ACT 5
“Well, well. It looks like I’m stuck minding the fort this time.” As his eyes finished scanned the document, the man gave a small sigh.
He was a skinny man, and rather gloomy-looking, but with an intensely sharp look in his eyes reminiscent of a hungry wolf searching for prey.
His name was Skáviðr, the Wolf Clan’s assistant to the second-in-command. But he was also known by the sinister alias Níðhǫggr, the Sneering Slaughter, and feared by many within his clan, as well as outside it.
Sitting across the large work desk from Skáviðr, the Horn Clan patriarch Linnea chuckled a bit. “Hee hee, well, as far as we of the Horn Clan are concerned, there is nothing more reassuring than having the former Mánagarmr remain here with us in Myrkviðr.”
Armed riders had been spotted over and over again in the surrounding areas near the city of Myrkviðr, likely part of a Panther Clan scouting force. Just the other day, there had been reports of a skirmish with a few dozen of them, out at a nearby small fortress that had been constructed to improve the area’s defenses.
It was clear proof that the Panther Clan had not given up on recapturing Myrkviðr.
“Right now, our mission is to protect Myrkviðr, so that Big Brother can fight without any worries about the border here,” Linnea said. “The fact that you were entrusted with this area really just goes to show how much faith he has in you, so...”
“Did I really seem that upset by it?” Skáviðr asked.
“Ahaha! Just a little bit.” Linnea held her thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart.
Indeed, it had only been a very slight difference in his tone. It was only just enough that someone like Linnea could notice it, since she had met and spent time with him on numerous occasions throughout the winter months.
However, the man was usually quite stone-faced, so even a slight showing of emotion in his expression was a big deal.
That was why Linnea had said what she did, but now she regretted it, wondering if perhaps it had been too nosy of her to do so.
“Heh, I appreciate your kindness. I see why one so young serves as a clan patriarch. You take good notice of those around you.” Skáviðr delivered those words of admiration with a small smirk. For a man who was often noticeably sardonic, this was a rare bit of polite and unqualified praise.
Linnea was relieved that it seemed like she hadn’t made him upset with her.
“The Dólgþrasir must truly be a terrible foe,” she remarked, “if the battle with him worries even someone as strong as you.”
Linnea had only met Steinþórr once, in the Horn Clan capital Fólkvangr during Yuuto’s victory celebration there.
Even then, the young man had been so overwhelmingly intimidating just by his violent force of presence that recalling it now made Linnea shudder. However, she had never actually gone up against him on the battlefield.
Skáviðr had actually faced him in combat. Linnea was eager to hear his assessment of the Battle-Hungry Tiger.
Despite the reassuring words she had said to Skáviðr earlier, Linnea herself was deeply worried for the man she loved, heading to battle in a place far from where she could reach him.
“If I am being honest, neither I nor Sigrún would stand a chance of defeating him in combat,” Skáviðr said bluntly. “He isn’t human; he’s some kind of monster.”
Skáviðr wasn’t the sort of man who would mince words in order to relieve the mood of a situation. Whatever the time or place, he only spoke what he believed to be the facts.
Though it had only been for a few months, Linnea had come to know him quite well in that time, and she understood that facet of his personality.
It was for that reason that the next words out of him made her wide-eyed with surprise.
“However, my master is far greater than a monster; he is a war god reborn.”
“Pft... Ahahaha!” Linnea couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “I would never have thought I’d hear words like that come out of your mouth. That’s a bit unexpected.”
Skáviðr was a realist who always spoke only what he believed to be the facts. In other words, he believed without a doubt that Yuuto actually was the incarnation of a god in the flesh.
For Linnea, hearing the former Mánagarmr say this about the young man she revered as her sworn brother only renewed her sense of how incredible he was.
Surely he would grasp hold of victory this time as well, and return home in triumph.
Just as Linnea was thinking that, there was a small snap! as if something nearby had broken. The sound was oddly loud in her ears.
“Hm?!” Skáviðr grunted, his face clouded by a troubled scowl.
“What is it? Is something the matter?”
“...No. It’s just that the leather handle wrapping for my sword seems to have snapped.” Skáviðr’s expression looked quite openly bitter.
She followed his gaze to the nihontou at his waist, and saw that the leather cord wrapped intricately and tightly around its hilt had broken, its loose ends hanging down.
To a warrior, a weapon was something you staked your very life on. This was especially true for its grip, where changes could strongly affect its ease of use.
Though Linnea was from a different clan, she was still a patriarch, so it had to be shameful to a warrior for something like this to happen in front of her. It was also quite unlike such a seasoned veteran as Skáviðr.
It was so unlike him, in fact, that it filled Linnea with a terrible sense of dread.
She knew that Yuuto had been the one to forge Skáviðr’s sword. For a part of that sword to suddenly break...
Linnea couldn’t shake off the horrible premonition that she now felt.
The elliptical shape of the gibbous moon hung in the sky like a bright white lemon, its soft light illuminating the surrounding landscape.
The crackling sounds of burning wood mixed with the distant cries of owls, as the field generals of the Wolf Clan army sat gathered together in a circle around the campfire.
“Aughh, even though it’s spring, it still gets pretty cold at night.” Wrapped in a single blanket, Yuuto shivered.
Sigrún was seated next to him, and without a moment’s hesitation, she took off her fur mantle and held it out to him. “Father, please take this if you are feeling cold.”
“That’s the mantle handed down to each Mánagarmr through the generations,” he said. “I can’t just wear that. I’m not qualified.”
“If it’s you, Father, I believe that all the previous holders of the title would surely approve of it.”
“No way. I can’t just act like I’m someone I’m not,” Yuuto insisted, and waved off her offer.
Within the Wolf Clan, that mantle was the very symbol of strength, and almost every boy who grew up in the clan dreamed of one day wearing it.
When it came to his physical ability to fight, Yuuto was still, shamefully, confident that he was weaker than the average rank and file soldier. As such, he didn’t see himself as worthy of donning such a symbolically important item.
“Then I shall at least go run and fetch you another blanket from... Hm?!” With an intense expression Sigrún suddenly jumped up, her hand already at her sword and pushing it the first few inches free of its scabbard with her thumb.
However, she soon released her grip and sat back down.
What’s going on? Yuuto wondered.
An instant later, a sudden voice from the dark behind him answered his question. “Hello, Father.”
“Whoa!” Yuuto nearly lost his balance and tumbled forward as two figures seemed to materialize from out of the shadows behind him. “Geez, that scared me!”
It was Kristina and Albertina.
Many of the generals sitting in the campfire circle were clearly just as surprised. Their shock was within reason, for the location of this campfire out in a wide open field had been chosen for its clear view of the surroundings, to make sure that no one unnecessary could snoop in on their meeting. And yet, two people had gotten this close without anyone noticing.
