ACT 4
Wolf Clan soldiers had begun to gather in the area surrounding the Horn Clan capital Fólkvangr.
They numbered close to eight thousand. During the war with the Hoof Clan three months ago, around four thousand Wolf Clan troops had converged here. Considering that, this was an astounding increase in size.
The greatest factor in that, of course, was that the Wolf Clan had obtained large amounts of farmable land and increased their population over the past half a year, but at the end of the day, it was once again their iron playing a pivotal role here.
In geochemistry, there was a term called the Clarke number (or just Clarke), named for the American scientist Frank Wigglesworth Clarke. The Clarke number expressed as a percentage the relative abundance of base elements in the surface layer of the Earth’s crust. An index table of Clarke numbers showed that copper, the main element used in the bronze weapons of Yggdrasil, only had an abundance of 0.01%, while tin was only 0.004%. Both of them were relatively quite rare metals.
Practically speaking, it was even harder to shore up a large enough amount of bronze weapons and armor for an army than it was to secure enough provisions to feed them.
By comparison, iron was the fourth most abundant element close to the Earth’s surface, with a Clark number 470 times that of copper! As long as one possessed the knowledge of how to refine iron, it was possible to obtain great quantities of it, and to do so much more cheaply and easily than bronze.
Yuuto had identified deposits of iron sand all throughout the Wolf Clan’s territory. The position of their lands between two mountain ranges was likely a large factor in that. They had all the raw materials they could ever need.
In addition, just like with the glassmaking, recently many of Ingrid’s apprentices had set out on their own to set up independent tatara furnaces in various places around the country, and so there had been an explosive growth in iron production. Now iron was so plentiful in the Wolf Clan nation that it was even used in farmers’ tools like hoes and plows.
Because of that, even if there was a large increase in the size of the Wolf Clan army, they would be able to supply them with iron equipment in an incredibly short time.
“Big Brother, I sincerely offer you my thanks for lending your aid once again to the Horn Clan,” Linnea said. “Just as with last time, I am impressed at how quickly you arrived.”
“Heh heh, you know what they say, ‘Swiftness is the soul of warfare.’ Naturally, I’m the fastest. ...Just kidding. Really, this time it’s all thanks to the iron, you see.” Yuuto responded to Linnea’s greeting with a playful wink and a grin, then turned and gestured to the line of wagons trailing behind him.
As Linnea turned her attention to the wagons, she soon found herself gazing in wonder. “What?! You’ve wrapped the wheels with iron?! I... I see. So iron can be used in that way, as well.”
“That’s right, and it’s pretty handy improvement.” Yuuto grinned proudly.
Fundamentally, the marching speed of a group of soldiers was determined by the slowest among its number.
With a full army, there were specialized troops that transported provisions and gear, equivalent to the modern Transportation Corps. They had to move heavily loaded wagon carts with wooden wheels, which meant that although the spokes reduced the impact a bit, there was still no end to small breakdowns, due to built-up damage.
Until now, stopping to make repairs in those cases had been an unavoidable loss of time.
However, by using iron to line the outer rim of the wagon wheels, and to reinforce the truck itself, one could drastically increase the durability of those parts. That meant the usual sort of common breakdowns were almost fully eliminated, and the formation could travel more smoothly and quickly.
“You really are amazing, Big Brother,” Linnea said in awe. “And compared to you, I’m... Even though I gave strict orders not to go out, they were ignored. I could not even make my subordinates adhere to my instructions. That is what led to this horrible situation. I am deeply, deeply sorry.”
Linnea bent over in a low, deep bow, her hands clenched into fists on the hems of her skirt.
She felt a great deal of personal responsibility for this affair, as was typical for her earnest and sincere personality.
“No, there was nothing you could do about it. This is the sort of thing that doesn’t make sense until you experience it firsthand. Nobody understood Li Mu at first, either.” With a frustrated expression, Yuuto slumped his shoulders.
Li Mu was a great general from a time in Chinese history known as the Spring and Autumn Period. He wasn’t exactly a well-known historical figure in Japan, but in China, he was known as a hero who had established tactics for infantry to use against cavalry attacks.
Li Mu’s strategy was exactly the one Yuuto had given to Linnea: Use smoke signals as a fast emergency alert system to warn when enemy Xiongnu riders attacked, and immediately evacuate the citizens inside the city walls. Do not permit your soldiers to attack, instead having them focus only on defending the city walls.
Because his strategy was so defensive, even passive, Li Mu had been called a coward not only by the Xiongnu, but by his own Zhao kingdom soldiers, and soon relieved of command.
After that, the more aggressive general replacing him as the protector of the northern borders of Zhao had launched bold attacks against the Xiongnu and fought fiercely, but he’d suffered enormous losses every time and lost control of the border, forcing the king to hurriedly put Li Mu back into his former post.
Holed up behind fortified walls, and focused only on protecting them. It was indeed a coward’s tactic, passively allowing the attackers to ravage the surrounding territory as much as they liked. But in the end, this was the way to keep casualties to a minimum against an armed cavalry force.
But even if those were the facts...
“You can’t expect people to go along with something just because it’s rational, you know?” Yuuto lamented with a sigh, running his fingers through his hair in frustration.
