The Aden Plains
Count Coulomb's army currently numbered around five thousand. It might have seemed a paltry force, but in the wars of Solari World, the headcount of ordinary soldiers barely mattered. What counted was the number of skilled knights and mages.
A single knight capable of wielding Aura could hold his own against hundreds of regular troops, and a mage who commanded area-of-effect spells produced more firepower than hundreds of archers combined. When measuring an army's true strength, then, the only numbers that mattered were the knights, the mages, and the mercenaries who could stand as their equals.
Of course, if those elite forces were evenly matched, the rank-and-file became the key that decided the battle.
The Reiss Knights, whom Count Coulomb led in person, fielded twenty knights. The experts he had recruited himself numbered thirty-two. In other words, this army's real fighting strength was those fifty-two people.
The Reiss Knights were, to put it kindly, fiercely loyal — and to put it unkindly, loyalty was all they had. Most of them were washouts who barely scraped the average knight's qualifications in Solari World. Somehow, they even resembled the lord they served.
Count Ernest fielded a similar number of knights and mages. That figure, however, did not include the mage unit he had been training in secret. The unit consisted of twenty men, every last one of them a War Mage specialized for the battlefield.
Which meant his effective fighting strength was half again as large as Count Coulomb's. Considering how precious mages were, it was a measure of just how fiercely Count Ernest had been itching for this territorial war.
In the original story, the early stages of the war were a taut, even contest. At times, thanks to the original protagonist Jin's dazzling performance, Coulon's territorial army even held the upper hand. But once the War Mage unit was committed, the ensuing full-scale battle inflicted near-annihilation on Coulon's forces and handed them a crushing defeat. That was the point where Jin ran for his life, and the RPG abruptly turned into an escape game.
And the lore compendium has detailed notes on this war. The deployment route of the War Mage unit — the thing that matters most to me right now — is written down in there too.
The reason Count Ernest hadn't committed the War Mages from the outset was simple: he was confident he could win without them. Seize victory with the smallest possible expenditure of pieces. That was also the most basic preparation for the next enemy waiting down the road.
But when Jin's exploits bogged the front down into a stalemate, Ernest deployed the War Mages as his trump card. Which meant that if I wanted to drag this territorial war to a Coulon victory, I needed to cut the War Mage unit off before it ever reached the field.
The War Mages possessed such overwhelming firepower that calling them a decisive weapon in a pitched battle was no exaggeration at all — but they were far from invincible. Without an escort, they were useless. That was simply the nature of the mage class.
Know the enemy's information in advance. Hit them with the smallest force that can do the job. For someone who already knows the future, that's more than possible.
Too many threads of information were crowding my head. I decided, for the moment, to focus only on what I needed right now. The War Mage unit wasn't being mobilized immediately, so I could afford to set that problem aside. What I had to worry about at present was doing what Jin had done: opening a gap while the two armies were still roughly equal in scale.
We marched for three days and arrived at the Aden Plains. The plains lay between Coulon County and Ernest County — a stretch of land that belonged to no one, a neutral ground. At the far edge of those plains rose Mount Aden, and the Mythril Mine discovered on that mountain was the spark that had ignited this entire war.
We established a camp. Count Coulomb sent out scouts, and before long they came back with word that Count Ernest's army had just arrived at the opposite end of the plains.
"So the war begins in earnest," Luna said, gazing toward the Ernest lines. The air of a battlefield settled over the skin. Even the common soldiers seemed to feel it; their faces were drawn tight with tension.
The situation now was this: two armies camped at opposite ends of a vast plain. The field was more than wide enough that a head-on collision would unfold into a pitched battle of considerable scale. Neither army, however, moved rashly.
Three days passed after we first set foot on the plains. Coulon's territorial army eased its camp, bit by bit, toward the center, and Ernest's forces did the same — yet still there was no clash. The two armies shifted in a wary dance, each watching the other.
Every morning, a strategy meeting convened at the command post. Originally only the army's officers were permitted to attend, but I had been granted a special exception. That was the fruit of three days spent cultivating a friendship with Count Coulomb's eldest son, Hendrik Coulon.
Getting close to Hendrik had been easy. Through Priscilla, a maid at the castle, I had learned that Hendrik was extremely fond of sweets. I introduced them as confections imported from the East and presented him with modern snacks from my world. Hendrik, like his father, was a man of feeling. He regarded me with particular warmth. I had refused to look away from the territory's hardship, I had poured my own funds into the war, and I had even taken the field myself — he treated me as something close to a hero.
"The coin from Lord Walker's own purse is what moves this army! Does Lord Walker not, therefore, have every right to sit in on our war councils?"
When Hendrik marched me into the meeting and declared as much, Count Coulomb nodded. The other officers looked distinctly sour about it, but once they were told that I, as a merchant who had traveled this route often, knew the local geography extremely well, they had no choice but to accept it.
