X. The Battle of Schapendorf (5)
X. The Battle of Schapendorf (5)
Darkness settled over the snow-covered battlefield.
Keldric looked at the soldiers huddled together, warming themselves by the fires.
Mercenaries mingled among them, and a few peddlers had already begun doing business around the camp.
Some soldiers clung to the priest who had accompanied them from Bellam. Keldric silently swept his gaze over the camp.
Familiar faces caught his eye: Jorgen and the other welcome members of the Ram Mercenary Company.
'They survived.'
Their survival was good news. Seeing a familiar face lying cold and rigid on the battlefield would have been deeply unsettling.
"Sir Keldric, we'd best hurry."
Sir Henri spoke from ahead. Keldric turned away without hesitation.
"Right. Let's hurry."
"This way."
They were heading for the largest and cleanest tent in the camp.
It was Sir Lothar's tent and, at the same time, the place where the diligent knights who had yet to retire would gather.
Even though the sun had set and darkness had fallen, the reason the exhausted knights had not yet gone to bed was obvious.
The battle was not over. At sunrise, they would have to fight viciously once more.
To win, they first needed a productive discussion.
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"Shit."
Sir Lothar muttered with a deep frown, drawing everyone's attention.
"I know we couldn't finish everything in one blow, but aren't these results too meager?"
Sir Lothar had only one complaint: they had captured neither knights nor nobles.
Territorial war consumed enormous sums. Many lords strained their finances merely hiring mercenaries.
They had to hire mercenaries and make suitable offerings to the Church.
The money naturally came from Baron Yaven's wealth—the same wealth Sir Lothar would inherit one day.
To end a war that kept bleeding those coffers, they urgently needed to capture either the enemy lord or his knights.
"We've matched their number of knights, but it's still disappointing. Can you not do a little more?"
Whatever the state of House Yaven's finances, Sir Lothar's manner was grating.
All the knights frowned wearily, especially Sir Rutger, who had fought no less fiercely than Keldric.
"Sir Lothar, the first day of battle is always chaotic. Capturing a knight you've felled alive in the middle of it is..."
"Yes, yes. I understand your efforts. But I believe you can do better."
"...Yes."
"Let us work together more effectively tomorrow. We cannot remain here long."
Sir Rutger looked unconvinced, but he stepped back and nodded.
Sir Lothar's expression softened at the sight, evidently pleased that his knights had submitted without further argument.
"More villages are being pillaged. I hear the area around Einhorn has already been reduced entirely to ashes."
Einhorn was a village bordering Baron Gofrit's territory.
It produced nothing exceptional and was hardly a village Baron Gofrit would ordinarily covet.
Burning such a place to the ground appeared to be an act of psychological warfare.
He had probably burned it as an example, hoping to unsettle Baron Yaven's subjects and frighten them into submission when his army later arrived.
Keldric did not favor such methods. His jaw tightened.
"So let us aim to crush those bastards within two days."
After thinking it over, the knights slowly nodded.
Sir Lothar was right that they could not remain there long. Schaffendorf was already under requisition orders for various supplies.
If they stayed too long, they would lose the inhabitants' loyalty and trust, and some knights would begin questioning the honor of their conduct.
"Watching today's battle, I noticed something strange."
"What is that?"
"Sir Rutger, how did they manage to fight us on even terms?"
Sir Rutger fell silent, unable to understand what Sir Lothar was actually asking.
'What the hell is he talking about?'
Keldric and the other knights were equally confused, and silence briefly filled the tent.
"Er, Sir Lothar... What do you mean?"
"They won once, so their morale is high. They also had one more knight and, by my estimate... perhaps twenty more soldiers."
"..."
"Our army, meanwhile, consists mostly of men who were already routed. By common sense, shouldn't they have had the upper hand rather than merely fighting us evenly?"
It was a surprisingly perceptive question, though one that ignored several circumstances.