For the soldiers and their commanders, fighting the enemy was their job. Getting them to stick to orders not to engage the enemy at all was always going to be tough. Even more so when faced with the losses of the lands and people they were meant to defend.
With this, Yuuto felt all the more keenly just how difficult a task it was to command others.
“Father!” Sigrún arrived on the scene, seemingly in a rush.
Yuuto knit his brow and his face scrunched up in displeasure. Next to him, Felicia and Linnea did exactly the same.
Sigrún immediately took notice of this, and she began to apologize with an expression of terrible unease.
“I... I am truly sorry for arriving late. Falling behind you is a disgrace to my duty as the head of your royal guard. I promise that I will do my utmost to ensure it never happens again, so...”
“Uhh, n-no, I’m not angry, okay? You’re not used to that yet, right? It can’t be helped.”
“Th-thank you for your forgiveness, Father!”
“Uh, yeah, um. So, I know you’ve arrived now, so for now would you mind giving me some space for a bit?”
“Gh...!!” Sigrún gasped as if struck with a mortal blow, or as if she were facing the end of the world. Her face stiffened and went totally pale. “F-F-Father, you really are angry at me over my tardiness aren’t you? Auugh... I’ve upset Father... he hates me... Wh-what am I supposed to...”
“R-Rún, you don’t need to lose your senses so,” Felicia said rapidly. “Big Brother most certainly doesn’t hate you. There is no way he would!”
“Y-yes, that’s right,” Linnea agreed. “You are the Strongest Silver Wolf, the Mánagarmr, and the proud head of the Múspell unit. You are Big Brother’s mighty sword. He would never hate you.”
“Felicia, Aunt Linnea...” Sigrún turned toward the two other girls, her beautiful icy features momentarily brightened by a grateful smile.
“But, please, get away from us right now!” Felicia and Linnea immediately followed their kind words with a request that didn’t allow any room for argument.
“Wha?! Gh... ughh, r-right, I... I understand...” Sigrún managed to mutter, stricken by shock, and she slowly trudged back in the direction she came from.
Yuuto watched her go, feeling a pang of guilt. She looked to him like an abandoned puppy. “D-don’t you think that was a little harsh just now, you two? You should at least tell her the reason why. A-as a guy, it’s a little hard for me to tell her.”
“W-well, it is true that the misunderstanding should be cleared up right away, but... speaking truthfully, I do not want to get close to Rún right now either,” Felicia said. “It might spread to me, for one thing. But, well, I suppose I have no other choice.”
Stealing glances at Yuuto and Linnea, Felicia gave a long sigh and went after Sigrún. She had concluded that she couldn’t exactly push that role onto either of the two people who outranked her.
Once Yuuto could see that Felicia had (from a safe distance) begun to give Sigrún an explanation, he turned back to Linnea. “So, what is the Panther Clan doing now?”
There was no use in regretting what had already passed. Dealing with the present and ongoing threat was their greatest priority.
“After passing through Myrkviðr, they invaded the lands around Sylgr,” Linea said. “I have heard their numbers are small, only a few hundred...”
“And that’s just one of the ways they try to make us lower our guard.” Yuuto clicked his tongue resentfully.
The Panther Clan was trying to encourage their enemies to underestimate them as a smaller force, and thus provoke them into a fight on the open plains, where cavalry had the advantage.
“Right. So I have taken extra care that my general there understands he must keep the city gates closed, and focus only on defense. After learning how easily Myrkviðr fell, I believe that everyone will follow their orders now, but...” Linnea wore a pained expression, and her words carried her trepidation.
Seeking shelter behind the city walls would indeed limit the effects of the Panther Clan’s invasion.
However, almost all of the farmland was outside of those walls. At this rate, the farmers could not safely live and work on that land.
Things couldn’t be left like this.
Yuuto nodded slowly at Linnea’s unspoken implication, and then spoke with conviction.
“I know, Linnea. We have to do everything we can to get them out of Horn Clan territory.”
“Tch, cowards. The bastards won’t put a damn toe outside the wall,” Váli, one of the Panther Clan generals, complained gruffly as he stared up at Sylgr’s city walls.
Ordered by Patriarch Hveðrungr to lead the vanguard unit, it was Váli who had sacked the city of Myrkviðr. He had continued east after that, and was now attempting to capture Sylgr.
“These guys are a tougher hunt,” he muttered.
The Panther Clan was using the same strategy fighting against the Hoof Clan as they had at Myrkviðr.
The strategy was simple. First, their soldiers were given free rein to pillage the area around a city, to anger the enemy enough to make them leave the walls and launch an offensive out onto open ground. The Panther Clan forces would rout the enemy infantry on the field and then take their stronghold.
The Hoof Clan had started out being entertaining, easily falling for the trap, but now the Hoof Clan were apparently a bunch of cowards, locking themselves inside the city walls and refusing to come out.
“I can’t take too long here, or Father will show up.” Váli scowled, his face twisted with deep displeasure.
Perhaps it was because they lived their lives in such a harsh natural environment, but the meritocratic ideology of Yggdrasil was even more deeply entrenched in the culture of the Panther Clan. They believed in the law of “might makes right,” and warmly welcomed anyone into their ranks, regardless of background, as long as that person showed strength and ability.
