The Raven's First Hunt

Passio Baron Territory.

A vassal domain of House Crombell, it sat nearer than any other to Engaldar Baron Territory, itself a vassal holding of House Ahental. The two lands were neighbors in the truest sense, sharing the great bulk of Mount Tolid at their backs, and a well-kept highway ran cleanly between them, so trade was frequent. Engaldar, falling within Ahental's sphere of influence, enjoyed commercial privileges that Passio did not — which was why its markets ran larger.

Yet the land itself was much the same, and so were the staples that fed both domains. The economic gap between them was a goblin's height, and nothing more. Both were agricultural and forestry territories, and neither could be called prosperous.

Lately, though, Passio had been shrieking with delight at an influx of "visitors" — which was to say soldiers, mercenaries, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and knights — drawn by the coming war with Ahental.

That, too, would end soon enough. It would have been nice if the boom had lasted, but come tomorrow's dawn the war would begin in earnest, and the numbers would drain away.

War. I do feel a little sorry for Baron Engaldar. They say a man can't see an inch ahead of his own fate — and this is exactly that.

Running a territory that barely scraped by, Baron Passio had naturally grown close to Baron Engaldar, a man in the same boat. To be honest, he had received a great deal of help. Tomorrow was the day he would drive a knife into the back of a friend and benefactor.

It sat poorly with him. But they served different lords, and both men had always known a day like this would come.

It had simply arrived a little early.

Baron Passio turned to the aide trailing behind him.

"How do things stand in Engaldar? Are their preparations coming along?"

"Yes, my lord. Being so close, they seem to have caught a whiff of something off. Word is they've pulled every last commoner into the castle."

"Have they? Engaldar never struck me as the sharp-nosed type."

Had he grown suspicious of the strange crowds milling through Passio? Or had Ahental already sniffed out their surprise attack?

It hardly mattered. Crombell's soldiers and knights were already in Passio Baron Territory, waiting on the day agreed upon with the envoy. The envoy was due to reach Ahental before the day was out, which made tomorrow's dawn the perfect hour to strike.

In that murky blue hour when a sentry's tension begins to slacken, he would lead Crombell's forces in a stealth assault on Engaldar Castle.

"Ahental's army still hasn't reached Engaldar?"

"They held their departure ceremony five days ago and set out, but they still haven't arrived."

"Taking their sweet time, then. They can't have imagined anyone would strike first."

"Yes, my lord. The one coming this way is the Second Young Master, Ereb von Ahental — the one they call a wastrel. No known talent for command. It's his first campaign as a commander."

"His first command? Haha! That's not even funny. What does Ahental take this war for, handing a job this size to a greenhorn?"

In truth, it was nothing to sneer at. A noble army often valued symbolism over actual command ability. That symbolism was authority, and authority was what moved troops.

The real reason Baron Passio was laughing, of course, was that he felt safer for it.

His mood improved considerably.

"Are the men resting well? We've got a big day on our doorstep. Break out the drink and the food and let them sleep it off. Come tomorrow, they won't have days like this."

"They've been too loose for days now. It worries me."

"Afraid Engaldar might come marching with a few soldiers? If they want to die, let them. Coming to find a grave where the Crombell knights are waiting? Haha!"

It was confidence with reason behind it, and the aide nodded.

Every sizable village in the barony was packed with Crombell soldiers, knights, and mercenaries playing at being travelers. Elites who would seize their weapons and pour out the moment war broke.

"The muster is tonight. Tightening discipline then won't be too late. What separates a fine commander from the rest is knowing when to give the men slack and when to take it away. Understood?"

"Yes, my lord!"

The aide bowed and was about to withdraw when a soldier burst in at a dead run. The insignia marked him as a scout. His face was white as chalk. Something had gone badly wrong.

"M-my lord! Disaster! The enemy is striking first!! Ahental's army appeared out of nowhere — they're already crossing Engaldar Baron Territory and coming straight for us!!"

Ereb and Messi's Second Army advanced at a punishing pace. In what felt like a heartbeat they had crossed the border of Engaldar Baron Territory and been inside Passio Baron Territory for some time already.

The highway linking Engaldar and Passio lay empty, almost stripped of travelers. Word of a formal declaration had not yet arrived, but both sides treating war as a settled fact had been enough to cut the traffic dead.

Even so, an enemy scout might be watching from anywhere. They could not afford to slow down.

The infantry — soldiers and mercenaries alike — were dying on their feet. Ramang, commanding the knights at the head of the column, eased his horse and then pressed it on again in careful pulses, doing what he could to haul their pace up with him.

