70 — 7 (10)

Dust boiled up as the cavalry on both sides trailed long comet-tails. They charged hard, but seeing Fred coming like a tiger made the riders in the van flinch. Orders were orders—their goal was to stop Fred as much as possible—but anyone could see it was eggs against a boulder. In the face of the obvious, morale could only sink.

One hopeful factor remained: there was a massive bounty on Fred’s head, and even a Sword Expert fell to a dogpile. The single best scenario was to take Fred’s head here. If Fred died, the backbone would snap, and the battle might as well end at that moment.

No matter how stouthearted, no one stayed calm with the Reaper’s scythe hanging long over their necks. Hearing their own hearts about to burst and seeing that blue aura drawing near, the horsemen silently screamed for help. Why for help? Because Marquis Gangpireu, short on cavalry after splitting his wings, had depth in infantry—his seasoned deployment now paid off.

From the dry sky, a rain of arrows suddenly poured like a shower. Arrowheads flew like awls and tore the riders’ flesh. Screams burst in clusters. Some horsemen, mortally hit, toppled straight off their mounts; others were unseated when their horses were struck.

“Damn it.”

Fred snatched an arrow falling toward his face and snapped it with a twitch of his hand. He flicked his gaze left, estimating the archers’ numbers and the volume of fire.

‘Not many. If they dump everything on me, their anvil will crack.’

The infantry bracing the front were the anvil. If they wasted arrows minding the flanking cavalry in this head-on grind, the anvil itself might be pushed back. Meanwhile, unlike Fred’s light cavalry—who had to think about flanks because of the arrows—Gangpireu’s depleted light horse got a bounce in morale and picked up speed. There was only one target worth life and death: Fred. Tall grasses, trampled by hooves, lost all shape as the points closed for the clash.

A pupil dilated wide. The horseman who had aimed his lance at Fred with high ambition opened his mouth in pain. As his pupils froze, he hung in the air with a look of shock. His body lost balance and smacked into the ground, while his head flew through the air. Blood sprayed in sheets over Fred.

“To take me… you’re a century too early.”

Fire roared up inside him. War was one of the things he did best. He wetted his dried lips. The briny taste of blood. That feeling ran into his mana—the blue aura took on killing intent and bared cruel teeth. Impacts of flesh and iron followed in rapid succession. Fighting from horseback demanded tremendous balance—there were no stirrups. Your lower body had to clamp the horse while your upper body moved violently. Fred met a lance-shaft and swept it aside. The man on the other end clutched the bucking shaft like a child; Fred’s blade traced a smooth line across the back of his hand.

Not content with taking fingers, the sword drove deep into the horse’s neck. Over the duet of horse and man screaming, Fred fed more mana into the cut. Wedged among the neck muscles, the blade pushed through meat and slid free. Fwoosh!

‘Come on—come at me! Hahaha!’

Fred’s eyes flicked left and right, looking for a man who could take his blade. Marquis Gangpireu had two Sword Experts. Fred remembered one face perfectly. Not here—posted elsewhere. Either on the hammer or the anvil, or glued to the marquis’s side. Fred’s smile turned feral.

“Take this!!!!”

It felt good to be recognized from all sides—but how did it feel when the place was a battlefield and what they wanted was your head? Fred rocked his neck to slip a lance and lopped off another rider’s throat in one clean stroke. Splashed again with gore, he popped his left heel into his horse to make up lost speed. As if understanding him, the horse screamed and surged. Perhaps it, too, had acquired a taste for blood. Whether it was a horse or a beast, the enemy were no longer sure. Fred carved down the next riders one after another as they thrust weakly with sloppy form, and his lungs opened clear.

“We can’t stop him!! It’s impossible!!”

“Run!! We have to run!!”

“Too late!”

“Kill them! Kill them all! No time! Hurry!”

Voices of every kind were swallowed by the other drumbeat—pounding hooves. Concentrated at a single point, Fred’s light cavalry encircled and devoured the marquis’s light cavalry in an instant. Man and beast alike fell riddled and torn. Reforming as drilled, Fred’s troopers gathered their line and drove on, unstoppable. Naturally pushed from the tip toward the center, Fred kept spurring forward.

Feeling the savage heat pouring off Fred, the riders parted to give him a lane as water splits around a prow. A lord who led from the very front—this was Fred. With the full respect of his men at his back, he galloped on. The view opened again. The warm splash that had drenched him moments ago was now carried away by the wind; it even felt cool.

