Vol 6 Chapter 1 (2/2)

“Moldorf.”

“At any rate, a large army can’t break through the forest. A small number will go through the woods first and cause a disturbance among the enemy. In addition, we’ll cut off their path of retreat and with Cherik coming at them from the front, the enemy won’t be able to move.”

His voice was calm but it was all the more powerful because of it. Most of the commanders knew of Moldorf’s fierce fighting style. They would follow him after all.

While a number of officers and soldiers lined up their horses to take the path around the forest, Moldorf selected a few dozen mounted warriors and had them conceal themselves on that side of the forest. From the start, their surroundings were far from brightly-lit and the trees’ long shadows stretched over Moldorf’s face. Under his dragon-shaped helmet, a dark shadow fell across his eyes also.

The men and mounts in Taúlia’s encampment were growing increasingly active. Perhaps as part of a diversionary attack, a shot was fired and resounded throughout the dawn sky.

“General!” The adjutant cried out in surprise.

“Follow me!” Moldorf called out to his subordinates, but although it was a command issued to the entire troop, a lone horse rider suddenly went flying forward.

Having rushed his horse into the forest, Moldorf rode hard through the trees. The rising sun cast a faint, emerald light as it filtered through the leaves.

I’ll end this.

The expression under his helmet was fierce as he spurred on his horse. Just as he had said to the commander from Lakekish, this battle had neither honour nor victory. No matter how much they might pride themselves on being upright and principled, being forced to fight against their will would sully the souls of warriors.

That being the case, the only way was to finish things as quickly as possible. If after this Garda did not keep his promise, if he kept the people imprisoned, if he continued to coerce the soldiers and forced them to fight new wars…

If that time comes, forgive me, my wife, my son, my daughter. Forgive me… Princess Lima. I will drive the entire army forward and march on Zer Illias. And this I swear, the Red Dragon’s beard will be dyed crimson in his opponents’ blood. Even if that means that you will be sacrificed and that it is your blood that will flow.

Moldorf pa.s.sed out of the forest. As expected, Cherik’s sortie had caused part of the defence to collapse. For a moment as he raced through, he saw the face of a youth who looked up vacantly towards him. One of the sentries. He parted his head from his neck and sent it whirling through the air. Once more readying the spear that had tasted first blood, Moldorf continued his charge.

A number of lights were lit on a slightly protruding hill. Taúlia’s standard fluttered in the centre. Its design was the same as Zer Tauran’s.

He saw the figure of a man bring out a folding stool and sit on it.

“Ax Bazgan!”

In shouting out, he was at least displaying a last bit of pride as a warrior. Belatedly noticing the rider fiercely approaching, the Taúlians tried to reach for their swords and spears, but they were easily blown away before Moldorf’s onrush.

Panicking, Ax fell off the folding stool. Moldorf sharply kicked his horse’s flank and readied the aim of his spear. He steadily approached the enemy figure. Ax wasn’t even able to grab a sword. Blood spurted. As Moldorf’s horse seemed to cut across the hill, Ax’s head disappeared from the neck upwards as he grovelled on the ground.

But –

Wrong.

Moldorf felt an intense sense of incongruity. “That” was not Ax Bazgan. The atmosphere in the enemy camp when he had set his aim and when he had actually decapitated his target were clearly different from what he had expected.

In that case – as Moldorf was about to turn his horse’s head left and right, a huge shadow suddenly fell across him.

When he looked up, the large figure of a Sozos dragon was reflected in his eyes.

“Ho,” the one who spoke from atop the Sozos’ back was the strategist Ravan Dol. He was an old man whose body was as thin as a dead tree, but he handled dragons with admirable skill. ”Surely that is Kadyne's Red Dragon? The fish we caught was much bigger than expected and we reeled it in, reeled it in.”

Beating a wooden dais that had been set up on the dragon's back, Ravan did not look to be as merry as his words suggested. While ”reeling it in” was good and all, this was in fact a situation in which it would have been better if they ”had not needed to reel it in”.

