Reincarnated to the Past 12: Clash (2) (Patreon)

Ureya grimaced as she ducked under the swing of an axe before lashing out with her sword. 

‘Short bursts like how Alan practices his sword swings!’ she thought to herself, and followed through with a jab. The tip of her sword sunk into the enemy’s crook of the neck before she pulled out, knowing fully well that it was a kill even if the raider was still standing, shocked and in pain. Instead of using her sword, she kicked him away before spinning and lashing out with her sword. 

The enemies surrounding her backed away, scared by her lethality before they used their numbers to rush her. 

It was just then that her brother rushed into the scene. Brown bearded, leather armored, as tall as Alan, and wielding a warhammer, he was her big brother. 

They covered each other’s back just like how their father taught them to fight (her reluctantly). He struck high, she struck low. She struck around, he demolished the most threatening looking enemy with a single strike of his hammer. 

Her brother’s friends rushed in to help, but they were weaker than her. Immediately, a few of them died.

And then-.

Ureya’s eyes widened as she realized that they were trapped in an encirclement. Then she saw a bunch of the raiders rushing towards her father’s position. 

Not too long afterwards, her father’s banner came down.

“No!” she shouted in horror.

-VB-

Reincarnated to the Past
Chapter 13: Clash (3)

-VB-

The center was dissolving.

The center, the most crucial formation for victory, was dissolving.

They were routing!

“Shit, shit, shit-!” I hissed before turning to my designated lieutenant, the man currently in charge of communication between myself and the spearmen. “Stop advances! We need to support the center, now!” I roared over the screams and roars of friends and enemies alike.  

The man looked surprised with his gaping mouth and wide eyes underneath his rudimentary leather helmet, but then he heard the shouts from the center of the battlefield. His eyes shot towards there, but that’s not what I needed him to do!

I grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. “Send the order now!”

Startled by my shout before he hurriedly pulled out a hollowed out lamb’s horn. He blew into it and -.

PTHOOOOOOOOOOOO~!

My entire flank paused before they came to a slow stop. 

Then they began a slow march backwards.

“Alan!”

I whirled around, just in time for my eyes to see a launched spear soaring down towards me. With finesse I wasn’t sure I had before, I pulled out my sword and struck the tip of the spearhead with the flat of my blade just as it got within an arm’s length of my head. I pushed up and the spear ricocheted off of my blade, launched over my head and away from the rest of my troops. 

I turned to the person who’d called for me and my eyes widened in surprise. Hoktim was one of the spearmen? 

“Hoktim?” I gasped in surprise, unable to help myself. 

“What are you doing, lad?! Go and help the center!”

I hesitated, but I knew that if the center fell, there was no chance for the rest of the Kettins to defeat a numerically superior foe.

“Hoktim, you’re in charge! Hold formation and do not let anyone run!”

The grizzly man nodded before he quickly pulled out of the second line of spearmen’s rough formation and into the center of the crossbowers and the spearmen. “You heard the commander! Hold formation and stick those Scythians motherfuckers with arrows and spears!”

Then I burst away from the left flank’s rear, speeding towards the still falling center formation. Some of the closer raiders from their right flank tried to shoot me, but their arrows moved as slow as 10x slow motion for me. I didn’t even deign to use my sword to parry them. I moved just a bit out of the way, stepped just a bit forward, lurched to the left a bit, and jumped high. In doing so, I dodged them all without expending unnecessary energy. 

Then I was upon the rear flank of the Scythian’s center formation; the idiots had pushed too far too fast in their battlelust. 

And there, upon their horses, were the commanders (if the shiny and colorful decorations said anything along with far better equipment than the rest of the soldiers). 

I wasted no time. I brought out my crossbow and knelt on one knee to the ground without coming to a complete stop. My forward momentum moved my body in a skid, and I winced when I felt a sharp rock hit my knee. But I came to a stop no more than fifty yards away from the commanders. 

And I fired.

The first bolt flew and embedded itself into the left upper back of the most well armored cavalryman, piercing through where his heart should be. 

It took me two seconds to pull the lever back and reload the crossbow, and before they figured out where the bolt had come from, I fired another shot. 

This one missed.

“Fuck!” I hissed before drawing my sword and charging. 

My legs carried me thirty yards before they spotted me. The guards around the cavalrymen and the cavalry themselves drew their weapons, but only the guards moved to stop me. 

I dodged the first sword strike with only a turn of my shoulders and slit the throat of the first offender with only the tip of my blade. I took the dying man’s sword from his loose grip and threw it, and it landed precisely into the next attacker’s exposed stomach. As the second attacker went down screaming. I grabbed the second attacker’s hatchet before leaning back sharply to move out of the way from the third and fourth attacker’s high and low horizontal swings.

And with that stolen hatchet, I threw it.

It struck the banner pole of the Scythians, and I grinned triumphantly as their banner dropped. Then I drew in a deep breath and roared.

“KETTIN!” 

I struck down another attacker, and roared again. 

“KETTIN!”

…

“KETTIN!” 

It was a loud roar the thundered over the screams and clashes of metals. 

“KETTIN!” 

Ureya looked up from where she stood among four others of her tribe, her brother included, and gaped. 

“Their banner’s down!” 

Her brother snapped his head up once, the roar of their tribe’s name causing a brief lull in the battle, and he grinned. 

“KETTIN!” he roared.

Ureya jumped in surprise before she had to defend herself from her latest attacker. 

Her brother roared again, seemingly aware of something.

“KETTIN!”

…

Ghigari grimaced as he held his side, where one of the raiders had struck their spear into. Thankfully, he’d been protected by his armor, or he would have been dead on the spot. 

“KETTIN!”

He looked up from the arms of his elite guards dragging him away from the battle, and with it, the rest of the center. He watched in surprise as the enemy banner fell.

“KETTIN!” someone else from within the breaking center roared out. 

He grinned painfully.

‘Morale,’ he thought. ‘They mean to reignite our will to fight.’

“Unhand me!” he growled and his surprised guards (he’d been knocked out for a minute before this) turned to look at him. Surrounded by his guards, Ghigari was able to stand up. 

“Don’t just stand there! Take the fight back to the enemies! Their commander is down! I AM NOT!”

The center formed around him again, and he watched as his elite guards, including his second son, took charge of the center and began to push back against the confused enemies looking over their shoulder in surprise. 

“KETTIN!” he roared out painfully, still clutching at his side. 

…

When my rallying call was answered from the thick of the battle and from the now no longer routing Kettin center, I knew that I’d done my job.

My next job was to survive the fifty or so pissed off infantry and six cavalry. 

I jumped to my left to dodge and lunging spearman, and I punished him for overextension by slicing open his left stomach. He screamed in pain as he let go of the short spear to clutch at his side. I took that spear before it fell to the ground, spun with my sword to keep enemies away, and then when I came to an end of the 360 degrees spin, I chucked it as fast as my arm could throw it at the frontmost cavalry thundering down on my position. 

The spear flew true and struck my intended target: the neck of the horse. The gurgling neigh of the horse heralded its fall, and the surprised cavalry screamed as he fell with it too. 

I jumped back… just in time to see fifteen bolts fly over my head and strike at the Scythians nipping at my heels. 

I briefly glanced over my shoulder and saw that the left flank that I’d entrusted to Hoktim had fallen back so far that they’d actually caught up with me.

Unfortunately, that meant that we were now being attacked from the front and the side by the retreating Scythian center. 

It was all up to the center now.