ACT 7
With a crushing roar, the raging floodwaters surged downriver.
Due to the multiple days of rain, the massive volume of water dwarfed even the previous flood.
Neither a great mass of soldiers nor a singularly peerless warrior could hope to withstand its destructive force. All would perish equally within those waters.
That was, of course, only in the event that they were actually caught up in them.
“Haaaahhh...” Ginnar let out a miserable-sounding sigh as he watched from within the Wolf Clan ranks.
Ginnar had originally been a merchant with experience traveling throughout the many lands of this realm. Yuuto had recognized his talents and expertise, and had brought him in as a member of the Wolf Clan.
Ginnar was the one in charge of the construction of the river levee this time around.
From his vantage point, he could see the Lightning Clan troops on the far side of the river, also watching the waters from a safe distance away.
The last time this trap had been sprung, it had caught the Lightning Clan patriarch Steinþórr and several thousand of his men, taking them all out in one fell swoop. But this time, it hadn’t managed to harm even one enemy soldier.
Of course, that only made sense when one considered that the ones who’d broke the dam and set off the flood were the Lightning Clan themselves.
“All the silver we invested in this, and now it was all for nothing...”
The project he had toiled so hard to complete had just collapsed without producing results, meaning all of his efforts had been futile. There is nothing in this life which saps a person’s strength and empties their heart more than that.
Ginnar could hardly bring himself to accept the reality of it. He just stood there, staring out at the surging, muddy waters with regret in his eyes.
“It wasn’t for nothing.” From behind Ginnar came a low, chilly voice.
Ginnar timidly turned around to see a man standing there who looked almost like a specter of Death.
The man’s cheeks were sunken and hollow, and his skin was a sickly pale. Only his eyes shone with a keen light and vitality at odds with the rest of him.
Frankly speaking, his ominous appearance made Ginnar uneasy.
This man’s name was Skáviðr, and he was the Wolf Clan’s assistant to the second-in-command, a man of great reputation and authority. Skáviðr was acting in Yuuto’s place as the commander of the Wolf Clan army in the field.
“It took them a day of searching to find the upstream dam, and it will take another day for the floodwaters to recede. That’s two days their advance has been halted,” Skáviðr said calmly. “Right now, if it will buy the Wolf Clan even a small amount of extra time, money is no object.”
“Until Yuuto can successfully return to Yggdrasil, hold back the Lightning Clan by whatever means necessary.” That was the mission Skáviðr had been given.
It was certainly true that things were looking bad for the Wolf Clan right now. Even so, Skáviðr believed without a doubt that Yuuto would be able to save them somehow.
“Yes, but the new moon was four nights ago,” Ginnar said, his brow furrowing. “We still have twelve more days until it’s full again.”
Just twelve more days. A short time, yet so long.
If anyone but Steinþórr had been the enemy commander, it would have been a manageable amount of time.
If worse came to worst, the Wolf Clan could have barricaded themselves within Gimlé and held out against a siege for that long, at least.
However, with the power of Mjǫlnir, the Shatterer, at his disposal, Steinþórr could smash open the thick city gates with ease.
The strong, solid walls built with time and care around the city might as well have no meaning at all.
His existence so flew in the face of sense that it was unfair, through and through.
“Hey, the weather’s lookin’ pretty good.” Steinþórr sat atop his horse, staring out at the morning sun as it rose from behind the distant Þrúðvangr Mountains. His lips curled into a grin. “Perfect day for a battle.”
Yesterday, the rampaging waters of the Élivágar had finished receding, and the river was finally back to its normal state.
The wind was also fairly strong, and blowing from west to east. That would cut down on the speed and power of the enemy’s arrows.
This was, indeed, the perfect day to attack.
“Heh, looks like everybody’s ready to go,” he added, glancing behind him.
His soldiers were standing in orderly ranks, fully armed and armored, their weapons held at the ready.
Their faces looked ready for battle, too: They were filled with intense spirit.
“All right, you guys, let’s do this!” Steinþórr hollered. “Follow me!”
And he raised his great iron warhammer up high, whipping his horse into a run.
“RRRAAAAAAAAAGHHH!!”
Like a massive peal of thunder after a bolt of lightning, the war cry of the Lightning Clan troops reverberated throughout the crowd. Following Steinþórr’s lead, one after another they surged into the Élivágar River.
From the opposite bank came the telltale sound of countless bows being fired, and a storm of arrows flew toward the Lightning Clan troops.
The soldiers held up their thick wooden shields and hunkered down behind them as the arrows rained down.
Several unfortunate souls were unable to defend themselves completely. As arrows pierced their bodies, they collapsed forward with a splash into the water.
