A Rescue Worth Nothing
Never did I think I'd end up living out one of those old tales I'd only ever heard from my grandfather!
“Don't break formation! Hold the line! Don't you dare run, you rats!”
The pirate captain labored desperately to keep his men from bolting. It was easier said than done. Confronted with something none of them had ever lived through, most were already little more than rolling eyes.
“Anyone who runs loses his head!”
—KIIIIK!
A handful of ghouls bored into the formation. The undead raked their claws at the living with an immense, seething hatred. One pirate took the blow clean across his shoddy cloth armor and dropped where he stood.
Then arrows came arcing down on top of that. Goblins were mercurial creatures, wearing a thousand different faces depending on the time and the place — and, as ill luck would have it, the goblins in this region seemed prosperous enough to craft bows and arrows of their own.
“Captain! Give the order to fall back!”
“Hey, you stupid bastard! You turn your back on monsters and every last one of you dies! We force them back somehow — then we retreat!”
“That may be, but this is hardly a normal situation!”
“They're goblins, that's all they are! Hold! What kind of pirate gets spooked by goblins!”
At the captain's roar, his lieutenant ground his teeth and nodded.
But scarcely had they steeled themselves when their breath caught short in their throats.
“...fuck...?”
A massive shape had begun to stand out among the goblins — a hulk two or three heads taller than a man, bearing the head of a bull on its shoulders.
The accursed monster — the minotaur!
They said powerful monsters sometimes drove weaker ones before them, but who could have imagined a minotaur herding goblins like a pack of hounds!
The pirate captain glared at the minotaur, then spat. Evidently the god he worshipped had decided that today was the day to come collect him.
The host trailing behind halted and began to form up. Johan rode out to scout with his guards and Kaenerna.
From the crest of the hill, the scene ahead came into view. It was a ferocious bloodbath, plain and simple.
“Kaenerna. Do you know why so many ghouls are rising here?”
“Probably the wars that were fought around here.”
Everyone else was scowling at the ghouls, but Kaenerna answered as though it were nothing.
“The more who die wronged, the stronger the power of the dead grows — and the undead multiply with it. I imagine only the wielders of wicked magic are pleased.”
“But does that mean ghouls can move alongside goblins?”
“You can't hold a conversation with a goblin, but that doesn't mean they know nothing of shamanism or sorcery... Every so often they pull off tricks even we can't manage. Fraternizing with other monsters is one of them.”
Sweeping his gaze across the field, Johan spotted the minotaur and started. A warrior with a bull's head screwed onto his shoulders was swinging a ponderous club.
“So that's it. That's goblin cleverness for you. Isn't that a minotaur over there?”
“Hah. Pitiful creature — forsaken by the gods.”
“...?”
The centaurs pitied the minotaurs. They believed the bull's head was the mark of a people unloved by the gods.
It was the sort of remark that would have sent a minotaur into a rage had it heard — but the beast simply stood off in the distance, snorting and pawing, doing nothing at all.
“With a minotaur on the field, wouldn't it be wiser to avoid the fight?”
Kaenerna asked as much. The minotaur was a monster so violent it had earned epithets like hero-slayer and knight-killer.
Horns sharp enough to splinter mid-grade steel plate, strength that tore the very earth open, and an intelligence on the high end even among monsters. It was no rarity for a knight who came hunting a minotaur to end up the hunted instead.
“I'd like to grab a few of those pirates and squeeze them for information... Is nobody making a break for it?”
“I don't believe they can flee even if they try.”
The pirates were a motley lot — humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, even a vampire — but not one of them fought mounted. A crew that lived its life darting across the sea aboard a ship could hardly afford to haul horses around besides.
The goblins and ghouls, meanwhile, were already steadily closing the encirclement to completion. When a few would-be escapees dropped where they ran, the pirates gave up on flight and fought.
“I'll have to carve through that ring first, then take them. Goidun. Go relay the order to the main force.”
When it came time to gather knights for the charge, the first to step forward was Izelia. Johan found himself reminded, yet again, that she was an elf.
