XII. The Battle of Ramders Plain (1)
XII. The Battle of Ramders Plain (1)
The destruction of Einhorn cast a long shadow.
Keldric remained troubled throughout the journey away from the ruined village.
The thought that Carlton might easily have suffered the same fate left a bitter taste in his mouth.
But Keldric was not the sort to collapse beneath another person's despair, and the journey had to continue.
"The snow..."
As they traveled west from Einhorn, patches of cleared ground began appearing here and there.
Keldric examined them closely. The north wind was descending and a blizzard was imminent. Surely the border west of Einhorn was not normally this mild.
"Signs of people."
"...Yes."
A closer look revealed the remains of campfires.
Keldric found many places where the snow had been cleared. It had not melted; someone had removed it by hand.
Alisa narrowed her eyes. After staring at a spot beside the road, she ordered a soldier to brush away the snow there.
"Sir Keldric, look at this."
"This is..."
Keldric guided Boreas closer. Sure enough—
Horse dung lay beneath the thin covering of snow.
Most travelers simply left horse dung wherever it fell. A disciplined army or mercenary company dug shallow pits and gathered it there.
A shallow pit lay before Keldric, filled haphazardly with dung.
"Who were they?"
"I'm not sure either... but mounted men clearly camped here."
Campfire remains, ground cleared for tents, and a pit containing a large quantity of horse dung.
Only a fool could miss the conclusion. An unknown third party had entered the territorial war.
Gofrit's army was already on the verge of destruction.
The notion that he had hidden a vast cavalry force that now rode to his rescue belonged in a novel.
That left two possibilities: either a horse merchant with an enormous herd had passed through, or another participant in the war was moving cavalry around the area.
Keldric was certain it was not the former.
No horse merchant would be insane enough to wander through a war zone. Bandits would lick their lips and strip him bare.
'There shouldn't be... anyone else who'd be moving through this area.'
A third party had clearly appeared, one belonging to neither Gofrit nor Lothar, but Keldric could not identify them.
Speculation would accomplish nothing. Instead of studying horse dung all day, he needed to finish the task at hand.
"We'll move cautiously from here. Send three cavalrymen half a league ahead as a scouting party."
Keldric took reasonable precautions against the unidentified force.
He committed three of the detachment's precious five horsemen to scouting the road ahead.
It was only light reconnaissance. Their numbers were tight, but caution would do no harm.
They could not fight a bandit force if one appeared, but three riders should at least be able to escape.
The three cavalrymen rode ahead and soon disappeared across the snowfield.
Keldric waited until they vanished from sight before moving again. The soldiers followed after their brief rest.
After hours of marching, the sun began to sink and the sky turned orange.
"Find us a place to camp."
As the soldiers cleared snow from a suitable campsite, Keldric watched the sunset with unease and frustration in his eyes.
He had prevented Gofrit from returning home, and the journey had gone smoothly. Yet he still felt uneasy.
His gaze turned west, toward the red horizon. Something dark moved faintly against it.
"Those are..."
As the figures drew closer, he recognized the three scouts he had sent ahead.
Something was wrong. Their faces grew more urgent and their movements more frantic as they approached.
"S-Sir Keldric! Sir Henri!"
The reason soon became clear.
"There are Rheesian cavalry ahead!"
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Rheesians—people of the Duchy of Rhees.
Their ruddy faces, thick platinum-blond or golden hair, and fearless temperament made them natural warriors.
Where had these Rheesians come from?
The Kingdom of Polonia lay east of the Empire.
Farther east lived the descendants of ancient barbarians who had settled inland: the Rheesians.
"Their camp is about one league ahead. There were at least a hundred of them, and every man was mounted."
The returning scout trembled as he spoke. Keldric and Henri exchanged grave looks.
More than a hundred cavalrymen alone. It was an enormous mounted force unlike anything they had ever seen.
Nearly five hundred men had fought near Schaffendorf, but a hundred cavalry was an entirely different kind of threat.
Cavalry inspired fear by their very presence. Infantry found them exceptionally difficult to fight.
A foot soldier could thrust with a spear or try to drag a rider down with an axe or hooked blade, but his options were limited.
Arrows could drive most enemies back, but they were less reliable against fast-moving cavalry.
Horsemen used their mobility to tear through enemy formations. Archers struggled to suppress riders racing across the battlefield.
A hundred of such troops amounted to a disaster.
"If a hundred men are mounted, wouldn't that strain their supplies and remounts?"
Henri raised a reasonable question. The scout's expression darkened further before he answered.
"Yes. There was a separate group hauling supply wagons with them."
"Be precise. Were they actually there, or do you only think they were?"
"Th-they were there. I saw them."
Keldric knew little about Rheesian logistics.
He did know that a hundred mounted troops required abundant supplies and that the Rheesians made up shortages through plunder.
