Chapter 151: A Monster Among Hungry Wolves (8)
Chapter 151: A Monster Among Hungry Wolves (8)
A battlefield after a large-scale pitched battle was a place more horrific than a cesspit. Every manner of foul stench swirled and mingled together.
The reek of blood.
The stink of human excrement.
The rancid sourness of fat spoiling in entrails and guts.
The fermented musk of horse sweat.
The unpleasant tang of iron.
Even the revolting smell of mud kneaded from earth and blood.
Yet at the same time, it was a land flowing with milk and honey. It was like a golden wheat field rising from dung, one might say.
"I'm refitting my gear properly today. I was so embarrassed carrying that hand axe around."
A young-faced mercenary holding a decent-looking sword grinned. Victorious soldiers were gathering spoils all around, as casually as digging up potatoes.
"Rookie. Leave that and grab what's over there first."
"Isn't it the same sword?"
"Idiot, that's an eastern curved blade. It sells for more than a peninsula-style arming sword."
"Ah! Thanks for the tip."
Elsewhere, others were harvesting prisoners the way one might gather fallen chicks from a nest.
Most of them were warriors under Eugene's command. For even the spoils gathered on a battlefield had their own hierarchy and order of priority.
The stronger the army, and the greater the achievements of its soldiers, the better the claim they held to the choicest plunder.
"What are you?"
A right-wing mercenary who had been discreetly leading away an expensively dressed prisoner was caught red-handed by a tribal warrior.
"I'm a decurion of the White Snake Mercenary Company..."
"That's not what I asked, is it! Where do you get off trying to stick your spoon in?"
Slap!
The mounted tribal warrior's thorned whip lashed against a corpse beside the mercenary.
The scalp at the back of the head peeled away, dried blood spattering as the skull lay exposed. At that grisly sight, the mercenary released the prisoner and fled in a fluster.
"You'd better get moving, shouldn't you?"
The tribal warrior aimed his bloodied whip and grinned, and the prisoner scrambled toward Eugene's formation. There, dark elves were marching prisoners away in long lines.
"Kneel and put both hands on your heads."
"I said grab the top of your head with your hands, not just raise them!"
"Line up in groups of ten. Now, front row, sit in order. One... two... three...."
Prisoner control that was well ahead of the era was unfolding before his eyes.
Dark elves holding binding ropes bound a few uncooperative ones as examples.
It was a new restraint method Eugene had taught them: both hands were tied behind the back and then connected to the neck.
"Gaaagh!"
The slightest rough movement sent a choking sensation through the prisoner, who screamed.
"Did you learn all this from Lord Goffrey?"
"From a different instructor—no, a different person."
Rex stroked his chin as if fascinated by the advanced foreign techniques.
"Oh my! Noble lords. You need not put your hands on your heads. There is no need for you to do as those lowborn wretches."
"There, there, come this way. Mind your step so you don't twist an ankle."
Knights and nobles whose families would pay a ransom were courteously guided by human heavy infantrymen.
"My legs ache. Could I borrow a horse..."
"Ah-ah! Do not cross the line, if you please."
Eugene looked over the noble-looking prisoners with a satisfied expression. They seemed like bars of gold gathered in human form.
"Now this is business."
Having done nothing but thrash mercenaries, bandits, river pirates, and sea raiders until now, the sight felt all the more endearing to him.
"Our treatment is finished. We had few wounded to begin with. We've plenty of medicine left—shall we send medical support? The center is one thing, but the right wing was utterly torn to shreds."
Rex spoke while applying a cold compress to his index finger, swollen from shooting so many arrows.
The Holy War Knight Order, which had held the center, suffered little damage. They had been pushed back badly while supporting the struggling right wing, but they were fundamentally tough men.
Moreover, in this era, monasteries were the finest medical institutions. The holy knights and armed priests of the center army had rotated to the rear and received emergency treatment each time they were wounded.
The right wing, by contrast, was poor in every respect. It was where the fiercest close-quarters fighting had occurred, and the wounded mercenaries had been left unattended like disposable goods.
