Chapter 261: Where Is This? (2)
Thud. Boom. Boom.
"Aaah...!"
Four of the seven boulders struck the wall. Stones the size of a man set it swaying, and Franc, watching, let out that sorrowful moan.
She's thrown her heart in with London's side, hasn't she.
Franc's anguished voice filled my ear as she clung in my arms, and I kept reading the fight to the north. Every time a stone hit the wall, cheers burst from the Viking lines and screams from the battlements above, and sighs spilled from Franc's lips in the same breath. She didn't even seem to notice how hard her slender fingers were knotted in my clothes. Each time a catapult stone struck, she tugged at my sleeve, aching with it.
Boom—crash!
"Gyaaah—!"
"Aaaaagh—!!"
Each time a massive stone landed, the wall broke apart in fragments and dust, and a few unlucky soldiers, shaken loose, plunged from the battlements and were reduced to bloody pulp.
A few more hits and that section's coming down.
The men attacking the wall seemed to have noticed as well. Catapult after catapult hurled stone at the weakened stretch. Were the engines that good, or were the crews simply that skilled? I'd read that a catapult's accuracy was miserable, and yet these Vikings were striking true with absurd ease. At this rate... wait. Huh?
"Oh, Franc. Look over there. The cavalry lying in ambush are about to hit their flank."
"Ah?!"
A few hundred meters to the left of the Vikings attacking London lay a dense forest, and from it some three hundred cavalry or more burst out as one and charged the catapults.
A strike at the flank. Whoever's commanding them has nerve.
White coats blazoned with roses over chain mail, the whole troop charging as one—the sight was striking enough to raise the hair on my arms.
"Waaaaah—!"
"Waaaaaah...!"
The Viking warriors had been creeping their line forward, waiting for the wall to fall. At the charge of three hundred cavalry they spun around and rushed them all at once, mounted or not, no distinction made. Their line collapsed, and the formation turned into nothing but chaos.
In that same instant the northern gate opened, and another two hundred cavalry poured out and charged the Vikings.
"Not bad."
At the charge from the northern gate, the Vikings split themselves into two ragged groups and ran at each cavalry force. Even to my eye, the response was a complete mess. Distance is everything in a cavalry charge, and they had all the distance they needed—and still they threw themselves in bare like that. Aigoo.
"...! ...!!"
I sighed inwardly at the Vikings being smashed to bloody pulp, then pulled the excitedly windmilling Franc even tighter against me and watched their army get ground apart by the charge. While the cavalry hacked off limbs and ran lances clean through Viking bodies, part of the troop that had burst from the western forest drove straight for the catapults.
The target was the seven engines, it seemed. Sure enough, the riders who reached them drove off the Vikings nearby and cut every cord that gave the machines their spring and tension. All seven catapults the Vikings had hauled in were rendered useless by that work, and the army that had allowed a cross-shaped cavalry charge began to scatter in every direction.
The Vikings didn't simply take the blow. Several hundred of them, mounted, managed to bring down a few of the cavalry—but that was truly only a fraction. The notion that ordinary horsemen and infantry could break a professional cavalry charge was absurd from the start.
The defending commander seemed to have decided this was the moment to settle it. The northern gate opened again, and infantry poured out to advance on the Vikings mired in confusion.
"Uwaaaaaah—!"
Beneath that great roar, the infantry charged as one—leather armor, swords, shields, and spears, plain white surcoats without a stitch of ornament thrown over the top. Even from a distance, the force of it was overwhelming.
"That's it...! Smash them to pieces...!!"
Franc's long platinum hair swayed as she pumped her clenched fists, thoroughly worked up. I stroked her head, gentle, as if to settle her.
Once they had allowed the cavalry charge, the Viking ranks were a shambles. Deaths were few relative to their total strength, but with the formation broken and chaos spreading, they couldn't mount a proper response even against the defenders' thousand—not half their number—and began to be driven back helplessly. Sensing the tide had turned, the Vikings at the rear abandoned the fight and fled as one toward the northern forest.
And then the army collapsed in what was, quite literally, an instant.