‘Tricks won’t save you!’

How long the marquis’s light horse had bought him was now painfully clear. The light cavalry Fred had honed and honed for this succession war were nothing but a razor’s edge. With Fred himself—a Sword Expert—putting muscle behind the point, the mere fact they had lasted moments had been a miracle.

Like a strong wave sweeping a weaker aside, the enemy horse vanished in a blink. Watching, Marquis Gangpireu growled under his breath. The infantry anvils were about to meet head-on; the light cavalry duel had already flared once; his heavy cavalry were only now crossing the midpoint.

‘They didn’t buy as much time as I’d allowed for. The initiative for the hammer-blow is clearly gone. As expected of Fred.’

By the time the marquis issued fresh orders, the anvils were a breath from colliding.

A front-rank infantryman felt his lungs about to explode. His shield had become a hedgehog. “Hell!”—if his shield had been poorly made or held a little wrong, those arrows would have punched into his flesh.

He had never realized people’s breathing was so loud. He had trained until puking, over and over, but here and now his mind still went white. He had never felt such jealousy of the grasses nodding lazily in the wind. The arrow-storm hammering the front line cut off as if by lie; now those in the mid-ranks bore its weight.

‘Step forward and I die for sure.’

Even so, he couldn’t stop. No one thought of stopping. A bird cut a long line through the air overhead; more than a few soldiers watched it. Their thoughts were obvious—but brazen brass calls blasted from every side.

Here it came. Reflexes trained into the body were terrifying; even in this, the body could move. One soldier, hearing the horns, shrieked and sprinted—and, absurdly, that became the spark. Not to be outdone, several on the other side broke into a run; then, like a wave, everyone surged forward. A tall man behind shoved him ahead; if he hesitated, he would be trampled by his own side, so he ran, gasping. Chaos. Hell opened before his eyes.

Anvil struck anvil. The infantry had begun the main fight. People seemed easy to kill, but once battle grew to this scale, it rarely resolved quickly. The decider would not be foot, but horse—that much was clear.

Fred swung his cavalry’s arc. He meant to smash the rear openly. Best case: hit wherever the marquis stood. But any commander with sense would be posted on the safer opposite side.

‘Here’s the problem. Do I loop farther to strike where the marquis is—or hit straightaway?’

The worst case: looping only to find the marquis wasn’t there. Bad. Fred’s horse were light cavalry, their hammer-force low—he would need to strike several times. He clicked his tongue, then chose to trust his feel. No looping—he would smash the enemy’s left shoulder. Without hesitation, he set the course.

‘Initiative is mine.’

Dust rose like flames. Seeing the cavalry thunder in, Marquis Gangpireu sneered—like father, like son, maddeningly direct. He shifted position in haste. With the front so fraught, he couldn’t move far, but edging sideways was possible—putting him at dead center. No matter how brave the horsemen, few dared plunge into the exact middle.

The reason was simple: if the first riders failed to kill the commander on entry, all the cavalry would jam together in the center and be annihilated amid the anvil.

With the direction set, survival came first. Numerically superior, the marquis had no need to collide head-on with Fred’s hot-blooded charge.

Fred’s view: a knot of infantry in a sloppy square. He scanned quickly for the marquis; as expected, nothing shown. Maybe a blank; maybe just unseen. Either way, there was no time to brood. The hiss of incoming, the chorus of screams and shouts filled heaven and earth—and his ears.

Crunch. The hammer’s first blow on the anvil. An elite charge—every rider a mana user. At the very tip, Fred’s greatsword caught a skull. Sensation, vivid and deep, ran up his left wrist; he leaned in and launched the body whole. Mounted greatsword work—possible only for a Sword Expert.

Gazing at eyes gone wide with terror, Fred swung again. Striking from horseback meant that even a low cut hit the head—the prime target. Add a blade soaked in mana, and three men at once went down in a single hew.

In mere seconds he broke the square and cleared the front. He glanced around: a shambles. The far-back rank he’d hit was already caved in by the chunk; men bled out even now; the second line flailed, unsure where to set. Worse, this stretch was mostly archers.

‘I’ll crack this sector and slip out.’

Next for the cavalry was to avoid the trap: hit and run. The hammer’s logic was the same for all. The only difference was how many blows it took—light horse versus heavy.