The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar: Volume 18 E-Book

Seiichi Takayama

• Herausgeber: J-Novel Club
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 239

Beschreibung

The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar: Volume 18

Leseprobe

PROLOGUE

It was June 2, 1582. That night, Nobunaga’s eyes snapped open from his slumber, alerted by a feeling of hostility in his immediate vicinity. The air was heavy with a tension that couldn’t be explained by the presence of just one or two opponents. It needed several thousand warriors, perhaps even as many as ten thousand, to reach a level like this. Honno-ji Temple, where he was currently staying, was far from enemy territory, meaning the tension had to come from something other than an enemy army.

“Treachery! Just who is behind this?!” Nobunaga asked in a roar as his squire ran into his room. His squire was a good-looking young man in his mid-teens. The young man’s name was Mori Naritoshi. Nobunaga still called him Ran, however, coming from his childhood name of Ranmaru. Ran was a son of the late Mori Yoshinari, one of Nobunaga’s most loyal retainers, and he was blessed with a sharp mind. Nobunaga had recently begun to view him as one of his most promising retainers.

“My Lord, based upon the banners, I believe it is the armies of Akechi Koretou Hyuga no Kami!”

“Ah, is it him? Perhaps this is fate, then.”

Upon hearing Ran’s answer, Nobunaga realized his fate was sealed. His enemy’s forces numbered over ten thousand, and he had, at most, a hundred soldiers on his side. Certainly, Nobunaga had defeated enemies despite being badly outnumbered countless times before, but given the sheer gulf in numbers and the fact that he was surrounded, there was virtually no chance of him seizing victory here.

The best thing to do under the circumstances would be to run, but Honno-ji Temple wasn’t his castle; it had simply been a convenient stop on his journey, meaning there were no hidden escape routes. His only option would be to force his way through the envelopment to escape, but among the Five Great Oda Clan Generals, Akechi Koretou Hyuga no Kami Mitsuhide was the one Nobunaga rated the most highly. Mitsuhide was perhaps the perfect warlord; he was a supremely capable diplomat, governor, and general. He skillfully took care of whatever issue was placed before him and had no real weaknesses to speak of.

While Nobunaga had no intention of giving up without a fight, Mitsuhide had taken an extremely risky gamble. More than anything, he would try to secure Nobunaga’s head. Nobunaga knew deep down that he had almost no chance of escape.

“Tch. I let my guard down thinking I was in my own territory.” Nobunaga clicked his tongue bitterly as he picked up the bow and spear against the wall. With his supremacy secured, he had assumed that no one would dare resist him. This was the result of that arrogance.

“Seems I’ve grown feeble.” He sneered self-deprecatingly at himself. Had this unfolded in his youth, when he was constantly on guard for assassins, he would have likely realized the danger before Mitsuhide’s armies could surround him and would have easily made his escape. It was an awful thing, getting old.

“I’m not letting you mere underlings take my head!” With a roar of defiance, Nobunaga rapidly shot off arrows from the temple’s entrance. Over the years, Nobunaga had continued to hone his fighting abilities. His arrows quickly struck down the ashigaru that charged toward him. However, there were far too many enemies for him to handle. Every time he shot down one, ten times that number would take their place, sensing the opportunity to take a valuable head.

“Back, you damned cur!”

His enemies had finally reached his melee range, forcing Nobunaga to discard his bow and pick up his spear. He quickly beat down the ashigaru that lunged at him. More men continued to surge forward, and Nobunaga kept cutting them down as they approached. He swept them away and struck them down. However, he was but one man facing off against thousands. The drawn-out fighting sapped at his strength. He began to accumulate more and more small wounds...

Bang!

A gunshot rang out, and the ball pierced Nobunaga’s right arm.

“Guh!”

In response to the intense pain and the force of the impact, Nobunaga dropped his spear. The spears of the ashigaru tried to follow up, thrusting toward Nobunaga...

“Great Lord!”

However, Ranmaru’s spear swept aside the enemy spears. The spear points all were knocked off target, never managing to quite reach Nobunaga’s body. Still, it had been quite the close call.

