Chapter 38 - Flags Flutter and a Soldier Dances with His Sword (1)

["Do you really have to learn swordsmanship?"]

Ragna had said that. A cutting remark, but a fair one: Encrid's body simply would not cooperate. Encrid had been born without talent. All his life, he had made up for his sluggish body with dogged effort. Yet he had met countless instructors, learned swordsmanship, and spent long hours pondering it alone. That had made his thinking flexible and taught him to adapt what he knew remarkably well. Learning something in the first place was difficult. Once he had learned it and entered actual combat, however, things were different. In truth, he had been born with one talent: flexibility and adaptability. 'Use whatever you have to suit the situation, to meet the need.' By the Kingdom of Naurilia's standards, he was intermediate-grade or a little above at best. Intermediate in the mercenary trade, too. Wherever he went, his skills placed him somewhere in the middle. That was where Encrid stood now. But quite apart from his skill level, his effectiveness in actual combat was exceptional. Having lived his life with so little talent, he knew how to make full use of everything he had. A soldier's spearhead came flying at him. His sharpened ears caught its whoosh through the air. It was not as precise as seeing it, but he caught the direction and pictured his opponent's movement. 'A circling step.'

Encrid moved his feet. The heart of the beast lent him boldness. Pressing down through his left heel, he drew his right foot back and turned. That single move sent the spearhead whistling past his eyes. Even with a spearhead suddenly appearing out of the fog, he did not panic. There was no need. That spear had already stabbed him to death dozens of times. He had dodged its opening thrust more than two hundred times. Instead of drawing his sword, Encrid grabbed the middle of the shaft and pulled. The enemy soldier lurched toward him, his mouth opening in surprise.

"Huh?"

As the soldier's head emerged from the fog, Encrid seized it and twisted. CRACK.

The soldier's neck broke. A man with a broken neck could not live. As the enemy crumpled to the ground, Encrid took his spear. He recalled the enemy formation before the fog spread. They had all been clustered together.

'Throw it anywhere, and it'll hit someone.' He planted his left foot and hurled it with all his strength. The spear tore through the air and struck something with a thud.

"Urk!"

He heard a death cry. "What the hell?"

"Shit!"

And the enemy's startled voices. Having thrown the spear and listened, Encrid bent low and ran forward. Even eyes that could see through the fog would struggle to spot someone charging in at their feet. THRUM-THRUM-THRUM!

Quarrels and arrows flew overhead.

"Aaargh!"

"Urk."

"Fuck, arrows!" Behind him, his allies screamed and cursed. It should have made his hair stand on end, but he was fine. He had done this many times already. If anything, the problem was that he felt too little tension. Closing the distance, he drew his longsword. His ears had judged the distance accurately. SHING!

He took the drawn sword in both hands and swung, adapting a high horizontal cut. Normally, high horizontal cuts involved blocking the opponent's sword with the guard and cutting with the back edge. Encrid changed that as he pleased. The stance was similar. He raised the sword above his crown, parallel to the ground, and changed to a thumb grip, with his thumb extended. From that position, he swept the sword in a circle. His low crouch turned the high horizontal cut into a low one. It was such an absurd stance that he could not put proper force into the blade. But it was an unexpected strike. The enemy failed to react. WHOOSH!

THUD! THUD-THUD!

He felt resistance against the swinging blade. "Aargh!"

"What is it?"

"Down low!" Oh, how quick of them to notice. He pushed through the fog and rose, bringing enemy soldiers into view. He could still see only about as far as his sword could reach, but even that was something. He could see his enemies, their weapons, and his own sword. That made this different from before. Three men had deep cuts across their shins. All three limped, streaming blood, and all were armed with crossbows. One gritted his teeth and leveled his weapon. Encrid took a passing step. His left foot went diagonally forward, his right following. In an instant, he was somewhere else. The quarrel hissed through the spot he had just occupied. He did not stop at dodging it. At the same moment, he attempted a cut to the crown. The heavy longsword fell from above. The crossbowman reflexively drew a shortsword and tried to block, crossing it against the longsword. Encrid powered straight down through it. CLANG! CRUNCH!

