The Wrong Man for the Job
Whether one loved mages or hated them, one thing was certain: if you were going to borrow a wizard's power, it was better to borrow it from a good one.
Had Johan or Zanniaga heard this, they would have countered that magic was hardly the cure-all people believed it to be. But to the nobility, magic was closer to a fairy godmother — a creature that granted whatever wish happened to be convenient at the moment.
"...I look forward to your guidance."
"I pledge you my loyalty."
The viscount kept his word. Before the agreed deadline had even run its course, envoys arrived bearing the first tribute payment, and the viscount's second and third sons faced Johan with expressions that mingled fear and awe in equal measure.
Their attitude is better than I expected.
Frankly, Johan had anticipated something laced with more disgust — more hatred. No matter how lofty his reputation or how generous the terms of the negotiation, he was still, at the end of the day, the invader. No one could serve in the court of the man who had just toppled their father without some turbulence of feeling.
And yet the viscount's children showed remarkably little of it.
Part of it was their fine noble upbringing, and part of it was that they understood exactly what their situation was. They were not fools enough to bare their emotions freely in circumstances like these.
Beyond that, serving in Johan's court wasn't really the worst fate a young man could suffer. A boy destined for the clergy would leave for a university city or a diocese; one with merchant ambitions would head for a city with trade houses; and a knight's son would naturally depart for his lord's court. It was the way of things.
Come to think of it, I should be taking in the young knights of my vassal families too.
The shock of the count's fall had settled, the oaths of fealty had been sworn — it was time for custom to resume its slow rotation.
Among the vassals who had sworn loyalty to Johan, those raising sons to become knights hoped above all to send them to serve under Johan himself, to learn at his side. This, too, was a kind of opportunity.
Raising a single knight was no cheap undertaking. For a poor knight's son, wandering and learning whatever a lone hedge knight deigned to teach, serving in a noble's court alongside the scions of other knightly families was a prize beyond measure.
There they would learn from master instructors everything a knight required — the sword, the bow, horsemanship, the hunt, the game of chess — and beyond that, the scholar's arts as well: tactics, theology, law.
And best of all was the chance to build connections. Not merely to put faces to names among their fellow knights, but to forge a bond with their lord. That was the true prize.
To poor knights, a lord's favor mattered more than anything else. It was the lord who held the accolade ceremony, who gifted them their arms and equipment, who set them on the road to a prosperous new life as knights.
Johan, who had never received even a single such introduction, knew exactly how long a road one had to walk without it.
Strange, to be on the giving end of it now.
Such arrangements were costly, of course, but not a loss for Johan. In the long run, they paid for themselves many times over.
Each family's sons were a kind of hostage, and at the same time, while they trained beneath the court's roof, their loyalty to their lord took root and deepened. Sweat and blood spilled far from home as a boy had a way of making devotion to one's lord grow stronger than affection for one's own kin.
Given how such men were raised, it was little wonder parents and children so often found themselves swinging swords at one another over a piece of land.
"We march along the eastern coast, then turn toward the County of Culia. The spoils are plentiful, so keep your eyes on your movements."
"Yes, sir!"
The mercenaries roared their assent. These were men who had worked their way from the duchy all the way up to the Emperor's own demesne, lining their purses at every stop. With their employer recovered from his wounds, their morale could not have been higher.
Kiada had finished readying the Republic's fleet alongside the other captains, and as the vanguard set out in sequence, Johan waited at the very rear of the column.
It was then that he spotted a body of horsemen moving in the far distance.
"What is that?"
"?"
The mercenaries beside him lacked Johan's eyesight. They tilted their heads, baffled by what he meant. Johan turned and asked the viscount's kin who were riding with him.
"You don't see them?"
"F-forgive me, my lord. I don't understand what you mean."
The viscount's second son wore an expression of profound apology, convinced that Johan was testing him.
Johan wasn't testing anyone, though. He was simply puzzled. Nearly a hundred riders were approaching the viscount's castle from the west, and that struck him as odd.
Newly hired mercenaries? Unlikely. The man's already bleeding coin — I doubt he'd be hiring more.
The viscount had been felled, then forced to cough up a staggering indemnity after the rampage of some mad knight. He would need to breathe quietly and tighten his belt for some time to come. Calling in expensive mercenaries on top of that made no sense at all.
"Could they be coming to attack you, my lord?"
Ever since the crossbow ambush, the bodyguards had developed something of a persecution complex. Given that their lord had taken a bolt while they'd trusted and relaxed around the man beside him, it was only natural.
"A hundred riders, and they're attacking here?"
"...I... I suppose not."
Counting the fleet along the coast, they could muster a force numbering in the thousands. No one but a lunatic would throw a mere hundred cavalry at that — scattered as they were by the current march, one signal could still bring them all back together.
Are they heading for the castle?
Judging by their trajectory, the riders' destination was the viscount's castle. Johan found himself wondering why the sight nagged at him so. He'd gotten everything he wanted; even if these riders harbored some suspicious intent, a surprise attack was utterly impossible, and he could withdraw in perfect comfort...
Ah.
Johan understood. He knew why it bothered him.
Wasn't this exactly the situation with the Aitz family lands all over again?
To be sure, the viscount and Sir Gesen were entirely different men. But the circumstances undeniably shared a shape.
No... wait. Am I being paranoid?
The conclusion his instinct had handed him was unsettling enough that Johan dove back into thought. Did the Emperor have any reason to kill the viscount, as he had killed Sir Gesen?
The viscount had remained loyal to the Emperor through all of this, had never betrayed him to the very end. Even while bleeding money, he had kept shipping gold to the Empire. If his loyalty had been the slightest bit thinner, he would have simply come under Johan's banner.
However much of a deranged tyrant the Emperor might be, he had no cause to kill this man. Gesen had been different.
