The Baby as Bait
Clang! Clash! Thud! Boom!
The furious ring of weapons colliding filled the air, broken only by the raw screams of Kar warriors.
“Aaaaaaargh!”
“Guh—!”
“Uwaaagh!”
Severed arms spun through the air; spear points punched clean through chests, and blood pattered steadily onto the frozen ground.
Every one of them was a brave warrior of the Kar tribe—men who did not fear death. Yet now they crumbled like moths flung into flame.
And watching it all with an impassive face was a single man.
Kereilkarun felt genuine admiration well up inside him as he watched Arteon fight without a single step of retreat against his warriors.
It’s more than impressive… it’s almost beautiful.
How could anyone move like that with a spear?
A spear’s greatest strength was its reach, allowing its wielder to keep enemies at a distance. That was why axemen and swordsmen always tried first to close the gap; if they failed, their weapons simply never touched their foe.
So a spearman should make it his first principle to keep anyone from ever entering that range…
Then why is this bastard…
And he was doing it while cradling an infant in one arm.
Kereilkarun was not merely admiring, however. He tracked Arteon’s every motion, measuring speed and the arcs of the spear. All the while his own warriors continued to shatter against that spear-tip.
Slash!
“Gah—!”
Arteon slipped past a closing warrior’s strike as though the blow were water, then cut down two more in the same heartbeat. For an instant it almost looked as if the spear itself had shortened. He set the shaft against his lower back, locked it with both arms, ducked, and spun; the warrior pressed against him died before he could even understand how. One blink, and it was over.
The remaining Kar warriors flinched and took a collective step backward from the incomprehensible kill.
“Don’t!”
Kereilkarun shouted on pure instinct. Giving ground to a spearman was suicide—and just as he expected, Arteon’s spear shot forward in that exact moment.
Thud-thud-thud!
Shoulder, chest, gut. The spear punched through whatever flesh it found without discrimination.
Three more bodies hit the ground. Barely minutes had passed, and nearly twenty warriors were already dead. The surviving Kar stared at Arteon with faces gone pale.
It had not been entirely one-sided. A few meaningful blows had nearly landed—
…Exquisite.
—yet each time, Iryakle, hidden in the darkness, had stepped in and cut down the warrior lunging at Arteon. Their coordination was almost uncanny: one an open, hard, and merciless spear, the other a pair of beast-claws waiting in the shadows. Together they were proving far more effective than either could have been alone.
But as the minutes stretched, the balance began to shift by degrees. Kereilkarun’s eyes sharpened like those of a predator that had finally scented weakness.
“He’s starting to tire,” he said quietly.
“It appears so. But the cost in warriors is already too high.”
Fewer than two hundred Kar stood on this field. More than twenty of them were already corpses. Morale would crack if the slaughter continued much longer.
Yet—
“Keep hammering them. Keep at it until even a hairline crack appears.”
“But, Taman—”
The subordinate at his side looked at him with open worry, then fell silent under the cold weight of Kereilkarun’s gaze and hurriedly bowed his head.
“F-forgive me. I overstepped.”
“Baulkuran.”
“Yes, Taman.”
“I don’t know how he looks to your eyes,” Kereilkarun said, his gaze locked on Arteon. Even after killing more than twenty warriors the man’s aura still burned clear and solid; all they had managed was to disorder his breathing a little. “But that one… is stronger than I am.”
“What?”
“We change the plan. Tell the warriors to attack the infant in his arms.”
Nothing else mattered. Strike the child, and—
A gap will open. It has to.
Baulkuran’s eyes flickered. The order was cowardly enough to wound any warrior’s pride. But if the enemy truly surpassed Kereilkarun himself, then pride became a luxury they could not afford. The man had to die by any means necessary.
Baulkuran turned toward the ring of warriors surrounding Arteon.
“Attack the infant in the Imperial’s arms! Kill the baby—no matter what!”
The shout carried naked murder. Arteon and the hidden Iryakle both flinched and looked toward the source of that insane command. Arteon’s eyes went flat and cold.
“Do Kar warriors possess no honor at all? Targeting an infant who cannot even speak… if your great chieftain heard that order he would hang himself for shame.”
Kereilkarun snorted. It was the first time Arteon had spoken a word.
“You mad bastard, invoking the great chieftain?”
Killing intent thickened in Kereilkarun’s eyes.
“I’ll see whether you can still talk like that after I’ve cut off all four of your limbs.”
Then, louder:
“Strike. Fail to kill that child and I will kill your families in its place.”
“…!”
Every Kar warrior’s pupils shook. Kereilkarun had never once broken a promise—especially not a promise like this.
