Captain Eisenmark Appears, Desuwa!
The next day, at noon.
The market square was packed with an even bigger crowd than yesterday. Apparently, word had spread that a swordswoman from the Empire and a mysterious challenger out of the citadel were about to face off.
"My lady, there are far more people than I expected."
Bielka murmured anxiously.
I nodded from inside my heavy, cumbersome armor. The disguise I'd chosen consisted of full plate covering me head to toe, a closed helm, and a round shield forged from a single slab of steel. The armor itself was a set of Empire-style plate that had been sitting in the armory.
Peering out through the eye slits of the helm made the world narrow and stifling, but this was the best option available.
If the disguise were seen through and rumors spread that the Grand Duke's daughter had been brawling in the lower city, I didn't even want to imagine how my mother would react.
Hildegard was already waiting for us at the center of the square, standing in the same relaxed posture as yesterday, a light suit of armor on her back and her woldo slung over her shoulder. When she spotted me in the crowd, a curious smile crossed her face.
"So you've come. Full plate, no less. How cautious of you."
There was a faint note of teasing in Hildegard's tone, and behind the curiosity in her eyes lurked a trace of suspicion.
"Ahem, hm. I wanted to experience your technique properly."
I answered in a lowered voice from inside the helm. The helmet acted as a resonating chamber, making my voice sound deeper and heavier than usual.
"No sword? You want to fight bare-handed?"
She seemed puzzled that I carried nothing but a shield.
"The shield is more than enough."
Hildegard's eyes widened slightly at my answer, her expression a mixture of bewilderment and interest.
"Just a shield? How intriguing."
Slowly, she drew the woldo from her back and gripped it in her hands. The blade caught the sunlight and flashed a cold blue, that light rippling irregularly like dark waves rising from the abyss.
The spectators began forming a circle around the two of us, and Bielka slipped in among them. She didn't seem to doubt that I would win — what worried her was the dressing-down I'd get from Mother once my identity came to light.
"The duel between Lady Hildegard Pechter and the mysterious challenger — let it begin!"
A man in a simple shepherd's outfit bellowed loud enough to shake the rafters of the square, apparently having appointed himself the unofficial referee.
Hildegard lowered her stance, extended her woldo out to the side, and began circling toward me in a slow, deliberate arc. I stood my ground, the shield planted firmly in front of my body.
Now then — what kind of technique are you going to show me?
Her first strike came lightning-fast. Hildegard's woldo plummeted from above, hurtling down toward my shield. I reflexively raised it to absorb the impact.
KAANG!!
The sharp shriek of metal on metal rang out across the square. The shock running up my arm was far stronger than I'd anticipated.
She's no joke. A regular soldier taking that head-on would have broken bones even in full armor.
But what came next was even more startling. Hildegard slid her woldo rapidly along the face of the shield, riding its edge, and thrust sharply through the gap in my armor.
"Ugh!"
The helm's narrow field of vision made her movement nearly impossible to read. I twisted my body in a hurry to evade, but the tip of the woldo scraped across my plate with a harsh, grating screech.
"Oh-ho, nice reflexes. Seven out of ten would have fallen to that one."
There was genuine praise in Hildegard's voice. She retreated a few steps and reset her stance.
If it were Natasha, she'd have gone for the angles a shield couldn't cover from the start. Milena would have chained a second strike with her other blade even after the shield blocked her. And Volgar would simply have tried to smash the shield outright. But this woman wields her weapon in an entirely different way — she flows like liquid, seeking out the gaps.
I thrust the shield forward and took a single step in, holding a defensive posture as I waited for her next attack.
She dropped low and darted sideways this time, then abruptly changed direction, whipping a swift strike toward the underside of my shield. I lowered the shield to block it — and in that instant, Hildegard withdrew the woldo, spun, and brought it crashing down toward my head. I jerked my neck back on pure instinct, but I couldn't stop the blade's edge from hammering into my pauldron, a violent shock slamming into my shoulder.
And so we traded over a dozen exchanges. The crowd roared and groaned around us, but none of it reached my ears. My entire world had narrowed to Hildegard's movements and her woldo.
