Chapter 20
Chapter 20
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 20
"Aaaagh!"
"Enemy raid!"
"My leg!"
Arrows tearing through the darkness cut down the soldiers outside the barracks in an instant. By the time Baron Alvin, roused by screams that seemed to shatter the night, emerged from his tent, a knot of cavalry was already piercing the outer perimeter and charging in out of the dark.
"Aaagh!"
"Where is Sir Tilluman!"
Only when Baron Alvin called for him did Tilluman come scrambling out, frantically throwing on his plate mail.
"My lord, don't worry—get back inside, it's dangerous. Archers, fall back and return fire in the enemy's direction! Quickly!"
"Ah, understood. I'm counting on you, then."
He had scrambled out, but Tilluman was clearly more than a knight in name only—he issued orders rapidly. Only then did the mercenaries and soldiers, who had been milling about, begin to form a battle line around him.
"Pikemen, set your pikes and stop the cavalry! The rest of you, collapse the barracks into the cavalry's approach lanes!"
"Yes sir!"
The darkness made it impossible to identify the enemy, but the charging shapes were unmistakably cavalry. They had never anticipated meeting cavalry in a place like this, so they had a bare thirty-odd pikemen total. The knights shouted themselves hoarse, urging them on, thinking they had to block the horses' advance while the pikemen held.
THUD-THUD-THUD!
As the soldiers with pikes massed at the front, Go Jin-cheon raised his Maekgung. As if on cue, the fifty-odd Black Armored Ghost Cavalry drew their bows as well. And when Jin-cheon drew his bowstring, fifty-odd Maekgung bowstrings pulled taut.
"Hooo."
Twang!
WHIZZ-WHIZZ-WHIZZ!
Jin-cheon steadied his breathing, his eyes flashing as he loosed the string, and the fifty-odd arrows flew as if following his lead.
"Gaaagh!"
Thud-thud-thwack!
"My eye!"
The soldiers who had clustered together carrying nothing but pikes were turned into pincushions in an instant and sent sprawling. Half the shafts punched clean through their torsos; the rest buried themselves eerily deep.
"Aaaagh!"
"Sir Tilluman, watch out!"
"Where are those arrows coming from!"
The pikemen had collapsed uselessly before they could even engage the cavalry, and Tilluman cried out in shock. A soldier building obstacles in front of him shouted back in a stammering voice,
"The—the cavalry shot them!"
"That's absurd! How can cavalry arrows have that kind of accuracy in the dark! Are the archers even returning fire right now!"
"Well, that is..."
Mounted archers were not entirely unknown in this world, but their accuracy was abysmal because they fired while moving. They were, in short, practically a nonexistent troop type, so Tilluman ignored the soldier's report and cursed the archers who were supposed to be returning fire. But the soldier continued his report with an awkward expression.
"The archer company is nearly wiped out!"
"What!"
"They did return fire, but they were counterattacked and destroyed instead."
Tilluman felt the absurdities piling up one after another.
They had loosed arrows in the direction the enemy fire came from to suppress it, but the arrows they shot didn't even come close to the archer company led by Uru. With the difference in range, firing from roughly the right direction—how could they possibly hit?
"All of you stand and pick them off one by one!"
"Yes!"
At that moment, Uru's archer company was rising from cover, hunting the scattered enemy archers darting between the fires. When the arrows the enemy launched in response all fell short and pattered uselessly into the dirt, Uru clicked his tongue and gave that order.
"Break through. Wedge formation!"
"Ha!"
THUD-THUD-THUD!
Jin-cheon gave the command, and with a sharp battle cry he switched his bow for a spear and began accelerating. As the obstacles entered his field of vision, Jin-cheon's Battle Cry shook the darkened battlefield.
"Huuu-yaaaaaah!"
Neigh!
THUD-THUD-THUD!
The cry torn from the paired man and mount drove into the allies as faith, and into the enemy as terror. And then they soared.
"Aaaah!"
"Unnh—a m-monster!"
Booooom!
"Aack!"
Jin-cheon flew over an obstacle that looked utterly impossible—hastily built or not—and landed among the soldiers, whose faces filled with horror.
And the silhouette of man and horse descending with the moon at their backs was like a demon. The three steel horns on the horse's head, the weighted presence of the armored bulk sheathed in steel from head to toe—reflected in the moonlight, it loomed all the more as death incarnate. And as that cry ended and the foremost soldier's head burst open, the soldiers behind lost their will to fight.
"We can't stop this!"
"R-run away!"
WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH!
Thwack!
"K-huhk!"
What met the soldier who turned his back was death. A hand axe that had come spinning from somewhere with the whistle of wind tore through the back plate of his armor like paper and buried itself, and the festival of blood began.
SLICE!
"Push through just like this!"
"Ha!"
Jin-cheon, who did not favor the spear, gave the order while swinging the Hwandudaedo, a greatsword half again as long as those of other soldiers. As he urged his horse forward, splitting obstructing enemies into upper and lower halves, the spearpoints of the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry following behind bored in all the more relentlessly.
"Hrya!"
THWACK!
"K-urgh!"
Thud.
With the Ghost Cavalryman's kiai, a rotational thrust exploded home—and a soldier, not merely stabbed but with a hole large enough to fit a head punched through his torso, was hurled away limp.
"Don't fall back!"
"Attack the horses!"
"Get inside the reach of their spears!"
CRUNCH!
"Gaaaagh!"
A mercenary who dodged a Ghost Cavalryman's spear and closed in on the horse was met, inevitably, by a steel horseshoe densely studded with spikes, flying into his face and crushing it.