But these were the fighters of the Lightning Clan, known for their bold spirit and daring. What’s more, their patriarch himself was leading them onward from the front. An obstacle of this level would not halt their advance.
The water sloshed around their legs as they planted each firm step in the riverbed. Step by step, unfaltering, the troops steadily made their way across the river.
At last, Steinþórr’s trusty steed stepped up onto the far shore. One after another, the men of the vanguard ranks followed behind him.
The sound of bronze gongs echoed loudly from throughout the Wolf Clan formation.
Following that signal, the archer units on the Wolf Clan front lines split into two groups, which quickly retreated backward toward each flank.
From the opening between the retreating archers marched forth a tightly packed formation of soldiers, armed with spears each twice as long as a man’s height.
“There’s that longspear unit they always use,” Steinþórr remarked.
Those spears were so absurdly long that they were unwieldy, and pretty much useless in single combat. But used like this in a formation battle, the formation itself became a groundbreakingly powerful weapon.
By packing their soldiers tightly together, it created a “wall of spears” — they attacked as one so that it was difficult to block or evade, and they did so from outside the reach of a normal soldier’s spear. It was a real problem.
But Steinþórr had already defeated them once before. While they might be a pain to deal with, they were still no match for him.
All the same, he did not charge at them straight away, and instead studied the enemy’s movements carefully. This was quite the rare move for the man who always rushed in recklessly.
“Hmph,” he said after a moment. “It doesn’t look like they’re trying to trap me in quicksand like they did with that formation at Gashina.”
During that battle, he had cut his way into the enemy ranks at a seeming advantage, only to find that they’d used their formation to surround and trap him on all sides. Along with being swallowed up in the flood trap a year earlier, that sort of experience had become a bit traumatic for him.
Because of that, he was now stopping to think for a moment whenever he was about to charge into the enemy with his men.
If one looked at the way he had immediately given chase to the Wolf Clan a few days earlier, charging after them alone, it might at first seem like his actions were the height of foolishness. However, that was because he had been alone. He believed that he himself would be able to fight his way out of any situation, but didn’t want to risk harm to his troops, and that had been the basis for his decision.
“Okay, no problems, then.” Steinþórr licked his lips in anticipation. “Just need to make sure not to let my guard down.”
In an ironic twist for the Wolf Clan, this man’s defeat twice at their hands had changed him. He had learned to think about his actions in battle, causing him to grow remarkably as a commander.
“Good grief. They could have hesitated at least a little,” Skáviðr said with a sigh.
The Lightning Clan troops were charging his way, leaving clouds of dust in their wake, and he had just caught sight of the familiar shock of red hair at their head.
Skáviðr had already heard the details of the Battle of Gashina from Kristina.
This man had been defeated by the Wolf Clan’s tactics twice now, and yet he still persisted in charging straight at them. That was, he supposed, quite fitting for the man said to have the heart of a tiger.
Skáviðr, on the other hand, would frankly have been quite satisfied with both sides staring each other down from opposite banks of the river all the way up until the day of the next full moon.
Even if that weren’t plausible, he had hoped the enemy side would spend at least a few days in more careful observation of his actions. He hadn’t anticipated that they would charge through the river as soon as the waters receded.
That was, in fact, the one course of action Skáviðr had most hoped they would not take.
Of course, what’s done is done. Lamenting it now would do nothing to improve the situation.
Skáviðr unsheathed the blade at his waist and held it aloft. “We’re going to counterattack! Phalanx squads, advance!”
As he gave the order, the warhorns blared, and the Wolf Clan army roared to life.
“RROOAAAAAGHH!!”
Their war cries rose up in a burst of sound, and the ground rumbled as the heavily-armored longspear infantry unit, the phalanx, surged forward.
When Skáviðr had first heard about the “ox-yoke” formation Yuuto had utilized during the Battle of Gashina, he had been nothing but impressed with his liege lord. However, for this battle, he had been forced to discard it as an option.
At Gashina, the topography had been a large factor, with the Lightning Clan troops charging through a narrow mountain pass, making their movements predictable. Add to that that the Wolf Clan army at that time had been much larger than the Lightning Clan forces attacking them.
This time, the Wolf Clan had fewer troops on the field than their enemy. If they tried to use the same tactic, they would simply be crushed.
The phalanx tactic had also been defeated by Steinþórr once before, but at the very least, it boasted a high defensive capability second only to the wagon wall tactic.
“RAAAAAAGHHH!!”
The two advancing armies each threw out one more loud war cry as they collided.
The first few moments of the clash went in the Wolf Clan’s favor. It was a natural outcome. The Lightning Clan force was focused into a single point, Steinþórr, while the Wolf Clan was aiming a directed line of force against the Lightning Clan ranks.
