I. Where the Frost Lingers (12)
I. Where the Frost Lingers (12)
After leaving Hilmer's bedroom, Keldric headed straight for the guest room where Joseph was staying.
But no one was there.
'Had he already fled?'
Keldric left the guest room, his expression impassive.
Keldric had half expected Joseph to flee, and a fierce blizzard raged outside beneath the deep darkness.
Trying to leave the village in this weather meant either freezing to death or being dragged off by wolves.
Joseph surely knew that too.
In the end, the only place Joseph could flee was somewhere within the village.
He was, for all intents and purposes, a rat in a trap.
As far as Keldric knew, Joseph still had one last card to play.
'The cavalrymen.'
Keldric ran out of the manor house, adjusted his helmet, and raised the torch he'd taken from a servant on the way.
Once around, twice around, three times around.
The torch spun in circles, tracing a scarlet trail.
Keldric carefully controlled its speed so the flame wouldn't go out.
Sure enough, before long, a faint and unfamiliar sound came from the distance.
Clop, clop-clop!
They were not human footsteps. Something heavy was running with a light, rhythmic beat—the unmistakable sound of shod horses.
Keldric stared toward the sound with a trace of tension on his face.
This was his first time facing actual cavalry.
'They were coming.'
The sound of hooves plowing through the snow grew clearer by the moment.
Keldric drove the torch in his left hand hard into the ground.
The torch stayed planted without breaking, and the flame didn't go out. It became a fixed light, with cloth soaked in pig fat burning fiercely.
The wind made the flames dance without rest, driving back the cold and darkness.
Using dark adaptation as before wouldn't work against cavalry. Even if the light went out, they could simply turn their horses and flee. They'd probably brought torches of their own, so it was better to keep the area lit.
Once he had decided, Keldric did something rare and gripped his sword with both hands.
Not because it was heavy. A two-handed grip simply seemed better against cavalry.
Keldric waited quietly. The horses' snorts grew audible as they drew closer.
His first battle against cavalry!
Though tense, Keldric was confident he could win.
He'd never properly fought cavalry before, yet confidence welled up within him.
"Haa..."
So he stood his ground.
Alone in the freezing blizzard and darkness, his sword held high.
Neigh—!
A horse's whinny rang out clearly.
Keldric sensed that the time had come. His grip tightened around the sword.
"What, did those mercenary bastards succeed?"
"Kurshek! You're buying the drinks, just like you promised!"
"Ah, shit..."
The cavalrymen approached noisily, apparently with no intention of hiding their position.
Their voices were close—so close that the charging riders had already come into view.
Just as Keldric saw them, they spotted him standing beside the torch planted in the ground.
"Move!"
"H-hey! You lunatic!"
Their panic wasn't simply because they had seen Keldric.
The silent Keldric had suddenly kicked off the ground and charged straight at them.
Being struck by a horse meant being crippled at best and killed at worst. Even an ordinary horse at full gallop could crush a human body.
The lead rider instinctively yanked on his reins. The abruptly checked horse stumbled, staggered several more steps, and stopped directly in front of Keldric.
That sealed the lead rider's fate.
Keldric thrust his two-handed sword forward like lightning.
"Aaaagh!"
Already struggling to control his horse, the rider couldn't avoid the thrust. With a single scream, he was skewered.
His gambeson and leather lamellar armor were certainly sturdy.
But Keldric's monstrous strength and the well-honed blade drove the thrust straight through them without resistance.
Neigh—!
The now-riderless horse ran several more steps before fleeing toward the manor house.
This happened because the riders had brought hunting horses rather than warhorses. A well-trained destrier might not have fled.
'They weren't fully armored.'
That told Keldric the cavalrymen weren't overwhelmingly formidable. Their equipment was decent, but fighting them was far from hopeless.
"It's a trap! They lured us in!"
"Those mercenary bastards told them everything!"
"Damn it! Kill him first!"
Five riders remained.
They quickly spread out in every direction.
Hooves tore noisily through the snow in the darkness.
"G-ghurk..."
Keldric pulled his sword from the cooling corpse, took his stance, and glared at the riders circling him.
Their maneuvers lacked the skill Sir Volfen had once displayed, but they still showed organized cohesion.
Still, it was manageable. Keldric was certain of it.
"You bastard!"
Two riders peeled away from the circle and charged Keldric from crossing directions.
A tactic guaranteed to work against a lone opponent—block one attack, and the other would land!
But such a tactic only worked against an opponent it could actually overwhelm.
The two riders thrust their spears at Keldric almost simultaneously.
