The Siege of Andrassy (4)

It was a blessing that the saddle arrived in time before our departure. Dris Trading Company had even attached the appraisal results for the thing, whose effects had until then been listed as unknown.

In other words: the longer you rode, the harder you hit. Not that I had much use for that — I hardly planned to swing a weapon around like the knights did, and there was no telling ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠whether the effect would even extend to my Daoist arts.

In any case, holding Ruby's grand test ride on the platform had paid off in full. The soldiers marched off in high spirits, chanting my name and Ruby's in one breath. There was not a single soul raised in this country who didn't nurse a romantic dream about dragons.

And then there was... shall we call it the thrill of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠riding a dragon? Ruby was so enormous that every one of her steps should have jolted my whole body, and yet the ride felt remarkably steady — whether that too was the saddle's doing, I couldn't say.

"Squeak."

Hellcat seemed perfectly comfortable up there as well. The creature settled lightly onto Ruby's broad, flat back, then curled up and claimed the spot as though it had been its own bed all along.

And yet it wouldn't let me — the one who fed it — so much as lay a finger on it, while it cozied up to Ruby of all creatures. So it really was the type to lord it over the weak and grovel before the strong.

There was exactly one inconvenience to dragon riding.

"My lord Iden!"

Vitten was waving a slip of paper at me from far below.

"Urgent dispatch from the count's domain!"

"Then come up here. Don't shout from down there."

Ruby was simply too tall for me to hold a normal conversation with anyone at ground level. This meant poor Vitten had to shuttle back and forth between her back and his own saddle, and it wore him out considerably.

According to his report, the demon army had launched a full-scale offensive beginning the very morning we departed — almost as if they knew a relief force was being organized. Count Andrassy had held firm until now, but this time felt different, he said. If we did not arrive in time, the castle stood in real danger of falling into demon hands.

"I misjudged things," Vitten said glumly. "No matter what, I should have gone with Thalia. Even if I'd had to put a leash on that mangy cat to manage it."

"Don't fret too much, Vitten. The enemy rushing like this means they're just as pressed for time as we are. They want it settled before we arrive, I'd wager."

"My apologies. Here I am, moaning away in front of my own lord. I must be getting old."

Vitten pulled a sheepish face. My gaze drifted almost of its own accord to the pouch hanging at his neck — embroidered, and in exactly the same design as the gift Lily had given me.

"Don't tell me that's... one of those lucky pouches?"

"How could you possibly tell?" Vitten echoed, eyes going round.

"I got one as a gift myself. Seems carrying them around is all the fashion."

"It is, my lord. They've been selling like hotcakes at the market lately — only five barts apiece. So while I was buying mine, I picked one up for Thalia as well. You never know, do you? Some wondrous Awoken Ability might just be sleeping inside this humble little thing."

Vitten's thoughts were my own thoughts, verbatim. And that was precisely why superstition could never die out in this world. With Awoken Abilities of every conceivable kind scattered about, running a con was laughably easy.

Still, something about the flow of this conversation was odd. Every time Vitten opened his mouth, Thalia came up. It wasn't limited to today, either — the tendency had grown distinctly worse of late.

Granted, as senior and junior knights and superior and subordinate besides, the two of them couldn't help being on each other's minds. But how common could it be, honestly, for a subordinate to go handing his commanding officer lucky little pebbles as presents?

"Vitten."

"Yes, my lord?"

"Do you, by any chance, fancy Thalia?"

Watching Vitten's face compose itself into a look that plainly said, Where in the world did that come from? I added:

"I mean, as a woman."

"Me? Fancy Thalia?"

Vitten tipped his head back and roared with laughter.

"Finest joke I've heard all year. And there's barely a handful of days left in the year to hear a better one."

"Right. Perish the thought."

"It's only that having the vice-commander's seat snatched from under me by her still sticks in my craw. It'd be a fine state of affairs if I went and died before I ever got my rematch."

"Vitten."

