Luagarne's head had no time to rest as she grasped the scale of the approaching enemy and the movements of her own side. She mulled over part of the situation she had thus assessed.
'Should I call it madness, or should I call it boldness?'
If not that, are they just probing?
'They're probing.'
If you can't respond to the movement Rihinstetten's army showed, the war ends before it even begins.
Rihinstetten advanced while sending a work group forward. The vanguard doesn't stop and just keeps pushing in as is.
All while fronting a large biological weapon called an elephant. Its gray skin, with no demon-beast's blood mixed in, looked as if it could easily bear even a giant riding on it.
They had no intention of stopping. That intent vividly prickled the skin. Oil ran across the surface of her skin, making it glossier and slicker than usual. It was because the momentum exhaled by the massed army acted as a stimulant to a Frog.
Looking at the elephant unit swinging their trunks, the soldiers would feel dizzy. This is losing from sheer momentum. If you do nothing, that's obviously how it will go.
Of course, the moment Luagarne caught their movement, she responded in a way that fit it exactly.
"If necessary, the order of knights will step out to the vanguard."
A gray-haired knight right beside her spoke. Instead of answering Cypress's words, Luagarne closed her eyes. She'd been darting her eyeballs here and there so much she felt a stiffness.
'If necessary.'
That phrase meant one thing. Cypress understood what Luagarne had set in motion amid a rapidly changing situation.
"Quick on the uptake."
The Frog opened her eyes and spoke.
"I've lived seventy years on quick wits alone."
"Right, even at a young age your wits are extraordinary."
Luagarne offered praise once again. Cypress smiled at the Frog's joke.
"Seventy is a very great age for a human, Frog. You seem to have considerable faith in the human who went out there."
At those words the Frog's cheeks puffed. The pale parts bulged round, like they'd pop with a flick. That's how much they puffed up.
"If he gets pushed, then step in. If he gets blown away by one casually thrown punch, even if the order of knights steps up, we'll lose this fight."
Luagarne peered into the future based on the Frog's unique insight and on the experience she had accumulated.
A tomorrow that may happen and may not.
If you start getting pushed, you'll have to meet enemy knights while encircled by the enemy. After that, the enemy can send out multiple knights and choose a chariot-wheel battle, or they can expend their troops and fight while gnawing away at our knights' stamina and mental strength.
'How many enemy knights?'
Three? Five? Ten? Don't know. Only that it won't be few. It's right to assume at least equal numbers to ours. Even if the headcount differs, when you compare fighting power, that's what fits.
The worst case is that they're superior.
Well, once the line starts to buckle, that's the end of it. Especially since that won't even be them throwing in their full strength.
It's just one casually tossed punch. If we collapse against that, the fight doesn't even establish. It's a losing fight from the start. It becomes the kind of battle that doesn't even need to begin.
She could hear the words thrown by the High Pontiff's will, or by the High Pontiff's strategist.
"Now then, if you can't even block this much, this is where it ends."
They didn't literally say that, but their intent is obvious, isn't it.
They had no intention of dragging the fight out.
'It feels like watching a fight between an adult and a child.'
This was her honest feeling. Only, the child on this side was watched over by heaven and endowed with a unique talent.
Conversely, the side that looked like the adult, apart from talent, was thrusting out a fist as if to test us.
"It's as always, but seeing trust and faith, directed at someone is a delightful thing."
Cypress spoke with his arms folded. Luagarne's gaze slipped from the battlefield for a moment and turned to the human named Cypress. Contrary to his composed tone, a strange heat glimmered in his eyes.
In other words, they were the same eyes as someone sitting at a so-called gambling table. The eyes of one who anticipates a thrilling pleasure.
"Amusing."
He muttered again. In that manner of speaking could be glimpsed the trace of Enkrid.
'Perhaps it should be called natural.'
Even in the guardian deity who had protected Naurillia for more than half a life, madness could be glimpsed. One wonders whether the word "ordinary" suits a knight at all, but Luagarne thought it was a madness different from that of an ordinary knight.
Just as with Enkrid and the madmen.
Her gaze turned back to the battlefield. More precisely, she became aware of those taking positions in three directions.
One is a swordsman who, contrary to expectations, intruded into enemy territory at will.
Another is a barbarian and a beastkin. Those two know how to use their heads. Or to be more precise, the barbarian does.
He will move with the beastkin in tow and, by an instinctive sense, find soft spots to stab and churn.
