Bloody Primal (3)
The bolt buried deep in his thigh. The orcs with tower shields forming a perfect circle around them. And Nella, clad in massive armor and shield, carving a brutal path through the allied ranks. As these pieces snapped together in his mind, the infantry captain finally understood the tactic Nella was employing.
“Break the encirclement at all costs!! We have to get out!!”
Ping! Ping! Ping!
“Khak…!!”
“Ugh…!!”
The orc army’s plan was clear: block any attempt to flee with their shield wall and annihilate the enemy through sustained ranged fire. With no equipment to counter long-distance attacks, the light infantry desperately needed cover. Yet the orcs had sealed them inside a circular barrier of tower shields, leaving them nowhere to hide.
They had to punch through the encirclement no matter the cost, seize favorable ground, and only then could they hope to counterattack. Even if they abandoned the fight entirely, escape was impossible without breaking the ring. While the captain shouted orders, bolts screamed in from beyond the wall and two human soldiers dropped dead, throats pierced clean through.
Time was running out for the humans.
“You… you bastards…!!”
Thud!!
“Guh… aaaaaah…!!”
At their captain’s frantic command, the human soldiers hammered wildly at the tower shields, trying to force a breach. But pitting raw strength against orcs was futile from the start, and their long swords were laughably useless against the iron wall of those shields.
A long sword was made for swift cuts and thrusts with a keen edge; it was never designed to damage a massive tower shield. The weapons were a terrible mismatch. When pounding produced no result, one desperate soldier charged forward, grabbed the shield with both hands, and began to pull with all his might.
It looked like an act of utter despair, yet he had realized the bitter truth: even if he spent all day striking the shield with his long sword, his own hands would shatter long before the barrier yielded. Still, no matter how hopeless the situation, his choice remained both reckless and foolish.
The tower shield did tremble slightly when pulled, but the contest was never close. Orcs possessed overwhelming natural strength. When the soldier pressed himself flush against the shield to gain leverage, a spear suddenly thrust from behind it and punched straight through his flank.
The tragedy was that their few remaining choices in this desperate hell were forcing them into such suicidal decisions. One man had discarded his sword, seized the shield with both hands, and died for it. His death achieved nothing tangible, yet it gave his comrades a vital clue. It was not entirely meaningless.
Several soldiers realized that bare-handed charges worked far better than futile sword blows. They began throwing their bodies against the shields in coordinated groups.
Thoom! Thoom!
“That’s it!! The shield’s moving! Push together!!”
Three humans grabbed one tower shield and heaved. A fourth, arriving late, caught the incoming spear with both hands and neutralized it. After several powerful shoves from the trio clinging to the shield, the massive barrier began to sway dangerously.
Hope flared in the eyes of the surrounding soldiers. More rushed in. The light infantry had decided to trust in the power of numbers. No matter how strong an orc might be, they believed a swarm of humans could overwhelm one.
Before they could test that belief, their desperate plan was utterly demolished.
Kwaaaaaaaaang!!!
The soldiers who had piled onto a single orc to create an opening were sent flying as bloody pulp, their original shapes unrecognizable. Joints snapped and flailed like broken marionettes. The corpses shot sideways in a straight line before slamming into the ground, carving long, deep gouges in the earth.
Nella had intervened.
Despite her enormous gear, she had closed the distance in an instant. Maintaining her forward momentum, she swung her gigantic kite shield. Every human soldier who met that iron wall died on impact.
Clang!! Clang!! Claaaaang!!!
In a heartbeat the humans understood: unless they stopped Nella, every attempt to break the encirclement would be crushed. They attacked her from behind, swords raised. Yet their long swords, which could not even scratch an orc tower shield, proved equally useless against Nella’s full plate armor, which was thicker and heavier still.
The long swords chipped and shattered while her armor remained pristine. The difference in equipment quality was painfully obvious.
Crunch!! Crack!! Crunch!!
Nella responded instantly to those who dared strike at her back. Her bastard sword was nearly the size of a true two-handed blade. She twisted her torso with explosive force, using centrifugal momentum to whip the weapon around.
The light infantry were well-trained; they could react with sharp, agile dodges when they anticipated a counter. Their training, however, had only ever used long swords, short swords, or at best broad swords. They had no experience against a weapon this long and massive.
They leapt backward to avoid the swing, but Nella’s bastard sword was longer than the distance they could cover. Three light infantrymen were cut in half on the spot, their upper and lower bodies separating in a horrific spray.
The sound the blade made as it carved through living flesh was disturbingly alien. The severed corpses showed clean cuts so perfect it looked as if their waists had been torn away rather than sliced. No ordinary sword, no matter how sharp, could shear through a human waist without the blade catching on bone and flesh. Common sense said the edge would lose momentum halfway through the abdomen.
