Run, You Idiots!
I want to live!
The innkeeper had no room in his head for a single stray thought. He moved with nothing but that one desperate conviction—dug out a jar of oil, set it alight, twisted it into a torch, and shoved it into Johan's hands.
"Carry that and follow me out!"
"Yes, sir!"
Johan went out without bothering to strap on his armor, weapon alone in hand. There was no time to gear up properly, not for whatever this was.
"Wh-what's going on?"
"What's happening?"
The other mercenaries sleeping upstairs had evidently been roused as well, and now came stumbling down. The ones who'd drunk themselves blind were still flat on their backs; only the lighter drinkers lurched about, bleary-eyed, trying to make sense of the situation.
Johan didn't answer. Explanations could come later.
"If you can't round up your own crew, your hands and feet are flying off. Move!"
Gamson was in the middle of making the sharpest decision of his life.
"...Fuck. Something's wrong."
Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was the fear Johan had beaten into him. Either way, every nerve in Gamson's body was screaming the same thing.
Run. Right now.
"What now?"
"Honestly, Bullun-hyung's really good at this kind of stuff."
While the other two babbled, Gamson crawled closer to the house and cocked his ear toward it. And he heard it. A heavy, disruptive thud.
"...Shit! Good at it, my ass...! I'm the idiot for trusting these backwater hick bastards!"
Gooseflesh crawled up his whole body as Gamson sprinted to where the horses were tied and started unhitching them. Prah and Pel gaped at him in alarm.
"What are you doing?"
"We agreed we'd wait for Bullun-hyung!"
"Then you wait, you morons! I heard something! I heard something over there! If the job had gone clean, why would there be any noise?!"
Gamson's terror was shouting now, and terror is contagious. The two of them worshipped Bullun, but they couldn't afford to dismiss what Gamson was saying either.
"If you want to live, untie the rest of those horses right now and get them out of here!"
"B-but... if we take them, then Bullun-hyung..."
"Bullun's finished, you idiots! Figure it out yourselves! I'm gone!"
He'd known them for what, a few days? There was no loyalty owed, none owed to him either. Gamson swung himself onto a horse. Between Pel and Prah, the one with a slightly faster brain was Prah—and Prah scrambled up behind him without a moment's hesitation.
"Pel! I'll leave one horse behind, so when Bullun-hyung gets out, ride it and catch up!"
"Uh, uh? Uhh... r-right!"
Prah privately marveled at his own cleverness. If the worst happened, they were fleeing early—but if Bullun did make it out, Prah now had an excuse ready-made.
You rotten piece of...
The horse slowed with Prah's weight on it, and Gamson cursed inwardly.
He wanted to dump Prah right there in the dirt. But starting a fight here and now would waste seconds he didn't have—and if the two of them ganged up on him, his ankles would be tied, and that knight would come. Prah and Pel, together, made two.
I should've stolen more horses!
Taking Eldans's horses, or stealing more from around the village, had felt far too risky, so he'd given up on the idea. Looking back now, he should have stolen every damn horse in reach.
Two men riding one horse, fleeing from a knight who might be bearing down on them at any moment...
It'll be fine. The knight won't have a horse to ride anyway...
"!"
Gamson saw it, plain as day. In the darkness, a spill of torchlight leaking through the cracks of the inn.
We're caught!
"FUCK!! Run! RUN, you idiots! The knight's coming after us!"
He'd forgotten he was even supposed to keep his voice down—that was how scared he was. This was the man who'd sworn at Johan behind his back all day, and the mere sight of a door opening in the distance was enough to make him nearly faint with terror.
Drum-drum-drum—
Gamson and Prah pulled ahead first, and Pel clambered onto the last horse moments later in a flailing panic. Bullun never came, but in all three of their heads, Bullun had already ceased to exist.
"Run! RUN!"
Heee-haw!
Here luck finally favored them: Pel was the best rider of the three, and the only one who knew the local terrain. Though he'd started last, he overtook the others almost immediately—and that turned out to be a blessing. The others were now following a guide who could lead them through the darkness without breaking their necks.
The three thieves ran for the village entrance for their very lives. Past that point, the black of the night would take them in and keep them safe.
Johan ran like hell.
The notion that a big, muscled man must be slow was nothing but prejudice. When Johan actually committed to it, his sprint could have chased down a horse.
And yet he realized it.
I'm already too late.
Far ahead, silhouettes were tearing through the night dark. The clip of hooves told him instantly who they were.
The full-tilt sprint to get this far had pushed his muscles to their limit. A man could not outrun a horse over distance. Endurance was a different animal entirely—and they'd already opened a gap.
If I wanted to catch them, I should've come out faster.
The moment he'd laid eyes on Bullun and realized the man wasn't alone, if he'd bolted straight out the door, he might have caught them. Too late for that now.
No—this one was out of my hands.
It was absurd, but Johan reined in his temper. This was the equivalent of a random accident. Who could have predicted one of the villagers would bolt with his horse? It wasn't as if a man could sleep hugging his saddle.
One chance...
