Chapter 35: First Subjugation (6)
Chapter 35: First Subjugation (6)
The subjugation force encountered the bandits' main force. The adjutants were taken aback to find themselves facing a full-scale battle so early.
"I never expected them to come to us looking for a fight first."
"They know we came to wipe them out. If they can't avoid the fight, they'd rather battle us all at once than let us defeat them piecemeal."
Their numbers were roughly similar, but the difference in the quality of troops was stark. If they fought, the subjugation force would win handily.
The one concern was that the invited knights were absent, and so was Eugene, their strongest asset. The decisive factor that could seal their victory was not with them.
From within the bandits' ranks, men draped in beast hides emerged one after another.
"Today is the day you die! Your blood and guts will fertilize this forest! We'll scrub your skulls clean and drink from them!"
A man a full head taller than everyone else stood in a bearskin, an axe in his hands. Dozens of other burly men appeared behind him and roared.
"Those are the bastards from the Gord Mountain Tribe!"
"Those sons of bitches got mixed up in this?"
"When you take work around these parts, it's a damn mess. All sorts of scum show up as enemies."
A tense murmur ran through the veteran mercenaries. Even among the large men of Gord, the mountain tribes were famous for producing natural-born strongmen.
They were a nightmare: they raided roads near the mountains, then fled into the peaks when a subjugation force came after them, forcing their pursuers into guerrilla warfare.
"It's not a number that will decide victory or defeat anyway! We are still at an advantage, so everyone keep your heads and engage the enemy! The knights will also return soon!"
The captain of the guard's words calmed the wavering army. Knights! Nothing gave mercenaries more courage on a battlefield than hearing that knights were coming to help.
"Advance!"
Both sides raised shields in dense formations, but neither line looked particularly solid. Many carried shields too small to cover their chests, and some had brought little more than planks.
"Aagh!"
Men kept dropping, clutching wounds from bolts and arrows.
"Those hit in the arm, hold on! Only those hit in the leg or gut fall back!"
"No, fuck! I can't hold my shield!"
"Shut it! If you fall back, I'll stab you in the belly myself!"
Unlike the subjugation force that immediately rotated out anyone injured no matter where they were hit, the bandits had no such luxury. If you could still stand, you were expected to act as a meat shield.
"Gaaah!"
A bandit who tried to fall back while clutching an arm pierced by a bolt was made an example of when an axe slammed into his chest.
"Just hold your ground! Then victory will be ours!"
A bandit raised his bloodied axe and bellowed, though what exactly he believed would save them was anyone's guess.
But the tide of battle was slowly tilting toward the subjugation force. Though shields were equally flimsy on both sides, the ratio of men falling was far higher among the bandits.
CRACK!
"Aaaagh!"
A bandit whose nose had been crushed by a stone toppled backward with a horrible scream. The Collapse Mercenary Company, positioned on high ground, was raining vicious stones down on them.
CRACK!
Some of the crude shields, little better than pot lids, shattered from a single hit. The force was terrifying.
"This is it! These fellows are truly reassuring when they're on our side!"
"If you don't want your brains scrambled, get the hell out of the way!"
The subjugation troops, their morale rising, roared with battle cries.
CRACK!
CRUNCH!
Unlike arrows or bolts, heavy stones sent vicious sprays of wooden splinters flying even when they struck a shield.
THUNK!
"Aagh!"
A stone deflected off a shield struck the cheek of the bandit standing next to him.
Not all mercenaries could afford sturdy helmets. Many of the poorer ones wore padded caps similar to winter hats. These men became prey for the slingers.
Wherever the bolts and sling stones concentrated, the bandits' advance was delayed, which meant their ranks were becoming uneven.
"Right flank unit! Attack!"
The captain of the guard did not miss the opening. His elite right wing began attacking the exposed enemy left from a partial encirclement.
Eugene looked over Galia's subordinates.
"I will take temporary command of you. Will you follow my orders?"