“Here is my report.” Kristina dropped to one knee and spoke humbly. “Fort Gashina has fallen, seized by the Lightning Clan.”
“What?!” One of the gathered officers shouted his disbelief.
“You say Gashina’s already fallen?!”
A wave of commotion swept through them all.
Yuuto also glowered, with a scowl like he’d just bitten into a rotten apple. “Tch! Damn! So we didn’t make it in time...”
Fort Gashina was the westernmost fortress on Wolf Clan territory, right up near the border with the Lightning Clan, so it had also been their front line of defense.
That was why he’d assigned Ansgar, sixth ranked in the clan and a man with abundant combat experience, command of the fortress and one thousand soldiers. He hadn’t foreseen that they would be taken down this easily.
“What happened to Ansgar, and the soldiers?” Yuuto asked.
“Big Brother Ansgar died in battle, against Steinþórr,” Kristina reported. “All of the surviving soldiers were put to death...”
“Ghh...! Damned berserker. Even this part of him is exactly like Xiang Yu.” Yuuto practically spat the words out with disgust.
In the world of the 21st century, there existed certain rules of warfare which condemned indiscriminate murder or torture, even for prisoners belonging to an enemy nation. But, of course, no such humanitarian rules existed here in Yggdrasil.
It was particularly important to consider that this was an era where the supply of food was extremely limited. Just by staying alive, prisoners of war would deplete one’s food stores, and one could never be sure when they might attempt to cause a revolt. Simply killing them right away reduced the number of mouths to feed and, at the same time, tied up the loose ends so that there was one less source of risk. It wasn’t a rare policy here.
Yuuto suppressed the violent emotions within himself, and spoke in a low, cold voice, indicating for Kristina to resume her report. “Proceed. What are the Lightning Clan troops up to now?”
As a commander, he needed to remain calm and under control at all times. Allowing himself to be swept up by temporary emotions was out of the question. He had learned that lesson painfully well last year, during the battle with the Panther Clan.
“Yes, Father,” Kristina said. “They have positioned their main formation at a narrow passageway between two mountains, and are waiting for us there.”
Kristina pulled out a map which she had prepared in advance, spreading it out on the ground and pointing out one particular location.
Yuuto stared hard at the map for a while, then gave a heavy sigh.
“I was afraid this might happen, and it looks like it has. He’s taken up position somewhere that’s gonna be a real problem for us.”
“It is as you say.” Kristina nodded in agreement, frowning.
With steep mountains covering both flanks of the Lightning Clan army, the Wolf Clan had no choice but to attack head-on. It would be difficult to get any soldiers into a position where they could ambush or attack from advantage.
In other words...
“He wants us to have a full-on fight, head to head, with no tricks,” Yuuto said.
His enemy’s choice to use that formation communicated that he was firm in the belief that he would never lose such a confrontation.
And it was no exaggeration to say that he was right.
The Wolf Clan’s basic infantry formation was the phalanx, which was extraordinarily strong at attacking enemies directly in front. But in their previous war with the Lightning Clan, the phalanx had been shattered by the sheer brute strength of just one man, a sight which had been seared into Yuuto’s mind.
The Wolf Clan forces were twelve thousand in total. Because of the Wolf Clan’s increasing prosperity, as well as its protective policies towards refugees, it had a far greater ability to mobilize a large army, and for the first time since Yuuto had become patriarch, he’d raised an army more numerous than his enemy’s. But against an opponent like Steinþórr, even 1.5 times the number of troops didn’t feel like it would make any difference at all.
“They say ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ but this feels more like we’d just be throwing caution to the wind,” Yuuto muttered thoughtfully.
He was lauded as an undefeatable commander, but he couldn’t bring himself to send in his troops without some sort of real plan.
Put another way, the reason Yuuto had gone undefeated so far was because he always began by creating the conditions that would make it so he could win. He did not engage in conflicts that he could not be sure were winnable.
A brilliant commander is not simply someone who is able to lead a small force to an upset victory over a large one. A truly brilliant commander wins because they should win, in a battle that is uninteresting from start to finish.
“Hmm...” Staring at the map, Yuuto tapped his finger against his leg for a while, deep in thought.
The first thing that came to his mind was the name of Han Xin, a famous general of Chinese history known as a brilliant strategist. Yuuto kept on finding similarities and parallels between Steinþórr and the Chinese warlord Xiang Yu. So, he got the feeling that a hint towards defeating Steinþórr would be found in the history of the generals who had been able to defeat Xiang Yu.
The Wolf Clan officers sitting around the campfire remained silent, so as not to disturb Yuuto’s thinking. Every one of them was looking at him with eyes that carried the light of absolute trust in their patriarch. One could see in their eyes that they fully believed that, as long as Yuuto was there to lead them, they would never be defeated.
And as if in answer to their wordless expectations, Yuuto slapped his thigh with one hand. It seemed he’d come up with a good plan.
“All right, that’s it! Everything lines up perfectly with Stratagem Sixteen: ‘Lure the tiger off its mountain lair.’ We’ll use that. Rún!”
Three days later, the Wolf Clan arrived at the near entrance to the mountain passage, and promptly began constructing their wagon fortress formations.
It was unknown how much good this would do against Steinþórr and his rune Mjǫlnir, the Shatterer, but it would still be much better to use the tactic than to not.
Yuuto had already come up with some strategies to counter Steinþórr back when he’d first left Iárnviðr.
Yuuto had hoped that by setting up his troops at the near entrance, it would seem like he was saying, “We’re ready for you! Now come and get us!” and the Lightning Clan would come through the mountain pass to attack them. But one day passed, then two, and still the Lightning Clan forces showed no signs of moving.
There was no doubt they were aware of the Wolf Clan’s arrival at this point, but like a turtle in its shell, they remained withdrawn, deep on the other side of the pass.
“Tch, I was wrong about them.” Clicking his tongue in annoyance, Yuuto turned and pondered, placing one hand over his mouth.
Steinþórr was a simple-minded guy who craved battle, so Yuuto had thought it a sure bet that he would lead his army to attack the moment they spotted the Wolf Clan forces appearing.
“Do you think, then, there might be some sort of trap set here, after all?” Felicia asked, looking troubled by the thought.
“Hmm, I don’t know. That just doesn’t seem like something that idiot would do...” Yuuto scratched his head.
The impression he’d gotten of the Steinþórr when they’d met in person at Fólkvangr, and again during their last war, was that he was the kind of man who rushed headlong into everything.
Still, there was an old saying in Yuuto’s homeland: “If you don’t see a man for three days, pay attention the next time you meet.” It was based on an older Chinese saying, and referred to the fact that people were capable of changing themselves while you aren’t looking. Yuuto himself was aware that he’d changed a lot in the almost three years since he’d arrived in this world.
He couldn’t deny the possibility that Steinþórr might have changed too, spurred on by his loss to Yuuto the previous year.
