"It looked like you needed some help."
The visor lifted. A short, dry clatter of metal grinding upward rang out. As the faceplate folded back, what lay beneath it was revealed.
Gardon's eyes took in the approaching knight.
The face beneath was pale, smooth-skinned. Beneath long, dark lashes, her eyes were fixed straight on him.
They were eyes that gave nothing away.
Gardon's grip on his axe eased for a moment. Without meaning to, he found himself taking her in again, from the beginning.
Her armor was a pale, silvery white. It flowed in smooth curves, fitted close to the body without a single wasted angle. It had clearly been forged to follow the exact lines of her frame — for all that it was metal, its contours were soft.
The helm covered her entire face and ran unbroken from the back of her skull down to the nape of her neck. Where her faceplate had been lowered moments before, only a narrow horizontal slit marked where her eyes should be. Long black hair spilled down from beneath the helm.
A ring-shaped gorget encircled her throat, and along the front edge of her pauldrons, a relief of eagle's wings stood out in raised lines. At its center was pressed a circular shield emblem.
Her breastplate, fitted tight and seamless, was sheathed entirely in thick plate, its surface etched edge to edge with fine, hair-thin lines of script. The distance made it impossible to read any of it, but it was clear at a glance that this was no mere ornamentation — it was some kind of record.
The vambraces covering her arms matched the same pale silver as her breastplate, and beneath the gauntlets encasing her hands, black gloves showed at the seams.
A wide, thick belt cinched her waist, fastened with a round buckle engraved in intricate detail.
Beneath the armor hung a deep navy surcoat that fell past her knees. A thin gold trim ran along its edges, and down the center, evenly spaced vertical lines ran the length of the fabric.
Below the knee, greaves continued the line down to sabatons that covered her feet entirely.
Gardon let out a short breath and spoke.
"Much obliged. Now then, you are—"
"Iris."
Her voice cut him off before he could finish.
"We'll talk properly once that trebuchet's been dealt with."
Her eyes had already left him, fixed on the far side of the moat.
In the mist, the massive trebuchet was nearing readiness to fire. The chain at the end of its throwing arm drew taut as the counterweight descended, and the basket loaded with huge stones was slowly winched down toward the ground.
Orcs swarmed over it, hauling on ropes and securing the counterweight.
Iris stepped onto the bridge spanning the moat.
Gardon stepped aside.
Iris ran. Her footsteps rang short and sharp against the broken planks, and from the far end of the bridge, an orc came charging at her.
It dropped low as it closed in, hefting its axe above its shoulder.
The orc's feet, just slightly, fell behind.
It wasn't something the orc was even aware of. Charging at Iris with its axe raised, it had no idea why its own body had hesitated.
All it knew was that the instant Iris's eyes turned toward it, something at the back of its neck had tightened.
There was no time to wonder what it was.
The body simply knew, before the mind could catch up, exactly what stood before it.
Behind it, another orc shoved at the back of the one in front.
A snarled curse burst out, but the orc doing the shoving never noticed that its own feet weren't driving properly off the ground either.
Sweat beaded on its palm. The axe handle had gone slick.
It was strange.
Orcs were not a race acquainted with fear. They didn't stop, not when they watched another orc fall on the battlefield, not even when their own flesh was cut open and bleeding.
But the instant Iris's blade passed by—
the orc's body, the very moment her gaze swept across it, took a reflexive step backward.
It didn't even register that it had done so.
Blood sprayed. Orcs fell. The sound of flesh and metal striking the ground followed, one after another.
A few of the charging orcs wiped at their brows with the backs of their hands. Sweat. Not from heat — the air in the mist was still cold.
The moment they realized their hands were shaking, the orcs screamed louder.
The sword in Iris's right hand swept horizontally through an orc.
The arm holding the axe flew off along with the waist. Three orcs lined up on the bridge fell at once.
Severed upper bodies toppled backward, and the lower halves sank to the ground a beat later.
Iris walked on and set foot on the far side of the moat.
"Out of my way, orc."
Her voice rang out, brief.
That was the moment.
Before the words had even finished carrying through the air, mana erupted from Iris's body in a violent burst.
The air around her warped. The space around her shimmered and rippled, as though scorched by heat.
Currents of mana, taking on visible shape, coiled and folded over each other in waves.
The charging orcs' bodies collided with Iris's mana.
It wasn't a wall blocking them. It wasn't a chain catching at their throats.
It was killing intent, filling the surrounding space and reaching out to seize the heart and throat of anyone it touched.
The orcs' charging feet would carry them no further forward. Those at the front pitched and tumbled to the ground. The ones pushing in from behind couldn't stop in time and piled on top of the fallen.
The ground around Iris's feet sank inward, the depression spreading outward.
Gardon watched her from behind. The ground shuddered beneath his feet, and the shaped mana pouring out from Iris rippled before his eyes.
A single, brief phrase delivered to the orcs. And then Inardil's blade swung toward them.
She swung her sword before the words had even finished leaving her mouth.
Sword Sing.
It was the technique mastered only by knights who had reached the pinnacle of Steel Path swordsmanship — releasing the mana wrapped around the blade and driving it forward with the full force of the swing. Sword Sing.
Shhhhiiing—
With a piercing sound, the blade of mana loosed from her sword arced out in a half-circle, tearing straight through the ranks of orcs.
