The Trap Springs
A group of men crossed the wide field in silence. They moved as one body, every step in perfect unison.
There it is.
They cut across the field, slipped past a handful of empty houses, and the wagons came into view—lined up in a neat row. Three conscript soldiers stood watch around them, torches in hand.
Just as he'd expected. Manir snorted, recalling how these conscripts typically carried themselves.
Soldiers who go home at night...
At first he'd taken them all for Auger's men. Then he'd learned they were villagers, drafted in a hurry. They were being kept in line with reasonably strict discipline and training, but they still hadn't shed the look of civilians. If they were going to have an outsider like him living among them, they ought to have paid more attention to their own security. It was obvious how completely they were absorbed in the campaign against Malešov.
Not that I'm complaining. Makes it easy to move.
The conscripts were yawning, worn down by the day's drills. Without so much as a glance behind him, Manir spread three fingers and pointed toward the sentries.
Three of his soldiers peeled off from the rear, slipped past him, and closed in on the guards without a sound. Not so much as a footfall. The sentries, staring blankly into the dark, never saw it coming.
"Huh...?"
One of the three conscripts made a noise, as if he'd finally noticed something. That was as far as he got. Before he could even see what was coming at him, he was out cold. The other two crumpled just as fast. It was over in a blink.
Manir's men snatched up the fallen torches and took the sentries' places. The rest of the group rushed in, hauled the unconscious conscripts out into the field and hid them, then melted into the shadows behind the wagons.
Just the three of them?
Manir waited a moment, in case anyone else appeared. No one did. Exactly as he'd figured.
"We check the wagons first."
At his quiet order, the soldiers split up and began searching the wagons. Manir kept watch. Aside from the faint rustle of men going through cargo, the night stayed still.
"Nothing."
"Nothing on this side either."
The soldiers returned once they'd gone through every wagon. Manir nodded, unsurprised. He'd never expected the Artifact to be sitting in a wagon like a crate of cargo. He'd only checked to be thorough.
"We go in."
The men who'd been combing the area around the wagons fell in behind him at once. Of the two houses standing side by side, the one on the left was where the mage was staying.
Manir dropped low and pressed himself against the fence. A quick look—no light leaking from inside.
Damn it. Is he out, or is he dead asleep in there?
There was no way to tell. The man's routine was too irregular. They'd already burned time trying to pin it down, and it had gotten them nowhere. As they prepared to go in, Manir clicked his tongue in frustration.
He drew the shortsword from his belt. The longsword would stay sheathed. Swinging a blade that long in a house this cramped would be idiotic. Besides, the mage would almost certainly start pouring magic from his Artifact without limit. If Manir's movement was restricted when that happened, it could get ugly fast.
"Only three of us go in."
The rest were to search outside the house and raise the alarm at the first sign of anyone approaching. He moved slowly to the door, then gave it the lightest push. Locked.
This is some real goddamn work.
The thought of himself as a common housebreaker rose up, and he spat a silent curse. Any other knight who saw this would laugh in his face.
Finish it fast and go home.
He was sick of this wandering life in a foreign land. He wanted it over. He wanted to go back.
Manir checked the keyhole. The house was old, and the lock was so eaten with rust it looked ready to snap at the slightest pressure. He hesitated only a moment, then raised the shortsword, bringing the hilt to his chest in a thrusting stance.
"Hup."
A grunt so quiet it barely existed, and the blade punched straight through the keyhole. The rusted lock gave way under the force. He took the handle again and pushed, and the door eased open.
He was a step from crossing the threshold when he stopped. Slowly, he shifted his foot aside from where he'd meant to plant it. His eyes dropped to the floor.
Looked at closely, the wooden boards were cracked—ready to snap the instant any weight settled on them. Someone had rigged this. Deliberately.
Crazy bastard...!
Manir shuddered at the mage's paranoia. He signaled the soldiers behind him to watch their step, and only then did he go in.
The small living room held almost no furniture, and no one was in it. He went straight to the only inner door and eased it open.
Empty.
The vacant bed was the first thing he saw. The mage hadn't come back yet.
"There might be traps like the one at the entrance. Be careful."
"Yes, sir."
Now it was a race. They sheathed their blades and began tearing the house apart.
"Find anything?"
"Nothing."
"Damn it."
The room held a few books and some clothes. Nothing that looked like an Artifact.
"...We'll have to wait for him to come back."
Manir clicked his tongue. He'd rather not meet the man at all if he could help it. Wanting him dead was one thing; he still wanted the job done clean. But it had come to this. There was no other way.
He mapped the path the mage would take coming home, then climbed onto the brazier beside the door. A few coals still glowed faintly in it, but not enough heat to do him any harm.
The instant he walks in, I take the arm holding the staff. One cut.
He held his breath, waiting—
A heavy crash shook the night outside.
Manir dropped into a crouch on instinct. For a split second he almost bolted out, then remembered his own men were already out there. He stayed put, and the soldiers who'd come in with him froze where they stood.