“If I went to the front line and taunted him personally, he’d have to take the bait then, right?” Yuuto wondered aloud, just tossing out the idea as it came to him.
But Felicia reacted in a panic, practically screaming. “Please, Big Brother, I implore you not to do that! Steinþórr is also well known for his mastery of the bow. It is too dangerous!”
“Oh, great, so the monster’s a perfect archer, too,” Yuuto grumbled sullenly. “It’s like there’s nothing he can’t do.”
Yuuto had a bit of a complex about his physical weakness and mediocrity compared to others, so he only found himself disliking Steinþórr more and more.
One might say it was just him finding reasons to dislike the man in everything about him; another case of the old adage, “If you hate a monk, you’ll even hate his robes.”
“Still, we’ve got to find some way to pull that tiger out of his cave,” Yuuto said, thinking hard.
However, even Yuuto couldn’t produce good ideas out of thin air when he wanted, and that day’s war council meeting came and went without reaching a conclusion on what, exactly, to do.
Yuuto remained deep in thought, straining to come up with something even after going to bed for the night.
The next morning, the situation on the ground suddenly changed.
Abruptly, the Lightning Clan started to move.
“Did they get fed up with waiting on us? Or was it that they finished some sort of preparations they were doing? Well, it doesn’t matter.” Yuuto raised his voice high as he leapt into his personal chariot. “Crossbow squads, prepare to counter-attack!”
The battle cries of his men echoed back along with the thundering of the feet and hooves against the ground.
It was then that Albertina ran up alongside him, weaving deftly through the soldiers in his formation. “Papa! Here, this is from Kris.”
“Oh, nicely done.” Yuuto took his smartphone back from Albertina, and promptly opened up the photo gallery app.
He tapped the thumbnail for the most recent picture to enlarge it, and grinned widely with satisfaction.
“Ah, this is a good shot. That’s Kris for you. She’s already totally mastered how to use this thing.”
It was a photo taken from high up on one of the mountains, capturing the scenery down below. It captured in frame the full extent of the Lightning Clan troops who were marching through the mountain pass towards the Wolf Clan position. The borders of the image were a little blurry, most likely because she’d heavily used the zoom function.
“If you know your enemy and know yourself, you shall not be imperiled in one hundred battles.” In war, precise information on the enemy held more value than any precious metal.
“You did a great job out there too, Al,” Yuuto said. “You’ve gotta be tired, right? Go get some rest and something to drink, okay?”
“Eheheh!” Albertina giggled and broke into a relaxed, happy grin as Yuuto patted her on the head and playfully ruffled her hair a bit.
This tactic of using his phone’s camera app was just as dependent on the swift-footed Albertina as it was on Kris.
The only one who could sprint through the wild, thick overgrowth of the mountains where there were no paths and make it back to Yuuto in such a short time was Albertina, wielder of the rune Hræsvelgr, Provoker of Winds, who was a child at home in nature.
“His marching formation looks almost shaped like an arrow,” Felicia said, leaning in from the side to peer at the smartphone screen.
“Yeah, the ‘arrowhead formation,’ to be precise.”
Shimazu Yoshihiro, the warrior general of Sengoku Period Japan also known as the “Demon of Shimazu,” had used this same formation to escape certain doom in the Battle of Sekigahara, when the victory of his enemies had become certain.
Rather than trying to retreat towards the rear, he had charged straight ahead at Tokugawa Ieyasu’s main army and cut right through them, passing right in front of Tokugawa in the process. He’d been able to break through and exit the battlefield, so this was now heralded as “Shimazu’s exit strategy.”
As demonstrated by such a historical example, the arrowhead was a formation specialized entirely for attacking with a full charge.
“Hmph, I guess that’s more like something that idiot would try.” Yuuto opened his phone’s camera app, and pointed it ahead at the Lightning Clan army charging towards him through the pass, zooming in.
He spotted a red-haired figure right at the front of their formation.
Normally with the arrowhead formation, the general would be positioned near the center or back, not right at the front, but this, again, was more how Steinþórr did things.
All of these things were still within the scope of Yuuto’s calculations, based on what he knew.
“W-wait, a horse?!” Yuuto cried out in shock and his eyes went wide.
He even rubbed his eyes and looked again to confirm he was really seeing it, but it wasn’t a mistake. Steinþórr was riding on a horse, his bright red hair catching in the wind like animated fire.
Up until at least last year, the man had only ever been seen using chariots. Had he perhaps decided to learn to ride a horse himself after seeing the Wolf Clan’s use of armed cavalry?
“Then there’s that... what even is that?!” Yuuto shouted.
Steinþórr was carrying some very large, strange T-shaped object, holding it out in front of him. Because of the camera’s heavy zoom, the image was grainy, and Yuuto couldn’t make out what it really was, but it looked to him sort of like a large propeller.
“What, is he gonna say ‘Go-Go-Steinþórr Copter!’ and take off flying or something?”
Such a thing was of course physically impossible on the face of it, but this man always seemed to surpass or defy all common sense, so Yuuto felt a strange sense that he couldn’t completely rule it out, which was unnerving.
He didn’t have time to waste on such absurd thoughts right now, though.
Yuuto gathered his focus, and shouted to his troops. “Your target is the red-headed man in front! FIRE!!”
At Yuuto’s order, there was the combined whooshing sound of countless arrowheads cutting through the air, as the crossbow bolts fired from Yuuto’s forces shot out towards Steinþórr.
Yuuto didn’t hold out any particular expectations that this volley would take Steinþórr down, or that it even stood a chance in the least. After all, during their last confrontation, the same man had used his iron warhammer to knock away all of the many arrows that came close to him, remaining unscathed. Even putting a scratch on him would be an excellent result.
More importantly, they were aiming for the horse.
However amazing this man might be, even the Battle-Hungry Tiger Dólgþrasir would have to focus on protecting his own body when confronted with this number of arrows, and so he’d be unable to fully protect his mount. If they could get him off of a horse and back on the ground, his mobility would take a huge hit.
In a sense, Steinþórr was the Lightning Clan army. Anything that lowered Steinþórr’s fighting capability also directly lowered the strength and morale of the Lightning Clan forces as a whole.
It was a solid tactic, but what Steinþórr did next caused it to fall apart.
Steinþórr took the propeller like object and swung it out straight in front of him.
In that instant, it changed shape, forming a dark grey wall that hid both Steinþórr and his horse from view.
The rain of arrows fell upon him only an instant later, and they were all easily repelled.
“Wha...?!” Yuuto’s jaw dropped at this impossible scene.
He could see now that the propeller-like object was a long rod attached to some sort of flat piece, almost like an umbrella.
However, the arrowheads used by the Wolf Clan were iron, and were being fired from heavy crossbows designed to give them much greater piercing power. If he were reflecting those arrowheads head-on, then that object’s materials were...
“It can’t be... is that iron, too?!”