However...
“Haaah!” Steinþórr let loose a loud scream that reached even Skáviðr’s ears in the command formation at the rear of his army. With a mighty, whirling swing of his hammer, he launched a horizontal sweeping strike from the right.
The Wolf Clan longspears in the arc of the hammer’s swing were unceremoniously broken in half.
He followed with another attack from the left.
A hole opened up in the wall of spears, and the Lightning Clan soldiers quickly began flooding into that gap. The Lightning Clan’s point of force became a line.
Steinþórr’s rampage didn’t end there. With each swing of the warhammer, another hole opened up in the ranks of the phalanx.
That overwhelming display of power went on to ignite a fervor in the Lightning Clan fighters, and they lost all fear, transforming into bloodthirsty berserkers.
At this point, they were becoming too strong to handle.
The scales tipped in favor of the Lightning Clan, as if the Wolf Clan’s momentum at the start had never existed.
“A single man, turning the tide of battle... your strength is as ludicrous as ever,” Skáviðr smirked. “But the fact that you’re only one man is also the Lightning Clan’s weakness.”
That hearkened back to the advice Skáviðr had received from Yuuto before setting out for battle, and he reflected again on its great wisdom.
Steinþórr was a warrior of peerless strength, without any equal in the world. And that was the catch. There was only one of him.
In other words, no matter how inhumanly powerful of a monster he might be, he could not fight in two places at once.
“Send the smoke signals now!” Skáviðr ordered. “Tell the special forces to begin the attack!”
Sigrún’s special forces unit was situated in the western flank of the Wolf Clan army, waiting on the signal to attack with bated breath.
It was comprised of mostly younger men, but over the two years after Yuuto had first become the patriarch, the special forces had become one of the Wolf Clan’s trump cards. They’d seen action in a great many battles and racked up experience and accomplishments to match, growing into a force of elite fighters.
Though it was clear that the main body of the army had already entered combat, everyone here still maintained their calm, without getting nervous or worked up.
That composure alone marked them as seasoned veterans.
“There it is!” Sigrún confirmed the smoke signal, and immediately signaled to her men with a jerk of her chin. “All right! Múspell Special Forces, move out!” She sprang forward into motion.
The members of her unit switched from their relaxed state into fierce warriors in an instant, racing behind Sigrún in an orderly formation.
The special forces unit was comprised solely of cavalry, and its excellent mobility made it a superior fighting force in Yggdrasil, where chariots were still the most powerful battlefield unit for most armies.
The only force that could compare to them in terms of mobility was the nomadic Panther Clan, whose fighters were trained from childhood in horse-riding and horseback archery, and who now possessed stirrups, just as the Wolf Clan did.
In no time at all, the special forces rode out and around to the flank of the Lightning Clan, charging into them from the side.
This was the hammer and anvil tactic, a core Wolf Clan move that had brought them victory many times now.
The sturdy phalanx formation had already been defeated by the Lightning Clan once. However, that was only because the monster known as Steinþórr was strong enough to push them back with his brute strength.
Steinþórr was now leading the Lightning Clan troops from the front. And so, there was nobody here at their flank capable of repelling the Wolf Clan special forces when they attacked.
If Steinþórr had for some reason not been at the front, the phalanx troops could have then pushed forward and crushed the Lightning Clan front lines.
Steinþórr would likely have been unable to stand that, moving immediately to the front, at which point the special forces could have begun attacking the flank in that opening, timed to the moment he moved away from them.
And in this instance, where Steinþórr was at the front, then the defensive power of the phalanx meant that they could slow him down as he dealt with them, while the special forces pierced his army’s flank.
After taking Yuuto’s words of advice to heart, and consulting with Sigrún, this was the principal strategy Skáviðr had come up with for this battle.
“The enemy is confused! Press forward!” Sigrún shouted as she swiped her spear sideways, its blade taking a Lightning Clan soldier’s head clean off. She immediately followed by charging forward and using her horse to knock two more soldiers off their feet.
The special forces fighters under her command were all fighting well, killing the enemy without any trouble.
The combat was progressing completely in their favor, hands-down.
They were like a pack of wolves descended upon a mass of confused and panicking herbivores.
They proceeded to tear through the ranks of the Lightning Clan.
“Huh, what?” Steinþórr sensed something was amiss behind him, and halted his horse, turning around to look.
Straining his ears, he could more clearly hear the blend of pained screams and angry cries. That had to mean combat had broken out somewhere in the back of his formation.
“Did they plant some kind of ambush...? No, it’s probably that group of fighters on horseback.” He clicked his tongue as he arrived at the answer. “Tch, that’s right, they used those guys on us before.”
