bows, the same new models also used by the Múspell Special Forces.
The new bows had a far greater firing range than the ordinary bows these men had been using up until now. As a result, they could now fire their arrows from outside the range of the enemy’s archers. In other words, they could deliver a completely one-sided attack.
The volley of arrows were launched high up into the sky, where they traced a tall, long arc, at last raining down onto the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance soldiers.
“Hm?!” Hveðrungr grunted in surprise as he watched what happened next.
With a satisfying thunk, the rain of arrows embedded themselves into the wooden shields being held up by the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance soldiers.
Despite being made with iron, the arrows hadn’t pierced through the shields completely. They would have to be very thick shields for that to happen.
“...That’s odd.” Behind his mask, Hveðrungr’s brow furrowed.
Until just the day before, the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance soldiers were using much thinner shields—the kind that were cheap, but still enough to defend against simple arrows with sharpened wooden tips or stone arrowheads.
Hveðrungr didn’t think that they could have distributed thicker shields like these across their entire army of thirty thousand in such a short space of time.
This combined army was made up of squads assembled from the individual armies of multiple different clans. Taking that into account, it was hard to imagine they’d all be carrying the same type of equipment. So then, he’d just happened to run into a formation armed with heavy shields this time.
That was a reasonable conclusion he could make, but he suddenly had a terrible feeling about this.
...And, that was when it happened.
“Rrraaaaaaggghhh!”
“Rrrooooooggghhh!”
War cries rose up from behind him, on both his left and right rear flanks.
“What?! What’s happening?!”
Wide-eyed, Hveðrungr whirled around to look behind him.
For a short moment, he had no idea what was going on.
Ordinarily, the answer should have required no thought. It was obvious.
However, even for someone as clever as Hveðrungr, it took a few seconds for his mind to reach the truth.
That was because this was something he’d assumed couldn’t possibly happen to him.
“An ambush?!”
The two large groups of soldiers were flying the banners of the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance Army. The ground rumbled loudly, and they kicked up large clouds of dust as they charged toward the Regiment’s formation.
“Inconceivable! How can this be?!”
If they’d set up an ambush for him, that meant that they knew exactly where in their formation he’d been planning to attack.
If this had been an ambush after a feigned retreat, in which they drew him to follow them along into their trap, that would still make some sense.
Likewise if their scouts had spotted him far in advance, which would have given them time to maneuver into place.
However, neither of those things had happened here.
Rather than a false retreat, the enemy had been conducting a normal march, advancing in a long, snaking formation. They should have had no way of knowing at what point along their marching column he would strike—not to mention whether he’d do so from their left or right side.
Had their scouts spotted and tracked him?
No, that definitely couldn’t have happened.
The incredible speed and mobility of the Independent Cavalry Regiment was one of its defining features.
Even if spotted by scouts, the Regiment could reach the enemy army formation before the scouts could make it back on foot to report them.
Even if Hveðrungr did allow for the possibility that scouts had somehow managed to alert them of his presence, it still shouldn’t have given them enough time to prepare a trap as elaborate as this.
“Grrh, this doesn’t make any sense!” Hveðrungr growled. “But I guess there’s no point dwelling on that right now.”
As he spoke, the enemy ambush had already cut off the direction his men had come from—in other words, their escape route. They were surrounded.
At this rate, it would only be a matter of time before they were wiped out.
He didn’t have any time to waste hesitating.
“All troops, forward charge! We’re going to break right through them!”
Hveðrungr unsheathed the blade strapped at his waist, and riding to lead his formation from the front, he plunged into the enemy forces head-on.
If death is certain, then I shall at least die with valor. ...Naturally, such heroic and resigned thinking could not have been further from Hveðrungr’s mind.
He’d made this decision precisely because he saw this as the only chance for his survival.
His opponent was a massive army.
Just as there were frontline commanders with true talent and skill among its ranks, there were those without it.
Yggdrasil was a meritocratic society centered around rule by the strong, so appointments of people without any ability to positions of authority was certainly infrequent. Of course, every person had their own strong and weak areas.