"Just send the medicine. With monks roaming all over, it's a bit awkward to send witches."
"Understood."
Eugene had introduced many unique systems to his forces.
One such group was the medics, noncombatants who focused solely on treatment. Most of them were witch trainees.
As experts in herbs and medicines, they were conscripted as medics during wartime. It would do them no good to be near the Order anyway.
With heads heated by the slaughter and fervor of the battlefield, there was no telling what trouble might arise.
"..."
Eugene shifted his gaze at the pain he felt in his arm.
A dark elf girl in her late teens was applying salve to the abrasion on his wrist. She was a would-be witch on her first campaign and one of Varda's assistants.
Her pretty face was rigid as stone with tension, and her delicate hand trembled as if she were shaking hands with Death itself.
"Relax. It's all right if it stings a little."
"Y-y-yes, sir! I mean, no—I will absolutely make it hurt... no, no! I will make it not hurt..."
"Shh."
Eugene let out a soft chuckle and brought his index finger to the girl's lips.
"Calm yourself."
The girl's face flushed deep red with flustered gratitude.
"The Apostolic Council must have felt a chill down their spines as well."
"They likely never imagined the count would go this far off the rails. Even if he wins, the backlash from his vassals will be immense at this rate."
Count Sicily had truly scraped together troops in the most haphazard way. A bandit knight wanted for heinous crimes was one thing, but to drag in the foreign power of the Eastern Empire as well.
"Might his refusal to duel before the battle have been arranged precisely for this?"
"Perhaps. Though the Immortals' lack of horsemanship may have been another factor. In mounted combat, the expeditionary force held the advantage."
Until the moment the two sides had crashed together, the prevailing public assessment had been that the expeditionary force held the edge.
Given that, it was possible Count Sicily had deliberately feigned weakness to maximize the effect of complacency and surprise.
The way he had hidden the Immortals, arguably his elite, on the left wing and committed them as a surprise attack spoke to exactly that.
He was a man who had always pursued practicality over honor, and with his house on the verge of being obliterated by excommunication, he would have been all the more desperate.
"Punish me for moving the troops on my own authority."
"No. Sir Haind. It was an excellent judgment."
After being entrusted with command, Haind had focused on holding his position. Yet all the while, he had kept his nerves sharpened on the battle at the center.
-The Castle Lord is giving them a proper thrashing.
-Look at those bastards, will you? I think the count is trying to bolt right now.
At the relayed commentary from the warrior women atop the battle tower, Haind had bitten his lip.
He had clenched and unclenched his sweat-soaked fists over and over, until at last he had reached a decision.
-If left alone, Count Sicily will escape to his main castle. We must restrict his retreat route in advance.
Haind had felt the immense weight of the decurions' gazes converging on him. Suppressing the pounding of his heart, he had continued speaking.
-Hammer Brotherhood, advance! Divide the horse archers into two. Team 1 will wheel wide to the left and block the southwest retreat route! Team 2 will follow from the rear, but keep watch on the center so you can respond immediately if the Castle Lord asks for support!
-...
-...
The Black Hand decurions had hesitated. Did he truly have the authority to issue orders of this scale?
To hold position and function as a shield was the left-wing unit's highest duty. Even as the senior knight, Haind was merely someone temporarily delegated command.
-A fine idea!
-If we charge now and cut off their retreat, we can land the big fish!
The dwarf warriors under Rampage had responded with fervent enthusiasm. At this rate, they were going to end this battle having achieved nothing while still draining the payroll.
-Look, it isn't even the Castle Lord's order...
-If things go wrong we can just bolt, can't we!
-...Fine.
The Black Hand decurions had reluctantly assented. The principle Eugene had always spoken of was that 'the chain of command must be unified.'
Whether they charged in or held their ground, the army had to move as a single mass together.
In the end, Haind's judgment had been exceedingly apt.
"So it was no mere coincidence that Count Sicily fled toward the Wandering Castle."
The southwest route, the finest of the count's escape paths, had become dangerous once Haind pushed out.
