Chapter 44
“Get out of my way, I will deal with him!”
Margrave Orquell charged toward Urich as he controlled his frightened horse.
“Woahhhh!”
Urich let out his beastly roar at the margrave charging on his horse.
The horse flinched again, and the margrave scratched the horse’s flank hard with his boot. The hesitating horse was reminded of its owner’s order and resumed its charge.
Clang!
The blade of the margrave had the momentum of the galloping horse. Urich received the blow with both his feet planted in the ground.
“Oh!”
The margrave felt his upper body thrusting backward. Even with the momentum of the horse, he felt that he was being overpowered by the barbarian.
‘My arm is going to break if I don’t move my sword out of the way.’
The margrave released the tension in his legs to absorb the impact of the clash. He tumbled off the horse, falling to the ground in an acrobatic maneuver.
“My lord!” The soldiers shouted.
“Surround him! Attack him from all directions!” The margrave exclaimed at his soldiers. There was no place for a commander who couldn’t take care of himself on the battlefield. He jumped back to his feet and gripped the hilt of his sword tightly.
“Hmph!”
Urich threw his second axe. The axe was buried halfway into the soldier’s knee, making the raggedy joint collapse backward. The soldier fell to the ground with a terrible screech.
Urich had used up both of his axes. He rolled on the ground to pick up the shield that one of the soldiers dropped. It was an inverted triangle shield that tapered downward.
‘A shield.’
Urich was never fond of using a shield. Even back in his tribe, he had only used it occasionally to block the arrows.
‘Is this how they used it?’
Urich mimicked the shield-wielding that he had seen here and there.
The civilized men were adept at using a shield. They knew how to attack and defend with a shield. The inverted triangle shape allowed its wielder to use the shield as a weapon with its pointy tip.
Clang!
Urich parried the soldiers’ attacks by swinging the shield and pushing them back.
Thwip!
His body flinched. An arrow fired from a crossbow plunged into his back, but Urich didn’t seem to be bothered as he kept advancing toward his enemies.
“D-does it not work on him?”
The arrow wasn’t able to dig deep into Urich due to the fur coat that was covering his entire upper body along with his armor-like back muscles.
“Go for his head, his head!” Orquell shouted. The soldiers with crossbows simultaneously aimed at Urich’s head.
Thwip!
Urich raised his shield to protect his head and upper body. As the arrows hit the shield, Urich darted forward in a swift motion.
‘That strange weapon takes a while to reload.’
Urich had seen the crossbow enough times to know how long it took for them to be reloaded.
“Dammit!”
Urich shoved the soldiers with his shield and crushed the heads of the tripped-over soldiers with his knees. As his immense weight came down on their faces, their heads crumpled as the facial bones collapsed. Urich’s hands continued to move rapidly to slit the throats of the soldiers.
“What are you doing, you can’t get scared!” The adjutant tried to encourage his soldiers, but they were all falling one by one, intimidated by Urich’s ferocity.
‘We can kill him with a single attack if we coordinate our attacks properly.’
There was no reason for them to lose. After all, their enemy was a single barbarian who stood up to them without a single piece of armor.
“Argh!”
But the soldiers were the dying ones. The adjutant then realized that something was wrong.
‘The fear that attacking first will result in certain death. We’ve been overwhelmed by him.’
That was the thing that kept the soldiers from coordinating a pincer attack. Whoever dove in first was certainly going to die. What would be the point of killing the barbarian if you also lost your life in the process? No soldier was passionate and loyal enough to jump in despite certain death. The soldiers all hesitated to be the first to attack, and that resulted in the worst outcome of all of them getting killed one by one. If the soldiers were without the fear of death, like the northern warriors, Urich would have been stabbed to death long ago.
‘So, this is the power of the barbarian that the lord was talking about.’
The madness of rushing into one’s own death, the willingness to fight with one’s heart bared open if necessary. The young adjutant realized the crucial importance of soldier morale on the battlefield.
‘Now I get why the civilization military struggled against the barbarians.’
After learning the reality, the adjutant knew that his time was up. Urich’s sword cleanly slashed his neck.
Many knights and warriors ended up dying before they could accumulate their experiences. might knights and warriors were created on a pile of death, and this young adjutant was merely a part of the pile.
“Kek, kek kek,” after losing every single one of his men, Margrave Orquell cackled with his face covered with one hand.
“Huff, huff.”
