7 (9)

Tents were being stripped open here and there like clothes being peeled off. On the ground lay the fertilizer of people who had been breathing only hours earlier. Quite a heap, Louis thought as he looked at the gutted tents. Crates of rations, packed tight, had snagged on a tent edge and came crashing down in a spill.

Because the raid had come at such a fast tempo, the food stores were barely touched—left intact as Louis’s take. Better than expected. Louis ordered the rations hauled to a single depot.

Beyond the teams following orders, every soldier nearby was busy.

“We finish today or we don’t rest!”

“Move, move!”

All around, things were being unfastened, and the rattle of wagons was especially loud. You could tell what they were stripping just from the clink of metal. Pierre’s infantry were, by default, heavy infantry with quality kit. Louis arrived where the stacked heavy armor had piled up like a hill.

Louis propped his chin on his hand. With this much, he could plate his regular infantry in heavy armor. There would be plenty of rejects, but his men had only leather-over-mail until now.

‘First, I’ll up-armor a portion of the infantry.’

It was an overwhelming plunder. Troves of provisions and iron were like salt to Louis’s advancing army.

Whooom.

A vicious wind scraped the dry land. Pale smoke wavered like wandering spirits. Faces of resentment seemed to flicker in the smoke. Its source was the mountain of corpses. The dead were being gathered and burned. Go to a better place, Louis thought, turning away without regret.

Back in his command tent, Louis opened the interface. His points already totaled five thousand—astonishing speed. He smiled wryly. As history had always shown, war was the most efficient way to gain points. Beyond the raw points, there were two other gains: his own Swordsmanship experience—after three engagements the bar was nearly at max. At this rate he would soon reach 5. Such was the power of the battlefield bonus.

‘The Civilization System matches the risk you take.’

But he couldn’t live like this forever; life came only once—no restarts. Managing risk as best he could was all Louis could do. His eyes narrowed, then stopped on something interesting: the heavy cavalry’s experience—promotion available. He wanted Mobility, but a single promotion didn’t unlock that track.

‘A shame, but…’

They were cavalry; without hesitation he took the Plains bonus. He checked the message and shut his eyes. The set piece had clicked perfectly, and his brother had suffered a rout. His blood had been boiling earlier; now it settled. His body felt pickled, thrashed and soaked in a barrel of liquor. Tired.

Traces of bivouacs lay everywhere, but there was no human presence. A broken bowl rolled lonely across the dirt. A blackened firepit remained as ash. Small birds chattered as if sightseeing Louis’s army. Ahead spread a steep stretch of wasteland. Sensing they were watched, grains of sand sloughed down. Louis rode forward. “It’s risky. Let me check first,” Boromir said—but Louis raised a hand to stop him.

He urged his horse right up to the yawning cliff. There, a black hole and the dark rock encasing it came into view. Iron. The one resource that appeared in only a single place within Duke Remitri’s domain.

“Iron, then.”

Yes—iron. Louis let out a short laugh.

Assign citizens and it would be active at once. In their rush to flee, they hadn’t even smashed the equipment properly. Screee—like arguing back at Louis’s assessment, a wooden lever crashed down with a thud.

‘We’ll need an inspection.’

Pierre arrived looking as if he’d been bathed in blood. The city’s mood was fear. No one spoke, but everyone knew he had suffered a major defeat—unlike when he had ridden out. A limping column of wounded trickled in. Families craned necks for loved ones, then wailed when most did not return. When the last soldier entered and the gates shut with none behind, a woman fainted from shock. But no one’s gut burned more than Pierre’s. He barred his chamber door the moment he entered and clutched his head in both hands.

‘You bastard whelp!’

‘After all that training!’

‘My heavy infantry!!’

The gloom he had dammed up came down like a waterfall. He couldn’t stand a moment of sobriety. With a blade-stab of a headache, he reached for drink. The familiar smooth glass helped a little. He upended it. The proof was so strong it scalded his tongue. Soon his skin flushed scarlet.

He drank and collapsed. What now? He doubted he could even save his life, let alone his city. Beg Louis? No. Not even in death. Gulping again, Pierre decided he had to throw himself on Marquis Gangpireu—the one who had prepared for war in earnest.