-My lord count, retreat to Adano City is out of the question!
-Our allies are still holding out, but at this rate we risk being encircled by the enemy left wing.
-Damnation... change direction!
And so, of the two remaining fallback routes, the count had, as ill luck would have it, chosen the path leading toward the Wandering Castle.
'I'll need to refine the rules of engagement for delegated command in my absence with a bit more precision.'
The left-wing fight had been so overwhelmingly dominant, and there had been many capable officers including Haind, so he had entrusted it to them with confidence.
Still, things could not always go as smoothly as they had today. Eugene mentally catalogued the areas that needed improvement from this battle.
* * *
"After all that preparation... it was a gods-damned perfect plan. That monster. Unbelievable..."
Count Sicily, in flight, muttered incoherently over and over. He wore the look of a man who heard neither his vassals' attempts to console him nor his guard captain's advice on what to do next.
"I spent twenty years as a free knight on the Peninsula, but I have never seen such combat."
An old knight spoke, glancing back again and again at the battlefield from which they had fled.
In this era's warfare, mass casualties occurred when a routing army was attacked from behind.
When the two sides stood facing one another, even a considerable disparity in strength meant they died slowly and broke slowly. That was why nobles could flee when they judged the day lost.
But this pitched battle had been a slaughterhouse that shattered all such common knowledge.
"M-my sons, all of them, remain back there!"
A baron who had joined the campaign with his three grown sons, all of them knights, clutched his reins, his voice thick with tears.
-My lord baron—no, Father! Leave the rearguard to us and depart. You must safeguard the future of our house.
From the eldest to the youngest who had just completed his coming-of-age ceremony, they had all taken up swords. He could not forget the sight of them remaining behind to buy their worthless father time to escape.
"A father, fleeing without so much as a backward glance, driven by fear..."
"My good man, I tell you it is too late! Compose yourself!"
The nobles around him struggled to dissuade the baron, who was trying to wheel his horse around and return to the battlefield.
"And what in the world was that enormous warhorse? Where in all creation is there a warhorse that smashes into a knight's mount and sends it flying?"
Eugene's first appearance had been nothing short of staggering: a gigantic monster that made sturdy Sicilian warhorses look like foals.
"You were famed far and wide as Bonyard's Monster Slayer, but rumor clearly got it wrong. Not a slayer of monsters—a tamer of them. That is unmistakably a demon beast summoned from hell!"
The nobles who had been spouting meaningless drivel in their dismay. Amidst them, someone spoke solemnly.
"Is it truly divine punishment?"
It was a thought every soul here had entertained at least once.
"Keep your voice down. If word reaches the Count's ears..."
"Ha! Look at that sorry state. Do you think anything spoken here would even reach his ears?"
In battle, the division of victors and vanquished was a matter of course. Even when losing, a liege's virtue was to show a stalwart example as a leader and instill courage in his followers.
Grumbled murmurs rippled all around.
The Count's current display was a profound disappointment to his vassals.
"Did you not all see that knight fight? Sir Ashram and that Mikel fellow were both formidable knights, yet they went to the netherworld without landing a single proper blow."
"I've never beheld such fierce and rugged cavalry. It looked as though vipers were riding atop those horses."
"With a monster like that rampaging at the head of their line, naturally they'd have nothing to fear."
In warfare of cold steel, momentum and morale counted above all. At times, the fervor kindled by a single hero could overturn the whole complexion of a battlefield.
"Rumors are circulating that the Apostolic Council has received a Champion from the gods."
When events beyond fathoming occurred, the people of this age commonly linked them to the divine. The battle Eugene had shown upon the field today was just such an event.
'Perhaps the Count truly was a heretic worshipper after all.'
While the Count remained out of his senses, suspicion and disappointment sprouted like poison mushrooms within his vassals' hearts.
The thought, namely, that their own liege might well have been struck by a mace from heaven.
What drove the final wedge into the nobles' unsettled mood was a colossal mass of stone and the shadow it cast.
"..."
"What in the world is that?"
