“Do you really have to bring that longsword?”
It was right before they were to depart from the campsite, their temporary garrison. Finn was pointing at Enkrid and Torres’s gear.
“Can’t I?”
“You’ve never climbed over a city wall before, have you?”
Of course he hadn’t. Climbing over a wall wasn’t exactly something people did for fun.
“I’ll say it again. Go as light as possible. If you wear that thick padded armor, you’ll collapse before you even start climbing the wall.”
Finn was right. Getting over the rocky hill itself was already a job. By the time they crossed the rocky hill and arrived before the wall, Enkrid thought he was glad he’d listened to her.
“As light as possible.”
That was the key. Finn lowered her body and stuck herself to the ground, creeping close to the wall. Enkrid and Torres also lowered their bodies and followed.
He could see torches flaring to life in the defense towers set between sections of the wall.
“Is it really possible to sneak in like this?”
A chill crept over his spine. The grass at their feet barely reached his shins, not nearly enough to hide a person. And it wasn’t like the moon was faint tonight either.
If only it were raining so no one could see well. But everything was bright. Even without torches, out on a wide plain, spotting a moving person seemed far too easy.
His heart pounded. He felt like he’d end up skewered by an arrow long before he ever climbed the wall. If not for the Heart of the Beast, his legs might have already started shaking.
Ahead of him, he saw Finn’s back leading the way. Her posture was low, but she moved forward without the slightest hesitation. There was no sign of doubt in her steps.
“She must have something up her sleeve.”
He didn’t know. After all that, they finally reached the base of the wall. They’d come a long way, sweating cold sweat the whole time.
Of course, if they’d decided to sprint, they could have closed that distance quickly. But the flickering silhouettes moving atop the defense towers killed any thought of that.
“So this route you took… it really avoids the defense towers’ line of sight?”
Maybe Torres was feeling the same, because as soon as he pressed his back to the wall, he whispered quietly. Finn answered, and her answer was ridiculous.
“No. If we got spotted, I was just going to run for it.”
“…What?”
“We didn’t get caught, did we? Then it’s fine. I watched them before. On bright moon nights they slack off a bit. If they were our guys? Not a chance. Really.”
It wasn’t some great trick. She’d left it to luck.
“Crazy.”
Torres muttered.
Enkrid felt much the same. But if he flipped his thinking just a little, it did seem somewhat reasonable.
“If we get spotted, we run.”
To chase a ranger on foot, they’d need at least cavalry. But what kind of land was this? Land of monsters and beasts.
The worst place possible for cavalry. If some griffon that loved horse meat showed up, well, that would be that. A griffon was a monster that required at least a platoon of trained elite soldiers if you didn’t have a knight-level fighter.
He didn’t know if there were griffons here, but either way, cavalry…
“No chance.”
So that gave them an answer. Pick a night when they’re unlikely to get caught, walk right up, and stick to the wall. If they got unlucky, arrows would fly.
But what master archer could hit a vague shadow at night with perfect accuracy? It was a bold approach, using the bright moon and the enemy’s carelessness. So— “You spent the whole day planning to climb the wall at night, didn’t you?”
He must have chosen a night with dual moons like today on purpose. When Enkrid murmured that, Finn turned her head. The moonlight lit half her face, leaving one side in shadow, the other washed in silver.
Finn pursed her lips in a small sound of admiration.
“Oh? Sharp, aren’t you? On dual-moon nights like this, they loosen up. You saw the shadows pacing in front of the towers, right? There were at most two per tower. That means their numbers are low.”
Enkrid nodded and turned his gaze. He counted the defense towers rising up from the wall. Four in total.
Two guards per tower.
Not many.
“Once we’re up, there’ll be a corridor-like passageway.”
The walkway atop the wall wouldn’t be that wide. The Cross Guard’s wall and the Border Guard’s wall had been built in the same era.
“So the layout should be similar.”
In his head, he drew a picture. What to do after they got on top. There was a huge difference between moving with a plan in your head and just going with the flow.
Enkrid wasn’t the only one thinking.
“Hope we don’t waste all our strength just climbing up.”
Torres was the same. He worried about what came after. Finn just shrugged at that.
“We’ve come this far, so we’re going. I’ll trust in your stamina and grip strength.”
Enkrid lifted his head again, judging the height of the wall. Roughly three to four times his own height.
“This way.”
Finn started guiding them again. Following her lead, they arrived at a section of the outer wall. It was also where the defense towers cast deep shadows under the passing moon.
Once their backs were pressed tightly to the wall, everything around them turned pitch-black. Far off, torches burned atop the towers. Right beside him, he could feel Torres and Finn breathing.