“We can’t hold them here. Pull back, Ran!” Nobunaga ordered.

“Yes, my lord!” Ranmaru replied, his body already drenched with the blood of his enemies. Even so, he was still steady upon his feet, and as they continued their retreat, he cut down any enemies that gave chase.

“Heh. Impressive skill with that spear. It reminds me of your old man.”

Despite the current circumstances, Nobunaga bared his teeth in a grin. Ranmaru’s father, Mori Yoshinari, had been a master of the jyumonji spear, and had been known by the alias of “Sanza the Berserker.” Ranmaru had clearly inherited his father’s skill with the spear.

“I’m extremely honored by your praise. However, if things continue like this...”

“Mm, yes. Things are looking grim...” Nobunaga bitterly spat out the words. Far from finding a solution to his current predicament, things were clearly getting worse. Nobunaga was already severely wounded and was finding it difficult to move. It appeared that he had exhausted his options.

“Then this, too, is fate!” With that, Nobunaga kicked down two of the braziers that had lit the room. The fire quickly jumped to the floorboards, and the wooden floor began to burn in the dimly lit gloom.

“M-My Great Lord?!”

“Hrmph. I won’t allow that traitorous cur to have the honor of claiming my head!” With that remark, Nobunaga ran into the nearest room. Ranmaru followed after him, and soon after, a wall of flame blocked off the entrance. At the very least, this would buy them some time.

“Phew, at least we can take a brief rest.” Nobunaga plopped down in place with a sigh. This level of exertion was a bit much for a man who was nearing his fiftieth birthday.

“Perhaps this is a fitting end... Having invaded and burned all before me like a raging fire, for the flames to consume my body in the end would be rather poetic,” Nobunaga murmured as he stared out into space. Even the great Nobunaga could do nothing but accept his fate.

“A damned shame. To be a step away from conquering all, only to be tripped up by my own retainer...”

Had he fallen to a powerful enemy—someone the likes of Takeda, Uesugi, Hojo, Mori, or Honganji—he would have been able to accept his fate, though certainly, he would have still felt some measure of disappointment. Even if he knew that betrayal was a common fate to befall lords of the Warring States Period, dying in this way meant that the flame of ambition burning in his body would forever remain unfulfilled.

“Thirty years of work... It was all so close to coming to fruition. I was so close!”

Nobunaga had sworn that when he came of age, he would seek to conquer all beneath the heavens. In the thirty years since, he had focused single-mindedly upon that goal and charged through the world of the Warring States Period. He had been the pathfinder, paving the road toward reunification. Just as he was about to achieve his long-stated goal, someone had come to snatch it out of his hands. It wasn’t something he could forgive.

“It’s mine. This is my conquest. I won’t give it to anyone—not to this traitorous swine, and not even to my son! I’m the one who will be known as the conqueror!” Just as Nobunaga spat out the words in an almost mad spate of rage, the strange bronze mirror sitting in the corner of the room began to glow with an eerie light.

When Nobunaga came to, he found himself in an unknown land. He knew nothing about the language or the culture, but that meant nothing to him. He had overcome countless obstacles in the past. This was just another new challenge for him, which was why he would do here as he had always done. The oath he had sworn to himself in his youth hadn’t changed. All he would do in this new world was surge forward toward that goal. He would once again be the conqueror. Here, in the land of Yggdrasil.

ACT I

“I’m leaving the kids in your care, Mitsuki.” Yuuto did his best to sound cheerful as his wife boarded the carriage. He was about to set off to stop the forces of Nobunaga’s Flame Clan. Mitsuki had no doubt already heard that the Flame Clan was fielding an army of over a hundred thousand men, which was why Yuuto had put on a false air of nonchalance in an attempt to reassure her.

“Mmhm. Be careful out there, Yuu-kun. Make sure you come home alive.”

“Well, you’re the one setting off, you know.” Yuuto smiled teasingly and nitpicked at Mitsuki’s comment.

