The Devil Breaks the Line
It was Johan.
"What—who the hell is that?"
"■■■ ■■?"
Even when a band of western knights had thundered into their midst like a bolt from the blue, the warriors had not panicked. Their morale was far too high and their ferocity too great to collapse at a mere ambush. They wheeled their horses around at once and fought back, greeting Johan with a wall of battle-hungry shouts.
Johan advanced, cutting those warriors down.
Only warriors gathered here who would not have shamed their father-gods and mother-gods. The riot of colorful banners that stood out even through the choking dust was proof of just how illustrious the lineages these men hailed from truly were.
Warriors bearing those banners charged at him with couched lances, and a wind thick with killing intent howled. Johan trampled them underfoot and pressed on.
Garhatzi—who that very day had felled three Vinashitim knights and received silk and a necklace from Yeheman—lunged at Johan wielding a spear that gleamed razor-bright. Mobrahim, who had cut down a centurion of the Imperial Guard and captured a small banner, swung his battle axe at him. Igar, once the Sultan's body slave, a man said to have no equal with the blade, drew his longsword and came on as well.
Johan butchered them where they stood and drove forward.
"■■■! ■■ ■■■ ■■■!"
"Reinforcements! That mad ■■■ has broken through!"
When every lance bearing a banner had been snapped like kindling and renowned warriors fell to single blows, the fighters on the other side of the field finally began to grasp what was happening.
"What in the gods' names is going on over there?"
"It appears we've been ambushed from the left, my lord."
"Don't be absurd. They're nothing but one band of raiders. Blind as the Emperor may be where that knight is concerned, surely our men aren't losing to a mere ambush? I'll give you soldiers—go and stop them!"
Yeheman's aide nodded and raced off. Yeheman glowered after him in disgust. However infatuated they were with that Count, to be thrown into disarray by an ambush like this—
This was the center, where the elite had gathered. For them to be shaken by a surprise attack was shameful in itself.
"...!"
Yeheman, who had been waiting on the tide of battle, felt his eyes go wide. He simply could not believe the sight unfolding before him.
The entire front line was collapsing before a single man.
When one broad-shouldered, towering western knight swung his grotesquely oversized warhammer, the warriors around him toppled and rolled like rotten trees coming down. Those who took the blow on their armor were smashed beyond recognition; those who raised their shields had the shields shattered along with the arms behind them.
It did not take long for the eastern knights and warriors who had fought back with courage at first to lose their stomach for the fight and break.
Centered on the point of Johan's charge, the formation crumbled like water bleeding through a breach in a dike.
"A demon has appeared! The heathen dogs of the west have brought a demon with them!"
"O gods! Drive that demon from us!"
As men turned their backs on one another and fled screaming, the front line collapsed faster still. Johan spurred his blood-hungry bicorn on and hunted the enemy down without mercy.
Yeheman felt tears of blood welling up in fury. The proud elite of the center were scattering in every direction like rabid, disease-ridden curs.
Warriors who should have punched through to the Emperor's own camp by now were so battered by the ambush that they could barely keep hold of their own banners.
Then he saw the Emperor's banner falling back. The Imperial Guard was desperately re-forming their lines to pull the Emperor out of danger. Any hope of taking the Emperor was dead in the water.
"Ye—Lord Yeheman."
"Sound the retreat! We fall back to the camp and regroup there!"
True to a knight long steeped in the brutality of the battlefield, Yeheman grasped the situation at once: left alone, this would only carve the wounds deeper.
The pack of horsemen led by that terrifying western knight had torn the formation apart with nightmarish force—but by sheer fortune, their numbers were few.
If they were to retreat, it had to be now. If the Emperor's recovered guard rallied the other soldiers and counterattacked, the losses could be on an entirely different scale.
"Retreat! Retreat, all of you!"
At the shrill blare of horns, the warriors of the center scrambled backward in a panicked rush.
Had they made it as far as the Emperor's tent, they might have dithered out of wounded pride—but not a soul did. They fled, thanking their stars that they might escape the man sweeping the field like a scythe.
The heathen warriors drained away behind them like water at low tide. Terrified that Johan might give chase, they glanced over their shoulders as they urged their horses on, and those on foot threw off armor and weapons alike as they ran.
"What, is it over?"
"The enemy is retreating! My lord—do we pursue?"
"With this many men? Are you joking?"
Izelia couldn't help but be exasperated. The same Johan who had been rampaging like a madman moments ago was talking as if none of it had happened.
Still, she had to admit that charging in again with this few men would be pushing it. Johan aside, everyone else was exhausted to the bone. Even Izelia's warhorse looked thoroughly worn out.
As for merit, he had certainly earned it in abundance just now. She couldn't say exactly how many enemies he had cut down, but she had a feel for it—he had struck the enemy around here a truly solid blow.
She wiped the blood and sweat from Johan's face.
"Ah. Thanks."
"This much I can do anytime."
Johan looked around. On the right, where his own army was posted, there seemed to be no more fighting, and on the left the enemy appeared to be withdrawing as well.
No pursuit, then.
So today's battle ends here?
Johan sensed it instinctively—and his instinct was not wrong.
"A great victory, my lord! A great victory!"
"I wouldn't quite call it that."
"If this doesn't count as a great victory, then every victory ever won will feel worthless! Modesty is a virtue, my lord, but taken too far it embarrasses everyone around you as well."
Jusban, the mercenary commander from the Republic, shouted the words with bandages wound tight around him. Despite his rather serious wounds, he was brimming with joy.
The credit belonged to the victory in battle.
