Chapter 73: Pictland -1-
The great drill yard of Nogales Castle was swept by a chilly wind.
Yet the heat pouring off the thousands of elite soldiers assembled for the northern campaign was driving the cold back.
Before setting out on the expedition, Arthur made sure the rear was firmly secured.
"Kay, I'm leaving the rest to you. The advance detachment of regular troops called in from Ireland should be arriving soon, so place them where they're needed and keep North Wales under ironclad defense."
"Haa... it's always me who gets saddled with everything. Fine, fine! You just go out there and cut off some barbarian heads. I'll keep the territory running perfectly on my end!"
Even while irritably shaking a bundle of documents, Kay glanced at Mordred lying in the cradle and nodded with dependable confidence.
For the record, Mordred was coming along. They would be staying in Pictland for quite a while, and there was no way he could leave his child behind.
"I pray for your victory, Arthur. I will assist Kay with all my strength and fill the void in state affairs while you are away."
Guinevere, too, stood before Arthur in a neat dress and bowed her head gracefully.
Now that she had fully recovered her health, she already looked every bit the queen fit to govern a nation.
As Arthur exchanged farewells with his close retainers before departure, there was one unusual gaze watching the scene with interest from a corner of the drill yard.
It was Isolde, princess of the Kingdom of Munster.
She had once set foot in Nogales as part of an Irish delegation, and even after the Kingdom of Munster had voluntarily entered as a vassal state and the conquest of Ireland was complete, she had not returned home and remained in North Wales.
She had chosen to stay of her own will, to study abroad.
Though Isolde had not had many direct points of contact with Arthur, she had observed from afar every miraculous change he had brought about.
Administrative reform, improvements to sanitation, a revolution in food culture through unheard-of cooking methods, and even military reform founded on overwhelming force.
Watching Arthur's path, Isolde had come to feel not merely fear, but reverence.
'I need to learn more. To build a better world, to make my homeland of Munster prosper, I'll learn everything I can at Arthur's side.'
Isolde clenched her fists, her passion for learning burning hot.
Arthur, too, knew that Isolde had been offering small help with various clerical tasks and administrative work, so he did not particularly stop her from moving freely about the castle and studying as she pleased.
"All forces, march!!"
At Arthur's thunderous command, the banner of the red dragon snapped in the wind, and the great host began its advance north.
After marching north for some distance, Arthur and his party held their final council regarding the first target of the northern campaign.
"The first place we will smash is Fotla, the mountain kingdom in the central interior of Pictland."
Morgan pointed her staff at the rugged mountain range on the map.
"It is ruled by Fotla mac Cruithne, one of the sons of Cruithne, the founding king. In the past, this land became infamous for mountain ambush tactics that used its harsh terrain to drive back even Roman legionaries."
Merlin stroked her chin and added to the explanation.
"What makes the Kingdom of Fotla troublesome is the quality of its weapons. It owns the largest iron mine among the seven kingdoms, so all of its elite troops are armed with sturdy iron spears and specially made battle-axes."
"Battle-axes?"
When Arthur asked with interest, Merlin conjured the shape of the weapon in the air with an illusion.
"A huge crescent-shaped axe blade, with a sharp hook like a beast's claw attached to the back. The Picts use that hook to catch charging cavalrymen by the waist or snag a horse's legs and throw them down, then shatter their spines with the axe blade. It's a nasty tactic, so they won't be easy to deal with."
"Oh... quite a vicious weapon."
Ushiwakamaru smacked her lips as she toyed with the hilt of her sword.
"And deep within the remote mountain valleys of the Kingdom of Fotla, there is also an independent tribe mixed in, called Asol."
Morgan continued.
"The terrain is so harsh that the King of Fotla's authority does not fully reach it, so Picts and Gaels have mingled there and formed a territory of their own. Killing the king alone will not make them submit at once."
Once the briefing on terrain, weapons, and internal power structure was finished, Arthur casually tossed out a question.
"So then, does the King of Fotla or his kingdom have anything like a Noble Phantasm that could actually threaten us?"
Morgan and Merlin looked at each other, then shrugged.
"If it were one of the other great kingdoms, perhaps. But I've heard nothing about Fotla possessing any special Mystery or Noble Phantasm from the Age of Gods. It has nothing but brute quantities of iron and raw strength."
At that answer, the corner of Arthur's mouth curled upward.
"Then it's toy-level. For a pre-meal event, this should be over pretty quickly."
At that same time.
At the entrance to the rugged mountain range of the Kingdom of Fotla.
"Kwooooooooooot!!"
A gigantic monstrous boar the size of a house roared, spittle flying from its jaws.
On the creature's broad back sat a vicious throne cast from iron, and upon it lounged the King of Fotla, dressed in savage leather armor and adorned with skulls, wearing an arrogant grin.
"Britain's milk-smelling boy king is coming to dig his own grave!"
Behind the King of Fotla stood two thousand elite soldiers in formation, armed with massive crescent hook-axes and iron spears, radiating killing intent.
"This is the perfect chance to break the pride of those fools who mocked my domain as the most insignificant among my brothers'! In these mountains, where even the Romans never made it out alive, I will smash the heads of those Britons and lay the cornerstone of victory! Then I shall stand as the greatest king of all seven kingdoms!"
As the King of Fotla raised his axe and roared, the Pict warriors filling the mountain slope answered with shrieks like the cries of beasts.
"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeei!"
"Hohooooooooooooooooooooi!!!!"
