ACT 4
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“The enemy is attacking! I repeat, the enemy is attacking!”
“Ugh... Again?”
Yuuto was yanked out of his slumber and back to the waking world by the clangor of gongs and shouts. The room in front of him was still dark. He grabbed his smartphone from next to his pillow and activated it with the fingerprint sensor. It was 1:12 a.m. He had gone to bed around 11 p.m., so he had gotten perhaps two hours of sleep.
“They really won’t let us rest, will they?” Felicia, who had been sleeping next to him, said with a mix of fatigue, resignation, and resentment. Her current state of mind was understandable. Over the past week, the Flame Clan Army had bombarded the walls in irregular intervals during the day, and at night, they had mixed in sapper units as well as feints that involved false battle cries. All of these things piled more and more pressure onto the defenders and robbed them of any opportunity to sleep. Although Yuuto was aware that these were commonly employed siege tactics, it didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Yuuto quickly jumped out of his tent and headed to the command center a short walk away. Fagrahvél and Bára were already there, as they had been placed in command as he tried to rest.
“What’s the situation?!” Yuuto asked.
“Your Majesty?! I thought you were going to leave things to us and get some rest.”
“Well, I’m far too awake now to go back to sleep. Fill me in.” Yuuto waved off Fagrahvél’s concerned question and instead encouraged her to answer his question.
“They’re attacking the west wall this time. Our archers responded quickly, and the enemy immediately retreated.”
“And the damage?”
“They’re still checking, but based on what could be heard, there were likely only around a hundred or so men. I don’t believe they would have accomplished much.”
“I see. But even a stream can eventually wear down a mountain.”
The Gjallarbrú Fortress was built to stop the Flame Clan Army’s advance. It was constructed entirely out of concrete and had been built without a single entrance on the far side. All concerns about blocking a major artery in Yggdrasil’s road network had been completely disregarded. However, the focused fire of the cannons was slowly chipping away at the fortress walls. On top of that, sappers would approach the walls under the cover of darkness and use axes and hammers to make the breaches larger. Had they been focusing on a single point, the Steel Clan could have stationed their defenders on that point, but Nobunaga was aware of that and was attacking multiple locations at once, and completely at random, to prevent the defenders from being able to predict his next move.
“It would have been better if we could have had kill holes for arrows or spears, but...” Fagrahvél said and furrowed her brow in disappointment.
Yggdrasil had nothing in the way of electrical lighting. At night, bonfires and torches were needed to create adequate visibility, and there were limits to how much light they gave off, particularly when they could only realistically be placed on the top of the wall. Yuuto agreed with Fagrahvél in that he would have liked to have a method to look out for the enemy lower down on the wall. However...
“Stop blaming yourself. There would have been no way to finish the wall in time if we had included anything like that. I’ve said it several times now, but you did an amazing job.”
The fact that they were able to create such a long wall in such a short time was because it was built in an extremely simple manner: two adobe walls made of brick with concrete poured in between them. As for the wall’s appearance, there were spots along it where the concrete had seeped out between the bricks, and the entire thing was sloppily constructed in a way that resembled a child’s art project. Even by cutting corners and utilizing Fagrahvél’s Rune of Kings, they had just barely completed the wall in time. Had they tried to add in kill holes for spears and archers, they probably wouldn’t have managed to finish even half of the wall. In that sense, they were in a much better situation than they would have been in otherwise.
“You honor me more than I deserve. However, the fact of the matter is that we’re still on the back foot against the enemy here.”
“Yeah, true.” Yuuto’s features twisted into a frown.
They usually only noticed an enemy attack when the Flame Clan soldiers started to hammer away at the wall. Because of the head start this gave the enemy troops, the attackers were able to get in several blows against the wall before the defending Steel Clan soldiers could respond appropriately, and because this was all occurring under the cover of darkness, the defenders were unable to accurately hit the enemy attackers, meaning they were able to get away unscathed. Even so, they couldn’t just leave the enemy to continue to chip away at their walls. Right now, they were letting the Flame Clan get the better of them.
“That said, I don’t intend to just sit back and let them get away with it. I’ve already taken steps against it,” Yuuto said as his lips curled up into a grin. He wasn’t so confident in his ability to improvise that he thought he could deal with the situation as it developed. His way of doing things was to prepare his measures in advance. “Lord Nobunaga is, frankly, an all-around genius. His strategies are extremely logical, his ideas are sharp and innovative, and he has the power and charisma to shatter existing concepts. He’s a ridiculously capable warlord, whether he’s leading field battles or sieges. Of course, it’s not like he has no weaknesses at all.”
“He has a weakness?” Fagrahvél leaned forward to ask.
“Oh? I find it hard to believe that monster has anything of the sort,” Hveðrungr, who had kept his silence until that point, also inquired with great interest. He had actually crossed swords with Nobunaga in his last campaign and knew from experience just how dangerous an opponent the man was. The ludicrously powerful aura of intimidation Nobunaga radiated was something that had to be experienced to be believed.
“And that weakness is?”
“Oh, that’s... Mm?” Yuuto paused mid-sentence and turned around, glaring at a single point.
“An enemy attack?” Fagrahvél sighed out the question.
Yuuto nodded. “I think so. I felt malice. The center, I think.”
“Very well. Messenger, it’s as His Majesty said. Hurry and send word to the defenders in the center!” Fagrahvél issued the order to a nearby soldier, who quickly ran off to communicate his message. She then quickly issued additional orders, and the command center was lit up with activity.
“Lately, you’ve been almost godlike, Big Brother. It’s quite the feat to have been able to feel an enemy’s presence from such a vast distance,” Felicia said with a note of admiration. Over the past week, Yuuto had somehow detected the enemy’s attacks several times despite being at the command center, which was located some distance away from the front lines. He was able to feel the enemy’s malice and hostility. At first, he thought it was just his imagination, but he felt a strange surge of anxiety and sent his soldiers in the direction that he felt the hostility radiating from, and each time, there had been an enemy presence there.