Steinþórr had repelled their cavalry unit easily the last time, so he hadn’t anticipated his enemy would use them again.
On the battlefield, an army is oriented with its force directed forward to strike the enemy, leaving the sides and rear vulnerable to attack. There was no mistaking, then, that the back flank of his army must be having a terrible time of it right now.
“Should I leave the front to the others and head back there, then?” he wondered aloud.
But there was the problem with that idea: The only reason his men were doing so well against the enemy longspears was because Steinþórr was at the front.
If he were to leave the front line, the Wolf Clan would surely regain their footing and begin to push his army back.
But if he didn’t head back, his army would be torn apart from the rear.
As the saying goes, “What aids one may harm the other; one cannot be in two places at once.”
“Hmph, I guess I have to hand it to you guys,” he muttered.
He really wished there were more than one of him now.
But naturally, reality did not oblige. There was only one Steinþórr. And there was no time for him to waver in his decision.
This was a moment of crisis, and yet Steinþórr’s lips twisted into a savage, beastly grin.
“So I’m damned if I go back, and damned if I go forward, eh? Well then, there’s only one choice for me to make!”
“He should already be well aware of the disaster occurring at his back, and still he refuses to move from the front line, then?” Skáviðr growled bitterly.
In the distance ahead, he caught sight of some of his own soldiers being flung bodily up into the air.
One could search all of Yggdrasil and likely only find one person capable of launching fully grown men that high into the air in combat: Steinþórr the Dólgþrasir, the Battle-Hungry Tiger of Vanaheimr.
In other words, it proved Steinþórr was still fighting there, at the head of his formation.
“That man never seems to want to move the way I want him to,” Skáviðr grumbled.
If the red-haired patriarch had rushed to the back flank to protect his forces there, Skáviðr would have immediately sent smoke signals to tell the special forces to pull back, while ordering his front lines to regroup and press forward.
Then, as the Wolf Clan gained the advantage and Steinþórr returned to the front line to reverse their momentum, Skáviðr could have quickly sent another order to have the special forces resume their attack.
Steinþórr would have been forced to travel back and forth, focused on protecting his men at his current location, while the Wolf Clan rallied the attack on the side he was absent from.
Skáviðr’s calculation was that this would push the battle into a more even contest.
That had been his intention, anyway, but his foe was proving to be a man who only charged ever forward.
“Ironic that normally, this would be the best opportunity one could ask for,” Skáviðr said with a sigh.
If Steinþórr was keeping himself on the front line, then naturally the special forces were wreaking havoc across his formation from the flank.
In a short while, they would succeed in splitting the Lightning Clan forces into two.
Once that was accomplished, the separated halves would each be only four thousand men strong, and that would result in the Wolf Clan force of six thousand being enough to defeat them, the balance of power of the armies being reversed.
Skáviðr had been instructed by Yuuto on a passage written by the man known as Sun Tzu:
“We gather as one while the enemy is fractured in ten, and so they must attack with ten fragments against the one. Hence, we shall be many to the enemy’s few.”
The passage was apparently written in an older style of Yuuto’s language, so Skáviðr had asked for an explanation.
Yuuto had explained that it summarized the strategy of keeping one’s own troops united as one body while finding ways to force the enemy to divide theirs. In the cited example, by fracturing the enemy into ten parts, one could use one’s whole troop strength to attack enemy forces that were now each only one tenth of their original strength. In this way, one sought to create a numbers advantage.
It was something completely obvious once pointed out in that way, but that was also what made it such a valuable truth.
And so, Skáviðr was following this principle of strategy and splitting the Lightning Clan forces. Once they were split, by all rights he should only need to have his troops attack a few specific areas, and that would lead his side to victory. However...
“Splitting them once wasn’t enough.” Skáviðr shook his head.
Steinþórr wasn’t going to be stopped by an enemy force merely one and a half times the size of his own. If Skáviðr was hoping to stop the man head-on, he would need to outnumber him five or ten to one.
Still, perhaps affected by the attacks happening at their rear, the Lightning Clan soldiers had come down from their berserker state of mind. The seemingly-overwhelming ferocity of their assault had abated.
Then again, after having had their forces split in this way, they were still refusing to succumb to fear and panic, and were maintaining their morale. That itself was a bit of a surprise.
“In that case, we need only split them yet again!” Skáviðr declared.
The special forces unit had plowed their way through the Lightning Clan ranks and out of the opposite side; they now turned around and began a second assault.
This would surely be enough. Even if it did nothing to stop Steinþórr himself, it would fully panic his men, and his army would lose its ability to function.
