The soldiers unsheathed the swords strapped to their saddles before they let the horses free. If they died in the fray, they would have no way home.
“Line up!” the leader announced.
The soldiers drew their huge zweihanders, which they had never envisioned needing, as they steeled themselves.
This is a real shit show, the leader thought. Here he was in this nowhere canton working a garbage job, down half his men, staring down a man who’d turned out to be more a force of nature than the stray irregular infantryman he’d seemed at first glance, searching for some faint scrap of courage to hold him steady as he charged headlong into the heart of a spell he couldn’t begin to understand.
“CHARGE!”
It was a shit job, yes, but one he could not back down from—he gripped his sword and gave the order. Despite the agony of their injuries, his men let out a bestial roar and surged into the fray. The distance between them and their enemy was great, and those lances, just floating there comically, stood in the way.
“Raaah! Cut them down! Push on!”
“Grh!”
“Guh! Dammit!”
The soldiers lopped spearheads left and right and forced their way through, but one of the lightly armored cavalrymen collapsed as he was run through, and one of the ironclads tumbled after taking a crossbow bolt to a gap in his armor.
The blunt spear wall still struck at them. Once they had shredded the handles down into splinters, the unit was exhausted. This was no mere pike formation—each lance had been built around an iron core meant to bear the brunt of many a mounted charge. Many of the company found that they’d reduced their blades to little more than crude bludgeons. Nevertheless, they’d made it through, and now they only had to contend with a sword apiece.
“Ngh... Halt! Their footwork’s childish! Knock them down and snap them!”
The soldiers began to strike down the swords. Goldilocks was close at hand!
The leader raised his head subconsciously, recognizing in a flash of instinctual panic first the tenor of a feint in the blades’ motions, and then a fleeting pang of bloodlust at his back. His hand moved without thinking. He raised his sword and twisted clear of the strike. If the sword had hit, it most certainly would have pierced him under his arm—one of the rare vulnerable spots that was nigh impossible to provide coverage with any form of armor—and found his heart.
This first attack seemed like a joke! No, it was a joke. The sword’s imprecise form evoked the movements of a beginner swordsman, not yet advanced enough to be trusted with more than a stick. The leader was a knight, and thanks to his many years of training, for a moment he could see the image of a swordsman behind the blade. The easy posture of that phantasmal figure resembled Goldilocks, who stood a distance away with his sword over his shoulder, glaring at them.
It was impossible—the leader was shocked with the sudden realization that behind each sword was a tactical mind as fearsome as Goldilocks himself. It was unfair, unacceptable. Could such techniques really be allowed out in the field?!
A chorus of screams and a splatter of blood on his armor told him that his subordinates had lost. In a blink, two fell to the ground. One had been cut through the gap in his gauntlet, his hand thudding to the ground. The other had been hamstrung, sending him tumbling to the ground for good.
“Grh... Go on!”
Despite that, the subordinate lunged at the sword coming for his leader and stopped it in its tracks. The sword struggled and blood flowed from his hands. His flesh split open; his bones were scraped away.
“If this is magic...crush him and it will end!”
“Please, go on!”
“We’ll be your shield! We’ll stop the blades, so cut him down!”
The soldier who had lost his hand took up his dagger in the hand he had to spare, and the leader’s remaining subordinates threw themselves into occupying Goldilocks’s remaining proxies.
The leader made his way through the momentary gap that had opened for him. Sparks scattered as a sword scraped at his back, but he pressed on across dirt stained with his subordinates’ blood.
“Prepare yourself!” the leader said. He felt the sting of shame that he could not give his name, but he charged with his sword at the ready regardless.
“Splendid! I’ll take you on. Now come!”
Goldilocks stood there with a relaxed posture and a fearless grin. Perhaps his magical sword, imbued with an unbreakable incantation, had felt the fighting spirit of the two warriors, for it began to wail with bliss in the faint light of the Night Goddess.
[Tips] Cavalrymen equip themselves such that they may continue combat when horseback charges are no longer ideal. Soldiers clad in heavy armor are not to be underestimated, even on foot.
Our blades clashed and sparks scattered in the night air.
The impact I felt through my arm was heavy—too much to parry.
“Oh? You’re not too bad,” I muttered.
“Shove off...you sprat! What does...a rootless wannabe bandit...know of the blade?!” he grunted in return.
My foe’s swordsmanship was unique—both heavy and light, both smooth and hard. His zweihander was as mighty as his stature, yet his swings were far more easy than I would’ve imagined. The blade’s sharp edge and its heft were enough to crush an unprepared opponent’s sword. He had his own well-honed “kill-on-sight” maneuvers too, it seemed.
I was so impressed by his skills that I let a compliment slip from my lips, but what I got back was nothing more than angry vituperation.
It irked me to admit, but he really was good. If I were to rate him in my own terms, I would say he had zweihander mastery of some kind of style at about Scale VII or VIII. Then with a whole ream of add-ons and traits, his magically hardened armor boosting his defense, and the battery of enchantments on his unique weapon, he was just as good at defending as he was on the offense.
What reasons had led someone so wonderfully complete like this into doing such a dirty job out here? On the other hand, perhaps jobs like these had always been his bread and butter...
I let up on the power I was putting into the push and let him pass me on my left, giving him a good knee to the abdomen in the process.
“Ngh...”
My foe stumbled slightly, but immediately regained his composure. He spun around into a rising slash. I knew that a simple kick wouldn’t harm someone in metal plate, so I’d been planning to get him down onto his knees, but he was well-versed in dirty fighting like this and quick to strike back.
Clearly he was no squeaky-clean knight who had earned his stripes through jousting sessions and mock battles. He was a real warrior, accustomed to scuffles and wrestling, who saw nothing out of the ordinary about a battle where he was vastly outnumbered as projectiles rained all around. He didn’t blanch at all in the face of my rough-and-ready Hybrid Sword Arts. Rather, it seemed like he had been a border patrol sentry, a bandit hunter, or involved in the feudal lords’ territorial skirmishes—someone who had been hardened by many a battle.
Good, I thought, he’s worth taking down!
I stepped forward and slightly to the side, clear of his slash. I needed to return the favor, so I committed to a rising sweep from the shins up. However, with the momentum from his own attack, he rolled over to the right, buying himself a fair bit of clearance from my attack. He had good eyes and was crafty enough to keep out of my range. With both of us using longswords, a single misstep in positioning could all but lock you out of mounting a meaningful attack or defense.