Chapter 39 - Flags Flutter and a Soldier Dances with His Sword (2)

“Eyes, feet, hands,” Ragna said. “Start with your eyes, move your feet, and finish with your hands. That's swordsmanship.” Encrid did as he said. He watched to predict his opponent's movements, moved his feet to get into position, and moved his sword only to finish the job. WHOOSH. He put it into practice in his next battle. Rather than seeing an attack and dodging, he anticipated it and dodged. His opponent's line of attack failed to find him, while his own reached the enemy. Thrusting his sword was merely confirmation. THUNK! His sword pierced the man's Adam's apple. He pulled it out sideways, severing muscle, nerves, and blood vessels. Blood gushed out. The instant he killed the soldier, Encrid rolled across the ground and drove his pommel into the shin of another standing nearby. CRACK! The man wore no greaves, so naturally the bone broke. “Gaaagh!” The man thrashed as he fell. Encrid plucked up a quarrel that had landed beside him and drove it into the man's heart. His armor stopped it halfway. As Encrid rose, he stamped down hard on it. THUNK!

The quarrel sank in to the end of its shaft. He lifted the dead man with one hand and tilted him to the side. THUD! THUD! THUD!

Quarrels buried themselves in the corpse. Here, Encrid made a small mistake. A quarrel nicked his thigh with a faint hiss. With his mobility reduced, it was difficult to rampage through the enemy ranks. Still, he did as much as he could. Thirty-two. Two more kills in a single day—even with a mistake along the way. 'Eyes, feet, hands.' See with his eyes, move with his feet, finish with his hands. A few more rounds of practice in actual combat seemed worthwhile. So that was what Encrid did. Through those repeated todays, he also gained a rough understanding of the enemy's movements. 'They guard the flagpoles.' And while doing so, they kept circling in one direction. If he charged straight ahead one day, he ran to the left of that route the next. He had never brought down a flagpole, but he had come tantalizingly close. Encrid felt a thirst. He felt he was missing something. 'Can't I do it alone?' If not, he could simply bring Rem or Ragna, but his stubborn pride stirred. He had learned proper swordsmanship and made it his own. He wanted to take another step forward. He wasn't getting impatient, but he kept feeling it was time to advance. 'I'll try first.' If this proved to be nothing but stubbornness, he could reconsider afterward. Repeating today had given him that opportunity. “Shit, what are you?” After several battles, he came face-to-face with an enemy Platoon Commander. It wasn't a familiar face. This was someone new, with whiskers like a rat's. “What do you think?” Encrid answered with a faint smirk. No one should have been able to act so boldly in the face of death. Rat-whiskers from the Principality of Aspen swallowed hard and thrust his spear. “You fucking bastard.”

* * *

After dying and waking up, he returned to training. “The Oniak Sword Technique.” Once Encrid grew familiar with the concept of eyes, feet, and hands, Ragna moved on. What had begun as an effort to master the fundamentals had somehow reached the history and theory of swordsmanship. “Fortunately, what you learned shares the same roots as my swordsmanship, Squad Leader.” Of course it did. Ragna had taught him. “I followed the example of one particularly good instructor. I suppose I really was lucky.” Encrid's explanation was absurd, but Ragna had no choice but to believe it. Otherwise, none of this made sense. He could accept the overnight improvement in skill. It was possible if Encrid had been practicing his fundamentals alone all along without knowing how to use them. Of course, even that was extremely unusual, but Ragna could simply choose not to dwell on it. He decided to apply the same reasoning to how the foundations of the Northern Heavy Sword had become ingrained in Encrid's body. What good would questioning it do? His Squad Leader had never pried into his past. He ought to extend the same courtesy. “Have you heard of it? The Oniak Sword Technique?”

