The Siege of Semek (2)
The attack on Semek sent shockwaves rippling all the way back to the Infula Holy See.
The Crusade Knights — an order that marched rarely, an order whose station stood even above the Holy Knights — were now riding out, and that alone told how gravely the Heavenly Church of Infula regarded this crisis.
The Crusade Knights, to whom every single member was issued a warhorse.
Once more driving their imported warhorses — steeds purchased from the Federation of Eight Brothers, the Orc clan-nation whose people boasted superior frames and extraordinary endurance — the twenty-four Crusade Knights spurred as one toward Semek.
Through the visors of their tightly sealed helms, divinity poured forth like plumes of white breath.
With every breath they drew, unrefined holy power escaped their lips like steam in the cold.
They made no effort to suppress it, no effort to purify it — the divinity simply left their bodies as it willed, and it made the Crusade Knights look for all the world like berserkers.
It overflowed white as breath through the gaps of their visors, and rose like smoke through every seam of the gleaming silver plate that sheathed their torsos.
At every stride of their galloping horses, the twenty-four — twenty-five, counting the Thirteenth Crusade Special Task Force — left behind a hazy trail of divine traces, as if by deliberate design, announcing to all that they had passed this way.
"I ask you: who is your enemy?"
Scarlet spoke — commander and sole founding member of the Thirteenth Crusade Special Task Force, riding at the very head of the column.
Though her voice was never loud, the Crusade Knights roared back as if they were a single body.
"All things that stand against the Heavenly God!"
Those who opposed the Heavenly God were enemies of the Church.
To the Crusade Knights, they were the foe — things that must be destroyed without fail.
"I ask you: who is the enemy of the Heavenly God?"
"All foes who disturb the peace!"
Those who defiled even the flesh of souls that had found tranquility in the embrace of the Heavenly God.
Those who skulked in darkness praising death, who went further still and heaped insult upon the living to blaspheme the Heavenly God.
To the Crusade Knights, they were the foe — things that must be destroyed without fail.
"I ask you: what shall be done to those who dare defy the Heavenly God?"
"We shall grant them a painful slumber!"
Mercy was useless against those who stood against the Heavenly God.
Mercy was meant only for those who still possessed the possibility of repentance.
A light tinged with madness flashed past the gap in Scarlet's visor.
Loyalty and faith toward the Heavenly God.
That faith could admit not even a hair's breadth of doubt.
Against those who hostile to the Heavenly God, no mercy of any kind was required.
"I ask you: where is it that you ride?"
"To Semek — where the Heavenly God keeps watch over those who sleep in eternal rest!"
The place where those guided into the Heavenly God's hands at last lay buried.
At the very least, a place where wicked multitudes must never set foot.
That place — Semek.
"I ask you: why do you ride to Semek?"
"To soothe the dead — those whose sleep was broken and whose remains were defiled in Semek!"
"I ask you: how shall the dead be soothed?"
"With mace and shield we shall lay them down, and return them to the Heavenly God!"
Scarlet fell silent.
The moment she had been assigned to the Thirteenth Crusade Special Task Force as its commander, Scarlet had been granted command authority over the entire Crusade Knights.
Bearing strength that would never yield to the undead, twenty-four strong, Scarlet rode toward Semek.
To bring down upon the dead who blanketed Semek the hammer of eternal rest, once more —
Twenty-five Crusade Knights, Scarlet at their head, thundered onward.
*
"Do not give ground! The line must not break!"
Lewis, wasn't it? I think that was his name.
Yona pulled a cloth from her sling bag and wiped the bodily fluids splattered across Kayak's skin, then glanced ahead for a moment.
The Holy Knights were fighting well.
Even a layman could see it — a tide of undead hundreds strong pressing forward, and those ten Holy Knights holding it back with nothing but raised shields.
Fortunately the road was relatively narrow, so all they had to do was block the undead funneling toward them; it looked easy enough at a glance, but considering the numbers shoving from behind those shields, they might well already be operating past their limits.
"I'm fine, Yona. Go see to the knights."
"Got it!"
Yona answered quickly, slipped out from behind Kayak, and ran toward the Holy Knights.
James and Kayak could handle whatever squeezed and clawed its way over the knights' shields without much trouble.
What truly impressed her was that Hero over there, Ludwig, dancing through the thick of the undead in a whirl of golden flashes. White blessings rained down upon his head without pause.
Far in the rear, Vigrind was surely pouring out blessing upon blessing, layered with every holy buff and healing she could muster, without a moment's rest.
...Must be nice.
That's what a priest is. And that's what a Saint is.
She's basically the protagonist, isn't she.
"You're hurt!?"
A claw had torn clean through the man's armor, and blood was streaming down through the gash.
Yona forced her hand into the gap and pushed through to heal him; the bleeding stopped, and next a purple ooze — corpse poison — trickled out instead.
She wiped it away briskly with her shrouded hand, and the wound came clean.
"Much obliged!"
At the knight's words she only nodded once, then scanned her surroundings again.
A healer could never afford to stand still.
Her position might technically be right behind the Guard, but that was only because the Guard had the highest chance of taking a hit — in truth, a healer wasn't there to heal the Guard alone. She had to keep her eyes on the entire party and move accordingly.
Yona was moving by exactly that principle now.
Even if the enemy was only zombies, small injuries kept accumulating.
The wounds themselves might be nothing much, but the corpse poison that wormed in through them was the problem — which meant her hands were indispensable.
The corpse poison smeared on the Holy Shroud was neutralized by divinity and vanished without a trace, leaving the shroud its customary pristine white.
It really does make a difference...!
Yona marveled once more at how much holy power she had to spare.
The efficiency of holy power varied with the grade of the Holy Shroud. The lower the grade, the more divinity it consumed even for the same healing.
