Rafin spoke.
"Rewad, it's far so it'll be hard to see, but look closely. It looks like people built something out of wood over there."
Rafin pointed to the middle slopes of Mount Svartr.
"Where? I don't see it."
"You can see that rock shaped like an eagle's head over there. Right beside it."
Rewad looked beside the rock Rafin had described, the one shaped like an eagle's head. He could see something small made of wood. It was so far away that he couldn't tell what had been built out of the wood.
"Oh. I see it. It's too far to tell what it is. But it looks man-made."
"Then, we should search over there. I'll tell the commander."
Rafin went to Gerhardt and told him he could see a trace of people on Mount Svartr.
"You did well to spot something that far off. We couldn't go there and come back in one day."
"Then we'll need to pack camping gear."
"It's already afternoon, so it'd be best to go back to the meadow as we are today, pack food and camping gear properly, and head there tomorrow."
The soldiers searched Nordmar Gorge further in the afternoon. They found no trace of the barbarians at the mouth of the gorge.
The next day, a party of some 20, including Rafin and Rewad and the knights they served, Gerhardt and Lancis, packed food and camping gear and climbed Mount Svartr.
Gerhardt thought it would take several days just to reach the eagle-shaped rock they had seen yesterday. It was a wonder how Rafin had spotted the wooden structure, so far away it looked almost like a dot.
Since they wouldn't be able to see the eagle-shaped rock once they were inside Mount Svartr, Gerhardt fixed the surrounding terrain in his eyes as they approached the mountain.
Like Gerhardt, Rafin committed the lay of the mountain around the eagle-shaped rock firmly to memory.
They climbed the mountain for half a day without rest. The mountain wasn't all steep slopes. The mountain was so big that there was even flat ground on its middle slopes.
Gerhardt meant to rest and eat around here.
"We've climbed since morning without a single break, so we'll rest here before moving on. Eat."
The soldiers got the meal ready at once. The menu was soup made by boiling reindeer jerky in water, cheese, and dried plums.
The smell of the boiling jerky spread all over the mountain.
Rewad was eating beside Rafin. There were few trees on the flat ground on the mountainside, so the sky was easy to see, and at the edge of the flat ground the trees were still thick.
Rewad was chewing a dried plum when gray shapes began to appear among the trees at the edge of the flat ground.
They were animals, gradually showing themselves. They looked quite large.
A few gray animals, sniffing, came all the way out from among the trees. They looked like wolves, but they seemed twice the size of a full-grown wolf.
They seemed to have come following the smell of the boiling soup.
Wolves that big had to be dire wolves. He had to warn everyone.
"Dire wolves have appeared."
Everyone heard Rewad and looked to one side. There were 3 dire wolves. Soon a few more appeared behind the 3.
The soldiers stopped eating and all took up their swords and shields.
Once they had all shown themselves, there were 5 dire wolves. The dire wolves were glaring toward the soldiers. They were getting ready to fight.
Gerhardt spoke.
"Those beasts think we're prey. They seem to think their size will let them beat us. Let's teach them a lesson. Everyone, form a square."
The soldiers formed a square. Then they raised their shields tight, up to their chins.
The 5 dire wolves were slowly closing in. One or two at a time, they tested the soldiers, coming closer and growling. Looking at the dire wolf that had come closest, Rafin saw that its shoulder height was as tall as a man.
An ordinary wolf would need five or six of its pack to hunt a single bison, but a dire wolf looked as if it could hunt alone.
When a dire wolf came close and growled, the breath from its muzzle carried the stench of rotting meat, and the gust was strong enough to blow the soldiers' hair about.
The smell must have been foul, because the soldiers grimaced.
Gerhardt spoke.
"They're threatening us one at a time, trying to break our formation. Keep your spacing and don't let the formation fall apart. Focus on defense for now. When I give the signal, that's when you charge. Get ready."
However much the dire wolves kept threatening, the formation didn't break. Since the soldiers only stood their ground on the defensive, the dire wolves seemed to let their guard down against any counterattack, and the sharpness of their movements gradually dulled.
Watching the dire wolves move, Gerhardt sensed that the moment to attack was coming.
Two dire wolves came close, growling. They bit the shields. Just then, Gerhardt shouted.
"Now."
The formation broke apart and the soldiers attacked with their swords. One dire wolf let go of the shield and pulled back, dodging the sword stroke.
But the other had its shoulder cut by a soldier's sword.
— Yelp
Perhaps because dire wolves were canines too, it made exactly the same sound as a dog.
The dire wolf with the cut shoulder ran back to its pack in a hurry.
Gerhardt spoke.
"Re-form the ranks. If the formation breaks, they'll pick us off one by one."
As they re-formed the ranks, Rafin moved to a spot where he could face the dire wolves.