Unable to withstand the force, the shortsword's opposite edge pressed into the leather helmet and sank into the soldier's head. It was less a cut than a crushing blow. GURGLE.

The man toppled backward, his skull split and bloody froth bubbling up. Blood streamed through the caved-in leather helmet, drawing a red curtain over his face. "G-guh."

Unable to form words, the soldier with the shattered skull landed on his backside, his eyes clouding over. Encrid recovered his sword, stepped back, and pivoted, shifting a step sideways in an instant. An infantry shortspear swept through the space he had occupied. Its head brushed his left flank and tore his cloth armor a little. That was all. After evading it, he sent his sword out. Not a quick swing, but a slow one. The spearman reflexively pulled his weapon back and blocked the blade with its shaft. THUNK.

Sword met shaft. Maintaining contact, the blade began sliding down it. A step forward, a bind, then a following cut. GRRRRRAK!

The spear shaft grated beneath the blade.

THUD! The sword's destination was the soldier's chest. In an instant, the blade slid down the shaft and tore into him. Flesh gouged open and bone broke. When Encrid pulled the sword out, blood burst forth, spraying his own chest. He recovered his sword and rose from his slightly bent-kneed stance, straightening his knees and bringing himself upright. Everything he had learned so far had been fundamentals. Time spent abandoning bad habits and building anew. Viewed coldly, he had only just regained his former level. Yet now, with his sword handling and fundamentals honed around the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique, what he had at his disposal was utterly different. It was nothing less than giving a lion wings. His flexible thinking produced results beyond his actual skill. His blood-soaked sword moved among the remaining soldiers. Silently, Encrid danced with his blade.

* * *

Six flag units. The Principality of Aspen's commander considered them.

'Even if they realize it's a spell, they'll never work out which of those six they need to bring down.' Victory was theirs. Now it was time to consider what kind of victory they would claim.

"Cut off their retreat." The Gray Hounds, held in reserve as an independently maneuvering force, moved behind the Kingdom of Naurilia's troops. Now, if the men panicked by the fog tried to flee, they would run into the Gray Hounds. Having issued the order, the commander reviewed his operation for flaws. There were none. The Frog general had come to reiterate that this operation must not fail before leaving again. Otherwise, an officer of a general's standing would have had no reason to visit this battlefield. The commander gave another order.

"Kill them all."

This battle would change the relative positions of Aspen and Naurilia. While he issued his orders, Encrid was dancing with his sword among the First Flag Unit.

* * *

"Goddammit!"

Naurilia's Battalion Commander thought he was having a nightmare.

'They beat us to the punch.' The enemy had made preparations, but so had his side. Yet if he lost all his troops here, no amount of preparation would let him do anything. "Retreat! Fall back!"

Calls to retreat rang out everywhere. The Battalion Commander could not keep his composure. "Gaaah!"

Quarrels came flying from behind the retreating allied troops as well.

'Those fucking crossbow units!' The Battalion Commander felt faint. Somehow, they had managed to conceal that many crossbows. Where? The scouts' report had already supplied the answer.

'The tall-grass fields!' This was no time to leisurely ponder such things. His mind was fleeing reality. "Get a grip! Close ranks!"

Two of the more capable Company Commanders tried to rally the troops, but their enemies were no ordinary soldiers. The force that had come to bite at their rear was the Gray Hounds, the Independent Company that was the pride of Aspen's army. The Battalion Commander realized he had been outmaneuvered. Desperately, he tried to collect himself. "It's The Fog of Annihilation! Aspen's army has deployed a shaman!"

Those sons of bitches.

"How do we clear the fog?" Hardly any of his adjutants had an answer.

"Bring me someone who knows!" He could not see ahead, and the enemy was hammering his troops from front and rear. At this rate, they might be wiped out. No, they would be wiped out. Soon, an adjutant brought an answer.

"We have to destroy the spell's medium!"

The medium? The flagpoles.

"Charge the flagpoles!" the Battalion Commander shouted. "... We don't know which direction they're in."

