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As if to soothe Hanson, MacMillan smiled faintly.
“Hanson’s story isn’t entirely without credibility. You may not know this, but for someone like me, who lived in a rural village far from the sea, it was no easy thing to even see salt. That’s why the occasional traveling salt merchant was bound to be welcomed…”
With MacMillan stepping in to vouch for him, the soldiers had no choice but to shut their mouths. Hans, however, still shook his head as if he could not accept it.
“But it doesn’t make sense for women to sleep with someone just to get a mere handful of salt, does it? For one thing, would their husbands just stand by and watch?”
Emboldened by MacMillan taking his side, Hanson thrust out his chest.
“Of course, those women were widows with no husbands. Still don’t believe me?”
“I don’t. What village in the world has that many widows?”
“Why, you little—”
Watching the two bicker, MacMillan gave a bitter smile. In the end, he had no choice but to intervene between them to calm the commotion.
“Hanson is telling the truth. There are a great many widows in mountain villages. Because…”
As MacMillan explained, an indistinct light briefly passed through his eyes. It was homesickness for a hometown he could no longer return to. Shaking his head to drive away his thoughts, MacMillan continued.
“The husbands are often eaten by monsters while hunting, or even while plowing the fields. That’s why mountain villages tend to have more women. In that sense, Hanson’s story has some truth to it.”
Thanks to MacMillan’s intervention, the argument between the two ended in Hanson’s victory. Triumphant, Hanson looked around at the soldiers as if to say, See?
“See? What would you lot, who only knew how to grub in the dirt, know? Is there anyone here who was a soldier from the start? There’s only MacMillan, isn’t there? And even he was a proud territory guard…”
Hanson’s words were true. Apart from MacMillan, all the soldiers who made up the 57th Guard Squad came from different hometowns and had held completely different occupations. Hanson had been a salt peddler, and Hans, who had been arguing with him, had been a farmer. The other soldiers had each had their own different trades as well.
Only MacMillan, the senior soldier, had originally been a soldier, unlike the rest of them. He had been a guard of a small territory located at the entrance to the Pelusia Mountains. But every one of them had been forced to give up their livelihoods against their will. When war broke out, they had been conscripted by force, and most of them were men who had barely survived after being wounded in the Battle of Tranbor, the worst defeat in Truvenian history.
They had been sent to the rear, and after completing their treatment, reassigned here to the city wall garrison of Icarot. It could only be called a bond formed after truly countless twists and turns.
Perhaps unable to accept his defeat, Hans brought up another topic.
“Still, the one who had it best among us is definitely Passat. You know why, don’t you?”
“Well? Why is that?”
When the soldiers’ attention focused on him, Hans glanced at the ladder leading up to the watchtower, then puffed out his chest. Passat was currently on duty alone atop the watchtower.
“You can figure it out if you think about it. As you all know, that fellow used to be a servant in a noble household so prestigious that just hearing the name would make your ears ring. So imagine it. Who knows? Some beautiful noble lady who sent her husband off to war, overcome with loneliness, might have secretly dragged Passat into her bedchamber. Not thick-waisted, thick-legged country women, but elegant noble ladies who look like they’d flutter away if you blew on them…”
At Hans’s words, the soldiers burst into roaring laughter.
“Kekeke, that makes sense.”
“It’s entirely possible.”
Amid the soldiers laughing and chattering, Hans suddenly seemed to remember something and turned his gaze. In the corner of the watchtower, a soldier with an extremely small build was sitting crouched down. His helmet was pulled low, so his face could not be seen clearly, but the small portion of his lower face that was visible was wearing a faint smile, as if he found it amusing.
“Hey, Damon. Now that we’ve run out of material, how about you tell us about your experiences?”
“M-me?”
An extremely awkward tone came from the mouth of the soldier called Damon. It was a halting voice, with intonation and speech patterns completely different from theirs. At that, the soldiers’ gazes focused on him. That was because, among the soldiers here, he was the person shrouded in the most mystery.
After hesitating for a moment, Damon quietly shook his head.
“I-I have no experience with women.”
“Well, with looks like that, it’d be a blessing if any woman followed you. I like your honesty.”
At Hans’s jest, the soldiers once again broke into noisy laughter. Of course, not loudly enough for it to leak outside the watchtower. Seeing that, MacMillan gave a bitter smile, as if there was no helping them.
“You’re hopeless. Hey, Damon, don’t mind him.”
“I-I don’t mind.”
The soldier called Damon shook his head as if unconcerned and took off his helmet. Then the face hidden beneath the helmet was fully revealed. It was an extremely foreign face. Eyes that were long and slanted sharply upward, and a severely curved hooked nose. By any measure, it could not be called handsome. A face utterly different in shape from those of the other soldiers. The true identity of the soldier called Damon was none other than Dokgo Seong.
‘This is amusing enough. Should I call it an experience I haven’t had in quite some time?’
He had resolved not to care, but being mocked could hardly be pleasant. Hans, however, did not leave the quietly seated Damon alone.