This was also something that should have been impossible.
In Yggdrasil, the only two clans with the knowledge of the techniques for refining iron were the Wolf Clan and the Panther Clan.
For all of the other clans, iron was a “gift from the heavens,” an incredibly rare metal that could only be harvested from meteorites.
With a metal plate of that ridiculous size — and it had to be very thick, too, to deflect iron crossbow bolts shot dead-on — they would need an exorbitant amount of iron, and it was hard to imagine they had access to that.
Hard to imagine... but Yuuto couldn’t very well deny the reality of what was happening right in front of him.
“And just how strong are that idiot’s freaking arms, anyway? That’s so broken!”
The Wolf Clan fired off a second, then a third, volley of crossbow bolts in succession, but the giant iron umbrella easily deflected them all.
Yuuto knew it was meaningless to try and deny reality, but at the same time, he found it easier to doubt his own eyes than to accept this.
Even if that giant umbrella was made entirely of iron, it would have to weigh almost fifty kilograms, or several dozen at the very least.
And its center of gravity was pretty clearly towards the top, meaning its effective weight while held straight outwards would have to be over a hundred kilos.
Steinþórr was able to hold it easily, lightly supporting it with just one arm.
Yuuto was left with no option than to reaffirm that this man was but a monster dressed in human skin.
“Ha haaaaa! Looks like nothing beats an umbrella on a rainy day, eh?!” Steinþórr laughed uproariously, and with a flick of his wrist, he quickly pulled the iron umbrella back to carry it across his shoulder.
With that one simple movement, anyone could see that rather than being subject to the object’s heavy weight, he was controlling it easily at his whim.
It was so heavy that three grown men would struggle to even lift it off the ground, but he handled it as if he wasn’t even aware of its weight.
“All right, then! That must be the wall of wagons I’ve heard so much about!” Focusing ahead, Steinþórr’s eyes shined with interest.
Up ahead at the exit out of the mountain passage, a bunch of tall wagons were packed tightly in a line, blocking off his path forward.
With his godly aptitude for battle, once he’d seen it with his own eyes, Steinþórr could tell in an instant its effectiveness as a defensive tactic.
I get it now, he thought, grinning. It doesn’t look like much on the surface, but it really is just like a little fortress wall.
If defenses like that had suddenly popped up out of nowhere in front of the Panther Clan, they must’ve had a lot of trouble trying and failing to get past them.
The corners of Steinþórr’s mouth pulled upwards, and his face twisted as the beast in him came out.
“Maybe the Panther Clan’s armed riders bounced off of it, but you’d better not be thinking some piece of crap like that is gonna stop me, Suoh-Yuuto!”
Steinþórr screamed and the muscles on his right arm bulged larger, several blue veins becoming visible.
With a powerful swing of that arm, he flung the huge iron umbrella ahead of him like a javelin.
“Uwaaghh!” a Wolf Clan soldier screamed.
“Wh-what is that?!” another one shouted.
“Gyaaghh!”
The iron object spun as it hurtled forward with incredible speed and force, as powerful as an iron cannonball, and some of the Wolf Clan soldiers hurriedly scrambled from their positions in an attempt to evade its path.
The umbrella was large enough to easily fit two grown adults under it. With an object that large hurtling at them at full force, it wasn’t unreasonable that even some of the brave Wolf Clan fighters would fall into a panic from the fear.
With an enormous, ear-splitting BOOM! the iron umbrella slammed into one of the wagon carriages and sent it flying backwards from the impact.
The iron plates were crumpled grotesquely and riddled with cracks, and the wooden carriage frame itself was splintered into pieces from the sheer force of the collision.
“Well, that takes care of that.” Without a pause, Steinþórr rode his horse right through the gap left by the missing wagon.
The Wolf Clan soldiers were frozen in astonishment for a moment by this sudden development, but they soon came back to their senses and realized what was happening.
Behind the wagon line, a tight formation of soldiers with longspears shuffled forward and stood fast in Steinþórr’s path.
“Hahh!” Pulling his long iron hammer from its sheath on his back, Steinþórr swung it in a rapid, sweeping attack, and with the added momentum of his horse, it slammed into three soldiers like a bolt of lightning.
He followed up by swapping the weapon to his left hand, and dealt another sweeping attack that blew away soldiers on that side.
His old warhammer had been lost in the floodwaters during the Battle of Élivágar River, and so the one he was using now was one he’d had the Panther Clan forge for him.
To go along with his new horseback combat style, he’d had the new warhammer made at least a head longer than the previous one.
Normally that would make it much more unwieldy in a melee, but for the kind of man who had just twirled and launched that huge iron umbrella, a little bit more weight on his hammer was nothing at all.
He was just as threatening as he had been during the previous war — no, even more terrifyingly threatening — and it sent shudders through the ranks of the Wolf Clan soldiers.
“All right, who’s next?!” Steinþórr taunted, but the only responses were wordless, terrified moans.
“Ughh... Nghh...”
“Aaah... ah...”
Steinþórr thrust out his iron hammer and screamed, and the pale-faced Wolf Clan soldiers on the front line pulled backward.
Forced to come face-to-face with this inhuman, monstrous display of raw power, they had lost their will to fight.
“Uuuraaaaaaaaghhhh!!” Following just behind Steinþórr, the screaming ranks of Lightning Clan soldiers charged in.
Right in front of them, they were witnessing Steinþórr’s godly strength on display, and the heat and passion of battle drove their morale into a fever pitch.
To them, this battle was no longer a contest.
With the wagon wall breached, the first line of Wolf Clan defenses fell shortly thereafter.
That report quickly reached Yuuto’s location.
“That’s technically supposed to be an advanced tactic from three thousand years in the future, but that bastard’s enough of a cheater in his own right.” Yuuto spat out the words with loathing.
Even during their last war, starting with the undefeated phalanx, Steinþórr had brute-forced his way through every one of Yuuto’s strategies taken from future history, each one of them unprecedented in this era.
Yuuto was always meticulous and layered with his strategies, always working beforehand to piece together a “winning solution” before committing to battle. He couldn’t stand seeing everything he’d built up just thoughtlessly smashed to pieces like this. It was like the man was single-handedly picking a fight with the collective wisdom of human military history.
That said, even Yuuto had harbored a sneaking suspicion that things might end up going this way. He was shocked, but not that much.
The same could be said for the troops of the Wolf Clan.
Already they had seen the wagon wall defense overcome once by the Panther Clan, though it had only been due to an extraordinarily clever scheme in the moment. The troops knew that the wagon wall was not absolute.
And Yuuto had made sure to announce ahead of time: “There’s a strong chance the Lightning Clan will be able to break through the wagon wall, but do not worry. I have a plan.” His troops had all heard the announcement or were aware of it.
Thanks to that, the Wolf Clan soldiers as a whole hadn’t fallen into confusion, and they were still moving properly according to Yuuto’s orders.
