Celestial Fire (6)

‘No, if possible, I wanted to have a look at Saint Mallory too, but if I end up meeting him here… Still, this is not the time to put my private desires first.’

Azadine asked Aramis,

“I’ll request support from Sir Karna. As for requesting reinforcements from Fireglyph, we should do that after joining up with Sir Karna.”

Aramis seemed displeased, but the other knights and soldiers welcomed Azadine’s proposal.

“Good, then shall we head there at once?”

Azadine tried to move out immediately while the momentum was there.

But everyone rose in opposition to Azadine’s proposal.

“What? Right now?”

“Everyone is exhausted from the successive battles.”

“I know they’re exhausted, but the Bri bastards know we’re here.”

“There were no enemy scouts, though?”

“Not scouts. A Bri sorcerer had possessed the dryad who died a little while ago. If we don’t move immediately, we’re in danger.”

Azadine insisted that they had to move at once, but everyone was only half-convinced by his words.

“Are you saying we should leave the villagers behind?”

“That’s right. The villagers are exhausted too….”

“We’ll use the warhorses to pull the wagons. That way, we can take the villagers with us as we escape.”

Azadine proposed that the knights dismount and travel on foot while using the knights’ warhorses to pull the wagons. At that, the knights were startled.

“What? What knight would get off his horse for the sake of lowly rabble?”

“By rescuing them at all, we are already fulfilling the sacred duty bestowed by the Three Archangels.”

“Sir Azadine. It seems that, as your experience within the knightly order is shallow, you have not had enough time to properly learn a knight’s mindset and bearing.”

“I can see that your talents as one of the Messenger Clan are outstanding, but as for knightly qualities, lacking.”

The knights who had been on Azadine’s side when it came to fleeing against Aramis now opposed Azadine’s proposal instead.

“If we get some rest, we can deal with those barbaric Bri easily enough. We cannot very well have precious warhorses pulling baggage like peasants and travel like farmers.”

“Damn it. You’re not even the Holy Knights of the King’s Church, so what are you….”

Azadine said that much, then shut his mouth.

Among the public, the Holy Knights of the King’s Church were regarded as more powerful holy knights than the Rescue Knights Order, and Azadine had inadvertently let that common reputation slip out inside the Rescue Knights Order itself.

But hearing such pathetic nonsense right in front of him, there was no way his insides would not burn.

Azadine could see right through the reason the knights opposed this so strongly.

They did despise the peasants, yes, but the real reason was that they were thinking of their own safety.

If the knights remained mounted, they could run at any time and escape, but if they dismounted, then they would have to share the fate of all the refugees and the rest of the troops.

Since it did not seem likely that the Bri would bother taking knights or nobles alive for ransom, the knights had rejected Azadine’s demand for the sake of their own survival.

‘Damn it. This is infuriating in its own way too. If they were just enemies, I’d crush them and take command away from them.’

On the Chadra Plateau, Azadine had smashed the forces that opposed or undermined him and seized command authority.

But Aramis was not someone he could treat that way. Though he had various shortcomings, Aramis was, by the standards of one of the Messenger Clan like Azadine, fairly favorable toward him.

Bringing down someone hostile to him and seizing that person’s real power was self-defense, but toppling even someone who was well-disposed toward him would be an unforgivable evil.

In the end, Azadine had no choice but to compromise by leading the soldiers and militiamen willing to cooperate with him, gathering the village’s wagons, loading food supplies and such onto them, and at least getting evacuation preparations underway in advance.

Although the members of the Rescue Knights Order opposed Azadine’s proposal, they too were afraid of a night attack.

The reason they rejected Azadine’s suggestion was because they had made a rational decision that placed their own interests first, not because they had underestimated the Bri threat in the slightest.

“Hey, keep a good watch tonight.”

So the knights ordered their retainers,

“Have the soldiers take turns and stand watch.”

And the retainers passed it on to the soldiers.

Then the soldiers, in turn, kept trying to push it off on one another based on rank and age.

In the end, the militiamen and the least experienced soldiers were made to stand watch.

Past midnight, as dawn drew near, dark clouds began to gather in the sky. After midnight, a light drizzle began to fall.

And taking advantage of that drizzle to erase their presence, Bri scouts tried to infiltrate the village and got caught on the alarm lines.

-Clatter!

They were alarm lines Azadine had forced the soldiers, so exhausted they looked ready to collapse at any moment, and the villagers to string all over the village.

“Judging by the Bri, with their body structure it’ll be hard for them to move low to the ground, so string the alarm lines at this height!”

The Bri’s legs guaranteed excellent jumping ability and fast movement speed, but precisely because of that, changing direction freely was difficult for them. The horns growing from their heads made crawling or crouching difficult.

And he had not stopped there, but ordered that the ropes be reinforced by attaching metal cauldrons, pots, frying pans, or shards of pottery that made a good sound, and that had now shown its effect.

Because of the sound of the rain, the noise made by the utensils did not carry far, but they still realized that something had snagged on the alarm line.

“Enemy attack!”

At someone’s shout, the Bri immediately began hurling javelins.

Azadine too woke from a doze.

