Chapter 104 - I Bring Word from Retsha

“Damn.”

Pin bit her lip and muttered. Only Encrid and Torres, right behind her, barely caught the dismay in her voice. The three had scarcely started back before they found a group of soldiers. With her shoulder against a gentle bend in the passage, Pin peeked around it toward the way they had come, then tossed her torch behind her. The light sailed away, leaving only the faint glow of the torches ahead. Darkness settled around them. Torres crouched and peered ahead. He could not see through darkness, but his training for situations like this let him make out roughly how many opponents there were and how they were armed. 'Fuck, that’s a lot.'

Even a rough count put them over twenty, and their equipment was no joke. Every soldier carried a crossbow and a shortsword at the hip, with much the same gear as the rest. What did that mean?

'A trained unit.' The fact that they were no ragtag band of mercenaries was a problem in itself. A trained body of soldiers was more dangerous than most groups of demonic beasts or monsters. Especially enemies armed with crossbows in a tunnel this narrow.

'We’re going to die.' While Torres studied the enemy, Pin weighed their options. Should they turn around and head out into Cross Guard instead? Had the enemy only blocked their retreat? Or was something waiting along their original route too? As Pin and Torres began to panic, keeping silent for fear of being overheard while their minds raced—

“Messenger! A messenger from Captain Roger!”

Encrid rushed out, bellowing at the top of his lungs. Torres was shocked. Pin was even more shocked—too appalled to reach out or make a sound.

'That crazy fucker.'

It was practically suicide. Three or four crossbowmen firing would be enough to turn him into a skewer. He had to know that, yet he ran without hesitation. Of course he did. Roger was the name of the spearmen’s commander. Encrid had thrown out words that would bewilder the enemy and make them hesitate. [“If you can’t see an opening, make one. A fair fight? Will that keep you alive?”]

Jaxon had said that. Deceive the enemy? Why wouldn’t he, if he needed to? Dreaming of knighthood did not mean he intended to become an idiot who only fought duels. If the occasion demanded honor, he would act accordingly.

'But they set a trap, had a mage play her tricks, and even brought in wolf-men. What honor?' That did not mean he had spent his repeated todays simply learning how to fool the enemy. Letting the tension out of his shoulders had broadened his perspective, showing him what he could do and what he stood to gain. Past experience and recent experience. The repeating today. What should he seek and gain amid it all? There was no reason to struggle merely to escape today.

'Fighting multiple opponents.' Experience fighting elite soldiers was rare enough, let alone while caught in a trap with nowhere to go. This was different from the tall-grass fields. Back then, he had only needed to evade them. Longspears and arrows. A commander’s orders. Shields barring the front and a rain of arrows from behind. Moments when one wrong step meant death. He could dodge an arrow or two if he put his mind to it, but how could he evade a downpour? Nor could he clumsily imitate a knight and knock them all away with his sword. In short, facing the elite soldiers left no opportunity to hone his swordsmanship. The fight was over in an instant. Let his guard down, and he died. What should he do in such moments? What should he use as his weapon? A line connecting the dots. Seeing the dots took an instant, and connecting them took another. He had learned one thing.

'Split-second judgment.'

The quick thinking needed to seize a fleeting opening. If they stayed here, the spearmen would arrive before even half a candle burned down. So what he had to do now was slit the damned crossbow commander’s throat and wreak havoc. Unless he dealt with those arrows, there would be no tomorrow. “Captain Roger? A messenger?”

This was a tunnel. Without holding a torch close, it was difficult to identify a face. Checking for an Aspen army uniform was harder still. And even if someone had sharp eyes, how could they scrutinize Encrid as he raced toward them? “The city! The city!”

Encrid shouted whatever came to mind—anything the enemy might misconstrue.

“Fuck! Monsters!” The eyes of the commander assigned to block their retreat darted about. Not that Encrid could see them. He did not need to. He had closed the distance and identified the face in the torchlight. Most importantly, he already knew who the commander was. He charged straight in. “Huh? Hey, stop!”

A soldier in front finally spoke, but the reaction came far too late. All that shouting had been for this brief opening. Encrid had covered dozens of paces in one dash, but there was no time to catch his breath. SHING.

