The Trap Within the Trap
"But with those bastards charging in with their eyes turned white like that, can he really handle it alone?"
"I suppose not. It may be one thing to run from them on horseback, but unless you've got nerves of steel, it can't be easy."
The soldiers watching could hardly believe what they were seeing, and at the same time, they worried about Shrakhim's safety. Not because they truly cared about him, of course, but because it would be a problem if the commander of the operation died.
"Good. Those bastards have lost their heads properly now, so it's time to draw them in."
Shrakhim had borrowed a white horse from the post station guard and ridden out on it.
"Easy there, horse. Don't be frightened. If you trust me and follow along, I'll give you a mountain of candied carrots tonight!"
Even back when he had been a thug, he had always taken good care of horses. The memory of the mount he had lost to Hogrifon came back to him, and a chill stirred somewhere in his chest.
- Neigh!
Fortunately, the horse listened to Shrakhim just fine.
"Good. Let's go!"
He waited until the trolls came close, then wheeled the horse around and fled. It was an expertly executed maneuver.
I am the man who has dragged Hogrifon, and even a Minocentaur, by the tail and lived to tell of it!
By now, he had participated in no fewer than four lure operations: two Hogrifon lures, one Minocentaur, and one FogHog. And every one of them had involved monstrous creatures far more terrifying than this.
Compared to a charge that made the earth itself tremble, the trolls' pursuit was nothing to fear.
- Trooo! (Stop right there!)
If he ran too fast, the trolls would fail to keep up. But if he tried to flee too slowly, the horse would panic. Shrakhim maintained just the right speed and distance, neither too hasty nor too leisurely. In other words, he had become a master of running away.
"Fine, I've stopped. What are you going to do about it, huh?!"
When the bastards began to show signs of fatigue, Shrakhim slowed and stopped. Man and monster stood off across a creek.
The trolls seemed to hesitate even when they raised their weapons to throw them. If they missed, they'd only lose the weapons for nothing.
"Is that stone axe just for show? If it were me, I'd have thrown it already. Though I suppose that rock-hook bastard told you not to waste your strength for nothing. You should listen to your chief."
- Trooo!
Enraged, Stone Axe Troll#004 hurled his one and only weapon at Shrakhim.
"Urragh!"
Shrakhim batted it away with the Dandanum shield issued to him. The stone axe splashed into the creek and was carried off downstream.
- Trooooo! (Idiots! Not the knight. Aim for the horse's legs!)
Seeing that, Stone Axe Troll#001 shouted in exasperation.
Hearing that, Shrakhim quickly prepared to spur his mount. He could protect his own body with a shield or deflect blows, but it would not be easy to defend the horse's legs as well.
"Hyah!"
Because he broke away a half-step sooner, the trolls' throws all missed.
"So that one is the chief now? Foolish thing!"
In truth, Stone Axe#001's tactic was not bad. No, it was quite excellent. A horse had four legs; hit any one of them, and its mobility would be crippled.
The only mistake was failing to imagine that the human on horseback could understand their words.
Huh? I've been talking with them this whole time, so didn't they already know? What a bunch of idiots.
While Shrakhim shook his head, the trolls began bickering among themselves again.
- Trooo! (You idiot! Because of you, we wasted time!)
- Trool! Troro! (You fools! It hit! We should've thrown earlier!)
It would be lovely if they just kept fighting each other like this.
- Trooo! (There's a village up ahead!)
- Troor! (Go! To the village!)
- Trool Troo! (Then he'll come too. That one as well!)
Realizing they had come close to Darckovo, the trolls recalled their original objective and recovered their composure. The last one's words, in particular, were chillingly sly.
"Damn. This is bad."
Seeing that the trolls' aggro had shifted away from him and toward the village, Shrakhim decided to use his other specialty. Shooting.
"Here, take this!"
He fired the repeating crossbow at his hip and managed to strike several of them.
The small bolts fired by a repeating crossbow could not inflict serious damage on a troll. The impact was negligible, and they would regenerate almost immediately.
- Trook!
But being hit still hurt. And it still pissed them off.
- Troooo! (Catch him!)
Once the trolls had locked onto Shrakhim again, they resumed the chase.
"Run, taunt, run again... You're nearly at the level of a master now. Like some kind of troll tamer."
"Aye, that's right. They say slimes have a knack for sticking to things, too. Hah."
The militia, watching the godlike hit and run, burst out laughing at the sight.
