Shifting Allegiances
The pinnacle of a mercenary's career was to be granted land and rise into the nobility.
Most never reached it. They grew old and died in some gutter, or bled out on a battlefield. Even a single wretched village was enough to count as a triumph.
Nobles with lands of their own paid mercenaries in silver and gold — they never gave away soil. Soil was the one coin they refused to spend.
The Church, however, was a different animal.
The Church held the power to grant mercenaries land — and the power was all the greater because it never had to give up anything of its own. It could strip another lord of his territory and hand the mercenaries a righteous claim and legal right to seize it.
The Church had done exactly this before, more than once. It would summon mercenaries to wage war on its enemies, then settle them on the conquered ground. And so men who had once been simple sellswords now sat preening as arrogant lords — it was only natural that every hired blade who watched them burned with envy.
This summons is no ordinary one.
They wouldn't call this many men just to put down bandits. It has to be an invasion — a kingdom, or the Empire...
No. There's been no whisper of that. They're calling us to strike a city or a noble's fief — that much is certain. And if we take that land?
Won't it go to whoever earns the greatest merit?
"So they don't know the true purpose either."
Johan murmured to himself. This summons was no affair of crushing one or two pliable noble houses. It meant war against every Imperial-faction noble in the southern peninsula.
The mercenaries were dreaming of a barony at best — maybe a lordship. But judging by the scale of this operation, a county would not have been out of the question.
"Er, what is it? What, is there some other purpose, sir?"
"I'll tell you once it's confirmed. For now it's only conjecture."
Aclada showed no resentment at the deflection. A master of the steppe had to be cunning and keep his own counsel hidden. If Johan played his cards close to the chest, that was simply one more qualification — proof that he deserved his legend.
"So, Aclada — how did you handle such malcontents back home?"
"How did I handle them? The pathetic ones I ignored. The ones who got insolent to my face, I pressed down into the dirt, sir."
"Then I'll do the same. Good reference."
"Ah — are you leaving now, sir?"
"No."
"Aw..."
At Aclada's crestfallen reaction, Johan gave a dry chuckle.
"I can't move yet. We wait, and see."
He understood the mercenaries' restlessness too. They still knew nothing for certain about what was coming.
And in the end, these were the very men Johan would likely command and carry south himself.
Which meant he could hardly break them to his hand with sudden violence. Given time, the justification would build itself, and the opportunity would come on its own.
Aclada bowed his head at Johan's word. If it was Johan, he surely had something in mind. He had placed his faith once — so he would simply follow.
It surprised a great many people, but for all his brutish looks, Gurerik was a sharp-eyed and quick-witted man.
Which was why, once again, he was the first to reach a judgment.
Close ties with the Church, personally escorting a bishop to Mt. Sirandel — there's only one reason for that.
His head worked all the better after a good rest. No matter how he looked at it, Johan seemed likely to claim a position apart from all the rest in this summons.
And doesn't his reputation suit it? He's exactly the sort the Church's high-and-mighty would take a shine to.
The other mercenary captains, it seemed, could not bring themselves to imagine Johan taking the role of supreme commander. Yes, the man had made his name hunting monsters, but he was still too young, too green. The captains gathered here had all spent a decade or more — most of them far more — rolling across battlefields.
And precisely because of that, they clung to their convictions all the harder: that young knight might join the punitive force, but supreme command? Absolutely not. Inconceivable.
But Gurerik had seen Johan with his own eyes.
He had watched him lead nearly a thousand soldiers southward without a hair's breadth of hesitation. He had watched him go over the towering walls of Umdim first of all men and carve through the defenders.
If someone asked Gurerik, 'Can Sir Johan command an army of several thousand?' then honestly, there was only one answer he could give.
And if the Church had reached the same judgment he had?
Then there is only one thing to do.
"Sir Johan!"
"?"
Johan had been teaching Euclia to play baduk when the voice from outside turned his head. Euclia slyly palmed a game stone.
