8

The archer was so rattled that he loosed the string instead of drawing it—understandable, perhaps—but Fred did not miss the opening and smashed straight down through the man’s skull. The infantry who should have been stout shields for the bowmen failed to hold even an instant, so the slaughter of the archers was only a matter of time.

Another soul left this world, and Fred drove his horse at the next prey without a hitch. The green sheen of the grass was pressed out by blood until it forgot its own color. Birds wheeled away in fright; the light cavalry’s lance charge was that brutal. Having carved a sharp wedge out of the enemy line like a knife shaving a floorboard, Fred put his troopers to full speed before they could be surrounded. He meant to slip off the field. A few, unable to check their lust for kills even under orders, were isolated, riddled with arrows, and toppled like hedgehogs bristling with shafts.

Footmen who knew no better seemed to relax, thinking the horse had fled in fear, but the centurions who knew a little tactics felt their knees go weak at that swift maneuver. Even so, the anvil-on-anvil smash roaring at the front could not be ignored. Blades hunted flesh with a single purpose. In any case, within tens of minutes one side would become a heap of meat—so the only way to drive off terror was to clamp a hand tighter on one’s sword. And scarcely had they turned their eyes front when the light cavalry’s second charge began.

“Uraaaaaaa!!”

The sound of hoofbeats could have made him wet himself; when he turned his head, the sharp tip of a lance was already aimed at him. Thud! As if not satisfied with blanking his mind, the cavalry poured over them like a towering waterfall. Fred, blazing at the tip, cut through the archers—near to massacre.

Had Marquis Gangpireu done nothing but take blows until now, he would have laid down his title long ago. His heavy cavalry—less agile, but thunderously forceful—at last reached the rear of the melee. The timing hit just as Fred struck his “hammer” the second time. The heavy cavalry commander in the van was a man named Otomar. Two meters tall, Otomar was a Sword Expert the marquis prized most.

His halberd, matched to his giant frame, was terrifying just to behold. The ponderous, spreading drum of hoofbeats jarred the infantry’s skulls like thunder. They threw together a square, but this was not light horse—this was a heavy charge. Dozens of men flew like straw at a single impact. It felt less like breaking people than smashing toys.

The only difference from toys was the blood fountaining like a geyser. Chunks of flesh, mixed with blood, pattered down over the infantry. It was a sight no one could endure without horror. The shock was so fierce that more than a few soldiers dropped their weapons. The heavy hit seemed to ripple through every man.

As expected, one heavy-cavalry charge struck with the force of two from light horse. Even if Fred arrived first, only the gods knew the result. Lacking any mages, Fred had to read the field by feel; he had no idea the heavy horse had arrived. All he could think and do now was cut, cut again, break away, and re-enter.

For all his overflowing military talent, even Fred struggled to flip this disadvantage. If only Dekal were here, he would have had three Sword Experts counting himself. But Dekal had, absurdly, fallen to Louis.

‘If I’d only had Dekal…!’

It was a string of frustrations enough to parch the throat. Had Dekal lived, Fred could have trusted him with a wing; even on the anvil, Dekal’s keen instincts would have sniffed the perfect moment to strike. There was no time even for a sigh; the instant he sensed the danger, Fred withdrew off the press again.

On Fred’s anvil, the veteran commander Gaion met the heavy hit by posting the Sword Expert Anok in reserve. Anok was a chiliarch, but his flaw was that he knew neither water nor fire—he charged through anything.

Seeing the heavy cavalry coming in for a second pass, Anok clenched his teeth and spat a line. “Idiots.” No common soldier thought that way while staring down heavy horse—but Anok was different. He bellowed.

“Form up, all of you!”

Anok’s men were all pikemen; they dropped into formation before the last echoes faded so they could meet the blow head-on. The square snapped into shape with terrifying speed—a proof they had drilled this and this alone for a very long time. Ramming pikes—each a handspan longer than most and nearly axe-heavy—into the earth, Anok spat phlegm.

He had sensed instinctively that the point man among the re-entering riders was a powerful mana-user.

“You—right there in the middle. Come take your beating!!”

His mana-laden baritone rolled the field and reached Otomar’s ears clearly. Otomar’s smile went wolfish; he locked his gaze on the source.

‘Sword Expert.’

He wetted his dried lips and shouted,

“Show that fool exactly what our power is. Understood?”

The horsemen roared in unison and, with Otomar at the tip, began to pick up speed. Even without a runner, Anok’s voice carried to Gaion, who clicked his tongue.

‘Defying orders again.’

Whether there would even be a future in which to punish him was now a question. Gaion forced down the throbbing behind his eyes. He had entrusted the rear; now he had to hope Anok delivered. In this moment, every nerve had to be spent on the hellscape boiling before him.

The front was every bit the inferno Gaion judged it to be. He had seen big wars with barbarians, but this was his first time watching fully-armed regulars collide by proper arms. The staggered lacework of arrows from the sky was child’s play by comparison. Shield to shield and blade to blade, the infantry had already piled corpses high. The fact that so many lives had vanished in a blink beaded cold sweat on the veteran’s brow.

Pierre holed up in his port city and refused to come out, and in the meantime Louis took one of Pierre’s towns with ease. There had been no defenses, and only a few hundred soldiers remained. When Louis’s cavalry approached, the gates swung open at once, and the balding magistrate kissed Louis’s boot.

Louis looked over the citizens staring at him, soaked in fear. Smaller than Proia, the town still held a considerable population and ran its civil affairs well. It had been, after all, the second brother’s city.

‘Heh. That makes two cities now.’

Louis, used to reading a single city panel, found a second panel strange. Opening it told him the city’s state at once.

‘The food’s been stripped—famine and unrest. And this Respect stat—what is that?’

Everything but population and production had bottomed out. The one mercy: his income had jumped. Aksen had iron ore, broad farmlands, and a dyeworks industry.

There was one more welcome note. In their haste to move food, they had left the coffers untouched.

Louis went straight to the treasury and ordered the doors opened. Thick cloth draped over orderly rows of something. Whipping the covers back, he found himself ringed by gold.

With war grinding on and his budget running in the red, Louis’s finances swelled at a stroke.