Captain Eisenmark's Shield-Throwing Deathmatch!
I rested a hand lightly on the Mountain King's broad back, and the colossal bison kicked off the ground and surged forward.
We moved down the ramp that led from the fortress to the lower city, and from a distance came the sound of smoke and screaming.
The moment we reached the city's edge, my breath caught in my throat. Black smoke billowed from street corners on every side, and around the square the crowd churned like a raging sea. A wall of shrieks and howls clawed at the sky.
This had gone well beyond a mere disturbance. You could call it a full-blown riot now.
"Give us back our food!"
"The fortress wants to starve us to death!"
"The nobles have sold us out to the Empire!"
Furious cries filled the streets. At the center of the square, mercenaries dressed in Imperial garb were swinging cudgels savagely at the citizens.
Those men are my first targets.
I had two objectives: arrest the Imperial mercenaries and the disguised merchant conspirators, and suppress the citizen riot before it spread any further.
"Where might the city guard be?"
At my question, Hildegard swept her eyes across our surroundings and answered quickly.
"Here, there, everywhere — but there are far too few of them. They're scattered like grains of sand."
Her metaphor was accurate. Guardsmen were visible all over, but never in any coherent group. They were spread thin — three here, five there, across a dozen streets and alleys — utterly unable to respond effectively to chaos erupting in so many places at once.
"My lady, someone is approaching!"
I looked where Eliza was pointing and saw Sergeant Cormac running toward us. His face was blackened with soot, and his armor was smeared with blood.
"My lady! You mustn't be here — it's far too dangerous!"
"Report the situation to me."
"Yes, my lady."
He spoke between ragged breaths.
"Since this morning, men bearing the Eisenmark crest began forcibly seizing the citizens' food supplies. When the people resisted, mercenaries in Imperial dress appeared and intervened. Claiming they acted on orders from the fortress, they suppressed the crowds by force."
"And so the citizens were made to believe the fortress has allied itself with the Empire."
"Precisely. What's more, it's happening simultaneously across multiple districts, which has made any response nearly impossible. This is... without a doubt the work of someone pulling strings, my lady."
"Indeed. This was clearly planned."
Just then, I spotted one of the Imperial mercenaries moving with striking agility through the crowd.
That one...
His armor wasn't ornate, but it was far finer than the leather and lamellar the other mercenaries wore — proper chain mail, and expensive at that. He was likely their commander.
First, I need to calm the citizens down.
After surveying the situation once more from atop the Mountain King, I drew in the deepest breath I could manage.
"Citizens of the lower city! I am Katerina, daughter of the Grand Duke of Eisenmark!!"
My voice rolled across the entire square. At that sky-splitting cry, the chaotic din died in an instant. Thousands upon thousands of eyes turned to me at once.
"Everything that has happened today is a lie! The fortress has never once stolen the food of its people!
Those who seized your provisions today are swindlers, every one of them — and the mercenaries in Imperial garb are in league with those swindlers!"
The moment the words left my mouth, the mercenary commander I'd noticed earlier shouted to his men.
"Take that woman and her companions down! Now!"
Before his command had even finished falling, more than fifty mercenaries charged at us with spears and swords leveled. Most of them looked like hardened veterans who'd spent years rolling around battlefields. Their movements were organized, disciplined, machine-perfect.
They're not running — they're meeting us head-on? Well, that's a kindness, frankly.
"Follow me!"
Behind me, the guardsmen who'd been holding in reserve all hauled on their reins at once.
By rough count, we were barely ten, and the enemy at least fifty or more. There could even be enemies hiding among the citizenry. And this was a city, not some open plain or grassland. It was the perfect setup: well-armed, experienced infantry with the advantage of both numbers and terrain, ready to swallow a handful of cavalry whole.
But none of that mattered in front of me.
"Charge!"
Barely had my command left my lips before the enemy mercenaries began forming up.
"Defensive formation! Spears ready!"
In mere seconds, they'd raised a wall — shields locked in front, long pikes planted in the ground rising in a gleaming row. Behind it, archers drew their bowstrings taut. It was the ideal formation against a cavalry charge.