On the flip side of the coin, if someone was seen as lacking in ability, they could expect to be shunned and have any rank or status stripped away.
Despite Váli’s wishes, the events of war council meeting a few days ago flashed in his mind again. He had earned the ire of his patriarch once already. He had to avoid disgracing himself again here, at any cost.
“Looks like you’re having trouble.” A sudden voice came from right behind Váli.
“Gah!” Váli’s whole body shuddered with terror for a moment. But when he realized the true owner of the voice, he let out a protracted sigh in relief.
“What the hell, Narfi?! Don’t scare me like that.”
“Hm hmm, did I sound like him?”
Váli shot him a rotten glare. “Yeah, and it terrified the shit outta me!”
“You have my apologies for that.” The gentlemanly-looking young man called Narfi grinned mischievously.
“So, whaddya want? Did you come here to get your fill of laughs at the guy who shot off his mouth and then couldn’t even knock over a town like this one?” Perhaps because he was still flustered, Váli’s words were more cynical and stained with insecurity than usual.
Narfi shrugged his shoulders and smiled wryly. “Rest assured, I know just as well as you that this enemy isn’t letting us do things the way we normally would. Apparently, the Wolf Clan patriarch Yuuto is quite the expert at war.”
“Yeah, and to tell you the truth, having them stay behind those walls and not budge a muscle is driving me crazy. It feels almost like the guy completely sees through what we’re trying to do.” Even with Myrkviðr, it had taken an awfully long time to pull the garrison troops out into the field.
The Panther Clan was clearly using a tiny number of troops. Despite that, their enemies insisted on defending themselves behind the walls. It was bizarre.
It had to be due to orders they’d received from above; that was the only way it would make sense.
“It creeps me out to think about it.” Váli shuddered once, scowling.
It hadn’t even been a month since the Panther Clan had invaded the Hoof Clan territory near the Örmt River. And Myrkviðr had been the first time they’d fought the Horn Clan.
So how in the world had this happened? Not only did the enemy seem to have learned the Panther Clan’s methods, they’d already managed to put in place a counter strategy! It made absolutely no sense to Váli.
At least during the battle at Myrkviðr, the Horn Clan general and his soldiers hadn’t actually understood the terrifying power of the Panther Clan, leading them to eventually lose their patience and attack. But the fall of Myrkviðr had also served to heighten the caution of the commander here at Sylgr.
Váli got the sense that, most likely, however much he and his men might try to provoke them, the city dwellers would remain closed up like a tortoise hiding in its shell.
The expertly trained horseback archery of the Panther Clan fighters was unbeatably powerful against infantry, but against solidly built walls, it was a completely different story. If they attacked directly, they’d simply be repelled.
“Well, at least they should be almost done putting together that thing we used at Nóatún.”
“Ah, so you’re using that.” Narfi nodded with an air of understanding.
When the Panther Clan had first advanced on Nóatún, the Hoof Clan had done just as Sylgr was doing now, firmly locking down the city gates and preparing themselves for a siege defense. Perhaps through the battles up to that point, the Hoof Clan had come to fully grasp the terrifying strategic might of cavalry, and the fear had been seared deep into them.
As expected of the capital that had been built up by the supreme ruler of Álfheimr, Nóatún had walls which were much taller and even more solid than a city like Sylgr.
But, even those insurmountable-looking fortifications had not held for longer than ten days against the Panther Clan’s patriarch, Hveðrungr.
“Yeah, it’s a good thing we were able to capture Myrkviðr,” Váli said. “Thanks to that, we got all the materials we needed. Heh heh heh, I’ll have this puny city within the day.”
“Sylgr’s fallen?!” Yuuto unthinkingly raised his voice upon receiving the news from Kristina.
At that very moment, the Wolf Clan forces were in the middle of advancing towards Sylgr to save it. The shock to Yuuto was all the greater because he’d thought he would make it in time.
As Yuuto silently glowered, painfully digesting the news, Felicia spoke in his stead. “Did the soldiers fall to the enemy’s provocations and launch an attack, as was the case with Myrkviðr?”
It was the only plausible thing that came to mind.
The Panther Clan force attacking Sylgr was a small vanguard, only a few hundred. Even if by some chance the main body of the Panther Clan army had joined up with them, it was hard to imagine they’d be able to capture the city in a mere couple of days.
Kristina shook her head. “No, it seems the commander at Sylgr and his men did remain on defense within the city walls as you instructed, Father.”
“Seriously...?” Yuuto couldn’t believe it. “Then how did Sylgr get captured? I don’t care how crazy powerful armed cavalry are, that shouldn’t apply to fortified city walls...”
“It seems... the city walls were destroyed. They were bombarded by large rocks from the sky. It is the same method you have used before, Father...”
“It can’t be... they have trebuchets?!” Yuuto shouted incredulously, then stared off into the distant sky, clenching his teeth.
The trebuchet was a fixed siege weapon, a counterweight catapult device that made use of simple lever mechanics — the “seesaw effect” — to launch a heavy object as ammunition.
Yuuto had first introduced them during the Siege of Iárnviðr. Back when Loptr had been the second-in-command of the Wolf Clan.