"Running and taunting, huh. Easy enough when you're watching from a distance like us, but in truth that takes courage too. And you need excellent horsemanship. It's not something just anyone can do."
But the elite soldier Gunter, his expression serious, gave Shrakhim's tactical movement high praise.
"Erik, could you do that? With trolls charging at you and throwing stone axes, could you calmly control the distance and draw them in like that? Fighting a battle of wits isn't just about running away."
"Well... no, I couldn't do that. I've never even been on a horse to begin with. Hearing you put it that way, you're right."
Even the militia, made up mostly of farmers, began to see the knight's performance in a different light.
"All right, everyone, let's move too. The lure has gone well, so it's time to carry out the next step."
"Understood."
The militia set out with wooden clubs in hand. Since Shrakhim, the man who had devised the operation in the first place, was showing results himself, the soldiers followed the plan with far more confidence.
* * *
After a long game of chase, Shrakhim dismounted and came to a halt. The horse, exhausted, was whinnying hard. Seeing that, the trolls increased their speed and came after him.
- Troo! (Got you!)
- Troo?! (Wait!)
One of the trolls closing the distance pointed at the ground ahead.
- Tro, troo. (Strange. Over there. No grass there.)
In the middle of the green, grassy field was a patch covered thickly with tree branches.
- Troo. (Looks like a trap.)
Beside it sat a mound of piled dirt. Anyone could see the signs of freshly dug earth.
- Trool... (Suspicious...)
The trolls hovered warily, refusing to approach carelessly. Then Shrakhim shouted,
"No good, we have to charge them now!"
- Troo?!
At his cry, militia men emerged from all directions.
"B-but they haven't fallen into the trap. How are we supposed to...?"
But they did not charge. They only stood there, rooted to the spot.
- Trool. (It really was a trap.)
The trolls looked quickly around them.
But there were only seven or eight militia men at most, and all they carried were clubs.
- Troo? Trorol! (Not knights? Nothing to worry about!)
- Trolltrol! (There aren't many of them!)
- Trooo! (Come on, then!)
Having assessed the opposition, the trolls laughed viciously. The crude encirclement the humans had set up did not frighten them in the least. If anything, their fatigue from the chase made them glad to have one less thing to worry about.
"This won't do. Let's run!"
The militia, terrified by the bared fangs grinning like split mouths, turned and fled.
- Troo! Trotro! (Cowards! Your underlings are the cowards!)
- Trooo! (Serves you right, you pig-human!)
The trolls happily pointed at Shrakhim.
- Trooo! Tro! (Only weaklings here! Let's catch them later!)
- Trolltrol! (Yes, yes! Kill them. Start with that one!)
- Trooo! (I'll cut open that one's guts and chew them first!)
The trolls circled around the trap and advanced.
- Hihihihing!
To make matters worse, the horse panicked and bolted.
"Damn it!"
Shrakhim had no choice but to run on foot.
- Trooo! (After him!)
The thrilled trolls forgot their fatigue and ran after him. Shrakhim sprinted into a grain warehouse straight ahead. It was a fairly large building, the communal storehouse used by the whole village.
"Huff... huff."
He dropped the bar across the door the moment he got inside, but...
- Trooo!
One kick from a troll shattered the door to splinters. Tragically, that door was the storehouse's only entrance.
- Trooool. (And it's empty too.)
The grain warehouse stood hollow and bare. Bags hung from the ceiling, heavy with something that seemed to be grain, probably to keep rodents from getting at it.
- Trooooh. (If it were full of grain, we could have hidden inside it.)
- Troool? (What is that smell? Pig?)
- Trolltrol. (Go on, squeal. We can kill you in one shot if you do.)
Discovering Shrakhim leaning against the far wall, well away from the entrance, the trolls wasted no time mocking him.
Shrakhim spotted a vent high on the wall and leaped for it with all his might, but he barely managed to brush it.
- Tralalala! (Bwahaha!)
- Trollolo! (He's trying so hard! Twahaha!)
The trolls laughed themselves silly at the sight.
"Damn it!"
In one last desperate bid, Shrakhim fired off the repeating crossbow.
- Click. Click.
But even after emptying the bolt case, not a single troll had gone down. He had only succeeded in making them angrier.
- Trooo...! (You bastard! I was going to spare you for a moment because you were acting so funny!)
- Troool! (I'll kill you right now!)
Shrakhim pulled the axe from his back and raised it. It had been given to him by the dwarf girl he had met in Rainpa, Sera Rowgan.