Cavalry and infantry started after the routing host. It would turn into a pursuit and an annihilation, so the northern wall belonged to the defenders. The charging cavalry had taken considerable losses, though. Of five hundred, some eighty looked dead. Even so they didn't rest. As if it were only natural, they wheeled to fall on the Viking army attacking the eastern gate from the flank—not all of them, of course. About fifty kept after the ones already fleeing.
The charge, speed fully built, became a sharp spear and split the eastern Viking host clean in two. They were more raiders than an army. The men assaulting the eastern gate had a sloppy command and nothing resembling a formation, just a disordered mass, and when several hundred cavalry began breaking through from the flank they fell into chaos in a flash. Atop the eastern wall, the archers showed nimble judgment from the moment the cavalry appeared, turning their fire on those climbing the ladders. Thanks to that, the Vikings below the wall were caught between advance and retreat, able only to flounder.
Their momentum crushed by a single cavalry charge, they fled toward the ships they had moored on the Thames right beside them, and with that the battle was decided. A Viking defeat.
The Vikings who had attacked London numbered about 3,500 between north and east. The defenders looked to be a little under 1,500. Aside from the badly damaged northern wall and the modest casualties along the eastern, they seemed to have held well.
"Lucky London held. You called them Vikings a moment ago, Franc—so is Britain still called Britain right now?"
"If they are fighting Vikings, this would be the period of transition from Britain to the Kingdom of England. I learned that the London of this time was a fortress called Londinium."
"Londinium's awfully big to call a mere fortress. Even at a glance, it looks like hundreds of thousands of people live here. At that size it's basically a city, isn't it? Where's the capital?"
"The capital is probably at Winchester, to the north... but I cannot be certain."
She hadn't been the most devoted student, it seemed. Franc answered with a hesitant mumble. Well, history class is boring. I don't know much either—I used to sneak peeks at ability-user hero chronicles during Korean history.
Considering medieval population figures, hundreds of thousands living in a single fortress was by no means a small number. And this wasn't even the capital where the king resided. For a city and a fortress of that scale to have taken shape, the place had to be geographically important.
"Come to think of it, about halfway down there was a place with an enormous wall, a castle, and a city already formed. That must have been the capital."
That filthy city... Do I have to go back up?
Watching from the sky as Londinium's soldiers recovered spoils from the Viking dead, I decided I ought to pull some information from a local.
"Franc. Let's grab one of those knights who looked like a Physical Reinforcement type and get some answers."
"A knight's pride is terribly strong, and they are arrogant besides. Would he answer us willingly?"
"If I lay Mana Voice over Mana Vision, that'll give him charm and pressure both... might that not be enough on its own?"
I turned it over for a moment, and then, seeing Franc pretty as a princess in her frilled dress, a good idea struck me.
"Let's do it like this."
I whispered it into her ear. Her eyes went round, and then her face turned troubled.
"W-will that work?"
"I figure it'll work well enough. Catch him under Mana Vision and Mana Voice, set the mood, and nine times out of ten he'll bite. No—so long as the knight's a man, it will absolutely work!"
Faced with how certain I looked, Franc smiled awkwardly and nodded.
We moved to the edge of the forest stretching north, and I used Spatial Perception to find the cavalry chasing the routing Vikings. Pursuing on horseback through a forest—you'd have to be a special kind of stupid, I'd thought—but the trees were spaced widely enough to make a chase perfectly possible. So that was why the cavalry had followed.
I looked over the fifty-odd riders one by one. About ten of them were Physical Reinforcement I-Class, one was H Class, and one was G-Class. Among the regular infantry I'd barely seen any Physical Reinforcement ability users, yet they were packed into the cavalry like this. Had they picked only the healthy and the strong to make into horsemen?
The target was a knight who had stopped in the shade of a large tree while chasing fleeing Vikings, his horse apparently spent. An I-Class Physical Reinforcement ability user with a Phase Power of 12, he pulled off a plate helm that looked beaten round from a sheet of iron, tucked it under his arm, swept back his sweat-soaked blond hair, and sighed.
...Handsome bastards should all just die. What is this, a photoshoot in the middle of a battlefield?
"Ready?"
"Yes... do I truly have to do it this way?"