It was a weapon over 2,500 years more advanced than the current technological standards of this world, and the simple stone construction of the walls Yggdrasil cities was insignificant defense against its overwhelming destructive power.
“To think he’d so easily overcome Li Mu’s defensive strategy like this...” Yuuto raked a hand through his hair, then stopped and sighed.
From atop solid and tall walls, defensive troops could escape the trademark speedy assaults and mobile archery of the cavalry, while shooting arrows of their own to threaten and drive off attacks on the wall.
That had been the basis of anti-cavalry strategy for over a millennium of Chinese history, but here it had been easily subdued by technology from further in the future, a cheat inserted into this era.
“Hyahaha!” Váli snickered. “Now that’s a big army you’ve got there. Guess I can’t just surround you, then.”
Váli stood atop Sylgr’s outer wall, looking out at the approaching Wolf Clan troops, and lifted both arms up in what seemed to be a resigned and helpless shrug. But his face was brimming with confidence, the corners of his mouth turned upwards in an excited smile.
Miðgarðr was a land full of wide, expansive plains. Having been raised on those plains, Váli’s eyesight was far better than that of the city-dwellers. The army in the distance had just barely become visible to his eyes, so that meant it should still be quite a bit of time before they reached the city.
“When they move so slowly like that, it makes me wanna pelt ’em with a few boulders, but I guess that’s not gonna happen.”
The trebuchet might have dominating destructive power, but it also had one crippling weakness. It was so big and heavy that it was impossible to transport it once it was built.
That was the reason why, during their conquest of Sylgr, they’d had no choice but to take the time to construct one on site.
In addition, aiming and firing the weapon required a certain amount of prep time, so they couldn’t fire it in rapid succession, either. It was great against fixed targets, but just not fit for use against moving soldiers.
“Too bad. I wanted to let the men have a little more fun.” Váli laughed again, then turned around to gaze down upon the city he had captured the day before.
The houses had all been destroyed, corpses were strewn all about, and the air was choked with the smell of blood. The screams of women could still be heard here and there. At this very moment, Váli’s subordinates were in the middle of enjoying the spoils of their victory.
“But... timing is everything. And it’s time to go.” He pulled a single arrow from the quiver on his back, and fired it up into the air.
As the arrow flew, it emitted a piercing whistling noise. Several small holes had been drilled through the arrow’s shaft, so that air passing over the holes would produce the loud noise when it was fired.
At the signal, Váli’s subordinates began to gather at the Sylgr city gates.
They were all dressed in sleeveless tunics and simple trousers, with arrow quivers strapped to their backs. There were only about four hundred of them, but each of them was an elite, mighty warrior selected for the vanguard.
“All right, you bastards, you’re gonna go out there and give ’em the usual!”
Váli shouted his command, and all of his men mounted their horses in sync. Their motions were unbelievably light and nimble.
Váli nodded in satisfaction at their practiced, effortless movements.
“Heh, compared to you lot, those city folk are just as slow as always.” He turned to sneer at the advancing Wolf Clan forces. Sure, they had impressive numbers, but Váli’s eyes could only see how incredibly sluggishly they seemed to move.
Váli’s vanguard cavalry unit calmly began their retreat. Indeed, their pace was quite relaxed. They were deliberately matching their speed with the enemy’s advance, going slowly enough that the enemy could feasibly catch up. However...
“Hey, hey, what the hell is this? Why aren’t they chasing us? What a bunch of wet blankets.” To Váli’s chagrin, the Wolf Clan troops had prioritized retaking the city, and didn’t show any signs of giving chase. It was a complete letdown.
“All right then, let’s see if we can get ’em in the mood to play along.” Váli grinned mischievously, and ordered his men to reverse course.
If the enemy weren’t going to chase after him, he just needed to motivate them to do so.
They’d surely assumed that he and his men would continue to flee. He’d take advantage of that lapse in their guard and rattle them. With that purpose in mind, Váli wheeled his horse around and once again set his sights on the Wolf Clan soldiers...
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! All at once, a volley of arrows launched from the enemy ranks towards him.
“Whoa, whoa?!” In that split second, Váli managed to unsheathe the sword at his waist and deflect the arrow that would have hit him, but now his expression was strained and serious.
To the people of the nomadic tribes of Miðgarðr, hunting was a part of everyday life. And so, every man of the Panther Clan was from childhood intimately familiar with a bow, and by adulthood was a well-practiced expert archer. And yet, even they would not have been able to fire arrows that reached their enemy from this distance.
“So those are the ‘crossbows’ I heard about from Father,” Váli growled.
He’d forgotten the details about how they worked, but they were weapons that could shoot farther than a bow and arrow. They weren’t capable of firing as rapidly, though.
In that case, he just needed to close the distance before they could fire another volley. After that, they’d be no match for the superior rapid fire of his own men. The Panther Clan were just that fast.
“Heh, you’re all as quick as glue!” Váli screamed, sneering derisively.
And in the end, before the crossbowmen could load and fire a second volley, he had put them within the range of his own bow.
They were so slow, it was downright tiresome. By the time the enemy could fire off one shot, his men could fire ten.
And to top it off, it looked like there was some commotion between the crossbowmen and the soldiers behind them. Considering that they were in the middle of battle and the enemy was rapidly approaching, it was a sorry display of carelessness.