Mitsuki and the children would be departing from the Holy Capital with its residents and make their way toward the Silk Clan capital of Útgarðar. While she had no abilities that were of use in war, she had a vital role to play as a body-double for the late Sigrdrífa. While the people of the capital had, for the moment, accepted the need to evacuate, there was a high probability that some of them would be overcome with a longing for home and change their minds on the way. The presence of Sigrdrífa, who was beloved—even worshipped—by the people of Glaðsheimr, was the most effective measure to ensure that they continued on their journey.

“Hey! Don’t tease me when I’m being serious! I’m saying you need to come back to us!” Mitsuki puffed out her cheeks in a pout. Though she was now a mother of two, she still had a tendency to become flustered from even the slightest of prodding. It was precisely because Yuuto wanted to see her react like she was that he couldn’t help but tease her. He found that urge to be particularly strong when he was about to set off for war, perhaps because her expression was what brought him a sense of normalcy.

“Yeah, I’ll be coming back to you. I know how hard it is to be left behind.”

The losses of many people close to him, such as his own mother, Sigrdrífa, and Skáviðr, had left their scars on Yuuto’s psyche. He wanted to do everything he could to prevent his wife, children, and sworn family from experiencing that same pain.

“Do you swear?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

Mitsuki stretched her arm out from the carriage window and held up her pinky. Yuuto nodded and hooked his own pinky to hers.

“That’s a pinky swear, and if you break your promise, then you’ll have to swallow a thousand needles...” Mitsuki had been shaking her arm in tune with the little song, but her words caught in her throat at the end. Her eyes had filled with tears. No doubt she was worried about his safety and didn’t want to leave his side. Yuuto felt the same way.

“I promised, so I’ll make sure to keep it. Have I ever broken a promise?” Yuuto asked, squeezing Mitsuki’s pinky with his own.

“Lots of times.”

“Wha?! Wait!” Yuuto felt a sense of panic well up inside him upon receiving an unexpected answer. Yuuto thought he had done a pretty good job of keeping the promises he’d sworn to Mitsuki.

“You were always late when we were supposed to meet somewhere. I suddenly lost touch with you too. I was really worried about you...”

“Well, um, uh...” Yuuto knew he was at a disadvantage and mumbled nervously. As a patriarch, there were plenty of times when he couldn’t set aside his responsibilities to contact her. When things had gotten truly desperate, he had gone off to war without telling her. Since Yggdrasil was a land where one could never know what would happen in a conflict, no doubt those who had to wait on the sidelines were overwhelmed with concern.

“You’ve always kept the important promises though. You came home safely like you said, after all.” She was likely referring to that particular promise in the past tense because she was talking about how he had returned to Japan—to her side—after he had been transported to Yggdrasil.

“Which is why I’m going to trust you again, Yuu-kun... I believe in you, okay?”

“Yeah.” This time, Yuuto nodded solemnly.

“Okay.” Mitsuki finally seemed to have sorted out her own feelings on the matter and let go of his pinky. Still, there was a hint of anxiety on her features.

“It’ll be fine, Big Sister Mitsuki. He has an Einherjar at his side. In the worst case, I’ll pick up Big Brother and carry him to safety,” Felicia said reassuringly, patting her generous bust.

“Don’t carry me. I can run on my own,” Yuuto retorted, his brow furrowed. There was something embarrassing about the thought of being carried around by a woman. It had already been four years since he’d come to Yggdrasil, and he had trained every day over those four years. Even if he wasn’t at an Einherjar’s level, he at least felt he was more fit than your average soldier.

“I’ll leave him in your care, Felicia,” Mitsuki said, squeezing Felicia’s hand for emphasis.

“Rest assured that I’ll keep him safe,” Felicia replied, returning the squeeze with a look of determination. It seemed Yuuto’s unnecessary little remark had escaped the pair’s notice.

With an apologetic clearing of his throat, Jörgen, the Steel Clan’s Assistant Second and Wolf Clan patriarch, addressed the three: “Ahem. Father, Mother, it’s about time we departed.”