'You're the linchpin.'
The last is a young man in the center leading part of the army out. A human male who, by Cypress's standard, is young.
His name is Lawford; excluding Enkrid, he had spent the most time with Luagarne and was a genius who absorbed the experience she possessed.
'There are few better than you when it comes to leading a unit and reading the tide of battle.'
Luagarne's trust was grounded in what he had shown to date.
If Pel and Lawford simply fought one on one, Pel had the advantage. Lawford barely kept up.
But what if you fight with a hundred soldiers at your back?
In mock battle training, Pel had not once beaten Lawford. It was one of the reasons Lawford was far more popular among the soldiers than Pel, apart from looks, behavior, and training methods. His judgment and talent shine in particular circumstances.
Lawford, leading a unit, will fulfill his role anywhere, whether as vanguard or on the left or right wing.
Telling him to take a work group out was telling him to prevent this battle from ending before it even begins.
***
Rihinstetten's army advanced with the entire force divided into four—vanguard, left and right wings, and rear. Among them the vanguard unit kept coming without stopping. They looked to have no intention of stopping.
'An army that, if necessary, will fill a river and build a bridge across a cliff to move forward.'
That's what Rihinstetten is, as Lawford knows it.
'What does that statement imply?'
First is belligerence.
'Second is that they've fought that much.'
Seeing the enemy formation now, those words naturally rose. Lawford repeated his thinking. A broad view and situational awareness were his specialties.
Grasping the surrounding situation isn't done by checking every last thing with your eyes. Something more is needed, and its foundation was the power of thought.
It's like seeing a person walking and recognizing where they'll be standing three steps later.
To this he overlaid parts of the sensory technique he learned from Jaxon, and added tactics and variables he learned through Luagarne. Lawford felt his head heating up.
The enemy's momentum pricking his skin like stings seemed to be mixed with their will.
'The vanguard unit will simply smash in.'
The calculation begins. Everything he knows is aggregated, stacked up layer by layer, and then mixed again. The same process repeated countless times.
What was he seeing—his pupils moved ceaselessly left and right.
Pel waited with the Idol-Slayer slung over his shoulder.
It's quite an unpleasant thing to move at that man's command, but still, what should be acknowledged is acknowledged.
In fights that lead a unit, this man becomes an entirely different person.
While Pel was standing there, vacantly waiting his turn, Lawford opened the eyes he'd had closed. His gaze snatched up two factors the enemy overlooked.
'Ragna, Rem.'
The two moved. Knowing what those two are like, he could also anticipate how they would move. That doesn't mean they'll act exactly as he intends.
'Rem will keep poking and getting on the enemy's nerves.'
As a matter of outcomes, he knows what he'll do.
'Ragna is the opposite. He'll put his sword to everything that offends his eye.'
Judging by their usual tendencies, you'd think the opposite, but Lawford knows. Rem moves more cleverly than one would think, and Ragna uses his head less than one would think. Their actual tendencies differed from appearances.
'What I have to do here is—'
Take the vanguard's blow and prevent them from establishing themselves where they want.
'The reason they sent out a vanguard—'
Lawford saw that much. He saw it, he knew it, and because he predicted it, what he had to do was also clear. And he had the variables named Rem and Ragna on his side as well.
"Pel."
"Speak."
Pell looked at the huge creatures coming from up ahead. Judging by bulk alone, they were far larger than any bison of the wastes. Killing that would be his role.
"From this moment, you're our unit's guardian."
"Right, I'll cut down that hunk of—what?"
"While the armies are clashing, run your soles sweaty, and help the soldiers in danger."
Lawford knows Pel. He even prided himself on knowing Pel best within the order of knights.
'His stamina and reflexes are outstanding.'
In fights limited to the simple crossing of swords, his judgment is above first-rate.
Only, once you move to the side of coordinating the entire battle situation, all his abilities fade.
'A talent concentrated to a peculiar degree on one side.'
That's how Lawford sees Pel. He knows it because they've clashed countless times. He knew very well that if it were a fight with lives on the line, Lawford himself would find it hard to beat Pel.
'Of course, there's no way I'd admit that out loud.'
He had not the slightest intention of admitting it, even if his neck were half cut through.
"We're busy. Move, country bumpkin."
"You crazy bastard?"
Even as he said that, Pel set his feet as Lawford told him. What Lawford wanted was clear.