Encrid nodded. The Oniak Sword Technique. It referred to the Righteous Sword, Heavy Sword, Confounding Sword, Swift Sword, and Flowing Sword. In other words: a sword of correctness and precision; a sword of weight and force; a sword that beguiled and unsettled; a sword of speed upon speed; a sword that yielded and deflected. Five hundred years ago, a peerless genius was born. Born on a small farm, the child was truly a genius among geniuses. At the age of nine, he killed the bandits who attacked the farm with nothing but a fire poker. Only nine, and he had killed grown bandits who knew their way around a sword. Twelve of them, at that. [“So this is swordsmanship.”] The nine-year-old was mature beyond his years, supposedly because he had lost his parents so young. Watching the bandits swing their swords, the boy had grasped the principles of swordsmanship. Later, a nobleman heard that a young child had killed twelve bandits with a fire poker and went to find him. He adopted the boy as his son. And so the surname Oniak was added to the child's name. Leonesis Oniak. That was how the genius came by his name. Leonesis had been born with heaven-sent talent, but equally great misfortune. Around the age of ten, he contracted an illness that drained the strength from his limbs. It was incurable; no mage, physician, or healer on the continent could treat it. Before he turned twelve, it had paralyzed his entire body. Even after he fell ill, the Oniak family did not cast him out. The unfortunate genius might have faded into obscurity. But at twenty, though his entire body remained paralyzed, Leonesis made his mark on the continent's swordsmanship. He compiled every existing sword art into a comprehensive system of five categories. That was the Oniak Sword Technique. Righteous Sword, Heavy Sword, Confounding Sword, Swift Sword, and Flowing Sword. Though unable to use his body, he had rewritten the history of swordsmanship. It also marked the beginning of the history that would make the Oniaks the Empire's greatest family. The schools of swordsmanship Leonesis established passed down through the generations until they became accepted doctrine. Nowadays, people generally spoke of the Northern Heavy Sword, the Central Righteous and Flowing Sword, the Western Swift Sword, the Southern Confounding Sword, and the Eastern Qi Sword. The continent was broadly divided into five regions, and weapon arts had developed differently in each. “I developed a technique for using the Northern Heavy Sword. You'll find it more useful than those beast's innards.” Today brought the same sunshine and wind as ever. That day, Encrid learned a new technique from Ragna. From Rem, he had learned the heart of the beast. From Jaxon, a sense for the blade. And Ragna taught him something called Concentrate on a Single Point. “The principle is simple. Forget everything around you, take in your opponent, and concentrate on what you're doing. Let nothing enter your sight and concentrate.” The explanation was a fucking mess. “The essence of the Heavy Sword lies in the fundamentals. It has several other names: the sword that breaks through a guard, the sword you cannot evade even when you see it coming, the sword that pours all your strength into a single blow. That's what you need to do. Concentrate.” If concentration was all it took, what did that make the people who couldn't do it? “I'll show you a little trick.” As he spoke, Ragna's sword became a streak of light. He couldn't yet have grown accustomed to the sword they had traded, but Encrid couldn't even see the blade. He couldn't see the arm whipping through the air, either. There was simply a flash, and something passed beside his neck. SNICK. The blade grazed the skin of his neck. The sword was so fast that he only realized what had happened after it cut him. His neck grew warm. Blood trickled down. “You bastard, are you picking on our Squad Leader?”

Rem had appeared out of nowhere and was glaring at Ragna. Encrid put a hand to his neck.

'I nearly died.' The strike had been that dangerous. It had cut his skin too quickly for him to see. “They say people concentrate dozens of times harder in the instant before death. I'm helping him.” “You lunatic. What good is learning a technique when he's already dead? You clearly don't know our Squad Leader. It took him a looooooong time just to learn the heart of the beast. You hear me?” That was a strange thing to emphasize. Hadn't he stretched out that “long” a little too much? Encrid was about to say something when Ragna snorted. “Because he had a bad teacher.” “Huh? What's that? You want an axe in your skull?”

Rem cupped a hand behind his ear as he spoke. “I'm not an ignorant barbarian. My teaching methods are rational.” Rational? Encrid pondered the meaning of the word. As far as he was concerned, Rem and Ragna were much of a muchness. “But if you're from the polar tribes, doesn't that make you a barbarian too?” Ragna had pale skin and red eyes. They were characteristic of the polar peoples, the northern tribes. “Don't put me on the same level as a western barbarian. It's offensive. Deeply.” “... Fine, just fucking die. Once you're dead, I'll personally take you north and bury you.” They looked ready to have another go at each other if left alone. Encrid stepped between them. “You know what I'm going to say, don't you?” Despite his intervention, Ragna looked past him. “I know perfectly well that our Squad Leader is as slow as a northern ox. But I didn't know his fundamentals were this solid.” “What was that, you bastard? Don't change the subject. Hold out your head so I can plant my axe in it.” “You crazy barbarian bastard.” Northern oxen moved as little as possible to withstand the cold. People used them as a comparison for someone exceptionally slow. The two kept joining forces to call Encrid slow, but he had no grounds to feel wronged. “You said you'd show me a trick.” Encrid held Ragna's attention with those words, then turned to Rem. He didn't need to say anything. He only had to look. Rem huffed and puffed, then, under Encrid's steady stare, cleared his nose with a snort and all but shouted. “We've been ordered to assemble!”

