Negotiation (1)
“You at least know who I am, don’t you?”
That arrogant line came from the woman standing before him. Everything about her was the very image of nobility—the pride, the poise, the soft, bright cloth of her carefully chosen clothes, the meticulously tended face. All of it seemed to declare her rank without a word.
“…Strange. Why alone? I was told there would be two of you.”
Antanau tilted her head, then sat again as she spoke. Ren inclined his head in a light bow of respect and answered.
“The person who came with me stepped out for a moment on other business.”
Antanau nodded at that. With a brief gesture she had a servant show him to a seat. The chair was far softer and more comfortable than the ones under the open tent. She flicked a glance at the servant once more; he brought a cup and poured the tea.
Antanau took a single sip, then leaned forward until her eyes met Ren’s. Between the three-white stare and the dark circles of overwork, her gaze had a distinctly sharp edge.
“…What message do you bring?”
“Duke Ranel said that, in the course of resolving this matter, he is not concerned with any incidental damage that may occur.”
“Is that so…”
“We have no intention of negotiating.”
Antanau settled back against her chair and lifted her chin for a moment. Then she leaned in again, studying Ren as if turning something over in her mind.
Her gaze felt oddly frightening. She was a noble, and judging by the way Duke Ranel carried himself, people of her class treated those like him as lesser by reflex. She might well decide he was an eyesore and have him killed. The information Erika had given him before they went in only sharpened the feeling.
Erika had said the County of Antanau kept a fair-sized army. A standing force of three hundred, and ten household knights on permanent retainer. Those three hundred were fully outfitted in iron plate—two hundred cavalry on horseback, a hundred spearmen on foot.
It might not sound large, but it was a very substantial force. For comparison—the Ewaz Merchant Group, not counting hired mercenaries, numbered about three thousand in all. Add every outpost together and you still only reached roughly three thousand; with mercenaries, short of five thousand. Those who actually lived at the headquarters were only about five hundred, and even those with combat skill were not all armed.
Maintaining three hundred fully equipped standing soldiers year-round meant the county’s budget was healthy even without trade. Armies, after all, ate the most money when there was no war.
“Also… Duke Ranel is currently considering the hire of a mercenary company of some five hundred men.”
Ren deliberately mixed in a lie. At this rate the Duke’s request would be ignored outright, so he folded a military threat into the message. He had only said the Duke was “considering” it, so it was not a complete falsehood. In a situation like this, the thought itself would hardly fail to cross the man’s mind.
But Countess Antanau showed no worry at all—only confidence. What, after all, would frighten a countess who kept three hundred standing troops? From what Ren had seen on the ride into the territory, the soldiers looked superbly trained.
A mercenary band would seem a rabble to her. But—mercenaries came in grades. Soft, worthless companies existed, just as she imagined. There were also mercenaries who did not yield much ground to a nation’s regular army.
Lanzknecht.
A mercenary company founded under the Midgard royal family’s backing specifically to counter the Central Mercenary Corps that worked with the Ewaz Merchant Group. Direct royal support had made them formidable, by all accounts.
They used the newest powder weapons. Their morale and drill were said to match Antanau’s own army. And above all, they were easy to hire—so if one engaged them in numbers, rumor held they could wipe a small county off the map.
“I believe the name was Lanzknecht.”
“…What?”
In that instant the air froze. The confident smile of a moment ago was gone; only the startled look of someone who hoped she had misheard remained. Ren knew at once that the words had landed.
“He said he intended to hire five hundred of the Lanzknecht.”
“Don’t make me laugh. Would he tell that to the likes of you?”
“I merely overheard it.”
Her expression shifted again. Her face darkened. Had the sense of crisis finally arrived? Was she afraid a real war might break out? It would not be only that, of course.
The Lanzknecht were an exceptionally brutal company. They obeyed an employer’s orders—after a fashion—but only to the extent of the attack itself. Forbid them to sack a city and they would sack it anyway. They were an uncontrollable natural disaster.
