Chapter 349 - Hard at Work Even in This Weather

"Hard at work even in this weather."

KRA-KOOOM!

Lightning struck almost before Encrid finished muttering. "Something coming?" Krang asked.

Encrid nodded. The weather had gone mad. A storm had suddenly swept in. It had been raining since they left, but who could have predicted a change like this? At this rate, the weather could make friends with Ragna. Its whims rivaled those of that hopelessly directionless bastard. Just yesterday, it had been a glorious spring day, and now this sudden storm. "Seven ahead, ten to the left, eight to the right, and six behind," Jaxon said. RATATATATAT!

The rain showed no sign of easing. It looked ready to gouge holes in the ground. Even with an oiled robe pulled over him, the gale bent the rain into Encrid's face hard enough to sting his cheeks. The wind was fierce, too, blowing so fast he could barely keep his eyes open. The rain striking his clothes felt like arrows thrown with their heads removed. Attacking in weather like this? Calling them hardworking hardly covered it. They had a remarkable work ethic. Either that, or they had come against their will. "Have they taken your families hostage or something? Is that it?"

Encrid raised his voice toward the men ahead. As he spoke, he took a step, and the muddy road swallowed half his boot. It was the sort of day that made every step a nuisance. They had actually lain in ambush before attacking in this weather? Wouldn't they catch cold? He was genuinely beginning to wonder. It was called a highway, but it amounted to a road lined on either side with large, straight stones. Hadn't Krang said one of his ancestors, someone known as the Wise King, had laid it? Hence its name: the Royal Blessing. It connected the frontier to the royal seat; all one had to do was follow it to reach the court. The cities strung along this road formed the heart of the kingdom of Naurilia. Which raised a question all over again. What did that make Ragna, who could get lost even on a road like this? Just then, that genius at losing his way under any circumstances turned around. The men behind them were advancing a step at a time. So were the men blocking their way ahead. Squinting to make the most of his vision, Encrid could still see everything he needed to. Three or four men wore armor and held short swords; several others stood with their hands hanging at their sides. The man at the front spoke. No, shouted. His voice carried through the rain. "Mercenaries? Or standing-army soldiers? There's no need to risk your lives over this. We're only after one man." Bullshit. Apart from the man doing the talking, their presence had changed. Attacking while talking. Wasn't that a trick in the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique, too? They were trying something similar. Encrid tried to read the footsteps closing in from every side, then gave up. There was a limit to how much rain he could hear through. Between the downpour and the gale, he couldn't distinguish individual sounds. "Who?"

He asked despite knowing the answer, cupping his right hand to his ear and letting his left hang loose. "That would be..."

The man trailed off, a speaking trick that made anyone wait for what came next. With the man at the front holding their eyes and attention, something happened. RUMMMBLE.

The rain overhead began to take shape. 'Ah.'

Encrid was quite impressed. So they'd brought a mage? These were no rank amateurs. But he did nothing beyond admiring it. That was enough. He neither dodged nor cut at it. There was no need. Sorry, but they had something like a mage on their side, too. "Hmph."

Behind him, Esther rose in human rather than panther form and swept her hand. The rain gathered into a sphere, but before it could fall, it scattered again, spraying in every direction. It was spectacular. BOOM!

The bursting rain rang in everyone's ears. For an instant, the downpour overhead vanished. In its place, a wind three or four times stronger than before erupted outward from the point where the spells had collided. Encrid drove his feet into the mud.

WHOOOOSH!

The wind threatened to blow him backward, but he braced his stomach and bent forward slightly, weathering the gale. Naturally, everyone else held their ground on their own. The assassins hurriedly crouched as well. "A mage!" one of the enemies cried. They, too, wore oiled robes. The gust had blown quite a few loose, however. Beneath a fallen hood, Encrid caught a glimpse of the man who had shouted: a middle-aged man who looked past fifty. His gaze swung to one side. So astonished was he that he didn't even think to pull his hood back up. He was looking at Esther, standing proudly in the falling rain. Droplets bounced off her robe as she stood erect, and even the wind quietly lost its strength as it approached her. It was an uncanny sight. Amid the deflected rain, Esther raised a finger. With her index finger and thumb extended and the others curled, she aimed at the man who had cried out about a mage and whispered, "Demuller's Arrow." The rain swallowed her words; no one heard them. A spell of compressed wind took shape and flew. "Tch!"

