A Hand from Beyond the Sea (4)
When facing multiple opponents, the most important thing is to kill one of them in a surprise attack and seize the psychological high ground against the rest.
"That's how Father always handled it whenever he ran into bandits."
Whether you can kill that first one in a sudden strike. And if you can, how easily and how quickly you can do it.
Taking that first step well is what matters.
"Got it, Monia? The first thing we go for is the crossbow."
Of everything the group of sailors they were silently trailing possessed, that was the most dangerous weapon.
"Wouldn't it be better to attack from a distance?"
"No. If we attack from far away, they'll be free to shoot arrows at us."
"Ah."
"It's far better to face ten men with swords than five or six with bows."
They had to close in to cut with a blade, so the number you had to deal with at once dropped, and the dense greenery of the Floating Island hindered free swings of a sword.
On top of that, any man who closed with a blade on Chester naturally became a living shield against the others' arrows.
Best case is still to kill just enough of them that the rest decide to leave this place on their own.
It was only an inference drawn from Ant's nose and the fact that the sailor they had just seen had been one of ten, but if that inference was accurate, seventy men had come onto the island.
Even with Monia and Ant helping, Chester had no confidence he could kill seventy people.
Killing people pressed hard on the mind. Even Chester's father, who had grown used to murder while traveling alone, had struggled under the weight of it after only three or four kills.
That was why the crossbow.
Take the crossbow. Put a weapon that could kill people conveniently into his hands and lighten, even a little, the guilt and fatigue of murder.
And with the clear threat of that crossbow, restrain and cow those rough seamen.
Then drive them off the island.
Chester repeated the actions he had to take inside his head, steeling himself, and drew a knife from his coat.
Nearby, in a tree, Monia would already be watching the signal he had sent and preparing.
Then Chester began to walk, quietly.
Softly, so that no sound of grass underfoot would rise; as if he were blending every breath with the air of the forest; every muscle relaxed, as though he were not going out to kill a man right now but simply strolling down a nearby street.
Like a spider that had settled silently into place, he slipped behind his target, then struck with the fatal speed of a snake that darts in and injects its venom.
The man never felt Chester's movement.
Not only the sailor holding the crossbow, but the others standing around chatting were the same.
By the time they barely registered the keen silver blade that had stretched out of the forest dark, it was already far too late.
Thuk!
"Ghk?!"
He drove the blade into the throat, then twisted it lightly and tore it free as if ripping the flesh open.
Torn scraps of meat came out with the withdrawing blade, and immediately blood gushed in an unstoppable flood from the wound in the neck.
Chester did not stop there. With one hand he gripped the dying sailor firmly and strode forward.
There was no longer any need to hold his breath or mind his footsteps. He simply moved with boundless boldness, as lightly as if he had been walking down a street and happened upon a welcome friend he was going over to greet.
At the same time, as if controlled by a different brain entirely, the knife that had been flicking its tongue in secret from the shadow of Chester and the sailor's corpse stabbed another man's throat.
The instant the blade entered the neck, the muscles clenched and tried to seize the knife without mercy. Feeling that merciless resistance, as if the flesh refused to forgive the enemy that had ruined it, Chester used raw grip strength and the power of his shoulder to pull the knife free with ease.
Thuk! Thuk! Thuk!
Then he stabbed in rapid succession.
Chest, belly, shoulder, throat, chest again.
He had already delivered a fatal blow by stabbing the throat once; the knife work now was not meant to kill.
He deliberately displayed rough, violent, savage, cruel motion so that those still standing there, mouths hanging open, would freeze in place.
And in that interval, Monia, who had appeared as if she had always been standing there, swung the machete in her hand.
Whack!!
Monia swung the machete as if she were chopping wood and struck a man's neck.
The heavy chunk of steel, centrifugal force behind it, sank deep and solid into the throat. Regrettably, Monia could not pull the machete free again with sheer strength the way Chester could.
But she had already expected that.
Without hesitation she abandoned the machete and took up the axe exactly as Chester had taught her.
"...You bastards!"
One man reacted and tried to move. Arms spread wide to make himself look as big as possible, he charged at Monia.
Chester, still holding the crossbow sailor's corpse with the hand that gripped the knife, slipped his free hand into a pocket.
From the simple leather pouch he took a stone and flicked his wrist, throwing it.
Crack.
The flying stone struck the head of the man aiming for Monia.
"Ack!"
The instant the man flinched from the blow to the head, Monia's axe described a great arc and came down like lightning from above.
Crunch!
Four. Six left.
Still too many. Far too many.
When four of their fellow sailors died in the blink of an eye, the ones who had been standing there with blank faces, unable to keep up with the situation, began one by one to come to their senses.
"Y-you sons of bitches!"
"If you came to pick me up, you should at least speak our language! You have no manners!"
Chester quietly whistled. Ant, waiting nearby, burst out and sank its teeth into one sailor's shin.
"Aaaagh! What the hell!"
Chester stripped the crossbow and quiver from the dead crossbowman, kicked the corpse into the path of a sailor charging him, and while that man staggered in shock, drove the knife into his throat.
Five.
Just then Monia was overpowered by another sailor. It was only natural.
No matter how hard she had trained, she still could not match a seaman in raw strength.
Crack!
"Ack! Tss!"
