“People who use swords, you see.”
Hawkeye gripped the bowstave with an expression completely different from before. The bowstave had bent backward from the impact of colliding with the blade, and the instant it came into his grasp, it stopped dead in that position.
Clang!
Holding both ends of the bowstave with both hands, he blocked the sword once more. Tendons stood out sharply on the backs of Hawkeye’s hands.
“They think archers can’t fight at close range.”
Claaang!
The moment he released one of the hands gripping the bowstave, the stave snapped back with tremendous force and shoved the sword away.
It carried even greater force than batting a blade aside with another sword, leaving Commandment unable to easily attempt even the most basic swordsmanship technique of deflecting the blow. Her arm was thrown backward as though caught in the shock wave of an explosion.
“Petty tricks—”
Of course, she was a veteran, and traitor or not, she had once been the chief knight of an entire city. Without even a hint of panic on her face, she swiftly corrected her stance and assumed a defensive posture.
In a fight between swordsmen, this was normally the correct judgment in a situation like this, since an attack should naturally have followed.
“And they don’t know how archers fight, either.”
But the person she was facing was not a swordsman.
Hawkeye rolled the bowstave, now curved back into its original shape, in his hand and shifted his grip on it as though turning a sword…