The Traveler Who Came Biting
One of the servants spoke in a dazed voice. The paladins could not immediately grasp what he meant.
Already caught it? What is he talking about?
Then they looked ahead, and an unbelievable sight met their eyes. Johan, drenched in blood, was holding the troll's severed head in one hand and staring back at them.
"......"
"......"
"The Lord teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to fight..."
When one of the priests absentmindedly recited from scripture, Valien reached out a hand to stop him. Now was not the time for prayer. It was time for verification.
It was hard to believe, but if what she was seeing was real...
Then that knight had severed the troll's arm, and then its neck. No—on closer inspection, the arm hadn't even been properly cut off. The edges were strangely ragged for a clean amputation.
Tore it off...?
How would that even make sense, unless they had pinned the troll down and hauled at it with a block and tackle?
While the priests stood flabbergasted, exchanging nothing but glances, a servant finally spoke up.
"We need to collect its blood, my lord!"
"Ah—right. Yes, do that."
Knights were far above the station for such manual labor, and priests were hardly the sort to scramble for money. When it came to chasing profit like this, it was always the servants who leapt into action.
Troll blood was a prized alchemical reagent with magical properties, and highly popular among the nobility. Considering how difficult the beast was to take down, the asking price was whatever the buyer would pay.
Even more important, though, was the hide. Normally, slaying a troll meant bringing in fire, so more often than not most of the skin went up in flames. This time, however, a good deal of the hide had survived intact.
"Move it, move! You slug. Run! That blood—we need to catch it! It's worth more than your own ransom!"
The head servant, badgering the slaves, hurried to collect the blood. He dumped the water out of a leather pouch onto the ground and frantically pressed the empty bag against the troll's carcass.
"You won't get much that way. You need to lift the body and move it somewhere else so the blood can drain properly."
The paladins who had hunted trolls before spoke up. The servant asked in a fluster.
"How do we prop it up?"
"...Normally we'd brace it against supports, but in this case..."
Johan had washed off the blood roughly with water and gotten to his feet. Then he grabbed the troll by the ankles and hoisted it onto his back.
"Th-that is not work for a knight, sir!"
"It's fine. Better than hearing half a dozen men groaning about it. Where do you want it?"
"O-over there, on that suitable boulder..."
At the sight of Johan setting the example for work that should have belonged to servants, the priests gazed at him with awe. He had just hunted a troll, and yet he showed not a trace of boasting—such humble composure was the very image of an ideal man of the cloth.
Ascribing all glory to the Lord alone!
'Sticky and disgusting, though.'
Troll blood was foul and clung to everything. Valuable as it might be, he had no wish to wear it. Johan then stared curiously at the torches the priests carried.
"So this is the Fire of Saint Iena?"
"It is. Take care not to touch it. It is a fire that does not go out easily."
Johan studied the flame with fascination. It certainly felt different from ordinary fire. A flame like that would make hunting trolls vastly easier.
'...I should have just waited for them and let the thing walk into their hands.'
"Sir Johan. Sir Johan."
"?"
He was just trying to probe how the torches were made when the elf knights called him from behind. Johan walked over with a sour expression.
Leon Duiore, the elf knight who had taken a direct hit from the troll, lay dying, his face ashen.
"Knight. I do not think I shall live long."
"Hm. I see."
Johan took the wine cup sitting beside him and mixed in a bit of the Water of Blessing he had received from Suetleug. If it didn't work, he could always dilute it further. Better to economize.
'Ah. Wait. If I'd just coated my sword with the Water of Wrath, wouldn't I have won easily?'
...Johan decided not to think about it. Unaware of what Johan was doing, Leon Duiore cleared his throat and carried on.
"I have yet to wed, and I have no heir, so I would entrust my sword, my soul, and my pleasures to—"
"Just drink it."
Tired of dealing with these knight types, Johan shoved the cup to the man's lips. Leon gulped down the wine.
"Wine is welcome, but there is something I must say—"
"Breathe. Feeling any better?"
There was no need to ask. Leon's color had visibly improved. A man who hadn't even been able to breathe now wore a bewildered expression.
"Thank Lady Suetleug. Had she not given it, you would be dead."
"...!"
Leon and the other knights beside him were moved. They had been grieving at the sight of a comrade about to die before their eyes—and now, a miracle!
Wham!
The two other elf knights threw their arms around Johan in gratitude.
"Knight! I knew you were an honorable knight, but I never imagined you were so compassionate and noble! Thank you, once more!"
"We shall tell the Count of this without fail, and spread word of your noble deed far and wide!"
'If I tell Suetleug I only used the water because I had no choice, maybe she'll refill the flask.'
He'd been treated grandly by the knights, and there seemed to be any number of advantages to banking a favor—so he had used a bit of the water, yes. But witnessing the water of life's effects before his very eyes, it was only natural that greed stirred.
"Is there no one who will praise Sir Johan! To remain silent at the sight of this—do you have no eyes at all!"
At the knight's shout, his listening subordinates hurriedly took the hint and cried out their praises. Being complimented wasn't a bad feeling—but the problem was that they had abandoned the middle of an ongoing battle to do it. Johan said flatly:
"You'd better get back to your main force quickly. Can you walk?"
"Of course. Now that my breath has returned..."