Ravan was in command of several dragons and had been making preparations to capture Cherik. They had lit fires some distance behind their real encampment and thus created a decoy ”headquarters” in readiness of a surprise attack from the enemy. But still, that had only been on the unlikely off-chance that a few of Cherik's troops would come through the forest.

Yet here, beneath his eyes, was Moldorf.

s.h.i.+t.

Intense regret welled up within him. The opponent was Garda's army which had set out from Helio. Ravan had calculated that they could advance on Cherik if they emptied Taúlia, but any way he had looked at it, he had not believed that reinforcements could possibly rush towards Cherik. If it had come to this, then it wouldn't only be a single military unit coming through the forest. The enemy would be fielding a far larger force.

But still…

Be that as it may, the enemy had moved fast. He had been sure that even if they were aiming for Taúlia, news of its battle with Cherik would not be reported to Helio until later. That meant that their movements had been leaked to the enemy but even so, there was still one point that remained unclear no matter how much he thought about it.

It was too fast.

Considering their relative positions, at about the same time as they had left Taúlia, the enemy should have been in Helio. With regards to the preparations for the march, he had been vigilant to the point of over-cautiousness. He had severely restricted people’s comings and goings from the city-state and had advanced his arrangements in such secrecy that even the people of Taúlia probably hadn’t realised that they would soon be taking the field.

So why – worrying about that now wouldn’t make any difference.

Ravan sent out three dragons. At that moment, the Kadyne cavalry unit, following Moldorf’s charge, was approaching the “headquarters”, but the horses took fright and dispersed as the large dragons ran towards them with earth-shaking vigour. Only one of them, Moldorf’s horse, rushed around the Sozoses with unimpeded vigour, almost as though it was possessed by the soul of its rider.

“Ax, where are you? Show yourself!”

Moldorf shouted in a voice as loud as a dragon’s roar. An arrow whistled past his cheek but he paid no mind to something so trivial.

“E-Enemies!”

“A sneak attack from Cherik?”

“It’s the Red Dragon – the Red Dragon of Kadyne!”

Noticing the disturbance, the Taúlian troops lined up their spears and guns and took up defensive positions. From that point on, they were not imposters but guards protecting their headquarters.

But,

Retreating is the one thing we can’t do.

Perhaps drawn in by Moldorf’s spirit, the Kadyne unit that had for a moment been about to disperse showed signs of charging once more.

It was a fact that Ravan’s eyes were quick to spot an opportunity. And that his decisions were fast. If the entire army had left Helio, the numbers would be comparable to theirs. Moreover, Cherik’s troops were to their front. Any way he looked, they were at a disadvantage. Rather than wring his hands, Ravan would protect the headquarters by driving away the onrus.h.i.+ng soldiers.

He sent a new signal to have his apprentices open the dragon cages and release several small-sized Fey dragons. By continuing to make use of the dragons to stall for time, they would allow Ax’s main force to move east and, with the dragons as the rear guard, they would also halt the enemy’s pursuit. He did not think that would dampen the enemies’ spirits as they now had Ax close at hand. Nevertheless, the large enemy army would probably turn their way in order to crush their path of retreat. They, the rear-guard, would probably – no, they would almost certainly – be annihilated.

In that moment, Ravan prepared himself for death. Although even he had already lost track of exactly how old he was, it had never occurred to him to wonder when he might die. As far as Ravan was concerned, to do so would be halfway towards greeting death. The dreams, ideals and goals that he needed to achieve were as numerous as the stars.

But if Ax Bazgan were to be defeated here, Taúlia, no, not only Taúlia but all the western lands, would fall into Garda’s hands. More than all else, the one thing that Ravan could not lose was Ax himself. Because his dreams, his ideals and his goals were all of the legitimacy of the Bazgan House.

“Humph,” Ravan half narrowed his ever sleepy-looking eyes. “Although there is still a mountain of things I need to teach them, it can’t be helped. I’ll have to hand over their training to someone else.”