He drew his sword, gripped it in both hands, pulled it to his right, and swept it from right to left in a high horizontal cut. His opponents’ helmets and armor left their necks unprotected. The two men to the left of his charge were roughly the same height. SLASH!

One swing opened both their throats.

SPLURT.

Blood poured from the severed necks. “Uh—whoa! Fuck!”

As the startled soldiers reacted, Encrid saw the commander backing away and moved his right hand. Holding his sword in his left, he snapped his right hand to his waist as if striking it, then thrust it forward. FWEEE!

A whistle dagger. Several times more dangerous and sharper than an ordinary throwing knife, the blade punched through the commander’s leather helmet with a thud. If someone could survive with more than half that blade buried in his skull...

'He wouldn’t be human.' “Kill him!”

Three or four soldiers drew their shortswords with a metallic ring. Thankful the tunnel was wide, Encrid unfastened the buckler on his back and hurled it. THWACK!

The round shield flew through the air and struck the head of a soldier raising his crossbow a few paces away.

“Urgh!” Having bought time by hitting the crossbowman aiming at him, Encrid drew his sword back before his chest. Small turns of the blade caught the shortsword blows as the others charged. CLANG! CLINK! CLANG!

He used the flat of his blade to knock their swords aside. It hardly qualified as the Flowing Sword Technique. He was merely using his sword as a shield. Then came his next move. “Hah!”

He startled his opponents with a sudden shout, then threw himself aside, watching the soldiers’ positions and where their crossbows pointed. He did more than roll. As he tumbled sideways, he seized a soldier’s ankle, twisted it, and pulled. CRACK.

The man’s ankle twisted backward, and he lost his balance and crumpled. Encrid rose, winding his whole body around him like a snake. His left arm looped around the man’s neck, while his right hand caught the man’s right wrist and bent it upward. The shortsword fell from the soldier’s hand. THUD.

The earthen floor muffled even the sound of the falling blade.

“Ghk.” Killing the soldier would be an amateur’s mistake. Keeping him alive was how Encrid would hold out. Crossbows were deadly when fired in a mass from a distance, but up close, with a proper shield, he could weather them. Having thrown away his buckler, he had picked up a meat shield instead. 'This reminds me of my very first today.'

He had picked up shields to use back then too. This was no different. Only the material had changed from wood to human flesh. He braced his back against the wall and held firm. The crossbowmen hesitated, as did the men with shortswords.

“I’m alone! Come at me, all of you! Long live Captain Roger! You dogs of Aspen! Do you even know how to shoot those crossbows?” Just when a brief silence might have fallen, Encrid started spouting nonsense. And he kept going without pause.

“I said, come at me! You can’t handle one man on his own? Is that it? Is that what Captain Roger taught you?” 'They ought to start moving about now.'

He was not babbling for nothing. However slow they were to catch on, it was time they acted. And his hopes were answered. PAT.

Ail Karaz-style martial arts could subdue a person without letting a single breath escape. Darkness, torches, commotion, nonsense—all could serve to hide someone for a moment. “Crazy fucker! Shoot him!”

“Hey, no—don’t! Don’t shoot!”

Some of the agitated soldiers shouted back and forth with the man held by the neck and wrist. This was just right. The longer he stalled, the better. Even now, Pin would be behind them, striking the base of one soldier’s skull after another or choking them with Ail Karaz techniques. Torres would be quietly punching holes in their throats and skulls. In an exposed, head-on fight, those two would be at a disadvantage. But now the situation was entirely different. Who held the advantage now? Who had surrounded whom? “Day dawns and darkness flees! The sun shines and the moon goes out! Roooger! Roooger!”

Encrid kept shouting to conceal their presence, even making up a song with a rough rhythm. The commander was dead with a blade in his skull. Two more had died screaming. What followed was bewildering enough, yet the man responsible kept spewing nonsense. Feeling as though they were losing their minds was only natural. 'Fuck, what are we supposed to do?'

One soldier agonized over it. Wouldn’t it be better just to shoot the hostage in the head? With their commander dead, no one had an answer. As he wondered what to do— TWANG!

