Genichiro Ashina nodded.
"Good. Ashina does not forget its friends. We move. Master, you'll take the vanguard. My cavalry company is yours—let them witness Gyoubu Oniwa's valor."
"Sir!" A tall samurai in crimson armor bellowed back.
"Lord Naomori Kawarada, I want you to take your company around the left to cut off any enemy retreat."
"Sir!"
"Kuranosuke Matsumoto, you'll take your company and strike with me."
"Sir!"
Genichiro raised his voice: "All forces, attack! Let the name of Ashina's warriors ring to the ends of the earth!"
A full fifteen hundred elite soldiers came charging out of the ravine.
Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa led the first wave at the head of the cavalry. The old general who had once tutored Genichiro was at the very front, gripping a two-meter (about six and a half feet) cross-bladed spear, astride a tall warhorse. His men wore banners across their backs reading On the day of marching: honor in death, shame in surviving defeat.
The thunder of hooves snapped the White Witch's senses taut. She whirled—and there was Gyoubu Oniwa, riding in like fire.
Crimson warhorse, crimson great-armor, a demon mask on his face, his spear trailing at his side—everything about the man screamed that he was not ordinary.
"A demon out of Hell?" For a heartbeat, the White Witch faltered. Whatever else he was, Gyoubu looked nothing like a righteous friend of Narnia.
Her army was deep in the pursuit of Bella's coalition. Only she was left at the rear. That heartbeat of hesitation was all it took—the sky darkened with arrows.
The retainers took their lord's preferences to extremes.
Back when Isshin Ashina, the Sword Saint, had led the country, every samurai had trained the blade. Now, under Genichiro, every samurai in Ashina was obsessed with archery.
In their campaigns against the demons that bordered Ashina, Genichiro had dug an ancient technique out of the old scrolls, something that had long since decayed into a purely ceremonial art. He'd revived it to press their battle gains, minimize their losses, and maximize their advantages: yabusame.
Put simply: horseback archery.
They'd never outshoot steppe nomads, but in the context of Japan's Warring States period, yabusame was a highly technical discipline. Only because Ashina's samurai had been augmented by infernal power could they pull it off at all.
The arrow storm came down on the White Witch. She cast in a hurry, flashing back more than twenty meters (about sixty-five feet) in an instant, out of the kill zone.
She got out. Her ornate chariot and the white bears pulling it did not. Arrows clattered against the chariot's frame, and the two bears were skewered into the earth by a dozen shafts without so much as a grunt.
Before the White Witch had a chance to get her anger out, Gyoubu Oniwa and his cross-bladed spear were in her face.
Spear up. The blade carried the sulfur stink of demons—Gyoubu had killed enough of them with it. He had no fear of death and no mercy in him. The spear swept into an arc and drove at her heart.
"Worm! You dare raise a hand to me?!" The White Witch was furious, and she was no slouch with a blade. Facing cavalry on foot didn't rattle her. She drew the sword at her hip, parried the spear one-handed at an impossibly clean angle, and thrust her left-hand wand at Gyoubu's flank.
The wand started its motion and snapped back. At the same instant an arrow whistled through the space the wand had just vacated.
From far back in the field, in the nick of time, Genichiro had loosed an arrow and saved Gyoubu's life.
Gyoubu didn't waste the opening. He shifted the spear to his left hand.
Swung it in a full circle. Brought it down on the White Witch's neck.
His own strike lacked follow-through, but her own form was more overextended than his. She had no choice but to drop backward under the blade. Fast, timely, the right call—but the cross-bladed spear still shaved a lock of golden hair clean from her head.
Gyoubu's strike was evaded. The yabusame riders behind him switched to spears as a unit and unleashed a flurry of thrusts at her.
Bella had given the Ashina samurai one core objective: behead the White Witch. If they couldn't kill her, drain her magic, make her bleed.
Spears came down like rain. The White Witch stood like a sea-rock in the tide, parrying left, cutting right, turning blades aside without stopping.
Her swordsmanship was genuinely fearsome. By the time the cavalry fully cleared her, she had a single gash along one arm—and the riders she'd killed on the way past numbered more than ten.
Gyoubu took his riders a hundred meters (about three hundred feet) out, wheeled, and prepared to strike again.
Genichiro didn't need to build up speed. The moment the cavalry disengaged from the White Witch, his arrows arrived.
His arrows were fast. They came in strings, one after another, drilling at her without pause.
In all of Ashina, Genichiro's swordsmanship might not be the strongest. His archery, though, stood alone.
He could loose four arrows from a single jump's hang-time. With his feet planted, the shafts came faster still.
The bow was two meters long (about six and a half feet). The string was made from demon sinews, specially worked. The arrows carried a metal quarried from the borderlands of Hell—the heads gave off an unnatural red glow. Even the White Witch could only keep dodging.
She was arrogant, yes, but her mind and her judgment were both sharp. Seeing the enemy closing on her from every direction, she fought and retreated at the same time, trying to get back to her own army.
"All of you, back here! Help me!" she shouted.
The evil army's offensive froze. The Minotaur General, in mid-pursuit of the centaur general, couldn't process what was happening. His thick skull turned. Behind him, the whole force was a boiling mess, boar-men squealing as they ran back.
Thunk. The centaur general's blade punched through the Minotaur General's shoulder blade. The Minotaur lived up to his reputation for being thick-skinned—he swung his great axe in a full circle, forced the centaur back a step, and wheeled to run to the White Witch's aid.
The evil army came apart. The cowardly and the quick-thinking turned and ran. The reckless and the slow-witted kept charging forward, and a few giants with Frost Giant blood had pushed dozens of meters past the front line before they noticed they were alone.
"Counterattack! For Narnia! For Aslan!" Bella raised her cross-hilted sword. Her voice wasn't loud, but it rang in every ear on the field.
The centaurs blew their horns in a ragged chorus. The chance had come.
Bella, ignoring the unicorn's wounded looks, climbed onto the back of a gryphon.
She drew her staff and triggered the light spell bound into it. In that moment, it wasn't just a first-level light spell anymore. It was Narnia's hope. It was a light of hope.