To bisect three men with a single stroke was simply impossible by normal means. This nightmarish sight was the product of Nella’s overwhelming strength combined with the bastard sword’s tremendous weight. In simpler terms, she had simply burst through them with raw, irresistible power.
Crack!!!
One of the bisected corpses lay on the ground. As Nella strode past, she stepped on its upper torso. The sabaton on her foot instantly crushed the entire ribcage, leaving a deep imprint. It was clear proof that every piece of equipment she wore was so heavy that merely being stepped on could kill a human.
Clank! Clank! Clank!
Nella advanced on the remaining soldiers. With each step her sabatons rang heavily, stamping bloody footprints into the earth. The humans felt pure terror before an absolute predator no attack could touch. Overwhelmed, they began to stumble backward.
Stab!! Stab!! Stab!!!
“Kek…!!!”
“Please stop!! We were wrong!! Let us go!!!”
“Spare us!! Please, stop!!! Ack…!!”
Yet fleeing from Nella did not lengthen their lives. Orc snipers stationed all around continued loosing bolts, steadily thinning the human numbers. Some panicked soldiers who tried to avoid the concentrated fire by breaking through the encirclement were instead impaled by spears thrust from behind the tower shields.
Whenever a group gathered enough strength to threaten the wall, Nella would charge in without fail. The clustered humans were turned into bloody sacks of meat and smashed into the dirt.
“D-damn it… If only the main force had sent support…”
The infantry captain was wrapping a bandage around his thigh, applying pressure to the embedded bolt. Pulling it out now would mean bleeding to death. In the midst of overwhelming despair, a single terrible assumption flashed through his mind and froze his hands.
What if the main force wasn’t simply failing to answer messages… but was unable to answer them at all?
The original assault by the human main force had been a surprise operation coordinated with the dragon Kerdihak. The plan was for the captain to attack the Demon Lord Castle, draw attention, and pull away troops, allowing the main human army to strike the now-empty Caboni Forest.
Noise in the east, strike in the west.
His current mission was an even more secretive offshoot of that plan. Even if the Caboni Forest raid were detected, the odds of his smaller force being discovered were far lower.
Then who were these orcs lying in wait, encircling them as if they had known they were coming?
Without prior knowledge of their exact route, it would have been impossible to dig pits in precisely the right locations. The light infantry’s stealthy infiltration had been inside the orcs’ palm from the beginning.
Once his thoughts reached that point, the assumption gained horrifying weight and the full picture emerged.
If his unit had been discovered, what of the main force?
If the Demon Lord truly existed, the all-powerful dragon Kerdihak would have warned them. The resurrection of a Demon Lord was far beyond anything the northern outpost of Astaris could handle. Esteronan would have mobilized a massive army.
Therefore, Kerdihak’s guarantee that no Demon Lord existed was as good as fact. The activity around the ruins of Hemonigent, destroyed a thousand years ago, must have been nothing more than scattered survivors struggling to rebuild their lives.
The magical resonance Kerdihak had sensed and the dwarven-looking artifacts found near the Decastras Mountains were merely the minor efforts of defeated soldiers trying to survive.
That had been the assumption until now.
If this unit’s position, objective, and route had been exposed, then the main force’s raid must have been discovered long ago. The main army was likely facing a crisis so dire they could not even receive urgent requests for aid. Otherwise, every member of the main force carrying communication magic tools could not possibly remain silent.
“What… what in the world… how…”
Thud… Thud…
A round object suddenly rolled to a stop at the infantry captain’s feet. It was the head of one of his subordinates.
Shattered by Nella’s shield, the body had been torn apart and the severed head had tumbled across the ground to stop before him. The dead eyes stared upward, wide open, as if still looking at its commander. The sight sent raw terror surging through the captain.
With trembling eyes he slowly raised his gaze.
The battlefield was a living hell of endless screams and desperate pleas. A soldier knelt begging for mercy only to have a bolt slam through his eye. Another man, driven mad, kept picking up his severed arm and trying to press it back against the stump. A third had been run through the stomach while holding a shield; his intestines spilled out in a wet tangle. One soldier had tried to ignite the gunpowder they carried to burn the Taego Forest in an emergency, but a bolt struck him mid-throw and the resulting explosion tore him apart. Another who had swung at the giant female orc in full armor had his entire shoulder ripped away by her shield.
Blood painted the ground so thoroughly that the earth itself looked red. The thick stench of gore was enough to make the mind reel.
And then the infantry captain saw the eyes watching him.
An orc wearing colossal full plate armor. Brown eyes visible through the slit of her great helm. A gaze utterly merciless, devoid of hesitation when slaughtering enemies. Her enormous kite shield, shaped like a soaring hawk, was drenched in blood.