‘What will it cost?’

Obvious: seizure of every city. Even if he lived, he’d never taste past glories again. The Pontina house already chafed the king. That would be the end. Still—better than dying like this. How much would Gangpireu mock him? He hurled the bottle; it burst against the wall, and as the sound cracked, Pierre sat and took up his pen. He would send a letter.

Sunlight poured from a cloudless sky. Below, a picture of menace that could scare birds from the air: ranks of infantry and cavalry stretched tight; the horsemen were lightly equipped, but on both sides the infantry were heavily armored. Soon, half of these lives would no longer belong to this world.

Grass up to the ankles bowed and swayed. Battle on prairie was simple: the side with more cavalry crushed the side with less. Here, the lines were taut like rubber because the numbers of horse were close.

On the left horizon’s hidden edge, Marquis Gangpireu narrowed his eyes and stroked his beard again and again. While both sides hesitated over who would strike first, he knew this balance wouldn’t last. A bead of sweat crawled down his brow. He wished he could think only of what lay ahead, but the mind conjures many things in a crisis.

‘Louis…’

He remembered clearly the young lion. After parleying with Louis, the marquis had rated him highest among the brothers. But that was a judgment of character; he had never thought Louis could beat both elder brothers in a succession war. In military affairs, quality mattered: not only arms, but equipment and training mattered even more. Gangpireu stroked his beard again.

‘I still don’t know how you shredded Pierre’s heavy infantry so mercilessly. Perhaps I should have targeted you first.’

With Pierre’s collapse worse than expected, the marquis worried: even if he defeated Fred, could he then face Louis with his forces intact? Under his current plan, Louis would have fielded enough power to annihilate him no matter what tricks he tried.

Boom, boom, boom.

The drums growled. Fred had decided to strike first. Shaking off stray thoughts, the marquis stood. Time to answer—and to show what he’d built. He began to edge his infantry forward.

The soldiers were deathly tense. Some bit their tongues trying to swallow; others shook with a mad excitement for what would come. Yet the one common truth on both sides: once the order to advance came, like it or not, you went forward.

As the infantry lines thundered closer to collision, Fred held his reins, taut with focus, watching for the moment. He had massed every cavalry unit he could command on the right. He himself would lead the point. This differed from the marquis, who had split his horse on both flanks. Dry-mouthed, pupils flicking left and right to measure the instant, Fred drew breath and, with mana riding his voice like thunder, bellowed:

“Move!”

Light cavalry’s strengths were mobility—first, last, and always. Gangpireu had no unit type like heavy cavalry, but Fred trusted the fighting power of the light horse he’d tempered over long years. At the point, Fred spurred; the light cavalry ripped out of the line like lightning. Their speed was fearsome.

Wind hammered his face as he drove at full tilt.

This fight would not be decided by infantry. Foot served as the anvil—buffer and brace. The hammers were the cavalry striking from the rear. It was less a question of whose anvil would break, and more of whose hammer would smash harder. That would decide the day.

Gangpireu quickly launched the horse he had split between the flanks: one wing light cavalry, one wing heavy cavalry. The heavies would play the hammer; the lights would blunt Fred’s needle thrust. He did not expect his light horse to stop Fred—only to buy time, even at the cost of annihilation, before the heavy cavalry could smash the enemy infantry.

Both sides loosed arrows in taut, held volleys. Like hail mixed into a savage blizzard. Infantry raised shields, and arrows thudded onto them like sleet. Even so, the advance did not stop. They were ready for hand-to-hand.

When the two armies were stretched like a rubber band about to snap, a screen of dust rose—light cavalry appeared before Fred. This was the marquis’s time-buying force. If Fred got tied up here, he would lose the first hammer-blow—and with his infantry rear unguarded, the marquis’s heavy cavalry would crash in. In other words, Fred might be the first one shattered by the hammer.

Fred’s blood boiled; he drew his blade, teeth clenched. A Sword Expert, he preferred a cavalry saber to a lance. A deep-blue aura—proof of a mana user—shivered out along his form. Impossible to miss; but if stopping such a charge were easy merely because you saw it, the title Sword Expert would mean nothing.