When Misfortune Rains, It Pours
Once a man's luck turned downhill, it was rarely easy to climb back out of the slide. Marquis Crucho was living proof of that.
He was an experienced, seasoned commander, and he knew better than anyone that the moments just before landing were the most dangerous of any invasion. So he had investigated meticulously and drawn up a careful plan.
Locate the mercenaries currently pillaging his territory. Predict their routes. Contact his vassals within the march and seal off any avenues of advance they might leave open. Only then did he lead his transport fleet across the sea, aiming for the relatively safe southern coast of his own lands.
That was precisely where the Marquis's misfortune began. A storm struck out of season, and as his fleet battled the raging seas, its course was thrown off. He had no choice but to push north and make landfall there instead.
The second misfortune was the heathen corsairs. They were not confined to the island chains off the eastern edge of the Edene Sea — they prowled the southern waters of the Catalia Peninsula as well.
One should never picture pirates as mere roaming bands of aimless thieves. The heathen corsairs were seasoned warriors who typically made their bases in a nearby county or duchy, drawing support from it as they raided.
Perhaps they had convinced themselves the Marquis carried an enormous fortune from the Empire, because they came at him with savage ferocity. He barely shook them off and made it ashore.
And then the final misfortune found him. In the middle of his landing, he ran straight into mercenaries who were out on the prowl for plunder.
“An ambush! It's an ambush!”
Looked at coldly, even a spent and wounded army under the Marquis should have held the advantage over the mercenaries in both numbers and quality. But the terror of soldiers exhausted to the bone by the sea voyage exceeded anything the Marquis had anticipated. The front line collapsed in an instant, and his men scattered in every direction.
The mercenaries, who had no idea what was actually happening, charged in on pure momentum without understanding why. As the raiders roaming the countryside caught wind and converged one after another, even the soldiers who had been holding firm began to panic.
In the end, the Marquis had no choice but to quit the battlefield with his knights. It was an absurd, humiliating rout.
“He ran into heathen corsairs at sea, and then came under attack by mercenaries in the very midst of his landing.”
“Even so — that shouldn't have been enough to break him.”
“I was astonished as well, but I confirmed it again and again. The Marquis's army has collapsed.”
The Republic's envoy had found it hard to believe either, and checked the reports multiple times, but every account that arrived told the same story.
“Perhaps the Lord is punishing the Marquis for his arrogance?”
“I see.”
It didn't sound particularly persuasive, but Johan agreed for the time being.
According to the envoy, the Marquisate and the Emperor's own lands were chaos incarnate at that moment. Not only mercenaries but heathen corsairs had come ashore as well, all of them hungry for plunder.
And how would this situation serve Johan?
A fine excuse.
“Summon the vassals. They swore the contract, so they'll honor it.”
A vassal was bound to take the field with his troops whenever his liege summoned him. That was the very condition upon which his fief was held.
“My lord, you should certainly make preparations, but there's little need for great concern. The Republic's fleet holds complete command of the waters in this vicinity.”
The envoy was puzzled. There was no real need to call every vassal together at all.
The corsairs had eyes too. They had deliberately left the County of Culia alone now that the commotion there had settled. The sea was sealed off by the Republic's fleet, which left only a land approach — and a raiding party that botched that could easily find itself trapped and killed to the last man.
“No. The heathen corsairs are savage, brutish men, and there is no telling how they will act. The Republic's aid will be indispensable, I think.”
“Of course. I shall do everything in my power to assist you...?”
So long as the harbor existed, the Republic had no choice but to help him anyway. The envoy simply could not understand why Johan was making such a fuss.
Was his piety so devout that the heathen incursion had him worked into a lather?
To a man of the Republic — who traded with the Eastern Empire, or anyone else, without the slightest discrimination — such an attitude looked like simple foolishness.
Faith won't leave you so much as a single coin of gold.
But Johan saw things differently.
He had been racking his brain for a pretext to squeeze his vassals, and here a perfect one had dropped into his lap.
The advance was already tainted with the charge of disloyalty, so this works out all the better.
Failing to swear fealty when Johan advanced. Absenting themselves from the wedding. Refusing the summons of their liege.
