XI. The Coming of the North Wind (4)
XI. The Coming of the North Wind (4)
The north wind, which had carried only drifting snowflakes before, turned vicious.
Once the sun went down and night settled in, the northern snowfields became merciless.
The detached force had managed to rest in the village, but fate drove them back out into the biting frost without end.
Keldric was the one sending them into the cold. Of course it weighed on him.
'It can't be helped.'
Still, someone had to do it, and Keldric was that someone.
Someone had to stop Baron Gofrit. They needed to delay his return long enough for the main army to catch him and end the territorial war in one decisive battle.
"Sir Keldric, the cold outside isn't normal. Damned weather, I'd say."
Sir Henri approached with a worried expression. Just as he said, the blade-like wind blowing through the darkness was brutal.
As summer drew closer, the north wind grew fiercer and more violent. No wonder the soldiers were shivering.
"Are you certain we shouldn't make our stand in the village?"
"Sir Henri, we already settled this."
"I know, but..."
The way Henri smacked his lips surely came from a knight's desire for a chance to distinguish himself.
Keldric was not free of ambition. Even so, no matter how many times he considered it, he could not ignore the safety of the villagers living in this remote hamlet at the edge of the territory.
He ordered the soldiers to rest in the village and selected only a few men to watch the roads leading toward it.
If they spotted anything, they would follow the plan Keldric had prepared. That was the basic outline of the battle.
That meant the daring idea of striking amid the confusion from inside the village had already been discarded.
It also meant giving up the prize of capturing Baron Gofrit, so Henri's lingering disappointment was understandable.
"They are Lord Yaven's subjects too, are they not? They would surely regard an honorable sacrifice as worthwhile."
"There is no such thing as an honorable sacrifice for people like them."
What the people of a rural village wanted was simple: enough food to survive.
A large settlement near a city might have been different, but this remote place barely qualified as a village. It was simply a small community of peasants.
They would not meekly accept a sacrifice demanded by knights who had appeared out of nowhere. They neither knew nor understood that kind of honor.
Keldric had no intention of forcing such a hollow sacrifice on them.
He had sworn to stand against injustice.
"They want to live too."
"..."
"Protecting the weak is honorable. I do not want to treat the lives of those born under God's grace as worthless."
"Sir Keldric... You always say something that moves me."
Henri gripped his helmet with a solemn expression. His oily-looking mustache quivered along with him.
"You are right! Protecting the weak and defending the Church... How could I have forgotten something so important?"
"..."
Keldric gave him an awkward look. The man really was hopelessly simple-minded.
Still, it was fortunate that everyone accepted the decision without complaint. The soldiers trusted Keldric and followed his orders.
In truth, that trust came from watching Keldric run wild at the Battle of Schaffendorf, though he had no way of knowing it.
"Then, Sir Keldric, what will you do when he arrives?"
"When Baron Gofrit arrives... we will keep him tied down for as long as possible."
Capturing him alive would have been ideal, but Keldric had abandoned that possibility when he decided not to use the village as a battlefield.
He would focus on the original objective: preventing Baron Gofrit from returning quickly enough to rebuild his army.
That was why Keldric had pursued him in the first place. There was no reason to force a head-on battle while outnumbered.
So Keldric put his wits to work.
"Are there enough torches?"
"We have more than enough. There are piles of them. I should get moving soon."
"Good luck. It's a rather obvious trick, but..."
"Ha! What are you talking about, Sir Keldric?"
Henri, who had been about to leave the room, laughed heartily. His thick eyebrows arched.
"Winning without even fighting! By God, I have never heard of such a brilliant stratagem!"
Keldric cast an uneasy glance outside.
"...Right. We'll see soon enough."
A growing pile of torches lay before the large brazier prepared at the village entrance.
☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩
Marching through the darkness was a foolish choice.
It might sound as simple as following the dirt road, but in practice it was anything but easy.
Baron Gofrit glared down at the frozen road, which crackled beneath his horse's hooves with every step.
The thin ice covering the dirt was hard on the horse. Slipping was bad enough, but walking over frost-heaved ground all day could damage its hooves.
There was no alternative. It was still better than Gofrit having to walk himself.
With mixed feelings, Gofrit stroked the horse's mane. The weary animal snorted in response.