Before long the vanguard was looking down on a village. It was Padberry, the largest settlement in Passio Baron Territory save for the baron's own seat beneath the castle.

Ereb gazed at the village below the hill as if it were a meal he had been waiting for.

"At last. My first official merit."

"How do you intend to proceed? Will you burn it all to the ground?"

"Messi. What the hell do you take me for?"

"?"

"If I were going to torch the whole village, I'd have asked Lord Frox to do it already."

Hmm. Ereb's grown thoughtful. That's true enough... if I used magic, I'd take the lives of people who have no part in this. Not that I had any intention of doing so.

Frox smiled, rather pleased, when Ereb pointed him out.

He should have waited for the rest of the sentence.

"If I did that, Lord Frox would get all the credit, wouldn't he?"

"...What?"

"I'll turn it into a wasteland and burn it myself. I'll trample every last one of them."

Messi and Frox both clutched their heads. That temper of his...

"There's no need to go that far. The commoners will be too busy hiding, and the Crombell knights will come at us themselves."

"Well. That's true enough."

"We only need to kill the knights. If we start setting fires right away, they'll feel the danger and run. We have to raise the heat slowly, like a frog in a pot, and finish them."

"That's right, Second Young Master. Touch the commoners and you'll only waste more time."

The heart of a surprise attack, after all, was killing the enemy's knights while they were still off their guard — and hitting them fast.

"Second Young Master, give the order to charge. They're pointing this way from the village."

At Ramang's urging, Ereb looked down. Someone in Padberry had sensed something wrong; fingers were already lifting toward the hill where the Second Army stood watching.

Ereb smiled and raised his hand. A gem rested in his palm. He closed his fist, and it shattered.

Its purpose showed itself at once. It had been a Gem Scroll charged with a voice-amplification spell. Ereb's shout rolled down the slope in a voice that would carry all the way into the village.

"All forces, charge!!"

A roar went up. At Ereb and Ramang's cry, the knights at the vanguard poured down the slope. The people in the village staggered and milled, unable to gather their wits.

"Rear knights, surround the village with the infantry and tighten the ring inward! Vanguard knights, ride straight in and wipe out anyone who resists!"

Messi, for the moment, was an Ahental knight. He put his horse lightly forward and took his place among the leading rank. The animal moved as if it already knew his mind.

The thunder of hooves rolled down from the hill and drove into the village. The number of knights punching through was staggering. In this world the true core of any army was always its knights, and House Ahental in particular had used its wealth to raise them in great numbers.

Barely half of them were Ahental knights, true — but the knights of the allied houses carried themselves with a force worthy of any noble blade.

"An a-ambush! Everyone, get out of the way!"

"It's Ahental's money-grubbers!! Kill them all!!"

The mercenaries chose flight without a second word. The knights chose to fight.

"It's their surprise attack!! Get your weapons and—"

The rest never came. The head of a man who looked to be a Crombell knight left his shoulders in a single clean cut. A brilliant cluster of light was coiled around Ramang's blade.

"Anyone who resists is an enemy knight! Kill them!"

People change, they say, and Ramang's shout was thick with killing intent. Horse speed and the swift-draw of Ahental swordsmanship met, and a terrifying slaughter unfolded.

On the main road, every man who had a weapon in his hand lost his head or was split clean apart. Even those lucky enough to dodge the first stroke found the blades of the knights coming in behind. Men who might have been Crombell soldiers or knights died with a kind of empty ease.

However fine Crombell's knights and regulars might be, there was no answering a blow that fell this suddenly.

There was one exception. If a single strong fighter could gather the rest and turn them around, a counterattack was still possible.

As if on cue, one of Crombell's knights began to run wild.

"You filthy bastards — you think we'll just take this?!"

He carved through several Ahental soldiers in a single stroke and came on with his blade gushing a thick shimmer of light.

"A B-Brillant!"

"I'll take him!"

"No, Sir Ramang. I'll go."

A knight bordering on Brillant had thrown himself into the fight. Ramang started forward, but Messi was already driving his horse out to meet him.

If Sir Ramang takes him, it'll be too late. I have to finish this one before they can rally around him.

"A mongrel like you thinks he can face me?!"

The knight sprang at Messi's oncoming horse and brought his sword down in a great overhead cut, meaning to split rider and mount in a single stroke.

Messi answered with everything he had, circulating the Crombell Mana Cultivation Method as he swung. Crombell's own fierce, tyrannical mana fused with the strength of Enzo Muerte.