Rather than interrogating those three offenses separately, it was far more convenient to summon every vassal at once and settle accounts in one sitting. Anyone marching at Johan's side would hardly dare entertain other schemes while doing so.
When Johan had made his lightning advance, circumstances had allowed him to let things slide. Not anymore.
Anyone who was still failing to grasp the situation — after the wedding, and to this very day — would be trampled first of all!
The servants ran themselves ragged delivering the summons. The Count's vassals were thrown into confusion by the sudden order to muster.
“The heathens have invaded?”
“Is it those Zildirid bastards?”
Zildirid was a sizable island off the peninsula's southwest — and ever since the heathens had taken it, the place had been known as the County of Zildirid.
Sitting at a strategic crossroads with easy access to both the peninsula and the mainland, it was the port of call the heathen corsairs usually used, with the County of Zildirid's blessing.
Or else the corsairs came from Zildirid itself!
“If it's the Zildirid lot, we won't be in any immediate danger, will we? Shouldn't the Marquisate be dealt with first?”
“But my lord. If you ignore the summons, there may be consequences. You didn't attend the wedding either, remember?”
Among the vassals who had skipped the ceremony, the reasons came down to two.
One was the enormous congratulatory gift they would have been obliged to offer. The other was a lingering, shapeless unease.
Having refused the acting Count's orders, attending the acting Count's wedding would have taken a certain courage of its own.
A good number had told themselves it was better to hoard their gold coins than gamble on something needlessly dangerous.
Of course, even they had grounds for their confidence.
“Don't worry. That knight — no, I suppose we ought to say Count Eitz now. How long has it even been since the Count gained the County of Culia?”
The marriage of the acting Count, Izelia of the Blua family, had come as a shock to every one of the vassals.
Since when did Izelia have that kind of pull?
He was a knight who had arrived with an army backed by the Church. Surely he could simply have dragged the Blua elves, and the remaining Asada elves besides, into his courts, seized their lands, and been done with it.
That he had chosen an actual marriage instead suggested, more likely than not, that he was utterly besotted.
Whatever the case, the wedding had already happened.
Now it was the aftermath that demanded thought.
However much the Church blessed Count Eitz and proclaimed his title, the fact remained that Johan had held his county for barely any time at all.
He'd be lucky if he managed to get a handle on the situation any time soon!
To the vassals, this was something close to a blessing. A Count from outside, with no experience of governance — he would have no choice but to lean heavily on his vassals in all manner of matters.
“Still, my lord... you ignored the last summons, and now you're ignoring this one too. If he makes that his pretext...”
“You idiot. Were you the only one who skipped the last summons? He won't punish anyone for that. If anything, it's the Count who'll be watching his vassals' moods.”
The vassals who underestimated Johan, who hadn't fully grasped the situation, or who simply wanted to test their nerve had all begged off the summons with one excuse or another.
By happy chance, such vassals were only a small minority. The great majority had answered the order.
“Surely the Count won't hold our sins against us. We merely followed the Church's word.”
“Right. We're answering the summons as we speak, aren't we...”
It was the furthest thing from their minds, but the world had a way of surprising men.
The new Count might be young and green, but bringing the army he led to smash a single county's holdings was well within his ability.
Surely it would never come to that.
“May I say one thing to you?”
“Anything.”
Johan pressed a kiss to each of Izelia's cheeks and rose to his feet. Izelia flushed. He still wasn't used to these displays of affection.
“Th-there are servants right outside. There's no need to do that when no one's watching.”
Izelia assumed Johan did it so the servants and slaves would see, spreading word of their closeness by natural means. The deeper the bond between them appeared, the easier it would be to govern the territory.
“I do it because I like it.”
“Th-that's... no, I mean...”
“What is it you wanted to say?”
“The territory's silver isn't as plentiful as all that. It won't be enough to host everyone who answers the summons — were you perhaps thinking of raising taxes?”
Izelia asked carefully. It could very well sound like an encroachment on Johan's authority, which made him all the more cautious. But Johan hardly gave it a thought.
“No. I've barely held this title — what nonsense is this about taxes? Do I look cursed? I intend to do it with other people's money.”
“?”
Johan proceeded to show him exactly what he meant by other people's money.
