The Price of an Ambush
The swordsman who had been sent flying lay sprawled in his own blood, unable to rise. Only after one of their own went down did the others seem to grasp the reality of their situation.
"He's a monster!"
One of them cried out, his voice thick with horror.
The knight had fought his share of opponents, but never anything like this creature. Catching a troll, going undefeated in tournaments — none of it mattered now. Even the most storied, most agile knight fell when forced to fight bare-handed with a blade in a cramped space. That was why, when he'd first heard the rumors about Johan, he had accepted the contract with a confident "We can take him, no problem."
But this...
This was nothing like the knight they had imagined.
Johan raised his longsword and settled into his stance. With his flank no longer exposed, it came far more easily now. Still, he let not a shred of carelessness creep in.
Fighting properly trained swordsmen was an entirely different beast from fighting mercenaries. Mercenaries could be bludgeoned into submission with raw brutality; swordsmen demanded a finer touch. All the more so with no shield and no armor to fall back on.
The moment Johan drew his longsword and took his stance, the swordsmen swallowed hard. If they were swarming him all at once in a narrow corridor, perhaps it would be different — but facing a man calmly holding a longsword in the open like that...
"Don't be afraid! Rush him together!"
But it was Johan who moved first. However valiantly the swordsmen shouted, their frozen feet refused to obey. Only when Johan closed the distance with measured footwork did one of them finally stir.
That swordsman was lucky.
His blade was light, and so he never dreamed of locking swords with Johan. Had he tried to parry and deflect, the shock alone would have killed him on the spot, just like the men before him.
Instead he bounded backward, opening the distance — planning to time a thrust to Johan's approach.
"!?"
It was a miscalculation. Johan's body, which seemed to have halted, twisted in an eerie rhythm and closed the gap.
A treacherous footwork designed to make an opponent misjudge the measure. The kind of technique an assassin might use — not a knight.
"Gah!"
Blood sprayed. The swordsman toppled sideways. With one cleared away, Johan turned at once to face the men behind him. For all their wariness, they stood frozen in half-crouches, hesitating.
"Grab him!"
The moment Johan's command fell, Gerdolf lunged. One man tripped over another's outstretched leg and crashed to the ground — then promptly threw down his weapon and bolted. Johan couldn't help but admire the sight.
That one's a survivor.
When a beast was chasing you, you didn't need to be faster than the beast. You only needed to be faster than the man beside you.
"You little—! You're not getting awa—"
When the fallen swordsman began scrabbling for his dagger, Gerdolf smashed his fist into the man's face. Gerdolf was a knight who knew exactly how to break a person. He beat the man so savagely that Johan had to step in and stop him.
"Urgh... ahk... ugh..."
"That's enough, Gerdolf. I need his mouth working if I'm going to get answers. Who sent you?"
"L-Lord Giordano..."
"Giordano... Giordano..."
Johan sank into thought. Giordano — a chapter member aligned with the anti-bishop faction.
So I've become a genuine thorn in his side.
Well, how could he not be? The man had worked so painstakingly to spread ugly rumors about the bishop, and now some upstart knight was hogging all the city's attention. With his carefully laid scheme on the verge of collapse, sending assassins was only natural.
"E-even if you drag me before a tribunal, Lord Giordano will never be indicted."
"I imagine not."
Johan conceded the point easily.
The courts of this world did run on a certain systematic machinery. Dozens of bodies of law — customary law, imperial law, city law, canon law — weighed against one another while evidence and arguments clashed in sharp, technical disputes.
But in the end, in situations like this, the man with power won. It wasn't as if an outsider knight could indict a chapter member on the strength of a single witness. Johan had never expected otherwise.
"Dispose of him."
Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, Gerdolf swung his weapon and bashed in the swordsman's skull. He shook the blood off with a perfectly indifferent expression and shoved the body aside.
"All that noise will draw a crowd. Better to slip away before it becomes a headache. Let's move."
"An ambush?!"
The bishop's face went white with shock. Brawls broke out in the city often enough, but he had never imagined anyone would move so openly, so quickly.
"Are you hurt?!"
"No, Your Excellency. Thank you for your concern."
"God must have been watching over you. To stoop to something like this — the cowards... Brothers, do you see it now? What manner of men my enemies truly are?"
Smelling opportunity, the bishop launched into a passionate appeal. The rumors had been gnawing at him for some time now — if a knight like Johan had a change of heart, it would be disaster.
"The devil isn't lurking somewhere else, brother. It is precisely men like these who are devils. I never intended to go so far as to say this, but it seems you may have to act, brother."
"?"
"I mean that I may have no choice but to take up arms myself against those spreading these vile rumors about me, Biagione."
"You're asking me to draw steel within the city?"
"Shh. That's not what I said. But should they resist, the sword may have to come out."
The bishop spoke with ominous gravity, as though steeling himself for a great sacrifice — but Johan merely stared at him, dumbfounded.
Is this a joke?
Guarding and escorting the bishop was one thing. Raiding and abducting a member of the city's chapter was another entirely.
It wasn't impossible — but the moment he did it, every ounce of blame would land on Johan's head. And if the bishop chose to betray him in that moment, Johan was finished. Escape the city and he might count himself lucky; fail to escape, and he'd be marching to the gallows.
And he said all this with that grave, martyred air. Johan knew full well the bishop took him for a fool, but hearing it aloud still left him speechless.
"Besides, under city law, brawling within the walls is a crime, is it not? The first to draw a blade bears the guilt."
"Brother, do not cling so desperately to the laws of this republic. Men like us may wrangle over a hundred different statutes, but in the end there is only one law that matters. The law made by our Lord, who looks down upon us."