Sir Henri, who had been sitting quietly, answered the naive question at once.
"Sir Lothar, it was because we were defending."
"Hm?"
"When a battle has a clear attacker and defender, the attacker generally sheds more blood."
"Why is that?"
"We were prepared to stop them, while their formations kept breaking apart as they advanced."
The defenders stood their ground in an ordered formation.
The attackers had to throw themselves against that line. They could have chosen a tactic such as splitting into three groups for an envelopment, but that was not what they did today.
One side maintained its formation and the other did not. The side likely to suffer more was obvious.
"Don't they know that? They came at us like dogs in heat today."
"They'd know. Two factors simply changed the outcome."
One: the forty elite soldiers Keldric had brought from Bogenberg.
Their performance stood out. They held the line with practiced spear thrusts and rotated fresh men forward whenever the first rank tired, refusing to yield even in a prolonged struggle.
Second, Keldric and Sir Henri joined the knights, overcoming their numerical disadvantage and strengthening the mounted charge.
"Indeed... I see."
Sir Lothar's eyes briefly rested on Keldric.
Sir Lothar had watched Keldric's performance from the distant camp.
Keldric had knocked one knight unconscious outright and nearly captured Sir Gerhard, the man who had inflicted Baron Yaven's previous defeat.
That was enough to balance a slightly unfavorable battle. Sir Rutger supported Henri's explanation.
"They probably won't attack so blindly tomorrow."
"Then how do you suppose they'll act?"
"They will either take a defensive position themselves or attempt to introduce a new variable."
"What do you mean by a variable?"
"For example... the wizard we saw today."
The wizard.
Keldric recalled the robed man. His magic had possessed a distinctly sharp and lethal quality.
Keldric had barely evaded it. Otherwise, he and Boreas would have been consumed by flame.
"Sir Lothar, tomorrow we may need to take the offensive."
Baron Gofrit's side was naturally under greater pressure. They had left their own territory and could not maintain supplies indefinitely.
But their own situation was not much better. They had enough supplies for now, but no great surplus.
If the war dragged on and Baron Gofrit dispatched raiding parties throughout the territory, it would be disastrous.
One way or another, they needed a decisive result.
"Tomorrow, we will lead the attack."
"...You mean to charge from the outset?"
"It is our only option."
When two fools fought, the winner was simply the one who struck first.
The sides now had equal numbers of knights, and one of those on their side was the abnormal Keldric. If they wanted to shatter the enemy before circumstances worsened, their only option was a mounted charge from the outset.
"What do you gentlemen think?"
No knight would refuse such a proposal.
They nodded readily, and one raised a cup of wine with a shout. A faint excitement spread through the tent.
A suicidal charge against overwhelming odds would have been another matter, but no knight could resist a glorious charge with a real chance of success.
Sir Rutger watched Keldric intently amid the excitement.
Keldric's dark-blue eyes met his.
"Sir Keldric. Will you be all right?"
In this situation, Keldric had only one possible answer.
"No problem."
A glorious mounted charge to end the Battle of Schaffendorf before the cold closed in. They all agreed.
"Sir Lothar. We will crush them."
"That is... good. Very good. Let us do it."
Sir Lothar brightened into a smile. Keldric watched with mixed feelings.
The man had been obsessed with mounted charges in Bellam too, so naturally he looked delighted.
The late-night council ended there.
The knights returned to their tents, and Keldric was equally ready to leave Sir Lothar's tent and sleep.
"Sir Keldric. Could you spare a moment?"
But someone was waiting for him outside.
"...Sir Rutger."
Sir Rutger had left first. Now his experienced eyes rested on Keldric.
There was resolve in them.
"There is something important I need to discuss with you."
It was a gaze only an honorable knight—no, only a strong man—could possess.
The look of a man steeling himself for one of the greatest decisions of his hard-lived life.
Keldric could not ignore it.
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Dim dawn arrived, and the smoky campfires throughout the encampment died down.
