"Quicken your pace! Forced march!"
"Covert movement is abandoned! You may make noise!"
The Special Duty Corps changed its march speed.
Until now they had moved with great care and taken a long time clearing away even the traces of their meals; now there was none of that.
They didn't eat at all.
They marched chewing hard tack.
An operation looks complicated but is broadly composed of three elements.
Time, place, and situation.
Here the [place] was fixed to the altar, so it couldn't be touched.
The same for the [situation].
Nobody knew what the altar's surroundings were like.
But [time] was different.
Depending on how you managed it, it could be changed as much as you liked.
'They'll have a rough idea of when we'll arrive too.'
They probably thought it was a diversionary attack.
One striking at the same moment the pitched battle began at the front.
So he intended to break that.
Hit them earlier — or later.
But what use was there in dawdling in the barbarians' main territory.
In the end there was only one way to shake the board the enemy had laid.
Moving the attack far forward!
"This way!"
Guided by a man of the reconnaissance squad, they all ran through the forest.
Never mind the knights — the Special Duty men were veterans among veterans, and they covered the forest quite literally like deer.
How many times did they repeat running, walking and resting like that.
By the time not even half the targeted hours had passed.
The company at last arrived at their destination.
Hoooooo—
There was no need to check whether they had come to the right place.
Because far off in the sky, red hazes were rising toward the heavens like ascending vengeful spirits.
A light that raised the hair merely to look at.
It was unmistakably the altar.
"Enemy!"
The Special Duty Corps commander shouted and drew his sword.
The undergrowth sunk in darkness writhed madly.
Presently dozens of torches bloomed at once among the trees.
What was revealed beneath them was the barbarians' distinctive brown skin.
There was nothing to look at: enemies who had dug a trap and waited.
"March ends! Take defensive formation! We will receive the enemy's charge once here and then charge ourselves! Everyone defend and conserve your strength!"
Having confirmed the enemy, the corps commander shouted at once.
With darkness on all sides he couldn't know the exact number.
Still, inferring from the number of torches, at least 500.
Fewer than expected, and at the same time a heavy load.
Fighting one-to-one on a plain they could have massacred them easily, but this was a dark forest, and the enemy's own front room besides.
A fierce battle was foretold.
The one saving grace was the enemy's reaction.
Look at the state of them milling about, properly flustered.
It was proof that Delam's prediction had struck home.
Had they come crawling in covert movement as originally planned, it would have been not 500 but a thousand men before them.
"Defend! Defend!"
"Archers inside! Archers inside!"
At the corps commander's order the men reacted instantly.
The elite of the elite.
Veterans of a hundred fights, tempered by countless real engagements.
At the same moment they formed a ring, they sent the archers to the inside, and then the spearmen assembled their sectioned shafts.
Last, the men standing in the archers' direct line of fire stepped aside and shield-bearers plugged the front in their place.
The time that took was a bare twenty seconds.
The formation was complete before the barbarians could even react.
But that didn't make it all good.
You could tell just from the complexions of the knights attached to the corps.
"We are supposed to break the altar, and we take a defensive formation?"
"Corps Commander! Is this correct?"
"We must change to a wedge formation even now!"
The knights objected, but it was no use.
The corps commander shook his head, firm, with a hardened face.
At this the knights had no recourse either.
Their skill and rank might be a rung above his, but he was a corps commander to whom the Commander had personally delegated authority.
A knight lives by orders and dies by orders.
So there was nothing to do but comply......
The corps commander wasn't being an idiot, of course.
Without the knights dispersing the enemy's attack pressure, even the Special Duty Corps would take severe losses like this.
Which was why the corps commander asked.
Of Gillian, the eldest of the low-grade knights.
"Sir Gillian, this is a somewhat abrupt question, but... are you still wearing that sword ornament you always cherished?"
"Of course I— what!?"
"Sir Mitchell, your helm ornament has gone missing. Sir Talpim, I do not see the dagger you kept against emergencies."
"What are you talking ab— good heavens."