The soldiers in the second line of defense seemed to be putting up a valiant fight against the Lightning Clan at the moment.
Of course, they were up against the man known as Dólgþrasir, the Battle-Hungry Tiger, as well as his bold warriors of the Lightning Clan. And the enemy was attacking using the arrowhead formation, which focused solely on plowing through enemy lines without concern for anything else.
The Wolf Clan was being completely pushed back.
And furthermore, it wasn’t just because of who their enemies were.
The overwhelming advantage that Wolf Clan allies possessed over other clans had been taken away from them.
“They... all have iron weapons?!” Yuuto shouted.
Indeed, the Lightning Clan army apparently had all-new equipment.
It was difficult for him to even believe it. But then there was that huge iron umbrella Steinþórr had used earlier, too.
Yuuto’s brow furrowed. “It couldn’t be... was it the Panther Clan?!”
He groaned in realization.
It was the only possibility he could think of, really. It would also explain why Steinþórr was fighting mounted.
If this line of reasoning was correct, then the Lightning and Panther Clans had joined forces. To the Wolf Clan, there was no greater threat than this.
“But I never received any reports about that from Kristina...” he muttered.
Kristina was a spy who could sneak successfully into and out of anywhere. But... she was also only one person. She had a few trusted underlings she’d received from her birth father Botvid, but they weren’t as exceptional as she was. Naturally, there was a limit to the amount of good intel they could collect.
A Wolf Clan messenger’s shout brought Yuuto out of his train of thought. “Sir, the second line of defense has been breached!”
“Tch, dammit! I don’t even get any time to think!”
Right now, he had to focus everything on dealing with the problem in front of him.
That problem was Steinþórr.
With an enemy like him, even a single moment of carelessness could be fatal.
“Right. Felicia!” he called out. “We’re going with that plan we talked about. I’m counting on you!”
“Yes, Big Brother! Al, I’m counting on you to protect him, okay?”
“Okaaay!” Albertina called.
Felicia nodded at the energetic reply, and with the secret to the plan in her hand, she raced off on horseback.
“Rraaaaagh!!” Roaring wildly, Steinþórr swung his hammer along with the momentum of his horse, and plunged it deep into the guts of the Wolf Clan soldier who foolishly threw himself at him.
The man he hit was sent flying backward, slamming into four or five men behind him and sending them all tumbling to the ground.
Steinþórr then grabbed a spear which thrust at him from the opposite direction, and lifted it up into the air.
“Uwaa?!” the soldier holding the spear cried out in surprise.
On the battlefield, losing one’s weapon was the same as a death sentence. The spearman fell back on that common sense, and kept a tight grip on his longspear hilt, but that was the beginning of the end for him.
He was gripping a spear that was as long as the height of three adult men, but he found himself lifted bodily into the air by the man gripping the other end of it. For a quick moment, he felt his spine freeze.
“Hragh!”
With a grunt of effort, Steinþórr whirled the spear around and slammed the soldier down hard onto a group of his comrades.
The last thing he felt was the sensation of his body crushing his allies to death, before he too breathed his last.
“I’m seriously gettin’ tired of playing with these weaklings! Where’s that scraggly old wolf?” Drenched in the blood of his foes from head to toe, the Battle-Hungry Tiger screamed out his demands. “If you don’t got him, I’ll settle for that silver she-wolf!”
He had been forced to wait for this rematch for half a year.
He had been able to do nothing but sit and save his strength, biding his time until now.
And yet now, he felt completely unsatisfied by this result.
Then Steinþórr stopped as he caught a brief flash of golden hair out of the corner of his eye. “Hm!”
Turning, he locked eyes with a beautiful girl with an appearance that seemed out of place on the battlefield.
There was something vaguely familiar about her face.
Ohh, that’s it, he thought, she must be one of them. This girl was one of the group of seven Einherjar that had surrounded him during the Battle of Élivágar River.
Of course, that was all he remembered about her; she hadn’t left any real impression on him. In other words, that had been the extent of her strength as an opponent.
Still, she was an Einherjar, there was no mistake about that. She should at least be a little bit more fun than the other small fry.
“Heh heh heh... Right then, let’s have us a good fi—” As Steinþórr turned his horse to race towards the golden-haired girl, it happened.
Something twinkled in the girl’s hand.
What is that? he thought, and squinted at it.
“Gah?!” Steinþórr hollered as an intensely bright light shot straight into his eyes, turning his vision stark white.
He knew right away what had happened.
That thing the girl was holding had to be a mirror.
She was using it to reflect the sunlight, skillfully adjusting the angle precisely so that it went right into his eyes.
Steinþórr quickly turned his neck to the side and opened his eyes again, but the bright light was waiting for him.
“Prepare yourself, Steinþórr!” the girl shouted.
“DIE!!” Steinþórr heard the angry shout of a Wolf Clan soldier as they all attacked him en masse.
As the attacks came, he tried to fight back normally, but the golden-haired girl continued to manipulate the mirror so that the light always hit him in the eyes at the worst timing.
“Dammit! You think you’re clever with your stupid little tricks? Wh-whoa!”
Steinþórr pulled back violently trying to escape the light, and pulled on the reins of his horse, as well.
Of course, he did so without controlling his overwhelming arm strength.
The horse’s front legs reared into the air, and it stood almost vertically on its hind legs.
In the next instant, a spear point thrust into the space where Steinþórr’s body had just been.
“Phew, that was a close one.” Even for Steinþórr, that had been scary for a second.
It was a real and genuine threat having his sight stolen from him right in the middle of dealing with these attacks.
Once more, the bright light and an enemy spear struck at him.
However, this time Steinþórr didn’t try to turn his head away, and just calmly smashed his hammer down on the skull of the attacking Wolf Clan soldier.
He reached out with his other hand in the direction of the light — in other words, in the direction of his blind spot — and easily grabbed ahold of the next attacking spear, swinging it around with his full strength.
“Haaauugh!” With a shout, he whirled his long warhammer around, delivering a thrusting attack with the sharp point at the bottom of its handle.
He struck again, again, one thrust after the other.
Not a single one of them missed its target.
Every single thrust struck with extreme precision, felling an enemy.
In only a few moments, he was surrounded by a pile of Wolf Clan corpses.
“No... impossible... how...?!” Though his vision was dark, the girl’s faint voice reached his sharpened ears easily. She sounded like she couldn’t believe what had just happened in front of her.
That was only natural. Steinþórr had been fighting with his eyes closed, after all.
Baring his teeth in a vicious smile, Steinþórr tapped the hilt of his hammer against the metal plate on his shoulder. “Ha! Against small fry like that, fighting blind is just about right for a handicap.”
Steinþórr had been forced to recoil by the bright light because his eyes were open. Thus, all he’d needed to do was fight with them shut.
The little twinge that ran down his spine would let him know when an attack was coming.
