Out of Control (2)

Rewinding the clock a little — inside the command tent of the Second Prince's army.

The Eastern Knight Commander and Count Windhafen were there.

"A messenger just arrived from the front," the Count said. "The First Prince has taken the field himself."

The Eastern Knight Commander, Flambrecher, regarded him with a gleam of genuine interest.

"Ha! Worlds apart from a certain someone who's nothing but vanity and pride. If only a man like that were our leader."

"It was precisely because he's such a fool that we were able to create this opportunity. You'll have to live with it."

"Well — I suppose that's true."

The Eastern Knight Commander giggled, a bright, artless smile spreading across her face that had no business belonging to someone her age. She was nearly forty, yet not a trace of those years could be found anywhere on her. Whether it was the height of her cultivation or something else, the dense, corded muscle packed across her body looked as though it had simply refused the passage of time, a living advertisement of her health.

It wasn't only her appearance. Her temperament and her manner were young as well — so much so that, watching her move, one might have taken her for a boy in his teens. Impulsive. Overflowing with ambition and a hunger for adventure.

"Master, what do you want me to do once I get there?"

"Go and sweep them all away. There's no one worth leaving alive."

"Hmm. Simple enough!"

She scooped up the sword she had set aside while sitting, and strode out of the tent. Her distinctive red curls tossed with the roughness of the motion, making her look more childlike than ever.

Watching her go, Count Windhafen thought:

Still the same as when she was little, Roswitha.

She had been just as headlong, just as unhesitating, the day he first laid out the plan and asked her to join him.

The thought made him laugh.

"But the skill, at least, has long since outstripped the years. That little girl is a Sword Master now. Hahaha!"

And so, even as his own soldiers were being scythed down by those damned toys, Count Windhafen could still afford to smile.

"First Prince Hector. And Albar Sternfelt."

The ones who had humiliated him.

A Sword Master could butcher them. Of that, he had no doubt.

A blade of icy blue-white, so vivid it almost hurt to look at.

I knew at a glance what it was. An Aura Blade.

I've seen it often enough. Father used to wield one.

The single greatest visual difference between Sword Qi and an Aura Blade is this: there is no disturbance. None. Sword Masters are knights whose swordsmanship has reached the absolute limit — but their control of mana has reached that same limit as well. At the Sword Qi stage, the moment mana is wrapped around a blade it begins to bleed off in every direction. At the Aura Blade stage, that mana is locked onto the steel without a flicker of waste, compressed and held. Mana controlled to that extreme, packed that tightly along a sword's edge, produces hardness and cutting power to match.

A wet, decisive sound.

An allied knight in steel plate came apart down the middle, split as cleanly as a block of tofu.

"Ahahaha! What are you all standing around for? Come at me!"

Hooves thundered — and then she was among them.

The woman who had to be the Eastern Knight Commander came howling in with a wild laugh, charging straight into our knight order. She was on foot, having left her horse, and she was still closing faster than a gallop. She swung her sword, and —

A sound like a giant blender chewing through meat.

The result was about the same. Allied knights and their mounts were minced where they stood, carved apart without the slightest resistance.

I loosed a spell at once.

The lance of fire screamed across the gap — and burst.

She swatted it aside as if it were nothing. We were inside a hundred meters. A close-range blind angle. And she still answered it with a reaction speed that made no sense at all.

"Aha? So you're the one Master was talking about?"

Master? Count Windhafen, maybe?

"Mind telling me your name?"

The air changed in an instant. A thick killing intent rolled over me, the kind that promised I would die if I didn't answer.

That unique pressure you get from shaping mana into a weapon of the will. The Aura Blade already gave it away, but yes — this has to be the Eastern Knight Commander.

It was a technique I had been on the receiving end of more times than I cared to count. Mana — aura, in a knight's vocabulary — loaded with emotion and hurled outward. Used to freeze an enemy in terror, to cut their fighting strength in half, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sometimes even to drop them cold.

I looked at the killing intent she was pouring out and felt not the slightest urge to flinch.

"Albar de Sternfelt."

"Ohh? Pretty composed for a mage, aren't you? Sternfelt, though… what's your connection to the Southern Knight Commander?"

So she was curious about my background. Fine. I needed to buy time anyway. I'd feed the curiosity and keep her talking as long as I could.

"I'm his eldest son."

"A-hang? So you're that so-called Sternfelt washout?"

That's a nickname I haven't heard before.

"Washout?"

"I started calling you that when I heard the eldest son of a prestigious knight house had suddenly thrown himself into magic and nothing else. Why? Got a problem with it?"

"No. Doesn't matter to me."

Even if I did, what would be the point of saying so? We had already met as enemies. Any grievance I had, I would settle the physical way.

"Ah — if you were trying to ambush me, you might as well stop. I can feel everything you're doing."

Damn it. The spell I had been weaving in secret had been found out.

A Sword Master, all right. The senses are on another level.

I had never used magic in my spars with Father, so this was the first I was learning of it. Had she done the same when she deflected that first spell? I had put it into the complete blind spot at the back of her head, and she had still answered as if she could see it coming. It was starting to look that way.

I threw the spell I had prepared straight into her face anyway.

A 5th Circle fire spell — a hyper-charged Fireball that launched a sphere of flame nearly the size of a compact car.