“I’ll show you worthless small fry what real archery looks like! Afraid it’s gonna cost ya, though!” Goading on his horse, Váli set an arrow and pulled back the bowstring.
He fired once, twice, a dozen times.
At first, his shots appeared haphazard, as if he wasn’t bothering to aim properly before firing. However, every one of Váli’s arrows found a target, striking the Wolf Clan soldiers right between the eyes.
Váli was an Einherjar with the rune Hrímfaxi, the Frostmane, which enhanced his archery to be the greatest even within the Panther Clan. And so it was said that when his enemies came face to face with the sight of his incomparable skill, it left their hearts frozen with fear, just as the name of his rune suggested.
That attack appeared to have at last been enough to ignite the fighting spirit in his enemies, for they let loose a reverberating war cry. “Rrraaaaghhhh!!”
This time, infantry soldiers with huge, long spears pushed their way forward past the crossbowmen on either side, and assumed a tightly knit formation before charging forward. It was an impressive charge, the soldiers raising clouds of dust at their feet as they ran forward.
“Ohh, the ‘phalanx,’ huh?” Váli mused. “Sure, with that, even we’d be in trouble if we went at you from the front.”
The Panther Clan’s cavalry was unrivaled in their potential for lethal assaults. They had used that potential to its fullest to crush the armies of the Hoof Clan.
Even so, if they were to charge into that wall of spears, the Panther Clan would be the ones to end up suffering heavy losses.
“But I’ve already seen that trick back at Myrkviðr! And you damned fools still couldn’t be any slower!” Váli roared with a mixture of frustration and delight.
If he couldn’t beat them by fighting head-on, he didn’t need to fight head-on in the first place.
Váli signaled with his left hand, and his men all ceased firing their bows.
He pulled on the reins, turning his horse sharply. His subordinates all followed suit.
Their movements, so seamless and coordinated, were enough to display their high level of training.
“Smell ya later!” Váli laughed. He kicked his horse into a gallop.
But he did not let it go its full speed. He refused to completely leave the enemy behind. He kept up a perfectly calculated pace, just enough to make the enemy think they might just be able to catch up.
“Uooooohhhhhh!!” With another war cry, the enemy picked up their forward momentum, just as Váli had anticipated.
Under normal circumstances in battle, when one force was pursuing another, the pursuers held the advantage. Even the lowest rank-and-file soldier knew this.
Normally, most soldiers in battles such at these had been more or less compelled into service via conscription. Still, on the other hand, this was an opportunity for those conscripts to make some good extra money. The more enemies they defeated, the more spoils they could earn.
In other words, to these soldiers, a winnable battle was also a relatively secure and profitable opportunity for them.
It’s no wonder you can keep up the chase with such vigor and spirit, Váli thought with a chuckle. “And if you were up against anybody else, I’m sure it would’ve meant something.”
As they rode forward, Váli’s band of riders all turned as one to face backwards, and readied their bows.
Despite their speed, and despite having both hands off the reins, their poise and position did not waver. Even with stirrups, it was an astonishing display of balance and technique.
“Fire!” Váli’s cry cut through the din, and he and his men released their arrows.
The enemy’s shields and armor served them well, but could not deflect all of the hundreds of arrows that rained down upon them.
One after the other, soldiers collapsed to the ground, but even so, the Wolf Clan forces stepped over the bodies of their fellow men and continued the pursuit.
After building up such momentum, they could no longer stop. Because their formation was so closely packed, if one of them tried to slow down or stop, he would just be pushed forward by the soldiers behind him.
Trying to reverse course and move against the formation risked that soldier being knocked off balance and possibly trampled to death by his comrades.
“So retreat means death, huh? But it’s the same even if you go forward, you know.” Grinning with unbridled pleasure, Váli pulled arrow after arrow from his quiver, nocked it to the string, and fired.
With each shot, another Wolf Clan soldier fell. With each fallen comrade, the phalanx unit seemed to rush toward them with an ever fiercer rage.
“Hah! So slow!” Váli couldn’t hold back his mocking laughter.
However bravely they might charge, in the end, a human’s feet could never hope to match the speed of a horse.
I’ll torment you all to death, Váli thought with glee. I’ll kill you all just like this, one by one at my leisure. He licked his lips in anticipation.
That was when it happened.
“Guagh!”
“Hurgh...!”
Arrows suddenly flew at them from out of the forest off to their right, and Váli saw several of his men gasp their last breath and fall from their horses. His hands froze.
In the next moment, a group of spearmen leapt out from the woods, rushing over to cut off his band’s route of escape.
“An ambush?! Did they predict we’d circle back to attack them?!”
Even as he spat out the words, several of the men holding down the right-hand side of his formation were felled from their horses by the thrusts of enemy longspears.
“Tch, damn it! Hey you bastards, we’re running north!”
They were boxed in by enemies in the front and rear, and the forest on their right, but fortunately there were open plains on their left.
Use the overwhelming mobility of the horses to keep the enemy from catching up with you, and launch one-sided arrow attacks from outside of their reach. In a nutshell, that was the winning strategy of the Panther Clan.