A crossbow string snapped.

THUNK!

The bolt buried itself in the captured ally’s head. 'Ah.'

Someone had finally fired.

“Kill him.”

It must have been the shooter who muttered that. These were properly trained troops too. None would disagree that indulging this farce any longer would lead to disaster. “Raise the torches! Behind us!”

At that moment, Pin and Torres were discovered. They were not master assassins. It was inevitable. Still, between them, they had taken down six crossbowmen in the meantime.

'Not bad.' How many times had he repeated this today? Only a few of those attempts had seen them take out as many as six. On to the next move. Encrid pushed his meat shield forward. The corpse, twitching with a quarrel in its skull, toppled. In that instant, before it hit the ground, Encrid drew and threw the whistle daggers tucked along his side and waist. He straightened his elbows and flicked his fingertips. Skipping the motion of lowering his hands, he moved them rapidly. Six whistle daggers flew in the blink of an eye. FWEEE!

Noise.

THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!

And more noise. Six more corpses later, only one soldier with a crossbow and two with shortswords held defensively remained. It had all happened in an instant. From the enemy soldiers’ perspective, it was a nightmare come to life. Just as Encrid was about to finish them without bothering with a standoff—

“Forward.”

A deep voice carried down the passage to his ears. Roger, the spearmen’s commander, had announced his arrival from the far end of the passage Encrid’s party had come through. THUD, THUD, THUD.

Synchronized footsteps shook the earth and the air. The surviving missile troops huddled to one side as Roger and his unit appeared with a dozen or so torches. He was composed. Even after seeing what had happened to his allies, he merely surveyed the area, his expression impassive. Shouldn’t he at least be rattled that the men assigned to block the retreat had been beaten? There were thirty trained elite spearmen. Roger’s eyes passed over Encrid once, then settled on Pin.

“You wildcat bitch. You got lucky.”

“It’s skill, not luck, you bastard.”

The two glared at each other as if ready to kill. CRACKLE.

The burning torches echoed in the silent tunnel. Encrid had known since the first today that those two had a history. He was not interested. Instead, while Roger and the spearmen held their distance, Encrid darted into motion again. He lunged toward the three huddled missile troops in a single stride, thrusting his sword to punch another hole in an enemy’s throat. As he pulled his sword free with a wet thud, a crossbow twanged. Encrid hurriedly ducked. The quarrel hissed through his hair.

'That nearly killed me.' He really had been lucky there. He had not expected a sudden shot at that moment. It had been a long time since luck had favored him like this, so he made the most of it. “I can see everything.”

He spoke and feinted a rush at the crossbowman, then darted sideways and drove his sword down into the other soldier’s skull. THUNK!

He pulled his sword from the half-split skull, pretended to retreat, and stared wide-eyed at something behind the last soldier. The spearmen’s torches had brightened the area, leaving Encrid’s expression and gaze plainly visible. Reading that expression, the soldier concluded that someone was about to attack him from behind. More than a few of his comrades had already died that way. But when he whirled around in alarm, all he saw was darkness. Darkness beyond the torchlight, the passage, the tunnel, loose earth sifting down. Then, as he turned back, he saw light—the gleam of a large, heavy piece of steel. THUNK.

The instant the soldier looked behind him, Encrid had charged again and stabbed him through the throat. This, too, was over in a flash. Roger lost patience and was about to order a charge when—

“I bring word from Retsha!”

Encrid played another trick. Roger could not help hesitating at those words. How could he not be startled to hear the name of Retsha, the mage at the heart of this operation? “Run!”

Encrid abruptly shouted.

“What?”

Torres asked, but his feet were already moving. Pin did not answer. She even snatched up two crossbows, but she too sprinted after Encrid. “Get them!”

Roger’s furious shout erupted behind them. The spearmen were not heavy infantry, so pursuit would hardly be impossible. Once they angled their spears and made it out of the tunnel, they could run with them in hand. Encrid ran with all manner of thoughts racing through his head. So did Torres and Pin. Both had plenty of questions about what was going on, but neither had the time or breath to ask. Now was the time to run.