Bwoo—!
From very far away, the call of night birds echoed. Aside from that, ten steps to either side and the ground was washed in bright moonlight, while here they stood in complete, opposite darkness. In the jet-black dark, Finn’s eyes glimmered faintly.
By day they held a shade of brown, but right now in the dark, all he saw was a strange glint.
“They don’t guard the wall as tightly as you’d think. Especially people who stop you from scaling the wall itself? Very rare. All you’ve got to do is not get seen by the patrol guards.”
“You know their patrol timing, or have someone on the inside?”
“As if.”
“So we’re leaving it to luck again.”
Finn and Torres whispered to each other. But Enkrid didn’t think this plan relied only on luck.
“The moonlight.”
You use their carelessness, get over the wall, and then just hide in the city.
“On this side is the slums. As long as you hide properly, you’re fine.”
The patrols in this area would be much fewer than elsewhere.
Of course.
Even the Border Guard was like that. What soldier would willingly walk among foul stinks and beggars constantly reaching out at them? Especially at night, when some half-mad vagrant could jump them out of nowhere.
So their entire movement here, even if not perfectly calculated, was soaked in experience.
“You’ve done this before.”
“You really do have a sharp edge to you.”
Who would easily imagine someone climbing a city wall at all? That was exactly why it was loosely guarded. And when they’d even dug a crawl hole tunnel as another option— Who would choose climbing the wall as a way to sneak into the Cross Guard?
Very few.
So it became the safest method. Of course, it came with pain. From the rocky hill route, to all this prep for climbing the wall.
Nothing about this had been easy.
“Ptoo.”
Finn spat on her hands and rubbed them together, then slung a leather pouch at her waist at an angle. The pouch was full of stone powder. She sprinkled it over her hands and rubbed them, then started climbing.
She found gaps to hook her fingers in, pushed off the ground, and hugged herself to the wall. Even if they’d tried to stack the stones neatly, a stone wall like this had plenty of cracks here and there. As she scrambled up, Finn began driving pitons into the cracks in the wall from her belt, at a slant.
Angled so they formed a diagonal line from above downwards. She then hooked ropes onto the pitons and let them hang, before climbing higher again with just her hands and feet.
“You think you can copy that?”
“Me? No way.”
Enkrid and Torres hid in the shadow cast by the wall blocking the moonlight, heads tilted back as they talked. Climbing the wall, Finn looked like a monkey. Or a nimble squirrel.
Just like that, she hung ropes as she went and did her job. Then Enkrid and Torres grabbed the ropes and began to climb. The diagonally driven pitons creaked, shedding stone dust.
But they never popped out. And it wasn’t like you could climb just by holding the rope. Whenever they saw a gap between the rough stones, they wedged their toes in, or hung by their fingertips.
They, too, had stone powder on their hands, grabbing the rope at times, jamming feet and fingers into the cracks at others, and resting there to catch their breath. Looking up earlier, he’d thought it would be quick.
“Feels like I’m going to die.”
It was harder than he’d imagined. Even Enkrid, hardened by the Technique of Isolation training, felt the muscles in his arms and legs start to ache. Especially his forearms, which throbbed.
And that was despite all the training he’d gone through holding and swinging a sword every day.
“Depending on the movement, you use different muscles every time.”
For no reason, Audin’s words came back to him. Thinking of it that way, climbing the wall was actually a good way to practice the Technique of Isolation. Looking up, he saw Finn climbing smoothly, as if it were nothing.
In any case, if there’s a beginning, there’s always an end. After all that grunting, they managed to reach the top of the wall, which was about three or four times the height of a grown man. Carefully, Enkrid hooked his hands and feet over the edge, hauled himself up, and rolled his body over.
As his feet touched the floor, Enkrid thought there was no one around. His instincts and Sixth Sense said so. So he let himself relax a little.
“You really worked hard to climb up in the middle of the night.”
A voice spoke as if it had been waiting for that very moment. A clear, ringing woman’s voice. Right after that, a sharp snap sounded.
Fwoooosh.
Three or four more torches flared to life between the torch racks where moonlight spilled. He had no idea what trick she’d used. But with just a snap of her fingers, she’d lit the torches.
It was impressive. Like something you’d see at a circus. Impressive, but not something to stop his hands and feet over.
“Huuuk.”
The moment the bright torchlight stung his eyes, Enkrid sucked back the breath that had risen to his throat from the climb and snapped his hands into motion. His hand flashed past his belt, and a dagger leapt from it. Since the Whistle Dagger’s sound was a problem, he used a normal throwing knife.