Urich was barely standing, holding himself up with his sword plunged into the ground. The soldiers who died by his berserk were only afraid because they couldn’t see the true state of Urich. In reality, he was only a wounded and fatigued animal. There were clear, deep cuts in his arms and legs as he could only afford to shield the fatal points of his body, like his head and torso. Blood was gushing from the deep cuts. His face was pale, and the arrowheads dug deeper into his body with every tiny movement.
“You can’t trick me. I’m used to that inflated fear of yours.”
The margrave grinned as he stared at the true image of Urich. He was barely able to stay standing.
Schring.
The margrave grabbed his sword with both hands and raised it high.
‘I won’t give you any time to recover, nameless barbarian. You were truly the greatest of all the barbarians I have met.’
The death of his men did not cause a drop of sadness in the heart of the margrave. In fact, his heart was frozen solid a long time ago. He was a knight who had witnessed too many deaths for it to affect him anymore. The only thing that was left in his knightly heart was a twisted sense of awe that replaced the initial hatred.
Urich looked at the margrave. It was getting harder for him to think straight. Extreme physical exertion led to mental exhaustion, as clear thinking was only possible with a well-rested body.
‘I... have to... think...’
Urich muttered. It felt like the muscles in his arms and legs had left his body. He felt like he was about to collapse unless he supported himself with his sword. All that bleeding was blurring his vision.
Margrave Orquell didn’t let his guard down. He knew the final power of a wounded beast.
He maintained his stance and gradually closed the distance.
‘I’ll feign a shoulder slash, then turn sideways to cut deeply into his throat. That should do the job.’
Unlike Urich, the margrave had plenty of time and energy to think of a clear attacking plan. He ran the trajectory of his sword multiple times in his head.
Crackle, crackle.
The margrave looked to the side without moving his head. From the darkness, he heard the sound of horse hooves and saw a young man with blue eyes through the fallen torches. It was Prince Varca Aneu Porcana.
‘Why would the prince be at the battleground?’
The margrave was puzzled, but there was no time to hesitate.
“Urich!” Pahell shouted as he dismounted the horse. Orquell rushed to land his attack on the barbarian.
‘I have to save him.’
Pahell found the crossbow that was on the ground. He thought back to the time that he shot it a couple of times.
Click.
He grabbed the crossbow from the ground with shaking hands. Luckily, it was loaded with an arrow. The margrave had no choice but to pay attention to his hands.
“Dammit.”
The margrave decided that he was too late and stopped his attack on Urich and raised his shield instead.
Thwip!
The margrave raised his shield up to his head and waited for the arrow to hit the shield.
‘I don’t hear the sound of the hit.’
There was no sound of the arrow hitting the shield. The absence delayed the lowering of the shield. The arrow headed nowhere close to the margrave due to Pahell’s poor accuracy. If the margrave had ignored the prince and carried out his attack on Urich, he would have successfully taken his breath.
That momentary delay in the lowering of the shield was enough to decide the winner. That tiny distraction was enough.
Urich, who had just caught his breath, took a half step forward and swung his sword with all his might. He was lacking his strength, so he put the weight of his body behind it and swung deep like a club.
Crunch!
The margrave tried to block the blow by holding out his right arm, thinking that he could use his left arm to switch hands for a counterattack.
‘One-armed Margrave isn’t a bad nickname.’
He thought that a single arm would be enough to block the blow of an exhausted barbarian. He was wrong. The blade that sliced through his right arm didn’t stop there. It struck his head, crushing his metal helmet. His head caved in along with the disfigured helmet.
“Cough.”
Margrave Orquell collapsed on the ground as he puked up blood. His bodily fluid mixed with blood spouted out of his eyes, nose, and ears, and the pink flesh was visible through the crack in his head.
“I couldn’t finish you off with that blow, I’m sorry. I’ll finish you off now.”
Urich, who collapsed alongside the margrave, said to his dying enemy as he barely lifted his sword. The margrave couldn’t contain his laughter after hearing Urich’s words. The image of Urich looking down on him as he was about to land the finishing blow mirrored his own past. Countless barbarians had died looking up at the young Orquell in the same way.
‘Now, it’s my turn to die looking up at a young barbarian.’
The last thing he saw before the end was the tip of the sword.
Schluck.
Urich decisively plunged his sword into the throat of Margrave Orquell with a brief stroke. The margrave closed his eyes.
Urich fell to the ground beside his fallen enemy. He and no energy left even for the smallest movement.
“Why did you come? I told you to hide and wait. But I did live thanks to you. I thought I was really going to die this time.”