Skáviðr just needed his side to hold out long enough for that to happen, and so he desperately continued to give commands.
He shouted at his men and encouraged them; others he motivated with fear, threatening them with the punishment of strict Wolf Clan law; and others still he enticed with the temptation of great rewards.
He gathered the Wolf Clan troops in a tighter, more centralized formation and did his best to maintain it.
Every deft action was thanks to, and proof of, his great level of experience as a general.
But eventually, the defensive lines could no longer hold out, and they began to break apart.
“Still not yet?! Khh... at this rate we will be overrun!”
Once the lines broke for the first time, they were entirely too fragile.
“Please forgive me, Master.” Skáviðr briefly looked up toward the heavens and closed his eyes, his brow furrowed. Then he opened them and gave the order: “...Retreat!”
For a field commander, the ability to ascertain and read the tide of battle was vital.
If he were to indulge himself in thinking just a little more, just a little longer, hanging on to unrealistic hopes, then he would misjudge when it was the right time to withdraw. That would only bring much greater casualties upon his side.
Both victory and defeat were normal in war. Once it became clear that a loss was certain, the important thing was to throw away the remaining desire for victory and order a swift retreat.
In Japanese history, one can see this was demonstrated even by the infamous warlord who named himself the “Demon King”: Oda Nobunaga.
At the Battle of Kanegasaki in 1570, from the very start of the battle, Nobunaga had fought with a clear advantage against his opponents, the Asakura Clan.
But as soon as he learned that his ally Azai Nagamasa had broken with him to side with the Asakura, Nobunaga quickly switched tack and ordered a retreat.
The swiftness of that decision left no good opening for the Asakura forces to attack, and kept Nobunaga’s losses to a minimum during the withdrawal. The great success of the “Retreat at Kanegasaki” was praised in the generations to come.
The course of this battle with the Lightning Clan had already been determined, and reversing that course was nigh impossible. Even if the special forces succeeded in splitting the enemy again now, the scattered Wolf Clan lines could no longer be restored.
It would require someone with god-like charisma taking command; someone like Yuuto, or Steinþórr.
Skáviðr was certainly worthy of being called a great commander, but he did not possess anything akin to that.
The Wolf Clan warhorns blared three notes in a row to signal the retreat. From throughout the ranks arose the voices of unit officers, barking orders at the rank and file.
“Withdraw! Withdraaaw!”
“We’re getting out of here, men!”
“Hurry, now!”
A shudder washed through the Wolf Clan army.
Any normal army at this point would completely lose its chain of command, with individual fighters putting their own lives first and making a run for it, cascading to the point where everyone fell into a state of confusion and fear.
But this was the army of the Wolf Clan, ruled by a strict and uncompromising law. And their supreme commander was a man who had fought and led the rearguard many times in his career, earning a reputation as a master of fighting while retreating.
“Do not break ranks! Move quickly but with focus; do not rush and do not panic!” Skáviðr shouted harshly from his easily visible position on horseback, as he waved his arm to signal the direction of the retreat.
In a field battle, normally the commander was the first one to escape in the case of a withdrawal. And that was usually the correct choice.
However, if the leader remained visible on the front lines, it could grant the troops some sense of reassurance, some sense that things were still all right.
While it could not be said that this worked completely, it did seem to have an effect — the retreating soldiers maintained some level of order, and chaos was kept to a minimum.
“Take this, and this, and THIS!” With mighty swings, Steinþórr sent the fleeing Wolf Clan troops flying left and right, opening a path and plunging ever forward.
At last, the red-haired monster reached Skáviðr.
“Oh! I found you, you scraggly wolf!” Steinþórr grinned and ran his tongue across his lips as he caught sight of Skáviðr.
“So you’ve already made it this far, Dólgþrasir,” Skáviðr said coldly.
“Ha ha ha, hey, what’s the commander of the army doing hanging around here? I figured you’d be long gone by now. Wasn’t running away supposed to be your specialty?” Steinþórr casually tapped his iron hammer against his shoulder as he taunted Skáviðr.
Three times now, the two of them had met in combat, and all three times, Skáviðr had fled.
Steinþórr was trying to insult him for that, likely in the hopes of keeping him from escaping again.
“Heh, it just so happens I’m here protecting what I’ve been entrusted with,” Skáviðr replied, readying his spear.
From Skáviðr’s perspective, this army had been given into his care only temporarily by his patriarch, Yuuto.
Even if Yuuto was an incredible leader who had never been defeated while in command, that meant little if he had no soldiers remaining to command.
Skáviðr needed to preserve as many Wolf Clan soldiers as possible and give them back to Yuuto, and he was prepared to put his own life on the line to do that.