“It’s not something that I should be given credit for. Given that it keeps happening, it’s probably from the power of the twin runes that Rífa left me.” Yuuto smiled a sad, affectionate smile. During his recent war with the Silk Clan, he had suddenly been able to see the locations of both his and the enemy armies in his mind. At that moment, Yuuto had felt his twin runes awaken, though not to their full potential.
“I see. It’s similar to the power you described back then. That would make sense,” Felicia responded.
“Not quite. It feels a bit different from that. Hey, remember when I checked my powers? I found out that my runes were Hervör, Guardian of the Host, and Herfjötur, Fetter of the Host, right?”
“Yes.”
“It’s just a hunch, but I’m pretty sure the ability to locate the armies is thanks to Herfjötur, and this ability to sense intent is due to Hervör.”
“Oh, really? It seems to me that they’re the same ability.” Felicia tilted her head quizzically.
She had a point. At a glance, they seemed very similar, but Yuuto knew in his own mind that they were clearly different abilities.
“It’s all a bit nebulous, but being able to grasp where the armies are is like looking at the battlefield from above. I can just see them, it’s as simple as that. As far as the ability to sense intent goes, that’s something I literally feel on my skin. It’s a hot sensation if I sense their will to fight, and if that intent is malicious, it becomes an uncomfortable, creepy feeling.”
Masters of combat are said to be able to feel an enemy’s intent when facing off against an opponent and can feel that intent faster than the enemy can move. Felicia hadn’t reached that level just yet, but Sigrún, Skáviðr, and Hildegard could, evidently, clearly sense these things when facing off against their opponents. Yuuto was sure that what they experienced was something close to the feeling that he felt.
“I see. It does make sense. You’re very good at reading people’s emotions, after all, Big Brother. That’s probably been strengthened by the power of the twin runes.”
“Yeah, that’s probably what it is.”
The greatest trauma that Yuuto had suffered in his life was the death of his sworn father, Fárbauti, and the subsequent banishment of his sworn brother Loptr, both events having occurred because he had been oblivious to how others were feeling. In the aftermath of that, he had sworn to himself that he would make a conscious effort to observe and pay attention to the emotions of others, and his new position as patriarch had forced him to develop that skill set very quickly. It definitely felt like that ability, one he had spent the past few years honing, had indeed been strengthened by his twin runes.
“However, it’s strange when I think about it. Your runes are supposed to be sealed by the Gleipnir that was used to summon you back here, are they not?”
“Yeah. Even when I look at them now, they’re still sealed. When I was able to use Hervör, I felt Rífa’s presence.”
“Yes, I recall you mentioning that.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she’s probably doing what she can to lend me her strength.”
Yuuto thought of his late wife affectionately and offered her a silent thanks. He had no proof, and there was no way to be certain either. Regardless of that, though, he was strangely certain that she was right there with him.
“My Great Lord, it appears that our attack on the wall’s center failed. The enemy had been anticipating the arrival of our men.”
“So it would seem. Given how many times this has happened, it cannot be shrugged off as mere coincidence.”
As he listened to Ran’s report, Nobunaga casually yanked out a few nose hairs and snorted. It was quite eerie for an enemy to detect his sappers, especially so when they had approached the walls under the cover of darkness and had been dressed entirely in black, as well as not wearing armor to avoid making any noise during their approach. However, this world was home to many Einherjar—people who were gifted with supernatural powers. On top of that, the young Suoh Yuuto possessed several mysterious technologies that even Nobunaga had no knowledge or understanding of. In Nobunaga’s mind, this wasn’t a particularly surprising development.
“The fact that the sappers managed to succeed on occasion and catch the enemy unawares means it’s not some strange technology from the lad’s era that’s detecting them. With that in mind, the most likely culprit is the power of an Einherjar.”
“I agree,” Ran replied and nodded. Were it some kind of mechanical detection method, the sentries would be taking advantage of it, and every attempt by the sappers to reach the wall would have failed as a result. By contrast, if the reason for their failures was due to an Einherjar’s ability, it wouldn’t matter how powerful they were; they were still human after all, and at some point, the rune’s wielder would need to sleep. In line with that reasoning, the sappers’ successful approaches had indeed occurred when the Einherjar responsible was asleep.
“What of our losses?”
“I’m told four were hit by arrows and require treatment. None of our men were killed.”
“Ah, as expected. The defenders may well be able to tell our men are making their move, but their archers can’t actually see our forces approaching the wall.” With that, Nobunaga flicked his nose hairs into the wind. Had the enemy archers been able to see their sappers, they would have taken much greater casualties. As things stood, the enemy was simply making guesses as to the general location of the enemy units and was firing projectiles blindly in that direction. That, too, helped Nobunaga eliminate something technological as the reason for the enemy’s capability to detect the Flame Clan’s sappers ahead of their attacks. Thanks to those deductions, he knew there was nothing to fear. “Have our men continue the cannon barrages during the day and sapping attacks at night, as per our existing plans.”
“Yes, My Lord. We’ll continue to grind away at both the wall and the enemy’s morale.”
That was a foundational tactic in siege warfare. A lack of sleep would rob the enemy of physical strength, awareness, and intelligence. What the Flame Clan needed to do was steadily weaken their enemy by maintaining the pressure against them.
“A lion will use all its strength even when hunting a hare. And Suoh Yuuto is no hare; he is a lion like me. If we underestimate him, he might very well tear out my throat.”
Nobunaga wasn’t one to gamble on the outcome of a battle. Ever since the Battle of Okehazama, where he had faced ruin at the hands of an enemy with overwhelming numerical superiority, he had made certain to always secure more soldiers than his enemy, create the circumstances needed for victory, and secure that victory before even the first shot was fired.
