Chapter 74: Dungeon (2)
Chapter 74: Dungeon (2)
"Those godforsaken bastards."
"How can anyone wearing a human face do such a thing?"
The monastics, who had marched in orderly silence without a word of idle chatter, lost their composure for the first time.
The village along the path to Lasta Monastery lay utterly devastated.
The village had been stripped bare and then set on fire. At this rate, even after the war ended, this whole area would be abandoned land.
"Pirates did this. Most of the wounds are short but deep—the work of the curved blades they favor."
The tribal scout who examined the bodies reported.
Land mercenaries might loot, but they generally refrained from murder. At least a shred of faith still lingered in their hearts.
Pirates feared superstition more, but mercenaries felt a deeper fear of judgment in the afterlife.
Even mercenaries who lived only for today would visit a temple once a year to offer prayers of repentance and a small donation.
"We will gather the bodies and then proceed."
"Are you certain? Reaching the monastery is urgent, is it not?"
At Eugene's question, Andrew bit his lip.
"Even so, we cannot simply pass by the tragedy before our eyes. It will only take a moment."
The monastics hurried around gathering the bodies in one place, and Eugene's men took the cue and helped.
There was no time for burial. They held a mass funeral by cremating the bodies together and reciting prayers for their repose.
Fortunately, the monastics soon found a chance to vent their anger when they spotted a group of pirates moving in the distance.
"Sir Eugene!"
Andrew looked at him with imploring eyes.
Only the Relief Knights were mounted; the battle priests were infantry. The pirates were far enough away that a pursuit on foot would let most of them escape.
"We shall subdue them."
"Thank you!"
Eugene took the lead at the head of the cavalry.
"They are easy prey. Save your strength for the real fight ahead."
Eugene had led forces of around a hundred during the Richwood campaign. But commanding a hundred cavalrymen was an entirely different matter.
A moment's distraction and the spacing would fall into utter chaos, and the roar of hoofbeats made relaying commands difficult.
Even speaking while riding required breaking words to the rhythm of the horse's gait. Trying to talk in long strings as though standing on solid ground was a good way to bite one's tongue.
That was one reason Eugene kept taking the field. Beyond spoils and connections, he needed real combat experience as a cavalry commander.
"Forget every other order if you must, but prick up your ears for the retreat! Any man who fails to withdraw in time, I'll personally beat him senseless!"
"Sir Knight! We're mercenaries. If there's one order we're damn good at following, it's 'Run!'"
"If we somehow miss it, use your whip. A punch from you would kill us."
The men joked, but their faces remained tense.
Their employer preferred an ordinary victory without losses to a glorious complete victory. In some ways that was a harder demand, but it gave the men who followed him more confidence.
"An ambush!"
"Damn it! They're all mounted, aren't they?"
The pirates were in poor shape. They looked exhausted, and many hung their heads because their morale was inexplicably low.
As a result, they were slow to recognize and react to the attack.
'Figures. They don't listen.'
Looking back, Eugene saw the heavily armored monastics running toward them. For all their anger at the pirates, they seemed ashamed to leave the entire cleanup to Eugene's force.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE.
The ground trembled beneath a hundred-strong cavalry charge. Hoofbeats thundered and dust billowed. The effect was overwhelming.
Pirates were less accustomed than land warriors to the pressure of a cavalry charge, and they froze.
"W-what do we do? Fight? Run? Surrender?"
"Damn it! If I'd known it'd come to this, I would've just joined the monastery attack."
While the pirates floundered, Eugene's army did not charge. Instead, it spread wide around them and cut off every escape route.
"We surrender! We surrender!"
Some threw themselves to the ground and begged, apparently judging the situation utterly hopeless.
"Shoot!"
A volley from the horse archers swept down. Men screamed and fell on every side, while those lying flat on the ground remained untouched.
"...!"
At the sight, more pirates threw down their weapons and surrendered.
Still, their numbers remained few. They knew that if caught pirating, even a painless death was a stroke of luck.
"You fools! What the hell are you doing? They're long-eared bastards! You think surrendering will save you—Ghk!"
The man bellowing at the top of his lungs collapsed, clutching an arrow that had pierced his throat.
"Captain!"
The man must have been their leader. With their last scrap of morale gone, the pirates scattered in every direction.
"Gah!"
"Aaargh!"
Just as they had done to the villagers, the pirates fell with cavalry blades biting into their backs.
With the situation as it was, the fight ended anticlimactically. Even the battle-priests had stopped running and were simply walking over.
Only a handful remained—those who had flung themselves flat to preserve their lives. The tribal horse archers glanced at Eugene, and he nodded.
THUD!
THUD! THUD!
Those lying on the ground took arrows through the neck and died before they could even groan.