"You monsters. Die!"
A soldier who actually managed to get close swung his sword, but it bounced uselessly off the horse armor.
CLANG!
"Damn it! The horse is covered in solid metal—gaaaagh!"
Neigh!
Crunch.
Thud.
A mercenary or two managed to hack at the horses, but their blades only clanged uselessly against the horse armor before their skulls were crushed beneath the enraged animals' hooves.
"Aaaagh!"
"Save me!"
"Where in the world did these monsters come from!"
Baron Alvin, who had emerged from the barracks where he had been hiding amid the relentless screams, froze at the sight of the near-slaughter. Every corpse was mangled or torn apart, with no part left whole. But that was not a sight that stopped at others alone.
"Ah... uuh!"
THUD-THUD-THUD!
"I—I am a noble!"
THUD-THUD-THUD!
"Damn you, do you not know the laws of warfare!"
Ahead of the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry, which had driven through like a wedge and left a bloody storm in its wake, stood the pale figure of Baron Alvin. Frozen, unable even to think of dodging the cavalry charging straight at him, Baron Alvin met them head-on.
THUD-THUD-THUD!
"Gaaaaahhh!"
THUD-THUD-THUD!
"Aaaagh! Aagh! Aaaagh!"
THUD-THUD-THUD!
"Aaaa?"
Clop.
Baron Alvin, who had been shrieking under the hooves of the charging cavalry, carefully opened his eyes. The cavalry that had been bearing down on him had simply passed by to his left and right.
Thud.
"I—I survived. Hoo."
The strength left Baron Alvin's legs and he collapsed, too relieved to be alive to care that warmth was spreading through his crotch.
"Secure the wagons. Charge!"
"Whoooo!"
"Eeeyaaaah!"
As Go Jin-cheon's Black Armored Ghost Cavalry pierced through and charged toward the wagons where the slash-and-burn farmers were imprisoned, the mercenaries and soldiers guarding them stepped forward. But at that moment—as if they had been waiting—Yeon Hwi-garam and the hundred Gauri Swordsmen burst in from the rear with a roar.
"Bakude! (Behind us!)"
"Bilken difens! (Block them quickly!)"
The voices of mercenaries who realized what was happening rang out urgently, but it was impossible to block both the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry charging from the front and the swordsmen from the rear at the same time. And in that gap, Hwi-garam's sword began to reap.
Sssslit!
"Gah!"
Cutting down two soldiers at once, Hwi-garam shouted to the swordsmen under his command.
CLANG-CRASH!
"Deputy, protect the wagons! The rest of you, kill every enemy so none can escape!"
"Ha!"
The swords of the Gauri Swordsmen, who charged in as one, were not swung more than once. With a single stroke, each split an enemy's sword and armor and moved on.
The mercenaries, already realizing they could not protect the wagons, tried to flee—but the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry, which had raced in before anyone knew, surrounded them, driving their horses and killing with savage persistence.
"Fuck! Dying like this is bullshit! You damned beggars! Let's die together!"
"P-please, spare me!"
"Kyaa!"
One desperate mercenary grabbed a torch and ran toward the slash-and-burn farmers cowering in terror in the wagons. His eyes bloodshot, the mercenary felt a thrill of glee at their agonized screams and began thrusting the torch onto the wagon.
"General, the wagons!"
"Hm?"
The archers originally brought to control the enemy rear had long since returned to the archer company under Uru's command. The urgent voice of a swordsman shook Hwi-garam's ears.
"Hooooo."
HUMMMMM.
With a low, centered calm, Hwi-garam fixed his eyes on the torch-bearing mercenary and slowly raised his left hand as if aiming at him. The raised left hand began to glow red-hot, and Hwi-garam's eyes seemed to flash for an instant.
"Transfer. Flame. Extinguish."
As the words were enunciated from Hwi-garam's lips, one character at a time, the fire in the mercenary's hand climbed the torch handle, leaped onto his body, and clung to him.
"Gaaaagh! Mwaen badenga! (Gaaaagh! My body!)"
FWOOSH!
"Kyaaaagh!"
"Secure the wagons!"
The fire that had attached itself to the mercenary consumed him, turning him to ash in an instant as if flames shaped like a famished ghost were devouring his body. The slash-and-burn women who saw this right in front of them shrieked in horror, and in the gap several swordsmen followed Hwi-garam's order and began surrounding the wagons.
"Me—Wizard! (A—a wizard!)"
SLICE!
"Gaaah!"
"Make sure not a single one of them remains standing on this earth!"
When a single body was wrapped entirely in flames and annihilated in moments, the mercenaries were thrown into even greater chaos. In that chaos, the Gauri Swordsmen's swords swung back and forth, staining the dark ground with blood.
"Let's go too! At the double!"
"At the double!"
"Whoooo!"
CLANK-CLANK-CLANK-CLANK-CLANK!
As Buru's order rang out, the metallic clashing sounds shook the dark as if playing a single majestic piece of music. When the panicked enemy soldiers came clearly into his sight, Buru raised his axe high to the heavens and let out his Battle Cry.
"Charge! Forwaaaard!"
"Waaaaah!"
"Hyaaaaah!"
"Chaaaaarge!"
Tap-tap-tap-tap!
At the sound of Buru's voice, the Axemen, Spearmen, and Shieldbearers tore into a terrifying full sprint and began to crash over the enemy.
CRASH-CRASH-CRASH!
"Gek!"
Booooom!
"Kill them all!"
Crunch!