"I know you're hiding them. What is it, sir?"
"I've come to beg a place at your side in this affair, sir! I ask you to accept my sword!"
"...Oh ho."
Johan studied Gurerik with something like wonder. He had expected the first captain to come picking a fight — not one coming to swear fealty.
"The way I see it, sir, you're certain to be given a role of great importance in this summons. Rather than waste my men on some pointless scramble for merit, I'd rather follow your will for certain — and take a better reward for it."
Euclia muttered something beside him in the Eastern Language — something to the effect that Gurerik was a clever one.
"Did I look worth that much, then?"
"You proved your worth already, sir, in the city of Umdim."
"That was you and your men doing the proving... Well. Good! I accept."
Johan agreed readily. Mercenaries crawling in on their own saved him all the work — and when it was a seasoned old hand like Gurerik, better still.
"The other captains will raise a stink when they hear. You're certain?"
"To tell the truth, I've already skipped the gathering and come straight here. Let them rage as they please. Hmph. Do you think I care my hat about the likes of them?"
Having chosen his side, Gurerik did not hesitate. And a man who spent his days worrying over mercenary company politics would never eat from this table at all.
What mattered, after all, was his own profit.
Gurerik's defection sent a larger shockwave than anyone expected. An uneasy current began to coil through the mercenaries trailing behind Johan's column — the column now escorting the bishop.
"Gurerik's no fool, though..."
The captains who knew his temperament groaned over it. Something about this was deeply wrong, no matter how they turned it.
They knew Johan was a knight who'd been racking up feats of late — but was he truly remarkable enough to make a man of Gurerik's stamp switch sides so brazenly? He was young. Green, by every appearance...
And so a few of the captains began to hold their tongues. If Gurerik's judgment proved right, they meant to slip quietly to the other side themselves — and the smaller their companies, the companies of a hundred men or so, the more urgently they meant it.
The ambitious captains, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth at the defection.
"Brethren, pray. Pray for this holy Mt. Sirandel."
When the column crested the hill and Mt. Sirandel came into view, the bishop spoke to Johan. Johan raised a prayer in a posture even more reverent, more fervent, than the bishop's own. The overseer was thoroughly satisfied.
So that's Uranonium?
The ancient imperial capital, small in the far distance, was just as Suetlg had said — more than half of it ruin and trace. Yet even what remained sprawled across the plain with monstrous scale. One could only imagine how beautiful the city must have stood in its prime.
"Your Excellency."
One of the mercenary captains came driving up at a gallop. Unusually, this captain was an elf — clearly a petty noble out of the Kingdom of Erance.
"We're told bandits swarm the woods at the mountain's foot. We beg leave to put them down."
"Er..."
Bishop Biagione was caught flat-footed. It was an unexpected proposal — and an ill-fitting one. Mercenaries, volunteering for a job that paid nothing?
Johan laughed inwardly.
Save their breath. Nothing will change for it.
The mercenaries apparently wanted to show the Church what they could do — bandit-hunting, of all things. But the Church would not change its judgment over a stunt like that.
He could well imagine how bitterly they'd wail once they learned as much.
"A most excellent proposal, is it not? Grant it, Your Excellency."
The overseer was delighted. The bandits rampaging through the vast forest below the mountain had brought misery to the villages nearby. Dealing with them was work done for the serfs' own good.
Biagione glanced at Johan. Unlike the overseer, the bishop had caught the delicate contest of power flowing among these men — it was, after all, the thing he did best.
Am I truly clear to grant it?
Johan flicked his eyes: go ahead. Gurerik, watching from beside him, felt the ground shift under his feet.
It wasn't the bishop wielding Johan. Johan was wielding the bishop.
Am I seeing things?
He looked again and still could not believe it. Unless Johan was the bishop's own get, how could that relationship possibly... no, there was no making sense of it.