Keldric rose early and left his tent. Metal clattered all around him.
"Ugh... I damn near froze my face stiff. Couldn't open my eyes this morning."
"I thought you'd dropped dead."
The mercenaries' grumbling joined the noise. Keldric looked toward the white mountains beyond the tents.
The mountains, great arteries of the Northern Everfrost, sent out the coldest wind of the day as though breathing their last.
"Haaah..."
The blond southern wizard accompanying him trembled in the same wind.
Alisa looked as though she had lost all purpose in life.
Her deadened eyes held nothing but the desperate instinct to seek warmth and survive the cold.
"Hold this, at least."
"Ah... Thank you."
Keldric placed a stone in Alisa's tiny, bright-red hands.
It had been warmed beside the campfire overnight. Keldric had even held it against his chest while sleeping, and it still retained some heat.
Alisa looked around self-consciously, then slipped it inside her clothes. Her red cheeks relaxed into a foolish smile.
"Alisa."
"Hehe... Yes?"
"Are you having a hard time?"
"Um... It's a little difficult, but I can endure it."
"Just hold on a little longer."
Keldric called Arno over from the campfire ahead. Reading the situation at once, Arno gathered the armor pieces and hurried over.
"It'll probably all be over after today."
"What do you mean...?"
Whatever else happened, today's battle would not be easy.
Yet an obstacle was not merely something to leap over or avoid.
When the waves of fate drove an obstacle into one's path, it was something to smash through.
Would one be swept away by fate, or defy it and continue down one's own road?
For Keldric, every obstacle was a stage on which to prove he chose the latter.
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The hosts of both sides lined up on the snowy field just as they had the day before.
Fresh snow had already covered the ground churned apart by yesterday's engagements. Snowfall was becoming more frequent.
The approaching blizzard brought fierce cold with it, tightening mercilessly around their throats.
Both Baron Gofrit and Sir Lothar needed to bring this to an end quickly.
"Fuck, it's cold as shit."
"Fuck... I'm killing every one of those bastards today."
The soldiers and mercenaries looked different now. Their eyes belonged to men prepared to kill one another.
A new tension hung over the battlefield. Everyone sensed what was coming.
Today, at last, the course of battle would change. If it refused to change, they would force it.
"Archers! Draw—!"
Baron Gofrit's soldiers immediately raised their shields. The soldiers of Sir Lothar, standing far in the distance, did the same.
"Loose—!"
THUD-THUD-THUD!
Arrows struck home. Thus far, nothing differed from the previous day.
But the moment the arrowfall ended and Baron Gofrit's soldiers lowered their shields—
BRAAAM—! BRAAM—!
"What the?!"
Baron Gofrit's soldiers stared wide-eyed. Were those their own horns?
No. The sound came from Sir Lothar's camp.
"Huh... Th-there!"
Someone shouted in a voice close to a scream, drawing several tense gazes.
Warhorses tore through the snow, carrying knights whose armor flashed in the sunlight.
"K-knights!"
"Fuck! Why are they already coming?!"
Five mounted knights charged like madmen. Behind them, the shouts of advancing soldiers swelled louder.
Several of Baron Gofrit's mercenaries tried to assemble a crude spear wall, but there was too little room.
No one had expected the knights to charge first. Most had prepared to meet the approaching infantry.
Yet the knights came thundering straight at them.
The earth shook, and every flashing lance point aimed at the enemy.
"Stop them! We have to stop them!"
"Raise shields!"
"Th-they're coming!!"
CRASH! CRUNCH!
Several soldiers flew aside, and a gap opened in the formation. The five knights drew their weapons.
Driving deep into an enemy formation with only five men was extremely dangerous, but the veteran mercenaries who understood their purpose turned pale.
"Hey! Fill the gap! Hurry!"
"Fuck! Hold the front rank!"
WAAAAH—!
The thunderous battle cry was suddenly right upon them.