Chapter 104 Assailants

After a somewhat rough awakening, Azi now stood outside of the carriage he was just sleeping in. The cold night air chilled his skin but it did little to help his situation as he could still feel the heat from the red teeth marks on the side of his neck.

He looked to his right and saw the offending person who had bitten him in his sleep. Noticing his gaze, Shizu turned her head away in embarrassment and coughed a bit before changing topics.

"Let's get going. If we don't act quickly, the enemy will get away and we'll be left with no answers to our questions."

Azi sighed and gave a nod of agreement before running off with Shizu who was followed by a group of their caravan's guards. Meanwhile, Kajima and Yashimu had agreed to stay near their carriage in order to keep watch over their belongings and to guard Rulu.

Of the caravan's guard detail of 50 people, 20 guards protected the first carriage, 10 guards protected the second carriage, and 20 mercenaries were hired by Jerome to protect his own carriage.

10 of the guards from the first carriage went with Azi and Shizu to aid in repelling the sudden attack on Jerome's caravan. Making their way to the sound of battle they arrived at the outskirts of Jerome's encampment which was only a few meters away from their own. They saw that the camp was swarming with people wearing white and black clothing that covered them from head to toe.

Shizu caught sight of the metal headband of the assailants that had the emblem of a fanged wolf bearing its maw. Under her breath she stated her guess on who the assailants were.

"Uzuru. This isn't good." Heaving a sigh, Shizu then commanded her group to start supporting the mercenaries in fighting off the assailants.

While the mercenaries were able to put up a good fight, they were caught off guard as the assailants had used the night to their advantage. Additionally, these assailants used fire magic in their initial attack which burned many of the mercenaries who were still asleep inside their tents.

Azi took notice of the color of the flames and pondered why they had a black hue, but after hearing Shizu's command he sprung into action.

With his gauntlets, Azi charged at the closest assailant who was about to kill a mercenary who was flat on his back. With a reinforced punch to the assailant's stomach, the wind was knocked out of their lungs. This left the assailant scrunched up on the ground in a fetal position as they tried to gasp for air.

Two of the caravan guards then moved without orders to cover Azi and directed the injured mercenary to safety. Azi took some rope out of his bag and began to bind the assailant's hands and legs together.

He soon finished and thanked the two caravan guards, but was slightly startled by the crimson red line of blood that stained the ground in front of the two caravan guards. This made Azi pause, since at the end of that line of blood was the unmoving body of an assailant that had tried to accost Azi as he was tying up one of the assailant's comrades.

While Azi knew that people were going to die in this encounter, he still felt somewhat sick to his stomach when he saw dead human bodies. He wondered if we would be able to take a human life as well but before he could find the resolve or reason to do so, he and his two caravan guards were charged by a group of 5 assailants.

Three of the assailants got through the two guards and charged Azi with their scimitars. They seemed aggravated as he noticed the concern in their eyes when looking at the tied up assailant he had subdued.

To counter, Azi reinforced his whole body and parried the three successive slashes away from him. This caused the assailants to gawk in amazement which Azi used to promptly knock the wind out of the two.

The third attempted to strike Azi with a horizontal slash but he deftly dodge it with ease as his small stature made it easier for him to dodge around large opponents. While this was an advantage for Azi, it was also a constant reminder of just how short he was when compared to a normal person.

He then punched the third assailant in the gut which brought to his knees as he keeled over in pain. Azi then got more rope out of his bag and went to tie up the first pair of assailants he had knocked down.

When he turned his head, he was startled by a blade that came close to cutting his neck. He was able to dodge the attack in time by flinching back his whole body away.

The first assailant had recovered his breath and was able to get back on his feet. This was the same for the second assailant as he had moved to Azi's right side to flank him.

Noticing this, Azi grimaced and tried to build the resolve to attack these people with the intent to kill, but the words of his grandpa rang out in his mind as he recalled his recently obtained memories.

"Never use force Azi, There are other….."

"Ways." Whispered Azi. "I just have to find a way."

Dodging to the left, Azi avoided the second assailant's strike and began to think of a way to subdue these men without killing them.

Unfortunately, these thoughts clouded his judgment as the first assailant caught him off guard and swung his blade in a vertical slash. Azi had to catch it with his left hand and for a moment his reinforcement magic was not in effect.

This caused a slight cut to form on his hand and blood began to flow from his left hand as it stained the blade of the first assailant's scimitar.

But now, Azi had a firm grasp on the blade so he used this to his advantage and broke the scimitar by using his overwhelming strength to bend the blade until it shattered.

Azi could tell that the blades were brittle during his first exchange with his fists as the contact he felt when parrying them felt different from weapons made of refined steel. He knew from the metal headbands that these assailants were from Uzuru as he had learned about them from Kajima's lessons and the books he read.

That nation was not as advanced as the Empire of Yamato and he learned from his lessons on blacksmithing that the main weapons used by Uzuruan soldiers were made of casted iron which were more brittle than forged refined steel weapons or forged iron weapons.

In Azi's opinion, Uzuru was not blessed with the Emperor's gifts and was sorely lacking in the department of material engineering, which was a term Azi had recently recalled.