Logistics in this era were crude. Most supplies traveled by cart over uneven roads, and the dirt tracks of the North were particularly miserable.
Anyone capable of sustaining a hundred cavalrymen under those conditions had to possess a powerful patron.
"Count Rasau may be behind them."
Alisa, effectively the only scholar in the party, offered the most plausible explanation.
Keldric nodded. Count Rasau possessed the wealth and influence required.
His comital house had only recently regained real authority, so he might not have been wealthy on his own. With the Emperor and other powerful nobles behind him, however, the situation changed.
"If it's Count Rasau, that makes sense. He's the only man likely to have brought this many Rheesians here."
"Has Count Rasau given no thought to what comes afterward? That many Rheesians will not simply go home."
Henri's words pointed toward a bleak future.
If the Rheesian mercenaries remained after the territorial war, they undoubtedly intended to make a fortune through plunder.
Whether their employer won or lost was almost irrelevant to that problem.
Pillaging had become routine for them because of conditions in their homeland. It was difficult to imagine them meekly taking their wages and leaving.
'A shit-eating mutt would give up shit first.'
Keldric agreed completely.
He had not dealt with countless Rheesians, but he had seen enough of them.
"Then what should we do?"
Keldric asked without warning. Alisa and Henri, who had been calmly giving their opinions, fell silent.
"Negotiation will get us nowhere. If we leave them alone, they may advance to recover Baron Gofrit."
"Ugh... This has become a serious problem."
Henri raked a hand through his greasy blond hair. Serving with a detached force for days on end was grueling.
The soldiers had rested briefly in Rundt, but it was not enough.
Even fresh, well-fed troops could not reasonably face a hundred cavalrymen.
"There's no help for it. We've no choice but to wait for Lothar."
Only one option remained: Lothar had to reorganize the army and reach them as quickly as possible.
Once his army arrived, the two sides would probably field similar numbers.
Two hundred infantry against roughly a hundred cavalry.
It was difficult to say which side would prevail in a direct clash.
And the Rheesians did not consist of cavalry alone. Other men had come with supply wagons.
Those troops could not be ignored. Maintaining a mounted force of that size required tremendous supplies.
"The situation is bad."
Keldric spoke quietly so the soldiers would not hear and lose morale.
Henri nodded. No matter how brave a knight was, a hundred horsemen were simply too many.
"How did a force that large even reach this place?"
"They must have crossed the North Sea, with help from Count Rasau or Bishop Rutbeck."
Whatever the explanation, the reality was grim.
Keldric swallowed a sigh.
One problem followed another. After Gofrit's army came a host of foreign mercenaries.
But even with disaster looming, they still had work to do.
"We'd best send a messenger at dawn and return to Rundt ourselves."
"Rundt? Wouldn't it be better to keep scouting them from nearby...?"
"That would be dangerous and pointless. They are all mounted, so we could not follow them without being spotted."
Henri accepted the argument. Keldric's reasoning was sound.
With that, the small council ended.
Keldric lay down early. Before long, he listened to Alisa's tired breathing beside him and considered the problem alone.
'Maybe...'
The thought sprang from a sense of danger.
An unprecedented crisis seemed to be closing in.
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At first light, Keldric led the detached force back to Rundt.
They remained there for four full days.
They could not return to Schaffendorf until they knew what the Rheesian mercenaries intended, and gathering that information fell to Keldric.
After four anxious days in Rundt, Keldric finally met Rutger, who looked as though several days had hollowed out his face.
"Sir Keldric! The messenger told us about the Rheesians. What in God's name is happening?"
"Sir Rutger, I'd first like to speak with Lothar..."
"Ah, of course. Come with me."
The army Lothar had gathered again numbered a little over two hundred.
It was an impressive force. Baron Yaven had probably emptied half his coffers to raise it.
Lothar's army had established a temporary camp near Rundt.
That many soldiers could not simply pour into the village.
Rutger and the other knights were another matter.
Keldric followed Rutger to the village chief's house.
Unlike the bitter wind outside, which now felt sharp enough to flay skin, the house was warmly heated.
"Ah, Sir Keldric. It's been a while."
Lothar sat inside, comfortably sipping wine.
Keldric's expression soured slightly.
Lothar must have heard about the massive cavalry force. How could he be this relaxed?
"So there really are that many horsemen?"
"Yes. That is what the scouts reported."
"Then there won't be any problem."
Had this immature young lord secretly brought some decisive weapon?
Despite himself, Keldric entertained a faint hope.
"However many lowborn bandits survive through plunder, why should they trouble us? One charge from you knights and they'll piss themselves and flee."
That hope was immediately and thoroughly betrayed. Keldric's brow twisted.
'This fucking idiot...'
The young heir before him—needlessly confident, fiercely proud, and unwilling to bend—was a flower raised in a hothouse.
One thought came to Keldric.
This might become his most difficult battle yet.