With whinnying cries, the horses began trotting back into the camp. Behind them came an enormous wolf. Karamaph had circled the area and driven the runaways home. Johan gave a faint smirk.
"Naming such a clever creature Karamaph. Don't you feel a little sorry for it?"
"Vile and honorless it may be, but it is certainly imposing."
"That much is true."
To the elf knights, the name Karamaph carried no pleasant associations. Its defection to the Empire, and the disgraces that had followed, had stained its name.
Of course, insults toward Karamaph did no damage whatsoever to Johan. If anything, he welcomed them.
"...?"
Then Johan realized something was off. Karamaph had come back with a man clamped in its jaws. The man was a complete wreck, squirming and thrashing, but the wolf refused to let go.
"Who did you bite and drag back?"
At first he assumed it had caught one of the bandits. But the man's clothes were far too fine for a bandit. His face and hands were soft too—not the sort of hide that came from living rough.
"Get this off me, you damned wolf!"
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
Noticing something strange in Johan's tone, the knights' men instantly drew their weapons and leveled them at the man. With a blade suddenly pressed to his throat, the man panicked and shouted:
"I—I'm only a traveler, my lord!"
"Traveling from where to where?"
"F-from Thuringen, but I have relatives in Marcel, so I was heading there..."
The elf knight beside them spoke up.
"Sir Johan. May I ask him a question?"
"Go ahead."
Thwack!
The elf knight drew a dagger and plunged it into the traveler's hand with a searing hiss. The traveler let out a piercing scream.
"If a lie is confirmed, I will tear you limb from limb and burn the pieces. Name the relatives you claim to have in Marcel!"
'And what's the plan if he doesn't confess?'
The answer was 'I don't care.' The elf knights possessed a remarkably convenient mental architecture that Johan could never hope to imitate.
The traveler rattled off a few names, but the elf knight wasn't listening. No—it seemed he had decided the man was lying from the very start.
As the elf knight kept twisting the blade, the traveler finally wept and vomited up the truth.
"I—I am a scribe of Baron Einben! Baron Einben! He brought the troll and told us to aid the mercenaries here!"
"!"
At the sudden name, both Johan and the elf knights were taken aback.
"The troll that appeared at our camp—it was because of you wretches?"
The knight roared in fury. To think that a troll had shown up in the middle of their bandit suppression campaign—all because of this man.
Johan was surprised in rather a different way.
'Wait, so the knights didn't just chase off after a troll on a whim?'
From what he'd heard, he'd assumed they had simply bolted after a troll somewhere in the woods—but it turned out this scribe had engineered the whole thing deliberately.
Sorry for misunderstanding you, knights... No, he wasn't. They had behaved far too stupidly for an apology.
"Trolls can be controlled? I've never heard of such a thing."
"Nor have I. Must be no ordinary wicked sorcerer."
Astonished as they were, the knights kept up the interrogation.
The scribe, soaked in tears and snot, babbled on.
He had come on Baron Einben's orders to support the bandits here, and it was for that same purpose that he had learned how to command a troll. If one anointed the body with a special draught provided by a sorcerer, the troll would not perceive him as an enemy and could be handled.
...And Baron Einben himself was coming in person, leading the mercenaries.
"...!"
"How many? What kind of men did he bring!"
"A hundred and fifty of the Imperial Bull Mercenary Company..."
"!"
The color drained from the elf knights' faces. They had assumed the punitive force's numbers would crush a mere bandit horde with ease—but with reinforcements of this scale arriving, the arithmetic changed entirely.
Moreover, mercenaries worth a baron personally leading must surely be well-trained heavy infantry.
"Baron Einben is notorious as the Emperor's right hand. If Einben has come, what does that tell you! The Emperor himself is behind this!"
"The accursed wretch, blind to all honor! To dare such an outrage!"
The knights of the Kingdom of Erance seethed. However friendly Marcel's relations with the anti-Imperial nobles of the Empire might be, this was a naked, bald-faced scheme.
Propping up the bandits and sending mercenaries to menace the city?
Had they not caught on, the baron would have shattered the punitive force once more, wrung gold out of the city, and then sat serenely in his own domain playing the innocent.
While the knights raged at this dishonorable treachery, Johan pressed on coldly.
"We need to return. Quickly."
"Indeed we shall, Sir Knight."
"Why do you people have to rampage like lunatics and manufacture situations like this?"
"F-forgive me, Sir Knight."
"When a troll shows up, you just fall back and rejoin your main force. What grudge did you have against it?"
"S-since the error was mine, I would ask you not to say anything to the others, Sir Knight."
"You all charged it together. What's the difference."
Johan was naturally berating the knights. The proud elf knights, without even realizing it, bowed their heads and listened. It was a sight they would never have shown before anyone but the Count himself.
Battles between mercenary companies tended to drag on until one side broke and fled. Even after hours of trading blows, the enemy was holding firm, and Suetleug felt an unease creeping over her.
Still, they were pressing their advantage in numbers, slowly tightening the encirclement around the enemy. She could sense the fear taking hold on the other side, too.
"In the name of Saint Oxo! Charge!"
"Bulls! Tear the enemy to shreds!"
"!?"
Which was why, when hundreds of heavily armored soldiers came bursting out of the flank without warning, even Suetleug could not help but be thrown into confusion.