“Damn it. Bastards.”

It was hard to tell whether that curse was directed at the Bri for attacking at this hour, or at the knights who had ignored him to the bitter end even though he had said they should move.

“My body feels heavy.”

Normally, he would set Arael’s Voice as a guard and sleep deeply, but this time Arael’s Voice had not been functioning properly, so he had slept lightly, and even after sleeping it felt as though he had not slept at all.

But he had to move. When he came out of the building, Bri soldiers were pouring in from beyond the forest path and across the river.

There were at least eight hundred of them, meaning two mixed battalions were coming in.

“We’re finished.”

He did not want to say anything that would crush morale if he could help it, but the situation was dire.

Azadine himself might be able to survive and escape, but there was no avoiding the massacre of these villagers and soldiers.

At this point, even if the knights tried to flee on horseback, it would be useless.

A stone road ran through the center of the village, so even in the rain the horses’ hooves would not sink, but the forest had turned to mud, and they would not be able to escape on horseback through it.

Of course, since the Bri’s feet were hooves as well, their mobility would be reduced too, but if both sides lost mobility, the side that suffered was, in the end, the one with fewer numbers.

Azadine too had now come to a crossroads of conviction.

Would he fight to the end to save the people? Or would he flee to survive alone?

‘There’s nothing to think about.’

Azadine stepped forward to save the villagers. From the start, there had been no need for any other choice.

If he retreated here, he might survive alone, but then everything he had lived for until now would become meaningless.

Azadine ran forward to save the sentries.

The sentries keeping watch in the darkness of night were the first to fend off the Bri assault. If he did not help them hold the defensive line, a wave of enemies would come crashing in instantly.

“Firewinter!”

At Azadine’s call, the hippogriff answered.

The hippogriff kicked off the ground and flew up, then dove straight at the enemies and rescued the sentries.

“Ah! Sir Azadine?!”

“Fall back. While Firewinter and I hold them off, wake the people and form the ranks!”

Azadine declared that he would personally hold off the enemy host alone in place of the sentries. It was an utterly absurd thing to say.

Even the sentries hesitated and stared at Azadine, but he showed no sign of retracting his words as he drew his ceramite longsword.

His blade flared into flame and evaporated the raindrops falling onto it.

“I’m going in!”

Azadine charged forward, cut down the Bri, and mounted Firewinter.

“Leap!”

The hippogriff beat its wings and briefly rose into the air, then used its weight to crash down upon the Bri.

When that impact broke the Bri formation, Azadine leaped down from the saddle and cut through the enemies together with the hippogriff, and when it looked like the enemies might surround him, he mounted the hippogriff again and disengaged.

Repeating disengagement and assault, he turned the enemy ranks into a wreck and was truly holding off the enemy offensive alone.

But the rain kept falling, the darkness lay thick, and the enemies kept pouring in without end.

And there were still soldiers all across the village whom Azadine had not yet rescued, isolated and still facing the enemy on their own.

“W-what is happening? Sir Azadine?”

Only after Azadine had made several assault runs did Aramis appear, not even properly armored.

“It’s a Bri assault. Your armor?”

“I managed to put on my breastplate for the time being. But how many are there? Huh… that many?!”

Aramis’s Celestial eyes shone, then pierced through the darkness and confirmed the number of the Bri.

‘Which is why you should have done as I said.’

Azadine wanted to lecture Aramis and the other knights for ignoring his opinion, but that would not change the course of the battle.

The only thing it would change was that their resentment would just be piled onto Azadine.

Azadine pointed toward the road beyond the watermill.

“Evacuate the people that way! After that, I’ll break the embankment! The knights mount up and ride back and forth between the watermill and the evacuation route, fighting cavalry actions! The soldiers form a square at the bridge by the watermill and hold it! The retainers wait beside the soldiers as reserves, harass the enemies attacking the soldiers from the flanks, and support the knights. You’re the most senior one here, right?”

Azadine singled out the most senior among the retainers and entrusted him with command of the retainer unit.

Both the veteran soldiers and the retainers inwardly admired Azadine’s concise orders, which were paired with a firm sense of purpose.

‘As expected, his reputation is no exaggeration. He did not sweep through the Chadra Plateau for nothing.’

‘Sir Aramis fights well, but his command is a complete mess. We’re lucky we met him.’

‘The problem is whether the noble knights will actually….’

The soldiers were worried that the knights might refuse to listen because of Azadine’s birth and status.

But the knights were not complete fools, and though they grumbled, they all mounted their horses.

“Sir Azadine! What about you?”

“There are still isolated sentries out there! I have to bring them back! Soldiers! Retainers! Put the sentries coming in behind the formation and reorganize them! The ones who were standing watch are exhausted, so rotate them into the reserves and let them catch their breath for a bit!”

Having said that, Azadine called Firewinter and together they swooped down on the Bri attacking the sentries.

The hippogriff struck down on the Bri from the sky, and Azadine cut through the Bri at the side as though mowing grass, so even though the assault came from just the two of them, an entire unit fled in terror.

It was overwhelming destructive power. Thanks to that, the sentries who had been in danger survived.