Franc squirmed, her face crumpling as if she were embarrassed, and fanned her flushed cheeks over and over, sending air across her face. She stood neatly with her hands clasped, in a voluminous white frilled dress. Silk gloves rose to her elbows on her long, slender arms, and around her white neck—bared all the way to the collarbone—hung the birthstone necklace of large topaz I had given her. The blue ribbons accenting her chest and both arms were nice, but something still felt a little lacking, so I had her drape on a cape of the same color.
And the image of an elegant noblewoman was complete. Anyone would take her for a young lady of a noble house who had stepped out for a stroll and lost her way.
"Perfect! You're stupidly pretty, and it suits you. So long as you don't act shy, we could call you a princess out for a walk and nobody would doubt it!"
Half her body was spirit, so she could reshape her clothes however she pleased. I hadn't known that would come in this handy.
"..."
I gave Franc a small smile as she sighed once more, then checked the knight resting in the shade. I gestured silently to her, floating behind me, to wait behind a large tree several meters off, and dropped down in front of him. The young knight flinched, shot to his feet, and leveled his sword at me.
"Who are you!"
The accent was a bit thick, but it was English I could follow without much trouble.
Meeting my eyes and hearing my voice, the blond knight flinched, his shoulders trembling, and took a step back. Since my return I'd kept growing, and I stood at five foot ten. My frame was a good third again his, and with the muscle well laid on, my build was plainly superior, so he opened his mouth visibly cowed.
"Of whom... do you speak? This is a battlefield. It is no place for one of noble station to come. And what manner of man are you, to be so discourteous, dressed like a jester? You attend a noble personage in such clothes?"
A jester?! It's just an ordinary shirt and cotton trousers!
He picked at my clothes, then put on a face thick with wariness again, so I loaded even more Mana Voice into my voice and shouted.
With the words I let out a touch of killing intent, and the sword-point in the knight's hand began to tremble visibly.
Insult me one more time. I'll flip on Mana Mode - Acceleration and strip that weapon off you before you can blink.
I turned, showed him my back, and walked slowly. Franc, hidden behind the tree ahead, shifted just enough to reveal herself.
"You—hk!"
Whatever he'd been about to say died. His eyes went a little unfocused at the sight of her, and he couldn't get another word out. Tsk. And this was a knight.
He was still holding the point on her, so I barked, and the knight startled hard. He shoved the sword into its scabbard, hurried back until he was some twenty paces from Franc, and dropped to one knee.
"Forgive the discourtesy of having pointed a sword at a noble personage!"
Hah... damn this tyranny of a pretty face. Franc's looks are a little unfair, sure, but I didn't think he'd react on the spot without a scrap of doubt.
Grumbling inwardly, I spoke in a rather overbearing tone on her behalf. By then she had opened a feathered fan and was lightly hiding her flushed face behind it.
"John Whele, Whele of the White Rose Knight Order! O exalted one!"
Heh. A naive knight who doesn't know how to doubt. Or is it that Franc is so beautiful and elegant he can't bring himself to question the word princess?
"Yes, Your Highness! Those who raided Londinium are Vikings of Norway..."
Listening to the rest of John Whele's account, it was as expected. The Vikings had occupied the northern regions of Londinium and invaded from there. Half of what, in reality, would be Norfolk and Cambridge had been taken from them, he said. Indirect clashes had broken out three or four times a year, but never before an invasion on this scale. The number of Vikings holding the two regions was also unlike previous years, and while countermeasures were still being prepared, they had massed in one place and come for Londinium.
When I had heard him out and looked back at Franc, she nodded too. Something about it was subtly different from the past of reality. Nearly three hundred thousand people, and an army of only 1,500. The discrepancy nagged at me, so I asked.
"The main host of Londinium has marched to put down the great Viking army now landing in the south. The troops remaining in Londinium are nothing more than a reserve."
"I am but a single knight of the reserve, and I do not know the army's designs. I know only this—the main host of the barbarous Vikings has begun to land upon the coast of Winchester in the south, and the glorious Great King Arthur Pendragon has personally taken the field at the head of the Knights of the Round Table, and so Londinium, too, dispatched troops!"