Johan gripped his mace and hurled it with everything he had. The night was pitch-dark, barely a target to be seen—half of it was a throw left to luck. He couldn't take all of them. But one more down would do.
Because then there'd be someone left to show hell to.
THUNK!
A dull, heavy impact, followed by the sound of something—or someone—crashing to the ground.
I actually hit?!
Even the thrower was astonished. At this distance, and it landed.
But the hoofbeats didn't slow, didn't turn. They kept their steady rhythm, receding into the dark.
Three of them, and I've dropped one—so two got away on horseback... Damn it. Please let one of them have been a mercenary.
Johan closed the distance and kicked the moaning lump in the dirt. The torchlight fell across the man's face. Prah. A face Johan had never seen before.
"...So he ran."
More than anything else, it was missing the ringleader that made Johan's blood boil.
"He's coming! He's chasing us!"
"That mad bastard!"
Gamson realized drool was streaming from his own mouth. He'd been too terrified to remember to close his jaw.
They had fled with no lights at all, while Johan came pounding after them with a burning torch held high. That, more than anything, was what terrified them. What kind of human being covered that distance on foot, at that speed?
THUNK!
"?"
Gamson twisted around. Behind him, he saw Prah shrieking as he plummeted off the horse's rump.
He hit him from THAT distance?!
"F... fucking hell... run! RUN, you stupid horse, RUN!"
"What?! What's happening?!"
"You idiot! The knight's after us! Run! If he catches us, we're all dead men!"
Pel knew, without being told, that his friend had gone down. But there was nothing to be done about it now. Turning the horse around meant death.
"Prah...! Prah! I'll come back for you, I swear I will!"
"Shut up and watch the road!"
And so one mercenary and one country bumpkin succeeded in escaping the village.
When the commotion finally died down, dawn had come.
A pall hung over the village, as though something foul had seeped into the air itself.
Atanka, the village head, clutched his skull.
Those worthless whoreson bastards, worse than goblins...!
He should have broken their spirit back when they first swaggered around acting like they were somebody. But no—he'd looked the other way when they caused small trouble, thinking it best for everyone to let things slide. And now they'd gone and made a disaster of this scale.
Every villager with a voice in the village had gathered at the headman's house. Word traveled fast in a place like this, and they wore every manner of expression as they crowded in.
"Headman. I hear the mercenaries who came with the merchant caused trouble. Is it true?"
"Causing trouble in our village, the nerve. Someone needs to be taught a lesson, no? Should we call out the militia?"
"Who got hurt?"
"They say Bullun and that Prah boy got beaten half to death. The mercenaries are holding them right now, so I heard."
"What? The mercenaries dare...? Let's gather the village men right now and gut them—"
"SILENCE!"
Atanka slammed his fist on the floor and roared. It was a side of the headman none of them had ever seen, and the room flinched back in stunned silence.
"Am I the only one here trying to figure out what's actually happening?! What a pack of idiots you all are..."
"Isn't that a bit harsh, headman? Defending the merchant you brought in, are we..."
"You little bastard. Then you go on, you try it! Seems you'd take your own son's side if he caused trouble too—so let me tell you, this is not an ordinary situation! That man over there is a true knight! And that merchant is a member of the Kettana Merchant Guild! Did you think any of this was going to be settled with threats and muscle?!"
"They're barely ten men between them..."
"Those barely-ten men kill people for a living, every day of the year! The militia? A bunch of fools who've swung a stick a few times... how many of you have ever fought a real goblin?"
"That's going too far! We've fought mercenaries plenty of times!"
"When the odds were in their favor to lose, you mean! We had a few dozen men, so they didn't care to spill blood over nothing. What do you think happens if it comes to a real fight? Say we took every one of them down—half of us would be dead and the other half would be running. And the mercenaries aren't even the problem. Mercenaries alone, we could have managed—stroked them, bribed them, threatened them, worked something out. The problem is that there's a true knight standing among them. Do you honestly not understand what it means that the man is a noble?!"
At the headman's words, the villagers began to murmur among themselves. The word noble chilled them. But the miller—Bullun's father—spoke up, surly as ever.
"He's a wandering knight, at the end of the day. No need to be so terrified of some landless drifter, is there? However strong he is, look how many of us there are. Give him a proper scare, drive him off, and once the steward arrives we can put our side of it nicely. I'll take the lead in the talking, so..."
Atanka drew in a long breath, his face flaming scarlet. The only reason he didn't slap the man across the mouth that instant was his age. A decade younger, and he'd have done it on the spot.
"And how exactly would you 'put your side nicely'?"
"We'd tell them the wandering knight came here and started rampaging..."
"And if that knight tells the steward his side of it, what then?"
"The steward is on good terms with us! Naturally he'd believe our word!"
"So the steward, faced with the word of a knight from a noble house and the word of us—he'd take ours, would he...?"
He laid it out dripping with sarcasm, and at last the villagers began to grasp the shape of their predicament.
The more one thought about it, the more wrong it all looked.
"Fine. Let's say he does take our side. So this knight goes back to his house and reports what happened here, and his house reports it to the Count. Do you think the steward will still be holding our banner then?"