But the way he threw it, just as he’d been taught, was razor sharp.
Thud!
Right behind Enkrid’s flying dagger, another knife hissed through the air. But instead of hitting a shield or anything, both daggers bounced off midair with a sound like drumsticks whacking some badly-made drum. Both of them.
“This really is some shitty luck.”
Torres’s voice came from behind him. He sounded resigned.
“Why?”
Without turning his head, Enkrid quietly palmed another pair of daggers.
“She’s a mage.”
A mage?
A mage here? That was the first thought that crossed Enkrid’s mind. Only then did he fully see the woman standing alone between the torches.
Her figure cut across moonlight and torchlight. Long wavy hair, and eyes slit vertically like a snake’s. The distance was barely ten paces. Surrounding them were less than ten soldiers.
Every single one had a crossbow raised and aimed.
“Not good.”
Of course that was what he thought. The mage seemed ready to speak further, but— “Move!” Finn’s shout rang out.
At that, Enkrid reflexively dropped his stance and pressed himself flat against the narrow passage wall. Right then— Vwoom! A booming sound of something slicing through the air came from behind him.
Something heavy passed by his cheek and shoved the air aside. His skin felt it clearly.
“She threw an axe.”
Realizing this instantly, he focused forward and finally saw it. A transparent film reflecting the moonlight. If you really focused your eyes, you could barely make out the shield.
Clang!
The spinning axe hammered into the shield. Unlike when it blocked the daggers, a different sound rang out, and fine cracks spread across the barrier. The axe stopped in midair, looking as if it were embedded in the shield.
“Jump!”
Finn shouted again. The axe stayed frozen in the air.
Then— Crunch.
Its blade shattered, the handle crumpled and broke apart, then chunks of it clattered to the floor.
Ting-ting-ting, thud-thud-thud.
The mage who’d taken the axe apart midair curled up one side of her mouth.
Plain mockery.
A smile that said: Try whatever you want. At Finn’s shout, the first to throw himself off the wall was Torres. He moved the quickest.
He grabbed the rope hanging down the outside of the wall and used it to slow his fall. After him, Finn dove off the wall with her bare body, as if she were leaping on wings. If he rolled correctly, his legs wouldn’t break.
But in building terms, this was a fall from at least the fifth floor. Land wrong, and you die. Even so, she didn’t hesitate.
And as for Enkrid— “If I have to escape anyway…” He decided it would be better to at least stick a blade once into the mage. He sank low, gathered strength in his thighs.
He recalled the squire’s footwork he’d tried to copy once. He hadn’t made it his own in the end, but— Crunch, thunk! He kicked off the ground.
In an instant, he closed the distance, reaching for the mage’s neck. In his hand was a guard sword with a wide blade. If the shield could be cracked by an axe— “Then I’ll break it by force.”
And split her head. How had he killed that mage last time? Get in close and cut.
Invisible spells, you dodge them with instinct. He’d fought a mage before, so he had confidence. Quarrels might still fly, but that was for later.
As he closed the gap, Enkrid saw the mage’s eyes. Eyes split straight down, vertical. The moment he met that gaze, he almost lost all strength in his limbs.
Thump—!
The Heart of the Beast throbbed and held his muscles together. At the same time, a thought flashed through his mind.
“Got her.”
But sometimes, confidence was poison.
“There are ones who can fool your Sixth Sense. They’re dangerous. Mages are like that.”
Jacksen’s voice rose in his memory.
Squelch.
A wet tearing sound. And the pain that followed.
“Idiot!”
Finn’s voice yelled from below, toward the top. So he hadn’t died from the fall.
“Guh!”
In that sharp, almost heightened sense right before death, he heard Torres cough. When Jacksen had talked about mages— Because he’d already killed one. Because he’d dodged spells using his Sixth Sense.
He hadn’t paid proper attention. He’d brushed it aside.
“I did something stupid.”
Were all soldiers on the same level? All knights equal? Then what about mages?
They were all different. Enkrid looked at the barbed thorn-vines that had coiled around his arm and ended up piercing through his neck. The moment he thought he’d withstood the mage’s gaze, something had snaked up from the floor and wrapped his arm.
It was a thorny vine.
“I am Letsha of the Rose Vines.”
With the mage’s words, Enkrid closed his eyes. It was the second end of today. When the third “today” began, Enkrid once again trained his body and swung his sword.
Then, after practicing Torres’s Hide Knife, he switched out the thin practice stones. It was his way of making sure he remembered the third today. And then— “You said we could disguise ourselves as a merchant convoy at dawn?”
He asked about the third method of crossing the wall.