A Knight's Son With No Master
Kim Yohan died in a freak accident — and was reborn with all his memories intact into the Eitz family, a knightly house of the Holy Empire.
Seventeen years had passed since then.
And in those seventeen years, Yohan had been forced to admit one thing: life here was not nearly as easy as he'd imagined.
Among the Empire's countless noble houses, the Eitz family was so small it couldn't even make it onto the pedigree charts.
Perhaps it was a blessing that, unlike other landless knights, they at least owned a single small village as their fief.
But even that village was unlikely to come back to Yohan. Gesen Eitz simply had too many children.
Three sons by the wife four marriages back — the eldest, the second, and the third. Two more sons by the wife three marriages back, the fourth and fifth...
The woman who had given birth to Yohan in this world was the wife two marriages back. She had died bringing him into the world; he had never even seen her face.
'At least I'm not the son of a concubine... though that's about the only consolation I get.'
Things were hard enough as they were. Had he been born a bastard on top of it all, it would have been even worse.
The sons of the elder wives, being older, naturally despised Yohan and the children of the other wives.
And the current Lady Eitz despised Yohan and the other wives' children just the same.
Marked by both factions of the fief — everyone except Lord Gesen himself — there was no way his life could be anything but miserable. Not that it would have mattered much if Gesen had been a proper mediator between them, because Gesen couldn't have cared less about the affairs of his own estate.
He spent most of the year away from the fief. Doing what, no one quite knew, but he was always infuriatingly busy. When he did occasionally return, he did nothing but drink himself blind. In truth, Yohan had seen his own father only a handful of times in his life.
So the management of the fief fell to Gesen's retainers, his wife, and his grown sons...
And the ones being crushed between them were the sons caught in the middle.
At least the others had full brothers who shared a mother. Yohan was truly alone. If he hadn't been blessed with such a large frame, he'd have been bullied his entire childhood.
"Well, well. Young Master Johan. A fine day to you."
"Mm."
Yohan returned the serf's greeting.
The Eitz family might have held a fief, but a small, poor house like theirs was never going to own an expensive castle. A manor of middling size attached to the village was the whole of it. Even that much made the lord's residence look like a palace next to the villagers' hovels, of course.
Which meant the sons of House Eitz had no choice but to rub shoulders with the villagers. And the sons who kept to themselves, like Yohan, all the more so.
Most of his brothers lorded their noble blood over the peasants and threw their weight around. Yohan did not. It didn't suit his temperament, and there was nothing to gain from earning grudges for no reason — even if the other party was a serf.
As a result, the villagers liked him. Young in years, but with a knight's build and a knight's manner. In the village, people had even begun to say that Johan ought to be the one to succeed Lord Gesen.
Of course, such talk meant nothing. Serfs bound to the land, whose lives were spent bending over furrows, had no influence whatsoever. Even if Gesen dropped dead tomorrow, the succession would be decided by his retainers, his wife, and his older sons.
"Oh. It's just Johan."
"Don't look at him, idiot."
Past the wheat fields on the edge of the village, a little further on, the woods began — thick and dark enough that even at midday little light pierced the canopy. The village elders called it the Devil's Forest.
Unlike Earth, the Holy Empire was overrun with land like this — wilderness never touched by the plow. It was a world where a traveler on the open road had to fear a beast bursting out of the trees at any moment.
Few in the village were permitted to enter that forest. Most serfs were forbidden from setting foot in it except on special occasions. The trees and the game within belonged to the lord.
Only the lord's sons and licensed hunters could go in.
The ones telling Yohan not to look their way just now were, naturally, his half brothers. Yohan shook his head.
Petty taunting of that kind had become almost pathetic. In the beginning he'd refused to take it and had thrown it right back; now he couldn't even be bothered, and simply ignored it.
'Don't they ever get tired of it?'
They knew better than to lay hands on him, so they confined themselves to mouthing off — and never came closer than they had to. They knew perfectly well that crossing Yohan gained them nothing.
Creak.
Yohan ignored them and came to a stop before a great, dense oak. It was time to repeat what he did every day.
'I wonder if training alone like this is really enough.'
A frame well over 180 centimeters tall. Raw strength such that, when fights broke out among the brothers, he'd once crushed four of them at once.
He'd sensed it from the day he was born — Yohan had been blessed with a remarkable body.
And yet...
'It feels like I'm getting even stronger.'
Yohan clenched his fist. The grip strength he felt was greater than it had ever been.
There was something called Bergmann's rule — the principle that animals living in colder climates grow larger.
Could this world's environment be doing the same to him, building his strength beyond its natural limits? His frame hadn't changed at all, so why did he feel more powerful than before? He couldn't explain it.
Thud. Thud.
