The Southern Commission
Issued by Viscount Folmers, Acting Lord of Valois Castle
Boiled down, Folmers' request amounted to this.
Most of Valois's fighting strength was currently committed to the northern front, and as a natural consequence, law and order in the south had gone to hell. Bandits were running rampant, and demonic beasts seemed to be prowling freely as well. The busy season in the fields was winding down, and times like these always brought bandits out of the woodwork. There was still a stretch of idle days left before the harvest, and unless you were tucked away in a mountain hollow like Bari Village, bored villagers with nothing better to do made for easy prey along the roads — or easy recruits. On top of that, even the occasional demonic beast that needed putting down wasn't getting handled, thanks to the bandits. Naturally, the requests for aid pouring into the main castle had piled up. But the soldiers who would have dealt with all of it had gone north, so of course nothing was getting solved.
Which was why Folmers had asked Joseph, since he was heading that way anyway, to tidy up the southern territory's security on the road out.
Compared to the northern beast hunt, this should be several times easier.
Joseph had fought bandits before, back when he'd left Bari Village. Granted, he'd spent an entire day digging pit traps and still gotten ambushed in his sleep, but it was experience all the same. And the Joseph of now was a different man from the Joseph of then. Back then he couldn't even properly use a single Mana Orb. Now a single spell set people on fire. It was almost embarrassing to compare those bandits to the demonic beast he'd only managed to kill by slamming orbs into it dozens of times.
Even so, he still didn't have a single proper defensive spell to his name, so getting careless was out of the question. His condition hadn't been right since the assassination attempt, either. After that night, he'd started waking over and over whenever he tried to sleep, and he could feel that casting even once now took several times the concentration it used to.
Whatever I do, my own safety comes first.
He'd taken the payment, so he'd do what he could. But what still mattered most was keeping himself in one piece.
"So — how many bandits and demonic beasts did you say were along the route?"
"From Valois Castle to Malešov, the reports that have come in put it at six bandit groups and two demonic beasts."
Malešov. A small village at the southernmost edge of the Valois Territory. Auger was apparently making his way there from the east, clearing bandits with his private soldiers as he came.
Six bandit groups and two demonic beasts…
Which, in practice, meant there would be far more. Just as Bari Village had once been sealed off by bandits, there would be plenty of places whose news had never reached the castle at all.
"Let's stop at every village along the way, then."
"Understood."
The carriage moved as slowly as it reasonably could. The slower they went, the easier they'd be for bandits to spot. It already looked like a carriage with money in it, and they had all of five soldiers. Anyone loitering along the roadside would have a hard time looking away.
What if they know I'm in here and hit the carriage first?
The thought crossed his mind, and he shook it off just as quickly. Expecting a mage hired to hunt them to be hiding inside an expensive carriage? Anyone clever enough to figure that out wouldn't still be out here robbing people.
Refn and the other soldiers looked remarkably at ease. Under ordinary circumstances, crossing a lawless stretch of territory with five men would have been enough to put a scare into anyone, but they showed no sign of it. More than half of them had taken part in the demonic beast hunt, and the rest had heard the rumors about Joseph. It also didn't hurt that none of them knew his actual condition.
On the second day out from the castle, a handful of ragged-looking men stepped into the road.
"Halt! Stop right there!"
There were three of them, and they were so brazen about it that Joseph and the soldiers alike were briefly too stunned to react. The rusty axe and clubs in their hands made their intentions obvious enough.
We're short on soldiers, sure, but we're wearing armor.
They must have looked like easy marks. There were probably more of them hiding nearby. Or they were just insane.
"How do you want to handle this?" Refn asked, sidling up to the carriage.
"I think there are more of them hidden nearby."
Joseph watched the bandits through a gap in the canvas. His job wasn't to drive them off. It was to catch them and kill them. And more than anything, he had no interest in taking a knife in the back of the skull.
"Wouldn't it be faster to grab those ones quickly and ask them?"
It wasn't a bad point. Bandits were usually people from nearby villages. They didn't have any grand sense of loyalty, so grab one and lean on him a little and he'd spill everything you hadn't even asked about.
Joseph considered it, then nodded. He pressed his back as far as he could against the cargo, covering his rear.
"Don't stop. Just keep closing in."
The soldiers looked puzzled at the order, but nobody offered an opinion. This wasn't just anyone giving instructions. This was a Combat Mage.
The carriage and the soldiers kept moving, closing the distance at a walk.
"You bastards! I said stop!"
As they drew nearer, several more men burst from the brush along the roadside. There were more of them than expected, and this time the soldiers drew their swords at once.
A thin hiss cut the air. In that same instant, Joseph formed a Mana Orb and sent it up over the carriage.
"The hell is that?"
One of the bandits blurted it out, gaping at the suddenly appearing sphere of light. Judging by the reaction, he didn't even know it was magic.
Joseph fired the orb at the idiots standing there like statues.
"Flame Bite."
⟨ Flame Bite ⟩
The moment the incantation left his mouth, the Mana Orb streaking toward the center of the group swelled into a great burst of fire and detonated.
"Aaaargh!"
The men nearest the orb were engulfed at once, rolling on the ground as the flames took them. The sudden roar and the bloom of fire had their eyes rolling back in their heads. The soldiers charged them without hesitation.