He was still in the preparation phase of his campaign. He knew that he needed to use brute force to defeat his enemy to demonstrate his strength to the world, but Nobunaga wasn’t so naive to believe that he needed to face his enemy on equal terms and win a direct battle to achieve that outcome. What he needed to do was create the appearance of him winning an equal battle. Even if the enemy had been mentally and physically drained, so long as he defeated them in a frontal clash, the people of the world would accept that Nobunaga had defeated the old order fair and square. Nobunaga already viewed Yuuto as his equal, which was why he had no intention of holding back against him. After all, the stakes in this clash were the authority over and existence of their respective clans.
“Oh, My Great Lord! Good morning to you!”
The next morning, Nobunaga was taking a stroll when a soldier called over to him. Nobunaga turned to the soldier, smiling as he waved jauntily.
“Hello there, sentry. Good work. I’m impressed you noticed me. It means you’ve been doing your job well. Allow me to praise you.”
“Th...Thank you very much!” The soldier’s face was flushed with pleasure, and he replied with enthusiasm, bowing his head to Nobunaga. To the soldier, Nobunaga was the very epitome of a great liege lord. Nobunaga had suddenly appeared at the doors of the Flame Clan, immediately seized the title of patriarch, implemented countless reforms that improved the lives of the people, and expanded the Flame Clan’s territories by several times their original size. He was a great hero who had brought prosperity to the clan. To be thanked for his work and praised by such a man was perhaps the greatest joy that a soldier might ever experience.
“Keep up the good work.” Nobunaga gently patted the soldier on the shoulder and walked off.
Continuing his walk, Nobunaga cheerfully called out to the soldiers he encountered along the way.
“Ah, training, are you? Hard at work, I see! Do your best!”
“Hey, you. You look pale. Cut your training short and rest.”
“How are your injuries? I’m glad to see you’ve returned to us alive.”
While Nobunaga treated the upper echelons of his forces sternly and without mercy, he was also a man who had a softer side. He often interacted casually and cheerfully with his rank-and-file troops, as well as those who were dismissed as inferior by the rest of society.
The primary literary sources from the Warring States Period, titles such as Luis Frois’s Historia de Japon, noted that Nobunaga spoke casually with even the lowest ranking of his subordinates, while the Shincho Koki (The Chronicles of Nobunaga) brought up examples of Nobunaga participating in festivals and dancing alongside commoners. He would even partake in activities like wiping the sweat off their bodies. There also existed an anecdote of him telling the people of a particular village that he would like them to build a hut and feed a man born with a deformity that had resulted in the people of the village treating him like a mountain monkey. He also obliged them to provide the man with cotton. While he was known as a merciless and frightening figure among those who broke the law or those who disobeyed him, those particular traits were not wielded against the common people who lived their lives peacefully under his rule. It was because of examples like these that records often noted that Nobunaga was extremely popular and admired by the common people within his realms. The same held true in Yggdrasil.
“The Great Lord is such a wonderful man.”
“He cares about even us lowly soldiers and speaks to us as though we were his children.”
“For sure. He’s nothing like the arrogant and overbearing lords who oppress us.”
“Yeah! He is the man most suited to be þjóðann.”
The common soldiers were all full of praise for their lord. Due to the widespread conscription that Nobunaga had conducted, the bulk of the Flame Clan Army was now mainly made up of peasant farmers rather than professional soldiers. Conscripted soldiers often suffered from low morale, and this issue was often exacerbated if a war dragged on. However, that common wisdom didn’t apply to the Flame Clan Army. If anything, their morale rose with each passing day, and they were becoming more unified as an army. Nobunaga’s ability to achieve such things was one of the many things that marked him as the great man that had brought an end to one hundred years of civil war back in his homeland.
“Rot! Rot! Keep rotting!”
“I see you’re hard at work.”
Having arrived at his destination, Nobunaga called out to the girl who was dancing around a row of huts while chanting a rather ominous song. Her black hair, black eyes, and ivory skin set her apart from others here in Yggdrasil. Her name was Homura. She was the beloved daughter of Nobunaga, born to him and a local woman here in Yggdrasil.
“Oh, daddy!” Noticing Nobunaga’s arrival, Homura stopped her dance, her face breaking out in a happy smile as she dashed over to him. “Homura’s been working hard like you said, daddy!”
“Wonderful. You’re a very good girl, Homura.”
“Hehe!”
When Nobunaga patted her head, Homura giggled with a shy smile. Nobunaga found her reaction adorable and lightly ruffled her hair.
“Tee hee! More, more!”
“Heh. Very well.”
After thoroughly petting and ruffling her hair, Nobunaga turned his attention to a nearby wooden box. His lips curled up into a pleased smile. “Great results today, I see. Brilliant as always.”
White stones were piled high inside the wooden box. Those white stones were saltpeter. It was one of the ingredients necessary for the production of black powder, and it was the most difficult material to procure—a strategic resource that was of critical importance in the gunpowder era. The nearby huts were essentially the assembly line of an enormous saltpeter production factory.
Traditional Japanese saltpeter production was a process that involved soaking wormwood root in horse urine, then keeping that mixture stored at a particular temperature over a period of several years. The process created a large quantity (for the time) of saltpeter, and it had been an extremely important military secret for the Satsuma Clan and Hongan-ji Temple. Nobunaga had learned of the techniques required for its manufacture during his conflict with Hongan-ji Temple, and he had set up a secret production facility in a place called Gokayama. He had repeated that process here in Yggdrasil.
“Hehe... Is Homura a good girl?”
“But of course! You are a great girl! It’s thanks to you that two of the army’s biggest supply problems have been solved. It is no exaggeration to say that you’re the one who’s done the most for the Flame Clan in this war.” With that, Nobunaga once again patted her head.
