The Knights Ride Ahead
Unfortunately, the commander of the city watch was not in a position to brush things off the way Johan could. He had to issue orders while keeping the mercenary captains beneath him from grumbling, make polite requests of the men from the knight monastery, and bow and scrape before the knights sent by Count Bartok. For all his years of experience in the city, he was a mercenary at heart in the end, and he had no idea how to untangle a mess like this.
Damn dogs, every one of them.
"My lords, how would you have us proceed?"
"If enemies are sighted, report to us. If we judge it necessary to act, we shall act."
"Understood, my lord."
With that, the knights withdrew. Not one of them showed the slightest interest in fraternizing with the mercenary captains. It grated, but there was nothing to be done about it.
"And the holy brethren, they..."
"We will march in step with the soldiers."
"!"
At those welcome words, the commander finally allowed himself a breath of relief. He couldn't give orders to the holy knights of the monastery, but if they would at least coordinate and fight alongside the rest — that was something.
"And the holy knights of the Knight Monastery of Saint Galanto as well...?"
"We shall do the same."
"Thank you. This makes my work far easier. With knights of such renown and holy knights besides, those bandits will soon be caught and strung up by their necks!"
To Johan's eyes, the punitive expedition's camp was chaos incarnate. Even the mercenaries that had gathered moved only in their own separate companies and bands; there was no thought of forming a unified battle line and operating as one disciplined force. On top of that, dozens of peddlers trailed their hired hands in and out of the camp, hawking meals, equipment, and sundries to the mercenaries.
"The discipline is better than I expected," Suetleug remarked.
"The commander of the watch is a man of some renown. His name carries weight even among mercenaries, so keeping them in line should pose no difficulty."
Johan nodded along to the dwarf Qumal's assessment while feeling like the only waking man in a room full of fools.
Unbelievable...
He knew in his head that this approach was the best available, but knowing and accepting were two different matters. Johan clicked his tongue.
The Red Iron Mercenary Company had been granted one of the better spots in the camp. The name of the Kettana Merchant Guild carried influence, as did the name of the Red Iron Company itself — but Johan and Suetleug's presence played its part too. Thanks to that, while the other mercenaries sweated over pitching camp and standing watch, the two of them were able to rest easy in their own site.
"Is this the camp of Sir Johan and Suetleug, the Sage of the Ipael River?"
A well-dressed servant approached and asked carefully. Suetleug furrowed his brow.
"I am Suetleug. What is it?"
"My master, Sir Gustave, wishes to extend his hospitality to you both."
"Hmm... very well. We will come shortly."
Once the servant had gone, Suetleug spat on the ground. Johan asked, startled.
"Do you have some grievance?"
"Knights are at their finest when they're flipping a mage's purse upside down."
"Then why did you accept?"
"Because one must consider Count Bartok's dignity. A mage who keeps friendly company with nobles is treated like a noble. A mage who does not is more dangerous than a slave — and there's nothing to gain from drawing their ire."
The knight monastery contingent and the knights waited comfortably in the heart of the camp. They, too, had no need to pitch tents or stand watches.
But the way the two groups made themselves at home could not have been more different. The monastery's camp was spartan to the point of carrying less baggage than the mercenaries', while the knights' tents were draped in cloth and banners of every garish color imaginable. The festivities had apparently already begun; raucous laughter and firelight spilled out from within. Suetleug shook his head at the sight.
"Men without a coin to their names, playing at extravagance."
For a noble, the true virtue was not frugality but luxury. The more lavishly one indulged, the more it displayed the grandeur of one's noble capacity. The trouble was that these knights were hardly wealthy enough to afford such displays.
"Don't they have fiefs?"
"Knights granted fiefs? They hold the title and nothing more. If they had lands, they'd hardly have come to a place like this."
Even after a dubbing ceremony and the receipt of a knight's title, a fief did not automatically follow. One had to earn lands through deeds worthy of them. These men were likely burning through far more gold than they made — all for the sake of their own pride.
"Well, they'll eat and drink handsomely thanks to it. On other people's money."
"Must be a comfortable life indeed. What kind of talk is that?"
Suetleug grumbled thus as they stepped inside. But Johan wasn't wrong.
What came out was no unidentifiable sludge of mercenary soup, but a nobleman's fare: a chicken cut properly joint by joint, fried and finished with a clean simmered spice broth, alongside roasts of pigeon, boar, goose, and assorted game. Onions, garlic, and potatoes arrived cooked alongside as a matter of course, and soft white bread fit for tearing and well-aged cheeses rolled freely across the table. The servants and slaves the knights had brought along watched it all with hunger shining in their eyes.
While the elf knights gorged themselves on wine and meat in a frenzy of gluttony, the holy knights were taking a meal of astonishing austerity. A few boiled potatoes with a pinch of salt — that was the whole of it. Johan made a face. They could at least eat some of the soft bread they never got otherwise.
"To think the Sage of the Ipael River would grace us — fortune is sure to favor our cause!"
One of the elves cried out loudly, and every eye in the tent turned to the two of them. Suetleug and Johan offered brief greetings and took their seats. Johan had been looking forward to tearing into expensive meat for the first time in ages, but the knights were having none of it.
"Sage, would you not read our fortunes for the battle to come?"
"......"
Suetleug's face was expressionless, but Johan could tell the old man's blood was boiling.
"My apologies. Magic is not something one casts so casually."