Just as before, the dire wolves took turns coming close, growling and threatening to break the formation. A dire wolf's gaping muzzle was big enough to take a man's upper body in one bite.
The eyes of some of the soldiers wavered with fear.
This time 3 dire wolves bit down on shields and hung on. Their bite was so strong the soldiers almost lost their shields.
Gerhardt shouted.
"Now."
Rafin had been waiting only for Gerhardt's order to attack. To draw the dire wolf biting his shield closer, Rafin pulled his shield back and swiftly stabbed his sword into the dire wolf's throat.
Rafin thrust so deep that his hand almost touched the dire wolf's neck. The tip of the sword came out the back of the dire wolf's neck.
Struck in a vital spot, the dire wolf collapsed on the spot.
With the square formation broken up, the dire wolves charged all at once when one of their pack was killed.
A melee broke out.
Rewad wounded a dire wolf in the flank and the leg. Even as he attacked, he kept his shield raised high to protect his upper body.
A few other soldiers had been bitten on the legs and arms by dire wolves; chunks of flesh had been torn away, and they were bleeding badly.
Their wounds had slowed them sharply, and if things went on like this, they were in danger of being torn apart by the dire wolves.
Rafin ran fast to save them. This time too, he went for the neck. He brought his sword down on a dire wolf's neck.
The dire wolf's head came off before it even had time to howl. Rafin could feel that the speed at which he had just run, and the feel of bringing his sword down on the dire wolf's neck, were different from before.
He could tell with his body that he had become faster and stronger.
Rafin wondered when this change had begun, but there was no room to think about that now.
Three soldiers worked together to finish off one dire wolf.
Now only two dire wolves remained. Perhaps they had decided they had no chance now; they tucked their tails and backed away.
Gerhardt shouted.
"No need to chase them. Let them run. Treat the wounded soldiers with potions, quickly."
The two dire wolves vanished into the undergrowth. The wounded soldiers were treated with potions and soon recovered. Their wounds were healed, but they had lost a lot of blood, and it would take time to regain their strength as well.
The search party set out again toward the eagle-shaped rock. A day passed, and the wounded soldiers recovered their strength too.
After the battle with the dire wolves, Rafin thought hard, as they climbed the mountain, about how his fighting skill had improved by leaps and bounds.
Rafin's body remembered the moment he had faced the blue light of the Eye of the Corridor at the Temple of Krilmar.
'That's right. It was that moment.'
As they climbed the mountain, Rewad recalled Rafin finishing off the dire wolves. Even for the winner of the jousting tournament, he thought, it would be hard to kill a dire wolf as big as a bull in a single stroke.
Rewad asked Rafin.
"A dire wolf can't be any weaker than Sir Folke......."
"What do you mean?"
"How can you finish off a dire wolf the size of a bull so fast? I knew you were strong, but I didn't know you were this strong."
Rafin could feel that he was far stronger now than even in his past life. In this life he had trained hard under Master Ivan's guidance since he was little, but in yesterday's fight with the dire wolves he had come to know it for certain.
"Only figured that out now? Hide your skill most of the time, then step in and fix things when it's critical. That's how you look impressive."
"Haha. So you had a plan."
"That's right. So treat me well from now on."
Rafin patted Rewad on the shoulder.
"Understood. I'll serve you well from now on."
Rewad gave Rafin a playful little bow.
The search party kept climbing the mountain. Seeing the lay of the mountains around them, Gerhardt knew they were nearly at the eagle rock. He spoke to Rafin beside him.
"You see the eagle rock over there? Another half day and we'll be there."
"Yes. I see it. It's far, all right. It took us several days just to come this far to the eagle rock on Mount Svartr. And even the road from the meadow to the eagle rock is only a tiny part of Mount Svartr."
"Even Mount Svartr alone, you can't see where it ends."
"Then the Grimhall Mountains as a whole must be enormous."
"Of course."
Before coming to Orpul, no, even counting his past life, Rafin had thought the barbarians were people who lived only in some narrow place at the end of the world.
But now, at this moment, standing on his own feet on a tiny part of the Grimhall Mountains and thinking it over again, he thought it might be the other way around.
Half a day passed, and they had nearly reached the eagle rock.
Gerhardt spoke.
"It's getting dark. That's it for today. We'll camp here and plan to go to the eagle rock tomorrow morning."
After spending the night, the search party reached the eagle rock the next morning. Seen up close, the rock was the size of a small keep.
And near the eagle rock stood houses made of wood.
The search party was surprised that there were houses where people lived, deep among these layered mountains. Gerhardt, at the very head of the search party, was looking at the houses built near the eagle rock.
Gerhardt thought the barbarians must have built the houses while staying here. But there was something strange.
Gerhardt spoke to Lancis beside him.
"Isn't something odd about the houses? Why are they so big?"
"I know. The doors look two or three times bigger."