Urich barely turned his head to look at Pahell.
‘Did he really do this all by himself? Alone?’
Pahell looked around as he bit his lips. There were signs of a fierce battle. A feeling of shame that he had never felt before rose from the corner of his heart.
“I don’t know. Perhaps I was scared hiding by myself,” Pahell answered as he stretched his hand toward Urich on the ground to help him sit up.
“Scared of hiding, too? You really are the biggest coward.”
Urich belched out a rough laugh.
“I’m saying that I was scared of being a coward who only hides... I am supposed to be the king after all,” Pahell answered, but the words that he was about to become the king didn’t leave his mouth as easily as before. He took the sword of the margrave and clipped it to his belt. The weight of the sword felt unfamiliar.
* * *
Pahell was exhausted. He had tended to Urich’s wounds all night.
“God dammit, how is a person alive after all that? Spit.”
Pahell vomited over and over again. Looking at the flesh beneath one’s skin was not a pleasant thing to do.
“Heat that thing up and hand it over. I need to burn the wounds,” Urich said as he was seated on the ground. Sweat was beading down his face, his eyes bloodshot, and his lips were parched to the point of seeming blue.
“Got it.”
Pahell wiped his mouth and took out the red-hot blade from the fire.
‘How many scars does he have? And he’s my age?’
Urich’s body was covered in scars from head to toe. The slashes and stab wounds were littered all over, and the burns left the ugliest scars.
“At this rate, I’m going to die taking care of you.”
Pahell said as he put the tweezer and dagger down. He had to peer into Urich’s flesh to find the buried arrowheads. It wasn’t something that he ever wanted to do again.
“Stop whining, I’m the one dying over here. Huff, huff,” Urich took a few deep breaths before bringing the blade to his wounds. It was a desperate remedy he had to use because there was no other way to sterilize the wounds.
Tssssss!
“Fuuuuuuuck! It hurts like hell every time I do it, fucking hell.” Urich burned one wound after another as he complained.
“Ugh.”
Pahell plugged his nose to stop the reeking smell of Urich’s burning flesh.
‘I’m really going to die at this rate. I’ve never had to go through this much ever since I came over to this side of the mountains.’
He hadn’t fought this hard since the Thirty-Men Slaughter, which was the time he killed thirty warriors of an enemy tribe over the course of three days. It was an achievement that spread his name throughout the surrounding tribes.
“Pahell, no, what was your name, Var...” Urich said with a pale face.
“Varca Aneu Porcana, that’s my legal name.”
“Yeah, that, Pahell Varca. If for some reason I don’t wake up, cremate my body but please cut my hair and bring it to the foot of the Sky Mountains.”
“What do you mean by...”
Pahell couldn’t finish his sentence, as Urich shut his eyes and fell unconscious.
‘He’s breathing, he’s not dead.’
Pahell breathed a sigh of relief after he made sure that Urich was still breathing.
“If you think about it, what he did just doesn’t make sense.”
Urich had killed over twenty men in the span of a few days. He had to fight and fight as soon as he recovered from the back injury that he got from carrying Kylios.
“This is something that a warrior could boast about for the rest of his life.”
The world was full of renowned knights and warriors, and the Sword Demon Ferzen, who fought off a hundred men on a bridge was one of them.
“You too will be famous one day, Urich.”
Pahell stared at the sleeping Urich. Urich was a mercenary and a warrior. From his ability to his actions, there wasn’t a single thing to be ashamed of. He was that great of a man.
‘Have I become the man worthy of becoming king like I’ve been telling myself?’
Pahell kept asking himself.
‘If I were a horse keeper or a farmer, it would’ve been alright for me to live as a coward. But I am the man to take the throne.’
The world was not an easy thing to navigate, and Pahell laughed bitterly.
“I’m not special.”
It was a truth that he never wanted to admit. Pahell made a rug out of his cloak and fur and tied it to Kylios.
“After all that bleeding, he’s still as heavy as hell.”
Pahell grabbed Urich by the upper body and dragged him onto the rug.
“You got this, Kylios.”
Kylios neighed softly as he dragged the rug that Urich was resting on.
Pahell wandered for another day until he came upon a busy road. Fortunately, he met and joined a caravan that was headed to the city of Valgma. They entered the city gates within less than half a day, and it was after spending two more days in an inn in Valgma that Urich finally came to.
The next day, they were joined by Urich’s Brotherhood in the city.
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