Flight by Night
It happened so fast the mercenary never even reacted. No—as a matter of fact, even if he'd seen it coming, he couldn't have. Johan's fist was simply that quick, and that heavy.
There came the sound of a skull caving in. The man toppled sideways out of the saddle with blood foaming at his mouth, limbs jerking once before going limp. No need to check for a pulse. He was dead on the spot.
"J-Johan, my lord!"
"Save your thanks."
Johan got Joseph up onto the riderless horse beside his own. Injured or not, one mount apiece still beat doubling up on a single saddle by a wide margin.
The one real regret here: never getting the chance to grab that guy's pack.
Johan found himself strange for it—harboring idle little laments like that in a moment this desperate and dangerous. Had his sense of danger simply broken?
No... that wasn't it.
He simply didn't register any of this as danger.
Confidence!
The certainty that even if every wolf in that clearing came at him at once, he would walk away alive—that was what kept him so calm.
Behind the two riders came the wet sound of something being torn apart by teeth.
"The wolves will eat well tonight."
"...Th-thank you."
Joseph's voice was still tangled in confusion. He had never imagined Johan would go this far for him.
"Consider the debt repaid."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You're the one who kept me from turning out like those idiots over there."
Johan added, jerking a thumb back at the mercenaries. Joseph had to fight down the laugh tickling his throat. Only a madman would crack a smile at a time like this.
Four dead, two wounded.
The moment the report landed—half the men he had brought along, dead or hurt—Sir Karamap's face turned cold as a headstone. The mercenaries didn't dare raise their eyes.
"Went after a wolf and came back dead and maimed?"
"Yes, my lord..."
"I paid silver for mercenaries. Not for cripples."
"We have nothing to say for ourselves. Forgive us, Sir Karamap."
They stood caked in blood, wounds great and small left untended—they hadn't even thought to wash before reporting. Such was their terror of the man.
"I won't claw that paltry silver back. But carve this into your skulls: if things go wrong, your necks alone will not come close to settling the account."
"Yes, my lord! We are grateful for your mercy!"
They roared it in perfect unison. Privately, they thought it was a crock of shit—but men who had mouthed off in front of Karamap and lost their heads over it were far from rare, and not figuratively. To survive long in the trade, you had to know how to read the man holding your leash.
"Go and rest."
Knock, knock, knock—
"What is it?"
"Th-the master of the house has sent me to see to the knights' arms and armor, my lords..."
The servant mumbled it, shrunk into himself. The mercenaries perked up at that. After a fight, armor and weapons wanted care: mail had to be rolled in a wooden barrel with sand and vinegar so the rust wouldn't take hold, and a longsword had to be wiped clean of blood and gristle, then oiled.
Naturally it was a thankless chore, and having someone else do it suited them fine. Proper knights simply handed the work to a squire or a servant. But they were mercenaries.
"Then take it and—"
"You idiot. How would you know he can even do the job? Forget it. We'll handle it ourselves."
The leader of their ten-man file cut the others off. Trust the handiwork of some servant in a backwater like this? This was expensive equipment. If it got ruined and they had to go to work barehanded, Sir Karamap would be simply delighted.
"Return to quarters and stand by. Do not go wandering outside the manor—stay within it. Set foot out unbidden one more time, and I will have your ankles severed."
"Yes, my lord! Our deepest thanks for your mercy!"
Roaring their gratitude at Sir Karamap one final time, the mercenaries were at last allowed out.
"Fuck... what kind of humiliation is this."
"Those wolf bastards were like something rabid."
"Go slap some salve on and wrap your bandages, you idiots."
"Count the men still on standby and this pissant fief has nothing anyway. Don't know why he's shitting himself like that. Honestly, couldn't Karamap kill the whole lot by himself? In that armor, he'd cut down a hundred of these hicks."
"A hundred, my ass. They'd all just run."
The mercenaries shuffled off, snickering. This little fief had no real fighting force to speak of: the nobleborn of House Eitz, barely trained at all, and the servants who waited on them—that was the whole of it.
Gulp.
Only once the mercenaries were gone did the servant begin to edge out, step by careful step. He had slipped from the room at the first opportunity, then hidden in a dim corner of the corridor rather than show himself.
"Well done."
Johan praised him. Trembling like a leaf, the man grinned all the same. Even by his own reckoning, apparently, he had managed something praiseworthy.
After the mercenaries who had gone wolf-hunting limped home a bloody wreck, Johan had taken the terrified servant aside.
"Wh-what am I supposed to do about this..."
"Tell them I forced you into it. Then no one will think to press the blame onto you."
With Sir Karamap's men hurt, the servant who had unlocked the storeroom and lent out the arms was now squarely in the line of fire. It would have surprised no one if the other sons or Lady Eitz had him punished on the spot to save face.
Johan knew that as well as anyone, which was why he had told the man to spend his name freely. His standing with the rest of the Eitz family could not possibly get any worse.
"Johan, my lord...!"
The servant brimmed over with grateful tears. Kindness from a man leagues above your own station cuts that much deeper. He cursed himself for the moment's hesitation when Johan had first asked to borrow the weapons.
Lord Johan is the only one here who deserves the name of knight...
The servant spoke up, his voice suddenly resolute.
"Lord Johan—it should never come to that, but if you ever have need of me, send word at any hour. There is nothing I would not do for you."
"Is that so? Good. Perfect timing, in fact—there happens to be one thing."
"?"