Be that as it may, the first thing to do was to kill the momentum of this surprise attack. Ravan had intended to dispatch a messenger but Moldorf, galloping without fear of the dragons, would not allow a single horseman through. He was no average commander. Inwardly, Ravan hurled violent hatred at the enemy general, but also, and above that, he heaped praise on him.

Moldorf too was prepared to die. If they could take Ax's head, it would be their win. Rather than turn away here, they would force their way further in. He calculated that if they plunged deep into the enemy line, Taúlia would not be able to use the dragons that were its strongest a.s.set.

Spurring on the Sozos, Ravan sent continuous signals from the top of the dais and guided the Fey to chase after Moldorf. But even as the Fey bounded closer and the Sozos advanced with ground-shaking steps, man and horse, united as one, galloped on unperturbed.

Dammit.

Even Ravan the Strategist was starting to feel impatient.

With the Sozos chasing behind him, Moldorf leapt over the soldiers firing bullet at him, he cut down the swords and spears approaching him from either side and, within the crowd moving about confusedly – from the other side of an enemy soldier whose helmet he had sliced through lengthwise he finally caught sight of his prey.

“So you were there, were you? Ax Bazgan.”

He raised the hand in which he held his sword towards the large man he had called out to. Although all around him was nothing but gleaming spearheads as numerous as the enemy soldiers who brandished them, he charged on with unabated vigour. Moldorf roared in a voice loud enough to cross the battlefield and pitched his posture forward.

“My Lord!”

Ravan was going to pursue behind him when suddenly, blackish blood spouted from the back of the Sozos’ neck. Despite the infinitesimal probability of doing so, an enemy bullet had struck the point where its scales were the weakest.

The dragon’s giant body lurched sideways and Ravan was thrown from the dais.

“I’ve got it!”

The belief in victory gleamed within Moldorf’s eyes. He himself knew it to also be the herald of destruction. If Ax died, Taúlia too would fall and no one would be able to stop Garda’s invasion anymore.

This is –

More than two hundred years after Zer Tauran.

This was the end of the western lands.

Part 3

As he charged, Moldorf tore through the wind, tore through the glittering sunlight, through the surging crowd and through the screams.

Ax also pulled out his sword but it was already too late. Moldorf’s readied spear was already in position to pierce his neck.

The finis.h.i.+ng blow was about to be delivered. Then – just before he did so, an unexpected sound struck his ears.

Gunshots.

Certainly, that wasn’t unexpected on a battlefield. Besides which, they were coming from a position far away from Moldorf’s. He didn’t think that the bullets would hit, but the gunshots that resounded were so orderly that it felt incongruous.

It should be too early for their allied troops to be in sight of the enemy sentries. In which case,

An enemy ambush?

After all, they had positioned a fake Ax in the decoy army which they had constructed at their rear. For a second, Moldorf suspected that every move they had made there might have been provoked by the enemy. The Ax before his eyes might well be another body double.

In some ways, Moldorf was too calm. As a general who had led countless soldiers over many years, he kept his eyes and ears on his surroundings even while in the middle of an a.s.sault, and because of that, in that moment, the force of his spear was slightly weakened.

And in that same moment, Ax’s st.u.r.dy sword flashed upwards.

Sparks flew between Moldorf who was on horseback and Ax who stood on the ground.

At the same time, a large part of Garda's army was making the detour around the forest when suddenly they were struck by an attack from their flank.

The very gunshots that Moldorf had heard echoing caused many of the mounted warriors to be thrown from horseback with a clatter. The other horses bolted upright and while the soldiers were thrown into confusion, what they heard next was the reverberation of horses' hooves advancing towards them.

“E-Enemies!”

An unknown cavalry was launching a charge from their side. Their momentum was like a loosed arrow and there was only time for a single shout of “Enemy” before the soldiers galloping in the van had pierced the chest of two, then three of Garda's soldiers with their spears.

