Chương 38: Book 1: Chapter 12 - Things Unseen [Part 3]

The triceratops broke the gate completely on its third charge. One of the doors tore loose from its upper mounting and fell inward beneath the horns, while the great animal followed farther than its handlers intended and crashed into the damaged barricade beyond. Men scattered, ropes tightened, and the beast was finally hauled around amid a confusion of splintered timber and shouting. The Satomi infantry surged forward before the defenders could rebuild the opening even as the Hōjō archers began firing up above.

Shimon had played matches in which hundreds of movements demanded attention at once, yet nothing had prepared him for the disorder of men willingly entering a place designed to kill them. The first wave reached the gate and disappeared into the fighting beyond it. Kagawa waited only long enough for the breach to become unmistakable before lifting his tachi from Kurobane's saddle.

"Forward!" the one-eyed deputy roared, all earlier instructions concerning reserve duty apparently forgotten now that glory lay within reach. Tarō swore and lowered his yari, but followed. Seki and Fujita moved with him, while Shimon found himself running because refusing the order beneath a rain of arrows seemed even more dangerous than obeying it.

Shimon carried the ōdachi low, the long scabbard knocking against his armor as Heita kept behind him with the naginata drawn close enough not to catch the soldiers around them. Their first dead man lay fifty paces from the wall, a Satomi soldier face-down with an arrow through the back of his neck. Another stumbled away from the gate with both hands pressed against his stomach, and the advancing men simply divided around him. There was no room for sympathy in the movement of an assault.

Stopping obstructed the men behind, and obstructing hundreds of armed soldiers beneath enemy archers merely created more corpses. A warning appeared across Shimon's vision. [HOSTILE TRAJECTORY ANALYSIS ACTIVE] Multiple projectile sources detected Threat density: HIGH Recommended action: Seek cover"No kidding," he muttered.

"Thanks for the obvious." A soldier beside him glanced over.

"What?" The man's expression changed before an answer became possible. An arrow entered through the upper cheek and emerged behind his ear, dropping him so abruptly that Shimon nearly caught his sandal on the body. Another shaft descended. The chip marked its arc and estimated position of origin. Shimon shifted, letting his reflexes take over, and the arrow passed close enough that he heard it rush past him before it struck someone behind him. Then the gate swallowed them.

The entrance opened into a cramped defensive court similar to the killing pockets Shimon had studied at Satomi's own castle. He had admired their design from the protected side; experiencing one from the other direction cured much of that appreciation. Hōjō spearmen waited behind overturned carts and a half-broken timber barricade, their yari extending through gaps as the first Satomi soldiers crashed against them.

The men behind continued pressing forward, compressing the assault into a mass of armor, spear shafts, shouting, and bodies with nowhere to go. Shimon immediately understood that the ōdachi was useless in such confines. There was barely enough room to turn his shoulders, much less swing a blade longer than some of the men around him. He shouldered the big weapon and drew his katana instead. Tarō was already fighting a Hōjō spearman.

The enemy combatant thrust across the barricade, and the experienced Kume knocked the point wide with his yari before driving his own weapon beneath the man's ribs. He twisted, pulled, and kicked the dying defender away from the shaft with none of the clean elegance sensei Matsuda tried to beat into them. To Shimon's left, Seki struck another defender across the face with the butt of his spear, reversed the weapon, and pushed the point into the opening beneath the man's arm.

His square face showed neither anger nor pleasure. The terse warrior killed with the same economical concentration he had shown when finishing the condemned prisoner in the forest. Fujita's first thrust missed. The younger castle retainer possessed better spear technique than confidence, and for one dangerous instant an old hesitation returned as the Hōjō soldier answered with a sword.

"Down!" Shimon shouted. Thankfully, Fujita obeyed before thought could interfere and the blade passed over his helmet. Shimon cut across the attacker's wrist, between the lacquered plates. Steel opened flesh and tendons, the sword fell from useless fingers, and the young spearman surged upward to bury the yari in the man's chest. You have defeated a Hōjō soldier. 6 experience gained. Bitterly, Shimon realized that there was an experience penalty for group kills. Fujita stared for half a heartbeat.

"Keep moving!" Tarō barked while wrenching his own weapon free. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. That broke the hesitation and together they moved. Training had done something to the five of them that Shimon had not entirely appreciated in the yard. They no longer fought as separate men occupying the same patch of ground. Tarō and Seki instinctively guarded the longer approaches, while Fujita reinforced whichever gap weakened.

Heita's naginata worked behind and around the yari, and Shimon filled whatever space the polearms could not control. At first, they fought much as they had trained against straw yōma. Then Shimon discovered that men were easier. Much, much easier. He had to stop himself from thinking of them as walking bags of experience points. A Hōjō ashigaru forced his way through the spear line with a shortened yari, perhaps expecting the swordsman behind it to be the weak point.