"Please lead us! Under your command, we will slaughter the bandits and avenge Sir Galia!"
"First, give the seriously wounded emergency treatment, then hide them somewhere out of sight. There is no time to carry them back to the main force right now."
"Understood."
They moved with the swift coordination expected of men accustomed to following a knight into battle.
They stopped the bleeding of badly wounded comrades, splinted broken limbs, and hid them in a secluded place. Then they carefully camouflaged the spot with leafy branches.
"We will come back for you. Keep quiet until then."
"Don't worry. Even if I wanted to make trouble, I don't have the strength. I'll lie here like a corpse. If the bandits find me, they probably won't even know the difference."
"See you later this evening."
They clasped hands, shared a brief joke, and parted ways.
"Sir Knight, we have joined you."
The twenty dark elf skirmishers joined them as well. They looked from the decapitated Galia to the bandit knight with the crushed skull, then to Eugene's flail, and nodded as if everything made sense.
"We're heading to where the other knights went. We don't know what's waiting for us, so keep our escape route in mind."
"Understood!"
Unlike Galia's squire, his servants were afraid to head toward the place where the unknown monstrous howl had come from.
But they could not refuse now that the squire had transferred command. Moreover, it felt as though, together with this knight, they could overcome any enemy they faced.
"Let's go!"
As Eugene spurred his horse forward, the troops under his command followed.
"Be careful. Inscribing tattoo magic on another person strongly enough to grant real power is extremely difficult. The mage responsible must be highly accomplished."
"I have no intention of throwing my life away like a moth flying into a flame. If things turn bad, I will be the first to shout, 'Fall back!' So do not worry."
Varda was relieved by Eugene's quick understanding. He was clearly different from other knights who, drunk on glory, charged in recklessly.
And so, the servants of Galia who had followed Eugene to the large encampment looked on, their faces utterly dazed.
"They're... all dead."
Every servant and slave who had laughed and eaten leftover food from the banquet was dead. There were even more corpses of bandits and mercenaries, but none of that registered with them.
"Uughk..."
Just then, a groan came from one spot.
"Robert!"
Galia's squire ran over and supported him.
Robert was the squire of Sir Kain, praised at the banquet for his colorful recounting of his lord's bloody duel with a hobgoblin.
"A monster... there was a monster. My lord... the other knights too... that thing got them..."
The grievously wounded squire forced the words out.
"Robert! Can you tell me what kind of monster it was?"
"Cough... b-black... watch out for the horns..."
The squire trembled as he spoke, then coughed up a bowlful of blood and died as his wounds gave out.
"Damn it!"
Galia's squire looked stricken. He felt as though forcing Robert to speak had killed him.
"He didn't die because of you. It was a fatal wound anyway, so don't blame yourself."
"Thank you, Sir."
The squire bowed his head at Eugene's consolation.
"We have found the bodies of the knights!"
A servant who had spread out to search waved them over. Two bodies lay there: one knight with his face crushed, another with his chest caved in.
"Sir Kain is over here!"
Another servant cried out.
A knight lay dead clutching his stomach. Something had punched straight through his mail and left several large holes through his upper body.
"What could have done this...?"
Galia's squire closed Kain's wide-open eyes.
"It is sacrificial magic."
Varda, who had been examining the encampment, pointed to one spot. In a place fashioned like an altar lay a heap of carcasses of cows, horses, and deer.
"What is that?"
"As the name suggests, it is magic that sacrifices living beings and receives something in return from the Otherworld. It looks like the work of whoever inscribed those tattoos on the heretic knight."
"Oh, God."
The servants made the sign of the cross and prayed. They had charged in thinking it merely a bandit's den, but far more wicked beings lurked here.
"A magical beast created through a sacrificial ritual forms a magic stone imbued with mystic power inside its body."
While everyone else stared in horror, Varda came close and whispered in Eugene's ear.
"Like a pearl, then."
"Similar, but incomparably more valuable. More importantly, even failed carcasses sometimes contain low-quality magic stones."
