I Will Be the Greatest Knight
Chapter 87: Vantage Point

Chapter 87: Vantage Point

A moment of distraction was a moment too long. As soon as Irene’s eyes went elsewhere rather than the mess of goblins all around her, she was knocked to the ground and her head narrowly missed a pile of stones. She felt lucky that she was at least wearing armor over her back, shoulders, abdomen, and wrists or she would be much worse off than she was at that moment.

However, there was no time to consider silver linings when the goblins all around her were going to kill her.

She had no choice but to figure it out or succumb to the blades of monsters.

Seeing a person down, the goblins began to swarm at the easy target. All they knew was attacking without rhyme or reason.

The clicks erupting from their throats and shrill shrieks that already filled her mind caused momentary panic to set in, but it was enough to have her slash at some of the monster’s legs. Even if she was only reacting and not thinking for a moment, it took down a few and gave her a window to stand up and to move away.

When she was finally not being swarmed, she needed to clean up the mess she made from falling over and attracting more goblins to the area.

With her best efforts, she tried to cut down as many of the putrid monsters as she could, but she was getting overwhelmed.

Fortunately, she soon heard someone shout her name and she saw Sir Phillip arrive from where he had been at the heart of the battle.

With a more practiced swing and a longer blade, he managed to do more damage than she ever could.

"You may go now!" he shouted. "Sir Sven is already seeking higher ground. We must blind the ogres or more will be lost. The sun is setting. You won’t be able to see soon."

Seeing as a full fledged knight was now on that side of the goblins, there was a more certain effort pushing the monsters in one direction. With his entire suit of armor and longer sword, he was more volatile and she appreciated him taking over for her.

It gave her a perfect opening to sprint to the opposite edge. She ran deeper into the plains before having to start climbing up a steep incline since there were no foothills at that point of the mountain range. When she spotted Sir Sven up ahead, she moved even faster. It seemed that he was seeking the same higher ground that she was.

The girl readied her bow by pulling it towards the front of herself for easy access. She also reached for the strap of her arrow sheath, thinking of adjusting it, but her gloved hand met only her armor. There was no strap to be found.

Her eyes widened and she felt momentary panic.

"Dammit!" she cursed under her breath—very unladylike but having long since lost anything about herself that would make her ladylike at all.

Rather than pressing on and hoping that Sir Sven would spare her some of his arrows, she had to fix the problem that she herself had created.

Right back into the mess of goblins she went considering the way back was much easier than the way forward because it was all downhill.

Fortunately, she was only faced with one active goblin because Sir Phillip had done most of the work and all that there were were slashed down creatures. It smelled like rot as well as the familiar stench of the substance that seemed to follow wherever monsters were those days.

She had to move a few goblin bodies but she remembered her surroundings from before and found the sheath covered in monster blood but perfectly intact.

All that was left to do was place it over her shoulders and sprint the way she had already traveled once.

Up the mountain, her thighs burned and her lungs objected to being suddenly subjected to such hard activity, but she was determined to not disappoint the knights who were relying on her bow skill. Since there were few who practiced with the weapon consistently enough to be accurate, she felt a bit of importance having mastered it enough to be called on in such a way.

Only when she was halfway to Sir Sven, however, she finally saw the ogres that they were talking about and her eyes bugged out of her head. She was thrown off for a moment. The size of the monsters were far greater than the one they faced in the forest just after last winter.

She knew if she were to hold her hands out in front of her, they would be trembling.

What was most important to her in that moment was not giving up despite what an impossible task seemed to lie ahead.

She kept looking at her path, but her eyes would stray to the ogres that were slowly moving down the valley. Since the goblins were mostly down, the knights and apprentices concentrated their efforts on the ogres and they did what they could to stop them in their path so they wouldn’t come across a village or any of the horses hiding amongst the trees if they hadn’t simply ran off altogether.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing she had witnessed was one of the ogres who picked up the goblins and used them as weapons, either swinging them to hit the knights or throwing them a shocking distance to strike something from much further away.

The yells of ogres were more terrifying than that of goblins.

Finally at the top of the crest in the mountain and at the edge of a steep cliff where they could look down at what was transpiring below, she nodded at Sir Sven who greeted her with a nod of his own.

"There is quite a good chance our arrows cause the ogres to come in this direction," the knight explained to the apprentice. "We will have to handle it if it comes to that because we are trying to get them to leave the few buildings they were pillaging before we got here."

The man didn’t lower his bow and pointed his readied arrowhead in the direction he wanted Irene to look.

She hadn’t spotted it before because all the colors were starting to blend together and be muted in the darkness of evening, but there were crushed wooden structures in ruins where the battle had likely started. All that was left of them were the rock and brick fortified foundations that hadn’t been totally crushed by the attacks yet.

Perhaps the worst realization was that there were knights and apprentices hiding on the other side of one of the taller walls, hoping to stay out of the way of the ogre’s stone hammer.

To her horror, one of the five knights mere feet from the ogre and hiding was her father. To her horror even more, the lifeless bodies of an apprentice and two knights lay just behind him, waiting to be taken to their final resting places if they made it out of the attacks, at least.

I will protect you, she decided.