“Something on my face?”
“Oh, no,” Diane stammered. “It’s just, I’ve never seen you look so grim...”
“It makes one grim, seeing the looks the lord marshal and Lord Paul had on their faces.”
“Their faces...” Diane faltered, then blurted out what was on her mind. “I know it’s not my place, ser, but surely this could have been handled well enough by a single platoon.”
Travis’s mouth softened into a slight smile. “Just what makes the lord marshal the Invincible General...” It was an unexpected remark. He wasn’t quite talking to himself, nor was it exactly a question.
Though confused, Diane hazarded an answer. “I think it’s because he’s never once lost a battle.”
This was even written in history textbooks; the name of Cornelius, the Invincible General, made the rounds not only of the Kingdom of Fernest, but the entire continent. He was a genuine living legend. But why Travis had brought it up now, Diane couldn’t guess.
Travis gave a small shake of his head. “That’s true, but it’s not the heart of the matter. The lord marshal crafts his strategies by always knowing what his opponent will do before they do it. That is what makes him the Invincible General.”
“I’m sorry, ser,” Diane said hesitantly, “but I don’t really follow what you’re saying. Is that connected somehow to our unit going out by ourselves?”
Travis was silent for a moment, then without a trace of self-consciousness, said, “I don’t know myself.” He then set about stroking his horse’s back. Diane was sure that if she’d had a mirror, she would have seen a face full of frustration staring back at her. As it happened, Travis’s next words confirmed this.
“Don’t make that face. If I understood how Marshal Cornelius thinks, I’d be an invincible general too.”
“That’s quite the leap of logic, ser.”
“Let me tell you something. Any battle is always bedeviled with uncertainties. It might be as you say, and one platoon would be more than enough to deal with this. But the lord marshal commanded our unit to go—and Lord Paul agreed with him. That alone, as I see it, is cause enough to be wary. Now can you accept it?”
“I accepted it from the start, ser,” Diane replied with an air of detachment. She might have had her misgivings, but she had never meant to argue with orders. In the military, one’s only job was to reliably carry out orders from superior officers.
“I see,” Travis said, smiling again.
Before long, Travis’s unit sighted a forest that spread out before them. A blanket of mist was creeping across the land.
“This fog’s growing mighty thick.” By the time they emerged from the forest, they were swathed in a deep shroud that obscured their vision. Travis gave the order to greatly slow the pace of their march—a precaution against being caught off guard by an unexpected engagement. But not ten minutes had passed when he was struck by a sense he could not put a name to.
What in the hell is this feeling? It was something different from the way his skin prickled when he faced a powerful foe. If he were to compare it to something, the horrible sensation felt as though slime had oozed down upon him from head to toe. He realized that his hands, gripping his reins, were slick with sweat.
“General? Are you all right?”
That was the Diane he knew. He made sure to keep an appearance of calm on the surface, but she had picked up straightaway that something was off with him.
“Get the word out to be on your guard, and hurry.”
“Understood.” Diane didn’t ask questions; she immediately executed the order. But they were already out of time. Before the orders could travel to the soldiers up ahead, one voice, then another, called out in terror. Not long after, Travis heard a moan so awful that it made the horses quail.
“Agh!”
“Don’t! Don’t come any closer!”
The bellows and screams broke over Travis like a turbid river, making him forget for a moment that those under his command were all elite soldiers.
“Ghouls...” Diane whispered as though paralyzed by fear. It was the most concise name that could be given to the enemy. Redolent with the foul stench of decay, they attacked as a horde. They appeared human in shape and size, yet human they were surely not. Even as they were rent by swords and gouged by spears, they raised no cries, instead biting, tearing, devouring the soldiers’ flesh. The sight ruthlessly drove home their monstrous nature.
Travis’s unit was undeniably elite, but none of them had expected to be fighting ghouls.
“We should retreat,” said Diane, her voice trembling. Already, half of the unit had lost all semblance of military order. The remaining half would soon be rendered nonfunctional too. With no way to swiftly quell the chaotic spread of the carnage, Diane’s solution was the optimal one.
Travis was just about to open his mouth to declare their retreat, when an impossible sight jumped out at him—a hulking brute of a ghoul brandishing a blue banner emblazoned with a pair of crossed swords. There could be no doubt—it was the banner of the Asvelt Empire.
“Why are ghouls flying the empire’s colors?!” Diane exclaimed, giving words to Travis’s thoughts. This in fact brought him back to earth, allowing him to observe the ghoul’s behavior.
“They’re not that fast! Push the long spears to the front! Keep them at a distance while blocking their attack and fall back!” Travis’s booming voice succeeded, if only marginally, in bringing his troops out of their confusion and back to their senses. But he knew it would not last. “Give me that.” Travis reached over to one of his personal guards, who had formed up tightly around him, and snatched the long spear from his grasp.
“Please, wait!!!” Diane cried.
“I don’t have time to argue with you, Diane,” he replied, then turned to the guards. “It might not be much, but we’ll have to buy the troops time to retreat!”
“Yes, ser!” they answered as one. And so Travis and his personal guard plunged into the maelstrom of madness. The hordes of ghouls closed in with lumbering steps, their voices seeming to pull all who heard them toward hell itself.
Travis spat hard on his hand that gripped the long spear. “Like hell am I taking this from a bunch of rotting ghouls!”
Together with this soul-stirring roar, his spear shot out lightning fast in a wild thrust—passed down through the generations, this piece of spearcraft was an art taught only to the heir to the House of Meyer.