He was telling the truth. The current advantage the Flame Clan enjoyed was largely due to the twin runes that Homura possessed. The first rune held the power to accelerate the growth of plants. Using that, she had solved the Flame Clan Army’s food supply problem. The second rune gave her the ability to control animals other than herself, and similarly to her first rune’s ability, allowed her to strengthen them. That said, it was difficult to make use of that ability on intelligent animals such as humans. She was only able to dominate lesser animals—ones that weren’t very smart. At first, Nobunaga had treated that ability as a useful tool for training horses, but one day she achieved a remarkable feat using it. She had managed to shorten the time it took to produce saltpeter.
According to Homura, the piles that produced the saltpeter were filled with tiny animals that they couldn’t see with the naked eye. Manipulating and strengthening those animals dramatically sped up the saltpeter production process. Given that Homura was still a child and her explanation was rather vague, Nobunaga wasn’t quite certain what the mechanism behind this process was, but what mattered to him was the fact that she had managed to shorten the process of creating saltpeter from a lengthy two years to less than two weeks. That meant that Nobunaga could use tanegashimas and province destroyers without worrying about his powder supply. That gave the Flame Clan an enormous advantage in many respects.
“I believe that only a few moves remain until we finally force the checkmate. So, Suoh Yuuto, if you have a way to flip this board over, go ahead and try it,” Nobunaga said with a wry grin growing upon his features. He bared his canine teeth in a predatory smile.
He knew that his own feelings were at odds with one another. Nobunaga’s most basic strategy in any war was to gather more soldiers than his enemy, sap the enemy’s strength, create an advantageous situation for himself, then win after securing certain victory through those preparations. In essence, Nobunaga’s style of warfare was to win with as little resistance as possible. Despite that, however, his heart was longing for his enemy to fulfill his expectations. There was a part of him that wanted nothing more than for his worst-case scenarios to come to fruition. He wanted desperately for Suoh Yuuto to be a man who could face him as an equal and rival as a commander. He wanted Yuuto to be the one opponent that could challenge him head on.
Meanwhile, far away from Gjallarbrú, in the city of Iárnviðr, Linnea let out a big yawn. It was extremely unusual for the exceedingly serious young woman to let something like that happen in public, but it was also perfectly understandable given recent events.
By all accounts, Iárnviðr was nearly impregnable. Its walls were arranged in the style of a star fort, and the entire city was surrounded by a moat. There had only been one actual assault by the enemy, but they had continued bombarding the city with their cannons all day and all night. She was never particularly brave, and if anything, was of a nervous disposition. Linnea had bags under her eyes, and it was clear she hadn’t been getting enough sleep.
“If you’re tired, perhaps you ought to get some rest? We can handle everything here,” Bruno said, snorting with a faint chuckle. While the words on their own were gentle, his expression and tone were both full of condescension and disdain. Linnea had thought they’d settled some of their differences during the recent Flame Clan assault, but it seemed she had underestimated just how twisted the man’s personality actually was. He may have had no problem fighting alongside Linnea, but he evidently had no intention of handing her the initiative. She could understand his feelings to some extent, but it still made him a bothersome man to deal with.
“I’m fine. We’re getting into the tougher stuff now. As the commander in chief, I can’t very well be asleep while everyone’s fighting.”
“If you say so. Shall we continue our discussion, then?”
“I believe the time has come for us to go on the offensive,” Linnea declared confidently, without a trace of hesitation.
It had been an hour since a messenger pigeon from the Múspell Unit had arrived, informing those within the city that they were in the vicinity and were awaiting orders from their garrison at Fort Horn. The reinforcements they had been holding out for had finally arrived. The Steel Clan now clearly had a numerical advantage, and they were in a position to catch the enemy between their two forces. The enemy had plenty of foodstuffs and gunpowder, meaning there was little possibility that they’d retreat due to a lack of supplies. The Steel Clan needed to deal with the Flame Clan Army sitting in front of Iárnviðr if they were going to move the Panther Clan civilians safely toward the east. In fact, if they didn’t do so quickly, those civilians would run out of supplies. There was no other option for them but to begin their attack.
“Mm, I agree. Then allow me to lead the first wave—the vanguard.” Bruno nodded with a faintly sour smile. Linnea looked somewhat surprised and blinked as she looked at Bruno. While she’d only worn her shocked expression for the briefest of moments and hadn’t moved much...
“What, exactly, are you implying with that expression?” Bruno had caught her surprise and looked at her with displeasure.
Linnea felt a tinge of anxiety in her heart, but she immediately pushed it down and put on her best diplomatic smile. “No, I was just a little surprised. I had thought you would be the most difficult to persuade under these circumstances. So to have you volunteer to lead the first wave was, well...”
From what she had heard, Bruno wasn’t much of a fighter. She still vividly remembered that Bruno had originally proposed simply abandoning the Wolf Clan’s sister clan, the Horn Clan, in the face of the Hoof Clan’s invasion of the Horn Clan’s territory. She’d also heard that he had suggested surrender during the early stages of the Siege of Iárnviðr, having written off the war as lost. That was Yuuto’s very first battle and was the battle that had established his reputation among the neighboring clans.
One of Linnea’s highest priorities at that particular moment was to welcome the Panther Clan caravan into the city as quickly as possible. In contrast, Bruno cared little about the citizens of other clans, his only imperative being to defend Iárnviðr at all costs. She hadn’t expected him to so easily agree with her proposal to charge out from the city and attack the Flame Clan Army head on.
“Hrmph. I suppose that you perceive me to be some sort of coward when the going gets tough; that I can only make bold decisions during peacetime when mine and others’ lives are not on the line.”