Have they come back?
He strained to listen, trying to read the situation. If the mage had returned, he would have run into the men outside. If a fight had broken out, there should have been at least the clash of steel. But there had only been that one loud noise, and then nothing.
And then it came. A hiss, low and wrong.
"Move!"
He didn't know what the sound was, or where it was coming from. The shout was pure instinct.
A voice answered from beyond the window, as if it had been waiting for him.
Something smashed through the glass and came screaming into the room—the same instant Manir dropped off the brazier.
White orbs...?
He snapped his head around. Three glowing spheres, each bigger than his own torso, hung in the air. He didn't know what they were. He knew, with absolute certainty, that they were the mage's work.
Manir wrenched the bedroom door open and dove through.
"Flame Bite!"
⟨ Flame Bite ⟩
Somewhere, the mage's voice finished the incantation. The three spheres detonated as one.
The moment Joseph finished the incantation, the mana orbs that had smashed through the window detonated.
The old house of earth and timber went up in a single roar of flame. The roof shattered, surged upward in a burst of splinters, then came crashing down near Joseph—or rather, it landed on the corpse of a fake mercenary.
"Ugh..."
Jiren recoiled from the body crushed under the rubble, then took a hit from Derik and scrambled back to Joseph's side.
"Don't forget your duty!"
Jiren raised his shield and planted himself squarely in front of Joseph. Joseph watched him and let out a short, dry laugh.
"You stay next to me if you want to live."
If something came flying, he could stop it with magic. But only if they were at his side.
Not bad for a first try.
Joseph stood watching the house collapse in on itself, a small smile on his face. Linking three mana orbs and firing them off as a single spell—it was an experiment he'd been turning over lately, a way to put more force behind his attacks. The result hadn't been half bad. His private soldiers, on the other hand, were staring at the wreckage with their eyes full of fear.
"How did it go?"
The house had barely finished exploding when Auger came out of the neighboring building with his own retainers in tow. Then he saw the mercenary corpses scattered around the wreckage.
"Did you kill them all?"
Joseph shook his head.
"There are still a few in the house. I haven't confirmed yet."
"I see."
Auger drew his sword. His private soldiers drew with him in the same breath and formed up in front of their lord.
"To think they truly came after you."
"Yes. I honestly wasn't sure..."
"And you still don't know what they were after?"
"No. That's what we need to find out now."
If they're already dead, there's nothing I can do about it.
They'd lasted longer than he'd expected, if he was honest. They'd thrown themselves into training so diligently that Joseph had started to second-guess himself. Part of him had even wondered if they really were just ordinary mercenaries—in which case they would have been a real asset when the time came to take Malešov.
If they'd held out a little longer, I might've been the one who got caught.
Ever since he'd taken them on, Joseph had been leaving the house every night on the pretext of magic practice. He hadn't known what they were after, but he'd been certain they would come for him at least once. So during the day he'd split them up and kept the pressure on, making it hard for them to move—forcing them, if they were going to move at all, to do it at night. And he only went out after dark, handing them exactly that opening.
At the same time, he'd put his private soldiers on a rotating watch over the mercenaries' house. They'd had a miserable time of it in the dead of winter.
Well. Beats me dying.
Joseph had already survived more than one assassination attempt. He had no intention of shrugging this one off. Of course his soldiers hadn't looked happy about the night watches—but what was he supposed to do? It had turned out to be true. By now they were staring at him as if he were some kind of ghost.
They're definitely not ordinary.
The moment Auk's report came in, Joseph had hurried back. By then the conscripts who'd been guarding his wagons were already lying unconscious in the field. It was a blessing the mercenaries hadn't used their blades—that they hadn't killed those poor bastards just to keep things quiet.
From cover, Joseph had watched the mercenary captain split his men and go into the house. He'd laid a trap at the entrance just in case, but that had been seen through too; it hadn't done a thing. And the instant the captain was fully inside, Joseph's group hit the mercenaries waiting out front. They rushed in with the private soldiers and smashed their heads in. Then they poured the mana orbs into the house without a pause.
"What were those bastards even after..."
Auk muttered it under his breath, watching the house burn. Joseph still hadn't let his guard down.
"Save the questions. This isn't over for certain yet."
Auk shut his mouth at once and dropped into a lower stance. Of every soldier Joseph had seen, these had felt the most professional. Stacked Flame Bite or not, he had a feeling they weren't the kind of men who'd die from that.
A section of the collapsed house shifted with a grinding crunch. And just as Joseph had expected, a man smashed through an earthen wall and stood up.
It was Manir, of course. The mercenary captain who'd led them.
He didn't so much as glance at the flames. He simply looked around. The men who'd been watching the outside of the house lay sprawled with their heads caved in. The soldiers who'd gone inside were dead, caught in the blast.
His gaze swept the ground in front of him. The mage. The knight. Their private soldiers. Voices and torchlight coming from the direction of the village.
Then his eyes locked on Joseph.
"...You bastard."
The longsword slid free of his belt.