Refn stayed by the carriage. There was always the one-in-a-thousand chance — someone might actually be after Joseph.
It was over in moments. Three burned to death. Four cut down by the soldiers. Two caught trying to run. Their own side hadn't taken a scratch. That first Flame Bite had snuffed the fight out of them in a single stroke.
"Anyone else?"
"None, sir."
While they interrogated the survivors, two of the soldiers swept the surrounding brush.
"Looks like that was all of them."
"Nine, huh. That's a fair number."
Nine might not have sounded like much, but against ordinary people it was more than enough. Even a soldier in full armor could go down from one good hit with an iron club. Unless you were dealing with something special, the side with more bodies had an easier time caving in skulls.
"Which village are you from?"
"Se— Semin."
"Semin?"
From what they gathered, it was a village quite a ways from here. The soldiers closed in and pressed harder, swords pointed at throats.
"These ones left their village for good, sir."
In other words, they hadn't come out during the off-season to pick up a little extra work. They were a professional bandit crew. Not desperate villagers turning to crime to eat — career criminals. With the war on, there were no soldiers left to hunt them, so they'd simply changed occupations. And then they'd had the misfortune of running into this.
"What do we do with these two?"
Refn looked down at the pair on their knees.
Ordinarily, survivors would be hauled back to the castle and hanged. Not practical, considering how many more we're going to have to put down. But this was a different situation. Joseph had to travel the southern territory catching bandits as he went. He could hardly drag surviving prisoners along every time. And if the number of survivors grew, some of them might start getting ideas later.
"Can't be helped."
Killing men who'd already lost the will to fight didn't sit well with him, but there was no other choice right now. They'd been trying to kill people themselves. They didn't have much room to complain.
In the end, the two who'd survived had their throats cut as well.
Afterward, Joseph and the soldiers searched the area a little more thoroughly. A short way off the road, in the woods, they found the bandits' camp. Digging through the packs inside turned up more stolen goods than expected. Most of it was worn clothing and rusted cookpots, but mixed in among the junk were things that clearly looked expensive. They'd been living well off their hauls, by the look of it.
"What would you like done with it?"
Refn glanced at Joseph, waiting. Joseph understood the look immediately. Folmers had asked him to put down bandits. The request had said nothing about what to do with plunder. Which meant that the authority to dispose of this — and every haul they took from here on — sat entirely with Joseph.
Hmm.
He checked the soldiers' faces. The rest of them were swallowing, watching him the same way Refn was. The truth was, Joseph didn't care much about the loot. Between the pay from the northern beast hunt and what Folmers had given him for this job, money wasn't going to be a problem for a while.
"Take whatever you need."
The soldiers' faces lit up at once, and they started rummaging through the haul. They looked more like bandits than the ones they'd just killed.
The carriage started moving again, still at a crawl. They ran into people at the roadside a few more times after that. Some were clumsy amateurs like the first bunch. Now and then there were merchants traveling with a pack of hired mercenaries. With the roads this bad, it seemed the merchants had banded together and contracted a mercenary company.
Joseph and the soldiers sold the goods taken from the amateur bandits straight to the merchants. The merchants eyed the volume of it with open suspicion, clearly wondering whether this haul had been stripped off bandits or acquired by doing a little banditry themselves. The moment they learned Joseph was a mage, they bowed at the waist. And if the goods happened to be a little unsavory? A mage had caught some bandits. That was the story, and that was that. Including the mercenaries, there wasn't a man present who was going to argue the point.
They'd finished offloading one haul and were on the move again when several figures appeared on a hilltop, looking down at the carriage. They were too far away to hear, but the men exchanged a few words and then vanished over the far side of the hill as if they'd bolted.
"Those ones look like they know their trade."
Refn figured they'd taken one look at the soldiers' armor and given it up. These weren't troops who'd made it to the front, but they were still soldiers of Valois Castle. The quality of the armor they wore was a different class from the ordinary stuff, and they moved differently from common mercenaries besides — they were trained men. This particular group of bandits had clearly eaten their share of iron; they'd known what they were looking at.
"We can't just let them go, though…"
If Joseph had simply been passing through, it would have been fine. He wasn't. Bandit suppression was the entire point of this trip, which meant they had to be caught for certain.
But I can't just go charging in after them.
All the party had seen were the ones who'd come out to the roadside. They had no idea where the rest were hiding. The fact that those men had run first suggested there weren't very many of them — that was about all they could guess. Stick their heads into the woods on a hasty chase, though, and they could walk straight into an ambush and die.
In a straight fight, maybe.
A dense forest was a different story. Joseph already knew, more than well enough, what an advantage it was to be the one hiding in the dark. Anyone who could read armor at a glance wasn't ordinary, and catching men like that with the numbers they had now wasn't realistic. On top of that, Joseph currently couldn't recover mana, and he had no defensive magic.
The risk is too high right now.
He thought it over, then decided to take the long way around. They'd have to come back through here later, with Auger's private soldiers in tow. The carriage swung its head about and changed direction. He could have sworn he felt eyes on them from behind. But nobody came bursting out of the trees, and they put the place behind them without trouble.