Someone who climbed the ranks thanks to their skill in combat would not necessarily have the ability to command others efficiently.
Not to mention, this army was formed by hastily combining the soldiers of several different clans.
There would be difficulties in communication and coordination between the squads from different nations.
The signs of those weaknesses were only visible in very subtle details, such as tiny irregularities in the movements of the soldiers. Those tells were something that any ordinary person would miss—that even someone with experience and training would miss—but Hveðrungr was able to seek out and spot them with precision.
Indeed, this was only possible through the incredible powers of perception that Yuuto had such high regard for.
His riders attacked using the arrowhead formation, focusing all of their energy into a narrow point, and that likely tipped the scale.
After a fierce battle, the Independent Cavalry Regiment broke through the enemy lines to the other side and subsequently made their escape.
Once they were no longer surrounded, they could move however they wished. Utilizing the mobility provided by their horses, they easily outpaced any attempts at pursuit, and though they had suffered some casualties, they’d succeeded in cutting their way free of a deadly trap.
Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of the terror that would befall them, as they would soon come to learn.
“Pheew! That was horrible!”
“Gah! Every sip I try to take of this kumis makes my damned wounds hurt even more.”
“So stop drinking it, then.”
“Shut the hell up! You think I can go without a drink after all that?”
Deep in the forest in the dead of night, the men of the Independent Cavalry Regiment were gathered around tiny campfires, arguing and joking in their usual boisterous manner.
They spoke rather crudely to one another, but it was all in good spirits.
After barely escaping the battle that morning, the Regiment had gone back into hiding in the thick forests near Dauwe Castle, where they were currently resting in order to heal up from that ordeal.
“Hey, keep in mind you’ve got to fight tomorrow too. Don’t go too wild tonight.”
The one who threw cold water on their revelry was, of course, their commander Hveðrungr.
“Heh heh, don’t worry sir, we know.”
“Hah, this doesn’t even count as ‘drinking’ for me.”
“Plus, c’mon, when it’s this chilly out, without a little drink or two to heat up the blood, a guy could catch a cold and end up in even worse shape to fight in the morning!”
The harvest season had passed, and it was well into the middle of the autumn months.
It was already the time of year when the cold started to make it difficult to sleep outside at night, and to add to that, they were camping in the highlands of eastern Bifröst, where it got even colder still.
They couldn’t make large bonfires due to the risk of revealing their location to the enemy, either. And so, Hveðrungr had decided to permit his men to drink a small amount of alcohol to help them cope.
“They sure do respect you a great deal,” a man remarked, walking up beside Hveðrungr.
He was Bömburr, the deputy commander of the Múspell Special Forces, who had been assigned as a ‘watchdog’ to monitor him during this mission.
He wasn’t anything extraordinary when it came to combat ability, but his main role within the Special Forces was in keeping them organized and coordinated, and as such, he was good at paying close attention to people. It would be safe to assume that even Hveðrungr wouldn’t be able to plot anything treacherous under his watchful eye.
Of course, Hveðrungr had no intention of doing so. At least, not right now, anyway.
“Speaking frankly, Lord Hveðrungr, I’d been a little worried about whether the Regiment members would follow your orders, but it would seem my anxiety was misplaced.”
“Hmph,” Hveðrungr snorted dismissively, and took a small drink from his own cup.
It wasn’t as if Bömburr’s doubt was something he couldn’t understand.
Soldiers fought with their lives on the line. They wouldn’t be expected to follow someone into battle who lacked the strength of character to prove themselves worthy of commanding them.
Hveðrungr had always lost battle after battle against Yuuto: the Battle of Náströnd, the Battle of Körmt River, and then the battles during the final Steel Clan invasion campaign against them. All told, his side had suffered quite a large number of wounded and dead.
He’d been outfoxed by the enemy this time, too, and it wouldn’t have been odd at all if some of the men began to resent the idea of following his orders.
“Haha! You’ve got nothin’ to worry about there!”