The sound of the weapon cutting through the air would show him exactly what kind of attack was coming, and from how far away.
His sense of smell could tell him whether he was next to an ally or foe, and also their rank.
With all that information at his disposal, he could make do without sight entirely.
Normally, of course, that wouldn’t be the case for a normal human, but for Steinþórr, it certainly was.
“Okay, now let’s quit playing around and do this.” Steinþórr shot the golden-haired girl a wide-eyed glare, and he pointed his hammer at her.
“Ghh...!” The girl grit her teeth with frustration, and turned her horse around, riding off. Apparently she realized her plan had failed, and was running away.
Like I’ll let you get away! Steinþórr thought, and he started to kick his horse into a gallop to chase her, but then stopped.
There was something about the image of her fleeing, something that reminded him of the scraggly old wolf he had fought during that last battle.
He had a bad feeling about this.
“I am so very sorry, Big Brother,” Felicia mourned. “I was unable to defeat Steinþórr. I had hoped to at least inflict even one wound on him, but...”
“No, it’s all right, Felicia. You did good work out there.” Even as Yuuto reassured her, his shoulders slumped and he sighed to himself. “Still, though, even the ‘laser pointer’ attack didn’t work on him, huh?”
Back in the world of the 21st century, the act of shining a bright light into an opponent’s eyes sometimes came up as an issue in the world of sports, where it was viewed as a contemptible act of cheating and strictly banned.
This, however, was a real battlefield where death was on the line, not some fair-and-square competition.
The strength of the Lightning Clan army was particularly dependent on the strength of one individual — Steinþórr — and so if anything were to reduce or hinder his combat ability, that would hinder the potential of his army as a whole.
Felicia was right. Even if defeating the man outright was impossible, just giving him a wound or two would have been desirable, but...
“That idiot’s too much for any of us to handle.” Yuuto lifted up both hands and shrugged, as if to say “I give up.”
Surrounding him and attacking with seven Einherjar hadn’t worked.
He’d gotten slammed by a whole dam’s worth of floodwaters and washed away, only to come back again in tip-top shape.
Knowing that attacking him head-on would just increase his own casualties, Yuuto had sent Felicia to use a more underhanded trick, only to have that thrown effortlessly back in their faces.
At this point even Yuuto honestly couldn’t think of a way to take the guy out.
“Of course, if we can’t fight him and win... we’ll just have to win without fighting him.” The corner of Yuuto’s mouth curled upwards into an impish smirk.
Indeed, from the start he hadn’t thought something as simple as the laser tactic would be enough to defeat Steinþórr.
At most that had been a test of its effectiveness, with the hope that perhaps they might get lucky.
And it had also been a lure.
An underhanded attack like that was very irritating to its victim.
Yuuto was a little surprised that Steinþórr hadn’t personally led his men to chase after Felicia, but that wasn’t a problem.
All of them were already well inside the jaws of the wolf.
All that was left was to bite down.
Yuuto’s mantle caught the air dramatically as he spun around to step up onto the rim of his chariot. He threw out one arm and shouted, his voice ringing loudly through the air.
“Notify all units! The time has come. Deploy the ‘ox yoke’ formation now!”
After Steinþórr became the patriarch of the Lightning Clan, the tactics of the clan army also went through changes. After a period of trial and error, the arrow-like arrangement of troop formations had come to be one of their go-to strategies.
This was because that structure made the fullest use of the incredible strength of their commander, Steinþórr himself.
Back in the arrow’s shaft, all the way at the back, was Þjálfi, the Lightning Clan’s assistant to the second. Since Steinþórr was charging forward at the head of the formation, Þjálfi took this position in his place, monitoring and sending out commands to all of the troops.
It was precisely because Þjálfi controlled the troops from behind like this that Steinþórr didn’t have to worry about any of the details, and could focus on fighting just as wildly as he wished.
Steinþórr was a man of dynamic action. Þjálfi was, by contrast, more firm and stoic. Always thinking with a calm and level head, he wasn’t a very showy or flashy man, but his penchant for sound, reliable tactics earned him his alias of Járnglófi, the Iron Gauntlet.
“Dammit! What the hell is going on?!” Þjálfi spat out his words with visible agitation.
This was ridiculous.
Right up until just now, the Lightning Clan forces had been completely overpowering the Wolf Clan.
They’d broken clean through the Wolf Clan’s first and second defensive lines, and totally seized the full momentum of the battle for themselves.
Just as they were carving their way into the third line, Þjálfi had felt certain of their victory, that it was now only a matter of time until the Wolf Clan forces fell apart.
That was why this didn’t make sense.
Suddenly, that state of advantage had been completely flipped on its head.
With no warning, war cries rose up from the left, right, and rear, and the earth trembled with the pounding of feet as the Wolf Clan soldiers pushed in on them en masse from all three directions.
This should have been impossible.
The Wolf Clan soldiers had been split and scattered by the Lightning Clan’s fierce charge, and had been reduced to nothing more than a disorderly rabble, and yet suddenly they had all reversed course and were attacking again without any signs of hesitation.
“So, what Father said was right, then.” Þjálfi exhaled deeply and wiped the sweat dripping from his brow.
A bit earlier, he’d received a message from Steinþórr:
“The enemy feels too weak. Something’s up. I think they’re gonna try something, so let the troops know and make sure they don’t let their guards down.”
At the time, it had seemed like an unnecessary precaution.
The enemy had employed the iron wagon wall which had once easily repelled the Panther Clan’s force of over ten thousand riders, and even used a novel technique involving reflecting light with a mirror, all in a desperate attempt to stop Steinþórr. And all of those tactics had still not been enough to stop him.
Rather than being too weak, they just weren’t strong enough, as far as Þjálfi had considered.
But in the end, Steinþórr’s intuition had been right.
“If I hadn’t gotten the orders out to the men when I did, right now the whole force would’ve been on the verge of collapsing in on itself,” Þjálfi murmured to himself.
If the soldiers charging forward had suddenly realized they were completely caught in a pincer attack without any warning, they would have ended up far more shaken than Þjálfi had been.
Their confusion and fear would have propagated throughout the ranks in the blink of an eye, and the Lightning Clan forces would have unmistakably lost their ability to act as a unified army.
“But still... what are we supposed to do?!” A pained look came over Þjálfi’s face, his brow furrowing.
Thanks to his advance warning and the charisma of their leader Steinþórr, the troops had been prevented from falling into total panic, but that did nothing to change the reality that the Wolf Clan was piling in on them in droves from both flanks.
Battlefield formations were, in general, designed for the purpose of attacking enemies ahead of them. They were vulnerable to attacks from the side and rear. That was especially true of the arrow-shaped formation that the Lightning Clan was using now.
They were just barely holding off the sudden assault thanks to the high morale they’d accumulated thus far, but they couldn’t escape the incredible disadvantage of this situation, and it was obvious that sooner or later they’d break under the pressure and fold in on themselves.
