41. Blood Knight (2)
A berserker lacquered head to toe in blood went on a rampage, black light blazing from his eyes. Mercenaries were torn apart like cotton-stuffed dolls.
Amias and his companions had finished off the last of the war hounds and were pulling their line back together. Half a dozen mercenaries who had looped wide around Utekwai came rushing in, but breaking a formation held by two mages and an apostle of the demon sword looked like a hopeless task.
The one-eyed bounty hunter watched it all from the cliff top, then clicked his tongue. Scratching beneath his eyepatch, he turned to the man beside him.
"At this rate, the mercenaries are going to be wiped out to the last man."
No one answered him.
The four mages, Widal among them, kept staring down at the base of the cliff in silence.
"Master Widal."
"Quiet."
Widal lifted his steel staff to cut him off, but Dirk only knitted his brow and pressed on.
"If the encirclement tears open like that, we'll have no way of catching the Fire Witch once she runs. We need to put down the Red Bear, at the very least—"
"I told you to shut your mouth."
The rebuke came out glacial, Widal's eyes nailed to the thicket below.
"Unless you'd like to be reduced to ash by a fireball? No? Then close your mouth and wait."
"...With respect, Master Widal — you were the one who said her mana would have frozen over if she was truly the Fire Witch."
"I did. She appears to have recovered."
"I beg your pardon?"
As Dirk pulled a face of pure disbelief, one of the hooded mages murmured under his breath — a man in his thirties, his robe stitched with round patterns.
"The wind is in the way. We can't comb through the thicket."
"The wind?"
"A dancing spirit, from the feel of it... and a strong one. Erenar seems to have made her move."
Widal's face hardened, and still another mage stepped in.
"A half-wit who couldn't cast a single spell is throwing fireballs and commanding wind spirits now — does that make any sense to you? What in the world did she steal from those forbidden tomes...?"
To Olide's acid-laced question, Widal offered nothing but silence. He didn't know the answer either.
And that was when—
"Master Widal, there!"
From where the startled Dirk was pointing, a fireball the size of a man's head came screaming toward them.
The mages reacted at once.
"Papillon — O butterfly!"
The mage in the hexagonal-leaf robe loosed a spell he had held ready in advance. Dozens of tiny butterflies unfurled from his fingertips, and in an instant the air for yards around turned biting cold — butterflies carved of ice were bleeding frost in every direction.
Shepherded by their master's will, the frost butterflies swarmed out in a body and flung themselves all at once onto the swelling fireball.
Fssshhh—
The moment the flames guttered out, the round-patterned mage thrust his wand toward the direction the fireball had flown. Its shaft was dotted with a few leaves, so that it looked like a living branch, and from its tip it spun up a small whirlwind.
The vortex stretched out in a blink and burst with a whump at the edge of the thicket, soil and branches geysering skyward as though caught in a twister.
Crackle— Sparks spitting from his steel staff, Widal turned to the wind mage.
"Did it land?"
"...I don't believe so."
"Damn it all."
Whooooosh—
Out of nowhere, a gale came howling down. The whole thicket pitched and thrashed in the violent wind — leaves clapping like hands, wind-riding sand caressing the bases of the trees.
"The wind is dancing."
As the wind mage muttered with a stiff face, Widal ground his teeth.
"A filthy situation. Everyone, brace yourselves."
Wound tight as bowstrings, the mages each prepared a spell.
Dirk likewise hefted the huge steel crossbow he'd left propped against the rock wall. He was cranking the windlass to set the bolt when Olide, in his blue robe, shouted his incantation.
"Judio-cium'me — Judge!"
A streak of light the length of a palm shot out at the speed of a loose arrow — no, many times faster — its blue afterimage smearing behind it like a long tail.
It was Lightning Arrow.
The lightning knifing into the thicket shaved past an enormous shadow by a whisker. Olide clicked his teeth together and let loose a shrill roar.
"What are you all standing around for?! Kill it!"
The moment they caught the shadow tearing between the trees, the mages went white with alarm.
"Hells — hurry!"
Never mind that the golden-haired girl they had been chasing was riding a gray wolf — at some point she had closed to within arm's reach of the cliff itself.
But the mages, frantically readying their spells, ended up scoffing instead. The blonde girl, unable to match the wolf's pace, had tumbled off onto the ground.
"...What is she doing?"
"The little fool."
But where the others were snickering, Widal was already sending vicious sparks off his steel staff and bellowing.
"You're the fools! Attack, now!"
Toward the Fire Witch — Ellen — as she pushed herself up out of the grass, Widal spread his palm wide. The current coursing through his steel staff ran down its length and gathered in his hand.
He seized the blue streak of light and swung.
KRAKAROOM!
As Chain Lightning wheeled overhead in a great arc, an ear-tearing crack split the air. Widal whipped the blue streak down like a lash; the chain of lightning stretched across dozens of meters and hammered into the ground where Ellen stood.