“Hraaaaaah!”
“Uwaaaaaaah!”
Madness flooded their faces. They charged screaming, every weapon aimed at the infant cradled against Arteon’s chest.
Whoooosh—!
An axe came first, thrown with deliberate, vicious accuracy straight at Iryakle’s child.
Clang!
Arteon knocked the axe aside—and the entire ring of warriors crashed in upon him at once. Their sole purpose, by Kereilkarun’s order, was the baby.
Iryakle broke from the darkness without thinking, body already moving toward Arteon—
“Don’t come!”
“…!”
Arteon’s shout froze him mid-step.
“Do what you have to do, Iryakle. The child… leave him to me.”
Even while batting away blows from every direction, Arteon poured mana into his voice so that every word reached Iryakle clear and sharp. If Iryakle let emotion drag him out of position now, the entire situation would collapse. All they could do was endure, and endure, and endure again.
Clash-clash-clash!
Arteon knocked three swords aside in a single sweep, eyes narrowing to blades. The Kar warriors no longer even glanced at him; every one of them was fixed solely on the infant, faces twisted with something close to frenzy.
Just how absolute is that bastard’s command…?
Was he holding not only Chebilk hostages but the families of every warrior present? Arteon could not be certain, yet nothing else explained this level of desperation.
Thrust!
“Ghk—!”
A Kar warrior took Arteon’s spear through the chest and coughed blood—yet even as he died he clamped both hands around Iglis’s shaft.
That brief instant was all they needed.
“Now!”
“He’s locked—hit him!”
The surrounding warriors flung themselves forward without regard for their own lives. Fighting men who no longer cared whether they lived or died was never easy.
Arteon clenched his teeth and hauled up every scrap of mana he possessed.
Woooooom—!
Power flooded into Iglis; the aura along the blade flared a deeper, fiercer blue.
“Honorless dogs.”
“Dieeeeee!”
“Hraaaaaaah!”
Screaming, they swung swords and axes. Arteon answered with a roar of his own and swept the spear in a wide, devastating arc.
Fwoooosh—!
A sudden rain of crimson filled the air. A dozen Kar warriors were cut cleanly in half and died where they stood.
“Uwaaaaaaah!”
“Dieeeeee!”
The survivors charged on, half-mad—only for three remaining figures to fall silently as Iryakle’s claws flashed out of the dark and finished them.
But the forced surge of aura exacted its price.
Ugh…!
A sick, twisting pain knotted Arteon’s guts. He bit down hard on his lip and swallowed the groan, refusing to let it escape.
In the exact moment the blood of the dead was still spreading across the ground—
Whoooom—!
A thunderous rush of displaced air announced Kereilkarun’s axe as it tore toward Arteon.
KRA-BOOM!
“Iruakaaaaaan!”
Iryakle’s scream ripped across the battlefield. Kereilkarun had thrown his own men as bait, waited for Arteon to overextend in defense, and struck in that single perfect opening. Even Arteon should not have been able to—
“…!”
Yet when the billowing dust cleared, Iryakle’s eyes went wide.
Drip… drip… drip…
The armor on Arteon’s left shoulder was shattered; bright blood ran down his arm.
He stood with the spear braced across his right shoulder, left arm still curled protectively around the infant. He had taken the blow with that arm to shield the child from the aura shockwave.
Exactly as Kereilkarun had planned. Everything Arteon had done so far had been built around protecting the baby; the earlier forced aura release and the wide defensive motions had left him open. The strike aimed at the child had landed precisely where intended.
Kereilkarun’s mouth curved upward.
“Looks like that shoulder won’t let you fight much longer.”
“….”
Arteon put distance between them at once, shifting to a one-handed grip. The shoulder wound made the left arm nearly useless; in this state even ordinary Kar warriors would be a struggle, let alone the man in front of him.
But then—
Arteon’s gaze flicked past Kereilkarun’s shoulder. A faint smile touched his lips.
“Don’t worry. I’m not the one who’s going to deal with you.”
“What?”
Kereilkarun’s expression hardened.
In that same instant—
KRA-BOOM!
A colossal explosion erupted behind him. Kar warriors were hurled in every direction as a choking cloud of dust swallowed the field. The cold northern wind swept through a heartbeat later, scouring the dust away.
From the thinning haze and the darkness beyond it, a familiar figure stepped forward.
“Sorry we’re late, Arteon.”
Isaac’s voice carried clearly. Beside him, Lucael’s order cracked like a whip.
“Special unit—leave not a single one of them alive.”
The elite soldiers of the special unit crashed into the Kar ranks like a breaking wave.