An Arrow From Nowhere
In his eyes, it had been magic, plain and simple.
Godefroi was a knight with his honor and face to think of, so he never actually claimed to his opponent that sorcery had been involved in his defeat.
That would have been far too humiliating.
But Godefroi's squire had accumulated precious little of that kind of face worth protecting. He thought to himself, quietly:
It was magic, I'm sure of it. I have to find out.
Had Godefroi known, he'd have whipped the boy for such nonsense, but the squire kept the thought locked inside where no one could see it. As a result, Godefroi never caught wind of it.
I will uncover the magic, offer its secret up, and win my lord's praise!
Even a fool stumbles onto the truth now and then. The squire spent his days prowling the edges of Johan's camp, digging and probing for whatever he could find. Since no fighting had broken out yet, the mood toward outsiders was not particularly hostile.
"Excuse me, but is there anyone here who can work magic?"
"What magic? Ah, well, the Count works miracles. You know how all those sick men got back on their feet? That's a fine story, that is—"
"No, not that. I mean like a bow strung with mystic enchantment, or an arrow that strikes the mark true every time."
"Hahahaha! Look at this lad! Where'd you crawl out from, talking like that?"
"?"
The mercenaries roared with laughter at the squire. It was the sort of talk only a country bumpkin would spout.
Young serfs who had spent their whole lives in sleepy villages often nursed strange fancies like these—weapons and magic straight out of myth and legend.
But once they clutched their few coins and made their way to the city, they learned better. Such things belonged in stories, and nowhere else.
Anyone who seriously went hunting for them was a lunatic, pure and simple.
"Easy on the laughter, now. We've traipsed all over half the world ourselves, so it's no great stretch to think someone might be sitting on treasures like that."
"Fair enough. The spoils from the White Kingdom were something else."
Every mercenary here had followed Johan around and grown fat in the purse for it. The exotic plunder taken from the White Kingdom fetched several times its price on the peninsula.
And such treasures naturally dragged rumors in their wake. The mercenaries themselves enjoyed spreading the exaggerated tales, which only helped them along.
"Listen, kid. I don't know if you're here to bet on archery or take up mercenary work with a bow, but there's only one way to hit a target properly. Practice."
"Kwahahahaha!"
Mocked from every side, the squire's face burned red. He desperately wanted to name the knight whose service he was attached to, but he wasn't quite stupid enough for that. He retreated, puffing himself up as best he could.
"That dim, is he? He won't last long as a mercenary."
"Who'd even take him on?"
Still, the squire did not give up. If anything, this only hardened his stubbornness. He asked and listened and poked around, and at last he heard something worth chewing on.
"Come to think of it, wasn't there a mage?"
"!"
The squire froze, then lit up with excitement.
"Wh-who? Where can I see them?"
"Ahem. My hand's feeling a bit empty."
"...Here you are."
The squire cursed inwardly as he handed over his coins. The mercenary grinned.
"This is something I heard from the slaves who tend to us, but apparently there's a rather impressive mage about. What was the name again? Janinara, was it?"
"Did that mage offer magic to the Count?"
"What? Hmm. I wouldn't know myself, but if there was magic to use, wouldn't he have used it?"
The mercenary thought back to the monster hunts. He didn't know much, but a mage would surely have enchanted something useful, wouldn't he?
"That's all I needed. Thank you!"
Straining to commit every scrap of the information to memory, the squire hurried out of the camp.
"His Excellency Johan of House Yeats is victorious!"
After the archery came the joust and the melee on foot. Johan fought every bout himself, fielding no champion.
The knights who had come at him aggressively at first wore looks of exhausted resignation once Johan claimed victory in all seven duels.
They had heard he was a fine knight. They simply hadn't imagined it was on this level.
"Splendid work, my lord. Their faces have gone white as corpses."
Johan removed his helm. Slaves came bearing water and washed the dust and sweat from his face.
"Is there no one else coming?"
"No, my lord. It's gone very quiet. You've won all this—are you not pleased?"
"Tired would be closer to it than pleased."
He accepted every challenge because they kept coming, but Johan himself felt nothing much about it. Even the cheers erupting from all directions didn't move him.
Staying aware of everyone around him, observing every courtesy, holding back his strength so as not to kill an opponent, and felling them just enough—this was harder work than any real battle.
I don't have to keep doing this nonsense, do I?
There was something to be gained, so he kept at it, but he was growing weary of it. He wanted to seize the Viscount and get to the real business as soon as possible.
"You may be the only man alive who says that after a victory, my lord."
Outside, a trumpet sounded three times. And after that, no herald's cry rang out. No new knight came forward to challenge him.
"Finally over."
Johan breathed a sigh of relief. But it was far too early to relax. The negotiation was only now beginning.
Should I have simply attacked?
Johan fell into serious thought.
What if he'd just led the mercenaries in a night raid, seized the Viscount before he could flee, and rounded up the rest of his retainers? Wouldn't the people inside that castle simply surrender?
Of course, it was a nonsense idea. To commit such graceless treachery in the middle of being hosted as an honored guest would drop the reputation Johan had worked so hard to build straight into the gutter.
But this negotiating process was...
Too long, too slow, too convoluted, and maddening to the bone. And what was even more absurd was that nobody else seemed to find the procedure strange at all.
Giada, the Republic's captain, reacted as if to say, 'You came as a guest—surely this much is only proper?'
By day, Johan made the rounds, lending his presence to gatherings of every rank of person assembled there, and enjoyed the banquets they had prepared. Hunts, contests, plays, songs—an endless parade of entertainments came free of charge.
Evening meant eating and drinking again. This was an occasion for honoring a Count, so luxury befitting one was required. The wine they'd laid in could have filled a river.
And all the while, the subject of negotiation could not be raised. He was being received as a guest!