Meanwhile, the various generals of the Wolf Clan units all shouted wildly in high spirits, as if releasing the pent-up frustration they’d endured so far.
“There’s the order I was waiting for! Claes Unit, charrrrrrrge!!” From the right wing of the Wolf Clan’s frontmost line, Claes shouted and spurred his men onward. He was the second-in-command of the Jörgen Family, the largest subsidiary faction within the Wolf Clan.
Over on the opposite wing, David, the assistant to the second of the same Jörgen faction, likewise fired up his troops.
“All right, David Unit, move out! Don’t let Big Brother Claes show us up, here!”
From within the second line rang out the voice of Alrekr, the young commander of Fort Gnipahellir. He raised his spear high in the air and rushed forward.
“Alrekr Unit! Now is the perfect chance for us to distinguish ourselves!”
From the third line, Olof called out and his unit began to converge as well.
“Olof Unit, reverse direction and charge! Let us show them that the Wolf Clan is full of more great fighters than just Sigrún and Big Brother Skáviðr!”
Olof was currently fourth-ranked within the Wolf Clan, and the governor of the city of Gimlé, which had become the Wolf Clan’s breadbasket lately.
“All right... all right!” Seeing that things were going according to plan, Yuuto unconsciously began to clench his fists in excitement.
The main defensive formation surrounding Yuuto was situated around the summit of a nearby hill, and from his position there, he could clearly watch the flow of the battle unfold. Bit by bit, the Wolf Clan troops were starting to envelop the Lightning Clan.
Surveying the same scene below, Felicia was unable to contain a gasp of wonder, and murmured her thoughts out loud. “Incredible... it almost looks like the flow of quicksand.”
Indeed, Felicia’s analogy seemed quite apt to Yuuto’s ears. Once a person stepped foot into a mire of quicksand, struggle as one might, the liquid soil just kept pressing ever inwards, overwhelming the victim.
“Yeah, it looks like our formation fit the situation perfectly,” Yuuto replied.
The “ox yoke” formation: This was one of the battlefield formations traditionally used during the Sengoku Era of Japan, known as the “Eight Formations” or hachijin, said to be inspired by even earlier writings on military tactics from China. One’s squadrons would be split into a shape featuring two large vertical columns, which could then converge on the enemy, restrict its movements, and wipe it out.
The point of the strategy was to entice the enemy into the gap between the two great columns, then have the columns turn inwards and instigate a pincer attack.
It was especially effective against narrow offensive enemy formations focused on forward movement, like the arrow-shaped formation the Lightning Clan was using. Indeed, the “arrowhead” was another of the Eight Formations, and so there was plenty of historical evidence.
Yuuto had predicted that considering Steinþórr’s abilities and temperament, he would be using that sort of assault-focused formation in the battle.
It was true that nothing could stop Steinþórr’s forward charge.
However, this was an army battle.
Not a one-on-one fight, but a clash between massive groups.
If the Wolf Clan could avoid a full-on clash with Steinþórr himself and destroy all of the squadrons behind him, it would be their victory.
The Wolf Clan troops pressed themselves ever more tightly in upon the Lightning Clan from the flanks, as if tightening a noose.
“Heh, you really did a number on me there.” Steinþórr laughed when he received word of his army’s critical situation via a messenger from Þjálfi.
He was, of course, fully aware that this was not the kind of situation in which one should be laughing.
His forces were now cornered with no escape, and things were desperate.
That was exactly why he was enjoying this so much.
Some might simply call it a type of arrogance, but Steinþórr was troubled by the fact that he was just too strong. Things would always come to an end before he ever got a chance to unleash his full strength. He won too easily.
It always left him feeling unsatisfied.
He’d always been searching for a rival against whom he could throw all of his power.
“You really are the best, Suoh-Yuuto,” he said aloud with a grin.
During the Battle of Élivágar River, Steinþórr had been holding back, gauging his opponent.
It wasn’t because he had been underestimating Yuuto.
It was just that until then, all of his battles had ended so quickly and effortlessly, and he’d wanted to enjoy them more. Without realizing it, he had picked up a habit of withholding his full strength.
But this time, he was going in at full power from the very beginning. He’d launched his frontal assault for real, and it had been turned against him.
In other words, Steinþórr’s full strength had been successfully countered.
What, indeed, could be more entertaining than that?
To Steinþórr, a contest was only a contest if the two sides were in a true struggle. That was what truly made the blood run hot and the muscles dance.
“This is no time to be complimenting the enemy!” Narfi screamed. “Quickly, you must issue an order to retreat! The Lightning Clan has already done more than enough to fulfill their role as a diversionary force! Please, leave everything else to Father! Patriarch Hveðrungr will take care of the rest!”
The Panther Clan general Narfi was pleading with him fervently, quite a change from the man’s usual cool demeanor.
Under normal circumstances, a man like Narfi would never have been used as Steinþórr’s messenger. He was too high in rank, for one, and brotherhood or not, he was a member of another clan.
However, within the Lightning Clan, only Steinþórr and a small number of others had managed to fully master horse riding in combat, and with the wartime situation being as desperate and time-sensitive as it was, there was no one more suited to the task than a nomad rider like him.
“Ha, retreat?” Steinþórr snickered. “Don’t be stupid. This is where the real fight starts.”
Steinþórr licked his lips, his face twisting as the savage beast within him revealed itself.
Indeed, to him a competition with actual struggle was enough to make the blood run hot, and muscles dance. And it needed to be a struggle between equals. After losing his last battle to Yuuto, if he were to retreat here, how could he ever claim that things were equal?
Only by overcoming this critical situation with his strength and turning things around could he finally claim that he and that man were true rivals.
Steinþórr’s pride was worthy of his renowned name of Dólgþrasir, the Battle-Hungry Tiger, but it wasn’t something that a stranger like Narfi could comprehend.
“Wh-what are you saying?! Sir, I would ask you not to make such a foolish suggestion. We must retreat now, or the whole force might be wiped out!”
“You’re wrong. That’s the choice that leads to death,” Steinþórr said bluntly, with complete confidence.
His army’s arrow-shaped formation was focused on charging forward, and was not well suited for moving backwards.
More than anything, if he were to give the order to retreat now, the soldiers would come to the realization that they had lost the battle. If that happened, their mental fortitude would break, having only barely held together under these circumstances so far. He could tell they would fall into fear and panic. And once that happened, that would be it. They would be nothing more than tasty prey for the Wolf Clan.
“Th-then, just what do you intend to do?” Narfi demanded.
“Heh! The one thing I always do, no matter the time or the place.” Steinþórr gripped the reins of his horse tightly, and a terrifying, laughing grin broke across his face.
With Steinþórr’s Lightning Clan army, there was only one path to take.
As it had been until now, so it would be from now on...
