The Gift of the Pagan God
The moment the scenery changed.
The cold, damp crypt where the smell of darkness and mildew had clung to the air was suddenly replaced by a warm meadow beneath a blazing sun.
Johan stood before a quiet pond. The thick canopy of greenery washed over him with a sense of still, gentle peace.
Yet Johan went white as a sheet and drew his sword. It was the mystery he had never once encountered in his life.
As Suettlegerd and Kaenerna had both declared, Johan's soul was truly strong and unyielding. So strong that ordinary mysteries and curses simply couldn't breach it.
It was because he believed that that he had dared to touch a cursed holy icon in the first place.
And yet now, here he was, having walked straight into a pagan mystery without offering any resistance at all. Of course he was stunned.
The sound of water reached his ears. A priest was walking out of the pond. The figure was as beautiful as the pagan statue itself, but Johan paid it no mind. He leveled his blade and spoke coldly.
"Send me back."
The priest only smiled. Before Johan could close the distance and swing his sword, a mountain of treasure appeared before him.
A heap of gold that would make kings themselves salivate. With that much, he could pay an army of ten thousand for years on end.
The priest gestured at the treasure, as if inviting him to take it. Johan shook his head. He was no fool who would accept something of unknown provenance.
"I said send me back."
The priest smiled again. This time, elves resembling Itzelia appeared at his side. They wore expressions of sultry allure that the real Itzelia would never manage, and they tried to cling to Johan. He shoved them off.
Undeterred, the priest offered its gifts again and again. But Johan drove his sword into the ground and said,
"I will say this one last time. Send me back."
The priest shrugged its shoulders as if it had no choice, as though it found his stubbornness exasperating. In that instant, Johan realized he was submerged in the pond.
"!?"
The priest scooped up the pond water in its hands and poured it over Johan's head. As the cool, clear water streamed down over him, he felt strength surge through his whole body.
If the demon Balkalmur's power was violent and savage, the priest's power was soft and wise.
The moment that power settled into his flesh, Johan understood that none of this had been a trap.
...Hold on. Then if I had accepted the gold...
Before the thought could even finish, Johan was back in the original crypt.
The mercenaries' expressions were not the slightest bit different from before. Fear mixed with tension.
They showed no surprise at Johan vanishing and returning.
Was that an illusion?
"L-Lord Count! Look at that!"
The pagan holy icon placed before him was scattering into nothing. The mercenaries gaped at the surreal sight.
It looked as though Johan's faith had vanquished the faith of the heathens. They crossed themselves without thinking.
* * *
I have no idea which god I met, or what it gave me.
On the way back, Johan tried to examine the new power flowing through his veins. But he could make nothing of it.
"Lord Count, it's remarkable. Who would have thought you'd sweep away the temple of those heathens, with a curse as vile as that, clean as a whistle."
The mercenaries spoke with genuine reverence. Knowing nothing of the details, they had no choice but to admire him. Who knew how many of them would have died in that crypt without Johan there?
"And if the curse hadn't lifted even after all that, it would've been the fault of the mercenary captains for piling up sins. I'll testify to it myself."
"That's right. Men who ought to be burned alive, the lot of them..."
The more respect and awe the mercenaries heaped on Johan, the more their hostility toward the mercenary company grew. Just how depraved did men have to be to walk around carrying a curse like that?
If the curse hadn't lifted even now, the guards would have been ready to step in and stab the mercenary captains to death themselves.
Fortunately, when they returned to the mercenary company's camp, Dirsam was already limping out, supported on either side.
"How is your body?"
"Yes... yes. I can manage."
On Dirsam's skin, the marks of the curse were slowly fading as he walked, propped up by his slaves. The magical miasma was receding with them.
"Can you still lead the company?"
No one was going to answer 'no' to that question. Dirsam nodded desperately.
"Of course I can lead it, Lord Count. Just leave it to me. I will serve you with my utmost loyalty!"
"Their curse has thrown our schedule badly behind. Lead the company south and join the main force. If you are late, I will not forgive it. Do you understand?"
Johan issued his orders to Dirsam in front of all the other centurions.
It was rare, when dealing with a mercenary captain of a single company, to so nakedly display a hierarchy like this within the company itself.
The custom was for even nobles to show mercenary captains a measure of respect and grant them autonomy when hiring them on.
But Johan had given Dirsam coercive commands before every mercenary's eyes. It felt as though Dirsam were a centurion and Johan the commander of the company.
And yet not a single man voiced complaint. On the contrary, they listened as though Dirsam obeying Johan's orders was only natural.
"......"
Dirsam broke out in a cold sweat at the mercenary camp, transformed beyond all recognition.
What on earth had happened while he lay flat with the curse?
They hadn't merely borrowed his command authority. It felt almost as if the entire company had passed into Johan's grasp.
These bastards have lost their minds...?
With the camp in this mood, there was nothing a mercenary captain could do. The captain's authority was absolute, but running a company, in truth, meant minding the men's tempers.
If they disobeyed or dragged their feet on Count Yeats's orders, a mutiny would erupt on the spot.
"Yes! Lord Count. I will serve you with my name and my honor on the line."
"Good. I will trust you, Dirsam."
Much the same conversation played out in the other camps. The mercenary companies, which had felt like graveyards, rapidly recovered their morale and prepared to march south. For the corsairs, it was a bolt from the blue.
"The mercenaries are on the move. Isn't that a problem?"
"What do they intend, coming down here?"
The corsair chieftains gathered in the Crucho Marquisate scowled.
They knew that several thousand mercenaries were roaming the upper reaches of this southwest. Yet clashes had been surprisingly rare.