The two men kept alive for interrogation wore better clothes and equipment and looked like seasoned veterans.
'The longer I spend with these fellows, the more I realize I couldn't possibly work with any other mercenary company. It'd drive me mad.'
The seasoned tribal warriors had selected them on their own without Eugene giving a single order.
"We'll tell you anything!"
"Please, just spare our lives!"
The two pirates, now fully grasping why they alone had been kept alive, spilled everything freely in answer to Eugene's questions.
They admitted that they had been raiding the villages and that a far greater number of pirates still remained nearby.
"The remaining pirates in the area have banded together and headed for Lasta Monastery."
"Those godforsaken wretches!"
"Do you truly not fear divine punishment?"
The monks raged at the wickedness of attempting to plunder a holy monastery.
"No! We do fear God!"
"That is precisely why we stayed out of the attack!"
The surrendered pirates protested as if they had been wronged.
Their words were the truth. They were men who had refused to take part in looting the monastery precisely out of fear of divine punishment.
"Can't you see we have nothing? Our companions called us cowards and drove us away empty-handed."
"So that is why you were all so thoroughly dejected."
"...Yes."
That was why they had been trudging along with their heads hanging in dejection.
They had ventured far inland, fought hard, and plundered, only to be branded cowards and sent back with nothing.
"Do you know nothing of those who went to the monastery and what followed?"
"We do not."
At their answer in unison, Eugene gave Haind, standing behind them, a look.
SLASH!
A man's head came off in a single stroke.
"We truly do not know! Mercy, I beg you!"
The pirate repeatedly banged his forehead against the ground as he begged.
"He appears to know nothing more."
Rex had conducted this sort of interrogation so many times that he could gauge the truth by expression and gesture alone.
"Then I'll show you mercy."
"Thank y—"
As the pirate raised his head, Haind's sword took it off.
The monastics watched impassively as the head rolled away with a smile still on its face. Even to those merciful men, pirates were little more than monsters that could speak.
"We must hurry, Sir Andrew. The enemy is moving faster than anticipated. The monastery may already be under attack at this very moment."
After hurrying onward, Eugene's army crossed the dense forest and Lasta Monastery came into view.
As befitted a place built to seal a dungeon, it looked more like a fortress than a monastery. It had no moat, but it did have stone walls and a gate.
Several hundred pirates surrounded it and were launching a fierce assault.
"We are fortunate to have arrived in time."
"Oh God. Grant me righteous fury and courage."
At Eugene's words, Andrew drew out a cross necklace from his bosom and pressed his lips to it.
The battle priests traced the sign of the cross, and the heavy infantry and tribal warriors also raised their weapons.
"The bastards still haven't noticed us."
"Magic really is amazing."
Before the battle, everyone gazed at Varda with awed eyes.
With a gesture of her slender hand, a path had opened through a forest that had looked impossible to cross.
"This many people moved and not a single footstep made a sound. It was as if the forest itself hid us."
That was why the hundreds of pirates fiercely assaulting the castle still had not detected Eugene's army.
"Varda-nim, you truly worked hard."
"Do not dismount."
Varda, drenched in sweat and lying in the underbrush, checked Eugene as he was about to dismount.
"Your victory will gladden me more than your courtesy, so focus on command."
Varda gave him a strained smile. She looked breathtakingly beautiful, and Eugene was deeply grateful.
"Homi. Take care of Varda-nim."
Homi nodded.
Eugene turned his back on Homi, who saluted with a resolute face.
"The pirates need no burial goods. The only thing they will take into the afterlife is the burden of their sins. Wipe them out to the last man!"
As Eugene drew his flail and took the vanguard, his subordinates' eyes gleamed with anticipation of plunder.
The pirate bands they had encountered before were beggars carrying nothing of value, suitable only for a warm-up.
But the pirates attacking the castle glittered all over under the sunlight. They seemed to have accumulated quite a haul.
"Push just a little harder! How much treasure do you think there is in a monastery guarded this tightly?!"
At the pirate chief's booming voice, the men attacking the monastery roared back.
"Harder!"
Thud!
A hastily built battering ram hammered the monastery gate again and again.
"Keep climbing!"
Ladders were hooked onto the walls and pirates clambered up.
"Aaargh!"
They were struck while climbing the ladders and fell one after another, yet surprisingly few died.
Since it was fundamentally a monastery, the walls were on the low side and skilled archers were lacking. There were no core defensive elements like boiling oil or murder holes.
"They just won't die, these bastards!"
"Overwhelm them with numbers!"
Even in an age that heavily favored defenders, sheer weight of numbers should prevail under these conditions. Yet it was taking far longer than expected.
"Fuck. If they're priests, they should act like it and memorize scripture. Why the hell is every one of them running around with a weapon?"
The pirate captain, unaware that there was a dungeon sealed within, was seething inside.
