A Strategy Acknowledged
Neeeeigh!
The horse, bristling with arrows and bolts, went down, and Dugald pitched headlong off its back into the dirt.
The men can't hold together. So this is what they wanted when they flung the treasure on the ground...!
The fall had wrenched his back, but he ground his teeth and swallowed the pain. Caked in mud, he hauled himself up and pushed forward one step at a time, sword drawn, cutting down the enemies who rushed him one after another as he slipped their blows.
"Nngh... I don't want to die..."
Just ahead, one of his own soldiers was barely holding off an enemy strike. Dugald started toward him at once to help—and a chill crawled up his spine.
He turned. A war hammer was coming at him with terrifying force. He twisted aside in time to take only a glancing blow, but a graze was still a blow. The strength behind that hammer was so great that Dugald staggered and his stance collapsed.
As if the other man had been waiting for precisely that moment, he turned the weapon's own weight against itself and swung the hammer again.
"Ghk!"
Iron rang on iron. Dugald just managed to stop the strike, but he was hopelessly outmatched in strength. He was flung backward and went tumbling across the ground.
"Kagh... cough..."
"Been keeping well, Sir Dugald?"
Jericho smiled at him, slick and mocking.
"Heh. Still not dead, then?"
Using his sword like a crutch, Dugald pushed himself upright.
"Revenge for last time? That blow carried quite a grudge."
"We did owe you plenty that day. But I'm not swinging with that day's feelings behind it."
The words were barely out before Jericho closed the distance in a blink.
This bastard... he was never this fast before...
Startled, Dugald hurriedly set the flat of his blade to catch the hammer rising from below. Jericho had expected exactly that. At the last instant he twisted the angle, and Dugald's sword spun into the air and landed far away.
Certain now that his opponent could no longer block, Jericho smashed the fleeing knight in the side.
"Gyaaah!"
The plate armor crumpled until it bit into flesh. That was the power of the hammer he swung. Dugald rolled across the ground again, screaming in pain.
"All that fuss? Disgraceful."
Boom!
The earth shuddered, and one of Dugald's arms was pulped beneath the hammer. Blood gushed out and soaked the ground.
"Aaaaaagh!"
Staring at the ruined arm, Dugald shrieked even louder, like a man gone mad. Jericho watched him thrash and let the past rise up. One of his bitterest defeats had been Dugald's handiwork.
"I'd love to drag this out a while longer, but we haven't the leisure for it."
"Ghh... s-spare me! Waaah!"
Boom!
As if he had no wish to hear another word, Jericho turned the man's head to pulp.
"Th-the commander's down!"
"Run!"
The soldiers who had been fighting to stay alive scattered the moment the knight leading them died, and the line came apart.
"Kahaha! We beat those damned kingdom bastards!"
"Waaaaah!!"
The mercenaries who had lived through the fight drank deep of victory, roaring loud enough to send the insects and birds fleeing in alarm.
"Get the scattered coin and arms back, fast! We have to be clear of this place before soldiers come down on us from the other side!"
"Aye."
"Yes, sir."
Some of the company dragged out the wagons and carts they had hidden in the woods, and at once they were busy loading weapons and plunder. Jericho cut across their work and went to the girl with the crossbow, and to Theo.
"...I wasn't expecting much, but that was a victory beyond anything I imagined. Was this the outcome you foresaw as well?"
"Hard to say. I wouldn't know that it went that far."
"The difference in numbers was ten to one. To overturn a fight that lopsided with a single scheme..."
They had broken an enemy force of more than a thousand with fewer than a hundred mercenaries. No store of battle experience made a result like that easy.
"It must be because you trusted what I said and followed it."
Jericho set a hand on the silver hair of the girl who answered so calmly, and stroked it with an awkwardness that didn't suit him.
"...Thank you."
Elon was leading his soldiers along the eastern road when he spotted people in the distance hauling carts. Taking them for the raiders who had struck the village, he drew his sword and pointed.
"All units, seize them!"
The soldiers charged with a shout. The mercenaries at the carts looked back at them, then abandoned the carts and bolted. That they gave the carts up so easily stirred a doubt in Elon. He went forward with his men and checked what was inside.
Empty carts. Then...
Too late, he realized he had taken the bait. He turned his soldiers around and hurried back the way they had come, southwest.
"Th-this can't be..."
All along the forest path, the corpses of his own soldiers lay strewn. The sight he had never imagined left him stunned.
"How did this happen... Then Sir Dugald..."
He searched with his men for Dugald's body. After a long hunt, a corpse wedged in a tangle of brush snagged his eye. When he looked closer, a familiar face met him.
"Sir Dugald..."
The plate he had worn was gone, stripped away by the Iron Hammer Mercenary Corps. He lay in nothing but his underclothes. Elon put on a look of regret, while inside he thought something else entirely.
This bastard dying is a windfall. When I get back to the domain, the vacant captaincy of the guard ought to fall to me. And I always coveted his wife—poor thing's a widow now, so I'll have no choice but to take her in!
The thought alone pleased him, but he could not bring himself to let it show. A soldier gathering the dead came up and asked.
"We've secured Lord Dugald's body, and the recovery is nearly finished... What are your orders now?"
"We return to the domain."
Theo and I sat side by side in one corner of a wagon heaped with arms.
"You were really something back there."
When he said it, I asked, flat as ever.
"At what?"
"You weren't scared of that terrifying man, and you said everything you wanted to say. And then things turned out exactly the way you said they would."
"It was just luck."
I wasn't fishing for modesty. Things had almost never gone this precisely the way I'd pictured them. I had simply been lucky. What if those soldiers had been elites? If they had, the ones who suffered would have been the Iron Hammer Mercenary Corps. But this was an age of war, and a world where not everyone could keep elite troops. I had figured most of them would be conscripts, undertrained and short on real fighting, and by luck the guess had proved right.
"But Theo. Are you really all right with this?"
"What do you mean?"
"When they said they'd let the captives go. You should have stayed there with the other kids."
"Why do you think that?"
Why? Because...
"Sometimes freedom matters more than having enough to eat. Following me like this is the same as kicking away a freedom that rolled right up to your feet. Even if you'd broken your word to me then, I wouldn't have cared."
When I had asked Theo whether he would stay or come with me, he had said he would come.
"I don't regret it."
"Why not?"
"You took my guilt off my shoulders, so I figure I owe you at least this much. That's why I'm following you."
This kid. I thought he was only naive... he had a sappy side too?
"You... if you die later, don't go blaming me for it. Understand?"
"I won't blame you. And if a crisis comes, you'll handle it somehow. Won't you?"
Watching Theo's innocent smile, I almost envied him. I think there was a time I was like that too...
"I don't have that kind of confidence, so look after your own hide."
"Hehe~ Okay."
He didn't have a careful bone in him, but in this world, where I had nowhere at all to lean, he was at least someone who put my heart a little at ease.
The wagon, which had been rolling along well enough, stopped all at once. A voice came from up front.
"It's late enough. We'll camp here. Light the fires and get the tents up."
Smoke from campfires rose over a wide clearing in the woods. The mercenaries pitched tents here and there and hauled all kinds of food out of the wagons. I picked one of the fires and sat beside it. Theo sat down after me, and then someone came up beside us.
"Not bad, the way you use that head of yours. Thanks to you, the lads who were in a foul mood have loosened up quite a bit."
You...
"That look says you're asking who I am. Name's Carlson. You saw me earlier, so we're acquainted, aren't we?"