KWAAAGH!
Crimson sparks and blue-white radiance flared in a searing clash of light.
Crossbow in hand, Dirk shaded his one eye — and through the slits of his fingers witnessed something uncanny. The whip of lightning had scattered in every direction, like ink touched to water.
What had swallowed the chain lightning was a vortex of cold raging around Ellen herself. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet, crystals of frost came wheeling in toward her body.
"...Frost armor? Stopping chain lightning with that?"
As the mage in the hexagonal-leaf robe breathed in disbelief, Widal reined in his scattered lightning and skewered him with a look.
"Save it and attack—!"
But in that one small gap, the mages were driven onto the back foot.
Ellen overwhelmed them, chaining offensive spell after offensive spell — all while keeping her armor of frost intact, and riding Aello's Feather Ornament between the thickets to scramble their vision.
"It's not— that's not possible..."
Olide stood gaping, the incantation dead on his lips.
Hovering a meter above the earth, whipping up freezing gales while she rained down fireballs, frost awls, and blades of cutting wind without a moment's pause — she soared clean past anything he had imagined of her.
...That — that's the power of a forbidden tome?
Deep in Olide's chest, feelings buried long ago crawled back to life. The rank, clinging filth he'd felt as a child watching Erenar — envy, jealousy, worthlessness....
"Stop standing there gawking and lend a hand!"
The wind mage snapped at Olide and thrust out his wand, timing his whirlwind to the fall of Widal's chain lightning.
Lightning met frost with another earsplitting crash and flare — and a beat behind it, the compressed wind burst with a bang.
"It hit."
Just as the wind mage had said, Ellen went tumbling through the air above the thicket, snagged in the whirlwind. Pelted by stones, splinters, and every other kind of debris, she was spraying blood from her left ear.
Watching her flung between the heavy trees, Dirk's one eye flickered. He leveled his steel crossbow at the unconscious witch.
Alive, a thousand. Dead, five hundred.
After a short deliberation, the crossbow swung toward Ellen's calf. He meant to make a stake of the heavy bolt and nail her to the earth.
Then, all at once, Dirk felt something wrong. The chain of lightning that had been howling so loud had, at some point, gone silent.
His head turned before he willed it, and with his one remaining eye stretched wide, a strangled sound left him.
"Oh, you crazy—"
In the bare moments Dirk had spent aiming his crossbow at Ellen, a figure in a black hood had fallen upon the mages.
The figure moved without a sound — and swung her blade.
Her first target, Master Widal, already lay sprawled on his back, blood fountaining from his throat.
"Ghhk—!"
The wind mage, a dagger buried deep in his eye, shuddered upright and toppled over sideways.
"KYAAAAH!"
Olide's scream came far too late. The expressionless assassin paid it no mind and hurled herself onward.
Her next target was the mage in the hexagonal robe.
"In-frid—"
The instant the word left his mouth, the assassin stamped off the ground and whipped her body around. In the same motion, a long leg shot out like a thunderbolt.
CRACK!
The heel of her boot hammered into his jaw — a picture-perfect spinning back kick. The frost mage crumpled, his neck broken.
Three mages, dead in the space of two breaths.
"Hoo... hah."
Still catching her breath, the assassin turned her head toward Olide. Beneath the hood, jet-black eyes glinted quietly.
"Uh—"
While Olide spiraled into panic, the black figure re-gripped her short sword in her right hand and her left swept across her waistband.
The very instant she drew the dagger back to throw—
"Hk!"
The assassin sprang elastically and rolled across the ground. In the same breath, a crossbow bolt sliced past her with a heavy whump of split air, knocking her black hood askew.
Dirk, who had snapped off the hurried shot from his steel crossbow, flinched and narrowed his brow. The hood had tipped back, baring the assassin's face — Mungchi's face.
The moment he saw that exotic face, his one eye flew wide.
"No way — you're—"
Just then, Olide — dumping every last drop of his mana into a spell finished in the space of a blink — flung out his hand.
The blue projectile that unfolded shot forth faster than the eye could follow. But Mungchi, who had been watching Olide all along, bent only at the waist and let it slip past.
"That's impossible—"
Olide's jaw hung at the sheer impossibility of her movement.
Dirk, a beat too late, shoved back his left sleeve and thrust his arm out. The tiny hidden crossbow spat its bolt point-blank.
Even Mungchi, with those monstrous reflexes, hadn't seen this ambush coming.
Thock!
"Ngh."
She dropped backward in a flash, but the bolt had already skewered the outside of her thigh.
"Got you!"
Dirk drew his longsword and charged, and Mungchi staggered backward.
Even so, she flung the short sword from her right hand. Dirk, as though he'd expected it, batted it aside without effort.
But Mungchi's target had never been Dirk. Her left hand flashed, and a second dagger went spinning at Olide.
"Ghruk—!"