"Ah, what a shame. No matter, though. There's only one outcome in any case. The bandits will all be torn to pieces!"
With that, the elf knight flung his cup gleefully to the floor. His retinue burst into applause and stamped their feet. Johan, meanwhile, quietly and steadily cleaned out the food within arm's reach.
Hmm. The meat's good.
"What could be more trustworthy, more straightforward, than a blade honed sharp? Compared to faithless, capricious magic... by the gods in the heavens above! Ah — forgive me, Sage. I did not mean to insult you."
"It's fine."
Johan marveled at the knights' eloquence between bites of meat. Inviting a mage to their table and then slandering magic to his face.
What was more astonishing was that they bore Suetleug no particular grudge or malice. They genuinely believed every word of it.
Suetleug was a sage on speaking terms with Count Bartok himself. Naturally there was nothing to insult there. But honor was owed to knights as a matter of course, while magic was just so dubious and untrustworthy that the words simply tumbled out exactly as they thought them...
Suddenly Johan understood why Suetleug so despised being hosted by knights.
I see. They have a talent for getting under one's skin.
"Sir Johan of House Yeats?"
Oh, no.
The arrow had turned toward him, and Johan clicked his tongue. He'd only been invited on Suetleug's account; he'd assumed the conversation would stay between them.
What do you do when someone pokes at your temper?
"What a pleasure it is to meet an honorable noble in this filthy battlefield of mercenaries and bandits. You are one, I take it?"
"Ah, of course."
Johan answered vaguely, but the elf knights seemed to take to him better than he'd expected. One elf, named Leon, poured him wine until it nearly overflowed the cup and said:
"I hear you've been fighting under a merchant guild's banner. To toil beneath such greedy creatures — you must chafe at it, surely."
"I swallow that resentment daily, my lord."
"Just so! I know that feeling well. Merchants are blinded by gold; they'll rake it in with a scavenger's claws by any means necessary. Do you know how greedy they are? Lend a man of that stripe money once, and he comes after you like a rabid dog starved for a week."
Isn't that the debtor's own fault?
The knights operated on a rather different logic than Johan did. Not 'if you borrow, you repay' but 'yes, I borrowed a little, but how dare you treat an honorable noble this way!'
"Leon. All the same, isn't fighting under a merchant's banner shameful for a knight?"
"Don't talk nonsense, Loren. When greedy merchants set their minds on you, they won't let go until they've taken an arm. It's the only way out."
The elf called Leon was under the impression that Johan fought under the guild's flag out of debt-ridden desperation. Johan, who had walked in of his own accord and was being fed three square meals a day, kept his mouth quietly shut.
"Quite right, my lord. Won't you join us in the charge tomorrow? The plan is to take the vanguard the moment the scouts bring word of the enemy."
"I'm afraid I must command the guild's mercenaries. It won't be possible."
"Ah, what a pity. To let such an opportunity pass as a knight..."
Johan had no intention of separating from the mercenaries to lead a charge alongside strangers. The knights wanted glory and battlefield honors, certainly, but none of that strictly required being first through the breach...
At this point, Johan had yet to truly understand what it meant when knights spoke of 'taking the vanguard.'
"The scouts have located the bandits' camp where their forces are gathered. Numbers appear to be roughly fifty..."
"Understood. We must prepare to advance the soldiers."
Before the commander of the watch could even summon the fighting men assembled before him, a blaring fanfare of trumpets erupted from the knights' side of the camp.
The elf knights, clad in chainmail and helms and armed with lances and longswords, sat mounted and ready to charge, alongside servants and slaves who were less heavily armored but well armed nonetheless.
Clop, clop—
The mounted men took the front. Those leading the spare horses brought up the rear. The elf knights simply rode out, pulling their remounts behind them. While the mercenaries stood gaping, the knightly column cut straight through the camps and sauntered off toward the front.
They had heard the scouts' report before it ever reached the commander, and readied themselves first. Coordination with the mercenaries? Joint suppression of the enemy? Such words meant nothing to the knights.
The only things that mattered were their own valor and their own glory!
"C-Commander! They've gone on ahead!"
"As if they'd listen if we tried to stop them. Get the mercenaries ready, and quickly! We have to sweep the field before the enemy slips away."
Knights charging off before preparations were complete, hungry for glory, was such a common occurrence that it hardly surprised anyone anymore.
It wasn't that the knights were stupid. They understood perfectly well that fighting together with many was advantageous. They simply chose not to act on that knowledge. Waiting for the mercenaries to arrive and fighting alongside them would have been tantamount to declaring that they alone were not strong enough.
To men born and trained as knights, such values and habits of mind were absolute.
"Isn't that dangerous? The camp is deep inside the forest, from what I hear."
"Danger, nothing. Those knights alone should be enough to wipe out the bandits in there."
Suetleug's words were no exaggeration.
If all several hundred mercenaries banded together against the knights, the knights would indeed have a difficult time of it. But mercenaries were creatures far removed from unity.
Faced with a furious knightly charge, their first thought would not be to rally together and resist — it would be to abandon their comrades and run.
The terror of knights lay precisely in battles of this scale: an overwhelming, savage fighting power that mercenary bands of similar numbers simply could not match.
Not much time had passed before a messenger from the knights came galloping back, blood spattered across his cheek and his clothes.
"My lord and the honorable knights have stormed the camp and put every soul within it to the sword!"