Johan dispatched the servant under cover of an ordinary errand, with orders to eavesdrop on the mercenaries. Karamap and his men shared one convenient trait: they treated servants and slaves as furniture, and paid them no more mind.
They won't suspect a thing.
Johan's prediction held true to the letter. The servant came back with plenty. And what he had heard was graver than expected. Johan's face set hard.
This actually looks properly dangerous.
Two new facts.
First: a reserve force was waiting somewhere close by.
Second: the men who had come with Sir Karamap were primed to start swinging steel at a moment's notice.
Why a knight of that caliber had trekked out to the middle of nowhere to raise hell, Johan couldn't say—but now that he had confirmed it, House Eitz needed to prepare.
What are serfs going to do against mercenaries? Still, it beats sitting on our hands...
Strike first, maybe. Dig traps. At the very least, ready a defense centered on the manor. Any of it beat nothing.
Next to a true fortress with curtain walls the manor fell well short, but it was big and solidly built. Rouse the servants from the outbuildings, arm them, and simply hold—and mercenaries without real siege equipment would find themselves in a genuine bind.
First order of business: keep them from any funny business until Gesen Eitz returns.
Gesen Eitz might be a rural lord, but he was a canny, seasoned knight in his own right. Once he was home, neither the mercenaries nor Sir Karamap would move so freely.
Johan smacked his lips and went to Lady Eitz. He'd sooner have avoided her entirely. There was no help for it.
"What drivel are you spouting?"
Damn. Called it.
Lady Eitz rounded on Johan with a voice sharp enough to draw blood. Nowhere in it was the soft, honeyed tone she reserved for Sir Karamap or Gesen Eitz. She was not even ten years older than Johan, yet she was several times more vicious and relentless than he was—anyone could tell from how she bent the entire Eitz fief to her will at that young age.
"Sir Karamap is hatching a conspiracy? Ha! And you learned of it by eavesdropping, no less. Are you slandering Sir Karamap right now, is that it?"
"What would I possibly gain from slandering Sir Karamap?"
"Let's see. You tagged along on a hunt with his men and came back a laughingstock. You seem to have motive to spare."
People see only what they wish to see.
To Lady Eitz, so keen to weave ties with Sir Karamap, the very idea that the man might be plotting something was a story that made no sense at all. And that Johan—the boy she never spared a glance—claimed to have overheard it? It only sounded flimsier.
"Shouldn't we prepare, if only out of caution?"
"Prepare? Oh, we shall prepare. Tomorrow at first light, I will set you before Sir Karamap myself. If a knight's blood runs in you, you will apologize for your insolence and beg his forgiveness."
Her game was plain as day: hand Johan over to Karamap and purchase his favor. Johan bit down on his tongue.
Give her an inch and she takes a mile.
"What seems to be the matter?"
Mid-conversation, Philip Eitz, eldest son of House Eitz, walked into the hall. At the sight of Johan and Lady Eitz talking, his face twisted. Not a pairing anyone ever saw.
"Brother, you see..."
Johan staked his last hopes on Philip. Lady Eitz held the reins of the fief, but Philip's authority within it was nothing to dismiss. He was the eldest son, he had lived on these lands his whole life, and a fair share of the household answered to him.
Philip's face said he didn't believe a syllable.
"Utter nonsense. What could Sir Karamap possibly stand to gain? Did you pick this up from the rumors wandering jesters peddle? Spread that drivel one more time and I won't forgive it."
Philip was less hungry than Lady Eitz to fawn over Sir Karamap. But he had no faith in Johan's words either.
Pathetic. Trying to smear the man with a false charge.
Sir Karamap was no bandit chief. Why on earth would he scheme in a fief like this? The story didn't hold together. Far more plausible: Johan, humiliated on the hunt, had invented the whole thing out of jealousy. No one could afford to act on such words—digging traps, readying for battle. If it ever came to light, Sir Karamap might take it as insult, or as threat.
And in that moment, Johan made up his mind.
He was leaving. Tonight.
He had meant to hang on somehow, scrape together whatever he could, and make his exit in good time—but lingering any longer felt like begging for a very bad time.
Grab just enough that they won't bother chasing, then run.
Steal too much and a genuine pursuit party might follow, so he would carry off a reasonable amount. Not that there was any such thing as "reasonable" when it came to stealing...
Either way, explaining himself one-on-one before Sir Karamap tomorrow was an offer he would decline.
"Return to your quarters and keep to them. From joining a hunt you had no leave for and seeing Sir Karamap's men come to harm, to slandering the knight himself—you will answer for every last bit of it."
"...Yes, my lady."
Johan wore the face of a duly chastised son. In his head, naturally, he was already calculating where to start looting.
Donning armor in broad daylight with a servant's help, and donning it in the dead of night while strangling every clink and creak, were two entirely different disciplines.
Johan armed himself with every nerve in his body stretched taut. Over the finest, sturdiest linen shirt he owned went a hauberk in immaculate condition, then a surcoat, and over it all a heavy coat of wool from the Kingdom of Finngland. The weather was turning cold; he would need the layers.
Everything Joseph had drilled into him paid off now: Johan assembled what a swift departure required without a moment's dithering.
Forget the silver.
Unlike the arms kept in the storeroom, the coin would sit under lock in the bedchamber. Getting caught inside would be dangerous enough in itself, and robbing the strongbox on top of the already costly arms might well buy him a pursuit party in earnest.
Granted, what he was already taking would boil its share of blood—but family pride had a face to keep. There was a fair chance they would let this much slide.
First things first—how am I going to earn some coin?