Keldric didn't stand still. As the spears shot toward him, he twisted sharply aside.
A spearpoint scraped past his shoulder with a metallic rattle as it caught on the chain links.
The shoulder of Keldric's surcoat tore slightly. The chain mail beneath held, though it was lightly scratched.
'I should have moved a little farther left.'
No matter how strong he was, Keldric was still inexperienced in this kind of fighting.
For now, merely deflecting the attack was enough.
The second spear came as soon as he avoided the first. Keldric remained calm. He couldn't simply dodge and let both riders return to formation unhurt; he had to finish at least one of them.
After avoiding both spears almost simultaneously, Keldric seized the second spear shaft.
"Huh?"
Then he yanked with all his strength.
Ripped from the saddle, the rider flew through the air in disbelief.
Suddenly airborne, he was met by Keldric's fist—an enormous battering ram to the face.
Boom!
The impact shook the loose snow around them. Keldric's fist caved in the rider's face through his leather helmet.
He convulsed several times, vomited blood, and went limp.
That was the end of him.
With two men freed from the mortal world by Keldric's hand, one-third of the cavalry force vanished in an instant.
"What the..."
The remaining riders stared in shock.
Everyone knew knights were formidable, but this was fundamentally infantry against cavalry. That gap wasn't easily bridged.
Keldric bridged what should have been an unbridgeable gap through sheer physical ability.
Dodge every attack, seize one spear, and smash the rider with a single blow.
That simple sequence had completely countered their tactic.
Of course, it was only possible in theory. Anything sounded easy when put into words.
They hadn't lost through carelessness. They had acted according to perfectly ordinary common sense.
Keldric stood slightly outside their common sense.
"What the hell is that bastard?!"
"Kurshek! That son of a bitch!"
While the four remaining riders reeled, Keldric glanced over the spear now in his hand.
'A good spear.'
It was a quality weapon made from solid oak.
From their armor and horses' tack to their proper weapons, these men were difficult to dismiss as ordinary mercenaries.
There were two main possibilities.
Either they were veteran sellswords from a truly renowned mercenary company, hired by someone—
Or they were elite troops carefully trained by a noble.
Keldric found himself leaning toward the latter.
The tactics they had shown bore clear signs of systematic training that no mercenary could display.
"Come at me—!!"
Keldric drew a deep breath and shouted. His voice boomed through the blizzard and darkness.
The stunned cavalrymen took it as a signal and hastily spurred their horses before they could think further.
They exchanged hand signals Keldric did not understand.
This time, rather than circling him and sending two riders, all four intended to charge at once.
At one rider's torch signal, the others turned their horses one after another.
They meant to attack together, but with slight delays between them.
It was a wise decision. If all four charged at once, they were more likely to become entangled and fall into chaos.
Facing them, Keldric quickly reversed his grip on the spear.
His shoulder muscles, drawn taut to their limit, began to ripple.
Creak—
Whoosh!
The long spear split the cold night air.
The spears carried by cavalrymen were generally unsuitable for throwing. They were too long.
But Keldric was not ordinary.
The spear tore through the air and shot forward like a ballista bolt.
"Hup!"
A startled rider quickly ducked and barely avoided the spear.
'That lunatic!'
It had been accurate enough to pierce his head if he moved a fraction too slowly.
The rider survived one crisis, but unfortunately, that movement brought a second upon him.
After ducking instinctively, he belatedly saw Keldric charging from the opposite direction.
One step, two steps, and then three steps.
Keldric rapidly closed the distance. Even if the other three riders charged him, he judged it better to kill the one before him first.
'If I only kept dodging, this would never end.'
The rider who noticed Keldric too late thrust his spear desperately, but it was already too late.
Keldric deflected the spear with his sword. The rider's thrust buried itself uselessly in the ground.
After neutralizing the attack, Keldric punched the horse square in the chest with all his strength.
Wham!
The horse collapsed forward without even managing a shrill cry. Blood streamed from its mouth as its tongue lolled out.
"Gugh! Grrk..."
The same was true of the rider crushed beneath the horse.
Leaving the crushed rider vomiting blood, Keldric quickly leaned backward.
Three spearheads immediately stabbed toward the place where he had stood.
The riders faltered when their blind-side attack missed. Keldric launched himself forward with his sword in hand.
The strength in his sturdy legs carried him instantly before another rider.
"Uh...!"
His moment of hesitation ended it.
Without hesitation, Keldric swung his sword at the mounted rider's leg.
With a grisly slicing sound, one of the rider's legs was severed at the thigh.