She really is remarkable. She'd have a strong win rate against Milena. Against Volgar... a coin toss, maybe? Hard to say.
Hildegard's spearwork was unlike any northern martial art I knew. At times it flowed like soft water; at times it blazed like wildfire. Her movements held too many patterns to predict.
"To hold out against me this long — you truly have skill. But shielding yourself with a shield alone has its limits, doesn't it?"
Hildegard paused to catch her breath as she asked, beads of sweat glistening on her brow.
"You can't win without attacking, you know."
"And sometimes the best attack is a perfect defense."
At my reply, Hildegard narrowed her eyes and studied me, as though she had sensed something.
"Hmmm..."
The crowd held its breath. They, too, seemed to realize that everything so far had been merely a prelude.
"Then let's see... try and keep blocking this!"
Hildegard suddenly accelerated. Her woldo whirled around me in blinding blue arcs, leaving nothing but streaks of light behind. Attacks rained down from every direction like a squall.
Block with the shield, twist aside, let the armor absorb what it could — I devoted everything I had to defense. But Hildegard's assault only grew fiercer.
This is... genuinely incredible.
While I was mentally revising my assessment of Hildegard upward by a full tier, she was preparing her decisive blow.
"HAAAAH—!"
She leapt into the air and swung her woldo down in a great arc over her head — an attack with every intent of cleaving me in two, helm and armor and all.
But the moment she committed to an attack that large was precisely the moment I'd been waiting for.
Now's my chance, desuwa... NOW!
The instant Hildegard left the ground, I spun the shield like a discus and hurled it at her.
……………
This round shield — the one I'd used to weather Hildegard's furious assault and had now just sent flying at her head — was something I'd stumbled upon only the night before, in the deepest corner of the armory, buried among dusty odds and ends.
Even the armory keeper had said nothing more of it than, "Ah, that thing? It's too heavy for any person to use. Honestly, I'm not even sure it counts as a shield."
It measured roughly sixty centimeters across, its core a solid slab of steel about a centimeter thick. It had been left to gather dust for so long that it appeared in no records worth mentioning, yet not a speck of rust had touched it — it still gleamed like polished metal.
Its weight, roughly speaking... somewhere between twenty-five and thirty kilograms in Earth units.
Even at twenty-five kilograms, that was about five times the weight of an ordinary shield. No common soldier, no knight — not even a monster of the Grand Duke's caliber like Katerina's father could have lifted it in combat.
Which was, no doubt, why it had sat ignored in a corner, unwanted by anyone.
But Katerina — I — could wield it. Hadn't I just turned aside more than thirty of Hildegard's strikes with it?
And anything that heavy... doesn't have to be just for defense.
The twenty-five-kilogram mass of steel went spinning toward Hildegard. Her eyes, suspended in midair, went wide with shock.
Too late. Barely a single second remained before the flying shield reached her. From a full leap, dodging was impossible.
THUD!
The heavy shield slammed into Hildegard's abdomen. Her body launched backward like an arrow loosed from a bowstring. The woldo flew from her grasp, and she tumbled a dozen full rotations before sprawling across the ground.
A dead silence fell over the square.
Everyone stood frozen — and only my heart was pounding furiously. I had thrown the shield with such flair, but watching Hildegard's body sail through the air like that, I found myself worrying I might have ruptured something inside her.
No... as long as she's not dead, she can be saved. Probably.
The healing magic of this other world was more impressive than I'd expected. When it came to curing disease it sat at roughly medieval Earth's level, but for recovering from injury it had aspects that outstripped even modern Earth.
For instance, the healers the Grand Duke of Eisenmark had summoned from every corner of the continent had managed to bring back his own daughter — the Grand Duke's daughter whose spine had been crushed, whose organs had torn to shreds and spilled out of her abdominal cavity.
Yes. That would be me. Though, admittedly, the fact that Katerina's body survived at all without dying instantly was the truly absurd part.
While the voice of reason screaming you hit her far too hard and the boundless optimism of the Death-and-Young-Lady declaring she'll be fine, desuwa! fought for control of my head—
"Sh-she did it! She won!"
One of the spectators shouted, breaking the square's stunned silence.