“That’s right. We know exactly how great this guy is because we’ve fought so long at his side.”
“Yeah, he conquered all of western Miðgarðr in just one year. Man, that sure was somethin’ else.”
“As for the battles against the Steel Clan... well, he just ended up with the worst enemy possible. That’s the only way I can put it.”
“Yeah, true. They used those walls made of wagons, and those exploding thunder balls—nobody could win against stuff like that!”
“But even still, this guy worked out a bunch of different ways to counter them. Can you believe it?”
“He really is amazing.”
The Regiment members all took turns singing Hveðrungr’s praises.
Hveðrungr let slip a wry chuckle.
“Heh heh, it’s no use; I can tell exactly what you’re all thinking. Even if you flatter me, I’m not giving you any extra alcohol.”
“Damn! You’re no fun, Father!”
“Ugh, shows what I get for praising you!”
“All right, then, how ’bout we don’t follow your orders unless you give us more to drink?”
“Yeah, there’s an idea!”
And with that, the atmosphere around the Regiment camp grew even rowdier.
It was a scene that left Bömburr, as well as the other Múspell members present, completely taken aback.
The Wolf Clan under Yuuto had been a nation of rule by law, and that had continued on into the new reign of the Steel Clan. The Steel Clan was very harsh when it came to discipline in the military, and that was even more true of the culture of the Múspell Special Forces, owing to the personality of its commander, Sigrún.
From their perspective, the idea of soldiers taking this sort of attitude with their commander and the former ruler of their nation was absolutely unforgivable.
“They, ah... that’s certainly a very informal culture in your ranks.”
“Heh, that’s because the men of Miðgarðr are rough and wild, and ‘etiquette’ is a foreign concept to them.”
“Ah, I see...” Bömburr could only respond with a vague nod.
Apparently even the deputy commander of the Múspell Special Forces had been thrown off by the difference in cultures.
“Still, they are loyal to their orders,” Hveðrungr continued. “There won’t be any... hm?”
Hveðrungr cut himself off when he heard an unexpected sound: a large group of birds all taking flight at once. He peered suspiciously up at the night sky.
Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have allowed himself to dwell on it, quickly returning to the conversation.
However, after the incident earlier that day, there was a strange uneasiness within him, something he couldn’t explain.
There were, of course, some birds that moved around at night, but for the most part, birds flew only during the day.
“Hey, all of you, get yourselves ready to move out. Leki, Skola, go search in the direction those birds came from.”
“Got it.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
The two men he’d given the orders to mounted their horses and set off in the direction Hveðrungr indicated.
Birds were easily startled by small disturbances and reacted to each other, so that if one took off in surprise, the whole flock did so as well. The usual causes were a predatory bird or beast moving nearby. In all likelihood, that was all it had been this time as well.
However, there was nothing to lose by choosing to be extra cautious here.
As it would turn out, that choice determined the fate of the Independent Cavalry Regiment that night.
A short while passed, and then—
“Father! It’s the enemy! They’re coming this way, and there’s a whole lot of them!”
The men he’d sent out as scouts came rushing back to camp yelling about news of an impending attack.
“Rrrgh, damn it all!” Hveðrungr spat out bitterly. “How is it they know where we are?!”
After he’d led his men free of the enemy ambush and away from the battle area, he’d made doubly sure to confirm that no one was still chasing them. On top of that, once all of the enemy soldiers were completely out of sight, he’d even gone to the trouble of changing up the Regiment’s travel route as well.
Just as his foes had predicted both the time and location of his surprise attack that morning, this too seemed completely nonsensical.
“Either way, we’re pulling out, now!”
Shouting that order, Hveðrungr mounted his own steed and spurred it into a run.
Thanks to his earlier orders, the men of the Regiment were fully prepared, and they quickly fell in line riding behind him.
The value of these initial actions cannot be understated.
If, for instance, Hveðrungr had ignored the sound of the birds, he would undoubtedly have been hit directly by his enemy’s surprise assault, and the Regiment would have sustained terrible losses.