Slip in among our formation and fight. The objective is simple. As far as his perceptive ability permits, approach the soldier in danger, take the attack in his stead and fight.
"Entire force, deploy in line abreast."
Lawford then gathered officers and spoke. Several junior commanders moved to his orders.
This side is elite too, if you call it that. It means they are those who rolled their bodies in dangerous battlefields and survived.
The unit that moved to Lawford's orders met elephants and giants wielding spiked mauls. Seen like this, it looked like a mantis blocking the way of a rolling boulder.
If the two fight, which side gets crushed? There's no need to strain for an answer. It was also clear which side ought to be the one to get scared.
'If the soldiers' minds collapse, then it isn't even a fight.'
So judged Lawford. In that sense, Pel slipping in among our units was a truly right call.
That soldier-ant caught between mantises is a monster who, alone, not only stops a wagon but even smashes it.
"What are you looking at? They say we fight together. I'm dying of regret I can't just hack up that hunk."
At Pel's offhand words, the morale rose. It's the effect of a knight fighting shoulder to shoulder with them. All the more since Pel had already carried out antics that stood out glaringly to their side's eyes.
The way he drew a line across the ground and dodged the enemy's thrown arrows, spears, shields, swords, and the like left a deep impression on everyone.
On top of that, the king right at his side stood up for him and respected his will.
It may be hard to ask these people to believe him on the same level as the Red Cloak Order of Knights right this moment, but perhaps it's fair to say he held a position sufficient to give a stability on par with it.
Lawford stood on both feet and drew his sword.
Chring.
His speed was slow, but his movements were made large. In that way, after gathering everyone's gaze, he struck the spear-shaft of the soldier standing beside him with the sword he drew before the unit arrayed in a line abreast.
Thump.
A small sound rang. The startled soldier turned his head to the side.
"Loosen up."
He then swung his sword sideways again. He tapped the blade of a junior officer on the right with a flick. The officer blinked and looked back at Lawford.
"Are you worried about that hunk?"
Lawford asked in a light tone. Just from the tone, there was no sense of threat at all—only calm.
"Wouldn't a man be crazy to feel relief seeing that?"
The officer answered.
Standing in the vanguard also meant he was that bold. Both the soldiers and the junior officers who stepped out to the front lines might have been tense, but they weren't cowed.
'A fine army.'
Even so, Lawford regretted the Border Guard standing army. Someday the day would come when he would fight shoulder to shoulder with those he had trained and rolled with.
Shaking off stray thoughts, Lawford watched the front. He saw a familiar silhouette moving beside a great hunk draped with jangling scraps of cloth all over its body, bearing a saddle that, if you set it on a horse, would be a load just like that.
Because it moved at a right angle to the direction the enemy squad was advancing, it caught the eye easily.
Rem doesn't move like that. Even at a distance where you couldn't see the face, the reason it was obvious who it was.
"My nickname is the Border Guard's Prophet. Now then, here's a prophecy. That hunk is about to topple and die."
Lawford pointed a finger to one side. The expression of the soldier holding a spear turned strange. He wrinkled his brow and the bridge of his nose.
It meant, what kind of bullshit is that.
Naturally, it was a lie, but there were a few soldiers who had said something similar to Lawford during mock training.
That he was one who heard the whispered words of the god of fate.
Chewed over, that meant something like "prophet." Strictly speaking, it was the result of him exercising the insight only he brought to bear on the battlefield.
He also mixed in what he learned from Enkrid—how to say the right thing at the right moment.
The soldier's expression changed abruptly. In his gaze, an elephant—the great biological weapon the south prided itself on—tipped and toppled.
Koo-oom.
Soon, with a tremor that shook the ground, blood geysered like a fountain up ahead. A great fountain of blood that entered the eyes of everyone positioned in the area.
In front of that would be a swordsman with a greatsword named Sunrise.
"Because the prophecy came true, I became a prophet."
LAwford muttered, then drew in a breath, gathered it, and shouted.
"Hold your grounds!"
A charge is a bad move. So judged Lawford. This unit, at any time, would recreate what Enkrid did.
In addition, if earlier Pel drew a line and blocked thrown weapons with an imaginary wall, this time a wall made of an army would block the enemy vanguard.
"We are the wall!"
Lawford shouted again. The force carried on the cry that burst forth as the prophecy came true soaked into all our side.
Timed to that, the west's greatest hunter moved as well.