The Blaze Shot tore toward the Eastern Knight Commander, devouring the air around it in a roaring sheet of fire. She vanished behind it. The thing was large enough to blot her out completely.

A sharp, clean note cut through the roar.

…A cutting sound?

My spell split down the middle, sheared cleanly in two.

The divided halves detonated a beat too late, and did her no damage at all. She was still standing in the same posture she had used to cut the magic apart, a rough smile on her face.

"What an insolent brat. In a hurry to get yourself killed with your own two hands, are you?"

A shiver ripped through me the instant I heard her voice, as if someone had dumped ice water down my spine. It wasn't the Sword Master's trick of pouring emotion through aura. It was something older than technique — the raw, crawling certainty of a rabbit realizing a tiger has started the chase. A higher predator, locking on. My survival instinct was screaming, and I could feel every note of it.

"Stop her!"

The First Prince's order had barely left his mouth before the Eastern Knight Commander was already closing the distance on me.

I abandoned the horse and short-range teleported on the spot.

A blade tore the air where I had been. A horse screamed.

I didn't need to look to know the animal was dead. I threw myself sideways with everything I had.

Something hissed past my ribs, close enough to feel. It was the longsword the Eastern Knight Commander had been holding a heartbeat ago. The Aura Blade was still burning along its edge, bright and clean, as the weapon sank into the wet earth as smoothly as a plastic spoon into pudding — no resistance at all, planted at the exact angle it had been thrown.

"Charge!"

The First Prince must have judged this the moment — a Sword Master without a weapon. His order rang out, and the knights surged forward, pounding toward her without hesitation —

A detonation of earth.

The ground where the Eastern Knight Commander had been standing cratered inward, and then she was in the air.

That's the same person?

Mana-boosted or not, she was in full plate, and she had just launched herself into the sky on the strength of her legs alone.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

She came on like that, using the knights in front of her as stepping stones, bounding from one to the next toward ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the sword she had thrown.

I threw the fastest spell I had, three times over, trying to check her approach —

She stomped down hard on the head of the knight beneath her and came on like the wind. She must have dumped aura through the sole of her foot at the moment of contact, turning the stomp into thrust. Same logic as the movement she had used to slip the knights' attacks.

I've already lost the horse. I need to make a decision.

Keep getting dragged around at her pace, and the only ending waiting for me was a loss.

I snapped an order to the Dragoon Unit.

"Dump every magic stone you've got and concentrate fire! Don't think about what comes after!"

"Yes, sir!"

Bruno's answer was still in the air when I Blinked out of the way.

A heartbeat later, fireballs came screaming in like a mad thing.

The shock and the smoke were so thick I couldn't see the Eastern Knight Commander at all.

But this won't be enough. Not even close.

If a Sword Master died this easily, they would never have become the nightmare of every battlefield in the first place. All I had bought was time.

The original premise is already in pieces. The objective is still the same.

The Vice Tower Master's magic had turned the trenches into something we couldn't use, and it had come down to infantry against infantry in a grinding melee. That didn't mean there was no way left to win.

"Your Highness! The Sword Master will be held by myself and the Dragoon Unit! Shatter their knight order, I beg you!"

I put everything I had into the shout, driving the operational objective into the First Prince's ears.

"Understood! Knights! Follow me!"

"Sir!"

Hooves hammered the earth. The First Prince and his knights charged for the enemy's cavalry.

I pulled the Saddle-type Altar Cannon off the corpse of the horse I had been riding and fell in with the Dragoon Unit. Then I started hurling Fireballs like a man possessed.

The world became concussion and flame.

In the end it comes down to who wipes the other side's fighting strength first. A game of chicken.

Hold the Sword Master in place for as long as we could — and race to see which of us cut the other's knights apart first.

Please. No more variables. Not now…

Canvas snapped in the wind.

"Are you still here, Vice Tower Master?"

A rustle of parchment. Frostrich shoved the quill and vellum he had been holding back across the desk and rose from his seat.

"What is it you need?"

The work he had been hired for here was already done. He had been in the middle of writing a research report on the magic he had used.

"Can you take the field at once?"

"I'm afraid that's difficult. The terms of the contract have already been fulfilled, have they not?"

"Double."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'll pay double. I'll add the same amount you received this time, on top of it."

The amount he had received this time. That had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been enough to buy a reasonably sized barony outright, had it not?

Knowing that, Frostrich had no choice but to ask again.

"Are you actually in a position to do that?"

A leather bundle hit the table before the last word had left his mouth. He opened it.

"Imperial Platinum Coins…"

Each one could be exchanged for fully five hundred Imperial Gold Coins, and there were easily more than a hundred of them. Add the jewels, and the total would leap well past half the figure the Count had named.

"Succeed, and I'll provide an identical bundle at once. Do you still not trust me?"

Frostrich weighed it. Then he decided to accept.

"Then let us draw up the contract immediately. Do you have one prepared?"

As if he had been waiting for exactly that, Count Windhafen passed over a sheet of parchment already written out. Frostrich signed it without hesitation, and the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠contract was sealed.

"The objective?"

"Join the Eastern Knight Commander on the field she just rode to. It would appear her feet have been tied."

"A Sword Master? By whom, exactly?"

The sound of teeth grinding.

A moment later, Count Windhafen spoke through a jaw clenched tight.

You will kill him. That, Count Windhafen added, without the slightest room for doubt.