“My lord. Grant me this honorable opportunity.”
“...I wasn't planning to talk you out of it.”
?
Do elves simply not keep the word 'safety' in their heads?
If Izelia charged in headlong and died, Amiens would be left all alone — and yet here was this initiative, from a woman who didn't even trust Johan nearly that much.
The people here simply thought on a different axis from him. Johan gave up on understanding and shrugged.
“Very well. You'll charge at my side, then.”
“Th-that's a bit...”
?
“...It's embarrassing. Making such a display of it in front of everyone.”
?
Why on earth?
He almost asked, then thought better of it. Elven customs, he suspected, would only leave him more confused.
“You've already had your say, so spare me the nonsense and stand at my side.”
“Ah. Y-yes.”
“Knights, to the front! And mark this well — any man who retreats without my order will find no mercy from me.”
The knights gathered at the fore, and Johan took his place at their very head. The sacred banner bestowed by the Order snapped and billowed in the wind. At the sight of it, the knights reverently crossed themselves and pressed their lips to their blades.
“Forward, forward! Grind the monsters into the dirt!”
“In the name of Saint Elanna!”
The pirates were pressed so hard against the wall that they never noticed the charge assembling on the hilltop. Only when the knights' onslaught was nearly upon them did they realize — and raise a great cry of joy.
“Salvation! We're saved!”
“...No, hold on — aren't those the Peninsula bastards?”
The pirates put on faces that couldn't decide whether to rejoice or despair. Rejoice or despair, it made no difference to the knights, who carried out their charge with textbook discipline.
Lances driven home with enormous mass behind their points sent goblins pinwheeling away and bursting apart. When the lances splintered, the knights drew their swords and laid about them. The goblins couldn't hold; they were simply swept aside.
A knight astride a well-trained warhorse was lightning and thunder that no defense could stop. They numbered barely a few dozen, yet the monsters melted before them.
And at the very point rode Johan, mace in hand, harvesting skulls.
“Out of my way!”
So savage and relentless was his fury that, for all the monsters swarming the field, an empty circle soon opened around him where not a single beast remained standing.
Izelia, glued to his flank, could only stare in astonishment and awe. Born of the same human flesh as any man — how could such valor be possible?
—KYAAAK!
—KYAAAK! KYAAAAK!
The empty ground widened, spread like a wave, and began to tear the monsters' formation apart at the seams.
Terrified by the sight of Johan, the monsters finally broke and ran. Johan reined in the knights before their excitement could boil over into slaughter, and asked:
“Where's that minotaur!”
He seized one of the centaur warriors to ask it. The Eastern warriors had sat out the charge, sweeping wide to either flank as outriders — a precaution against an encirclement no one had seen coming.
“It's falling back with the rest of them! Shall we pursue?”
“No. Let it go. We've accomplished what we came for anyway.”
The surviving pirates didn't even number a hundred. They glanced around with faces drained of all soul. Johan looked down on them and spoke.
“You are my prisoners now.”
Those who understood the Imperial tongue and those who did not alike nodded along, dazed. In truth, had Johan declared, “From this moment on, you are all goblins,” they would have nodded just the same.
Such was the terror of the man's presence.
Johan studied the pirate captain, his face twisted into a scowl. The captain was afraid, but he forced himself to meet Johan's eyes as though it cost him nothing.
“So. Your name is Tamir, was it? Tamir — and you own precisely nothing.”
“We ran into monsters the moment we came ashore — how would we have anything? We were taken before we could plunder so much as a coin.”
“No one to pay your ransom? From what I hear, you pirates have plenty of ties to Jikillid County.”
Unlike the drifting duckweed pirates of the open sea, the pirates in these waters had crawled out of Jikillid County, or the other counties and duchies to its south.
Which meant the odds were good that someone over there would pay to have them back.
“My sincere apologies, my lord. There isn't.”
“I think execution would be for the best. My lord.”
At Izelia's words, the other knights nodded along. To fight and bleed for a rescue, only to find the rescued owned nothing at all — the knights couldn't help feeling hollow about it.
“We should have simply left them to be eaten.”