"I'm seeing it for the first time, too. There ought to be nothing here but an open plain."
The nobles were all well-versed in the island's geography. Ceremonial visits to others' domains for weddings and funerals naturally broadened one's familiarity with the land.
Where originally nothing should have stood, an enormous castle had taken its place. To call it a dream would be to deny the unbearable weight of presence and majesty the fortress exuded.
"The Wandering Castle. So the legend was true after all."
The old knight murmured with a vacant expression.
He had visited Bonyard once in his youth. The striking fountain he had seen back then had now manifested as reality, descended before his very eyes.
Rrrrrumble.
The gate—which no siege engine in existence could have so much as dented—slowly swung open.
Forth from within sallied mounted cavalry and dwarven heavy infantry.
One noble with particularly sharp eyes saw the lead horseman lick his lips as though he had stumbled upon a windfall.
Warriors advanced in years, all of them, yet not a single one looked the least bit frail.
Though their muscle had thinned, untold decades of combat experience lay condensed like the venom of a serpent that had wintered long.
* * *
A short while before the Count's arrival, inside the Wandering Castle.
"Enemy stragglers spotted! They're heading straight this way!"
"We've cut down their scouts. They'll be approaching with no notion that our castle stands ahead."
An urgent report had flown in from the light cavalry who had been conducting a wide-ranging reconnaissance around the fortress. The garrison commander clenched his fist as though the moment had finally arrived.
"Any clue what sort they are?"
"Apologies. We tried to take the scouts alive, but it looked like they would get away, so we simply shot them dead."
"That will do. You carried out your charge admirably."
The garrison commander clapped the scout on the shoulder for carrying out his task so well.
"Issue the general call to arms!"
The mobilization order that the populace had been drilled in under Eugene's rule was declared in earnest for the very first time.
"Mama."
"Everyone, get into the rooms! Rachel! Look after your younger siblings!"
Women who had retired from the warrior's life and built homes as wives and mothers.
Every last one of them reached for the bow that had hung on the living room wall. Keepsakes, or perhaps trousseaus, brought with them when they retired from the warrior's path.
"I'll fight t—"
"Stop your nonsense, you little brat!"
"Ow."
A girl in her mid-teens received a sharp, affectionate hand-chop to the forehead.
The women gathering from every quarter differed in attire according to their fields of work. Yet without exception they were robust, handsome women, and alike in that each held a bow in her hand.
The superb condition of every bow plainly showed that they had been maintained with steady care even after retirement.
"Mother!"
"Don't even think about stopping me. I can still draw and loose fifty shafts without pause. Sidelined though I may be, I'm every bit as capable as those in active service."
A mother-in-law stood shoulder to shoulder with her daughter-in-law, a mother of five. By the nature of their race, the older woman showed no signs of aging and instead overflowed with ripe, mature beauty.
A few lines had formed beside her mouth, but elsewhere her skin remained firm and her posture ramrod-straight. Though somewhat faded, her abdominal muscles still held true.
"You'll throw your back out that way. At your age, injured backs don't heal so readily."
"I mount him more often than the old man mounts me, girl!"
The married women's banter held nothing back.
"There you have it—the secret to keeping a six-pack well into these years."
Her salacious gyrating hips sent cackling laughter erupting on all sides.
The faces of the women buckling quivers and short swords to their waists carried not a trace of fear. What shimmered there instead was the thrill of combat they had long gone without.
The dwarves who had been occupied with various labors across the castle likewise sprinted for the armory.
"Welcome, veterans."
The garrison troops already standing by began issuing weapons and armor.
"About time we hammered some heads instead of iron, eh?"
"You're short one leg—what are you even doing here? Stay out of it."
"Shut your mouth. For shooting a crossbow, a prosthetic leg serves perfectly well."
Dwarves by birth were stout of body and accustomed to heavy labor. Even withdrawn from the front lines, they maintained bodies nearer to active-service readiness than any other reservists.
The dark elf men made their way to the castle stables. That was the rallying point for those organized into the reserve cavalry.
