Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 44: Frost Along The Battlements
“Hah! The yokel took the bait!”
The young man calling himself Villis laughed and spurred his horse forward, already leaning in to take Lannor’s head. The warmth had gone from his smile. Only cruelty remained, raw and bright, with the eager twitch of a man who could already smell blood. He showed no caution. Why should he? Two crossbowmen hidden in the dark, himself mounted, one lone man on foot. What doubt could there be?
Cavalry. Kings of war.
In the age of cold steel, no matter how strong an infantryman was, before a horseman he was a rabbit beneath a hawk. Modern folk understood little of that, though anyone who had watched a Spanish bullfight might have grasped a little. Bright-clad knights sat their braided horses, close enough to a raging bull to feel its breath. The moment the beast charged, the horse stepped away, never more than a pace beyond the horns, playing the bull like a fool. A skilled rider could even draw a javelin, stab it into the bull’s back, and salute the crowd between heartbeats.
A bull ten strong men could not wrestle down became nothing but meat before one man and one horse.
It could not match the first burst of speed. It could not match movement. So what if the rider stood face to face with it?
Against men, that advantage became worse.
Infantry had only one chance to harm cavalry, the instant distance closed. Cavalry had chances from beginning to end. So in Villis’s eyes, his ease, his arrogance, his slack grip on caution, all of it was natural.
That certainty lasted until Lannor turned his head.
A pair of amber cat eyes lifted from the mud and fixed on Villis.
Their pupils had narrowed almost to slits.
Villis could not name the feeling that seized him. If he had to put words to it, it was as though some hunting cat had crawled inside his ribs and breathed across his heart.
The moment Villis urged his horse into the charge, Lannor’s fingers had already formed the Sign.
Infantry could not reach cavalry.
But witchers had Signs.
“Aard.”
The air buckled under a sudden thrust of force. Just as Villis’s horse was about to plant its hoof, that hoof was knocked sideways. The animal’s full weight crashed down through a leg placed wrong.
Crack.
White bone punched through flesh from the horse’s lower leg.
The animal screamed, shrill and terrified, and its several hundred kilograms of muscle rolled through the mudflat. When it finally stopped, the knight caught in the tumble could no longer feel his lower body.
Villis’s spine was broken at the waist.
Had this been hard ground instead of mudflat, he would already have been dead.
Expressionless, Lannor walked through the mire toward the tangled mass of horseflesh and man.
“W-wait! Sir, this is a misun, thump!”
A studded leather glove closed into a fist and smashed into Villis’s cheek. The well-dressed young man had still been trying to explain something. After that punch, half his face was raked away by the triangular iron studs on Lannor’s glove.
Pain drove his body to flood itself with dulling humors. The effect would not last long, but for now it was enough to make Villis’s eyes swim.
Two more bolts cut through the air after the punch. Lannor slipped aside from both with ease.
Once he was alert, and with no one pinning his movement, such things could no longer touch him.
One rider, two crossbowmen. A more troublesome killing net than the one that had been used against Bordon.
But Bordon had no way out then. He had to fight head-on.
And so he had been fought to death.
Now Lannor had crippled Villis while the man still thought himself safe. The battle had gone from beginning to end in the space of a breath.
An ordinary witcher could never have caught the instant a horse’s hoof came down, then released an Aard sharp enough to knock it aside. Their Aard spread too wide. Against a horseman, it might not even make the mount falter.
This was a first-strike kill that only Lannor, with Mentos sharpening his observation and control, could have managed.
The witcher stared toward the distant road, where the bolts had come from.
But he had no time to finish the crossbowmen. Bernie was bleeding hard now.
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