Although Garda's army was numerous, the soldiers from the various countries were unable to move as one. Their reaction to the unexpected event was dull and, just as Moldorf had a.s.sessed, the army was fragile. Some turned their horse towards the forest and tried to escape through it; some got caught up in the charge and fell from their horse, or ended their lives pierced by a spear; some lost their judgement and attempted to flee as the enemy soldiers pa.s.sed by their flank, and so were decapitated from behind by enemy swords.

The one leading the a.s.sault force was Lasvius, the commander of Helio's dragoons. About five hundred followed behind him.

He was a man whose forte primarily lay in leading operations that involved small or medium-sized dragons. There were currently no dragons left in Helio so he had of necessity ridden a horse into battle, but even so, his skill was far superior to the average cavalryman.

When Lasvius, who had led a deep thrust into the enemy ranks suddenly turned around to once more meet Garda's army head on, the cloud of dust that flew up was thick with blood.

“Calm down, calm down!” The general from Lakekish shouted angrily while quieting his horse which had bolted upright. “The enemy are few in number. Follow me!”

Although the troops' morale was by no means high, there were many far-famed commanders from each respective country. They were on the verge of gathering the various units in a coordinated strike at Lasvius' troops when,

“Guah!”

The soldier next to the Lakekishan commander was shot in the head and collapsed face forward from horseback. The commander cried out in surprise as a spurt of blood showered him the face.

“Wh-What!”

This time, it had come from behind.

Their white clothes fluttering in the wind, a group from the Pinepey tribe appeared. Most of them had a gun on their shoulder as they raced forward. They were nomads who excelled at horseback marksmans.h.i.+p. Along with the innumerable gunshots, the top of their shoulders were momentarily wreathed in white gunpowder smoke. It was almost humorous how the soldiers of Garda's army scattered before them, unable to maintain their battle formation.

As the Pinepey drew closer and spread out on either side, from behind them appeared a new group of riders wielding swords and spears.

Leading them was a swordsman whose face was half covered by a mask.

Their momentum carried them rus.h.i.+ng through the centre of Garda's forces which had fallen to the gunfire. Swords, spears and maces glittered in the light of dawn. Garda's soldiers were cut down without being able to react and were trampled by the horses. The sound of screams and the horses' hooves rose together, and the battlefield was filled with a bellowing reminiscent of a dragon's roars.

“Right, we're going too. Follow me!”

Lasvius brandished his spear and urged his men to charge once more. “Yeah!” the riders behind him shouted in response and he grinned inwardly as he jolted up and down on his horse.

That Orba, he thought.

The two-stage surprise attack was a plan that had been suggested by the masked leader of the other group of riders, Orba. Before leaving Helio, they had accurately foreseen that they would be far fewer in number than the enemy. Orba however had presented a plan to deliberately divide their troops into even smaller units. In doing so, it would conversely become difficult to gauge their numbers and the enemy would not be able to predict how many more attacks were still to come.

In reality, they were running out of bullets from this two-stage a.s.sault and the troops from Helio weren’t even seven hundred strong. Since Helio had only just fought the usurper king Greygun and the city was still in chaos, this was the most soldiers they had been able to sc.r.a.pe together. Furthermore, there had been no time to reorganise the troops, so their defence was fragile.

But the army led by Moldorf had the same weakness and on top of that, it had the added misfortune that Moldorf, who had in effect been entrusted with its command, had gone with the vanguard. Orders flew about in every local accent and it was impossible to tell who was handing down decisions to whom. Lasvius’ unit charged once more and Orba’s unit effortlessly cut down Garda’s army then plunged into the forest.

At their head, Orba smoothly galloped his horse to slip through the trees. A soldier from Kadyne thrust at him from the side with a spear, but Orba easily sliced at the tip and sent it flying.

“Forward, forward!”

While he took command to hurry them through the forest, the leader of Garda’s army, Moldorf had Ax in his sights but had just missed him. Ax had tumbled backwards and he was going to pursue with another attack, but the Taúlian soldiers swarmed to stop him.

