Chương 390: Chapter 361. A Bloody Battle 1

In the middle of the fighting, Youngwoo managed to pick up a small shield. Now that he had a little room to move, he could finally take weapons and defensive gear from the fallen. The shield had been strapped to a dead man's arm. Youngwoo tore it free and slipped it over his left forearm. His hwando remained in his right hand. A spear thrust straight toward his chest. Youngwoo did not raise the round shield directly in front of him. Instead, he pushed it diagonally upward from lower left to upper right.

The spearhead slid along the curved face of the shield and glanced aside. At that same instant, Youngwoo's right foot stepped inside the opponent's lead foot. From beneath the shadow of the shield, the hwando shot forward and sank deep into the spearman's side. The shield hand that deflected and the sword hand that stabbed moved within a single breath. A swordsman brought his long blade down from above. Youngwoo did not lift the shield high over his head.

He angled it in front of his left shoulder, caught the descending blade against the rim, bent his elbow, and drew it inward. The man's sword was dragged forward by the force of his own strike. Youngwoo turned half a circle with the momentum. His hwando drew a short diagonal line through the space between the man's neck and shoulder. Two men attacked at once. One aimed for his chest. The other for his face. Youngwoo raised the shield before his face and lowered his body.

The upper blade struck the shield and slid away. The spear aimed at his chest passed over his shoulder. Youngwoo bent his knees and drove himself into the spearman's reach. His hwando turned low and cut through the back of the man's thigh. As the spearman collapsed, the edge of the round shield smashed into the other man's jaw. Another swordsman closed in. Youngwoo moved the shield first, not the hwando. He drove the lower rim of the shield down onto the wrist of the hand holding the sword.

Before the man could lift his weapon again, Youngwoo shoved the trapped wrist sideways with the shield. The man's chest and belly opened. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Youngwoo's hwando entered that opening in one short, deep thrust. Even as the blade went in and came out, the shield still pinned the man's wrist. Youngwoo was not using the shield merely to block. When a spear came in, he used the curved face to guide it away.

When a sword fell, he caught it on the rim and let it slide past. The instant his left hand drove an opponent's weapon outward, the hwando in his right was already entering the exposed ribs or neck. Years of experience had made the use of weapons second nature. Defense and attack did not move separately. The shield made the path. The hwando passed through it. One attacker chopped down with his sword. Youngwoo angled the shield, let the blade slide away, turned halfway, and buried the hwando in the man's side.

As he pulled the sword free, another spearhead was already coming in. He knocked the shaft aside with the shield rim and cut over his shoulder. Block and strike. Almost simultaneous. A long spear drove toward him. Youngwoo used the hwando to knock its point off line, then smashed the shield into the spearman's head. The man collapsed limply. Another spear curled in from behind him. Youngwoo lowered his stance, slipped beneath the thrust, and drove the hwando into the man's waist.

Once Youngwoo began combining shield and sword in earnest, the men around him started falling with frightening ease. When one man rushed in, his own attack blocked the path of the man behind him. Youngwoo never missed those moments. Shield and hwando, shoulder and footwork moved as a single body. Then, for the first time, the commander's voice rang out clearly.

"Spears forward!" He must have shouted before. Why had Youngwoo not heard it? The poisonous smoke, the falling snow, the short arrows flying in from every direction, the swords and spears pressing in around him—he must have simply missed it. More than a dozen long spears extended toward Youngwoo at once. In a courtyard this confined, there were not many ways for so many men to attack together except to thrust. The spearheads drove forward through the snow in a single wave.

Youngwoo knocked one side away with the shield. The spearpoints struck it with a dull impact. He did not take the force head-on. He let it slide aside. At the same time, he struck the shafts entering from the opposite side with his hwando and twisted them off line. His lowered body turned with the motion. The shield swept upward to cover his head and chest while Youngwoo dropped even lower beneath it. The spearheads passed over his back. And in that instant, the spearmen's lower bodies were exposed all at once.

Youngwoo's hwando swept out in a wide circle. The blade skimmed low over the snow-covered courtyard and tore across everything below the waist. He was not aiming at a single man's legs. The rotation of his whole body carried through the blade. One broad arc cut through thighs, knees, and lower waists across the front rank.

"Aaargh!"

"Gaaah!" The men whose legs had been cut screamed and collapsed. The front line of spears fell apart in an instant. Shafts tangled together, and the bodies dropping into the snow caught the ankles of those behind them. A broad gap opened in the attacking formation. Youngwoo saw it and slid the hwando back into its sheath. Then he picked up one of the fallen spears. The weapon in his hand had a straight spearhead with a hook mounted beneath it. It could thrust. It could catch and pull.

At close range, it could also hook and drag an enemy down. Youngwoo spun it once through the air. The balance came into his palm. The hooked head made the weapon slightly front-heavy, and that weight gave the rotation a deeper pull. He adjusted the spacing of his hands and spun it once more in a shorter circle. Good. The weight was unfamiliar, but usable. Youngwoo's gaze went past the broken front line of spearmen. The men still standing were retreating through the snow.

More than a dozen had gone down in a single burst. The survivors backed away without meaning to. Their bodies had understood before their minds did. This was not working. At that moment, two short arrows came flying. Small. Fast. They cut through the snowfall almost without sound. Youngwoo did not raise the shaft of the spear to block them head-on. He gave a short turn of the wrist and let the rounded surface of the shaft brush against the arrow. He had not stopped it. He had merely changed its direction.

The arrow glanced away from the spear shaft and drove diagonally into the chest of one of the men retreating behind.

"Ugh." The man looked down at his own chest and collapsed. For a moment, both the man who had fired and the man who had been struck froze. Youngwoo's eyes changed slightly. Oh. That works. Another arrow came in sharply. This one came from beneath the wall on his right. Youngwoo did not swing the spearhead in a wide arc. He turned the shaft lightly before his waist. The instant the arrowhead touched the spear shaft, a tiny shock ran through his wrist. He followed that force and let it flow away.