Yohan set the question aside and began his workout. Training he'd carried over from Earth. No matter how gifted a body you were given, you couldn't grow strong without conditioning.
And in this, at least, Yohan was confident.
No one in the Empire knew modern, scientific training methods the way he did.
There was no equipment and the diet was hard to manage, but Yohan pushed himself as far as his circumstances allowed. The result was the body he carried now.
The problem was that this wasn't the modern world. It was a medieval one, in another world entirely.
Not a world where you could rise by being brilliant at naked-hand mixed martial arts — a world where you rose by wearing armor and swinging a sword.
And that was the one thing Yohan had never been taught. He wasn't alone in this, either. Most of his half brothers were in the same boat.
That was how little Gesen Eitz cared for his children.
The constant wandering beyond the fief was one thing — plenty of knights lived that way.
But even those knights usually sent their own sons to train as squires under another knight. Exchanging children between knightly houses to raise them into proper warriors was common practice.
A knight was not made overnight. He was forged by learning, from childhood on, everything knighthood demanded — the sword, etiquette, tactics, strategy — steadily, year after year.
Of Gesen's sons, only the two eldest had ever received any real knightly training, and the youngest — Lady Eitz's own son — was currently studying under a private tutor.
And the rest of them?
They just lived comfortably, and that was that.
'Must be nice. Living so blissfully unaware.'
Yohan shook his head as he watched his half brothers stroll into the forest, swords on their hips, off on a hunt.
How wonderful it would have been to live that carefree himself.
But he couldn't. Unlike them, blind to their own circumstances, Yohan saw his position with perfect clarity.
'If I don't get my head straight, I could genuinely starve to death...'
Think it through.
What happens when Gesen dies?
As Yohan saw it, the old man wouldn't last ten more years. Fat as a barrel, getting old, and still hopeless with wine and women...
When Gesen died, either the eldest son or the youngest would inherit the knighthood. Which of the two, Yohan couldn't say. Whoever fought harder and won, presumably.
The problem was the leftover sons — the ones like Yohan.
If the brothers had been close, someone might have set aside a corner of the fief for them. But as far as Yohan could see, there wouldn't be so much as a scrap left over. Whoever won, the losers' brothers would all be driven out.
'If they at least gave us some silver before tossing us out, that would be something.'
Frankly, he doubted even that.
He used to wonder, back on Earth, why second and third sons of the lesser nobility in history were always running off to join armies. Now, living it firsthand, he understood completely.
There was simply nothing else for them to do.
As sons of a formal knightly house they technically held noble status — so they wouldn't stoop to trade or farming, yet they still needed to eat, and so they needed money...
If they'd trained as squires under a knight, they might have made a living at arms, angling for a place in some landed noble's service. But untrained as they were, even that road was closed.
'Should I swallow my pride and formally ask to be sent to serve under another knight? I'm still his son, after all... Damn it. He never comes to the fief, so there's no way to even make the attempt.'
Yohan cursed Gesen. Because the man never came home, no door would ever open.
In the end, only one thing was left to Yohan.
Training.
He had no idea how much good unarmed fighting would actually do him, but until his anxiety subsided, it was all he could do. While everyone else trained in armor with a sword, he couldn't begin to guess how useful it would be...
And as he trained, his half brothers passed by and laughed.
To their eyes, Yohan must have looked like a madman doing something grotesque with his bare body.
"What is it, witchcraft? Did a witch put a spell on him? Hahahaha!"
"Shh. Say that where the new chaplain can hear you and we'll all be in trouble."
"Good day to you, Young Master Johan."
The hunter Joseph bowed his head respectfully. Yohan's manner was as courteous as a knight out of a bard's song, and that was precisely why Joseph had to be all the more careful around him.
"Joseph. Everything ready?"
"Yes, my lord."
Yohan studied him. It had felt strange at first to treat a middle-aged man so imperiously, but he'd grown used to it.
Any unnecessary kindness only made the other man uncomfortable — and if word of it reached the wrong ears, it could stir up real trouble for them both.
'In this place, there's no doing anything without watching your back.'
At the hunter's belt hung a crude dagger and several pouches — the peculiar remedies passed down among hunters. Painkillers, and salves used to lure beasts, among other things.
Then a bow and a quiver of arrows. That was the whole of a hunter's armament. No chain mail, no gauntlets, no metal boots — not even so much as the padded cloth armor called a gambeson. If a hunter had owned gear like that, he'd have sold it for coin on the spot.
Yohan had wondered what would happen if the man ever ran into a man-eating beast. The hunter's answer had been simple:
Then I make sure I don't go where they live.
— Cha Subin
Alright, let's get this started. It's going to be fun — I promise. Start!