“By the way, Damon. What on earth did you do before coming here?”
“…?”
“I’m asking what your original job was.”
After hesitating for a moment, Damon opened his mouth reluctantly.
“I-I was also a soldier. Where I lived…”
“Huh? That doesn’t sound true to me. From what I’ve seen, you must definitely have been a clown. Am I right?”
Damon gave a bitter smile and closed his mouth. Since he already knew full well what kind of soldier Hans was, he understood that keeping silent was the best option. Other than that, there was no way to escape the chatterbox Hans. Just as he expected, Hans, losing interest, turned the topic elsewhere, and Damon quietly sank into thought.
It had already been six months since he had been assigned here. During that time, he had grown fairly close to the soldiers here. Of course, there had been many twists and turns, but nothing serious had happened.
While living with the soldiers, Dokgo Seong devoted himself entirely to learning the language of this place. As a result, though he was still awkward, he was now able to communicate to a certain extent. To be honest, it made little sense that he could learn an entirely different language in a mere six months, but because Dokgo Seong possessed exceptional intelligence and memory, it could be said to have been possible. MacMillan, who had been quietly watching Damon, came over and patted him on the shoulder.
“Don’t let it bother you. That’s just the way he is…”
MacMillan’s eyes as he looked at Damon were filled with an indistinct light. And for good reason—if not for Damon in the previous battle, he would have been in a grave by now. The same went for all the members of the 57th Guard Squad.
It had only been six months, but during that time, the orcs had launched many aerial raids. And one of those attacks had been aimed precisely at the watchtower where they were stationed. MacMillan gradually sank into the memories of that time.
“Wyverns!”
Seeing a formation of wyverns diving toward the wall, the soldier atop the guard tower let out an urgent warning cry. But those were the last words the soldier ever left behind. When flames spewed from the mouth of the diving wyvern, the wooden guard tower went up in flames in an instant. Along with the soldier inside it, of course.
Thanks to his sacrifice, however, the soldiers in the watchtower were able to finish their preparations for battle and rush out. But the situation was not turning in their favor.
“H-heavens…”
The top of the wall was already filled with orc raiders.
Normally, orcs flew in riding on the backs of wyverns. Therefore, at most, only about five orcs could ride on a single wyvern. But the orcs had unusually changed their method of aerial assault.
It was a method in which orc infantrymen hung from ropes fixed to the wyverns’ backs and descended in an assault. As a result, a single wyvern could land around twenty orc raiders, and the top of the wall was already swarming with more orcs than the soldiers could handle. They soon surged toward the guards like a flood.
“Chwik.”
“Die, human!”
A fierce bloodbath broke out between the orc raiders and the defenders. Though they were inferior to humans in strength and stature, the orc raiders had already overcome that with their innate fighting spirit. On top of that, since they were outnumbered, the defenders continued to be pushed back.
“We must stop them even if it costs us our lives. Reinforcements will arrive before long. Do not retreat a single inch!”
The cries of the guard captain, who continued to encourage morale, were soon swallowed by the roars of the orcs, and the defenders, pushed back again and again, had no choice but to retreat to the vicinity of the wall’s edge. They were at too great a numerical disadvantage. Among them was the 57th Guard Squad commanded by MacMillan. They had already lost most of their will to fight before the endless onslaught of the orcs.
At that moment, someone stepped forward. An exceedingly small build. Realizing that he was the foreign mercenary who had been assigned to them not long ago, the soldiers of the 57th Guard Squad looked at him with doubt in their eyes. He did not look particularly strong, yet he was walking alone toward the place where hundreds of orcs were approaching with bloodshot eyes flashing.
“Kukuku, you damned vermin…”
A somewhat alien energy spread around Damon as he walked forward step by step. It was killing intent, an aura rather unfamiliar in this place. Damon, exuding a dense killing intent, was approaching the orc horde alone. He had already confirmed through the first fierce battle that killing intent worked on orcs.
“Chwik?”
Doubt gradually appeared in the orcs’ eyes. At first, when a single human walked out, they had thought some madman had appeared. But the strange energy spreading from that human’s eyes was gradually breaking their momentum.
The fighting spirit of orcs, called natural-born warriors, was needless to say extremely strong. But the strange energy coming from the human’s eyes was eroding even that fighting spirit without mercy. That was how intense the fighting aura spreading from the human’s eyes was. Damon’s fighting aura, unleashed without restraint, broke the momentum of the orcs arrayed atop the wall in an instant.
With every step Damon took, the orcs flinched and retreated backward. Though they sensed that this should not be happening, the orcs found themselves stepping back without realizing it. Only after being pushed all the way to the edge of the wall did they come back to their senses.
“Chwik. He is only one man. Kill him!”
The orcs finally realized the situation and raised their axes, but it was already too late. The defenders had taken advantage of that opening to completely reform their ranks. Moreover, reinforcements were fiercely climbing the stairs leading up to the wall. For the orcs, the battle had already lost all chance of victory.