“Steward. The ledger of the territory's holdings doesn't add up — has the castellan been cheating me, the scribe been cheating me, or do you simply take me for a fool?”
“Ah — n-no, my lord! I shall look into it at once!”
There was a reason Johan had gone straight for the territorial register the moment he arrived. Every spare hour after the wedding, he had done nothing but dig into the state of his lands.
With the merchants pressed into service as well, a new ledger had been compiled in proper Eastern numerals — and it flushed out everyone who had taken a cut here and a cut there.
Johan forgave every last one of them, magnanimously. Provided they repaid the sums several times over.
They wept tears of gratitude for Johan's mercy. The fact that their breeches were soaked through was a little odd, but surely those were tears of joy.
This is a different order of magnitude from running a single village.
By Johan's standards, the county system — the whole apparatus by which wealth flowed to the Count and the petty noble housecarls propping him up — was backwardness itself. He had never seen such crude, thumb-in-the-air administration.
Johan installed trustworthy men alongside the steward and the scribes and had the register and the ledgers redrawn from scratch. Among the priests, any who proved greedy and had been hoarding wealth were quietly threatened and relieved of it. Bishop Biagione's help was invaluable here. He had a demonic gift for sniffing out his own kind.
Once this work was more or less wrapped up, the summoning of the vassals was complete. And by the look of it, every man who meant to come had come.
“Why did you not answer the summons of your liege?”
The vassals arrived trailing retinues of ten or twenty at the least, several dozen at the most — and the sight of a host that seemed to number in the thousands drained the strength from their limbs.
It wasn't only the numbers. It was the quality of the men arrayed before them. Not levies, not slave-soldiers, but well-armed heavy infantry in disciplined ranks, with cavalry in considerable numbers besides. They had known none of this when Johan's host had swept through their lands at speed, but seeing it gathered here in the flesh, cold sweat broke out over their entire bodies.
Even those Eastern barbarians...
“My lord. Are your ears stopped? Why did you not answer the summons of your liege?”
Yet the most terrifying thing of all was the young Count newly seated upon his throne. For the vassals who had never once stood face to face with Johan, it was a heart-crushing shock.
The enormous wolf at his feet. The housecarls glaring from either side. And above all, the sheer, crushing presence the man himself gave off!
It was said the eyes revealed the power of the soul. Johan's eyes, wild and heavy with force, subdued the souls of the vassals outright. Once caught in that gaze, no vassal could lift his head.
“I... my body was ailing, my lord... it is shameful, and I am disgraced! I beg you, pass judgment upon me!”
“Raise your head. You are forgiven. Win glory in this coming fight and wash that disgrace away.”
Johan handled the vassals in graded measure.
Those who had attended the wedding were treated with the warmest favor; those who had come quickly afterward bearing congratulatory gifts, with the next warmest. The later a man arrived, the more reproach he was made to swallow.
That said, since they had all answered the summons, no fiefs were reclaimed. He did exact a few gold coins here and there, but beside the value of a fief, that was a cheap price.
The vassals, frozen stiff with dread, let out sighs of relief. It could hardly have gone better.
From here, all they had to do was hold their posts for the duration of the muster, and their vassal obligations would be fulfilled. Serve a set span of days each year beneath the liege's banner, and a vassal was free.
The heathens won't be coming this way, so...
He'll probably run some grand drills and hunts and then disband us, no?
A summons did not necessarily mean a battle. The muster was the liege's right, and lieges with no war to fight would call their vassals together now and then all the same — just to remind everyone who was master.
“Gerdolf. Take eight banners and ride to reclaim the fief of Sir Edouard.”
“Aclada. Take six banners and ride to reclaim the fief of Sir Veresic.”
“Gureric...”
But Johan shattered every expectation and moved first. His targets were not the heathens. They were his own vassals.
Those who had dared to ignore his summons!
“Men who swore their fealty to me before God have broken that oath and insulted my honor. If you are faithful, my lords, then show me that faith now.”
The vassals stared at one another, aghast. Johan's intent was unmistakable. Anyone could see it.
This was a test of loyalty.
And every single man whose banner was being called out now — weren't they all the ones who had been late to answer the summons?