He had been serving as the commander of the city’s garrison in Yuuto’s absence, but now that Yuuto had returned, Jörgen was now in command of the migrant caravan. It had been a choice made based on Jörgen’s remarkable abilities in coordinating logistics and administration.

“Ah, right. Sorry about that.”

Most of the migrant caravan had already set off. Without Sigrdrífa’s carriage among them, no doubt the people might start to wonder if they’d been duped.

“I’ll catch you later, Mitsuki.”

“Yup. See you later, Yuu-kun.”

“Ephy, I’m counting on you to take care of Mitsuki and the kids.”

“Yes, leave them to me.” Ephelia, who was aboard the carriage as Mitsuki’s lady-in-waiting, nodded respectfully.

It had been two years since he had found her in the slave market of Iárnviðr, and she was now in the middle of her growth spurt. With her greater height and longer hair, she was starting to become quite the beautiful young woman. She also showed a level of calm and resourcefulness that belied her delicate appearance. The various hardships she had experienced throughout her early life likely contributed to this. She was also very close to Mitsuki. Yuuto couldn’t think of a better lady-in-waiting for her.

“Right then, off you go.”

Yuuto called to the carriage driver. In response, the driver cracked his whip and the carriage set off. He watched the carriage grow smaller until he could no longer see it. Once the carriage was out of sight, Yuuto looked down at his pinky and murmured, “You’ll always be the place I want to go home to. I’ve always been able to do my best because I was always wanting to make it back to you. That feeling hasn’t changed. Not then, and not now.”

He was about to face the infamous Oda Nobunaga. He was certain that the journeys that lay ahead of him would be arduous. Even then, Yuuto felt he would be able to bear it because of the promise he had just made to Mitsuki.

“Still, over a hundred thousand... He’s blown my estimates clear out of the water.”

After seeing Mitsuki off, Yuuto returned to his office in the Valaskjálf Palace to determine how best to deal with Nobunaga. He had no idea how Nobunaga had pulled off the feat of gathering, arming, feeding, and supplying such an enormous army, but there was no use denying reality. The simple fact was that Nobunaga had those forces at his disposal. He needed to base his strategy formation around that.

“Tch. All we can muster is a mere thirty thousand...”

While he would have been able to match Nobunaga in sheer numbers if he had conscripted civilians to fight for him, Yuuto had consciously ruled out that option. The Steel Clan’s army was a standing army—a professional force made up of trained, full-time soldiers. Even when he had incorporated forces from the clans the Steel Clan had absorbed, he had taken only those with combat experience or those who wished to become soldiers and given them the requisite training.

This wasn’t a choice driven by sentimental concerns such as not wanting to send farmers off to war, but rather because the Steel Clan Army was supported by a number of overly advanced technologies, both in terms of tactics and in terms of equipment. Compared to a largely untrained peasant army, a force filled with professional soldiers was vastly superior in terms of combat ability, speed, and organizational discipline—the last of which was key to taking full advantage of Yuuto’s complicated tactics. On top of that, because a peasant militia was traditionally sent home after every war, he couldn’t avoid having some of that information and technology leak out into the world; something he needed to prevent at all costs. These concerns had led Yuuto to decide to field a more restrictive standing army instead.

It was true that numbers were an important aspect of war, but Yuuto had overcome numerical disadvantages countless times by making the most of his modern knowledge. He had executed risky—even reckless—tactics countless times, and in his experience, Yuuto preferred to have a smaller, dependable force of professional soldiers who could be counted upon to execute his orders. There was little merit, in his eyes, to having a larger but more unpredictable force filled with peasant soldiers. Even if he chose to start using conscripted peasant soldiers at this point, it was likely he wouldn’t be able to give them much in the way of training, and their introduction would simply throw his current army into chaos, ruining the advantages held by the Steel Clan’s forces.

“On the other hand, it seems like he’s gone ahead and gathered numbers, even if it meant throwing away the advantages of fielding an army exclusively made up of professional soldiers.”