With this, Azi had his way of fighting back and began to forcibly break the two assailants' weapons when they attempted to strike at him.

He then filled them with a punch to the gut and a kick to the head which left the two now unconscious on the ground. Before Azi could celebrate, he heard the crunching of snow behind him.

"Watch out!"

At the side, Shizu threw her umbrella like a mace and it smashed into the side of the third assailant's head. He had recovered and attempted to attack Azi from behind.

Turning around, Azi saw the bloodied mess of the third assailant's face which made him grimace a bit in regret for not being able to take the man alive.

Shizu approached Azi's side and asked. "Are you alright?"

Checking himself over, Azi saw that the cut on his left hand had healed without a trace of a scar. "I'm…. fine…." He affirmed but hesitation was in his voice as he could not confidently say he was alright as the sense of incongruity he felt when he looked at his healed hand had come back.

"Just feeling a bit sick whenever I look at dead bodies." To reassure Shizu he added a comment to hide the true reason for his hesitation.

"If you feel like you can't continue, I can have you go back to watch over Rulu." Suggested Shizu.

Azi took a moment to think but quickly shook his head side to side. "No, I can keep going but for now I'll hold back a little and try to provide support."

"Alright, but stay next to me. I'll take the vanguard while you intercept anything that catches me off guard."

Azi agreed to Shizu's suggestion and stayed next to her throughout the rest of the fight. Soon, a small group led by Touma arrived and aided in whittling down the number of the assailants. There were quite a number of them as the fight lasted for an hour, but in the end the assailants were no match against the caravan guards.

By the end, a number of corpses littered Jerome's camp site. The man in question had survived by cowering in the confines of his carriage while Ghost kept any of the assailants from approaching. Strangely, most of the assailants seemed to purposefully rush at Jerome's carriage which resulted in a ring of corpses that now surrounded his carriage.

After giving the mercenaries and guards who died during the fight a proper but simple burial, the dead assailants were piled up and burned to ash. The people of the Empire saw the citizen's of Uzuru as enemies but would at least give them a decent end.

Some of the ashes were then gathered and placed in an urn, which would be returned to Uzuru if the opportunity arose. Shizu was the one who suggested such an action while Jerome protested that any trace of these heretics and savages should be erased.

Everyone in the caravan did not take kindly to his words as it spat upon common human decency. This inturn made everyone give him the cold shoulder throughout the rest of the trip.

Seated back in his carriage, Jerome checked outside his carriage's door to ensure that no one except Ghost was nearby. He then heaved a sigh in relief since he had just narrowly averted the discovery of his involvement with the assailants.

He was questioned by Shizu on if Jerome had any idea how these people got into the Empire's borders but Jerome successfully feigned ignorance. He now counted his lucky stars that he was still alive after receiving that letter from Uzuru.

Jerome was also not surprised by the sudden attack and attempt on his life since when he received the letter from Uzuru he knew that an assassination attempt was coming as the letter, while written out to be a warning and a blow at his honor, was a thinly veiled threat on his life. The Uzuru people did not take kindly to betrayal and would at times seek retribution.

While Jerome could have warned the caravan, he did not want to bring suspicion on himself so he kept it a secret from his mercenaries and from Shizu.

Jerome was also lucky that Shizu came to help since Ghost was starting to get overwhelmed by the number of enemies. He wished that the rest of the trip would be uneventful but knew that this was only the start of his troubles.

Meanwhile, Azi and Shizu were interrogating the 3 people that Azi had captured. No one else in the caravan attempted to capture any of the assailants as they were used to killing and felt that attempting a capture during an ongoing fight was more trouble than it was worth.

While Azi was disarming the first assailant he downed, he was surprised by what he saw when he removed the assailant's head cloth that covered their face.

"A yamaton girl?" Azi said in confusion. In response to his words, he got a sharp glare from the assailant he had been working on to disarm.

"Does this surprise you boy? Or are you so brainwashed that you can't think for yourself?!" Said the young woman.

"No, not really and I'm not brainwashed. I'm just surprised that an Uzuruan has Yamaton features."

Yamaton's were known to have furry ears and tails, while Uzuruan were known for having scaled arms with somewhat reptilian eyes. Azi had believed that all Uzuruans had these features so the recent reveal of a Uzuruan having Yamaton features had caught him off guard.

This reminded him that he had much to learn which made his inquisitive mind start to race as he came up with questions he would like to ask the young woman.

But before he could, Shizu stepped in as she saw the inquisitive look Azi had on his face. "Azi! Now's not the time for you to ask questions. Get them loaded onto the 2nd carriage and join me at the front."

Sighing at his missed chance to learn more about Uzuru, he nodded in agreement but added.

"Sure, Sure. But I'll be staying in the 2nd carriage for a while."

"Why?"

Indicating his neck with a pointed finger, Shizu blushed and wanted to retort that it was just an accident but didn't want to reveal such an embarrassing fumble on her part.

Begrudgingly, Shizu acquiesced to Azi's demand and was allowed to ride in the second carriage with the captured Uzuruans to be their "warden".