For the record, I filed every one of those sour faces away in my memory. Once I swallowed Coulon County, those bastards would be dead anyway. Killing them early wouldn't be the worst idea.
"If we keep creeping forward like earthworms, we won't even fight before the year is out. We should strike them first. History has proven time and again the importance — and the advantage — of the first blow, has it not?"
Hendrik argued for a first strike through the entire meeting. Count Coulomb and Dedric Coulomb, however, seemed to think otherwise. Both men took the position that caution was required. That the Count himself would argue for restraint was a little unexpected. Among the officers, opinion split down the middle.
"Lord Walker. What is your view? You said you knew this land well. Which course seems the wiser, in your eyes?"
Then the question came flying at me like an arrow. For someone who knew the original story, it was far too easy.
"I believe we should strike first."
"Hrm. And your reasoning?"
"This is a stable, open plain where rain rarely falls and the sightlines run clear to the horizon. That makes it difficult to use the terrain or any natural features to lay traps. With the field open on every side, defense is actually the harder posture — whereas an attacker can choose his ground and seize the initiative."
"And yet a reckless assault, launched before the enemy's strength is fully known, invites the risk of a counterattack. Would it not be wiser to wait for them to come to us?"
"I do not believe the enemy is holding back because they have some scheme prepared. I believe they are hesitating to attack for the same reason we are. In the end, the side that breaks a stalemate like this is the side that profits."
Count Coulomb listened, then nodded.
"Then I shall give that view due thought. The officers appear divided, so for today, we hold the camp."
In the original story, the day they attacked was tomorrow. Judging by the mood in the tent, they would take the first strike around tomorrow here as well. Up to this point, it was tracking close to the original.
This world was Solari World, yes — but it was not identical to the original plot. On top of that, an irregular like me had already twisted a number of facts well out of true. The thing I had to watch most carefully, then, was confirming where this version had diverged from the original. Fortunately, this stretch of the war didn't seem to have changed in any major way. From here on, though, a great deal was going to change.
As expected, Ernest's army made no attack. The next day, we finished our preparations to sortie. Luna, Sera, Arme, and I were assigned to the vanguard — the unit where merit was easiest to earn. It was also, of course, the most dangerous, but at our current level of ability, this of this caliber wouldn't be a problem at all.
"Lord Walker. Having you at my side is truly reassuring."
Hendrik Coulon, commander of the vanguard, seemed to have taken a genuine liking to me. All those snacks had been worth it.
Hendrik Coulon was a simpler man than I had expected. He possessed a faithful, righteous philosophy unbefitting a typical noble, an upright heart, and a well-honed body — a golden boy in every respect. He was, without a doubt, Count Coulomb's son.
Dedric Coulomb gave off a similar impression. The difference was that where Hendrik was all physique, Dedric was all intellect. His duties, unlike his brother's, were mostly the sort that used the head — cryptography and the like.
Upright nobles like Count Coulomb were not common in Solari World. One didn't have to look far for a contrast: the Count Ernest we were about to fight had cooked up a nest of sinister schemes and used them to pick this territorial war. And Ernest, relatively speaking, was one of the decent ones. As the original game's story progressed, you ran into more and more nobles, and most of them were people you couldn't tell apart from demons.
"At last, a proper sortie! I am overjoyed that this blade of mine shall finally crush Count Ernest's wicked army! They have obstructed our territory at every turn. This time, we shall show them our true strength!"
Hendrik declared it in a voice that rang like a bell. He was like a loudspeaker with a broken volume knob. I couldn't tell whether he was talking to me or delivering a speech to the entire camp — and thanks to that, every soldier around us heard him perfectly.
"The young master's that sure of himself. Does that mean we've got the advantage?"
"Beats me. Word is Ernest's army isn't messing around. A buddy of mine does business over there. Got a letter not long ago — said they've got dozens of knights in gleaming silver plate."
"Don't we have about that many in the Reiss Knights?"
"Hell if I know. We're just regular grunts. But looking at the young master, maybe he's got an ace up his sleeve. Let's just try not to catch a stray arrow or a spell, yeah?"
Surprisingly, Hendrik's booming voice actually breathed confidence into the vanguard. A unit that charged at the front of the line ran on courage and nothing else. If they had to be foolhardy, so be it. They were meat shields anyway.
A trumpet blast split the air, signaling the sortie. The vanguard soldiers, who had been passing the time with idle talk, seized their spears and shields and began to march in step. Their destination was the far side of the Aden Plains, where Ernest's territorial army waited.
The fear lingering on the soldiers' faces did not vanish entirely, but when Hendrik rode forward, they found their courage and advanced on the enemy lines. He was like one of those legendary young warriors who always rode at the head of the charge.
And those young warriors always died on the battlefield, in the end.
His future would be no different.