It was simply not possible for all one hundred thousand of Nobunaga’s soldiers to be properly trained professional soldiers. That was clear from the fact that it had taken Nobunaga’s army a long time to move from their staging ground, the former Spear Clan Capital of Mímir. Nobunaga had probably spent that time instilling the bare minimum discipline and training required for the conscripts to function as a military unit. The reports from the Vindálf operatives who had infiltrated Mímir had indicated as much.

“Last time was overwhelming enough... This time, however, they outnumber us by more than three to one. It’s quite a daunting difference,” Felicia stated and furrowed her brow in thought.

Yuuto could initially only muster a dry laugh at the comment, but he responded soon after. “If they were only at Yggdrasil’s technology level, I’d have ways to deal with them.”

Unfortunately, Nobunaga’s knowledge enabled the Flame Clan to use technology and tactics several thousand years ahead of the typical clan of Yggdrasil, albeit the Flame Clan were still not as advanced as the Steel Clan. They had steel, stirrups, proper discipline, tactics, and even farming technology.

When it came to military matters, Yuuto was well aware that Nobunaga’s superior experience as a warlord dwarfed his own abilities. Yuuto wasn’t such a blind optimist that he believed he could defeat the conqueror of the Warring States Period while being outnumbered so significantly.

“I suppose we won’t have any choice but to hole up again like last time.”

Since this was an opponent he couldn’t defeat in an open field battle, his only other option was to retreat into a fortification and force a siege. It would take a little over two months for the migrants heading from the Holy Capital to the Silk Clan Capital of Útgarðar to make their way through Álfheimr. He thought he should be able to hold out for at least that long.

“Which I suppose means it’s time to make use of that place,” Felicia said as though the thought had just occurred to her. While Yuuto had been busy with his eastern campaign in the three months since his defeat at the Holy Capital, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t taken any measures against Nobunaga. If anything, since he knew just how powerful an opponent Nobunaga truly was, Yuuto had Jörgen, the garrison commander in the Holy Capital, prepare something while he had been away in the east.

Yuuto’s lips curled up into a playful smile. “I haven’t seen it for myself, but Jörgen says it’s quite the impressive place. Heh, I bet even Nobunaga’s going to be taken aback when he sees it.”

“Oh, there was no need for me to come myself,” Sigrún murmured with a note of disappointment as she gazed over the giant procession of people stretching eastward from the city. She was currently in Nóatún, the clan capital of the Panther Clan, which she now served as the patriarch of. This also just happened to be the first time she’d ever visited the city.

“Father said the people would need my persuasion, so I had prepared myself, but...” She let out a dry laugh. Sigrún had no real awareness of the fact, but as Mánagarmr, Sigrún was perhaps the most famous and admired member of the Steel Clan other than Yuuto. She had been sent to these lands to convince the population to evacuate by leveraging her immense popularity. Yuuto had declared it to be a critical mission, and Sigrún, fully aware of her own shortcomings as an orator, had spent the journey to the city seriously considering the best way to persuade the populace. For that reason, the sight of the people already making their way out of the city had been rather anticlimactic for her.

“I’m impressed with your work as always, Bömburr. Well done.”

“Heh, it’s not as though it were my doing, ma’am.”

Sigrún offered her praise to Bömburr, second-in-command of the Múspell Unit, only for him to respond with a dry chuckle and a shrug of his shoulders.

Bömburr was an oddly portly man, perhaps not someone most would consider to be a member of a hardened group of veterans like the Múspells at first glance. His combat ability was, at best, average among the unit, but no one in the Múspells questioned his right to serve as Sigrún’s second.

Army units were a gathering of people, which meant that administrative and management abilities were an important part of keeping them operating. Bömburr was one of the few, if not the only one of Sigrún’s subordinates, who was more brains than brawn. In times of war, he oversaw the unit’s supplies and logistics, while in times of peace, he managed the unit’s tasks and made sure there were no scheduling conflicts. Without him, the Múspell Unit wouldn’t have functioned anywhere near as effectively as it did. He was, by all accounts, one of the underlying foundations of the unit, and he was one of Sigrún’s most trusted subordinates.

