The Wrong Room
So this was what it felt like — the lie you told coming back around to bind you. Gamson hemmed and hawed, dragging things out, and the longer he thought about it, the more the whole scheme seemed to slip through his fingers.
The mood in the mercenary band was rotten anyway. What Gamson didn't know was that Gowan fully intended to punish him the moment they returned to the city; mercenaries weren't soft enough to let an insolent upstart keep climbing over their heads. He didn't actually believe it would come to punishment, but even he had caught the chill in the air. He'd spent the whole trip being treated like a greenhorn, and then gone and brawled with Kahn on top of it.
Maybe it was better to grab a share and vanish.
That sword did look good. He fought that well, after all. And a knight's bound to be sitting on a fat pile of savings.
Steal everything worth taking and run — how would some two-copper wandering knight ever chase them down? The Eitz family wasn't even from anywhere near here.
While Gamson sat on his hands, the village men had already hashed out a plan.
"Simple. We grab our things, steal the knight's sword, and we're gone."
"Hold on — what if he takes it out on our families? What if he comes after us?"
"Come after us? With the vigilance committee around? At worst he'll curse us out and try to pin it all on us. What's he even going to do about it? He might chase us, though, so we ride out on horseback."
"The knight's got a horse too, I heard. Steal that and ride it."
"Perfect! This big brother will lend you a hand."
Gamson, who had been weighing his options, finally made up his mind. The other youths cheered.
"That knight'll have a fat purse on him too. We take that as well. So — who's the lightest on his feet around here?"
The plan was simple. After sundown, Bullneun — the lightest and quickest-fingered of them — would act all friendly, stroll into the inn, and head straight for the knight's room. There he would open the door, slip inside, and carry out everything that could be carried, sword included. Then he'd link up with the others waiting at the stable, and out of the village they'd go. The other two, Pel and Pra, had apparently scrounged up a horse from somewhere, and they were practically preening with confidence.
"Two horses, four of us — two to a horse, and we're gone. We sell everything off in the city and split the take."
"Gamson's our captain now. Right, Gamson? We're counting on you."
"Hahahaha! Just put your faith in me. Mercenary work's no walk in the park, but I'll teach you everything I know."
Gamson said it with a laugh. Once they reached the city and the right moment came, he could toss these three fools aside like old rags.
This bastard's really getting on my nerves.
Hold it in. We need him until we reach the city.
Bullneun, who had a somewhat functional brain, shut the other two up with a look. He had no experience, but he was quick-witted enough. Boys who didn't know the roads and had never laid eyes on a city couldn't just strike out blind — even an unpleasant piece of work like Gamson was better than no guide at all.
"Wait here. I'm the one going in."
"Be careful. If the knight wakes up, we could be seriously fucked."
"Got it, got it."
When he answered with a careless wave and started for the door, Gamson grabbed his arm.
"Answer me properly, you little shit. If you wake the knight, we're all in danger."
"I said I got it, didn't I? And quit acting like a pack of cowards."
"What did you say?"
"This is our village. Even if he does wake up, he won't dare try anything."
The village youths were thinking of the wandering mercenary who had passed through once before, the one who'd styled himself a knight. This was their village; locals could stir up a little trouble and outsiders could do nothing about it. In this world, strength was law.
Gamson was a greenhorn too — ignorant, green as spring grass — but he was at least a greenhorn who had seen a wider world, and the villagers' reasoning struck him as outright lunacy.
The knight wouldn't dare act up? What delusion was this? If the man was noble-born, he'd cut down every last hick in the village without blinking, all who got in his way. No noble on this earth sat still while serfs crawled up his back.
The vigilance committee? To hell with the vigilance committee. Any villager with two brain cells to rub together would drop to his knees the moment a noble flew into a rampage. Gang up on a noble just because you had numbers? That was how an entire village got wiped off the map.
And Count Zarpek, lord of this village? Hearing of it, the Count would be so enraged he'd paint the place red with blood. His village, yes — but that changed nothing. Serfs robbing a noble's property and raising a hand against him was an outrage in itself, an insult to the nobility entire.
And these idiots just kept bleating their imbecile refrain: it's our village, so the knight won't dare do a thing.
Do they think a knight is on the same rung as a common mercenary?
"Come on, Captain Gamson. Bullneun's only talking big because he's confident. The man's genuinely light on his feet."
"...Fine, fine. Just be careful. Really careful."
Gamson clicked his tongue. He never once imagined that veteran mercenaries like Kahn felt exactly the same tightening in the chest whenever they had to deal with him.
Johan opened his eyes — at precisely the instant before Bullneun's hand touched the door.
A beast's instinct!
That instinct had shrieked a warning on pure reflex. What? Johan rose, straining to read the situation. Something ominous had dragged him out of sleep, but that didn't mean he could tell what it was.
Click-clack—
Someone had wedged a slender hook through the gap of the door and was trying to shove the latch aside — a trick possible only because the inn's door was built so shoddily.
An assassin? No. Because of someone like me? There's no way word of Karamaf's death got out.