The knights, whose faces had twisted at the abrupt remark.
But then they looked for the named items and started in shock.
They really had vanished.
Things they had carried attached to their own bodies.
"I have all of them."
The corps commander rummaged in his pouch as he said it.
Out came a sword ornament, a helm ornament, and one dagger.
All of them things the knights had just lost.
"Forgive me. I wished to test Vice-Commander Delam's concealment ability, so I unavoidably laid hands on your belongings."
"......!"
"That is the sort of operation this is... I would be grateful if you would trust it."
The knights had the faces of men who wanted to press further.
Which was natural.
An item carried on your person vanishing without your knowing?
Put the other way around—
'If instead of taking the item he had stabbed my throat... would I have been able to dodge that attack?'
'A cold sweat comes over me!'
The god of death had come and gone out of nowhere.
The knights, gooseflesh rising along their spines, shivered.
Thanks to which the corps commander could be certain afresh.
That Delam's concealment ability was the real thing.
'I'm trusting you and only you, Delam.'
***
Chk, chk, chk.
A strange sound rang out in the oak forest.
The sound of something being driven in.
But there was nobody who heard it.
It was a situation where a thousand troops in all stood facing off.
With a tension in the air that would blow up if anyone moved even slightly, it was hard to pay attention to a small sound like this.
'Going smoothly.'
Thanks to which Delam was able to reach the top of an oak.
Then he stowed away the tools that had made those small sounds — the daggers he had used to climb, driving them alternately into the trunk.
The next thing he did was a run-up.
Snap!
He ran a short distance and floated his body.
Delam kicked off a branch and landed safely on the next tree.
He had crossed from tree to tree.
It was in fact a thing impossible for anyone but Delam.
However dense and hard the tissue of an oak might be, the gaps between the trees were wide and the branches on the thin side.
But Delam was barely fourteen.
The lightness that came of a body small compared to an adult's, mana that made up for insufficient muscle, and a sense of balance carried to the extreme made it possible.
"Hmm?"
One barbarian with good instincts raised his head and looked up.
He could discover nothing, of course.
Delam crossed leaving only a slight noise, and right now was the darkest time of the day, immediately before the dawn broke.
There was no way he could find a flying squirrel.
And Delam was an excellent assassin as well.
It wasn't his main line, but he had experience of it several times over.
'And the [wind], optimal for hiding one's presence, on top of that.'
The [wind] had already been thoroughly confirmed in the Special Duty training.
Rubian, an intermediate knight, hadn't been able to find him with him directly in front of her, so its stealth needed no mention.
Thanks to which, at this moment.
There was not the slightest exaggeration in saying Delam had already become one of the finest assassins even in the Kingdom of Fior.
Snap, snap, snap.
And so Delam ran on above the trees.
He moved with weight on accuracy rather than speed, but running through a sky with not one obstruction, his speed was tremendous.
And as he went, Delam thought.
'However I think about it, this is the only way.'
Originally his thinking had been the same as the knights'.
The plan of forming a wedge formation the moment they reached the altar's vicinity, crushing the enemy and bursting through to the altar.
With the knights opening the road in front and the Special Duty men shoving their heads in prepared to die, it wasn't a hard thing.
The chronic problem of the Sambala tribal confederation in particular.
Because the soldiers' tribes of origin were all different, organic cooperation couldn't be expected, so it would be easier than predicted.
'And after that?'
Congratulations!
You have broken through the enemy and reached the altar.
'Then now you die.'
The wedge formation's greatest weakness comes out at that moment.
The culminating point of the offensive!
The Special Duty men, halting their advance in order to break the altar, would be reduced to a tasty meal for the barbarians.
Elite or whatever else made no difference here.
In a space where movement was restricted, with enemies rushing in from all sides taking your comrades apart one by one, who could hold out?
They could break the altar in the process, of course.
Though the survivors would number zero.
'I have to prevent that. That's the road on which I live.'
Surviving alone was of no use whatsoever.
Since he wouldn't be able to get back to the encampment.