She flicked her eyes toward the animal carcasses before the altar so that only Eugene would notice.
"If you search through all of those, you may find quite a haul."
"I will speak to the captain of the guard later and claim them as my spoils."
After sharing the secret, Varda stepped away. The girl who had once offered unconditional sympathy was gone; she had become a cool-headed, pragmatic mage.
"With this many sacrifices, what do you think the mage managed to obtain?"
"The most common result is the creation of a magical beast, a wicked creature distinct from monsters that exist within the natural order."
"Then that must be the thing that killed the knights and made that horrible roar."
Varda nodded.
"A properly created magical beast is a monster capable of crushing an ordinary knight as easily as a conscript."
"We need to head back to the main force at once."
"I will create a shortcut with my magic."
"Please do."
With Varda and Eugene at the head, everyone swiftly departed the encampment.
The beast had killed three knights. If it crashed into a main force now composed only of mercenaries, the result could be catastrophic.
The captain of the guard smiled in satisfaction as he watched the bandits' formation slowly collapse.
"Good. At this rate, we will win."
The bandits, despite being pushed back, held their ground as if believing in something, but wars were not overcome by guts alone.
"The mage has arrived! The mage is here!"
"We've wonnnn!"
Just then, a cheer erupted from the enemy ranks, and the bandits' morale skyrocketed.
"A mage?"
"Bandit scum hired a mage?"
The mercenary captains were rattled by the completely unexpected development. At that moment, a huge shadow fell over the elite mercenaries fighting on the right flank.
CRUNCH!
A mercenary in the subjugation force saw the comrade fighting beside him suddenly driven into the ground.
The monster standing on the corpse, which was frothing blood, looked down at him. It had the head of a horned beast, and limbs as thick as a grown man's torso.
Hssss—!
A blast of hot breath struck his face, unbearably foul. It felt less like an animal's breath than steam from hell.
Grrrrr—!
Blood-red eyes glared down at him. Fifteen years of experience surviving as a mercenary vanished from his mind, and his legs went weak.
"Hic."
A massive hoof flew toward the face of the mercenary who had collapsed with a hiccup.
WHAM!
Another corpse went flying across the battlefield. Only then did the subjugation force understand that something had gone terribly wrong.
A monster with the head of a great stag, half again as tall as a man, had appeared. Jet-black fur covered it from head to toe, and its sprawling antlers were as long as short spears.
"Wh-what is that? What the hell is that thing?!"
"Wasn't this supposed to be a bandit subjugation?"
The mercenaries of the subjugation force were plunged into chaos.
"A m-monster..."
"Don't panic, you idiots! It won't attack us! It may be a monster, but it's our monster!"
The bandits were just as horrified, but they pushed down their fear desperately.
"You have come, then?"
The chief of the bandits bowed respectfully to the mage in the black robe.
"It took me some time to kill the knights. They kept clinging to me even as they died."
"As expected, you are incredible. There was more than one knight among them, too."
A heretic mage and a hellish monster. The bandits' secret weapon had joined the battlefield.
"Wendigo. These are blasphemers who obstruct our faith. Tear apart and trample the enemies before you. Adorn your antlers with their entrails."
At the mage's command, the Wendigo roared.
ROOOOAAAR—!
Goosebumps rose across the subjugation force. The howl pierced through experience, training, and even armor to tear directly into their mammalian instincts.
Neeeigh—!
One adjutant was even thrown from his horse as his mount bucked in terror.
Eugene and his followers, now nearing the main force, heard the Wendigo's roar as well.
"Sir Knight! That was what we heard!"
Even with the servant practically screaming, Eugene remained calm. The dark elves looked tense, but his instincts did not register the situation as a true crisis.
'I don't know what kind of monster it is, but I can take it.'
Just as one predator could gauge another's strength from the scent of its urine, Eugene could sense something from the monster's roar.
His inborn warrior instincts and the intuition forged through accumulated combat experience both whispered that there was no need to retreat.