It was a kind of unspoken understanding.
The mercenaries had come to plunder, and the corsairs had come to plunder. There was no reason for the two of them to fight each other and bleed strength. Aside from the occasional squabble over treasure, they avoided one another.
And now the mercenaries were coming down. They had no choice but to be wary.
"Weren't the mercenaries supposed to be cursed?"
"It seems they've recovered. They say a brilliant priest broke the curse..."
"Don't talk nonsense. A priest of some solitary god couldn't possibly be that brilliant."
To the corsairs, the sects that worshipped the one God were the true heresy. These men venerated the Twin Faith — the Father God and the Mother God — and the monotheist church seemed beneath their contempt.
But a brilliant priest earned respect instinctively. Even if he was a heretic's priest, there was no helping it.
"No, they say a saint has appeared. They say he performed miracles of healing sickness merely by touching the afflicted."
"What the fuck..."
One corsair chieftain spat a curse as though the whole thing were absurd. But he wasn't the only one saying it. When several of them spoke in unison, the chieftain had no choice but to back down.
"Don't spread the talk of a saint appearing over there."
"The rumor is already everywhere, though..."
"You half-witted bastards. What is there to be so afraid of, a saint of the Widow Goddess!"
"Be quiet. That isn't the matter at hand."
When the young vampire spoke, everyone fell silent. It was a display of the man's authority — even though a nobleman sat right there among them, one from the Kingdom of Zildreed.
Ahir Mulque.
The second son of a prestigious noble house of the Eastern Empire. The Mulque family even held domains on the nearby Ulcana Peninsula, so it was only natural the corsairs treaded carefully around him.
"And if the mercenaries have their eyes on us?"
"Why would the mercenaries come for us, unless they've gone mad? If they were in their right minds..."
"There are any number of reasons, surely. It's not impossible."
Whether driven mad by greed or acting on orders, it was by no means an impossibility. At Ahir's words, the others wore troubled expressions.
It had been all well and good to seize the marquisate in high spirits, but they had failed to take what truly mattered — the Marquis's own castle. Marquis Crucho was holding out with astonishing ability.
Winter was approaching fast, and lingering much longer could tangle the whole affair.
"What if we split our forces in two and intercept them?"
"And leave the Marquis's castle standing behind us?"
"The men holding those walls barely number a handful. Splitting off shouldn't matter. Leave it to me. I'll go tear those feeble mercenaries apart."
"Your Excellency! Disaster!"
"?"
"Th-the enemy reinforcements have arrived before the marquisate!"
Johan's main force had advanced swiftly to the marquisate.
They had lingered in the south without moving for some time, so the corsairs, grown careless, had been struck in their blind spot.
"Well, we've cleared the first hurdle."
Having entered the marquisate, Johan spoke as he inspected his army. In crossing the river at their back, they had burned every boat and smashed the remaining bridges.
As things stood, the corsairs could not flee. They would have to cross the bridges behind the army Johan had brought, or circle all the way around to slip out of the marquisate.
Neither was possible. With an army that size on the move, they could hardly fail to be pursued. The corsairs had no cavalry, and mercenaries were already coming down from the north.
"When the mercenaries come down from the north, the corsairs will be caught in a pincer. My lord! How could those corsair scum ever hope to follow your strategy?"
The vassals fawned desperately, angling for Johan's favor. All the more so in a marquisate. Having led their armies here, they had crossed a river they could never truly return from.
They must make me take the Marquis.
No matter what it takes!
The men who had once been the Marquis's vassals were desperate. They intended to make Johan capture the Marquis by any means necessary. If they failed, their own necks were on the line.
"I must speak to His Lordship and claim the vanguard. We ought to blunt the enemy's edge, shouldn't we!"
"Well said. We must show those heathens a knight's valor!"
Several knights came seeking Johan out. Before a battle began, knights stepping forward to display their prowess was a fairly common occurrence.
To Johan it looked utterly ridiculous, but to the soldiers it was serious business, tied directly to morale.
"His Lordship is out on patrol at the moment."
"?!"
Johan himself was leading his guards closer to the corsair host.
Far in the distance, the Marquis's seat was faintly visible. A castle set against the mountains, built with defense above all else in mind. It looked as though it could indeed hold out a long while.
Near it, the scattered corsair camps came into view. Johan narrowed his eyes and glared.
I should have gotten my hands on a lens and made a spyglass.
But he hadn't, so for now he would simply have to get closer. His guards would fret, but Johan resolved to talk them into coming along.
As it turned out, there was no need.
"...?!"
The moment he stared, the distant corsair host began to draw visibly closer. Without using a spyglass, it felt exactly as if he had one.
Johan's eyesight was hardly poor, but this was like the eyes of an eagle. Bewildered, he blinked.
The power I received at the heathen temple?
The mysterious force flowing through his body was sharpening his vision like a surge of vitality.
The power of health? The power of vigor? I can't begin to tell.
In any case, if the power was lending itself to him, there was no reason not to use it. Johan narrowed his eyes and fixed his gaze on the enemy. Disordered for the most part, though a few camps showed decent discipline. Here and there he could make out banners that looked like the flags of noble houses.
"So there really are noblemen among them."
"...You can see that from here?!"
The guards were startled. Then the priest beside him spoke up.
"God Himself granted you a revelation. Is it any wonder you can see?"
The priests regarded the suppression of the heathen temple as a kind of revelation. With a great battle looming, such an event had seemed only fitting.
"Men approaching from over there!"
From below the hill, the guards spotted riders and raised the alarm, but it proved unnecessary. The party was flying a white flag.
Envoys, come to negotiate.