He had even heard that in the war between the Duchy of Eten and the County of Tau, when they struck Tau under contract with Eten, Tau’s lands became a hell. Every woman there was violated. The fields were left utterly wasted. And the county’s soldiers were impaled on stakes and set along the road to the Tau lord’s castle.
The story alone had been sickening enough that Ren had not wanted to believe it—but Erika had seemed to. When, in the carriage, he had asked her for a mercenary company suitable for threatening the countess, she had named the Lanzknecht as the most vicious and disgusting of them all.
“What do you think?”
Ren pressed the question before she could think clearly. If she recovered her wits, the first thing any sensible person would ask was whether the claim was even true. He had said he overheard it—but would she trust the word of a commoner?
So he asked before she could properly react. As he expected, Antanau was trembling faintly. Had he frightened her too much? She let out a breath and spoke again. Her voice was very grave, but a thin tremor still clung to it.
“Have them bring a proposal… I will give you two days.”
Erika was moving through the forest. The countess’s domain held a generous stretch of woods. Put less kindly, not much of it had been cleared. Being a border county, the territory itself was large enough that even limited clearance still left a respectable amount of open land.
She drew her cloak tighter around herself. She was not large enough to be easily spotted, but there was no reason to take chances.
She pushed a little deeper into the trees. The forest climbed with the mountain terrain, so the farther she went the more she had to work her way upward. After a time she looked back down. Fortunately, she still seemed unnoticed.
Erika closed her eyes and focused—to speak with the spirits around her. She was skilled in spirit craft, though not of the ordinary kind. Whether it was a racial gift she did not know, but she had always been able to talk with the spirits that lived in the forest and draw on their power.
Spirits had seen a great deal, and they loved to talk about it. Refuse to listen, and a spirit grew angry. If enough enraged spirits gathered, a spirit-god was born in the forest—and not a kindly one.
Elves usually called such things Calamity Gods. She had watched the gods of boars, of wolves, of goats twist that way before. Once they took a killable form, some elves even hunted them on purpose.
She, of course, was different.
—Did you know? This elf smells different.
—Did you know? Elves look the way they do because of Utgard.
—Did you know? Lately a lot of humans with iron wrapped around them like skin have been coming through here.
Erika kept her eyes shut and listened. Her pointed ears twitched faintly. Voices like whispers slipped in through them. One spirit babbled like a gossip; another offered a single line and vanished.
Opening her eyes would not have mattered. Spirits were invisible anyway. She closed them only for focus. That was how she gathered what she needed.
Even as a child she had learned the locations of game from the spirits and told her father, and they had hunted. They had warned her of coming rain, and of merchants passing through.
—Did you know? Countess Antanau is terrified of war!
—Did you know? The soldiers of the Duchy of Rahen said that if a war starts, they want to stand with Antanau!
Even now, the information seemed useful enough.
—Did you know? If you go deeper in, there’s the body of a nun who was violated and killed.
Of course… not everything was good. Stories like that came with the rest. She did not control what she heard—only collected it and used what she could.
At that, Erika climbed higher into the forest. Just as the spirit had said, a corpse lay there with a blade driven into its belly. She closed her eyes again—this time to borrow a spirit’s strength.
—Why should I?
—I don’t want to!
—Why would I go into a filthy human body?
At the spirits’ answers her expression slipped a fraction. She breathed out, steadying herself so she could focus again.
At last she managed to borrow the power of a boar spirit, and with that strength she began to dig.
When the hole was deep enough, she laid the body in it. She set flowers she had gathered nearby over the grave and gave the woman what funeral she could manage on her own.
Erika took out a small pocket watch and checked the time.
“Ah.”
It was time. Ren had said he would be finished about now, and that she should wait in the carriage first.
She was closer to being his teacher—so why was she taking orders from him? But the arrangement was already set. What else was there to do? She turned and headed for the carriage.