There were a few intrusions during the night, but not enough even for the cats left behind to join them. The guards handled blobs, spiders and one worm without waking anyone but a standby unit Rede had assigned. They weren’t given guard duty, but in return could be called upon at any time. Early the next morning, a cold and miserable column braved a second crest.

  So this is Remerrin. It looked just like Isekai, or federation controlled territory in the border zone, which meant more mountains, very sparse vegetation and a view north rather than south. It was, Ioha noted, substantially colder as well. The sun never bathing the steep slopes with warmth kept them perpetually cool.

  There were sounds from further down the pass.

  Rede’s voice cut through the rasping sound of shuffling feet. “Company ready arms!”

  Ioha moved his shield from back to left arm and grabbed his partisan tighter. Just to be on the safe side, he extended aura into arms and legs and created the pauldrons, vambraces and greaves that he lacked. Sooner or later, he’d have to buy those. His aura enhanced stamina was an entirely different beast than it had been even as late as early summer when he joined. The time with Nanami’s company, and the need for him to escort wagons out and into the zone with the added weight of armour, was worth it now. As a last touch, he extended gauntlet replacements. They still didn’t work as he wanted, and he always forgot to release his right-hand one whenever he needed to switch from partisan to broadsword.

  Harvali came up alongside him together with his party. “After that turn, we’ll see them,” he said and pointed ahead of them.

  So soon? That was less than five more minutes of marching. Around him, the company split into smaller units, and some of them used abilities to climb the surrounding cliffs. OK, apparently. “Where do we go?”

  “Sir Ironsnake wants you to be ready as soon as we pass the corner. Our scouts say the slope both widens and levels out there.”

  Open ground? What keeps the monsters from flooding Remerrin then? “Derina’s with the rearguard. Who’s on the other side?”

  Harvali shook his head. “This will be a pitched battle, and we’re attacking. Just try not to get killed.”

  Ioha grimaced but kept walking. His abilities worked best when he was on the defensive. A charging tank was a novel concept. Another two minutes, and they’d hit that bend in the road, and by that time he needed some kind of plan. No grids, no mazes, nothing that would impede their own charge. Damn, time to suck.

  It was near noon, but with the mountain range to their south, there was very little sunlight. Sunlight? Ah, so that’s why we’re charging. Slope levelling out meant they’d walk out into sunlight from an elevation. Any enemy would have to stare into the glaring sun. Oh well, here goes. He extended a shield above his head and had it spin. If nothing else, he could pretend to slice target dummies. Could he use his multi-target attack? No, not in formation battle. Risks were he’d hit his own.

  They made the corner.

  The road was still enclosed by cliffs for another fifty or so metres, but after that, the slope widened, just as Harvali said. Ahead of them, several hundred metres further down a mountain slope turned meadows, he saw a mass of creatures caught in battle. While the downhill slope did indeed widen, it narrowed into another pass before reaching the foothills. That pass was blocked by a fortification, and Rede’s company had arrived from the other opening of what was in effect a very large bowl in the landscape.

  Hammer and anvil. Ioha grinned, but that grin faded when he looked around him. We’re a damn small hammer. There were thousands of the monsters, and if they were that large from a distance almost nothing still alive were blobs or spiders.

  Just as his feet reached the end of the pass, parties started filing out to his sides in good order. From column to battle line it took less than ten minutes, and even though they lined up without any attempt to use stealth, almost nothing further down that sloping field took any notice of them.

  Around him, they filed out in two lines. Front and back, spaced less than twenty metres apart. The frontline, almost to a man, were armed with polearms with a much wider assortment of killing utensils in the backline.

  “Company, march!”

  Just like that?

  Just like that!

  Ioha always assumed a charge was something done at great speed. Here they walked. The lines kept their coherence until Rede’s voice cut through the air.

  “Company, halt!”

  First a tumultuous sound when hundreds of feet stopped walking at once, then silence. Now the monsters did take notice of them, and shadows broke loose from the massed attack against the fortification.

  “Archers, ready, volley!”

  Arrows arched over where Ioha stared at the onrushing monsters and lodged in them. A few fell.

  “Mages, ready, volley!”

  The effects of offensive spells were more devastating.

  “Company front, march!”

  Unsure what to do, Ioha kept pace with Harvali and waited for him to use whatever short range arsenal the knight had available.

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  “Company front, halt! Archers, mages, volley!”

  The meadow turned from gentle green to blinding white in a moment. He couldn’t even see the effect of the massed spells from their mages. Whether the arrows made any difference was an unknown as well.

  “Company front, charge!”

  Now or never. Ioha triggered his shield, and let it arc into something green and black in front of him. It hit and blinked out of existence. Before it even reached his target, he was walking briskly at Harvali’s side. There was to be no running. Seconds later they reached the first of the monsters, and the line staggered a little before they went down in a hailstorm of arrows and single target spells. The real test came shortly after.

  What the! With Harvali beside him Ioha walked into a towering something. He had never seen it before and couldn’t even guess where the vitals were. He stabbed two-handed, and the spearhead sank into something that gave. No scales or bone armour, at least. The thing screeched, and Harvali delivered a crushing blow that ripped parts out of it. Feeling like a useless idiot, Ioha set up frontal shields protecting those around him. Using his mass taunts would disrupt their own attack, and at the moment he felt rather helpless. Or?