That was because he had heard stories of his comrades in other regions easily obtaining gold and silver treasures from monasteries.
He even felt cheated, as though he alone had been saddled with needless suffering.
"Just let us take the place. I'll strip every last one of them naked and whip them until they die..."
The pirate captain's delusions were cut short by the sound of trumpets and hoofbeats cutting across the battlefield.
"Gold awaits us!"
"For Varda-nim! Offer her victory!"
Heavy cavalry were charging straight into the pirates' backs as they rushed the castle.
"Wh-what! Where the hell did those bastards come from?"
"There wasn't any sign of them!"
The pirates, who could not have imagined the enemy had pierced through a pathless forest, fell into utter chaos.
WHIZZ!
THUNK!
Arrows loosed by the horse archers pierced the backs of those climbing the ladders in quick succession.
Pirates tumbled down in droves as though a feather duster wielded by God had swept over them.
"Reinforcements!"
"What did I tell you? I said to trust Duke Ismar!"
The monastics struggling atop the walls raised a great cheer and struck their weapons against their shields.
Caught by surprise by so many cavalrymen, the lightly armed pirates had no way to hold their ground. They began fleeing from the spears and swords.
"Idiots! Where the hell do you think you're running?!"
The problem was that their escape route had been cut off while the castle still stood directly in front of them.
Unable to break through the cavalry wielding their weapons so ruthlessly, everyone swarmed toward the castle walls.
Of course, reaching the wall would change nothing. But their survival instincts screamed at them to live even a few dozen seconds longer.
"Stay back! I said stay back!"
"There's no more roo—Ghk!"
As countless pirates jammed together, agonized groans burst out from all sides.
"Listen up! There's no need to trade blows with them. Spread out, squeeze them, and drive them slowly toward the wall!"
Eugene, having assessed the situation, shouted in a ringing voice.
His men were elite, but the pirates still outnumbered them several times over. Trying to kill them all in direct combat would inevitably pile up casualties on Eugene's side as well.
"Sir! The situation is absolutely perfect!"
Haind, realizing what Eugene intended, shouted in excitement.
-Everyone focus. This map is an exact rendering of the Battle of Bootsholtz. As a perfect case study of the successful hammer and anvil tactic...
The hammer-and-anvil tactic Haind had studied countless times at the Knight's House was taking perfect shape before his eyes.
The key was the anvil's solidity. During tactical lessons at the Knight's House, his classmates had often debated what made the best anvil.
-The Gord infantry, obviously! Those bastards aren't just an anvil—they're a sharpened anvil. Their axes will split everything apart.
-An anvil's first requirement is sturdiness. The iron-wall formation of dwarven warriors is the best choice.
But no army could be more unyielding than a castle wall, a literal mass of stone.
Haind felt his knightly blood boil until it seemed ready to explode. It was the greatest exhilaration he had felt since serving Eugene.
"Surround them! Not a single gap!"
At Eugene's command, the tribal horse archers spread wide and closed off both flanks.
The heavy cavalry, by contrast, were slow to react, drunk on the excitement of battle.
"Can you not hear my command?!"
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
As Eugene struck the stray helmets and shields rolling nearby with his flail, the thunderous noise snapped the heavy cavalrymen back to their senses.
"Fall back! I said fall back! Spread out and drive those pirate bastards toward the wall!"
"Y-yes, Sir Knight!"
"We'll obey!"
In the center, the battle priests and heavy infantry advanced with their shields foremost, forming a solid wall.
"Ah, no!"
"We have to break through somehow... Aaagh!"
A few pirates who quickly understood what was happening risked their lives trying to break out, only to be hacked into mangled corpses by spears and swords from every side.
"No need to get into a melee. Just keep pushing slowly."
Eugene's men shoved the pirates forward, giggling with excitement.
Around half of the cavalrymen also dismounted, joining in building the encirclement with their shields at the fore.
The pirates on the outer edge tried to fight back, but they had no chance.
Everywhere they looked were broad shields, with spearpoints jutting from the gaps and aimed straight at them. Arrows from behind were just an added bonus.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
The futile sound of weapons striking shields.
THUNK!
THUD!
"Ack!"
Then came the screams of men collapsing with spears in their bellies or arrows in their shoulders and necks.
At last, crushed between the castle wall and Eugene's army, the pirates began to suffocate.
"Bleeergh!"
"Cough! Cough!"
Choking, coughing, and retching sounded continuously from every direction.
As the encirclement tightened, the pounding of weapons against shields from the outermost pirates grew rapidly louder.
At the same time, the screams from the pirates trapped inside weakened. They were packed so tightly now that even shouting was difficult.
"Hhhk..."
Once they breathed out, they could not draw another breath. There was not even enough room for their chests to expand.