It had been a fight brutal enough to wound the mercenary commander himself. In the center, the Emperor had nearly been taken prisoner; on the left, the enemy's charge had come within a hair of shattering the line entirely.
The enemy had proven far stronger than anyone had anticipated.
And yet, in the end, they had won. The enemy had been the first to withdraw, abandoning their camp before the fortress and falling back in another direction.
Johan himself thought a "great victory" required the capture of the enemy commander-in-chief, but the others didn't see it that way. If you drove the enemy off and won the field, surely that deserved the title?
"I've heard tales of your valor, my lord. They say you came to the relief of the center alone, with a single sword and no escort..."
"That's laying it on rather thick. I charged alongside the other knights and horsemen."
"That alone is more than impressive enough. Without your charge, my lord, the center would have broken."
Jusban downed a gulp of harsh liquor to steady himself.
He had been commanding the left wing and hadn't seen it with his own eyes, but once the fighting ended, he'd heard it from the Imperial Guardsmen and other soldiers who had been in the center.
"We thought we were dead men, surrounded with those heathens swarming us from every side. And then suddenly knights came tearing in from the flank and blew the bastards apart, or something like it. I swear on my life, I saw a halo with my own eyes. A light from the gods flashed behind him."
"I couldn't believe those savage devils were throwing down their weapons and running, so I checked it three or four times myself."
It wasn't only the soldiers' testimony. The enemy's snapped banner-poles and abandoned flags strewn across the ground bore mute witness to how ferocious the fighting had been.
A banner was the symbol of a noble house's honor—something never abandoned even in the most desperate retreat. Better death than the shame of losing one's colors.
And yet the contested ground at the center was carpeted with banners and the corpses of nobles alike.
Johan's charge had smashed them before they could even find room to run.
"It was an honor to fight beside you, my lord. Captain—I'm only now realizing your report contained not a grain of exaggeration."
Jusban raised his thanks to Kiada. He'd received reports on Johan's prowess several times before, but he had never imagined it was on this scale.
Well... I did embellish a little...
Kiada felt a flicker of embarrassment. Since it wasn't as if she'd bear any consequences, she had written him up in flattering terms—Johan had given her plenty to work with—and hearing him marvel like this made her feel a touch sheepish.
"The enemy has withdrawn. Are we pursuing?"
"Hard to say... That's not my call, is it? His Majesty will decide. My own men took no small number of dead and wounded either..."
Jusban scratched at his bandages and hesitated.
Though not as badly as the center, the left wing under his command had suffered heavy losses as well. The enemy's numbers had simply been overwhelming.
They had routed the enemy, but the enemy still had plenty of fight left in them. He had no desire to be the one to assault a fortified camp first.
The inside of the tent was pushed aside, and eunuchs filed out. Behind them the Emperor appeared. Johan and Jusban rose from their seats and offered a brief show of respect.
"You have all fought magnificently. Without every man's devotion, victory could not have been promised. To Count Eitz in particular, I offer my thanks once more."
For the Emperor to single a man out like this went well beyond a routine word of thanks—yet no one present found it strange. Given what they had witnessed of Johan's exploits, it was, if anything, remarkably restrained praise.
"Do you intend to press the attack, Your Majesty?"
"The soldiers are exhausted and wounded. I have no wish to strain them into blunders. And..."
His chamberlain was inside the fortress, and he had no desire to take such a risk on his account. But the Emperor swallowed the rest of the sentence. There was no need to bare his hand in front of others just yet.
"And?"
"An envoy has come from the enemy. They say they will pay tribute in gold if we let them withdraw."
Jusban's face brightened. As the Republic's representative, he had no intention of fighting the heathens to the death. The Republic traded with the Eastern Empire's merchants as a matter of course, after all.
If the fighting stayed confined to this region, he was more than willing to look the other way.
"What will you do, Your Majesty?"
"I would hear both of your opinions."
"I am in favor, Your Majesty. The enemy still has ample numbers. Attacking them where they've dug in is dangerous—and if they march off to plunder elsewhere, how would we answer for the damage? By accepting their offer, which lets them save face, we show mercy and majesty both."
The moment Jusban finished, Johan raised his hand. The Emperor nodded for him to speak.
"Might this not be a trap they've laid?"
"I doubt they'd stoop to something so dishonorable..."
But Johan was a man who cared nothing for honor or any of the rest of it—suspicion first, questions later.
"Just in case, I'd suggest we keep watch on them until they've actually gone."
"If that is your wish, so be it."
The Emperor granted Johan's request with surprising readiness—even though it would require not only Johan's own troops but the Emperor's men and the Republic's mercenaries to shoulder the duty as well.
What's this? He's more agreeable than I expected.
Johan assumed the Emperor was repaying the favor of having come to the center's rescue. If so, a gesture like this was fair return.
But the Emperor was not acting out of simple goodwill. He rated Johan far higher than Johan imagined—and it was because of the previous day's battle.
Gods above!
Gaiaros had witnessed Johan's charge with his own eyes, however distant. The shock of it had yet to fade.
A lightning strike into ground saturated with enemies on every side!
Once that charge had ended, the Emperor realized the mercenary commander's account had, if anything, been an understatement.
After a battle like that, anything Johan said carried a weight no one could question. Had Johan argued for pressing the fight hard, the Emperor would have followed his counsel in earnest.
If the Count is warning of a trap, there may well be something to it. I should order the watch doubled.
"Nothing further to propose?"
"Not particularly...?"
The Emperor's question sat a little uneasily with Johan. The Emperor was the nominal commander-in-chief, and the Republic's mercenary general was sitting right there—why did he keep turning to Johan?
He isn't planning to push us to the front on the grounds that the soldiers are fine and dandy... is he?