"You ended up with a useless master..."
Tears nearly sprang to Gofrit's eyes before he realized it.
It was shameful for a hardy northern man to cry over something like this, but Gofrit looked little better than a beggar by now.
Still, he had to survive. Only then could he put everything right.
Gofrit looked behind him. Aside from four knights, nearly eighty soldiers followed.
The force had been smaller at first, but he had gathered defeated soldiers he encountered during the retreat.
That slowed their march considerably, but he did not care.
'Do you know how much money I poured into them?'
Raising conscripts meant stripping his territory of its labor force.
Mercenaries were expensive as well.
Having already emptied his purse to hire them, Gofrit found it far more economical to keep the mercenaries he had paid for than contract a new company.
He could not abandon the routed soldiers either. Doing so would seriously hinder the reconstruction of his army after he returned home.
"My Lord, Rundt is just ahead."
A knight rode closer and spoke quietly. Gofrit nodded with a troubled expression.
Rundt was a village a little over half a day's journey from Einhorn.
When Einhorn was plundered, the knights and Rheesian mercenaries had clamored to sack Rundt as well. Only Gofrit's desperate intervention had left it intact.
Could he use that fact to coax even a few scraps of help from them?
Gofrit clung to the possibility in desperation.
The villagers would be beheaded if they were caught helping the lord of an enemy territory, but such things were acceptable as long as no one found out.
Gofrit wanted to avoid a fight at all costs, even against peasants armed with pitchforks.
'If only my forces were still intact!'
Of course, if they had been, he would have said fuck it and looted the place.
Gofrit felt little guilt about stripping a rural village bare. It was common practice.
No one would care if a backwater like this vanished from the map. With matters this urgent, why should he care if it burned to ashes?
It was not part of his own territory, and belonging to that detestable, vulgar Baron Yaven made him even less reluctant.
But circumstances were different now, and time was more valuable than loot.
There was no reason to waste it plundering the village.
"The Rheesians are waiting outside Einhorn. We should hurry."
"They have only just arrived?"
"It appears Count Rasau sent them as reinforcements. A messenger came and went."
Gofrit's face brightened at once.
His army's morale and condition might have been abysmal, but a path to survival remained.
Most of the Rheesian mercenaries were cavalrymen.
They might have been losing ground to the Kakkars, true nomads, but that did not make them any less formidable.
"I hope the Rheesians put up a good fight..."
"According to news from Rhees, another Kakkar host has recently invaded from the east."
"Another Kakkar host... Those Scythian bastards?"
"No. They came from even farther east."
"Ugh... We have more than enough trouble of our own. For now, all we can do is hope the Rheesians fight well."
He did not care whether the Kakkars and Rheesians slaughtered each other. As long as the mercenaries earned what he had paid them, that was enough.
First, however, he had to reach the Rhamdus Plain, where the Rheesian mercenaries were waiting.
A fortress stood there. Even if he could not return to his castle immediately, he could shelter there and dispatch messengers.
Darkness settled over the land.
Once the sunlight disappeared, the white snowfield became a black mire. The approaching snowstorm blurred the air until it was difficult to make out the road ahead.
Gofrit grew more anxious by the moment.
He had known this was the season when snowstorms began, but for one to arrive this soon...
'No!'
Summer was approaching, the season when the north wind returned. The snowstorms would only grow worse.
Northern summers were less severe than the winters, but they were infamous in their own right.
The White Hell. That was the name given to the snowstorms concentrated in the northern summer and winter.
How long had he marched on, consumed by impatience?
"My Lord! Over there...!"
"Oh!"
A light shone in the distance. Gofrit broke into a broad smile without realizing it.
The warm orange glow was still far away, but the very sight of it warmed his heart.
It was unmistakably firelight made by people, which meant Rundt was close.
"Hurry! The village is right ahead! Once we get inside, we can rest somewhere warm!"
A thunderous response rose unexpectedly. The soldiers were utterly exhausted too.
They were sick of the cold. Even a single bowl of warm barley porridge would heat them from within.
Just imagining their numb, trembling fingers thawing filled their eyes with one last surge of determination.
"...Hm?"
But something was strange.
As they drew closer to Rundt, Gofrit began to frown without knowing why.