The adjutant delivered the despairing words. The enemy troops they had initially seen had shifted positions like turning gears, circling round and round. They could no longer pinpoint where the enemy was. The Battalion Commander could not drive the word annihilation from his mind. While he agonized, the Fairy Company Commander in charge of Fourth Company realized the enemy would not simply let them withdraw. Her prediction had been right. And that was not a good thing. 'Without a reversal, we're all going to die.'

She thought the battlefield needed a fresh wind, but in the end, none came. The battle ended in a crushing defeat. The Fairy Company Commander barely escaped with her life. Behind her, as she fled, the fog lifted. The force had been annihilated. Fewer than fifty of her allies would still be alive.

* * *

CLANG! Encrid had fought well. Exceptionally well, in fact, and he was satisfied. His allies had been all but annihilated, but he alone had brought down nearly twenty soldiers. Blood ran over his sword hand. His forearm had been cut in the fighting a moment earlier.

'I can't put any strength into it.' Until now, he had devoted his time solely to training the fundamentals. Ragna had told him not to spar casually until the process was complete—until he had eliminated the bad habits ingrained in his body. Then he had immediately added:

["Though that's not really something to say on a battlefield."] Even as he said it, he must have realized it made no sense. Do not fight in the middle of a battlefield, all to get rid of bad habits? Was Encrid supposed to quietly let himself be killed? But Encrid could do it. By meekly offering up his life and dying, he had excluded actual combat. Only today had he put his skills to use in a real fight for the first time. 'It's different.'

Until now, he had fought by any means necessary, whether with the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique or anything else. That was how he had lived. It was still true. The only change was that swordsmanship now stood at the center of it all. 'I want to learn more.'

His hunger to learn surged higher. He did not want to stop at mere fundamentals. Having watched Encrid kill two squads' worth of men single-handedly, the enemy was reluctant to approach. For some reason, as he held out inside their ranks, his vision cleared further. The spell-made fog no longer affected him. He could see enemy soldiers standing in a semicircle before him. Every one held a crossbow. "Let's fight one-on-one, like men."

He said it in hopes of testing the skills his fundamentals had given him even one more time. "Crazy bastard," said a man who looked to be their Squad Leader. THRUM-THRUM-THRUM!

Crossbow strings snapped forward. Quarrels buried themselves all over his body. The one lodged in his eye brought hideous pain. 'It hurts.'

Yet he was happy, too. As he died, he thought about what he would do when today repeated. Ragna had kept emphasizing the basics.

["Train and train, and keep fighting with your life on the line. Then, well, eventually it'll sink into your body."]

It was a remarkably irresponsible thing to say, but there was meaning in it. Encrid needed more actual combat. Death settled over his entire body. Before he released his last breath, an enemy soldier looked down at him and said:

"Stubborn bastard." Even then, Encrid still gripped his sword tightly. His blood pooled on the ground. ["Whatever happens, even if you die, never let go of your sword. That's the first rule."]

Countless instructors had said it. Ragna had said it, and so had Rem. Encrid did exactly that. "Ptoo!"

An enemy soldier who had lost countless comrades spat in Encrid's face. That was the end.

* * *

Morning dawned. A new today began again, and Encrid mulled over what he had gained from yesterday's fight. 'I need more actual combat.'

That was his conclusion. He sought out Ragna again for instruction.

"You've more or less got the fundamentals, but you seem like someone who's spent his whole life training alone. Where did you learn the basics of swordsmanship, anyway?" He was right. Encrid had felt it himself. What he needed now was real combat.

"Here and there." "... Here and there? Hm. Fine, let's leave it at that. Sparring should help you bring out what your body's learned whenever you need it. And I don't know who your teacher was, but he taught you well." That teacher was you. Ragna was praising himself without knowing it. Encrid replied, "Is that so?" and threw himself into sparring. That, too, was such a joy. When the battle repeated again, Encrid cut down thirty soldiers on his own. He had not done it through skill alone. Quarrels and arrows had been flying at him throughout. He had accomplished it while dodging this way and that. He had to use his head well. Only then could he squeeze in even a little more actual combat. He repeated today several more times and swung his sword again. Before he knew it, the things called fundamentals had settled perfectly into his body. "There's nothing for me to correct in your basics."

Encrid's skills improved so markedly that, in the end, Ragna was moved to say those words.