A bizarre battle cry that could hardly be called human language.
Most of the Picts, being fantasy species by birth, lacked the intelligence to speak human language. Their minds were ruled only by beastlike instinct and a boiling mania for battle.
Yet paradoxically, that low intelligence made them a perfect army.
Just as wild animals obey the leader of the pack absolutely, the Picts had a strict hierarchy of command branded into their very bones.
Only the upper ranks among the Picts, including the King of Fotla, possessed human-level intelligence and language ability, and it was this small class of thinkers that controlled the lower individuals through absolute force and built the civilized state that existed today.
The King of Fotla looked down upon his overwhelming army and was certain of victory. Even if Arthur had conquered Ireland, he believed with absolute confidence that in the end his forces would be nothing more than a rabble of British humans.
History had always been that way. Even Uther, so praised by the Britons, had never dared covet Pictland and had met his end by poison.
"They're here! The prey is coming!!"
Far beyond the horizon of the plain, Arthur's army appeared, advancing beneath the banner of the red dragon.
The King of Fotla kicked the giant boar in the rump and strode forward.
"Kuhahahaha! Listen well, you stupid little brat of Britain! This is the territory of us Picts! As the price for daring to set foot on this land, I'll rip out your guts and feed them to this boar...!"
It was the very moment he began his swaggering, spit-flecked speech of provocation.
Rumble!!
Arthur, who had been listening to the taunt, lightly leaped down from the saddle of his beloved horse Llamrei and planted both feet on the ground.
That one simple motion alone shattered the earth in a radius of dozens of meters, cracks spreading like a spiderweb as the ground sank.
"...Huh?"
The King of Fotla's mouth fell open stupidly.
His insolent taunt could no longer make it from his brain to his lips. No, his breath had caught in his throat so hard he could not even force out a voice.
The King of Fotla saw it.
Behind the boy king standing in the distance, a colossal crimson dragon phantom rose up, tearing the sky to shreds.
A storm of absurd magical energy so vast it had long since stepped beyond the category of human and could be compared to a god.
It was the primal terror an ant would feel if it faced a gigantic volcanic eruption at point-blank range, the overwhelming difference in mass that made resistance as a living creature impossible to even imagine.
'Th-that... what in the...'
In the instant the King of Fotla, paralyzed with fear, blinked once without thinking—
Bang!!
With a blast that tore at the eardrums, the boy king's figure vanished from sight as though the pixels themselves had broken apart.
When he opened his eyes again—
"...!!"
Arthur had leaped into the air and was floating right before the King of Fotla's face, at a distance where their eyes met exactly.
In his right fist, scarlet magical energy drawn from the core of the red dragon had condensed like a sun.
The King of Fotla was not given even the time to scream, let alone defend himself.
KWA-BOOOOM!!!!!
Arthur's fist struck the King of Fotla square in the face.
The shockwave exploded outward like a storm, and in a single blow the King of Fotla's head burst apart like a watermelon.
Bone, flesh, and brains sprayed through the air.
And the merciless blow did not end there.
Using the recoil of the punch, Arthur spun in midair, then raised his right leg like an axe and brought it down savagely toward the throne.
Crack!! Crunch!!!
The steel-cast throne crumpled and shattered like paper, and that absurd impact was transmitted in full into the spine of the giant fantasy-species boar supporting it.
"Kkueeek...!"
Unable even to let out a proper death cry, the boar's spine snapped in two. It vomited blood, collapsed on the spot, and died instantly.
"..."
A dreadful silence, as if even the sound of the wind had stopped.
The two thousand Pict elite soldiers who had been shrieking to raise their morale just moments before now stood frozen in place, mouths hanging open as though under a spell.
The headless corpse of their exploded king, and the carcass of the giant boar with its spine broken.
Standing atop that ghastly heap of meat was Arthur, radiating crimson fighting spirit like flames.
Arthur casually kicked the corpse at his feet aside, then shouted in a voice filled with magical energy, loud enough to make the entire mountain range ring.
"Surrender, or die. Choose."
A simple and unmistakable ultimatum.
The eyes of the Pict warriors wavered. They were not an army bound together by loyalty or devotion to others.
They were beasts that worshiped only absolute power capable of ruling them, followed that power, and survived beneath it.
And at this very moment, before their eyes, a great calamity had descended—one that had crushed their leader in a single second without even allowing him the chance to swing that vaunted axe of his once.
Clang! Thud!
Someone dropped the axe they had been holding.
That sound became the signal flare, and all two thousand Pict soldiers threw down their weapons at once like a line of falling dominos.
Thump. Thump.
Toward Arthur, drenched in blood, they fell to their knees and pressed their foreheads to the ground in the most primal fear and reverence.
There was not the slightest trace of attachment to their dead king. This was a ritual of perfect submission to a new war god, an absolute predator.
'...Scathach said it back when I was in the Land of Shadows. Conquering the Picts is surprisingly absurdly easy.'
Arthur let out a faint, dry laugh as he looked down at the two thousand Picts lying flat before him.
To display overwhelming violence of such a different dimension that they could not even dare conceive of resisting it.
That was the fastest and most precise shortcut to breaking the survival instinct at the root of their being and seizing dominion over the Picts.
Arthur took his hand from the hilt of Chrysaor and turned back.
A single blow.
By nothing more than breaking the neck of the nuisance in his way, the campaign to conquer Fotla, the great kingdom of central Pictland, came to an end with absurd ease and anticlimax.
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