The enemy mage hissed through his teeth.

THWACK!

His head burst. "Die."

Only after she had killed him did Esther's voice come through clearly. Encrid thought she ought to have said, "He's dead," rather than "Die," at that point. "... What?"

That was not the assassins' leader, but the whip-bearing guard muttering. 'Surprised? So am I,' Encrid murmured inwardly. He had known Esther was a mage, but he hadn't expected her to overwhelm the enemy like that. "Why are you so good at fighting?" Rem asked Esther in an ordinary tone.

"I've always been good."

Surprisingly, she and Rem weren't on bad terms. She answered him readily enough.

"Nice."

Rem simply nodded. "Kill them all!"

The assassins' leader recovered his wits and gave the order. Only then did the men come at them from every side. Had they already forgotten the failed magic? No, they were simply well trained. What did being well trained mean? Doing what needed doing, properly, at the right moment. And that was what they did. Maintaining their encirclement, they hurled poisoned daggers and fired crossbows. They did not charge blindly. "Ah..."

Encrid had escaped from a trap where soldiers surrounded him, terrain deceived him, and even shamans and mages joined the attack. Compared with that, this scarcely qualified as an encirclement. Besides, Rem, Jaxon, Ragna, Dunbachel, and Esther were with him now. And the enemy mage had died with his head blown apart right at the start. 'We can smash through this with strength to spare.'

Even as he thought it, Encrid swung his sword. Five crossbow bolts aimed at Krang struck the silver longsword and flew aside. The whip-bearing guard drew a shield and covered one flank. Daggers thudded into it in quick succession. The tall shield served its purpose well. Meanwhile, Rem tore into the assassins like an enraged beast. They scattered as he charged, but limbs flew through the air the moment they split apart. They had been too slow to escape his rush. He reached them before they could get away. Rem paused briefly after his charge, and his axe caught Encrid's eye. He had had the weapon modified at a smithy.

["Make the handle this long."]

Its haft was longer than an ordinary axe's. His old hatchet had been half the length of a forearm; this one was half again as long. It traced silent arcs, severing and splitting arms, legs, and heads. Its reach was far greater than it appeared. "Dodged that, did you?"

Rem turned as he spoke. One man had barely evaded his committed swing. Weather like this made both gambesons and metal armor difficult to wear. His opponent was no exception. He wore light armor of thin, studded leather and carried a shortsword in each hand. Shrugging off his half-displaced cloak, he shouted, "You crazy bastard!" He looked more like a mercenary confident in his own skill than an assassin.

"Do you know who I am?" he shouted.

Rem answered with a weapon. Axes weren't the only weapons he had brought. Two throwing axes also dangled from his waist, and a short spear that could be assembled in sections rode on his back. Short daggers and the like were tucked elsewhere on his body. One of those weapons cut through the wind and rain. Rem's left hand flashed, and a throwing axe spun in a vertical disk before burying itself in the man's skull. The mercenary's legs flew backward as he crossed his swords before his chest. His body carried out the motion he had set in train before dying, guarding his front, but the axe was already in his head. The two swords crossed uselessly, clashed, and fell. His arms sagged and his body went limp. He flew backward and landed on his back. The axe remained planted in his skull as firmly as in a tree stump, an unmistakable statement of its presence. The pouring rain quickly washed away the blood. Watching, Encrid realized something. This went beyond having strength to spare.

'They don't know.'

The scene made it immediately clear. These assassins had come for Krang's head without knowing who had joined him as escorts. They had made the decision quickly, set off at once, and ridden hard. The enemy must have been too busy blocking the road to investigate every detail. That, of course, had been the idea. It was why Krais had said they would have the advantage if they rode swiftly along the highway. Even Encrid hadn't expected the enemy to fall for it quite so perfectly, though. "Urk!"

"Gah!"

Cries rang out one after another behind them. Ragna was running riot. Every movement of the long, thick sword in his hand sent blood spurting from an enemy's neck. Was he using grand, sweeping heavy swordsmanship? No. With precise form and stabs, he killed them one by one. While Rem rampaged and Ragna held the rear, the most excited member of the party rushed out and began wreaking havoc. "Here! Over here! Here!"