...Ah. Damn it.
Johan clicked his tongue. One variable had changed.
The viscount had sworn peace with Johan — and handed over his own kin as hostages!
From the viscount's standpoint, that had been a concession wrung out of him with every desperate fiber of his being. But there was no telling how it would look to the other side. It could very easily read as treason.
And if the Emperor is sending one of his men for a job like this, he'll be some filthy, greedy wretch of a creature.
And wouldn't a creature like that manufacture treason where none existed?
"The Count's army has passed through, sir."
"Fucking hell. Good thing we didn't run into them, then."
"Quite right, si—"
Crack!
The man backhanded his subordinate across the jaw with a gauntleted fist. The subordinate stared up at him, stunned.
"Baron, you little shit!"
"F-forgive me, Baron Gartner!"
Son of a bitch... and the man's ex-mercenary himself.
Baron Gartner was a warrior risen from the mercenary trade — first to a knighthood, then to a barony. That an illiterate man of base birth had been granted a baron's title was proof enough of how much blood his hands had waded through.
A savage brute of a sellsword, yes — but he paid his loyalty to the Emperor in full and on time. Even a hound has to recognize its master if it wants a long life. That dependability was precisely why he'd been handed this mission.
The Baron had received two orders.
The first was to verify the viscount's loyalty.
The turmoil in the southern peninsula had reached the Emperor's ears, and rumors — naturally — had spread along with it. The viscount had held his ground stubbornly, but the Emperor had begun to wonder whether the man might turn traitor after all.
Go and confirm the viscount's loyalty.
Coming from the Emperor, that much was practically special treatment. Had it been anyone but the viscount, Gartner would have been told to move without any such confirmation.
And the second order...
If the viscount was wavering, arrest him along with his kin and ship them all up to the Empire — a precaution against betrayal of any kind.
Fine. That much, a reasonable man could understand. The mistake lay in the choice of man. Picking someone who couldn't be swayed by a viscount's connections or silver tongue was all well and good — but surely you'd want, at the very minimum, someone willing and able to hold a conversation.
Baron Gartner had no such intentions whatsoever. His eyes and hands trembled with greed. Guilty or not, he fully intended to make the man guilty.
Once the viscount gets dragged away, I rule these lands in his place!
The Emperor, of course, had granted no such authority to a hound. But there was no one around to explain that to Baron Gartner, and so he nursed his pipe dream alone.
"And what the fuck, being scared of the Count's army? What are you, some sniveling coward?"
"Forgive me, my lord."
"Forget it. Get out there and scrape up some rumors! I want to hear what the Count did on his way through!"
Gartner was violent, but no fool. He had not the slightest intention of fighting Johan's army.
The numbers were bad enough, but the rumors were what truly curdled his blood. Only a fool believed every rumor — but no sellsword alive made the mistake of dismissing them either.
If even half of what he'd heard was true, the Count was a monster nobody in his right mind wanted to face.
In front of others, Gartner roared that he'd gut Johan the moment they met. Privately, he thought the exact opposite. Why in all the hells would anyone volunteer for a suicide mission like that?
"By the way, my lord."
"What?"
"If you really do end up ruling this place, we get a cut too, right?"
"You dare question my word, you cur?"
"N-no, my lord, it's not that. It's just, well... if the viscount's arrested, there's his sons, and..."
"Arrest them too!"
"And what if they get released after we ship them off?"
"!"
Remarkably, the subordinate had put his finger on the flaw. The Baron faltered.
"I see..."
"Oh — don't worry about a share for me, my lord. Just make sure this much is padded out nice and thick and I'll..."
"Shut your trap? Am I supposed to get nothing?"
"Th-that's not what I meant..."
Gartner nodded along, again and again, a new thought dawning in the wake of his man's words.
Then why not simply kill them all?
"My lord! My lord! My lord! Disaster! The Count's army — they say it's coming this way!"
"What the fuck?! Don't tell me some idiot's been blabbing about where we came from? Or waving flags around..."
With most of the south fallen, caution was required even on the Emperor's own territory.
Gartner and his men had procured entirely new banners, and forged travel permits as well — ones issued not by anyone connected to the Emperor, but by an unrelated noble. Inside the viscount's territory they'd be safe, but outside it, the risk was real.
But secrets leak through the smallest of holes, and if word spread because of one careless bastard...
"Ah. My apologies, my lord. It was a false alarm, apparently. They left long ago!"
"...Hang that son of a bitch. Now."
"F-forgive me, sir! One chance, I beg you!"
Gartner flapped his hand as if he had no further need of the man's voice. For the crime of speaking without thinking, the mercenary swung from a gallows by nightfall.
"My lord... Count. Is something the matter...?"
The viscount's second and third sons wore expressions of utter incomprehension. Johan had abruptly halted his army, handpicked only a small elite, and started moving in disguise. Naturally, the two of them — who knew the viscount's territory best — had been included, and now a thousand suspicions were crowding their minds.
"There's no problem. I simply need your help, the two of you."
"D-don't tell me..."
"?"
"Don't tell me... you intend to attack the castle??"
"...Do I look like I'd assault a castle with this many men?"
Johan shot back with an air of disbelief. A few dozen men at most — and disguised at that, without a single proper siege engine among them. If a force like this could take a castle, they wouldn't be human.
"But, my lord, you captured a castle single-handedly."
The mercenaries had to bite their lips bloody to keep from bursting out laughing. Johan had been demolished, utterly and completely.
"...That's a rumor. Aren't you ashamed, as knights, to believe gossip like that?"
"Ah. Is — is that so? Forgive us, my lord. My brother and I are still young... Then may we ask exactly what is happening? We're curious."
"What's the quiet way into a castle?"
Johan smoothly changed the subject.