'Here, take it. It's a gift.'
'W-what is this?'
'Can't you tell? It's an axe. I snuck it out of the house when I left, but it's too big for me, see. I figured it'd suit your hands better, so I'm giving it to you. It's a Karoum alloy, so be careful with the edge.'
The trolls came rushing in, uncaring even after seeing the sharply honed blade.
- Trwoar!
Shrakhim swung the axe before they could even reach him. Had the danger become so extreme that his nerves sharpened to a peak?
Crack.
No. What he split was the timber supporting the plank floor.
- Tro?
Crack.
The thin planks could not bear the weight of the staggering trolls and broke apart. What waited beneath them was a deep pit, bristling with stakes.
- Trwoeck!
The trap the trolls had seen through earlier, and the militia's attempt at encirclement, had both been dummies, mere acts of deception.
The crude trap had been left visible on purpose, and the flimsy force had scattered in terror. Seeing that, the trolls had erased the very concepts of trap and ambush from their minds. And the knight who had seemed to be their only true threat had fled without even a warhorse beneath him. That, too, was an act Shrakhim had staged without the slightest hesitation.
Blinded by these layers of deceit, the trolls had completely let down their guard. Now they would pay the price.
"Now!"
At Shrakhim's shout, the militia and the guard troops surged in.
"Waaah!"
- Trooo?!
The trolls panicked at the sight of a force that looked three times larger than the one they had seen before. The numbers were enough to surround the great pit completely.
The militia had not been trained in weapons technique. There had not been enough time, nor enough weapons. But this was a grain warehouse. The walls were lined with pitchforks and flails in abundance.
"Taste this!"
"I'll smash your heads in!"
These were tools they had swung all their lives, so their movements wasted nothing. Only the target had changed. Instead of turning over clods of earth, the pitchforks tore into troll flesh; instead of threshing grain, the flails beat troll skulls into submission.
Because they only had to repeat motions they already knew, the makeshift weapons were far more effective than teaching them clumsy spearwork would have been.
- Trooooock!
The trolls desperately tried to climb out of the pit, but each time they did, they were struck down by pitchforks and flails and tumbled back in.
"You monsters, die!"
"I'll make sure you never set your sights on our village again!"
The militia was badly worked up. As a result, their pitchfork and flail strokes had become monotonous.
- Troo! (Weapons! Take their weapons first!)
"Ghk?! These bastards?"
The trolls used their long arms to snatch at the farm tools.
- Trooree!
Stone Axe#001 deliberately offered up his left arm so the pitchfork would lodge in it, then grabbed the shaft of the pitchfork with his remaining right arm.
- Trowooree!
In the midst of the crisis, the brute strength he displayed dragged the militia member along with the pitchfork.
"W-whoa!"
"Hey, that's dangerous!"
He escaped the crisis only because others dragged him back.
- Trool trool! (Yes! Without weapons, there's nothing they can do. Those ones too!)
The trolls were quick to find the gaps in the militia's formation.
- Tro troo! (Copy that!)
The other trolls began imitating Stone Axe#001's actions as well. A torn arm wound was nothing to a troll with such tremendous regenerative power.
- Troo! Tro troll! (Hold out! Flesh grows back!)
- Troooo! (We can win! We only need to climb up!)
In the face of danger, they even encouraged one another.
Over and over, the trolls reached up from inside the pit. The militia turned pale when they saw severed fingers grow back in an instant.
"T-those damn things are relentless."
The impossible regeneration was frightening enough, but what scared them more was the madness that let them gladly offer up their own bodies in reliance on it.
- Trowooree!
Stone Axe#001 yanked out the stake lodged in his belly and drove it into the wall. Using it as a foothold, he hauled himself up, making him much harder to stop.
Seeing that, Stone Axe#002 drove a stake into the wall at shoulder height instead and even grabbed it like a climber.
"Those insane monsters! They pull out the stakes lodged in their own bodies and use them as tools...."
- Trrrro.
New flesh had already begun to grow over the holes where the stakes had been.
"Huff, huff. My arms are getting more and more sore."
Blisters began to rise on the militia's hands.
"Do these bastards even die?!"
Sweat running down their necks had soaked their hands by now. They tried to grip tighter, but their palms were slick, and it was growing harder to hold fast.
"Nngh...!"
Slipping from the trembling ends of the pitchforks, fingers kept latching on again and again.