I inched back to try and return inside the stove room and nearly stabbed myself in the back with an ally’s spear for the effort. The two scouting subordinates were white-knuckle, gripping their weapons, eyes wide in fear, blocking the doorway.
“Back! Back! Get inside!” I yelled, chasing them into the room before following them myself. “Hide behind the doorway! Don’t chance any peeks!”
Pushing them into a safe place (and one where they wouldn’t accidentally stab a comrade), I beckoned Troach over and hid next to the entrance.
“Earplugs! Hurry!”
Everyone took out scraps of cloth. Astoria had mentioned in the meeting that she planned to use a bomb. My training had prepared me for blasts in closed spaces, but the same couldn’t be said of anyone else.
Before our earplugs would block my instructions from being heard, I stated, “Troach, you and I will charge into the hall as soon as the bomb goes off. Wait for my signal.”
“Got it!”
“You two follow us. If you can’t, wait here. If any enemies come this way, take them out. If you can’t do that, then close the door and protect yourselves.”
“U-understood!”
“Great—plug your ears. And keep your mouths open.”
After stuffing my own ears, I chanced a glance into the corridor again.
I’d only looked away for a few moments, but the hall was in a terrible state now. Weapon-wielding ogrelings had appeared one after the next to join the enemy group. On my first encounter with this force, I’d estimated their ranks to total forty-four, but now there seemed to be even more.
The raiding group pointed their spears forward, knees weak. Still, our opponents were not fools. Deciding the subordinates looked easier to deal with than Astoria, they spread out in the hope of encircling them.
“Left wing, right wing, forward with me!”
Even through the cloth, I could hear Astoria’s shout. What I saw a moment later shocked me. Those soldiers, so afraid, had advanced at Astoria’s order. A mere eight spears were pressing back against the horde of ogrelings. I couldn’t have done that.
Still, Astoria would only be able to suppress the opposition with her own presence for so long. The ogrelings were alert, and reinforcements streamed up from behind to bolster their ranks. As their numbers grew, so too did their aggressiveness. The enemy halted its retreat and clanged their weapons together, looking like they were about to fall upon us like an avalanche.
Still nothing? When will it start? I fretted as I looked on. From atop her horse-lizard, Astoria remained undaunted.
Two large figures appeared in the hall behind the horde of ogrelings. One was a tall ogrekin with the head of a deer. The other, even more massive than the first, sported a bull’s head. The deer gripped a long-handled halberd, and the bull, a double-sided ax. An old ogreling rode on the deer’s shoulder. It was the shaman I’d seen before. Waving its staff around, it yelled in a hoarse voice to be put onto the scaffold. The contingent of ogrelings cried out in a feverish craze and, a moment later, rushed us like a dam bursting.
As though she’d waited for this moment, Astoria took something out of her saddlebag and hurled it in front of her.
The spherical object traveled in an arc before falling into the midst of the oncoming horde. Not a second later, it exploded.
In the nick of time, I turned away and hid behind the wall. The bomb was more powerful than I’d anticipated. A gust of air rushed in through the doorway, instantly putting out the flame burning in the stove and dropping the room into darkness.
When I looked back into the hall, it was an entirely different scene. The bomb had mowed down the entire charge. Dead ogrelings lay on the floor. Those closer to ground zero had been vaporized.
In the back of the room, the ogreling shaman, the deer-head, and the goat-head were covering their ears, unable to move. But that went for us as well. Several had let their spears fall out of their hands. They were all presumably wearing earplugs, but earplugs obviously couldn’t have buffered the shock wave.
Snorts shook its head and blew air out of its nose, seeming irritated. Only Astoria was happy—she turned around in the saddle and shouted behind her, “Lady Mizuho, did you get that?”
“What?! What did you say?!” Mizuho asked, tugging her earplugs out.
“Did you?! Get that?!”
“Ah, yes! I got the whole thing!”
“Very good! Forward, my troops!”
Astoria removed the longsword from her back and held it aloft.
“Long live the Great Camp Bravo Kingdom!”
“…L-long live the Kingdom!”
A scattering of cheers rang in the corridor. They seemed to be still recovering from the explosion’s impact, but as Astoria continued, brandishing her claymore, their voices gradually fell into line.
“For glory!”
“…For glory!”
“For victory!”
“For victory!”
“For the views!”
“For…the????”
“Charge!!”
Shutting her faceplate, Astoria smoothly brought her longsword down in front of her. Snorts took off like an arrow fired from a drawn bow. Its hooked claws scraped the floor and threw off sparks, and Snorts, now one with its knight, charged the enemy lines.
The ogreling shaman jumped up and down on its scaffold and barked something in a hoarse voice, causing ogreling reinforcements to come running into the hall. They flooded in from the stairs against the wall and from the trapdoors in the floor we hadn’t noticed until now, blocking off and stopping the soldiers trying to follow Astoria.
The bull-head clopped its hooves and stepped forward. It was a giant, twice the size of a human, with muscles all over its body that looked like they’d burst out of its skin. On its pale skin was a tattoo of a tightly packed maze pattern. Its hefty double-sided ax caught Astoria’s longsword head-on, producing a metallic clang like a cracked bell. Its hooves slid across the floor, kicking up dust. With the horse-lizard’s charge stopped, the knight and the bull-head began a fierce clash.
Behind the bull-head, the shaman continued dancing. The ogreling horde, which had been wiped out just moments ago, was regaining its numbers. Newly arrived ogrelings, perhaps spurred by the sight of the bull-head squaring off against Astoria, fearlessly pointed their spear tips at the soldiers. The situation was steadily became a melee where enemy and ally were mixed—precisely what I wanted to avoid.
I turned back to my team and said, “All right, let’s go. We need to take down that shaman. Troach, back me up. You two, watch our backs. Got it? Good. Charge!”
We burst out of the room and started along the wall toward the back of the enemy formation. The shaman on the scaffold spotted us quickly, however, delivering a command and pointing our way. In response, the deer-head stepped to meet us.
Like the bull-head, the deer-head had a maze etched into its skin. This one wasn’t a tattoo. Perhaps its race carried the pattern naturally.
It brandished its long halberd, trying to use its reach to overwhelm us. Closer up, its size surprised me. It wasn’t as big as the bull-head, but it still towered over an average human. Including its horns, it was over two meters high. The absolute rule of close combat was never to fight anyone bigger than you. Going head-to-head with this behemoth would be idiotic.
Yet if such an encounter couldn’t be avoided, what was the best tactic? The answer was simple: Use every means at your disposal to win.
I sped up my pace to throw our opponent’s timing off, then jumped in while it swung its halberd into the air. Sliding between its legs, I rammed my billhook into the soft portion behind one of its knees. With a tendon cut, the limb crumpled, and a scream raged in its throat.
Seeing Troach and our two subordinates trying to join me, I shouted, “Go! Go! Get the shaman!”
Troach widened her eyes, but she nodded. She slipped past the kneeling deer-head. The other two nearly stopped out of fear, but after Troach yelled for them to follow, they hurried along.