“No, that thought had never occurred to me.” Linnea tilted her head and blinked as though she had never once considered him to be like that, but, of course, she was lying. The truth was that she had faintly—no, had thoroughly—suspected that was the case. The anecdote of Bruno’s knees giving out from under him and him soiling himself when faced with Yuuto’s conqueror’s aura was an open secret among the Wolf Clan’s leadership, and Linnea, who had close ties with those people, had heard the story herself.
“I somehow doubt that. I am indeed a hopeless coward. The reason my Big Brother made me Leader of Subordinates rather than Second was likely because I often lost my composure during intense situations and was unable to steel myself to make difficult decisions,” he said self-deprecatingly with a dismissive snort. While the Leader of Subordinates, on paper, was a high-ranking position within many clans, it also permanently disqualified the occupant of that position from becoming patriarch of their clan. The only conclusion one could draw from this was that his beloved big brother, Fárbauti, had declared that Bruno was unsuited to the role of patriarch. It was easy to imagine the pain and despair that Bruno must have felt at the time.
“It only happens when those situations come on suddenly, though! I’ve had plenty of time to steel myself for this!” With that, Bruno confidently patted his own stomach. There wasn’t a trace of fear in his eyes. Instead, a strong will and determination burned within them.
That determination would have been obvious to anyone who had given it a moment’s reflection. Being so intimidated that he’d fallen on his rear and soiled himself was an enormously embarrassing mistake that could very well have cost him his position in the dog-eat-dog world of Yggdrasil. And yet, Bruno had somehow maintained his position as the head of the conservative faction within the Wolf Clan. Looking at it another way, that meant he had enough people that supported and admired him despite that humiliating incident, making it clear that he had the charisma and the character necessary to maintain his reputation despite everything.
“Besides, it would be a pity to not take part in what we already know is a winning battle.” With that, Bruno’s lips twisted into a malevolent smirk.
“I see. While I hate to admit it, it seems we’re rather alike,” Linnea said with a dry chuckle. She could understand Bruno’s feelings and thought processes like she could her own. She, too, often took time to reach a decision because she was too busy considering all the potential complications and consequences. Because of this, however, once she had come to a decision, she never wavered from it. She could remain steadfast in her choice because she had already thoroughly considered all the alternatives and possibilities.
“Very well. Lord Bruno, I leave the command of the vanguard to you. You’ll depart tomorrow morning! Go and show them what we’re made of!” Linnea ordered with a low, confident voice.
“Of course. I accept the honor of leading the charge,” Bruno responded in an unusually formal tone and bowed his head. That atmosphere only lasted for a brief moment, however. Soon after, both of them burst out in laughter.
“Heh. I see that you have finally arrived, Sigrún.” Shiba chuckled with pleasure as he read through the note brought to him by one of his spies. He had been the one who had perhaps been most anticipating this news.
“So, it begins soon.”
“Yeah. At long last. My beloved blade is crying out for action,” Shiba replied as he placed his hand on the hilt of the sword sheathed upon his hip.
Tradition had it that a weapon crafted by a master swordsmith was imbued with a soul of its own. The soul that made its home in his blade urged Shiba to hurry up—to provide an opportunity for it to fight. It yearned to be unleashed upon the world. It might very well have been just an illusion. It was also possible it was just him projecting his own wishes upon his sword. In Shiba’s mind, however, he had no doubt that it was the sword calling out to him.
“You’re determined to act?” Masa asked with a solemn expression.
It wasn’t that Shiba couldn’t understand what Masa was feeling, but...
“You don’t seem to be on board with this plan.”
“Of course not. Honestly, I don’t believe that it’s worth it.”
“Well, yeah. I know. This is the best option we have, though.”
“Do you truly believe that? Are you convinced that this decision isn’t being influenced by your emotions?”
“Yeah. This plan holds the greatest chance of succeeding.”
“Very well.” While it was with a great deal of reluctance, Masa finally nodded his assent. It seemed the exchange had let him make peace with the plan. He let out a soft sigh before returning to his usual frank and administrative tone of voice. “Our preparations are already complete. The only question is whether or not we can lure them in.”
“They’ll come. After all, the bait will be far too good to resist.” The corners of Shiba’s lips curled into a cocky grin.
While it may have sounded rather like he was singing his own praises, outside of Nobunaga, Shiba was the best known of the Flame Clan’s generals. Defeating him would remove a major threat and would substantially boost Steel Clan morale while simultaneously damaging Flame Clan morale immensely—a combination of boons that would be difficult to ignore. It was a rare and irresistible opportunity for the enemy.
“Right then. Masa, make sure the soldiers get plenty to eat tonight. I’ll even permit a mug of wine to go with it.”
“To all of them?” Unusually for him, Masa seemed to have concerns about following Shiba’s orders. After a moment’s hesitation, Masa decided to plainly voice his concerns. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? If all of them get a drink, then we’ll be defenseless if they attack us during the night...”
“Heh, that won’t happen. Though that’s just my intuition talking.” Shiba laughed, but he was absolutely certain about that. His voice carried a self-assurance that bordered on arrogance. “First of all, they have no reason to attack us when they’ve already got powerful reinforcements on the way.”
“Well, yes, but there’s still the one-in-a-thousand possibility that...” Masa interjected.
“That’s certainly true. In the end, it’s all about those one-in-a-thousand possibilities. Even if it does come to pass, however, it won’t have any impact on our plan,” Shiba responded plainly.
At most, it would mean a few more losses on their side. Those who would die were simply unlucky. They would have to accept their fate. The strong survive, and the weak perish; that was the fundamental law that governed everything in Yggdrasil. The weak had nothing else to pin the blame on but their own powerlessness.
“With that in mind, isn’t it better to have the soldiers face tomorrow’s battle with full stomachs, plenty of rest, and high morale, rather than having them fitfully spend the night watching for an ambush?”
“I-I suppose so...” Masa said with a tone of admiration.