“I’ll give you some advice, as someone who has lived longer than you: You live your life in a reckless rush, Dólgþrasir. This place is perfect for you to have a bit of a rest.”
“Ha! Then I’ll do just that,” Steinþórr shouted, “after I kill you!”
With a cry, he spurred his horse forward, and brought his warhammer to bear in a diagonal, downward swing.
Skáviðr reacted to the attack with perfect understanding; rather than trying to block directly, he swung a counter from the side, to knock the hammer off of its trajectory.
But, right before the two weapons met, the warhammer suddenly froze in its tracks.
Clang! Skáviðr’s spear blade slammed against the warhammer, but it did not budge an inch.
“Didn’t I already tell you before?” Steinþórr said casually. “I’ve figured out your moves.”
“Ngh...!” Skáviðr hurriedly made to pull his spear back into stance.
“Too slow!” Steinþórr swung his hammer in the same direction, as if he’d been aiming for that all along.
With the unexpected additional force added to Skáviðr’s spear, it was flung uncontrollably upward.
“Wha?!” Skáviðr was nearly always a picture of perfect calm, but now his face was awash with pure shock.
His reaction was understandable. Steinþórr had utilized Skáviðr’s own strength and force against him to knock him off balance. It was the “willow technique,” Skáviðr’s own personal technique.
After witnessing it only a few times, Steinþórr hadn’t just learned to read it, he’d been able to recreate it.
Steinþórr was capable of far more than simply relying on the singular application of his incredible strength. He was also an expert talent when it came to technique in combat, which was what made him such a terrifying foe.
“Now, die!” With those short words, Steinþórr quickly swung his warhammer in a sweeping strike.
“...!” Skáviðr hurriedly lurched his upper body away, attempting to duck the blow.
A strand of his hair fluttered through the air. If his reaction had been even just an instant slower, his head would have been sent flying.
Steinþórr’s attacks did not stop there. He quickly brought the hammer around to unleash a downward, vertical strike.
By this point, Skáviðr had already dropped his spear and had a hand on the sword at his belt. He fully understood now that he couldn’t hope to match the speed of Steinþórr’s attacks with his long, heavy spear.
He pulled his blade free of its scabbard and brought it up in time to receive Steinþórr’s attack.
However, there was nothing he could do about the vast gulf in power between them. At this rate, he would be overwhelmed.
He managed to move his body to one side at the last second, but couldn’t dodge the attack completely. The hammer strike grazed Skáviðr’s head and shoulder.
It only clipped him slightly; there was no immediate threat to his life. However, the impact of the blow was still intense; his vision wavered and blurred, and he lost his sense of balance.
That one landed hit had likely given him a concussion.
“Ghh...” Skáviðr was a warrior, and his instincts held him up, his blade returning to a ready stance. But his eyes were still out of focus.
“This is it!” Steinþórr shouted. He saw an opening, and he wasn’t about to let it pass. He swung his hammer around once more.
“I won’t let you!” another voice shouted.
At the last moment, Steinþórr’s strike was interrupted as Sigrún lunged forward into the space between the two men, spearpoint first.
“Tch. Again,” Steinþórr clicked his tongue in irritation as he deftly dodged the spear thrust. “This always happens right when I almost have him.”
He had been certain that this time, he would at last take the head of his foe, the “scraggly wolf.” That failure only made him all the more agitated.
“I will take charge of the rearguard. Assistant Second, get out of here!” As she said this, Sigrún tossed aside her spear and drew her own nihontou.
“No, wait, you can’t fight alone against... ngh!” Skáviðr’s words cut off in a gasp of pain, and he grimaced and held a hand against his temple.
“And what can you hope to do in that state?” she shot back. “You’re in the way. Get out of here. Now.”
“But...!”
“The duty of the Mánagarmr is to protect the soldiers of the clan by always fighting at the fore. Isn’t that right? You were the previous Mánagarmr. And I... am the current one.”
Sigrún did not look behind her as she spoke. She kept her eyes steady on Steinþórr the whole time, showing only her back to Skáviðr.
To Skáviðr, she seemed to tower much larger than her own slender frame. He could see the warrior’s spirit filling her.
He found himself feeling moved in a way that was difficult to describe. Just when did she come this far...? he wondered.
With his current injury, Skáviðr wouldn’t be able to fight properly anymore. He had no choice but to place his bet on her.
“...All right. Then I leave the rest to you.” Skáviðr turned his horse around, and kicked it into a run.
“Don’t think I’ll let you get away!” Steinþórr shouted.
“That’s my line!” Sigrún yelled back.
Clang!
From behind him, Skáviðr heard the sound of Sigrún’s reply, punctuated by the high-pitched clash of metal against metal.