However, the struggles for the Regiment did not end there.
Whenever they tried to conduct their sudden attacks, the Anti-Steel Clan Alliance Army was ready and waiting with fully-prepared ambushes that seemed tailor-made for each situation.
No matter where they tried to run off to afterwards, the enemy easily discovered their location, and launched surprise attacks of their own.
“What sort of mastermind is behind this?! How could anyone see through us this clearly?!”
At the risk of stating the obvious, Hveðrungr lived in an era of history before things like aircraft and transceivers were invented. Searching for people was primarily dependent on manpower.
Though the Ash Clan was a small nation in relation to others, it was still a vast area to cover on foot.
The fact that his location and movements could be uncovered over and over like this was unthinkable within the bounds of common sense.
“It would be one thing for the gods who can look down on us from the heavens above, but humans are creatures who walk the earth. How could human eyes seek us out like this?!”
Hveðrungr felt a terrible, cold shiver run down his spine.
Heh heh heh, he has good intuition. Though, I’m sure he himself has no idea he gave the answer to his own question.
A small figure was looking down at Hveðrungr from up in the sky.
Spreading its wings out wide, it boldly followed right behind the man as he fled.
If that figure had been human—nay, if it had at least been anything following him over land—Hveðrungr, with his skills of perception, might have taken notice.
But the black feathers of a crow made it hard to spot against the sky in the dark of night. And right now, the man was being chased by his enemies, so he had no time to scan the sky for oddities in the first place.
And that was why he couldn’t have noticed.
This small creature had always been watching him.
It’s certainly true that you lot are the swiftest military unit in Yggdrasil, faster than anyone else in the realm by far. But even so, you aren’t fast enough to escape the all-seeing eye of the Watcher From on High.
The red eyes of the crow—Hárbarth’s eyes—betrayed a subtle hint of joy, twinkling faintly with a sinister light.
This was Hárbarth’s power: His spirit could possess and control the bodies of other living creatures.
However, that power still had limits. Generally, he could only take control of lesser creatures that lacked complex intelligence or a strong will.
When it came to other humans, it was basically impossible unless they were sleeping or otherwise unconscious, and even then, the instant the target’s consciousness returned, his mind would be forcefully ejected. In that sense, his power was weak, imperfect.
However, the value of any tool lay in how one used it.
By projecting himself into small creatures like mice and squirrels, he could see into every nook and cranny of the imperial palace. By projecting himself into birds, he could monitor his enemies unseen from the skies above them, much like he was doing now.
It was the information he’d gathered using his power in this way that had facilitated his rise to his current position.
He’d exposed the secrets of his political enemies and robbed them of their public support, while leading foreign enemies to fall into his traps and adding to his military accomplishments. Over the long years, he’d accumulated and greatly expanded his authority.
Nowadays, Hárbarth’s vast capacity for obtaining any and all information was well known to all, such that there was hardly anyone left in the core of the empire who would dare speak ill of him.
The þjóðann Sigrdrífa and the Sword Clan patriarch Fagrahvél were perhaps the only exceptions to that. Of course, even the two of them were now his pawns, moving according to his will.
Heh heh heh, what a sight it was to behold. The power of Gjallarhorn, the Call to War, is magnificent indeed.
He had watched the battle play out at Dauwe Castle from beginning to end. Fagrahvél’s rune could act upon an entire army at once, and in terms of swaying the momentum of an entire large-scale battle, no one else held power that could compare—except for Hárbarth himself, with his ability to monitor all of the enemy’s troop positions and movements from the skies.
Either one of them alone was already a most terrible threat, and now the both of them had joined forces.
Furthermore, they could make the most of their powers thanks to the array of competent generals leading their armies.
The preparations for this had been flawless.
Keh heh heh, everything is set. At last, the Black One will meet his end here.
The cawing of a crow resounded in the darkness of the forest, echoing loudly.
To the fleeing members of the Independent Cavalry Regiment, it was an ominous sound—like the laughter of a harbinger of their misfortune.
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