"Set the fire! Set the fire! Burn this shed down! Set that house over there alight too!"
Firelight shone from the burning stables and spread westward, blocking the Demon reinforcements coming to help. Many of the Dog-kin who had hacked down the horses had already begun setting fires at random. But the seven or eight Dog-kin here were single-mindedly harvesting their "rare" spoils.
Clang! Bang! Thud!...
The brutal chopping rang like blacksmiths at work, hacking hard into knight Garcia's steel gorget! Under that kind of direct force, the steel gorget warped after only two blows. And so knight Garcia's neck was cinched tight by the gorget!
"Urgh! Hhh... barbarians..."
Knight Garcia's eyes suddenly bulged wide, and he could no longer draw breath. His whole body trembled and struggled, his vision went black, and his mind emptied; lack of oxygen and memories before death surged into his heart like foam.
"For the Lord and the Queen, conquer the Natives of the East Indies..."
In that instant, he suddenly thought of when he had first landed on the island, riding a tall warhorse, lance raised, slaughtering the natives to his heart's content! And of that native chief who had stopped fleeing, turned, and charged at him in despair, only to be stabbed dead by one thrust of his lance. That had truly been a glorious moment of knightly conquest! Yet a mere three months later, he had gone from that shining moment of knighthood to this stifling end of death...
"Lord... Holy Mother... Earth Mother..."
"Knight... honor... death..."
"Ah! I, a knight of Santiago de Compostela, Garcia de Sampero... am actually going to die in such a wretched way, at the hands of a pack of Natives, on muddy ground..."
Bang... Thud!...
"Urgh!!..."
The Bronze axes of the crowd chopped several more