Johan raced back through his thoughts as his body coiled tight. Whoever came through that door, he would subdue them the instant they stepped in.
Clack—
The latch slid free and the door swung open. Someone came creeping in through the dark. And Johan exploded forward.
"!"
The man never got his scream out, because Johan had already hammered a fist into his solar plexus and clamped a hand around his throat. Starved of air, Bullneun's face went dead blue; it felt as if his whole body were shattering.
Thud!
Johan flung him to the floor and pinned him down hard, then wrenched the arm up. He could feel the joint itself howling.
"If you want to live, you'll answer my questions."
"Hahk... hahk... can't... can't breathe... you fucking bastard..."
"Who are you?"
Johan allowed himself a flicker of relief. One look told him this was no assassin. Nothing trained could be this sloppy. Still, he did not loosen his grip — Kaegal would roast him alive if he got careless just because his opponent was pathetic.
"Answer."
When the man only wheezed and spat curses, Johan put weight into the pinned arm. With pain like his shoulder tearing off the bone, Bullneun finally croaked out words.
"B-Bullneun, of the miller's house... Bullneun!"
"And why did you come here?"
"Wh-why? I just got the wrong room, damn it! You think you'll get away with— Aaagh!"
Johan popped the man's shoulder out of its socket. Bullneun shrieked at pain beyond anything he had ever known, and Johan stuffed a filthy rag into his mouth to keep the scream from leaking out.
"I know exactly how little you think of me. A man who 'got the wrong room,' carrying a pick for the latch. So. I'm going to break your fingers one at a time now. I'd start talking before all ten are done — otherwise it'll be your neck that snaps."
"Mmph!"
Crack—
Without waiting for an answer, Johan broke one finger. Then he pulled the rag free. All of the man's earlier swagger was gone; Bullneun was a sodden mess of tears and snot, blubbering openly.
"Talk. Unless you want to die."
"Hnngh... please, spare me... I-if you kill me, my family won't take it lying down. My family runs the mill, I'll have you know."
"What is your father, a Count? Some bastard son of the nobility?"
"What's that supposed to—"
"I thought not. Throwing your weight around as the miller's son only works on your fellow villagers. You haven't tasted anything yet."
Johan stuffed the rag back in and broke another finger. Then one more.
The mill, the threshing house, the smithy, the inn — every facility in a village like this sat within the village, yet more often than not it belonged to the lord. That meant the villagers paid a separate fee to the lord every time they used them. The men who ran such places were, naturally, appointed with the lord's blessing, and the villagers resented them even as they feared them. However lowly the trade, a thread of connection to one's lord made a man somebody.
Johan wasn't fooled for a second.
Only serfs were cowed by such bluster. In truth, men like this miller never laid eyes on a noble in their entire lives. A scribe beneath the Count, a steward beneath that scribe — the steward was the absolute ceiling of what a serf could hope to see in a lifetime. A steward was, at best, a bottom-rung official who came around to collect the fief's taxes, and yet when one arrived, everyone from the village headman down to the local notables came crawling to fawn over him. Even the loudmouthed millers and threshing-house keepers trembled like leaves before a steward.
And besides — Johan, a modern man in his previous life and a born noble in this one, had never once been the type to cower at a threat like that. If a steward did come, whose side he would take was obvious to anyone with eyes.
Never mind that it was his own village and his own serfs. In a noble's eyes, serfs simply weren't the same kind of human being. Johan, by contrast, was a fellow noble.
"Now. Feeling more like talking?"
"Hnngh... yes... yes! To steal — to steal your sword..."
"The sword?"
"That sword... it looked expensive..."
How?!
Johan went cold. Expensive it certainly was — but he had never once drawn the blade inside the village. Which meant...
"How the hell did you know that?!"
"Th-the mercenary put us up to it! The one called Gamson!"
"!"
Johan realized just how badly the situation had soured. He'd assumed this was a lone, spineless thief — but if the man had accomplices, everything changed. Hoisting Bullneun up with one hand, he kicked the door open and bolted down the stairs.
"Wh-what the—?"
The innkeeper, who'd been nodding off at his post, let out a strangled cry. The knight lodging upstairs came thundering down with Bullneun in tow — and Bullneun was plainly out of his mind, drenched in tears, sobbing without end.
"What in the world..."
"Did you help him?"
"No! Never!"
The question came out dripping murder, and the innkeeper answered fast. A lifetime of keeping a village inn had sharpened exactly one skill in the man: reading which way the wind blew. One wrong word now, and he could genuinely end up dead.
Even in the dim light, Johan's bloodthirsty eyes were plainly visible. The innkeeper became aware of a faint warmth spreading through his trousers.
Th-this lunatic... what in God's name has he done...?
The innkeeper looked at Bullneun. He couldn't even begin to guess what kind of trouble the fool had stirred up.
"I'll take you at your word. Light it up — and hand me a torch!"
"Y-yes! Right away!"
The courtesy Johan had shown earlier had been nothing more than a lion briefly wearing a sheep's skin — and the innkeeper felt that truth settle into his bones. Knights were, at their root, beasts bred for slaughter.