“Relay this all troops. ‘If you retreat, you die. If you want to live, then face forward and advance at full speed. Have no fear. I will cut open the path myself!!’”
“Haaaaaaaaah!! Outta the way!!” Screaming, Steinþórr swung his warhammer freely left and right, in great circles.
Again, and again, the weapon whirled around him.
Over and over, it struck fresh targets.
Though the Wolf Clan soldiers kept trying to press in upon him, anything that stood in the young man’s path met the same grisly end.
No number of them could even dampen the speed of his advance.
“Uraaaghhh! Forward, forward, forward!” a Lighting Clan soldier screamed.
“The Wolf Clan can’t hope to do anything against us!”
“We have Lord Steinþórr! No one can stop him!”
The Lightning Clan soldiers behind Steinþórr rekindled the fire of their spirits, and raced ever forward.
Meanwhile, he Wolf Clan soldiers, who should have been in a decidedly advantageous position, somehow found themselves overawed by the outright unnatural intensity of their enemies.
“Wh-what’s with these guys...?”
“S-so strong... This is ridiculous.”
“Look at their faces. He’s a demon! They’ve got a demon leading them!”
Fighters from the Lightning Clan were always empowered by their high morale in battle, but this was different. Right now it was as if Steinþórr’s wild nature and inhuman fighting spirit had spread to all of the Lightning Clan soldiers, down to the last man.
With even greater momentum than before, they pierced through the ranks of Wolf Clan forces, as if they truly had become an arrow.
A report on this quickly made its way to Yuuto in his command formation at the rear of the Wolf Clan lines.
“He knew he was surrounded, and still pressed forward...” Yuuto spat the words out with disgust.
Retreating was exactly what Yuuto had wanted the man to do. The terrifying thing about the Lightning Clan army was their overwhelming destructive power in an assault, born out of a charismatic warrior like Steinþórr leading them from the front lines.
Put another way, if the Lightning Clan army could be forced to give up on advancing forward, Steinþórr’s spell over them would be broken and they would be reduced to a disorganized rabble, unsure of where to go. At that point, they would no longer be a threat to the forces of the Wolf Clan.
That was how things should have gone... but...
“What, is he just charging forward because he’s stupid and that’s all he knows how to do? Or does he have some kind of wild animal instinct?” Yuuto ranted in frustration.
Charging forward. It was the one means of escape from the trap that Yuuto had set.
Steinþórr was a warrior-hero, invincible on the battlefield.
There was no one alive who could stand in his way.
Whether it was Sigrún, the current Mánagarmr, or her predecessor Skáviðr, the man known as Níðhǫggr, the Sneering Slaughter, the result would be the same. No one could block Steinþórr’s advance.
Yuuto had been loath to needlessly sacrifice more of his men, and so he had purposefully made the defensive lines directly in front of Steinþórr thinner.
“Big Brother, at this rate, they will escape from the forces surrounding them!” Felicia exclaimed. “You must send a message to all units urging them to brace themselves and push harder. We must wipe out the Lightning Clan here, whatever it takes!”
Felicia’s counsel to Yuuto was quite bloody in nature, quite at odds with the graceful beauty of her appearance. She was, after all, a general who had grown up living in the war-torn lands of Yggdrasil. Right now in particular, she saw her clan nearly poised to take the head of Steinþórr, one of its greatest enemies.
It was no surprise that the agitation and adrenaline of this moment would run high and stay there.
However, after a short moment in silent thought, Yuuto shook his head. “...No, we’d better not. Actually, send a message to all units strictly ordering them not to press the attack too deeply.”
Fundamentally speaking, Felicia was always loyal to Yuuto in his orders and decisions, but this was one she apparently couldn’t accept. “Wh-why? This is a chance we won’t soon have again!”
“Because one shouldn’t fight an enemy that’s caught up in a suicidal frenzy,” Yuuto said, with an intensely bitter expression.
He knew that good results in a battle like this always came, for the greater part, from pursuing and attacking the enemy while they were attempting to retreat.
Like Felicia, he wanted to make the most of this chance while he had it. But he also knew of a historical situation that eerily resembled this one, and it was flashing across his mind.
It was “Shimazu’s exit strategy,” from the Battle of Sekigahara.
Shimazu Yoshihiro had held only a mere 1,500 men under his command, while his enemy Tokugawa Ieyasu had held close to 100,000. Despite that, when the Tokugawa army had attempted to attack Shimazu as he fled, they’d suffered severe counterattacks. Even the great general Ii Naomasa, who was known as one of the Four Guardians of the Tokugawa, had been gravely injured, as well as Tokugawa’s fourth son Matsudaira Tadayoshi.
And in Yuuto’s beloved The Art of War by Sun Tzu, there was a line which said roughly: “...throw [your soldiers] into desperation and they will show the courage of a Chu or Kuei.”
The meaning was that, if soldiers were thrown into a desperate situation in which there was no option for retreat, then even normal soldiers would fight with an intensity equal to people like Chuan Chu and Ts’ao Kuei, famous historical figures at the time the passage was written.
Right now, the Lighting Clan was indeed in that sort of desperate situation, in which they had no choice but to fight their way forward, and the ferocity that granted them was enough to make a man’s blood run cold.
If the Wolf Clan were to press their luck here, they might end being rebuffed by a desperate retaliation from their enemies, reliving the casualties of Tokugawa’s forces at Sekigahara.
Yuuto sighed. “Well, still, at least this first battle is going to end with our—”
“F-Father, y-you must hear this!” He was interrupted by Kristina, who rushed up to him, shouting.
This girl never failed to be cool and even smugly composed whatever the situation, but now she looked uncharacteristically desperate. She was panting and out of breath; she must have run at full speed the entire way to deliver her report.
“Haah... haah... F-from the south, there’s a huge band of riders approaching! They are already almost upon us! They number over ten thousand!!”
“What?!” Yuuto shouted.
“What did you say?!” Felicia cried out simultaneously in disbelief.
This was impossible.
The only nation in Yggdrasil capable of fielding ten thousand armed cavalry was the Panther Clan, with their access to the technology for stirrups.
And the Panther Clan’s territory stretched from the far northern steppes of Miðgarðr down to the north parts of Álfheimr. But this was south of the Tanais River, fully in the Vanaheimr region.
Between here and Panther Clan territory was the Hoof Clan, and though they had lost a significant amount of influence in recent years, they had once been one of the ten largest clans of Yggdrasil.
How could the Panther Clan have crossed over those lands?
Right now the Wolf Clan was finally about to succeed in driving aside the attack of their powerful enemy Steinþórr.
For ten thousand armed riders to show up now... “unexpected” didn’t begin to describe it.
And to make matters worse, the Wolf Clan had placed their battlefield formations facing westward, towards the advancing Lightning Clan. An army of riders from the south would strike them squarely in the side.
This situation was suddenly the worst it could get.
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