"And besides, I have my standards. Yes, I'll grant you the face is cute. But a woman who wears nothing but armor every day of her life, who never cracks that stone-carved scowl, and who melts people down like string the instant she triggers her Awoken Ability — where exactly am I supposed to find that pretty? The capital is crawling with lovely women, my lord."

"...Vitten."

"And that's not the half of it. You know what she said to me last time the two of us were alone togeth— urk!"

Vitten went rolling off Ruby's back in a spectacular clatter. Momentum carried him tumbling head over heels across the ground, farther and farther into the distance.

So that was a fall from dragonback, then. Not horseback.

I'd been meaning to point it out for a while now, actually — that his arms and legs were flying in four different directions, and that at this rate he was liable to part company with the saddle. He must have been truly rattled. And him a man whose trade was conditioning his own body, no less.

He'd called Thalia 'cute' just now. She could be called beautiful, certainly — but her face was built for precisely nothing so soft as cute.

They say — I heard it somewhere — that once a person starts looking cute to you, it's already too late to turn back.

If Vitten really was sweet on Thalia, I supposed I ought to go console him in advance. It hadn't been all that long since his last heartbreak, and here he was about to get his heart broken all over again.

News came trickling in as we marched, and every dispatch made the situation in Andrassy's domain look more desperate. I ordered the men to push the pace as hard as they could bear.

Before long, columns of smoke began climbing above the horizon. The din of battle reached us next — the sound of an unimaginable number of warriors hurling themselves at one another with their lives staked on it.

Shortly after, the castle walls took shape in the distance. Siege giants were visibly tearing them apart, and above the battlements a black swarm of flying monsters wheeled and clustered.

Worse still was the ground below the walls. The northern plain was packed so dense with monsters there wasn't room left to wedge in a needle. It was an army so vast my blood ran cold just looking at it.

"Knights!"

I raised my sword and loosed a lion's roar. My Daoist-amplified voice rolled across the field like thunder.

"Save Andrassy!"

Close to a thousand knights arrayed themselves into a wedge formation, aimed at punching clean through the enemy's depth.

"Charge!"

At Varga's cry, the mounted assault began. Leading the van was Vitten, transformed, loping along at a full horse's pace.

"Let's go, Ruby!"

I urged her after them. The knights were out of my hands now; the field belonged to its commander, Varga. My task was to visit shock and terror upon the enemy with my own strength.

THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD—!

Ruby's footfalls shook the earth itself. Her charging power had been proven once already against the monsters of the underground, but she was far, far stronger now than she had been then.

The enemy lines were barely a hundred meters out.

The giants lumbered into position to receive the charge, and ranks of orc spearmen leveled their long pikes. Ruby didn't bleed off an inch of speed until the very moment of impact — then she sprang and slammed her whole body into a giant's torso.

WHAM—!

With a dull, bursting crack, the giant's body went soaring. Still brimming with unused force, Ruby plowed on, mangling the monster ranks without mercy.

And then the effect of the Saddle of the Flying Dragon Knight kicked in. A groundless confidence welled up in me — as though, if I called on my Daoist arts this very instant, I could swallow heaven and earth whole.

The surging power of the thunderbolt... came to rest not in my hands, but in my entire body. Thunder qi overflowed past all measure, until it felt as though I myself had become the lightning.

"You insolent human whelp... GYAAARGH!"

Some demon or other got as far as announcing himself before the lightning found him and charred him to a crisp. He'd looked reasonably high-ranking, too — what rotten luck, of all the spells to be caught by, one inflated to absurd size by a buff.

Then it happened.

Hsssssaaaah...

Ruby lifted her head and began to breathe in. Her belly swelled up, taut and round.

No way...

You don't mean it. Do you, Ruby?

Ruby flung her jaws wide, and out came a breath of churning molten lava.

"KHYAAAAK!"

"M-my body...!"

I stared at Ruby, eyes brimming with emotion.

It had been a good six years since I'd first taken in that little wriggler of the hearth. And now that wriggler could loose a breath no dragon on the block need be ashamed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of. So this was what it felt like to raise a child of one's own.