On the battlefield, half-hearted commitments were perhaps the most deadly. For that reason, generals were required to have the clarity of judgment and firm decisiveness to toss aside one thing and focus on a particular strength during an emergency. That was, of course, much easier said than done.
“If I had to explain my reasons for my decision, that probably sums it up.” Shiba nodded as though he was satisfied with his explanation.
Putting his decisions into easily understandable words was one of Shiba’s greatest strengths. Most people tended to make decisions based on vague feelings that told them it was the right choice. Of course, since they were only vague feelings, those decisions were often misguided. Dissecting, analyzing, and correcting those vague feelings each and every day—converting them from vague notions to actual reasons—was a process that Shiba had spent years, even decades, refining.
Eventually, his decision-making abilities had overtaken his mind in how he processed information. What this meant was that once he had made a decision, he could then come up with many reasons as to why it was the right course of action. In short, Shiba now subconsciously sorted and processed all of those reasons and arrived at his decision. It was essentially subconscious intuition fueled by rational thought. It was because of this ability that Shiba was able to correctly make split-second decisions in the heat of battle.
“With all that said, I’m going to get some sleep.” He then rolled over onto his back. A moment later, Shiba began to snore. The sheer nerve that let him sleep without any anxiety about the coming battle was part of what made him such a successful general.
Some time had passed, and then...
“Ah!”
Shiba immediately sat up from his slumber. How long had he slept? There was a clear tension in the air. It was the smell of battle—a scent that was as familiar to him as his own home.
“The gods are on our side for this war! All forces, charge!”
Bruno drew the sword from his hip and shouted out orders, prompting a cheer to erupt from the Steel Clan forces. They were burning with anger. The soldiers had been looking for an opportunity to vent their frustrations.
“Excellent. Begin your charge in...”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Gah!”
“Ngh!”
“Argh!”
A series of loud bangs rang through the air, and several Steel Clan soldiers collapsed. They were being fired upon by arquebuses.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Guh!”
“Urgh!”
“Ack!”
Perhaps twenty seconds later, another volley cut through the air, and more soldiers collapsed under the fusillade.
“Confound it! They read our approach!” Bruno clicked his tongue with a look of annoyance.
With a single loader, an arquebus usually took over sixty seconds to prepare and load. By dividing the labor between loaders and gunners, it was possible to substantially shorten the reloading time. This was something the Steel Clan Army had implemented as well, but it was a difficult system to maintain under the chaos of a sudden assault. The fact that the Flame Clan troops were firing so rapidly meant that they had already been prepared for the Steel Clan’s approach. “I can see how he was able to overwhelm Sigrún in battle.”
Even in a one-on-one duel, no matter how fast and powerful a strike, if the defender was aware that it would be a strike from a high stance coming down at him ten seconds later, even an amateur was capable of dodging that attack. That was why the outcomes of battles depended on determining and gauging timing more than anything else. By that measure, the truly great generals were immensely sharp individuals who could, at times, read ten or even twenty steps ahead of their opponent. It seemed that the decisions of politicians like Linnea or Bruno were extremely easy for a highly experienced general like Shiba to read.
Gongs echoed from behind the vanguard forces. “There’s the signal! All forces halt! Great shield companies, forward march!” Bruno curled his lips into a smirk as he translated the orders from the gongs for his men. Neither Linnea nor Bruno were particularly skilled tacticians, but they were well aware that life never went as planned. It would have been best if their ambush had succeeded, but they had already planned for the possibility of its failure.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
No screams could be heard in the wake of the third barrage of gunfire. The orders issued earlier meant that the front line was being protected by the great shield companies, infantry units who had been equipped with thick steel shields specially designed to resist gunfire. By crouching behind their shields and holding them out in the right manner, they created a wall that the enemy arquebuses were unable to penetrate.
“There’s nothing to fear! Slowly but surely, we shall close the distance with the enemy!”
Having regrouped and reorganized their lines, the Steel Clan forces resumed their slow advance toward the enemy. While the Flame Clan troops continued to unleash more and more volleys into the Steel Clan ranks during their advance, it did nothing to stop their forward progress.
They had essentially implemented techniques used by riot police in their charges. It was a tactic that came from the 21st century. While bows could be fired upward and rain down arrow fire from an angle that would go over the shield line, it was an extremely effective formation against firearms that were only effective when used as direct-fire weapons. Of course, here in Yggdrasil it was impossible to create ballistic shields as light as the duralumin shields used by modern riot police, so these shield companies tended to be much slower than standard infantry.
“So, how will you respond next, Flame General?”
Neither Linnea nor Bruno actually wanted to defeat Shiba by their own hand. They were, in the end, a decoy to make it easier for Sigrún’s Múspell Unit to attack the enemy from behind. Given that the Flame Clan Army had noticed the attack from the force that had emerged from the safety of Iárnviðr’s walls, they were probably also aware that the Múspell Unit was now close by, which meant...
A loud roar that shook the very air on the battlefield bellowed out from the Flame Clan troops standing before them, and it was followed by the rumble of footsteps as they shook the ground underfoot with their sheer numbers. A weak-willed individual might very well have turned and ran from such a mob, but Bruno’s face was lit by a bright smile.
“Heh. Of course that’s what they’d do.”
From the moment they’d caught the Flame Clan Army between the two forces, the advantage shifted to the Steel Clan Army, and that advantage would only continue to grow as the battle dragged on. So, for the Flame Clan, their only option for survival was to quickly close the gap with the force that had made their way out from Iárnviðr and defeat it before the two Steel Clan units could complete their envelopment of the Flame Clan forces.
As far as the Múspell Unit was concerned, it was an extremely mobile unit that would be nearly impossible for the current Flame Clan forces to wipe out. It was also abundantly clear that if the Múspells were to be defeated, the unit that had left the safety of the city would simply retreat back into Iárnviðr and hole up behind its formidable walls once more. That would be an extremely troublesome situation for the Flame Clan to find itself in.