So only by keeping as many Special Duty men alive as possible did his own odds of getting out alive rise.
And make the mission succeed while he was at it.
What came out of agonizing over it was this operation.
Namely, going alone in secret and killing them all.
The altar would break automatically if only the shamans were killed.
So the intent was to assassinate and run.
'It's a thing made possible by the [wind], too.'
So far it was going smoothly.
He'd advanced roughly 500 meters on from the starting point.
But there was not yet a single barbarian who had spotted Delam.
And so Delam arrived at the altar.
A bare clearing made by felling every tree in the vicinity.
At its center stood an image carved from a lightning-struck old tree.
The carving looked like a person, and also like a monster.
It was probably one of Sambala's ancestors.
Some particularly mighty chieftain.
'What a mess.'
Delam clicked his tongue looking around the altar.
Nearby, the carcasses of a great many animals were heaped up.
The stench was so severe his nose was going numb.
Because the carcasses were, every one of them, putrefied.
You could tell from this alone.
What they were preparing was no weather change.
It was unmistakably Diaroia, the grand sorcery that spreads plague.
'Let's have a look.'
Delam concentrated his mind and surveyed the surroundings.
Ten shamans encircled the altar.
Each of them shook a distinctively shaped staff, a bronze mirror, a bell and the like while ceaselessly reciting what he presumed were runic letters.
And a good many barbarians surrounding them, of course.
At least fifty, by the look of it.
'It seems killing only five shamans should do it.'
As said, sorcery had the effect of one plus one plus one.
It was structured so that the more gathered, the more the power amplified.
Which was why they could use preposterous formulas.
There were weaknesses and side effects, of course.
If there weren't, who would be mad enough to be a mage in the first place?
Everyone would be learning sorcery.
At any rate, the most fatal weakness.
That was precisely the shaman himself.
The moment the sorcery triggers, a participating shaman loses a considerable portion of his mana and has to convalesce for at least several years.
And unlike magic, the casting time was long as well.
And if something happened to a participating shaman in the meantime?
The sorcery was cancelled outright.
The same held this time.
There were ten, so roughly half of them cut down and that was a cancellation.
The Special Duty men could go home laughing.
'Ah, damn, it's too far.'
But Delam smacked his lips.
Because every tree around the altar had been felled, there were no trees left to cross over to the shamans' vicinity.
Exactly five meters.
If only he could go five meters farther......
'No — I retract what I just said.'
Delam sighed, looking at one barbarian warrior.
An enormous man sitting alone in formal posture before the shamans.
Normally, when a knight's skill was comparable, you could roughly size him up.
You knew the moment you looked.
[This one is about like me!] or [This one looks shabbier than me!]
And if neither was felt?
'It means he's far stronger than me......'
Intermediate, probably — or senior.
There were only three senior knights in the Sambala tribal confederation, so with a pitched battle imminent, he wouldn't be here.
So by common sense, intermediate.
But is intermediate the name of some doghouse?
In Sambala that meant a war-chief, directly below a chieftain.
Reckoned in kingdom terms, the knight-order commander of a small domain.
'And if I charged him head-on alone?'
Nonsense.
The chance of winning was extremely low.
So he had to wait.
The fierce sounds of battle reaching his ears faintly even now.
The Special Duty Corps as Delam knew it could not lose to barbarians.
So if it looked like their side was being pushed, they'd send the troops near the altar over as support, and that would be precisely the chance.
'It'd be nice if that war-chief went himself.'
At any rate, now was the time to endure.
Delam took the locket from his breast and opened the lid.
Click.
The unchanging clear fragrance drove into his nose.
He felt his mind settle like a lake without a ripple.
"......!"
Just then an alarm bell rang inside Delam's head.
Hostility he wouldn't have noticed had his mind not been stilled.
Delam immediately turned his head downward.
And met them.
The war-chief's yellow eyes looking his way.
Those owl-like eyes.
BOOM!
The war-chief stamping his foot.
SHWEEEEK—!
And Delam loosing an arrow were nearly simultaneous.