The dagger sank into his lower belly, and as Olide pitched forward into the grass, Dirk's pupils trembled fine as needlepoints.
Three of the four mages were already dead. If Olide died too, Dirk — no, the whole of the Black Wolves — could be dragged down with them.
They would be defenseless against the slander, say, that 'greed-blinded bounty hunters butchered their employers and played dumb.' That was the shape of it.
While Dirk hesitated, drowning in that thought, Mungchi — bolt still jutting from her thigh — threw herself off the cliff.
"Ah, damn—!"
Dirk hurriedly looked down. Kicking off the cliff face midway, Mungchi crashed down through a leaf-heavy tree and vanished from sight.
Mouth agape with frustration — then Dirk snapped out of it, took up the steel crossbow again, and swept the thicket. He spotted Ellen lying just as she had before, and quickly cranked the windlass.
It didn't last long.
"...Goddamn it."
Watching the gray wolf hoist Ellen up in its jaws and trot off, Dirk gave a hollow laugh and crumpled where he stood.
"Fuck's sake — what kind of lunatic set this fire?"
At the grumbling of the mercenary with a knife scar carved across his nose, the woman wrapped in a black cloak scowled.
"Move instead of bitching. We're late enough as it is."
The mercenary only turned his head and spat, offering no retort. Even a no-account country sell-sword like him knew the name of the Black Wolves carried real weight.
And besides, the female bounty hunter who had introduced herself as 'Aeben' carried a blade at her hip — and cast magic on top of it.
Picking a quarrel with something that dangerous, the mercenary reckoned, was a stunt for drooling idiots.
Aeben glared at him a moment longer, swallowed an inward sigh, and glanced back. Forty-odd mercenaries were streaming down the mountain trail in ragged clumps, every man doing as he pleased.
So this is what I've been reduced to — wrangling trash like this.
Aeben had originally been leading the mercenaries in throwing up an encirclement beyond the pass on Mount Graduil. Then the situation had shifted, the order came down to cross over to the south, and here they were on a forced march.
Now, with a great blaze raging in the middle of the pass, they were floundering through one godforsaken thicket after another to skirt it.
I told them from the start — forget the ambush, just hit them head-on.
She was still unspooling her grievances inwardly when a stir rippled up from the rear of the column, and Aeben twisted around, lip curled in contempt.
"You worthless gutter-rats — I said shut up and walk! We'll be meeting the enemy soon enough!"
One of the mercenaries shouted right back into her fury.
"Something's coming up behind us, I tell you!"
"Coming? Coming what?"
"Come look with your own eyes!"
"You son of a bitch."
Before Aeben could even snarl and turn her feet, the 'something' the mercenary meant showed itself at the rear.
Grrrrr.
"...An Anupad?"
"Wh-what in the hells is that thing?"
Just as someone had breathed — what had appeared was an Anupad.
An Anupad wearing a steel crown.
The murmuring mercenaries froze into stances, weapons gripped. Dismissing it as a lone beast was impossible — the thing was simply too massive.
"That... is that really an Anupad?"
"An Anupad? Fucking hells, I'd sooner believe it was a hellhound."
The colossal Anupad, its body stretching nearly four meters, stood hunched a little at the waist as its gaze crawled over the mercenaries. Then it opened its jaws.
"U... shi-tu."
"...What did it say?"
"Ushitu."
As an eerie voice spilled from the long muzzle, dread seized the men and they stumbled backward.
"Ushitu. Offering. Burning."
"Th-that thing... it's talking?"
"Oh, gods damn it, what is going on?"
To the bone-pale men, the Anupad strode closer, unhurried.
"My children. Burning."
"Oh, you have got to be—!"
One mercenary screamed a curse and threw his axe. It flew hard and true and buried itself, thunk, dead center in the Anupad's belly.
"Ah."
The Anupad — once hailed as their queen by her own kind — stared down at her own stomach, murmuring blankly.
Black blood seeped through the torn hide. Moments later, freshly swelling flesh pushed the axe blade out.
Tok.
The axe dropped to the ground, and the Anupad began to weep.
"My children."
In the dead-silent forest, a giant hound standing on two legs shed tears.
"Ushi... tu. Ushitu."
At the Anupad blubbering who-knew-what, the mercenaries stood rooted, teeth chattering.
It wasn't only the grotesquerie of the scene — a mana from some other dimension had them bound fast.
"Take... me... too."
Eyes brimming with tears, the queen of the Anupads snatched up the mercenary nearest her — and split her maw wide.
That mouth, gaping open almost into a single straight line, swallowed the piss-soaked mercenary whole.
A hideous sound of flesh and bone being ground between teeth rang through the trees. The rest of the mercenaries couldn't even manage a scream; they simply stood in place, trembling.
"Ushitu."
Only after devouring all forty-three mercenaries did the Anupad named 'Ramashda' finally move on.