With all that in mind, their only feasible target was the force that had come out to face them, given that it provided them with an opportunity to break their ranks and take over Iárnviðr itself.
Once again, orders came from the gongs in the rear for all forces to halt.
“Heh, I was told she wasn’t much of a tactician, but I can see why she’s the Second of the Steel Clan despite her age. She’s got a good eye for seeing the big picture,” Bruno said with a soft chuckle. It was, in fact, extremely good timing. It would have been less than desirable to have the Flame Clan believe that he had ordered the vanguard to stop early.
“Archers! Gunners! Present arms!” Bruno issued the orders without hesitation. He and Linnea were both extremely cautious people. They were the sort who had preplanned solutions ready for any possible developments in battle. While they weren’t so good at dealing with the unexpected, the current situation was something they had already anticipated.
“Arquebuses are a weapon best suited for defense. Not much chance of firing multiple volleys while charging.”
It was something Yuuto had explained in the past, and since he had actually handled them as a defender, Bruno was well aware of that characteristic of arquebuses. In an extreme sense, bows could be fired while on the run, as the archer could draw arrows from the quivers on their backs, but with arquebuses, it was necessary to stop and kneel down to properly load them. This meant that the Flame Clan Army wouldn’t be able to use their matchlocks once they had gone on the offensive and begun their advance. If they did, they would manage to fire off a single volley at best. Simultaneously, now that the Steel Clan Army was stationary, they now had the time to prepare and aim their arquebuses at the approaching enemy.
“Now it’s your turn to be subjected to a fusillade... Mm?” Bruno noticed out of the corner of his eye that the Flame Clan had released something red into the air. They were still barely at effective bowshot distance, meaning something that could be seen clearly from their current position had to be quite large. Three such objects were launched in rapid succession at his forces. “Trebuchets! All forces, beware of boulders from above!”
They had already confirmed that the Flame Clan had used trebuchets at the Siege of Fort Gashina as well as during the opening stages of the Siege of Iárnviðr. With that said, trebuchets weren’t nearly as great a threat in a field battle as they were in a siege. They were easy to see from a distance, and they weren’t capable of sustaining a high rate of fire. It was also very easy to avoid their attacks. “They intend to disrupt our lines before they charge, do they? What a futile effort,” Bruno stated confidently.
However, his eyes went wide with shock as he saw what it was that was actually flying toward them. He quickly barked out new orders. “Gunners! Fire at those water urns!” The urns that had launched in their direction clearly had something inside. What was also clear was that whatever those urns contained would likely harm the Steel Clan Army in some way. If those urns contained gunpowder, then they were essentially giant tetsuhau, and if those were to burst within his ranks, they wouldn’t be able to avoid taking massive losses. He needed to destroy them before they landed. For Bruno to reach that conclusion was perfectly understandable, but in the end, it would only serve to work against him.
Bang! Ba...Splash!
“What?! W-Water?!” As water sprayed down upon them, Bruno realized his mistake. Because they had destroyed the urns in mid-flight, it had scattered water droplets over a wide area. It went without saying that rain, which could extinguish the matchlock, was the arquebus’s greatest enemy. Of course, this had been little more than a momentary squall. At most, it would just snuff out the matches of the soldiers who had reacted too slowly to shield their matchlocks. The Steel Clan Army was also equipped with lighters, so they only needed to relight their matches. It wasn’t a particularly serious problem. Or rather, it wouldn’t have been one, if the enemy hadn’t been charging at them at that very moment.
The Steel Clan had just fired a volley at the water urns. Those wasted shots gave the Flame Clan troops ample time to close the distance. Seeing this, the gunners had begun to fall into a panic. They felt an incredible urge to hurry and reload as quickly as possible. The panic that washed over them as they realized that this situation was quickly becoming one that could decide their fates caused every member of the firing lines to fumble and mishandle their weapons. The delay had been all of twenty seconds at most, but that was a lethal delay here on the battlefield. Along with a roar of rage, the sound of metal clashing against metal echoed across the battlefield. The melee had begun.
“I am Shiba of the Flame Clan! Only those who wish to die should stand before me!” With a shout, Shiba readied his halberd and charged into the enemy ranks. The enemy’s front line was a dense wall of heavy shield bearers. Although a man on horseback had several times the charging power of a man on foot, trying to charge headlong into a formation where the shields were braced by more than one person would ordinarily result in the charging warrior bouncing harmlessly off the wall.
“You went out of your way to harden your line, but it’s still far too porous to deal with me!” With that remark, Shiba forced his halberd into an opening between the shields, twisted his wrist, and swept his arm sideways.
“Gah!”
His halberd tore through the throat of a Steel Clan soldier, and the victim let out a death cry as he collapsed. The weapon in Shiba’s hand combined the thrusting blade of a traditional spear with a side blade for slashing. It was one of the primary weapons used in chariot warfare in Yggdrasil. While he hadn’t picked it up with the intention of using it against the wall of great shields, it just happened to be the perfect weapon to pry their defensive line open. Of course, that was true only when it was held in Shiba’s hands.
“Argh!”
“What in the blazes is he?! He keeps getting through the smallest openings!”
“And he’s absurdly fast! Just how are we supposed to sto—aaagh!”
Screams and angry shouts continued to rise from the throng of Steel Clan soldiers as Shiba cut through their ranks. For the average soldier, a polearm was a difficult weapon to wield with any measure of precision. However, Shiba’s skill with his halberd made it seem as though the weapon was an extension of his limbs. That wasn’t all there was to it, though. The real mark of his skill was displayed in the precision with which he wielded it—he was akin to a highly practiced artisan dealing with the smallest of carvings. On top of all that, he was moving at a speed that was almost impossible for the naked eye to follow. Frankly, he wasn’t an opponent that the rank-and-file soldiers of the Steel Clan Army could possibly handle. It took little time for the supposedly impenetrable line of great shields to collapse under his assault.