Dunbachel advanced, swinging her scimitar. She kicked off the ground, muscles tightening in her thighs, and shot forward in a streak. Three assassins aimed slings at her. Whirling the cords and pouches overhead, they launched handmade projectiles: stones ground into spheres. The sight drove Dunbachel wild.

"Don't you dare use those damned things on me!"

All the pent-up anger from what she had endured came pouring out. Naturally, the missiles' speed and power couldn't compare with Rem's own throws. Dunbachel drew back her scimitar and turned her wrist, catching the projectiles on its broad flat. The expected explosive sound of stone meeting blade never came. Had the storm drowned it out? No. She received the force of the incoming stones on the flat of her scimitar and deflected them. TI-DI-DI-DING.

Her exquisite control of the angle was astonishing, a feat that married finesse with audacity. 'Dunbachel, too...'

Did she belong among the geniuses? Had she always? Well, otherwise Rem would have had no reason to keep her close and teach her. She brushed the projectiles aside, almost letting them slide away, and charged in. If Rem looked like an enraged beast, Dunbachel truly was one. She was a Beastman, after all. Her rain-soaked fur seemed to weigh her down not at all; she was extraordinarily fast. Wide sweeps of her scimitar drove enemies back or sliced into the bodies of the unwary, and her claws came crashing down on their heads. Any leather helmet caught by those claws split lengthwise, utterly failing to do its job. "Where did these monsters come from?!" one of the assassins shouted. Encrid was knocking aside bolts and daggers aimed at Krang, then flicking fallen weapons up with his instep, catching them, and throwing them back. A dagger happened to bury itself in the shouting man's forehead.

"Oh, sorry. Were you talking?"

The dead man had nothing more to say. He lay sprawled on the ground with the dagger in his forehead, his limbs twitching. The rain had no intention of letting up.

SHHHHHHHH.

KRA-KOOOOM!

Neither did the lightning. Another flash lit the distance, followed by rolling thunder. Encrid spoke casually.

"Have you always been this popular?"

He was asking Krang.

"Even more so lately," Krang replied.

"The continent's greatest Bard has nothing on you."

"Just a fleeting moment of fame."

Krang returned Encrid's joke with perfect ease. Having enjoyed poetry and composition since childhood, he was good at jokes, too. The whip-bearing guard wanted to ask whether this was any time for jokes, but kept his mouth shut. With good reason. The battle was ending almost as soon as it had begun. After killing the mage, Esther stood idly beside Encrid's horse. Rem hurled a throwing axe at a fleeing man, finishing off the group that had blocked the road ahead. The apparent leader had died with his head split open in the first charge. Ragna was no different. The six men at the rear had thought they could kill him if only they landed a single strike. He had merely made it look that way, but anyone perceptive enough to realize that would have recognized his skill at first sight. Only after his practice-like stabs killed them one by one did they realize the gulf between them. By then, it was rather late. Every so often, Jaxon stabbed through the heart of someone trying to flank them or exploit an opening, then returned to his original position. Dunbachel killed the rest. "Hey! Where are you going?!"

She even called plaintively after the fleeing enemies.

"Running away, I imagine."

"Oh."

At Encrid's observation, Dunbachel gave a disappointed sigh. 'Crazy bitch.'

The guard had figured out what Dunbachel was, too. But madness aside, watching her fight told him one thing: she was certainly no less skilled than he was. Of course she wasn't. She hadn't been idling away her time. After all the punishment she had taken under Rem's tutelage, the Beastman was no longer the fighter who had first faced Encrid. But what surprised the guard most was the man before him. Encrid. As he tossed out jokes, he was batting away daggers, crossbow bolts, and sling stones with his sword, even in this storm. It bordered on a feat of acrobatics. And he did it as though it were nothing. An astonishing talent. Encrid did recognize that his sensory arts had grown far more acute and developed than before.

'Is it thanks to being trapped so completely among the enemy?'

His blade of intuition responded with unparalleled sensitivity. That made blocking easy even when he couldn't see. "You really are good at fighting."

Krang was impressed. Bodies littered the ground, the attackers all but annihilated. Whether they would later become Ghouls or Drowners, monsters said to be born only in rivers or torrential rain, was unknown. But this was no time to concern themselves with that. "Right, let's get moving again."

Encrid simply led the party on. They had dealt with the problem. Time to go.