The higher the shroud's grade, the more densely it was woven, and the amount of divinity wasted in circulation plummeted exponentially.
If circulating ten points of divinity used to send five scattering into the void and heal with only the remaining five, now only two of ten were squandered — a full eight went purely into healing.
To deliver five points of healing, only seven needed to circulate. That much was saved.
"Whew..."
Wiping the sweat from her brow, Yona looked back.
The carriage was still there.
The carriage visible in the distance had yet to run into any trouble.
Alec was back there.
So were Ceres, Rubina, and Vigrind.
An uneasiness she couldn't quite name settled over her heart.
- Kaang!
Then that train of thought was shattered by a sudden clash of metal.
"Ghoul—!"
Kayak's shout rang out, and Yona looked up at the shadow that had abruptly fallen over her head.
A single bead of viscous fluid dropped onto her face.
A face half rotted and sloughing away.
Skin that looked to be melting outright.
Claws stretching long from the fingertips of both arms.
grotesquely elongated arms and stubby, truncated legs.
A monster with a freakishly distended waist was dropping down toward her.
"Kkraaagh...!"
With no room left to dodge, Yona tangled with the creature that had pounced on her and tumbled head over heels across the ground.
In the several rotations of that roll, she found herself staring straight into the thing's clouded, watery-grey eyes, fixed on her.
"Yona!"
Kayak's voice carried from somewhere far away.
But he couldn't be faster than the ghoul right in front of her eyes — the instant Yona, pinned beneath it, twisted her head, claws punched into the ground with a dull thud.
"You goddamn son of a...!"
"Yona—!"
She'd wondered why Kayak wasn't coming — and the answer was that the ghouls weren't alone.
Several of them had easily vaulted over the Holy Knights holding the front line; one had thrown itself at Yona, and another was lunging for Kayak.
"Oh, damn it all...!"
Yona spat out a coarse curse and thrashed, struggling to shove the ghoul off.
Ghoul or no, it was undead all the same — so Yona forced every last scrap of divinity she had into the Holy Shroud, stretched out her hand, and seized the creature by the face.
And in the instant her arm extended, the ghoul's claws sank deep into her side.
Crack, crunch, ssssliice—
Horrid, skin-crawling sounds filled her ears — ribs splitting, muscle tearing, blood vessels severed.
Even as pain like sudden fire seared her brain, Yona clenched her jaw and kept her grip on the ghoul's face.
The mushy, revolting feel of it nearly brought her stomach up.
And mixed into that nausea was a thick, fishy reek of blood rising from somewhere deep inside her.
- Krrrrrrrrgh!
With a monstrous shriek, the ghoul atop Yona screamed and tore itself away.
Not letting that opening slip, Yona rolled and scrambled to her feet — then dropped to one knee with a short cry of pain.
"Uuurgh...!"
Boiled-black blood burst from her mouth along with a mass of shredded viscera.
Her side was gushing.
Dark blood poured and poured until it pooled beneath her.
"Ghh...!"
Yona bit her lip and hauled herself upright.
Would being wounded earn her any leniency? Like hell it would. Sure enough, the moment Yona rose, the ghoul twitched its blackened, burning face and lunged at her again.
- Thunk!
"Lady Yona! Are you alright!?"
The moment an arrow buried itself in the side of the ghoul's head, James's voice rang out.
Even as she heard him, Yona had the strange sensation that the whine of buzzing flies was woven into his voice.
"You... little...!"
Something brushed against her fingertips.
That something strapped against her thigh.
- Bought it for you. For emergencies, at least.
It felt as if she could hear Alec's voice.
- I can't die here.
If I die, that bald bastard's going to cry.
He's actually carried me before, after all.
She drew the hunting knife strapped to her thigh.
She tried to grip it in her right hand, but the tremor was too violent — figured as much — so she switched it to her left.
She'd lost too much blood; her vision was swimming.
Why wasn't her self-healing working? She couldn't understand it.
"Chi... The damn priests do it just fine, but me...? What a half-assed... Heavenly God...!"
The pain that had felt like burning now seared her like white-hot iron.
And that was the moment.
- Doong...
With a sound like the beat of a great drum, vitality flooded back into Yona's body.
And not only vitality — the wound in her side began closing with startling speed.
High in the sky, a sigil of the Heavenly God floated, sized precisely for one Yona, pouring radiance down upon her.
"Vigr...!"
Healing.
Healing at range.
It had to be Vigrind's work, and to Yona it was achingly, desperately welcome.
But that wasn't all.
Divinity had taken hold of the hunting knife in her hand as well — pristine white radiance began to bloom along the blade.
- CRACK!
The hammer of judgment fell upon the ghoul's head a second time.
Struck dead-on, the creature's entire body erupted in pitch-black flame, and overcome by agony it collapsed to the ground, writhing and thrashing.
As the ghoul flailed about, its sharp claws stabbing and gouging at anything and everything, Yona flashed it a grin.
"That's our Saintess for you, you bastard."
To Yona, laughing with easy confidence, came Lewis's scream of a bellow.
"The line must not fall! Hold! Hold the—! HOOOOLD!"
The front line where a mere ten Holy Knights were struggling began to collapse.
Their numbers had thinned greatly from the thousands they'd once counted, but they were still overwhelmingly outnumbered — and one by one, the defensive line was finally being trampled down by the dead.
Beyond it, a giant cobbled together from layer upon layer of stitched flesh and hide was advancing, dragging a meat-club that looked to have been mashed together from several corpses in exactly the same way.
"...O, Heavenly God above..."
Yona stared up at it, dumbstruck.
The ghoul, meanwhile, had burned to black ash at some point, leaving nothing behind but its foul stench rolling off in waves.