"Permission granted. Your devotion does you great credit."
"Thank you, Your Excellency!"
The overseer turned to Johan.
"And will you join the hunt, sir?"
"No. Someone must guard His Excellency. My company and Sir Wil's will remain here on escort duty."
Once a man takes a liking to someone, everything that person does pleases him. Set against the blunders of hot-blooded young knights, Johan's restraint only shone the brighter. The overseer nodded in satisfied approval.
By this point Gurerik had begun to feel a creeping, unfamiliar pity for the other captains. These were men who ought to have read the ledger coldly — and instead they were sitting blind, blinded by pride and stubbornness.
Fools... strut all you like. You'll never play the lead in this drama.
Johan's column halted, and the mercenaries trailing behind it began to shift formation, company by company, and advance into the forest — hunting bandits.
"That elf leads the bastards of Aquitaine. Made centurion in the Aquitaine Wolves once, before he was cast out."
"The Aquitaine Wolves... I've seen them."
"You commanded them, sir?"
"No."
Gurerik thought nothing of the flat answer — it could easily have been the other way around.
"Those bastard-born riders are fine horsemen, I'll grant. Being from Erance, they're finer still than Imperial knigh— hup. Beg pardon, sir."
"Say what you like. You may well be right."
Elven knights never tired of proclaiming their horsemanship supreme, and in truth most people rated it a cut above the Imperial knights'.
"So that's why elves kept showing up."
"Yes. Elves are mean-spirited, arrogant creatures — they'll try your patience, sir. I beg you'll bear with them in your magnanimity..."
"No. I like elves."
"?"
"Which companies should I actually worry about?"
"The Gorgalle Company is famed for its crossbowmen. They're skilled enough to command double rate, sometimes."
That company, drawn entirely from Gorgalle, brought down vicious barrages with their costly crossbows. More than a few great monsters had been brought low by their bolts.
"After that, the Medusa Company and the Mano Company are the ones to watch for... Sir? Where are you going?"
"Something's happened in the forest."
Johan was already on his feet. Karamap had caught it too; he had his head up, glaring toward the trees. Smoke was rising from several points in the forest, and thin screams drifted on the wind.
"Enemies! Enemies!"
"Battle stations! Protect His Excellency first of all!"
"Yes, sir!"
Johan wheeled his elite guard around the bishop, then strapped on his armor himself and sprinted for the front. Euclia fell in behind him, spear in hand.
Ssshhhh—
The steppe grass shivered, and dozens upon dozens of men rose out of it. They'd realized they were made.
They had meant to use the distraction of the men waiting outside for one good ambush — but the opposition had been far too wary. The Eastern warriors and the mercenaries had patrolled the perimeter without pause, circling endlessly. However great a stealth artist you were, there was no slipping past eyes that never closed.
"We're spotted!"
"Run! Run them down!"
Caught in the open, the bandits only burned hotter, wilder with fighting spirit. Men who crept in disguised, then charged like this — these were no common cutthroats.
Which company are they from, I wonder?
"Spears!"
"■■■■■■!"
"Don't let them near the camp! Trample them!"
The warriors spurred forward alongside Johan. The bandits, facing mounted riders on open plain with nothing between them but their own hides, gritted their teeth.
"Hraaagh!"
A few hurled themselves sideways with bizarre war-cries, flinging weighted nooses to drag the riders from their saddles.
But the Eastern warriors rode as if the horse were their own body — or else possessed a horse's body outright. They slipped the loops without breaking stride and cut the throwers down mid-swing.
Grievously wounded, the bandits still would not fall back or surrender. They glared harder, wilder, and kept swinging — as if they hadn't noticed the blood pouring from their own bodies.
So Johan simply crushed them completely.
"Out of the way!"
He came on with his mace raised. Every swing brought another of the snarling bandits down like a felled tree. The man commanding the bandits stared at Johan, his face twisted in sheer disbelief.