  COWARD!

  It was maximum range. Single target, and the creature caught in his command had to smash its way all along the frontline to reach him.

  “Peel it!” Rede’s voice rose above the clamour. He must have seen what Ioha had done. It went down to the concentrated attacks from the backline long before it reached him.

  He glanced along the formation. The enemy monsters were in disorder where one of their own had gone berserk in its frantic attempt to reach him. Another one? Maybe not. He cost the backline opportunity attacks.

  “Ware counterattack!”

  The mass of monsters moved.

  “Questingtank, now!”

  Ioha let loose everything in his arsenal. Grids and mazes were in place in seconds, and after Harvali forced his men to evacuate Ioha’s immediate vicinity, he filled the vacuum with both area attacks and his close distance funnels.

  Too much! He threw layers of hard shields and began using the multi target attacks, despite a low risk of hitting friendly soldiers. It was still too much. Shit! The line buckled around him. Shit!

  He’d either get overrun or found out. Found out was better. At his side the battle standard rose from the ground, his status display flickered a few times and Ioha felt how soldiers rallied around him. I’m so screwed! He added every additional effect he knew was associated with his banner. The display flickered a few times more until he let out his roar of challenge. A searing pain cut through his brain, and the display lit up with stars dancing in front of his eyes. For a moment, he was blind, and when he got his sight back, he wondered if he had lost some enemies.

  Another roar of challenge. It thundered across the entire battlefield and his banner suddenly flared up with a blue white light stabbing into the sky.

  Are you shitting me? For real?

  The entire field fell silent. Then a slow rumble.

  “Peel it!”

  You’ve gotta be kidding me! He cast overlapping grids in a last attempt to at least slow the onrushing horde down a little. They held.

  That’s impossible! They still held. Around him, monsters burst into flames and their remains got shredded by his swirling razor blades.

  Oh, hell! On top of the banner a helmeted angel stood and reinforced his shields, but of course angels wore no helmets. If that woman with a spear in her hand was no angel, and if his god claimed to be Heimdall, then that shining robe was a mail hauberk, and she belonged to a very different mythology

  Ioha’s status display flared alive over and over again, while their backline took the opportunity to saturate the massed enemies with as many area attacks as they had available. Despite all this, there were simply too many monsters, and the line buckled again. His punitive mass taunts reached further, and the few who didn’t obey him gushed blood, and he didn’t even want to know what happened inside their bodies.

  The display kept flashing and in desperation Ioha opened it and glanced at his divine section.

  You suck! Heimdall, you jerk! Battle-hymn. Host of defence. Both in the high thirties, so the effect wouldn’t be too impressive, but Ioha had no illusions about the side effects. But there’s nothing else to do. He cast both effects. Down the blue white light spearing the heavens another half a dozen Valkyries descended, split out and gathered like a crown around the one on his standard. The battle-hymn, well, they sang it.

  Monsters reeled, soldiers cried in ecstasy, and Ioha groaned. The frontline held as well. Then spears fell from the skies. It looked very impressive, but offensive abilities in the thirties were nothing you were supposed to use against C and B ranked monsters. It caused a lot of confusion, though, and the backline kept raining down destruction of an entirely different potency.

  And it still wasn’t enough.

  “Company, backline, retreat!” Rede’s command showed he saw it as well.

  Another barrage of spells and arrows landed in the mass of monsters. Ioha couldn’t see exactly where, and he really didn’t have the time. The short time he used for navigating his display was enough for his world to turn into a hellscape of biting teeth and grabbing tendrils. He released multi-target attacks as fast as he could and even managed to hurl one spinning shield into the madness. Mostly he threw up shields and barriers to at least lessen the pressure on his position.

  “Company, backline, retreat!”

  Rede’s last command was followed by yet one more firestorm of spells, and despite being busy beyond absurdity, Ioha felt how their backline didn’t even as much as flinch. Spells and arrows kept raining into their enemies. Added to the insanity was the ongoing choir from above, who plunged shining spear after shining spear into the madness, inflicting more and more damage while Ioha’s display blinked white in his head.

  He had no time to open it and check. Something large barged into his shields and toppled over. He barely had time to put up a few hard shields top before it landed on him. By his side, Harvali frantically hacked away at it from the maximum distance his two-handed weapon allowed. It bled, burned and was slowly reduced to a writhing mass of flesh, bones and claws.

  Can’t see anything! Ioha conjured a spinning shield on top of him and targetted himself with his next set of stabbing lances. It made the trick. Whatever it was must have died, and Ioha’s defensive inferno quickly shredded it. Its remains dripped down on him, and he found a moment to clean himself absurdly clean, in disgust at what tried to find its way inside his armour.

  Another set of detonations told him their backline was far from finished, and Rede no longer called for them to retreat.

  I don’t think we’ll make it. Ioha had time to repeat that thought thrice before blaring horns announced themselves from the other side of the chaos. Something thundered, someone roared, and suddenly the battlefield lit up with explosions from a range where their backline couldn’t reach.