They weren’t the type to engage in jumbled melee combat, where ally and enemy struggled and fought at close range, but the enemy’s ambush had put them in just that situation.
They couldn’t make good use of their cavalry’s greatest strength, its superior speed and mobility. And conversely, the sluggishness of infantry, which Váli had so thoroughly mocked, was effectively no longer a disadvantage.
From behind, the enemy’s main force continued to charge towards them. They’d be in serious trouble if they didn’t escape soon.
“Looks like the whole ‘expert at war’ thing was true, after all,” Váli muttered, clicking his tongue in disdain.
He found this enemy truly disturbing. This should have been their first time facing him in battle, but they were way too versed in countermeasures against armed cavalry.
“You won’t escape!” A man who seemed to be the leader of the ambush forces cried out, and charged towards Váli, riding on a horse of his own.
The man’s eyes were sharp and piercing. More than anything, he seemed to exude some kind of dark, ominous aura.
Váli felt a trickle of cold sweat run down his back.
“Hah!” The enemy leader thrust his spear at Váli’s chest.
“Whoa!” Váli barely deflected it with his sword.
That moment marked the first time in the history of Yggdrasil... nay, in the history of Earth... in which two armed cavalrymen engaged in battle.
“Tah! Hyah!” The enemy leader unleashed two more quick spear thrusts in succession. Váli narrowly avoided the first by quickly tilting his body, and deflected the second with his sword, knocking the spear upward.
His opponent’s upper body was pushed backward, as well. Váli prepared to seize on that opening for a counterattack, only to stare in amazement at what happened next.
His opponent’s speartip that had supposedly been repelled upward now traced a clean, circular arc through the air, and suddenly the sharpened butt of the spear haft was headed straight for Váli’s temple.
He had been caught off guard himself, and there was no way for him to block in time.
“What the hell?!” At the last moment, he managed to pull his head back, but lost a few hairs in the process.
He had literally just dodged by a hair’s breadth. The whipping sound of air that reached his ears told him just how powerful and sharp the man’s attack had been.
Váli got the sense that he was doomed at this rate, and so he hurriedly pulled on the reins, moving his horse’s head in a circle, and kicked its stomach.
It was the signal to run at full speed. Váli’s well-trained horse responded immediately and charged forward, despite the fact that an enemy was right in front of it.
The two horses collided head-on, but it was the enemy’s horse who was thrown backwards.
With this, the two horses had also determined which one was dominant.
The enemy’s horse stumbled for a bit, then took another step backwards, as if fearful of the stronger horse. The enemy leader kicked to urge his horse forward, but it would not advance.
“Ha ha ha, the horses of Miðgarðr are a class apart from the weak horses you city-dwellers raise!” With that taunt, Váli set his horse to retreat from the enemy once again.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t fight with swords or spears per se, it was just that they weren’t the weapon he specialized in.
Besides, fighting to the death on equal terms wasn’t his style. Ending the enemy’s life with one-sided, risk-free attacks was Váli’s preferred way of fighting.
As his horse raced away at full speed, he turned around and readied his weapon of choice.
His stance bore no trace of the haphazard mannerisms he had displayed earlier. He steadied his aim, pushing his mind to the limits of its concentration, and fired.
“Hup!”
In a flash, the enemy leader used his spear to deflect the arrow, despite it being shot from such close range—
“Wha?!”
—and then it was his turn to go wide-eyed in surprise.
It was a completely natural reaction, for as the first arrow was knocked away, a second arrow was revealed immediately behind it.
By firing two arrows at a precise interval, the second arrow was concealed in the shadow of the first. And the second arrow was also fired at a slightly different angle.
The first arrow might be either deflected or dodged, but in that instant the second arrow would arrive without allowing any time to react. Caught off guard, the enemy would thus be pierced by the second arrow.
This was Váli’s ultimate technique.
“Gah!”
But this time, his enemy was no ordinary man. With reflexes that could only be called phenomenal, the man tilted his head to evade the second arrow.
Even so, it wasn’t quite enough, and a spurt of bright red blood erupted from the man’s temple. Yet the man didn’t fall from his horse, and kept his keen glare fixed on Váli.
It was like the Grim Reaper was staring him down. And yet, Váli found himself grinning in response.
“Ha ha, to think someone would be able to dodge that attack on their first time seeing it. I’ll be remembering that face of yours, buddy. Bye for now! I hope we meet again!”
With those final words, Váli loosed another arrow. He followed it with another, and another.
Fleeing from the enemy with superior mobility, he and his men continuously fired ammunition at the enemy pursuing them. They struck down one enemy after the other, while suffering no casualties of their own. That was the basic battle strategy of the Panther Clan, after all.
Once they had shot every last one of their arrows, Váli and his band of cavalrymen jaunted away from their enemy, falling quickly out of sight.
Yuuto stood next to one section of Sylgr’s defensive wall, frowning to himself as he inspected the damage.
The wall was at least three times his own height, but here it had been smashed to pieces in a spectacular fashion.
There had been collateral damage, too; some of the brick houses next to the outer side of the wall had been partially destroyed, crushed by the force of falling rocks.
A bunch of those huge rocks still lay strewn about the area just outside the wall. It was clear enough from a glance that this destruction had been the work of a trebuchet.