“I just played up the threat of the Flame Clan a little, and they responded quite quickly. The people of this region are well acquainted with raiding nomadic clans. I suppose the threat seemed more real to them.”

Sigrún nodded in understanding. “I see. So foreign invaders are something they’re already quite used to.”

The city had once been heavily pillaged by the Panther Clan, and after being conquered, they had been treated like slaves by the conquering nomads. When the Steel Clan invaded their territory, the Panther Clan leadership had instituted a scorched earth policy, which resulted in their farms being burned to the ground, and during the Steel Clan Encirclement, they had been raided by northern nomadic clans and fallen victim to pillaging once again. Predation by outside enemies was a real, tangible threat in the lives of the people of the Panther Clan, and the rumors about the Flame Clan’s imminent incursion were enough to reopen the old wounds of their collective trauma.

“It also bears remembering that the Steel Clan were the saviors that liberated them from the oppressive rule of the nomadic clans. They have good reason to listen to us,” Hildegard observed as she rubbed her index finger under her nose.

Hildegard, Sigrún’s protégé, was an Einherjar who possessed the rune Úlfhéðinn, the Wolfskin, and despite her youth, she was second only to Sigrún in the Múspell Unit in terms of fighting ability. She had been given Yuuto’s chalice and was now one of his direct children, but because things were still desperate, she had not yet started her own group, instead staying with the Múspells for the time being.

“Is that so? That’s an unexpected boon, then. I had honestly thought this would be quite a difficult task.” Sigrún smiled as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. While she was capable of motivating and urging on her own soldiers, dealing with civilians was a completely different matter. Yuuto had told her that she was the only one who could do the job, but Sigrún had been unsure if she could actually fulfill that role. She was honestly relieved to see that the people of the Panther Clan had already started evacuating on their own.

“Hmm... I feel like you’ve changed a bit, Mother Rún.” Hildegard furrowed her brow for a moment as she looked up at Sigrún’s face.

“Mm?”

“Well, you’ve gotten more expressive, I guess...? You were always a bit dryer in the past.”

“Oh? Yes, Felicia said something similar to me before I left. I can’t tell the difference myself,” Sigrún replied as she patted down her own face.

“Yeah, you’ve definitely changed. I’ve started to learn how to read your expressions. I mean, it used to be that I really couldn’t tell what you were thinking.”

“Oh, you can read me now? That’s a serious problem,” Sigrún murmured solemnly as she rubbed her chin.

“Huh? Really?” Hildegard blinked, as though she couldn’t quite grasp what Sigrún meant. Sigrún mentally shook her head at the fact that Hildegard didn’t understand the significance. Thinking back on it, though, that was perhaps one of Hildegard’s biggest weaknesses.

“If an enemy manages to read my intentions in the middle of battle, then that could mean the difference between life and death in a close match. You’re a good example. I can tell when you’re plotting something.”

“Huh?! Really?!”

“Ah, you really hadn’t noticed?” Sigrún let out an exasperated sigh and grabbed Hildegard by the sleeve.

“Well, this is a good opportunity. It’ll take a while longer for all the people to leave the city. I could use a refresher after all my rest. I’ll give you a little lesson.”

“Oh? Of course! I’m happy to accept!” Hildegard replied in a taunting tone, her eyes gleaming.

“That’s a first. You usually don’t like training with me.”

“Hehe. Well, when I landed that blow on you, Mother Rún, I felt like I’d finally made some real progress. I’ve been feeling really good lately.”

“Oh? Well, that’s something to look forward to.”

“Don’t come crying to me when you lose. Your era’s over, Mother Rún.”

An hour later...

“I’m sorry... I concede. I concede! Can we stop now?!” Hildegard pleaded with tears in her eyes. Sigrún looked down at her and sighed.

“You said you’d made progress, but if anything, you’ve gotten weaker.”

“No! It’s just that you’ve gotten way stronger, Mother Rún! You’re way faster than before!”

“Am I? Hmm... I suppose so. Despite having taken time off, my body feels oddly light, and my movements feel sharper.”