The Seal Reclaimer
Those aren't the Aquitaine Wolves! Johan knew it the moment he laid eyes on them. Their kit was nothing like the men from the fief — for one thing, not a single one of them carried a longsword.
Several of the Aquitaine Wolves had fought with longswords, which said a great deal about their caliber. The mercenaries before him now, however he looked at them, were not the Wolves of Aquitaine.
Not that that gave him any reason to stop.
Johan hurled himself at the nearest man. Whether it was the darkness all around or the way every eye was fixed on the hilltop, the fellow never noticed him until Johan was already upon him.
"Wh-whuh?!"
The man hardened his grip on the shield he carried and braced to receive the blow. A large round shield had that much virtue: held up at all, it covered the direction of an enemy's attack.
...If the enemy had been anyone other than Johan, that is.
Johan answered simply, and effectively.
CRUNCH!
He kicked the shield as though shoving a door — and the thing split and flew backward off the man's arm. Thick, sturdy timber, layered and reinforced, but before monstrous strength it might as well have been paper.
"Huh?"
Johan was, briefly, genuinely startled; he hadn't expected the shield to fly quite like that. His body, though, moved on without him — a thrust, aimed at the throat of a man whose stance had collapsed. A choked gurgle, and blood sprayed.
"What the hell is this bastard?!"
The fallen man had been carrying a messer, a thick single-edged blade. It was rusted and its edge was barely an edge at all, but it would serve well enough for throwing. Johan snatched it up and hurled it at the man charging in ahead of the rest, who shrieked in alarm and threw up his shield.
One step.
Johan used his footwork to close the distance — not Kaegal's secret art, just an ordinary advancing step. Simple as it was, married to Johan's strength it became something dreadful. The man panicked and swung his mace; Johan slid his blade in, nudged the weapon off its line, and sheared the man's hand away. Then one blow into the opening it left. A single strike, and the man's body came apart.
…?
Something felt wrong. The longsword was cutting far too well.
Not that the blade had been left dull — Johan kept a moderate edge precisely because a razor finish chipped easily. Sharp enough to cut a man down, certainly. But nowhere near enough to split one open like butter.
I did think it a fine blade, since Karamap carried it…
As the dim firelight touched the steel, the ink-black blade seemed to drink in the blood — and then writing surfaced along it. The Ancient Imperial Language, glowing blood-red:
"I am the one who reclaims the seal."
The Seal Reclaimer?
A fitting sword for Karamap, who broke noble houses and carried off the seal rings that were the very emblem of their bloodlines. Johan clicked his tongue. He'd known it was a masterwork — but this somehow made it more awkward to carry than ever.
Johan scooped up the dead man's shield and mace instead. Two of their number had gone down in the space of a breath, and the rest were surging in to kill him.
THWACK!
An arrow, loosed from far off. He caught it on the shield without so much as a blink. The dark hid everything, but he could read it by feel well enough.
"Nobody said there'd be a bastard like that!"
…?
And with those words, Johan was certain.
These bastards didn't come here for me at all!
Damn it. All that fighting for nothing. If anything, he was the one who'd jumped them. Well, naturally — no one in that situation would have gone out of his way to come hunting for Johan.
Not that either side could exactly make peace over it now. And Johan had never been kind enough to overlook men who came at him with murder in their eyes.
"Come at me!"
He let out a short shout and charged. Firelight washed over him, and his gear showed itself at last. The mercenaries flinched at the sheer size of him and the steel he wore.
The spearman was the first to die. Reach weapons were always a nuisance. Johan simply charged in, caught the thrust on his shield and slid it aside, and swung the mace.
CRACK!
Huh… blunt weapons might actually suit me better.
Had Kaegal seen it, he'd have torn his hair — I taught you the sword, not the cudgel, you ogre bastard. But Johan and the mace got along to an almost indecent degree. Short reach, few variations, easy to manage — and with a body like Johan's, there had never been much need to coax subtleties out of a blade.
"You monster bastard!"
A shortsword came whipping in at his waist, but Johan closed the distance first and smothered the blow with his own body. The man's arm snapped, and his head came bobbing forward, nicely positioned for hitting.
Once more.
A dull thud, and the man dropped. A raving madman had charged into their line and torn it open, and the enemy's nerve broke. Only four lay dead — but the momentum was terrifying. No mercenary alive does his work prepared to die for it.
"Charge!"
Gowan snapped the order out fast. You struck when the enemy shrank back like that. His men came on with a roar.
Even concentrating on nothing but encircling Johan would have been a struggle for them, and with the fight collapsing this way, it only got easier. He drew a short breath and drove forward, turning one arrow on his shield — a weak draw, by the feel of it, hardly worth the name.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Johan rolled in from the flank, mace swinging, and three men went down spraying blood. Even blows to the body, short of the head, meant grave wounds. Johan smiled with satisfaction. Decent work, for a weapon scraped up off the road.
With more than half of them down, the survivors began to run without anyone waiting on anyone else. No orders were being given anymore, and Johan found that curious.