"Aaaagh!!"
The thigh dangled by a narrow strip of flesh, a truly gruesome sight.
Clutching it and screaming, the rider lost his balance and fell into the snow. Keldric saw his neck bend at an unnatural angle.
"Die!"
In the meantime, yet another cavalryman charged at Keldric.
The unfortunate rider charged just as Keldric's first swing flowed naturally into the next.
Keldric's second swing split the charging horse's head. It cracked cleanly apart.
'...?'
At that point, Keldric again noticed something strange.
He had nearly severed a rider's thigh moments earlier, and now a horse's head had split in two just as easily.
He could not dwell on the question for long.
The horse died instantly and collapsed forward, sending its rider tumbling across the snow with it.
"Aack!"
The rider was lucky not to be crushed beneath the horse, but screamed when his ankle twisted during the fall.
After lightly catching his breath, Keldric slowly looked around.
Blood was scattered over the pure white snow, and horse corpses and human bodies lay everywhere.
And over them, white snow was already piling up.
"One, two, three, four, five..."
Keldric had finished off five cavalrymen. The sixth was nowhere to be seen.
No matter how he searched, he could not see so much as a horsehair, let alone the rider.
A continuous trail of churned snow led toward the forest. The last rider appeared to have fled midway through the fight.
Keldric sighed after a victory that left a distinctly bad taste. Letting an enemy escape made the ending deeply unsettling.
"Hngh, ugh...!"
As if to compensate, the voice of someone still alive reached Keldric.
It was the rider who had fallen and broken his ankle when Keldric split his horse's head moments earlier.
Keldric rested his blood-slick sword on his shoulder and slowly approached the survivor.
The blood on the blade was still warm, sending wisps of white steam into the air.
The chilling sight made the rider clutching his ankle scream in terror.
"I-I serve Baron Gofrit as my liege! I demand treatment befitting his honor!"
Keldric paused at the rider's words. What baron?
"Who did you say you serve?"
"Ansen Schultheis, Baron of Gofrit! I am one of his elite soldiers—"
"Why did you come to this village? Why did you attack House Bellaf?"
Baron Gofrit or whatever—Keldric asked the more important question first.
House Bellaf governed Carlton Village as a fief, but the land ultimately belonged to its lord, Baron Yaven.
And another noble had instigated the attack on House Bellaf?
Keldric had a bad feeling. He detested conflicts between nobles.
He couldn't imagine it escalating into a territorial war, but such wars often began over trivial matters.
At least in Keldric's view, this incident was no trivial matter. It was extremely serious.
That was why Keldric had asked for the reason behind the attack on House Bellaf.
Sir Volfen might have earned someone's grudge.
"That is..."
But the fallen rider hesitated and could not continue.
In his desperation to live, he had blurted out his master's name. Now that death had taken one step back, his mind began working again.
Why had they attacked House Bellaf? Of course he didn't know.
Had he been a proper knight sent by Baron Gofrit, perhaps he would have known. But no matter how elite he was, to the baron he was only a soldier who obeyed without talking back.
Baron Gofrit wasn't an idiot. He would never reveal his entire purpose and plan to ordinary soldiers.
Go to the backwater called Carlton Village. Kill the current head of House Bellaf, which rules there. Then help the second son take his place.
Those were the only orders the cavalrymen had received.
"..."
Meanwhile, Keldric waited for a very long time.
He waited until the rider with the broken ankle groaned from the throbbing pain and the torch planted in the ground began to die in the cold wind.
"So you don't know either?"
In the end, Keldric's patience ran out.
He still had to find Joseph, who had likely gone down to the village, and worry about the cavalryman who had already fled far away on horseback.
He had no time to waste here.
"W-wait! Wait...! No, please wait just a moment!"
"There doesn't seem to be anything more to hear. You don't know your master's purpose either, do you?"
"S-sir! If you spare me, you stand to gain much! I can serve as a witness..."
Not a chance.
If a baron simply denied everything, the testimony of a mere soldier would be useless.
That unrealistic plea made Keldric realize there was no more information to extract from the half-crippled rider.
Then there was only one thing to do.
The blood-coated sword swung horizontally.
Slice!
The cavalryman, who had been babbling to survive, had his neck severed in a single stroke.
Red blood sprayed across the pure white snow.
'Unbelievable.'
The only thing he'd learned was Baron Gofrit's name. Keldric clicked his tongue and rose.
Lights still burned in the manor house. After watching it for a moment, Keldric turned his gaze in the opposite direction.
Toward the village.