Anticipating a general call to arms from the moment they were transported to Sicily, they had already moved their equipment there.
The grooms blew their whistles the instant the mobilization was proclaimed.
Neigh!
Prrr!
The warhorses that had been resting here and there sprang up smartly and fell into line, just as they had been drilled.
"This way!"
The reservists entering the stables were guided by active-duty soldiers who had been standing by. The armor and saddles handed to them already had bows and arrows pre-set.
"Everyone remembers the rules of engagement, yes?"
"Close combat unauthorized! Supporting fire for the garrison!"
When the one-eyed man shouted, they all answered in chorus while cinching saddles onto their mounts.
The reserve mounted company stood ready, composed of dark elf males ranging in appearance from their thirties to their sixties.
Seniors and juniors who had served in different eras, on different battlefields, and borne different experiences—yet in this moment, they took up arms as equal comrades.
"Matiz. You've grown so much since I last saw you."
The retired old soldier stroked the fully grown horse. She was the youngest daughter born to the warhorse he had ridden when he was still on active duty.
"I'll be in your care."
Prrrruup.
Matiz rubbed her cheek against him in return. She remembered the touch of the master who had stroked her when she was young, alongside her dam.
Compared to the other reservists joking and buzzing with noise, the horse archers' faces were largely somber.
The mounts had changed, even if the rest of the gear they carried into retirement remained the same. Time's passage felt cruel.
For the comrades who had borne them across battlefields and shared their every hardship and joy had long since passed on.
The Wandering Castle, which had been defended by a garrison of only some one hundred fifty, reorganized into a large-scale army fit to serve as a wing of the expeditionary force in barely twenty minutes.
"Let's go! We have a gift for the Castle Lord to wrap!"
"Uooooooh!"
At the garrison commander's cry, every voice roared and every hand beat weapon against shield, and the gate swung open.
Only, not a single soul among them could have imagined.
That the gift already voluntarily making direct delivery from the hills was the most precious treasure of this entire war. Its worth exceeded the combined total of all the spoils their master had won in his great victory.
* * *
"Welcome back, Castle Lord. Congratulations on your magnificent achievement!"
"You caught them for real?"
As Eugene rode back to the Wandering Castle, the sight of nobles trussed up in a row like dried yellow croakers strung on a line drew a dry laugh from him.
The garrison and the fierce-eyed old veterans were welcoming their lord home.
"A few nobles did manage to slip away, but we have taken Count Sicily alive."
"Outstanding. Truly, well done."
Eugene praised the garrison commander. He had not expected the first general call to arms to be carried out with such flawless precision.
"See that the scouts are also rewarded. Had they not severed the enemy skirmish line, we could not have caught them with such ease."
"Of course, my lord. Need it even be said?"
When Eugene cast a sidelong glance around, he saw that Sicily's nobles were split in two.
Those who lamented with heads hung deep, and those who were cautiously studying Eugene's expression.
The stance of the latter group—that they were already beginning to weigh the prospect of standing under a different banner—was plainly evident.
Most were nobles of knightly origin, and even as they contemplated switching lieges, they hardly displayed any cringing or self-serving caution.
Clench.
What shone on their faces as they tightened their fists was a longing for certitude. Revelation, or perhaps a notion like the wind of destiny.
'He is mighty. A warrior of true might.'
The great lord who looked down upon them from atop his monstrous steed.
'Has there ever been any who so harmoniously united and led such stubborn dwarves and such prideful dark elves?'
They had watched him rampage across the field with their own eyes, and his ferocity still burned vivid in their memory. He stood in stark, damning contrast to the greedy and craven Count Sicily.
Flap-flap.
His black Wendigo cloak billowed, a fearsome great flail hefted in his hand.
Gazing upon that sight, they felt their blood rouse as warriors before they felt themselves nobles. They were drawn by pure instinct toward genuine strength.
A sudden, ravenous hunger stirred.
The desire to stand behind that knight, to run across the battlefield as a single wolf pack—it crept, tingling, up from within them.
End
ⓒ Gusojae#1wecx