Shimon saw the rear hand tighten, the shoulder turn, and the man's weight commit before the thrust properly began. His enhanced reflexes provided the time, while Matsuda's training supplied the answer. Shimon knocked the point aside, entered before the spearman could recover, and drove the katana through his unprotected throat. Resistance traveled through the hilt, followed by the awful yielding sensation of steel entering the body beneath. The soldier's breath struck Shimon's cheek.

The young man casually pulled the blade free, and flicked the blood off the blade. You have defeated a Hōjō Ashigaru. 13 experience gained. He had to stop himself before thinking "better". Another defender reached him before he could process the notification. This one was older and better armored, his first cut forcing Shimon backward while the second struck hard enough against his guard to almost jar both. But Ayanokouji, although weakened by his new "gift", was still much stronger than he had been.

The man's hips began to turn. [COMBAT ANALYSIS ACTIVE] Committed attack probability: 82% Shimon stopped watching the sword and watched the body. When the cut came, he moved outside its line and answered across the thigh. The first stroke failed to pass completely through the armor but broke the man's balance, allowing Shimon to follow with a thrust into his neck through the gap in his armor that his chip painted for him. Blood struck his helmet. You have defeated a Hōjō Retainer. 19 experience gained.

A spear point passed through the space where the notification had been. Even with his attention mostly focused elsewhere, his near magical reflexes allowed him to avoid it with almost contemptuous ease. A quick glance around him showed something was happening. Beyond the barricade, Satomi soldiers hauled part of the timber aside, widening the opening enough for the mass behind them to spill into the outer enclosure. That was when Kagawa arrived. Kurobane forced his own route through the assault.

Men scattered rather than argue with several hundred kilograms of angry, predatory dinosaur and its claws and teeth. Still, there were those who had found bravery in battle. Or, perhaps, they had remembered honor. The fukuiraptor struck a Hōjō spearman with chest and jaws almost together, lifting the man from his feet, while the scarred rider cut downward from the saddle at another defender. Kagawa was smiling.

Shimon had seen that expression at the execution stakes, and finding it again amid the battle made something in him tighten.

"Left!" Tarō called, the warning pulling him back toward the cell. Three Hōjō soldiers were moving around the broken barricade to strike their flank. Seki met the first with his yari, driving the point beneath the man's armor. Fujita caught the second through the shoulder, but the third forced himself between their shafts and reached the rear line. Heita stepped forward. The scar beneath the naginata fighter's chin stood pale against his face, yet his hands had stopped trembling.

His eyes looked from his open helm without hesitation. Without regret. That was becoming the pattern with Matsunaga: fear owned him before the fighting, but once steel began moving, another harder part of him took control. His naginata cut behind the Hōjō soldier's knee. As the man collapsed, the pale warrior reversed the weapon and drove the blade through the side of the neck with an efficiency that would have satisfied even the grizzled spear instructor Ishikawa. Another defender rushed him almost immediately.

Heita shifted aside and cut across the abdomen before the attack could properly develop, the strike not penetrating armor but stopping his opponent. A stab through his open faced helm, however, finished him easily. Shimon stared for the smallest fraction of a second.

"Remind me not to frighten him."

"You frighten him constantly," Tarō grunted as he thrust past Shimon's shoulder. Fair. The battle spread through the outer enclosure. Hōjō archers continued firing from raised platforms until Satomi soldiers forced their way up the stairs, while smaller fights developed around storehouses, gates, and passages between the earthworks. The hunters should never have been part of the assault. They were also, Shimon realized with growing unease, remarkably good at it. But their lives should never have been risked here…

in this mundane battle. Weeks of training against things stronger, faster, and considerably less concerned about injury than human beings had altered their expectations. A man recoiled when a spear entered him. A man slowed after losing blood. A man did not generally seize the blade that had cut through his fingers and keep attacking. Yōma had taught them to expect worse. Tarō killed another defender with an ugly thrust beneath the ribs.

Seki lost his yari when a falling man trapped the shaft beneath his body, drew his katana without complaint, and continued fighting. Fujita took a shallow cut across one cheek and appeared more offended than frightened by it. Behind them, the scar-chinned warrior remained pale and efficient, the curved blade of his naginata appearing wherever the spear line opened. Shimon stopped noticing individual notifications of the death he brought.

They followed the Satomi advance toward the next enclosure until shouting erupted from their right. A side gate had opened beneath the central earthwork, and several dozen Hōjō warriors came down the slope beneath their banners, attempting to cut through the men who had entered the castle and isolate them from the breach. The organized advance dissolved. Men collided from several directions. Shimon lost sight of Tarō and nearly lost Fujita as well.

Someone struck him across the back hard enough to drive him forward, although the armor absorbed most of the blow. Health: 22/24 The young man turned and cut at the attacker, forcing him away, only for another defender to enter from the right. Shimon caught one stroke and deflected another before a body collided with his back. He began to turn.

"Watch your front!" a familiar voice commanded over the fighting.