The clanging sound of mercenaries and soldiers rubbing shoulders was heard from all directions.
“Jorgen. Did you drop your balls or something?”
“What?”
“You keep looking around, so I asked. Should I help you find them?”
“Fuck off, Anton.”
Veteran mercenary Anton tried to make a joke. Thanks to him, the surrounding mercenaries chuckled and the tension eased a bit.
Jorgen, who also gave a hollow laugh, readjusted his posture.
‘Toben, that bastard…’
Suddenly, the mercenary band’s still-idiotic youngest member came to mind.
He had stubbornly survived the last battle, so he would probably survive this one as well.
Neigh!
Jorgen glanced at the sound of horses neighing and clattering, and saw six knights and several cavalrymen lined up in the rear.
Jorgen focused on the particularly large knight among them.
Lord Keldric. Without a doubt, the strongest and calmest knight Jorgen had ever seen in his life as a sword-for-hire.
He felt relieved with him around. The ripe tension subsided slightly.
Boo-ooo-!
The sound of a horn shook the battlefield. Following that, large flags rose one by one.
Immediately after, the mercenaries and soldiers shouted as if they had made a promise.
“Let’s go! You dumb bastards!”
“Those guys are all pushovers!”
Once the battle started, it was impossible to distinguish between enemy and ally.
Therefore, all the soldiers and mercenaries had to do was advance.
Looking at the flags set up at the rear of each camp, they simply moved towards the enemy camp’s flags.
Anyone who blocked their path was killed. It was extremely simple, but a very effective way to survive.
Both sides walked slowly, but at some point, they stopped at a certain distance.
“Archers!”
And as always, the archers were responsible for signaling the start of the battle.
“Draw!”
Lord Rutger’s voice rang out. On the other side, archers notched their arrows with a loud shout.
Jorgen swallowed hard. If he was hit wrong, he would be gone in an instant.
“Fire!”
The sharp sound of cutting through the wind struck his ears.
It sounded like birds chirping, but it was eerie to think that it was a weapon that killed people.
“Raise your shields!”
Jorgen quickly raised his shield. And he desperately crammed his body under the shield.
He wouldn’t die if he was hit anywhere but his upper body, but even if it was just the tip of his toe, it would still suck.
Thwack!
Arrows rained down continuously. It was a bit embarrassing to call it a rain of arrows, but anyway, you would die if you were hit.
After the sound of arrows hitting the shield echoed a dozen times, Jorgen quickly lowered his shield and struck the arrows stuck in the shield with his sword.
The earth shook. The enemies started running first. Jorgen’s bloodshot eyes glared at them as if to kill them.
“Block them!”
“Hold on, you bastards!”
It seemed that they were the ones blocking.
☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩
The battle had begun. Keldric bit his lip as he watched the battlefield where spears and swords clashed.
‘Damn it.’
The small-scale battles he had experienced so far were hardly worth calling battles. Real battles were different in scale.
Considering that even this was only a little less than five hundred troops on both sides combined, he felt like his body would freeze in an even bigger battle.
“Lord Keldric! I am now… so excited!”
“Lord Henri.”
Lord Henri, standing beside Keldric, hissed out hot breaths. Lord Rutger and the other knights were the same.
Knights about to go into battle were still human. They, too, felt tension.
But the difference between a mere mercenary and a knight lay in turning that fear and tension into anger and excitement.
A knight even used tension as strength. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to tear those lowly mercenaries apart.
‘This is driving me crazy.’
Keldric also spread that tension throughout his body.
All his senses were heightened, and strength overflowed from his muscles.
“Filthy things. Let’s kill them all.”
“Those lowly bastards! Dare to inflict the shame of defeat upon His Excellency…!”
As the battle progressed, the knights’ excitement reached its peak. Their bodies, honed over a lifetime, were imbued with martial arts refined to the extreme.
How long had they been waiting in that state of excitement? Several mounted forces in the enemy camp began to move.
“Knights!”
Someone on the battlefield shouted. Keldric heard it very clearly.
As they said, the enemy knights finally revealed themselves. A total of seven knights and eight lightly armed cavalrymen.
On their side, there were six knights and ten cavalrymen. In terms of pure numbers, they had one more, but originally, it was right to only count the knights.
“They’re coming!”
Boo-ooo! Boo!
As the enemy knights formed their ranks, a horn sounded magnificently twice. Lord Lothar had given the order to charge.
Keldric lightly kicked Avelin’s flank. The other knights moved their horses in the same way.
Warhorses, their entire bodies made of muscle, lined up in a row and marched forward. Their destination was, of course, the center of the enemy camp.
As the enemy knights formed their ranks, Lord Rutger raised his spear high.
“Charge! Chaaarge!”
“For honor! For victory!”
“May God grant us a glorious victory!”
The warhorses kicked off the snowfield and galloped forward powerfully. Thick cloth, supposedly armor, fluttered. The biting north wind grazed their ears as if cutting them.
Keldric felt the surrounding scenery gradually passing by faster. The battlefield, where a fierce fight was raging, was rapidly approaching.
“Spears down!”
The knights lowered their spearheads in unison. The terrified soldiers in front of them hurriedly cleared the way.
Keldric did not stop. The knights did not stop. There was no reason to stop, and they couldn’t stop.
As a result of rushing forward like a fierce wind, the enemies were already right in front of them.
The enemy soldiers, belatedly facing the knights’ charge, turned pale.
“Uh, uh…”
“Shit! Get out of the way!”
“Knights!”
However, there was nowhere to escape the explosive charge belatedly.
Kwaang! Kwajik! Kwajak!
At the same time as a tremendous sound echoed, several strong men were sent flying into the air from all directions.
The knights’ charge completely ravaged the enemy camp. But that was the same for their own camp.
Without time to worry about the rear, Keldric reflexively thrust his spear forward with all his might.
Kwadeudeuk!
“Kkeuaaak!”
There was no time to retrieve the spear. The ink-black longsword was immediately in Keldric’s hand.
“Kill them all! Sweep away all these lowly things!”
The shouts of the enraged knights were the terror of the battlefield. Extremely honed martial arts became an irresistible violence that swept through.
All around him were enemies, but Keldric didn’t feel anything strange about it.
For a knight, it was their duty to break through the center of the enemy camp.
“Lord Keldric!”
While mindlessly swinging his longsword, Keldric reflexively twisted the trajectory of his longsword at the same time as Lord Henri’s call.
With a clang! The sword of someone who had lunged at him was deflected.
The one who had come close to Keldric was a knight, also on horseback.
“Heueup!”
Thwack!
Without asking or questioning, Keldric threw a punch first. The knight, hit squarely in the face of his helmet, was knocked off.
But Keldric had no intention of ending it there. Extreme anger and excitement drew out Keldric’s strength to the fullest.
Keldric’s large hand grabbed the neck of the knight who was falling from his horse.
The body of the knight, wearing heavy armor, floated into the air. Everyone who saw the sight widened their eyes.
“Kehek! W-wait a moment…!”
Kwaang!
And then, he slammed him straight into the bare ground.
The knight who had been slammed down tried to get up somehow, but in the end, he couldn’t regain his composure and fell face down on the ground.
As the surroundings were filled with shock and fear, Keldric additionally drew a mace in his left hand.
“Come on!”
The Battle of Schafendorf had just begun.