“Haaaah!”
“Tyaaah!”
Kshiing! Claaang!
The air around the two warriors echoed with beast-like shouts and the loud, percussive clashing of their weapons.
“Take that, and that, and that!” Steinþórr shouted excitedly as he pressed Sigrún back. To no one’s surprise, the Battle-Hungry Tiger had the advantage.
Sigrún’s weapon was a master work that even Steinþórr’s destructive rune Mjǫlnir could not smash apart, but if anything, that was just what he wanted.
The fact that his enemies could never withstand any attack from him meant that he never felt any challenge or satisfaction from destroying them. At least this meant the two of them could have a real fight.
But after a moment, he began to doubt even that much.
“Come on, come on, what’s wrong?! You seriously stepped up to lead the rearguard when you’re this weak? You’re not gonna buy any time at all for your friends to escape!”
“Ngh...! Hah! Toh!” Sigrún managed to match Steinþórr’s strikes with her own, but with each attack, Steinþórr was slowly but surely cornering her.
It was only a matter of time now before his warhammer would strike true against this silver-haired girl — or so Steinþórr thought.
“In that case...!” Sigrún’s eyes narrowed, and then her attacks suddenly came at Steinþórr with much greater speed and power than before.
“Whoa!” Steinþórr couldn’t believe his eyes. He whistled, impressed. “Hey, looks like you’ve got it in you after all. Why didn’t you start off with— w-whoa?!”
Steinþórr’s undaunted, casual taunt was cut short by an even stronger rush of attacks from Sigrún that came at him like a whirlwind.
“Toh! Hah! Haah!” Sigrún said nothing to Steinþórr; indeed, she didn’t even seem to hear his words. She was utterly and completely focused only on striking with her blade.
Her face looked different, as if she’d been possessed by some warrior god, and her attacks felt that way too. With every attack, her strikes seemed to grow even more swift, more skillfully placed.
At last, the momentum of the fight shifted, and now it was Steinþórr forced onto the defensive.
“Whoa, whoa, seriously?” Steinþórr was taken aback.
It was true that he was tired, since he’d been fighting non-stop since morning, and it was also true that his combat senses weren’t driven up to their maximum potential, like when he’d been surrounded by multiple enemy Einherjar at once.
But even so, Steinþórr had not been going easy on his opponent at all.
This was a first-time experience for him.
Even counting the scraggly wolf from earlier, no one he’d met in his life had ever managed to fight on an equal level with him before.
What’s with this girl’s ridiculous reaction speed?!
His enemy’s physical abilities had suddenly increased dramatically, but even so, Steinþórr was still capable of swinging his weapon faster, and with much greater power behind each blow.
And yet, it was as if she had the ability to see into the future. She seemed to predict his every move, moving to shut down his attack motions before he could scarcely begin them.
It wasn’t that she had discovered the patterns in his attacks and was acting based on that. Steinþórr was a peerless, natural talent at fighting. He didn’t fight with any sort of fixed “form” to begin with.
She was simply and purely seeing his attack motions the instant they began, and reacting to that with absolutely abnormal speed.
Steinþórr had no way of knowing it, but this was the ability Sigrún had unlocked within herself at the climax of her battle to the death with the ferocious garmr, an ability she had come to call “the realm of godspeed.”
It is said that sometimes, when a person is pushed to their limits in a life-or-death moment, time and everything around them seems to slow down from their perspective. This was the essence behind Sigrún’s ability.
Ironically, Steinþórr himself had served as the catalyst on this occasion: He was unquestionably an enemy far beyond her power, and losing to him would mean certain death. He had forced her consciousness beyond its normal boundaries and into the realm of her ability.
At last, Sigrún’s blade managed to graze Steinþórr’s cheek, and he gasped.
“Ah...!”
It was nothing more than a scratch, but this was yet another first. Never in Steinþórr’s life had an enemy managed to touch him with their weapon.
“Keh heh heh, ah hah hah hah! This is so much fun!” Steinþórr licked the blood dripping down from the cut on his cheek, and grinned with delight. He didn’t care at all that he was on the back foot.
To Steinþórr, life’s greatest joy was in finding and fighting strong opponents.
Sigrún’s furious assault continued for a few more moments. But after about ten more clashes, suddenly, the speed of her movements began to drop considerably.
Clang!
Their two weapons clashed, but Sigrún’s reaction was clearly the slowest it had been so far.
Steinþórr’s attack had more than enough strength behind it this time, and it repelled her sword blade upward.
He spun his wrist and made to strike with the butt of the hammer’s haft, and as he did, he saw that Sigrún’s face was ghastly pale, almost blue, and sweat was pouring down her face.