And having just received a report that his men had discovered the weapon in question some distance away, where it had likely been constructed by the Panther Clan, there was no doubt.
“So, this is where you were.” A sudden voice came from behind him.
Felicia, who was right next to him, gasped in surprise and quickly whirled around, then exhaled in relief.
Yuuto turned around as well, and casually raised a hand in greeting to the familiar figure.
“Hey there, Assistant to the Second. How’s that wound of yours healing?”
“It won’t present a problem,” Skáviðr replied coolly. The blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his head was painful to look at, and it exacerbated his already sinister-looking appearance.
That said, he was steady on his feet, so it looked like Yuuto could take the man’s word for it that he was fine. Just what you’d expect from the unkillable previous Mánagarmr.
“On that note, I wanted to ask you something,” Yuuto put in. “How was it, actually fighting them?”
“They didn’t offer any resistance.”
“But you’re not saying they were weak, right?”
“Correct, Master. ...Just a moment, if you would.” Skáviðr picked up a moderately-sized brick from among the remains of the destroyed wall, then tossed it up into the air.
Slash! There was a silvery flash in the dark, moonlight reflecting off of iron.
“Amazing,” Yuuto remarked in sincere appreciation, applauding.
The brick had been sliced cleanly in two, and the new surfaces formed by the cut were even and smooth. Even with the exceptional sharpness of a Japanese sword, such a feat would still be impossible without a considerable level of skill.
Yuuto himself had a bit of experience in swordsmanship, but if someone of his level were to try the same thing, they’d likely only strike the brick and send it flying.
“This nihontou, and the phalanx as well, are unrivaled in a clash of arms,” said Skáviðr. “That is, as long as we can make such a clash occur.”
“...I see,” Yuuto nodded. “So you felt no resistance from the enemy because it was near impossible to make that happen, then.”
“Yes, sir. The longspears used in the phalanx cannot match the range of arrows. And however magnificent the edge of a sword may be, men on foot cannot catch up to those on horseback. Even after taking them by surprise with an ambush, they managed a clean getaway.”
“Hm, not being able to use my special forces right now makes this tough,” Yuuto pondered. “Do you think I made a bad call?”
The Wolf Clan had its own cavalry unit, an elite special force led by Sigrún. Of course, it had been a little less than two years since Yuuto’s introduction of the use of stirrups. The only people from among his people’s population of city-dwellers who could learn to fight on horseback effectively in that short a period were those with a certain amount of talent. He only had a total of about two hundred so far, a force smaller than his enemy’s.
It wasn’t that Yuuto found anything romantic or inspiring in the idea of a small group of soldiers defeating a force that outnumbered them. He preferred to wage war by using strategy and tactics that put his troops at a complete advantage compared to the enemy, so that victory was the natural outcome. That was why, instead of using Sigrún’s unit here, he had given them another mission. But the prospect of a small group conquering a large group still held interest for him.
His forces hadn’t been able to give chase because they were infantry. But if he’d instead used his own cavalry, would they have been able to chase down the enemy and defeat them?
Skáviðr quietly shook his head. “No. If you had sent them in pursuit, the most they might have managed to do was catch up, only to be soundly defeated when the enemy turned on them.”
Getting such a definitive, and hopeless, answer left Yuuto wanting to throw his hands up in frustration. “Seriously?”
The Múspell Unit was a collection of the Wolf Clan’s elite fighters. Being told with such confidence that they would have been defeated was a little hard to take on an emotional level.
Even so, it was the opinion of the man who’d actually fought with the enemy and their commander. He couldn’t take Skáviðr’s words lightly.
“There is too great a difference in terms of fundamental skill,” Skáviðr explained. “If the enemy had been merely on par with the Múspell Unit, I would have been able to eradicate them during that ambush.”
“Yeah, that battle really surprised me. I was so sure it would work, too.”
The timing of the ambush had been so perfect that Yuuto had wanted to pat himself on the back at the time. But in the end, they’d only taken out around ten horsemen.
Despite being caught off-guard, the enemy fighters hadn’t panicked. They’d guarded well against the spear attacks, then followed their commander’s order and made a well-organized retreat.
Frankly, it had been so impressive that Yuuto even wished he could have them as his own soldiers.
“Specifically, it is the way they were able to balance their bodies while riding quickly,” Skáviðr said. “It would be insulting to even compare ourselves to them in that regard.”
“Ah, I see.”
How well a soldier could hold their balance directly translated into their ability to fight well.
For instance, if one soldier was standing on firm, dry ground, and his opponent on muddy ground, it went without saying that the former would be at an overwhelming advantage.
Thanks to the stirrups, it was now easier for a person to maintain their balance atop a moving horse, enough so that they could learn to fight on horseback. But there was the catch: It had only become possible to fight on horseback, nothing more.
A horse was a living creature with its own will, independent of its rider. It still took a long, long time to master the art of fighting while riding one.
Having stirrups would originally have covered for the difference in skill, but the Panther Clan was using them too. They were a clan raised from birth to be familiar with horses and riding, so of course it only made logical sense that Yuuto’s cavalry would be no match for them.
“And that balance is what allows for that incredible technique of theirs... the ‘Parthian shot,’” Yuuto murmured.