The orange light he had seen had undoubtedly come from torches.
Were the villagers holding a feast or something?
Obviously not. Then what were those lights, growing more numerous by the moment?
"What is that...?"
His question was answered soon enough.
Waaaaah—!!
A tremendous shout rang out from nearby.
At the same time, countless orange lights sprang from the darkness ahead.
"...!"
Goosebumps rose across Gofrit's body. The knights riding beside him reacted the same way.
A pitch-black night, a light snowstorm that obscured their vision, and soldiers shivering with cold and exhaustion.
The conditions were far too favorable—for an ambush.
"It's a n-night attack!"
Gofrit himself had crushed Baron Yaven's army with a night raid. He knew exactly how dangerous one could be.
Panic swept through the column. A knight drew his sword and screamed at the top of his lungs.
"Hold steady! Draw your weapons!"
A multitude of torches moved frantically across the snowfield ahead.
They were far enough away to be indistinct, yet much too close to ignore. Shouts and heavy pounding filled the night.
The pounding came from Gofrit's own heart. Panic seized him so badly that his breath caught and his mind went blank.
The enemy had seen them. Who in God's name were they, waving torches and shouting in the darkness?
'The pursuit force is already here?!'
The answer seemed obvious. It had to be Lothar's pursuit force.
They must have followed the road west from the north and waited here for Gofrit's army.
"My Lord! Give us your orders!"
The knights were just as shaken.
One hurriedly pulled on his helmet, rode up to Gofrit, and demanded an answer.
Gofrit felt sweat stream down his back. He glanced at the soldiers behind him.
Could they win if they fought the pursuers?
"My Lord!"
They were cold, hungry, exhausted, and utterly demoralized.
They probably held the numerical advantage, but victory in their current condition was far from certain.
If they did not fight, however, they would have to cross the snowfield in this state.
Even if the journey took only a day, the pursuit force was not stupid enough to let them go. They had already been discovered at point-blank range.
"We fight!"
"M-my lord! If we fight here...!"
"What else can we do? They've already found us!"
They could not outrun the pursuers.
It was better to form ranks and fight here than flee indecisively and be struck from behind later.
"My Lord! Over there!"
That resolve vanished the moment he saw another cluster of torches rise in the distance.
Booooo—!
A long horn blast heralded slaughter.
Through the driving snow, dozens of torches appeared at the edge of his blurred vision, rapidly drawing closer.
The faint churn of snow, pounding hoofbeats, and riders urging their mounts on with shouts of 'Hyah!'...
Cavalry. They had appeared well away from the torches near the village, and there were far too many of them—at least thirty by his estimate.
If that many horsemen were charging together, there could be only one explanation.
"I-is that the main army?!"
Lothar's entire army had caught up to them. Nothing else made sense.
There was no time to wonder whether Lothar even possessed that much cavalry.
Gofrit abandoned the idea of fighting immediately.
He might have had a sliver of hope against the pursuit force alone, but facing the enemy's main army was beyond anything he had planned for.
"R-run!"
"Fuck! It's all over now!"
By the time he regained his senses, the soldiers had already lost the will to fight and were fleeing in every direction.
The knights drew their swords and shouted for them to return, but stopping deserters in the darkness was nearly impossible.
"My Lord! We must retreat at once!"
They had no cohesion, morale, or reason to fight left.
The thunder of approaching hooves drove Gofrit frantic.
"My Lord!"
"Damn it! Where are we supposed to go?!"
They had almost made it. Rundt was close enough to touch.
If only they could rest there for half a day—no, even three or four hours—they could make it home.
"I will open a path to the south!"
The cavalry was coming from the north, while the village entrance to the west had already been swallowed by countless torches.
Going back east was out of the question. South was the only escape.
It would take him even farther from his territory, but Gofrit first had to survive.
"South! We go south!"
"Everyone, stay together!"
"Mounted men to the front! Clear a path!"
Gofrit knew a disorderly retreat could be worse than standing and fighting, but he trembled with fear as he frantically drove his horse south.
The blade-sharp wind mixed with the snow and blinded him. Furious shouts rode upon it.
It was the north wind, blowing over the northern mountains with snow and chaos in its wake.
It closed mercilessly around Gofrit's throat.