XI. The Coming of the North Wind (3)
XI. The Coming of the North Wind (3)
The mountains raised their hips.
Keldric thought as he watched the snow begin to swirl. It was a metaphor northerners often used.
When someone moved through a dusty place, dust scattered everywhere. Likewise, when the mountains occasionally lifted their heavy hips, snow flew wild... something like that.
"Now it's snowing too? This is too much."
Sir Henri brushed the snow from his horse's mane and grumbled.
It was not the usual heavy northern snowfall, but the windblown flakes were steadily thickening.
Arno had to maintain armor every night, while Helga stayed busy brushing snow from the horses and saddles.
And it was not only the attendants whose chores had increased. Keldric and the entire detachment were gradually wearing down.
They had cavalry, but horses tired too. The real problem was the infantry.
The farther west they went, the deeper the road disappeared beneath snow.
Walking a snow-covered road required enormous stamina. The snow swallowed their feet like a marsh.
"My feet are raw."
"These fucking blisters are driving me insane... Doesn't anyone have a needle?"
"Why would anyone have a needle? Cut them open with a knife."
Several soldiers had to light fires often to keep their numb feet from turning blue.
Keldric watched uneasily. If these difficulties continued, they would inevitably affect combat.
They were following a road. How could it still be this bad?
But the imperial north routinely produced absurd weather, and the Everfrost seemed determined not to let anyone cross its snows intact.
Worse, several of Henri's attendants had caught colds. Worry filled his face.
"Sir Henri, if you want, we can camp nearby and rest for a while—"
"...No. We have a task to complete, Sir Keldric."
"If that is what you want."
Keldric and the detachment marched for two straight days.
They had not turned west until the fork, but they had still covered considerable ground.
Keldric stared beyond the white horizon. The western mountains remained far away.
The distant land was likely Baron Gofrit's territory.
"Is there a village along this road?"
"Yes. There's one more village before we reach Einhorn."
A soldier familiar with the area answered energetically.
The road continued to Einhorn, but there was apparently a village called Rundt along the way.
According to him, Rundt had once been a fortified outpost enclosed by a low circular palisade.
As barbarian raids faded and life stabilized, the neglected palisade was dismantled and the outpost became an ordinary village.
"Rundt is declining. Trade with the neighboring territory stopped completely, so fewer people pass through."
"I see."
When a waterway was blocked, the stagnant water eventually rotted.
Human communities were not much different.
Lords sent peddlers even to backwaters at the edge of their domains for a reason.
Even a remote village could house fifty to one hundred people, and outside trade was essential to keep its economy moving. Carlton was the same.
Briefly lost in memory, Keldric brushed the snow from the soldier's shoulder.
The man's face was bright red from cold. Keldric sighed uneasily.
"Then we will rest there."
"Yes! Understood!"
It was unavoidable. Henri looked displeased, but even he accepted that his attendants needed rest.
Attendants were not disposable tools for knights to use and discard. Loyal, capable ones were hard to find.
Nor could the bond built with them or their experience fighting for their master be ignored.
"But where the hell did he go?"
Henri muttered as he rode. Keldric immediately knew whom he meant.
"Baron Gofrit?"
"Yes. He didn't follow the road, so he must have cut across the snowfields and forest..."
Keldric's gaze shifted slightly. In that direction, far off, lay a small wood.
The road did not go north before turning west for no reason.
A forest blocked the direct western route, so the road had been laid across the open snowfield instead.
"Couldn't he have fallen behind us?"
"Possibly. But we shouldn't assume too quickly."
Keldric's detachment had traveled north, then turned west.
The remnants of Gofrit's army had gone blindly west.
Their paths differed, but their destinations were nearly the same. There had to be some overlap.
And after abandoning their supplies, Gofrit's starving men would not pass a village without stopping.
Keldric had seen no tracks or signs left by a large group.
The traces of Gofrit's earlier march had long since vanished beneath the recent nighttime snow.
That meant Gofrit's army might still be lost in the forest.
'Should we search the forest?'
Keldric's primary objective was to pursue Baron Gofrit.
But no matter how intent they were on pursuing Baron Gofrit, taking exhausted soldiers into the forest was out of the question.
They could block the nearby routes and wait, but the northern snowfields were too vast.
Still, they could not sit idle.
Keldric pressed on along the road. The sun was already setting.
If they reached the village before dark, they could at least count on warm beds.
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"Damn it..."
The rightful ruling house of Gofrit, the Schultheis family, had governed the land for generations.
Ansen Schultheis, Baron Gofrit and head of the house, had encountered an unexpected crisis.
The bitter cold was a problem, but something else held his life in its grasp.
"When the hell does this forest end?"
The forest, the snow, and the howling of wolves that sounded every night.
All of it clung to Gofrit's ankles as he tried desperately to return home.
The soldiers who had barely escaped had no morale left, while the knights were listless and stained by defeat.
Gofrit feared they might betray him. The worry was driving him mad.
By betrayal, he meant cutting off his head while he slept and turning back.