Ruby and I moved as man and dragon made one, flattening monster and demon alike without distinction. The monsters especially wilted in Ruby's presence — the primal terror a creature feels before a predator.

"Block them! I said hold the line!"

No amount of demon shrieking made a bit of difference. The monsters flung away their weapons and tripped over one another in flight. They had never been an army with anything like human discipline to begin with.

And into that crumbling rabble the knights plunged, grinding it to nothing. They rode until the momentum bled out of their charge, then dismounted and set their arms whirling in dazzling flourishes.

For my part, I hunted the loud ones — the ones with twin horns jutting from their skulls.

"The enemy is falling back!"

By the time the infantry column caught up, the enemy's left wing had sloughed away like wet snow. The center, though, still held — and that was where the giants stood massed thickest.

"Rosrik!"

I picked the middle-aged man out of the sea of foot soldiers. Rosrik, Kaldrik's father, had lost none of his composure even in the thick of this chaos.

"Yes, young master."

"Let's go bag a giant."

His eyes blew wide open.

"Right n— "

I hooked an arm around his waist and kicked off into empty air. Treading the open sky, I flew as free as any bird. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Rosrik, evidently a man who had never in his life left the ground, went rigid as a boulder and clamped onto my arm.

"Hup."

We came down at the tallest watchtower on the western wall, where a young soldier stood all alone, minding the defensive engine.

"Hey there."

"Sir!"

The soldier startled so hard he nearly dropped his weapon. I pointed at the harpoon clutched in his hands.

"Mind if I make use of that?"

"O-of course!"

"And while you're at it, give this man a hand loading the ballista, so he can put a shot downrange."

The soldier nodded so hard his head nearly came loose. Rosrik settled in before the ballista. Engineer training, perhaps — the way the soldier racked the harpoon was admirably deft.

Overflow had left Rosrik without a single drop of mana in his body. I'd been toying with the idea of assigning him a loader, and it was lucky that a suitable man happened to be standing right here.

"Your name?"

"Leo, sir. It's Leo."

The soldier's answer came out in a shiver. He was, in fact, trembling quite visibly.

"Cold, are you?"

"No, sir!"

He barked it like a drill command, then finished in a voice small as a crawling ant.

"It's only that I can't quite believe the young master is standing right in front of me."

At this rate someone ought to conduct a proper inquiry into the minstrels. What in the world were they peddling about me?

"That one will do nicely," Rosrik said, pointing at the giant hammering the central gate — a brute a good two times the length of any of its fellows. The soldier froze halfway through the loading, his face curdling into the expression of a man who urgently needed the privy.

"You don't mean to say you're going to kill a giant... with this?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Forgive me for saying so, my lord, truly... but this ballista is an anti-air engine. Against a giant it cannot deal any meaningful damage at all."

"Is that a fact?"

"Yes, sir. This position is normally held by the anti-air unit, so..."

I flashed him a grin.

"Then let's have a look at what does happen."

Rosrik peered down the sights with grave deliberation. Leo swallowed hard.

Rosrik's ability was Legend Slayer.

It dealt damage in proportion to the difference in mana between him and his target. Overflow had shattered every last mote of mana in Rosrik's body — which meant the gap between him and a giant ran into the thousands of times over.

The eyes of a hawk-sharp hunter swept the giant's frame, reading its weak points. Losing one's mana did not take one's cunning with it.

At length, something past all describing began to gather in Rosrik's hands.

THWANG—!

The ballista's harpoon sang out. It climbed a shallow arc across the field and struck the giant square in the torso.

At a glance, nothing seemed to come of it — just one more blow among the countless others raining down on the giant.

Then, to a sound like bone being ground on stone, the giant's ribcage curled inward into itself. Spewing blood and gobbets of flesh down like rain, it swayed, sagged, and slowly toppled.

...So that was it.

Legend Slayer.

"Well? What do you think, Leo?"

I turned to look. Instead of an answer, Leo began to hiccup.