Then he turned and strode back toward their position. “We should head back,” Ragna said, watching him go. As he moved to put away his drawn sword, Encrid caught his wrist. “The trick?” A thirst for learning was what drove Encrid. And hadn't Ragna been about to teach him something new? He had called it Concentrate on a Single Point—Concentrate One, a technique he said he had developed by refining a secret art passed down from long ago. Encrid wanted it. “It won't be easy.” The fundamentals hadn't been easy, either. Rebuilding his stance, learning footwork, abandoning what he already had, learning to cut and thrust all over again. Not one part of it had been easy. Yet he had enjoyed it. Exhilaration had followed. The joy of growing stronger day by day filled his whole body. He said he dreamed of becoming a knight, but perhaps he had come this far simply because he loved the sword. When Encrid held a sword and swung it, he was happy enough to forget everything else in the world. With Encrid still holding his wrist, Ragna spoke matter-of-factly. “You need to be in mortal danger. When people think they're going to die, their nerves become razor-sharp. You need to experience that heightened state over and over.” The method resembled how he had learned the heart of the beast. But the heart of the beast demanded boldness even in the face of death, while Ragna's Concentrate on a Single Point demanded the opposite. He had to struggle desperately because he didn't want to die. Fear of death would sharpen his nerves to needle points. 'I'll practice it in combat.'

Encrid formed a plan in his head and acted on it. “Knowing the trick alone won't be enough.” “Tell me what it feels like once you've learned it.” “It feels as though everything around you fades away, and your sword moves exactly as you want it to.” Ragna answered readily. Encrid looked into his red eyes. He saw a seriousness there that he had never seen before. 'What's gotten into him all of a sudden?' Ragna was fickle. Even so, he had never shown this much enthusiasm before. With hidden passion burning deep in his eyes, he spoke. “It's time to go.”

Encrid nodded too.

“We should.” Battle began again, and the fog rolled in. “A spell? Those fucking bastards.”

Rem raged. “Stay low!”

Ragna shouted after Encrid as he ran forward. Before, he had been frantic to stop him. Not now. He knew that Encrid would no longer fall to some mediocre soldier. Charging forward, Encrid once again engaged the enemy in order: eyes, feet, hands. 'The crossbow unit first.' One thing had changed: after several more repetitions of today, the enemy formation had grown familiar to his eyes. No, to be precise, it wasn't his eyes that had grown familiar with it. He had simply memorized it without trying. Before the first enemy soldier could thrust his spear, Encrid closed right in and drove a dagger upward. THUNK!

The dagger pierced the man's jaw and the roof of his mouth. Encrid abandoned it and shoved the dead soldier with his shoulder. “Huh!”

“Urgh!” The soldiers knocked backward floundered in confusion. Encrid threw two daggers into the opening. They flew into two soldiers' throats. It was a stunning display of skill. He drew his longsword straight into a diagonal cut. CLACK! An infantry spear shaft blocked it. Expecting the block, he used the rebound to draw his sword back and slash the throat of a soldier on the opposite side. SLICE! The keenly honed blade cut the soldier's throat. Another fight. Another battle. Another repetition of today. He fought again and died again. And through it all, Encrid struggled desperately. He had understood the moment he heard the trick. He had to fight desperately not to die, rather than face death boldly. That was what mattered. In the end, he would not escape death. But that was fine. He would get what he wanted anyway. Of course, he would still have to do his job in the process. 'The flagpole.' Attack the flagpole serving as the spell's medium. He added an objective to his combat practice and charged toward it. Through his repeated todays, Encrid knew the enemy soldiers' movements in advance. Relying on the fog, they were thrown into confusion by even a single attacker. He took full advantage of it.