When lost, retracing one's path was the surest route.
The trees had shielded the ground, leaving faint tracks that would lead them back to Lothar's army.
Surely Lothar would not kill surrendering knights... and once they surrendered, none of them cared what happened to Gofrit.
Perhaps they even thought his severed head could serve as their ransom.
The knights had no intention of such dishonor, but cornered men imagined the worst.
They had spent three days trudging through the snow under that anxiety, and now the fourth day had begun.
Gofrit despised this wretched existence, but he would accept any indignity if it meant living.
He had to find a way. He had to survive.
"My lord."
The knight Gofrit trusted most approached.
Gofrit looked at him with feigned composure while soothing his stomach with hard-won hot water.
"What is it?"
"It seems we will soon be out of the forest."
"I-is that true?!"
"Yes. The scouts have confirmed it."
Baron Gofrit's lips twitched.
Once they escaped this damned forest, everything else would proceed smoothly.
"Were there not several villages on our way here?"
"Yes. Places called Einhorn and Rundt."
They had stripped Einhorn bare and enjoyed a brief period of comfort.
But not Rundt. They had left it alone because they needed it as a midway base.
That choice had now extended Gofrit's life.
"Once we are out of the forest, we will head to Rundt. How long will it take?"
"If we leave now... we should arrive during the night."
"Tell the soldiers to prepare. We need to hurry and warm ourselves."
His joy at surviving lasted only a moment. Gofrit suppressed it.
An uneasy thought crossed his mind.
'What if... they sent no pursuit?'
Gofrit might have fallen on hard times, but he was no idiot.
He considered the situation from Lothar's position.
After crushing another lord's army, Baron Gofrit would never have failed to pursue the handful of survivors...
Lothar was inexperienced enough to make that mistake, but he had seasoned knights beside him.
No pursuers had appeared so far. In truth, that was normal.
However desperate they were to capture him, they could not recklessly charge into the snowfields.
Nor could he rule out that the pursuit had gotten ahead of them.
"We must hurry! Finish preparing to move out!"
If so, there was no time to lose.
Gofrit drove the knights and soldiers, hurrying their departure from the forest.
That was the sole path to survival.
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Rundt, a village beside the burned ruins of Einhorn.
Keldric felt the gloom hanging over it.
The villagers trembled with fear. Their neighboring village had been ravaged not long ago, and nothing said they would be spared.
"An army passed through here, you say?"
"Aye! Those sons of whores! The bastards who burned Einhorn passed through here a few days ago and headed east, my lord!"
The village headman seemed to be talking about Gofrit's army before its defeat.
After that army plundered Einhorn and passed through, Rundt's fear was only natural.
"We are here now, so calm down. They have not returned this way?"
"N-no, my lord. We have not seen them since. God must have watched over us..."
Then it was almost certain they were still lost in the forest.
After dismissing the headman, Keldric immediately called Henri.
"Sir Henri, it seems they have not passed through here yet."
"That is fortunate. Do we simply defend the village?"
"For now, yes, but... I do not know."
Would merely defending it be enough? Keldric was uncertain.
If they waited, they would face men exhausted by forest and snow, making victory easy.
But it was not a sure way to capture Baron Gofrit.
Keldric's detachment consisted of two knights, one wizard, five cavalrymen, and twenty elite infantry.
The defeated remnants of Gofrit's army numbered at least forty.
Even that was an optimistic estimate. There were probably more, including three or four knights.
Exhausted or not, the difference in numbers was clear.
Gofrit could leave those men to pin down Keldric and escape.
Keldric's mission was to pursue Gofrit and prevent him from returning home to rebuild his army.
But he was not willing to let such an opportunity slip.
"Instead of defending the village, what if we ambush them inside and around it?"
Henri offered another option. It sounded plausible.
But that would effectively abandon the village's defense.
They would attack Gofrit wherever he entered, almost certainly inside the village.
There was no guarantee the cornered army would not set the village on fire.
But it would unquestionably achieve the minimum goal of pinning down Gofrit.
"Hrm..."
Rundt was a small rural village in the northern empire, home to fewer than one hundred people.
Farming offered little. The villagers survived by gathering mushrooms, selling goat's milk, and cutting firewood.
Keldric remembered Carlton Village.
It was an ordinary backwater where people in similar circumstances lived close together.
If these people were caught in a battle involving more than sixty soldiers... would they survive?
"Sir Keldric. What will you do?"
Preserve the village and force a frontal battle, or ambush them in its center without regard for the villagers' lives.
The difference came down to this:
Would he reduce the casualties even if Gofrit might simply bypass them?
Or would he accept the deaths of innocent villagers to pin down or capture Gofrit as ordered?
It was one or the other. Keldric stood at a crossroads.
Keldric looked outside uneasily. Snow swirled over an entirely white landscape.
If the red blood spilled there belonged to innocent villagers—
'Even then, did he have to accept it?'
As the snow thickened, so did Keldric's dilemma.
It was the first burden he had faced as a 'leader.'