He was referring to the technique the Panther Clan horsemen had demonstrated during the previous battle, the one where they turned their bodies around while retreating at a full gallop, then fired backwards at their pursuers. Europeans had started calling it that because the horseback nomads of the Middle Eastern nation of Parthia had been notable for using it against the Roman Empire.
It was a tactic that had passed down among the Scythians and the Mongols as well, and had become one of the key tactics used by nomadic nations to terrorize settlement-based agricultural nations.
In more modern times, the term in English came to carry a metaphorical meaning similar to ‘parting shot,’ a remark or insult lobbed in parting, by a coward or a poor loser for instance. Though, actually, one might wonder if perhaps the Westerners were poor losers for attaching such a meaning to the term.
If Yuuto carelessly set his infantry in pursuit of the Panther Clan horsemen, even the phalanx, the unbeatable formation that had brought him victory thus far, might as well be powerless against the Parthian shot. And, even after using an ambush to create a pincer attack, the enemy had slipped through their fingers.
This overwhelming gap in mobility was a dire threat, pure and simple.
“Well, I had already taken that much into consideration.” Yuuto sighed.
Looking at the situation in reverse, it meant that if he put pressure on them with a large mass of troops, they’d elect to use their key strategy and then retreat, rather than stay and fight head-on.
Back when Yuuto had researched the topic online, he’d read that because nomadic nations tended to have smaller populations compared to agricultural nations, they held more strongly and consistently to an ideology of avoiding direct combat with an opponent they couldn’t defeat.
Also, because nomadic peoples didn’t remain settled in one location, they didn’t focus on building or maintaining defensive strongholds. In fact, the Panther Clan had simply abandoned the stronghold cities they had gone to all the trouble of capturing.
For now, the Wolf Clan needed to continue onwards and push the enemy out of Horn Clan territory. Afterwards, Yuuto was working on the theory that they could construct new defensive walls, similar to the Great Wall of China, on the outer borders of their agricultural lands. If they then focused on defending those, they could protect the Horn Clan.
Of course, it would take a lot more than a day or two to build a giant structure akin to the Great Wall, but Yuuto had learned a helpful idea from the history of the Battle of Nagashino in 16th century Japan. It was in that battle that Oda Nobunaga had triumphed against the nigh-undefeatable cavalry of the Takeda clan, using wooden stockades.
For Japanese history buffs, the story of the Battle of Nagashino was more famous for Nobunaga’s famous use of “three-rank volley fire” with his gunners. But it was also said that Nobunaga was the first Japanese general to come up with and use anti-cavalry stockade barriers.
A fence or barrier used to block the movement of horses didn’t need to be all that high, as any quick image search for pictures from a modern Japanese farm would show.
That was because horses were naturally averse to trying to jump over obstacles in the first place.
Myrkviðr was known for its vast lumber resources, so Yuuto figured they would be able to construct basic stockade-based defenses quickly and cheaply.
“Still, if they’ve got long-range siege weapons now, they could break through my defenses easily,” he muttered. This new factor was going to be the real headache.
The most common siege weapon in Yggdrasil was still the log-based battering ram. Against something like that, an arrow volley from inside the barricade would be more than enough to defend it, but the trebuchet had a range of 300 meters. That was more than twice what a crossbow could achieve.
“So, if we can’t defend, we’ll need to strike the enemy themselves... That being said, even if we try to chase them, they’ll just keep whittling down our forces. We need some way of luring them into a trap...”
Li Mu of Zhao, the famous general who was well-known as the pioneer anti-cavalry strategies in ancient China, had begun his career focusing entirely on defense. But several years later, he had devised ploys to lure the Xiongnu nation’s troops into a trap, thus defeating more than a hundred thousand of them.
Supposedly, after that, the Xiongnu hadn’t dared approach the border of the kingdom of Zhao for ten years afterward.
In other words, he had halted their nation’s appetite for invasions by forcing a strong impression on them as a whole: “If you cross us, you’ll only suffer greatly for it.”
“Damn it,” Yuuto muttered. “Is murdering each other the only way out of this, then...?”
In order to create enough of an impact to put that impression in the enemy nation’s heart, it meant the battle would need to be appropriately gruesome in its outcome. There was more than a good chance it meant he’d also need to kill the sworn older brother who had once taken such good care of him. There was also the possibility that Yuuto himself would be killed.
Yuuto had still been holding on to the hope of settling this with only a few small battles over territory, without escalating into full-scale war. It had been a bit of a naive thought, but there had also been hope of that based in reality. But now, the device Yuuto had helped engineer had smashed that hope into rubble.
“I guess you reap what you sow,” Yuuto muttered. “Damn it, it just goes to show how broken those cheats are now that the enemy’s using them.”
Those cheats ran roughshod over anything possible with the current standard of warfare in Yggdrasil. Even though Yuuto was making all the right strategic moves, the future’s technology could overpower him easily.
It was like playing chess against an opponent whose pawns had all somehow been promoted to queens.
“But that doesn’t mean I can just sit by and let you do whatever you want, Big Brother. It’s about time I fought back against you.”
Yuuto stared off towards the west. His opponent wasn’t the only one with a row full of queens.
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