After striking one sailor's nose with a stone and freeing her, Chester kicked over the man whose leg Ant was still chewing, then charged the remaining three.
The one holding Monia makes three who can't move right now.
That left two free to act. One of them had already drawn a cutlass and swung it, but Chester roughly hauled up a fallen corpse and used it to block the blade.
The cutlass edge buried itself in the dead sailor's skull and stopped short of Chester.
"Hic!"
Shoving the corpse—and the cutlass with it—aside, Chester closed the distance in a single breath.
Thuk! Thuk! Thuk! Thuk!
He seized the sailor by the throat with one hand and stabbed the belly. Kept stabbing the belly.
"Ugh! Ghk! G-guh!"
Whether the face of the man whose belly was being savaged twisted in agony or not, Chester kept stabbing, then turned while still holding him.
Chester's exposed body was now screened by the sailor whose gut had been opened, and the one who had been about to ambush him froze without meaning to.
"Damn it!"
And that gap was enough.
Using the corpse as a shield he closed the distance, then took the man's life with the knife while the other could not move freely.
Two more down.
Three left.
"Get off! You bastard!"
— Yipe!
Just then Ant, still clinging stubbornly to a shin and biting, took a kick and went flying far away.
That one's done.
With a leg ruined like that he would not be able to move freely. So Chester focused on the remaining two.
He looked at the sailor who had now thrust Monia forward exactly as Chester had done, using her as a shield.
"Th-this way you can't attack either!"
He could not understand the words, but the intent was clear. The man was copying Chester, trying to freeze his movement.
It was the correct answer. As long as there was any chance Monia might be hurt, Chester could not attack.
If she might be hurt.
So Chester simply threw a chili-powder bomb.
"Huh?"
Monia, who knew the chili-powder bombs existed, drew in a deep breath, held it, squeezed her eyes shut, and braced for the coming attack.
"Urgh! Ghk! Cough! Hack! Gack! What the hell is this! Aaaagh!"
The instant the grip holding her loosened, Monia thrashed with all her strength and broke free. Chester decided to finish the sailor still streaming blood from the nose that the stone had broken before dealing with the one blinded by chili powder.
When he turned his head to find that man, the sailor who had already recovered was quietly approaching Chester, cutlass raised high, about to bring it down.
Chester simply watched him and stabbed with the knife.
Idiot! I'm faster!
The sailor had been certain of it, but unfortunately the tip of his cutlass struck a solid branch and stopped dead.
"Huh?"
That was his last word. After finishing him lightly with two thrusts to the throat, Chester looked at the remaining sailor, who was still half-mad from the chili powder and swinging his cutlass wildly just to protect himself.
"Hmm."
Chester examined the structure of the captured crossbow for a moment, then hooked his foot into the steel stirrup at the front.
He gripped the steel handle on the string, then drove the foot hooked in the front stirrup powerfully downward.
With the strength of his leg the string was drawn back in an instant and locked onto the catch.
He took a bolt from the captured quiver, set it on the crossbow, and aimed at the sailor who had finally exhausted himself thrashing about.
He clamped the stock tightly under his armpit and took careful aim.
I've only handled a crossbow a few times when one of Father's friends came to visit.
With that thought he finished aiming and squeezed the trigger with his finger.
The bolt flew with a ferocity incomparable to the crude bows Chester and Monia had made, and buried itself in the sailor's head; the sharp tip of the bolt poked out the back of the skull as if it had half-penetrated.
The sailor who had taken the bolt to the head toppled backward and collapsed.
Monia, for her part, pulled the axe free from the head of one sailor and approached the last man, who still could not rise.
"S-stop...!"
"Hah!"
Thud!
The body of the sailor struck by the axe flopped like a fish out of water, then gradually grew still.
He was dead.
Confirming it, Monia wiped the sweat pouring from her entire body and looked at Chester.
"Shall we rest a little?"
"No! No. I can keep going."
They had killed seven men, yet Chester was fine.
How is that even possible? I was already struggling with just the machete and the axe.
He stabbed through human bodies as swiftly as if he were cutting butter with a knife. There seemed to be no resistance at all in Chester's movements.
While Monia marveled, Chester checked his own body and mind.
Still all right.
He did not know how long it would last. While his body and spirit were still sound, he had to kill even one more person.
"Yeah. Good, just as I thought."
"What is?"
"Knives."
Chester rummaged through the corpses for a moment and found the sharp knives several of the sailors carried.
"Occupational hazard. These guys never know when they might get tangled in rope or netting and end up in trouble, so they always keep a sharp knife ready for that."
He drew one knife from its sheath and flipped it lightly, getting used to the feel in his hand.
"Yeah. Nice. Good."
Besides the sailors' knives, he also took one crossbow and two bows.
"Don't we need these swords?"
"The cutlasses? Forget it. Better to stick with the machete and axe than blades we're not used to."
Monia remembered how, just earlier, one sailor had seized a chance to kill Chester only for his cutlass to catch on a branch, losing both the chance and his life in vain.
He had held a familiar tool, yet the unfamiliar environment had made him fail to take the chance. The same thing could happen if you picked up an unfamiliar tool.
"I understand."
"Good. Then let's move."
"Yes."
After checking that Ant was all right, Chester and Monia followed the ant-wolf—who was making it very clear with its whole body that it was fine—and set off through the forest in search of the second group of sailors.
Sixty left.