At that, the pirates muttered uneasily among themselves. Not as fluent as Tamir, perhaps, but a few of them understood the Imperial tongue.
“Barely ashore, so you know nothing of these parts. No one to pay your ransom. Nothing to your name... You're no pirate. You're a beggar.”
“Show me this mercy — sell me as a slave — and I will never forget your grace for as long as I live.”
For a heathen pirate, being sold into slavery rather than beheaded was generosity indeed.
Johan weighed it over. They'd fetch a fair price at that. And the Republic could never seem to get enough slaves...
?
Kaenerna signaled from beside him. Johan rose and moved to the rear.
“What is it? Some kind of problem?”
“That captain. He has the air of a noble.”
Kaenerna spoke the Eastern tongue, and the accent Tamir used with his fellow pirates was unmistakably a nobleman's.
Just as one could sort noble from commoner by the pronunciation of the Imperial tongue, so it was with the Eastern tongue.
“A noble, and yet he refuses to pay a ransom?”
“Could be any number of circumstances. A family without the means. A second son or lower. Or perhaps he's bound by a vow... I hardly know the customs of the Eastern heathens well enough to say.”
“Isn't that pipe of his an import from the East?”
“What, should a man trace an item's provenance before he lights it?”
Kaenerna shot back, incredulous. She had a point. Even Kaenerna could hardly be expected to know the ways of the East.
“If it's giving you pause, then just execute him or sell him off. Noble house or not, it's a heathen one. Snubbing it shouldn't cause much trouble, should it?”
“There aren't even a hundred of them. We'll hold them as prisoners for now.”
There was no harm in keeping prisoners. He could parade his battlefield honors before the baron and bask in the credit while he was at it...
When Johan announced that he would forgo summary execution and march the prisoners back to the barony, his vassals barely blinked.
He means to leave their disposal to the baron, it seems.
Clearly he meant to comfort the grievously wronged baron and grant him a chance to vent his pent-up fury. If that was the intent, dragging them along made perfect sense.
The moment Johan's host advanced, the pirates that had been skulking about the area vanished to a man. The monsters that had been slinking through the countryside scattered in fright as well.
A host several thousand strong — its mere movement was enough to send enemies running.
“At this rate, that minotaur is going to become a proper headache.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because the baron is going to get down on his knees and beg us to catch it, no matter what...”
Izelia grasped his meaning and nodded.
Baron Monrado would plead for the minotaur's extermination by any means necessary.
Pirates, at least, would eventually flee — but monsters would hound him without end. With a horde that size, he could never manage it alone.
Johan would have liked to oblige if he could, but playing tag with a cunning monster was where he drew the line. His vassals' grumbling was one thing; there was simply far too little profit in it.
Pirates would have been preferable, frankly...
“Turning it down as circumstances allow wouldn't be a bad approach.”
“And how do you intend to refuse?”
“Well... there are plenty of ways. More to the point — you fought well.”
At the praise, Izelia's face went red. Like the other elves, she was helpless against compliments on her martial prowess. Tucking her burning ears behind her hair, she said:
“Beside you, it is something to be ashamed of.”
“There's no need to measure yourself against anyone. If you're willing, would you care to spar with me sometime?”
“...If you are willing, then I — I would welcome it.”
“Haha.”
Feels like taming something wild.
Coaxing and taming a tall, ever-wary elf left Johan with a quiet, amused snort. To Izelia, that laugh looked like mockery, and unease crept over her — had she behaved too poorly?
Come to think of it, volunteering to stand at the fore of the knights' charge had been rather absurd of her as well. Johan's expression had seemed a little off at the time, too...
D-does he think I stepped up for nothing, without the skill to back it?
“My lord. There — the baron.”
“Yes. I see him.”
Johan clicked his tongue and stared ahead.
Baron Monrado had not waited for him inside his keep. He had come out to the very edge of his lands and thrown himself face-down. He looked scarcely better than a beggar.
Isn't it a bit cheap, a noble pleading through tears?
The instant Johan thought it, Baron Monrado burst into loud, heaving sobs.