The instant the orcs saw the blade of light flying toward them, their charging steps faltered — but by then Iris's Sword Sing had already cut clean through their bodies.
Before they could even open their mouths to scream in pain, before their bodies could react and raise their weapons to block—
the blade of Sword Sing was already gone.
It had cleaved through the first orc it touched, then the orc behind it, then pressed on to cut through even the minotaur standing beyond them.
An orc's shield split in two.
Beyond the shield, another orc's breastplate cracked open.
The advancing blade of Sword Sing didn't stop as it tore through the orcs standing further back. But by the time it had cut through layer after layer of flesh and steel and finally reached the farthest orc, its edge had begun, little by little, to dull.
Starting from the front row, the upper bodies of the orcs in the blade's path slid free. The cuts were so clean that for a moment, before they fell, some of the orcs' bodies simply remained standing where they were.
A few of those orcs were still alive.
Flesh had torn beneath their armor. Their sides had split open. But unlike the others standing in front of them, their bodies hadn't been cleaved fully in two.
Orcs who had reflexively dropped low also survived — those whose bodies, faster than thought, had thrown themselves flat to the ground in the instant the blade split the air. And the ones who came charging in late, shouting, behind them.
A few orcs rose to their feet and climbed over the fallen bodies to rush at Iris.
Iris turned, sword still extended.
An orc's axe came down at her from the front.
Iris didn't dodge. She raised her left arm and caught the axe blade lightly on her vambrace. A brief clang of metal rang out.
She twisted her wrist, deflecting the axe's path, and in the same motion her right hand swept the sword upward in reverse. The blade rose from chin to helm, and the orc's head split apart along the edge.
Another orc charged from her left — a hulking brute, twice Iris's size.
A club gripped in both hands swung toward her left side.
Iris stepped inside the swing.
Inside the arc the club traveled, she closed the distance until she was right beside the orc's elbow, and her own left elbow drove into its gut.
As the orc doubled forward, Iris's sword punched through its back.
She hoisted the impaled body and flung it aside, then kept walking.
Sounds wrung out by pain rose all around her, as blood poured from the severed bodies.
The sound of blood and severed torsos hitting the ground went on and on. Pieces of flesh struck the earth, one after another.
Gardon, standing across the bridge, watched it all. His hand tightened around the axe handle without his meaning to.
It took him a moment longer to fully grasp what he was seeing.
A single, almost casual swing had felled dozens of orcs.
The orcs' bodies froze.
The charging orcs' feet stopped. The ones pushing in from behind collided with those who'd stopped ahead of them, the formation breaking apart. The smell of blood spread through the mist.
The surviving orcs looked down at the corpses piled at their feet.
A single knight stood before them. Her faceplate was lowered, and where her eyes should have been, there was only a narrow horizontal slit. Beyond it lay nothing but darkness. No living eyes could be seen, no breathing expression.
But it wasn't the fact that nothing could be seen beyond the helm that gripped the orcs so deeply — it was the ominous aura radiating from the knight herself.
It was a stillness unlike the killing intent the orcs knew by instinct. No fury in it. No hostility. And yet the simple fact of standing within the radius of that knight was enough to stir something ancient, etched deep into every living thing.
It was what a beast felt standing before a predator. Not a judgment that the fight couldn't be won — that judgment hadn't even formed yet. It was something they understood only after their trembling arms and legs had already sent the message, again and again.
That thing will kill me.
That thing will kill us. That thing will kill us. That thing will kill us. That thing will kill us.
"OKKA——!! OKKA-ULLA!!"
A bare-headed orc hoisted its axe high overhead with both hands and roared. The veins in its neck bulged, and the cry rang out through the mist. The same cry rose again behind it, and again.
Hundreds of orcs charged Iris at once, their feet splashing through pools of blood.
Iris's sword moved again. A single horizontal sweep of Inardil to the left, and the entire front line of charging orcs fell, cut through at the waist.
The orcs coming from behind tripped over the fallen and went down too, and Iris walked forward over them, advancing. With each diagonal stroke of her sword, the charging orcs were cut down in groups.
A minotaur planted itself in front of Iris.
The massive creature spread its arms wide, blocking her path. In its hand was a heavy iron hammer.
The minotaur raised its hammer, but Iris had already leapt above it. Her sword, brought down in midair, drove clean through from its left shoulder to the opposite hip.
She landed and broke into a run.
A path opened wherever her blade passed.
The orcs did not flee.
Dozens fell. Hundreds were cut down before their own eyes. Minotaurs that charged her were felled in turn.
And still, the orcs' feet did not turn back.
The reason wasn't a simple one.
She was just one knight. One knight clad in steel.
But the orcs did not run. They could not run. To show one's back before hundreds of one's own kind was not a choice that existed in the orcish tongue. No orc retreated on a battlefield. Orcs fell — but orcs did not flee. The instant one turned its back, even if it lived to return, it was already dead.
So the orcs pressed forward. Dozens were cut down. Hundreds fell. Still the feet of the orcs coming up from behind did not stop. They trampled the fallen, waded through pools of blood, and kept advancing.
Iris ran.
Inardil's blade cut down the surging orcs and carved a path through them, and along that path, Iris advanced toward the enormous trebuchet beyond the wall.