Properly trained mercenaries, aren't they. There's simply no better defense against a cavalry charge than a wall of pikes.
And of all days, I'd rushed out without fitting the Mountain King with his barding — ox-barding, to be precise — so if I charged straight into that pike wall, the Mountain King himself might take a serious wound, or worse.
As the mercenary formation locked into place, the commander's mouth curled into a smirk of certain victory. He was waiting for me to charge in headlong.
But he knew one thing and not the second. Why on earth would I slam headfirst into an enemy who was so obviously braced for it?
From atop the Mountain King, I gripped my shield firmly. It weighed roughly thirty kilograms — a weight an ordinary person would struggle to lift with both hands, let alone one.
I settled my balance and stared down the center of the pike wall. Time seemed to slow. My senses sharpened to a razor's edge, every muscle's movement calculating itself in my head.
"Hold the formation! Don't break!"
As the mercenaries tensed at the approaching bulk of the Mountain King, holding their line—
"Here — have a taste of this!"
The shield flew from my hand.
Like a discus thrower's release, the magically reinforced shield — without so much as a scratch on it — cleaved through the air. Its thirty kilograms of steel carved through the wind with a sharp, rising whistle.
A single blink of an eye later, the solid slab of steel struck the center of their formation like a cannonball.
KRA-BOOM——!!
The moment of impact, a bone-chilling concussion rocked the entire square, like thunder erupting from the very earth. The shockwave rippled through the air, so violent it was almost visible.
The pikes shattered. Not merely snapped — they burst apart like glass, fragments scattering in every direction. Where the shield had punched through, there was nothing left at all. A perfect void.
The mercenaries behind it fared far worse. The pikes had absorbed a measure of the force — sparing them from being cleaved in half alive — but the men standing at the formation's center went down like bowling pins, toppling over one after another.
"AAAAAAGH!"
"Gods above — what WAS that!?"
"RUN!"
The mercenary commander's face went white. It was hardly surprising, watching a dozen of his elite mercenaries neutralized with a single throw.
I seized the instant their formation collapsed and drove the Mountain King forward.
"Mountain King — charge!"
"■■■■■——!"
With a bellow that shook the earth itself, the Mountain King thundered into the broken formation, his massive body plowing through the gaps the shield had torn open.
"She threw her shield, so she can't do that again! Reform the ranks!"
The commander shouted, but the situation had already turned. True, I no longer held a shield in my hands — but my overwhelming advantage remained. The pike wall was gone, and I was sitting atop a two-ton bison.
"GYAAAH!!"
The mercenaries screamed and tried to flee, but a bison carrying a rider was far faster than any of them.
The Mountain King bowled over five mercenaries at once. They flew into the air like bouncy balls and went sprawling across the ground.
"Draw your blades, at least! Stop that monster!"
A few mercenaries found their courage and rushed in with swords raised. The instant one of them lunged for the Mountain King's flank, I lowered myself along the beast's side and seized the man's wrist.
"Where do you think you're going?"
I twisted his wrist until the sword dropped, then hoisted the man bodily off his feet and hurled him at another mercenary charging in from the opposite side. The two went down in a tangled heap.
"Archers! Loose! Quickly!"
Three archers drew their bows from a distance. I had anticipated the incoming arrows and blocked them with the vambrace of my armor. Full plate was more than enough to turn aside mere bowshots — nothing like a crossbow.
"Long live Grand Duke's daughter Katerina! Long live Eisenmark! CHAAARGE!"
Behind me, Bielka, Hildegard, and the fortress guard let out a unified war cry and drove forward. Following the breach I'd carved, their horses plunged into the mercenary ranks.
Bielka's halberd whistled through the air in a great sweeping arc. One mercenary dropped where he stood. Her weapon moved as naturally as if her arm had simply grown longer.
"HYAAH!"
With each battle cry she poured out, the halberd traced another killing arc and felled another mercenary. Bielka's face was full of everything at once — the thrill of her first battle, tension, fear — and her eyes burned like fire.