Only after enduring all of this did the talks finally begin.
"Swearing friendship is all well and good. Our Republic has no objection to that. But has Kardilian not broken his promises again and again?"
"Mind your words, sir! To insult our lord is to insult every one of us!"
"If merely stating what happened is an insult, then whose fault is that?"
True to his station as the Republic's captain, Giada drove the Viscount's retainers into a corner. In the present circumstances, the advantage lay entirely with the Viscount's side—
Wait. No. It didn't. No faction nearby would come to their aid, while Johan's camp was at the very height of its prestige.
They needed time. Even the retainers most loyal to the Emperor did not outright refuse a peace with Johan.
The problem was that Johan's side had no reason to accept it. If they were to make peace, they would have to extract something for it.
"Then what is it you propose?"
"Send a relative of high standing from among your lord's kin as a hostage. Only then would we have reason to trust you."
"!"
"And at the same time, make a donation in atonement for the blasphemies committed against the Church thus far."
The retainers' faces hardened to stone. Of course they hadn't expected the other side to simply roll over, but this came out harder than they had anticipated.
Send a highly ranked kinsman of the Viscount as a hostage, and pay a donation for everything done to the Church. Neither was a condition they could swallow easily.
"Th-that is a demand far beyond reason."
"He's right! Hand over the Viscount's own blood as a hostage? Is that not madness?"
"Then let us call off this peace agreement entirely! Neither of us stands to lose much, it seems!"
Giada played his bluff boldly. One can always shout loudest from the advantageous side of the table.
The retainers sweated through their clothes and pleaded for time to deliberate. The demands were so outrageous that they needed space to confer.
"Do you think they'll accept?"
"They cannot refuse outright, but I expect they'll swallow a good portion of it. How far are you prepared to concede, my lord?"
Giada asked, counting off on his fingers.
"They may send a relative of lower standing, and I will allow them to shave the amount of the donation. That much I can accept."
That is, the donation was nominally paid to the Church, but in practice it would be split between Johan and the Church.
Knowing the Viscount's finances were desperate at present, the money would not come all at once—it would arrive steadily, parceled out over several years.
Giada was honestly startled by Johan's cool-headedness. It was far too composed for a young Count whose name was on every tongue in the region.
His cousin the Bishop, or any of the other knights, would never have accepted such a compromise.
The position was favorable; they'd have demanded everything.
But Johan was showing restraint at this critical juncture. A virtue not easily found.
"Do you not feel the sting of greed, my lord? They must look to you like a thorn in your eye."
"Carquilano here is a fine place to defend and a poor place to march out of, so it poses little threat to me. If they hand over kin as hostages and swear not to attack, I can turn a blind eye."
Taking this territory for himself, or winning the Viscount's fealty outright, would have been preferable—but the world never arranges itself exactly as one wishes. Johan was prepared to compromise.
The Emperor still lives within the Empire, and the situation around the peninsula remains unstable. I cannot drag things out for years over a single castle like this.
A siege gone wrong could swallow whole years. For Johan, whose territory had only just taken shape, such waste was not permitted.
"You are truly wise, my lord."
Though he said nothing to Giada, Johan had one more thing he was counting on.
Once the Viscount made peace with Johan, would the Emperor really sit still?
To be sure, there was personal friendship between them, so the Emperor might understand.
But the Viscount was old.
After the Viscount died and his heirs took his seat, would the Emperor still trust them?
This hosting and this negotiation were, in a sense, a process of planting seeds. The fruit wouldn't show now—but those seeds would sprout in time.
What he couldn't seize today, he could later—
"!"
Thwip!
Johan, walking along lost in thought, sensed something streaking toward him and snatched it out of the air with his hand.
Frrrt—
A well-made arrow sat clamped tight in his grip.
"...?!"
"!"
It happened so suddenly that even the soldiers guarding Johan failed to react. They hadn't yet realized what had come flying at their employer.
"...Get down, my lord! Get down!"
In the midst of the confusion, Giada worked out a remarkable ploy. The moment Johan heard the whisper, he grasped its meaning at once.
"Ugh!"
Johan doubled over, feigning that the arrow had struck him. The mercenaries belatedly began to scream. Giada bellowed.
"The Count has been struck! His Excellency has taken an arrow!"
"My lord! My lord!"
"I wasn't hit, so calm yourselves."
The guards, mid-panic, faltered. Johan's voice sounded entirely unharmed.
Huh?
"What are you doing?! Scream, my lord!"
"Ah. Right. Sorry about that. Screaming now."
"U-ueheheh! Ueheheh! Uheheh!"
"Carry His Excellency somewhere safe!"
The days were growing short and darkness was falling fast, but in an instant torches blazed to life on every side. The mercenaries had been bellowing that ferociously.
"Make way! Out of the way! The Count has fallen!"
Alarm swept through the Viscount's camp.
The Viscount, slowed by age and unable to dash about the way Johan did, had been resting his worn-out body inside the castle. The customs of hospitality exhausted the host every bit as much as the guest.
Yet even he shot upright with a cry the moment he heard the news.
"What nonsense is this you're telling me?!"
"C-could it not be a lie?"
"S-several slaves who were present confirmed the report! An arrow truly did come flying."
The faces of the retainers had gone blue to the point where they could not possibly grow paler. If an arrow had truly been loosed at the Count...
The only ones who could have shot it were nobles on the Viscount's own side. No outsider could set foot where the Count passed. Only the nobility beneath the Viscount could have managed it.
"What madman—!"
"We must find him and kill him!"
"This is no time for that! How are the Count's soldiers reacting?!"
A loyal army is several times more terrifying when it goes berserk. Mercenaries who had just heard that their employer had caught an arrow would be in a towering, murderous rage.