A thunderclap of force. The one thrown backward was the Crombell knight. The instant his blade met Messi's, it exploded, and he died wearing a coat of his own sword's razor fragments.

Once again, a Brillant had fallen to a single blow.

In the last instant of his life the knight recognized a familiar current in Messi's sword, and the shock of it broke him. His eyes and mouth were stretched as wide as they would go. He looked like a man who had died of sheer terror, and the Crombell soldiers and knights who saw it went cold with fear.

Who was this other-race, that he could kill a knight who had reached Brillant in a single exchange — and make the man feel terror as he died?

The handful of soldiers the Brillant had cut down were restored in an instant.

"What in the world is that...! Is that man some kind of dark god?"

One of Crombell's knights muttered it as if his mind had slipped. Did he not look exactly like the lofty evil deity Ohgana, who weighed life and death in either hand?

Messi set about carving through Crombell's knights and soldiers without a pause. Every swing of his sword sent a head whispering away, or left a man with nothing above the waist, his upper body lifting free as if it had forgotten the ground. Sights no sword should have been able to make kept arriving, one after another. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Through all of it, Messi's face did not change by so much as a line.

When he had resolved himself to kill, he had chosen to suppress Lee Eunho, the Korean, and live only as Messi, a man of this world.

Cowled by that emotionless, single-minded slaughterer, the enemy began to give ground.

Giving ground was not the same as escaping. First they had to survive Ahental knights on horseback, weapons already in motion. Even if luck let them slip that cavalry charge, they still had to face soldiers and knights coming at them in packs. And if their luck was truly rotten, they caught one of Frox's spells and burned.

On top of all that, an encirclement of two thousand soldiers was drawing shut. There was no answer to a situation like this.

"Everyone, run! We can't win — run!!"

"Run!!"

Choosing retreat was the right decision. Making it so late was not. The ring had already closed. They had hidden their identities so carefully that no one with clear authority had been in a position to decide.

Perhaps they understood that flight beyond the village was no longer possible. One by one they ducked into houses and shops.

Ereb watched them do it, huffed a short laugh, and raised that amplified voice again so the whole village would hear.

"From this moment, every house and shop the Crombell dogs have gone into will be burned to the ground. If any of the villagers are hiding in there with them, come out now."

At that, commoners who had nothing to do with the fight came bursting from the houses the enemy had fled into. A few of the enemy tried to use the rush as cover and run. Not one of them escaped the knights' swords. The blood of the earlier fighting was still thick on their clothes.

The villagers who had come out to live pointed, for the sake of their own lives, at the houses where Crombell knights were still hiding.

"Set them on fire."

At Ereb's cold order, flames took hold one roof at a time. From the burning houses came screams and wailing; those who ran out met a knight's blade and died. Another Brillant burst from the fire and died on Messi's sword. Seven knights who looked to be Lavish were cut down without mercy by Ramang and the Ahental knights.

"Kill them faster! Secure the horses and personal rations — we move at once!"

Messi watched it all and felt neither nausea nor disgust.

Before he knew it, he had adapted to this place too.

Baron Passio listened to the scouts as they came running in one after another, and his face grew worse with every report. He could feel, with a sudden and unwelcome clarity, just how fast the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠enemy was moving.

"Flames have gone up from the direction of Padberry! The knights and soldiers stationed there are believed to have been wiped out!"

Another report followed hard on its heels.

"My lord, it's urgent! Nildir village is requesting reinforcements!"

And then another.

"Nildir is a wasteland, and the Crombell knights and soldiers in nearby Beona are evacuating in a panic!"

Ahental's army was thrashing through the territory like a fish in a shallow pond, striking wherever it pleased. Every village named was one of the larger settlements in Passio Baron Territory.

And because they were large, they had the inns and storehouses and streets that made them natural places for Crombell's disguised knights and soldiers to lodge. The news that those places were collapsing without resistance was almost too much to believe.

"How is this even possible? Surprise or not — you're telling me Crombell's knights were pushed back this helplessly?!"

"I don't understand it either, my lord. There should have been at least two Brillant knights in each of those villages..."

Asking the question did not mean the aide standing in the same room had an answer.

Then one of the scouts spoke, his face uneasy.

"Could it be... that Ahental's Knight Commander has come?"

"Surely not. That rumored new Sword Master?"

"...!"

At the single word Sword Master, the spirit in the study broke all at once. A picture too ugly to imagine had just painted itself behind every pair of eyes.

It was precisely the effect Messi had hoped for when he put Bacillus forward as a fake Sword Master.