Be My Shield
"I present myself before His Grace the Duke."
Franz Meyer offered the greeting. The man receiving it was Adel von Setia—Franz's lord.
"My lord."
"Sit at ease. I have a great deal I need to discuss with you, Sir Franz."
"Yes, my lord."
I took the seat opposite him as he indicated.
"Sir Franz."
"Yes."
"I am truly grateful to you."
"For what, exactly?"
"You saw that my power base was too thin—that the Four Great Factions could yank me about whenever they pleased—and so you built a new faction to keep the four houses in check. Is that not so?"
"Hmm…"
Half right. I had formed the faction because I expected Adel to waver—that much was true. But I had not done it for Adel. I had done it for myself. A lord who could be shaken, and the mainstream factions treating that lord like a toy to be moved about—that was the worst possible situation for me.
"You need not answer. I know the full measure of your loyalty. When everyone else betrayed my father, you alone stood by him to the end. That alone makes it plain: the rest of my vassals are a pack of wolves, and you are the only true loyalist among them."
"You honor me beyond my deserts."
"Which brings me to this. I have a request."
"A request, my lord?"
"Yes. As you well know, the four great houses are still powerful. Now that I have turned my back on them, they will tear into me the moment I show any weakness. I am afraid of them—of those wolves. Help me. Make certain they cannot kill me and seize power. Be my ally. Be my shield."
"…"
Standing with Adel was not difficult. But if the original game storyline held, it was also a dangerous choice.
"Lord Adel."
"What is it?"
"Swearing loyalty to you and becoming your shield is no hard thing—provided you promise me just one thing."
"I will promise anything! Tell me what it is!"
"That heart of yours, as it is now."
Adel looked puzzled.
"The desperation. The urgency. The hunger to survive."
"…"
"Never let it change. So long as you do not change, I will remain on your side."
A moment later—
"You made such a show of gravity I thought you were about to name some impossible condition! What is hard about that? I will never change!"
"That is a promise."
"Of course it is!"
My lord and I clasped hands. The contract was sealed. It would not last long, most likely.
The Kruzenstein army advanced as far as the Aquila River.
Forty thousand troops held the western bank. Ignoring a force of that size meant risking a severed supply line—and a knife in the back. So the Kruzenstein army made camp on the eastern bank, intending to smash the enemy outright in a river-crossing assault and push through.
Setia's forty thousand against Kruzenstein's twenty thousand. Crossing a river against twice your numbers was never going to be simple.
Yet the Kruzenstein rank and file were, against every expectation, in remarkably high spirits. And why not? Since Leona von Kruzenstein had become their lord, they had never once been defeated. Two times the enemy, three times—if Leona was in command, they would grind them all to dust. That was what the Kruzenstein army believed.
Around the time her soldiers were thinking such thoughts, the head of the house herself wore a troubled look.
Leona von Kruzenstein had climbed a nearby ridge to survey the full disposition of both armies. What she saw was far from ideal.
"Of all things, a river. They mean to keep us from using our muskets. So the enemy has someone with a working head after all?"
Franz Meyer. The man said to have become the real power of late. She had heard that in the previous battle, too, it was Franz Meyer's sudden intervention that had cost them the fight.
"Numerical superiority alone I can overcome. But being denied our muskets as well—that is a headache."
Should she pull back? The thought crossed her mind, then she steeled herself.
"Win or lose, it is worth testing them once. If only to learn what level of opponent we are dealing with."
Dawn of the next day found Leona already moving her army. In a darkness where nothing could be seen, only the enemy's torches shifted and hurried about. By morning, both armies could finally make each other out.
Forty thousand. The largest host I have ever laid eyes on. A great many of them.
That was Leona's thought.
Every soldier's movement is linked to the next. The organizational strength of the Kruzenstein army is nothing to dismiss.
That was mine.
Neither side took the other lightly; both approached with care. In that tension I saw Adel's hands trembling.
"My lord—are you afraid?"
This was Adel's first battle. Fear was only natural.
"Honestly? Yes. I am afraid."
"Do not worry. I have blocked every factor that could lead to our defeat. We will win."
"…I am putting my trust in you alone."
We were still speaking when drums began to sound from the enemy lines, and their soldiers started to advance.
"All forces—charge!"
"Archers to the front!"
As the Kruzenstein army closed in, our archers loosed volleys into their vanguard. On Leona's side, massed musketeers answered in kind. Across the river, arrows and musket fire poured in torrents from both banks.
Explosions rolled from every direction—the crack of musket powder. An exchange of fire between archers and musketeers. We had the numbers, but the training of Leona's troops was of another order entirely. Her ranks held an overwhelming share of crack shots, and before long our archers began to give way.
"Fall back! Fall back to the rear!"
The drums shifted to an uneasy rhythm, nothing like the signal for attack. It was the order to withdraw. Officers relayed the command; the men fell back as ordered.
So the opening skirmish goes to them after all…
I had expected as much. In quantity we dominated; in the quality of each soldier, the Kruzenstein army was overwhelmingly superior. I had known victory would not come easily. That was why I chose to pull back. Letting the enemy cross the river was, by itself, an advantage for us.
The formation shifted. Everyone regrouped a hundred meters from the riverbank—the position where Adel had been waiting from the start.
Then Leona's army, having forded the river and begun its true charge, slammed into our real vanguard, which had been held carefully in reserve.
Their spearhead was Clemens de Balboa. Clemens lacked the insight to read a battlefield as a whole, but he made up for it with raw courage and a killer's instincts in the thick of a melee—a fierce general rather than a great one. And opposite him…
"Pikemen, forward!"
The House of Meyer. We had expanded our pike contingent from the original thousand to two thousand. Those two thousand pikemen, combined with four thousand regulars, put six thousand men into the field.
Meyer's two thousand pikes took the front and began to hold the enemy. Clemens, for all that he had lost once before, showed not a shred of fear; he stood in the van and drove his men on.
"All forces, attack! This is the day we repay the humiliation of last time!"
I had to admit, Clemens's courage was a little exhausting. One defeat ought to take some of the wind out of a man—yet his ferocity showed no sign of breaking.
Even so, this battle favored us overwhelmingly. We had the numbers. We were on the defensive. We had chosen the ground. With every advantage stacked like that, defeat was simply not an option.
"Do not give a single step!"
I shouted. Both sides leveled their pikes and closed, step by step. Then the points met. The two pike walls began to beat and shove each other's spearheads aside, fighting for control of the line.
Last time our pikemen had won in a rout. Not this time. A large share of the Meyer ranks were recruits of less than a year; the numbers had grown, but the quality had dropped, and we could no longer overwhelm the Kruzenstein troops on training alone. On top of that, Leona's own household pikemen had joined the fight this time. Their drill was sharper than before; ours was duller. Before long the two sides were evenly matched.
We won last time, but the Kruzenstein army is a force tempered by countless real battles. I never expected an easy victory to begin with.
Which was why the order I had given was simply this: do not give ground.
Not "push them back." Just "do not give ground." That alone was enough.
"Solid work, Meyer."
Leona was impressed. She had expected as much from the moment she heard Clemens had lost, but the enemy vanguard—Franz Meyer's army—was solidity itself. This was a different dimension from the easy handling of Clozel's forces. The Meyer army was the very core of Setia's host.
"If only the Meyer troops were not here, this would have been simple…"
Unable to break the center, she could not freely press either wing. The Meyer army, holding firm in the middle, was the pillar that kept the entire Setia force upright.
"But the real fight starts now."
Leona meant to show them. She meant to show how she had carved up her younger brother when he had come at her with more than twice the men.