What? Arthur Pendragon? King Arthur? The Knights of the Round Table?
Startled, I turned to Franc. Her eyes had gone wide as saucers—wider than mine.
"...? Why would you inquire of such a thing...?"
Damn. I was so startled I just asked outright.
At the look on John Whele's face—how could you not know—I switched on Mana Mode - Acceleration, slipped behind him, and chopped him in the neck until he dropped. Once suspicion took root, honest answers would be hard to come by.
I looked for a moment at John Whele, face planted in the dirt, then turned to Franc, still frozen in surprise.
"Hmm. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, he said. Wasn't that just a novel?"
"Ah? A-ah..."
Franc blinked like a lamp with its fuse blown. She didn't seem to have a grip on her wits at all. First I hauled the unconscious John Whele up and propped him against the tree trunk beside his horse. See, why'd you have to look suspicious. If you'd just gone along with it, you wouldn't have been knocked out.
Then I went to Franc, who still hadn't come back to herself, wrapped an arm around her waist, raised a Wall of Space, and leapt into the sky.
Looking down, John Whele—head bowed, out cold—came to with a sharp "Hk!" as quickly as a Physical Reinforcement ability user would, and whipped his gaze around. Pain rising, he groaned and clutched the back of his neck, glanced about, and his face grew paler and paler. Then, like a man who had seen a ghost, he mounted and galloped desperately for Londinium.
"Something's off, for Britain's past. Don't you think?"
I asked it while I watched him tear away as if his tail were on fire, then turned to Franc in her voluminous dress. No answer. She still didn't seem to have come back to herself. Was the mere existence of King Arthur really that shocking? Maybe, since Franc was a knight herself.
...Showing me a face like that while thinking of some man who isn't me.
A little anger flared. I condensed a mass of TP on the tip of my tongue and took her lips.
"Mmph?! Mmm... nngh!"
She tapped my arm in resistance as the TP slid down her throat, but little by little her movements stilled. Eyes closed, face flushed, she breathed in soft gasps and gulped the TP down, and as her excitement rose a thin trickle of nectar began to seep from her petals. Only after I confirmed that half-melted look did I take my lips away. She stared up at me blankly, lips slightly parted, eyes thoroughly wet.
"You back with me now?"
"A-ah..."
Red all the way to her ears, Franc covered her face with a silk-gloved hand and drew back a little. I smiled, wicked.
"Don't go losing your mind over some other man with your husband right here."
"Wha—?! I-it isn't like that!"
"Really?"
I looked at her crookedly, as if to ask whether she wasn't thinking of King Arthur and the Round Table. Franc shook her head so hard it blurred, as if to say absolutely not, then burrowed into my arms and coaxed me in a nasal little voice.
"Oh, honestly. I was only startled by the tale of the legendary King Arthur, that's all. You're the only one I have, Seoha!"
I pretended to sulk for a while and enjoyed the coaxing, until Franc's face began to crumple toward tears. That was enough.
"All right. I'll believe you. Anyway, if King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are here, that means Camelot is too—but John Whele got suspicious, and I never learned where it is."
"Mm. Then if we climbed a little higher into the sky and searched, one by one, for places where a great city has formed, would Camelot not turn up?"
"That's one way. But."
I'd asked where Camelot was on reflex, startled by those words, but thinking about it now, I wondered if there was any reason to go looking.
"I don't really see a reason we have to find Camelot."
Even so, we had no goal anyway, and there was no guarantee this world held a Return Point that would take us across to the Phase World. Maybe look, if only to pass the time?
Then Franc's eyes sparkled, and she offered me an idea—and at that, my own flew open.
"Um, Seoha? If it is Camelot, then Merlin, the one called the sage, ought to be there. What if we found him and asked about this world?"
"Oh?"
Come to think of it, in the novels Merlin had been portrayed as a sage and a great mage, hadn't he? This world had ability users too. If it was Merlin, he might know something about a Return Point appearing.
"That's a good thought. All right—let's go find Camelot!"
"Yes!"
Franc was terribly pleased the moment I said we'd look for Camelot. She was just purely happy at the thought that she might see King Arthur, Britain's own legend. Right?
...Right?