Though they had been fighting furiously, it had only really been a few short moments in terms of elapsed time. Yet she looked like she had been running at full speed for a whole hour.
With only the support of her one rune, she had fought the twin rune Einherjar Steinþórr on equal footing, and for a brief moment, she had even surpassed him.
It seemed that such a feat had put a considerable amount of strain on her.
“Tch. I was happy to see it looked like you’d really improved, but this is still all you’re capable of, huh?” Steinþórr paused, staring at her with disappointment. Things had finally looked like they were about to get interesting for him, and once again, he had been let down.
He gave a long sigh and lowered his weapon, then jerked his chin to the side. “Go. I’ll let you leave, this time.”
“Haah... haah... Wha... what are you... trying to pull?” Sigrún was wheezing so hard she could barely speak, but she glared hard at him all the same, suspicion in her eyes.
Steinþórr shot her an amused smile, and tapped his warhammer casually against his shoulder.
“I remembered what that scraggly wolf said to me about you. Said that in two years’ time, you’d surpass him. It’s been less than a year since he said that. There’s another year left, then. I’ll give you one more chance to live and make it happen. It’s your reward for managing to cut me.”
With his true rival Suoh-Yuuto gone, Steinþórr had lost the best source of fun in his life.
In this whole world of Yggdrasil, there were only maybe a couple of people, if that, whom he could seriously fight against with his full strength.
This girl had real potential. It had only been for a moment, but she had fought on par with him.
It would be a fun bit of sport to let her go, and see just how much further she could grow.
“Haah... haah... you’ll... come to regret this choice,” Sigrún panted.
“Then make me regret it.”
Steinþórr made a gesture with his free hand as if shooing away a dog.
Sigrún glared hard at Steinþórr one last time, and then, saying nothing, turned her horse and galloped away from him.
And thus, the second Battle of Élivágar River came to an end, with the Lightning Clan victorious.
The Lightning Clan continued their advance, and began marching on Gimlé.
And the Wolf Clan army no longer had the power to stop them.
Meanwhile, at approximately the same time, the detached section of the Panther Clan army led by Hveðrungr, three thousand men strong, was surrounding the Horn Clan capital Fólkvangr.
The area around the city had no forests or groves of trees, so there was nowhere suitable for assembling the Panther Clan’s powerful siege weapon, the trebuchet.
Furthermore, Fólkvangr was one of the few very large cities in the Álfheimr region. It would probably take quite a considerable amount of time to take the city with a force of only three thousand.
As it happened, though, Hveðrungr’s objective here wasn’t to capture Fólkvangr.
This was simply one part in his strategy to overcome the Horn Clan army’s “wagon wall” defense.
To the Panther Clan army, comprised entirely of fighters on horseback, the high wall of reinforced wagon carriages was like their natural enemy.
In fact, perhaps it was more appropriate to change perspective, and think of them as if they really were fortress walls.
Which is to say, despite Hveðrungr’s enemies being out on the field, they were locking themselves into a type of fortress.
That wasn’t something he could overcome with sheer force.
So in that case, how could he bring down their fortress?
The answer was simple. There were tried and tested methods of defeating someone holed up in a castle or fortress. One key element was starving the enemy of supplies.
And that was where Hveðrungr had hit upon his strategy. He would surround Fólkvangr, the source of army resources in this region, and thus cut off supplies to the Horn Clan troops behind their wagon walls.
As for the Panther Clan’s source of supplies, the main body of the army was getting plenty from their previous base at Fort Gashina. And the detached squadron was securing what they needed by attacking and pillaging the nearby villages.
Being so close to the clan capital, everywhere within sight was cultivated farmland, stretching out to the horizon in all directions. There wasn’t going to be any difficulty getting food.
As for the soldiers protecting themselves within the wagon walls, they would likely move soon to either secure supplies for themselves, or to attack the Panther Clan in retribution for their actions.
And of course, that was exactly what the Hveðrungr wanted.
If that happened, it would give the seven thousand fighters in the Panther Clan army’s main formation all the opening they needed to cross the river and reach the Horn Clan side unscathed.
The enemy had to move at the speed of those heavy wagons. There was nothing they could do to avoid how slow and sluggish it made them. In contrast, the Panther Clan was the fastest army in Yggdrasil, and had three times the troop strength.
The Panther Clan could freely move around and in front of their enemies, destroying the supply sources they were heading for. They would continue this process for as long as it took, and slowly strangle their enemy.
Because the army had been supplied by Fólkvangr, they likely didn’t have much on hand.
“I’d give them about ten days or so, at best,” Hveðrungr estimated aloud.
And as it turned out, his prediction was not far off.
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