“Right then, you mongrels! Follow me!” Shiba held his halberd high into the air and urged on his soldiers, who erupted in an excited cheer in response. The soldiers on the field had just witnessed the commanding general himself breaking through the enemy’s defenses. The morale of the Flame Clan soldiers had reached a fever pitch, and they had worked themselves up into a frenzy of excitement.
“So that’s the great general Shiba, eh? He’s just as powerful as the rumors say.” Deeper within the Steel Clan lines, Bruno watched the red mounted warrior rampage through his forces, and his face twisted into a grimace. The mere presence of that man gave the enemy momentum, while his own forces shrank back from him in fear. Shiba had completely taken the initiative away from him. “We can’t allow him to continue like that. The confusion should have settled by now. Have the gunners take him down,” Bruno quickly instructed his subordinates.
While he quite frankly didn’t like the objects created with technology from the land beyond the heavens, he was pragmatic enough to make use of anything that would give him an advantage. The Wolf Clan soldiers on the battlefield were clan members who would be vital in rebuilding the clan. Each one had an incalculable value to him and the future of the Wolf Clan. He had heard that the Flame Clan had used a volley from the matchlocks to take down Steinþórr, the Dólgþrasir. No matter how powerful Shiba was, he wasn’t at the level of that monster, which meant that the arquebuses should be able to take him down too.
“Father! The gunners are ready.”
“Good! Fire!”
Bruno swept the sword in his hand in Shiba’s direction, and a moment later, the staccato burst of gunfire echoed across the battlefield. Soon after, Shiba had vanished from atop his horse. It seemed his beloved mount had also been caught in the volley, and it wobbled before collapsing in place.
“Heh, we’ve won. It was foolish for their oh-so-mighty general to lead from the front...”
“Agh!”
“Urgh!”
“He’s alive?! He’s still alive!”
“Surround him! Surround him and kill him!”
Angry shouts rose from the Steel Clan ranks. As he heard the contents of the shouts, Bruno bit down bitterly on his thumbnail. “We missed him. He’s a sharp one.”
Soldiers who had survived countless battlefields were sensitive to the scent of approaching death. Sigrún, for example, was able to easily identify anything that had been poisoned. It was probably that sort of intuition that had let Shiba avoid that fusillade.
“Dismount, all of you! The enemy still has their tanegashimas! Being on horseback just makes you a bigger target!” The authoritative bass could be heard clearly over the chaos of battle. That was likely Shiba’s voice. Following the voice’s commands, the enemy soldiers began dismounting.
“Tch. This makes our guns useless.”
The enemy commander was now in the middle of the Steel Clan’s infantry lines. Certainly, that wasn’t a bad problem to have. It meant that the enemy general was in reach of his soldiers’ blades, after all. The current situation was still to Bruno’s advantage.
“He may be the most powerful warrior in the Flame Clan, but surely he’s not as outrageously powerful as Steinþórr.” That monster with the heart of a tiger would have been able to use his brute strength to effortlessly sweep aside the soldiers in front of him. At the very least, he hadn’t yet seen that bizarre sight unfolding before him, meaning, however powerful he might be, Shiba’s skills were still within the realm of common sensibility. Even Sigrún, the bearer of the title of Mánagarmr, the Strongest Silver Wolf—by far the greatest warrior in the Steel Clan—wouldn’t be able to survive being surrounded by a hundred enemy soldiers. Skáviðr, Sigrún’s predecessor as Mánagarmr, hadn’t been slain in single combat against a warrior of renown but had fallen to a nameless soldier while fighting alone against overwhelming odds. The sheer weight of numbers could overwhelm even the strongest warrior.
Despite that, however, they hadn’t been able to take Shiba’s head. Bruno shouted in frustration. “Why?! Why can’t we take him down?!” He had ordered his soldiers to target Shiba first and foremost. Shiba had continued fighting against those odds, deflecting and avoiding the attacks from the common soldiers over the last half hour. The Steel Clan soldiers hadn’t managed to wound him at all over that period. If anything, they were on the back foot, with Shiba forcing his way through their formation.
“How is he still going after fighting for this long?! Doesn’t he only have a single rune?!” He couldn’t understand what was happening. The longest a person could fight at full strength was, at most, ten minutes. For the average fighter, the fear and tension on a battlefield would eat away at the endurance of a combatant and would reduce that fighting time further. And yet, Shiba showed no sign of slowing down and continued to dominate the battlefield.
“Blast it! He’s just putting on a brave face. Only a little bit longer... Just a little longer, and he’s ours!” Bruno ordered his soldiers to continue fighting. Over the last half hour, he had spent the precious lives of many of his own Wolf Clan soldiers in an effort to kill Shiba. If they were to let him go now, those deaths would have been for nothing. That was an unacceptable outcome for Bruno. On top of that, the enemy general was currently fighting on the front line. An enormous prize had been dangled in front of Bruno. There weren’t that many people who could just turn around and let an opportunity like this pass. It was simple human psychology. It was a classic case of the sunk cost fallacy, in which a person continues to invest in a venture after facing setbacks in an effort to make up for the losses they’d suffered in the process. The tantalizing prospect that he could turn it all around with just a little bit of effort would draw him in and pin him into place. Shiba’s almost reckless charge had been predicated on that bit of human psychology.
Bruno was already caught in Shiba’s web. Had this been Jörgen or Sigrún, or even the late Skáviðr, they would have been able to set aside any hypothetical arguments, accept what was happening in front of them, and made the ruthless call to pull back. Bruno, however, couldn’t bring himself to make the decision to cut his losses. He had missed his opportunity to withdraw.
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