Did I kill their captain? Come to think of it, the shortsword man among the ones he'd dropped had rather looked the part…
He sprinted after the rearmost runner and hacked his legs out from under him. No need to catch them all. He only needed enough to hear what they had to say.
Two or three should do. Better than one, in any case. Johan broke the fallen man's leg — this was the one who'd kept loosing arrows at him, so he broke it with a little extra attention to the pain.
"KRAAAAAGH!"
With Johan behind them, the mercenaries scattered in mindless terror, throwing away even their weapons. The mere thought of that thing on their heels turned their spines to ice.
WHUMP!
Even so, he managed to snag one more. As the man whipped out a dagger and lunged, Johan laid one blow into each cheek.
"You dog…"
The fellow had some real venom in him, snarling away even now. Johan broke one arm so he couldn't try anything clever — and since the man's eyes still looked a little too alive, he broke the other one too. Only then did the man scream:
"Ahh — ahhh, m'lord! I done wrong! I done wrong!"
"Oh? So you can recognize wrongdoing after all?"
"Yes! Yes! I feel it to the bone!"
There was something uniquely terrifying in it. Where other men would have spat curses and thrashed and carried on, this one broke arms one at a time, expressionless — and that was damnably more frightening than any screaming.
They never said there'd be a monster like this… sons of bitches!
"You bastard! How dare you raise a hand against us!"
Enraged, Gamson moved to hammer the fallen man, but Gowan held him back.
"Why are you stopping me?!"
"He isn't your catch, is he? Whelp."
"We can just kill the man who attacked us, can't we?!"
"Then go right ahead. I won't stop you."
While they were at it, Johan came back. He looked at Gamson and asked:
"What's going on here?"
"Uh… no. Nothing at all."
Gamson mumbled and backed away. Face to face with Johan soaked in blood, whatever speech he'd prepared shrank straight back down his throat — especially with one of Johan's hands gripping the head of a mercenary whose limbs were still twitching and jerking.
"Good work, all of you."
"Not at all! It's thanks to you, Sir Johan, that we're still breathing. Thank you — truly!"
Gowan bowed with perfect courtesy, and meant every word of it. He'd had his small doubts about a wandering knight's skill, but what he'd just witnessed had swept them away without a trace. So this was what a knight was. The sight of the man charging in without even his full armor and butchering five or six men in the blink of an eye still made his skin crawl.
"And what do you intend to do with this one?"
"Couldn't you take him into the city and sell him as a slave? We're bound that way regardless…"
"Not a bad thought, but I've questions to ask first. I want to know who put this one up to it."
"Huh? He's just a bandit, sir."
"Bandits can take commissions too."
Johan called for Eldans. The Cat Beastfolk, who'd been hiding between the wagons shaking like a leaf, poked his head out.
"I-is it over? Is it all over?"
"It's over. You can come out now."
Eldans emerged with a long sigh. He hadn't the faintest idea what all this ruckus was about.
"They do say careless talk invites disaster… but bandits, of all things…"
…?
Johan studied Eldans's face. He didn't appear to be lying.
They certainly hadn't come for Johan. And no one would hire cutthroats like these to go after a band of bodyguards as unremarkable as Gowan's men. Which left—
Doesn't that make it the merchant and nobody else?
"Oh. You caught two of them?"
"Sir Johan took them himself."
"Then sell them off as slaves. Filth like this — turning to banditry! There's a god's curse waiting for the likes of them."
"Before that, let's hear what these men have to say."
Johan rested the mace across his shoulder.
"Who sent you?"
"W-we don't know anything!"
CRACK!
The mace came around before the words had finished leaving the man's mouth. The already broken knee simply burst apart.
"KUAAAAAAAAAGH!"
"Did you think I took you alive to hear that you know nothing? Squeeze it out! The answer I want — squeeze it out of yourself!"
The watching mercenaries swallowed hard. The man looked barely twenty, and yet there wasn't a single gap in him — it was almost beyond belief. You couldn't help wondering what house had trained him.
"Live as a cripple for the rest of your days, or give me my answer. Now — one! Two!"
"I-it was the captain who took the job! He said all we had to do was hit that merchant! So—! That's all it was!"
The prisoner blurted it out in a scramble, and every head turned toward Eldans.
"Master Eldans. What is the meaning of this? You said nothing of any such thing."
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about!"
"Don't tell me you were pinching pennies on guards…"
"If I thought someone was after me, I'd have hired twice the men — would I gamble with my own neck to save a little coin?!"
Eldans protested with the air of a man sorely tried. Gowan's face twisted, but he found himself convinced.
"I understand."
The wages Eldans had put on the table were nothing to scoff at: three imperial coppers a day, and one imperial silver for every battle joined. At twelve coppers to the silver, that was fair money for caravan escort work. Eldans was no fool who would shortchange the matter of his own neck.
If he had known for certain that someone was after him, he would have hired more mercenaries without question. A seasoned merchant does not gamble his life away to save a few coins.