The bishop was throwing everything he had built over a lifetime into swaying Johan. The polish of countless sermons and conversions rippled through his every word.
Faced with that reverent, utterly sincere bearing, even those who despised the bishop would find themselves wavering with a nagging but what if. Religion held that kind of power.
But just as Johan had not been moved by the words of mages, he was not moved by the bishop's. His soul was simply not built to be seduced by honeyed rhetoric.
Then again — why is he bringing this up all of a sudden?
Then it clicked. The bishop must have read it in his manner as well.
That Johan would never agree to negotiate.
The bishopric was days from falling, his reputation in the city already in tatters. If negotiation failed, the bishop had nothing left.
What remained was intimidation by force.
It looked like madness — but cornered men had always been prone to committing lunacy. He clearly meant to move boldly before the rumors could shake Johan loose. And this ambush would have seemed the perfect stick to spur Johan into action.
"Your Excellency!"
"Yes, brother!"
"No."
"...What did you just say?"
"My contract is to guard Your Excellency. It was never to see me through a crime."
"Did I not tell you! Narrowly viewed, perhaps it looks that way — but in the grand scheme, you would be guarding Biagione himself..."
"I do not see it that way."
When Johan cut him off flatly, the bishop was thrown into confusion. All the more so because he had witnessed this same knight draw his blade and fly into a rage over a few insults not long ago.
Why was the man who had raved like a madman then sitting so meek and docile now?
"What is the problem, brother? Did you not risk your life and refuse to yield for the sake of the insults I suffered!"
"That was a fair fight. This is a cowardly ambush. There is no honor in it."
Damn these knights and their codes!
The bishop cursed the customs of the imperials. Their honor, their blasted traditions!
"As I have said — look at the bigger picture. If you do this, I will pay you gold crowns on top of your fee."
"Why would I need gold crowns to do what is right in the eyes of God? I don't need them. I will not do it."
When Johan refused so obstinately, the bishop's temper finally began to boil over. He had showered the man in gold, and this was how he was repaid — with petulance.
The bishop slammed his palm down on the table and raised his voice.
"Brother! Think carefully. This is not a task for my sake, but for the sake of the God we serve. To rise up so that those filthy, degenerate blasphemers may defile this city no longer! If you refuse to hear me, brother, then you commit a great sin before God — aye, a sin that can never be washed away!"
"Well, I'll do penance later, then."
"...???"
The bishop reeled as if struck across the head. The knight before him was not a devout man. Absolutely not.
No man of true faith, hearing talk of sin from a bishop's lips, could wear so blank an expression. He should have flinched with fear or flared with anger — something.
"B-brother... in the bishop's name... do you not fear God's judgment?"
"I fear God's judgment — but that is on account of my own conduct, not Your Excellency's idle words. Lord Whoremonger Bishop."
At the sound of his own infamous nickname from Johan's lips, the bishop's face flushed a furious scarlet. Johan pressed on, cold and composed.
"Your Excellency. As a knight, I made an honorable pact with you, and I have acted accordingly. The gold you paid me was more than sufficient for guarding a bishop. It falls far, far short of what it takes to ambush a member of the city's chapter. If you wish to raid a chapter member, then pay the price that such work properly commands."
"Y-you... you..."
The bishop muttered in a daze of shock. All this time he had believed he was playing Johan in the palm of his hand — when in truth he had been dancing in Johan's. Humiliation and shock tangled his thoughts into knots.
"So. Will you pay?"
"Silence!"
Even without hearing a figure, the bishop could guess. To drag a knight like Johan into such an ambush, you would have to rip out your family's central pillar and offer it up.
"You... you, in the city..."
"Your Excellency. I am guarding you at this very moment. I would advise you not to throw even that away over a careless slip of the tongue."
The bishop, who had been on the verge of threatening Johan, flinched and came to his senses. The words were fair. What good did it do to threaten one's own man?
"And I'd suggest you spare me the clumsy threats. I have my own connections in the chapter."
"Ab-absurd. You've only been here..."
"Only a short while, true — but House Brudhe stands behind me. Quite a number of people have come calling on that account alone."
"...!"
Of course. Johan was the duke's banneret. It would hardly be strange for men seeking favor with the duke to seek out the duke's knight.
So that's why he was out so often lately...!
The bishop collapsed where he stood, his face drained of all hope. Johan looked down at him and spoke.
"Why not simply retire, Your Excellency? Relinquish your seat and step back, and you might yet save your own life. You surely have wealth tucked away — take it, and live out your days comfortably somewhere with a pleasant view."
"What kind of nonsense—"
Even in the depths of despair, the bishop reacted with sharp sensitivity to any mention of his power and his fortune. He glared up at Johan with venomous eyes.
Just then, a commotion erupted outside the manor — the dull crunch of something heavy breaking and shattering.
Johan looked at the bishop with a face that said, surely not.
"You can't possibly be attempting such a petty intimidation right now, Your Excellency. If mercenaries are coming through those doors, it will still be faster for me to simply wring your neck..."
"N-no!"
The bishop clutched his own throat before he could stop himself. The calm in Johan's voice was deeply unnerving. The courteous mask was gone; restrained violence and something feral rippled beneath his gaze and his voice. He was like a lion looking down upon sheep.
"Though I suppose if you were going to hire third-rate mercenaries like that, you'd have done it long ago."
Employing thugs whose backgrounds hadn't been properly vetted was a fine way to strangle yourself with your own noose — doubly so for a man like the bishop.
Then what in God's name was that noise outside?
With a tremendous crash the door burst apart, and the intruder revealed itself.
Malevolent eyes. Claws. And wings.
Something vaguely reminiscent of a dragon, and yet utterly unlike one — smaller, uglier, far more twisted.
It was a gargoyle.