“Don’t get in my way!” He swung his spear from atop his horse.

With wild energy he mowed down another and yet another, blood spraying, while Orba’s horse-riding form approached from behind.

Clang – sparks flew. Moldorf managed to stop Orba’s sword thanks to his animal intuition and turned to look back at him with a ferocious expression. He opened his mouth so wide you could see into its red depths.

“So you’re still alive, you masked brat?”

“Unfortunately so.”

Orba and Moldorf circled around one another on horseback, jabbing repeatedly at each other. In the blazing white sunlight, the favoured weapon each held in hand glittered and clashed with the other’s.

In a head-on confrontation, Moldorf, who was proficient at fighting on horseback, had a huge advantage. But all around him were Taúlian soldiers thrusting spears at him from the ground and preventing him from overwhelming Orba.

Moreover,

“How much longer does a man like the Red Dragon of Kadyne plan on playing the sorcerer’s accomplice?” Orba shouted at Moldorf as sparks flew yet again.

“What!?”

“Right now, you should be rallying the western powers to destroy Garda. I don’t get it, how long are you going to be content to be Garda’s slave?”

“B-b.a.s.t.a.r.d!”

Orba nimbly twisted his neck away just as Moldorf’s spear cleaved through the air right before him. If he had been just a fraction slower, the force of that strike would easily have torn off his head.

“What would you understand?”

“What I understand is something you should know too.” Orba continued to ridicule him. “Take your troops back to Kadyne. They’re undermanned over there. You can retake it.”

“Shut up, brat! Do you not understand that that will only cause the people who have been taken hostage to be injured in vain? And besides, it isn’t only the people of Kadyne, our princess, Lima Khadein, is in Zer Illias. But you keep flapping that mouth of yours as though you know everything.”

“And what if I keep flapping it? Your spear has been slicing nothing but air for a while now. You wouldn’t be able to bring down a single bird with that.”

Thanks to those words, Orba was able to gain an understanding of Moldorf’s circ.u.mstances, as well as of those of the soldiers serving in Garda’s army. Naturally, he had absolutely no way of knowing Kadyne’s situation from the outset. It was just an act to draw out the real motive.

The tip of a spear flew over the top of his shoulder with a whistling sound. They were surrounded by ten or twenty soldiers and it would be easy to lose a limb if one relaxed one’s attention.

“If it’s about your princess, then all the more reason.”

“What!”

One of Moldorf’s blows was about to pierce Orba’s mask. Just before that happened, a gleaming sword swept upwards and deflected it.

“There is no way that a princess wouldn’t lament that her home country had submitted to the sorcerer because she was taken hostage. Show true loyalty, Moldorf. Prove to your princess that Kadyne will not bow to the likes of Garda.”

“Y-You. You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!”

Moldorf’s face turned blood-red at the masked swordsman’s impudent words. He was no longer aiming to defeat Ax. His target was now Orba alone and, skilfully handling his horse, he cut down the distance between them.

Although Orba was forced into a defensive position, at that same time, his troops exited from the forest in a line and immediately crossed spears with Garda’s forces. The Taúlian army was also on the alert. Furthermore, the main body of Garda’s troops were still being held back by Lasvius’ unit.

d.a.m.n, Moldorf was forced into making a new decision.

However great their numerical advantage, it would be difficult to take back the momentum that had pa.s.sed into their enemies’ hands.

What was especially problematic was that no sooner had Cherik's army, which had originally been the one to need the reinforcements, seen that those reinforcements were in difficulty than they had lost the vigour with which they had thrown open the city gates and flown out, and instead indecisively held back before even having crossed swords with the Taúlian troops.

“Bah!”

With a silent prayer, he swung his spear one last time and shattered Orba's sword. With that, his remaining regrets were all the more bitter and he glared piercingly into Orba's eyes before pulling on his reins with all his strength.

“Retreat. Retreat, retreat!” He cried out as he kicked his horse's flank, and even his voice sounded stained with blood.

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