Troll Slayer
He was hardly some green recruit. Sure, he'd struck from horseback, but he had blocked it on his shield—so how did any of this make sense? Falling like that.
Of course, from the standpoint of the mercenaries who'd taken the hits and dropped, it felt like a raw deal. They had blocked properly, and yet their bones had shattered and the impact had punched straight through to the flesh beneath.
"Karamap! Block their front!"
"What? Who the hell is Karamap?"
The mercenaries were thrown into confusion by the sudden name. Sir Karamap—once renowned as the Emperor's grand executioner before vanishing without a trace, his name passing endlessly through the mouths of countless gossips. Some whispered that the cunning Emperor had spirited him away in secret to weave yet another scheme.
Why on earth would a knight like that show up here?
They soon learned exactly who the name referred to.
-Woooooo!
"Those blasted wolf spawn!"
Karamap sprinted through the brush alongside the road and burst out ahead of the horses, looming over them. At his snarling, savage howl, the horses reared high on their hind legs and halted dead.
"Just two of them! What are you doing? Take them!"
At Baron Einben's shout, the mercenaries grimaced. This noble wasn't even fighting himself, yet he wouldn't stop yapping orders—and it grated on their nerves.
When their bellies were full and their heads safe, they'd held their tongues out of respect for the power behind the baron. But when things went wrong, it mattered nothing whether a man was a noble or a noble's grandfather.
Still, the baron's influence remained valid. Once they escaped this place, he would prove a generous purse deep in Imperial territory.
"It really is just two of them. Might as well take them alive, I suppose."
"Damn it all... if I'd known, we'd have taken them back there."
The mercenaries grumbled as they readied themselves for a fight. Facing knights on horseback held little appeal. They were veterans with over a decade of war behind them, but fighting knights was a different matter entirely...
"Where do you vermin get the gall!"
The elf knight of the Velleman family was enraged to the brink of madness that the mercenaries would stand and fight instead of fleeing. The humiliation he'd suffered at the hands of the troll was already exploding into pure fury.
Thud!
That exploding fury poured out through martial arts refined to their absolute limit. The elf knight drove his horse a single stride forward, ran his lance through the gaps in one man's armor to drag him from the saddle, and in the same motion drew his longsword and sheared the helm clean off the mercenary beside him. The blow had landed atop the helm, but the fountain of blood gushing skyward was nothing short of spectacular.
"Come at me again, you wriggling vermin!"
The elf knight roared savagely and swung his lance once more, hurling another mercenary through the air. The knight who had scrambled back and forth against the troll was, among mere mercenaries, nothing less than a slaughterer. Johan watched with genuine admiration.
Knights really are lunatics—but damned effective ones.
Johan joined the fight without delay. The mercenary who'd cursed his comrade as a man who couldn't even raise a shield came to understand, with his own body, exactly why his fellows had fallen.
A mace swung lazily from horseback connected with a sickening crunch, and his body simply came apart beneath it.
"Karamap! Not that one—don't eat him!"
-Grrr!
Karamap had, at some point, pinned Baron Einben beneath him and was grinding him into the dirt. The baron was sputtering something through the mud.
"I am a high noble of the Empire, Baron of Einben! I demand the courtesy due my station!"
"A man who dishonorably set mercenaries loose as common bandits dares wag his tongue about honor?"
By custom, captured nobles ransomed one another. But custom was only custom—and when tempers flared, such niceties evaporated.
Moreover, this was no formal battle. An Imperial noble had secretly hired a mercenary company to prey on travelers and been caught red-handed. The elf knight's rage and his drive to kill were only natural.
Tap—
Johan held the elf knight back.
"Sir...!"
"We have a reputation to keep."
And a ransom to collect.
Whatever nonsense Baron Einben had pulled with his troll was one thing; his ransom was quite another. Johan had not the slightest intention of throwing money away.
At those words, the elf knight's face filled with admiration.
"Well said, Sir. I learn from you once again. A knight's virtue is his honor."
"Ugh... wa... water..."
One of the fallen mercenaries rasped out his dying words. The elf knight answered with his lance.
Thud!
The writhing mercenary went still for good.
"I nearly forgot that a knight's virtue is honor. In my opinion, meeting a knight like you in this wretched city of merchants must surely be the work of divine providence."
"R... right, of course."
Suetleug let out a long sigh. Somehow, it seemed they had won. As he swayed on his feet, Goidun hurried to support him and asked after him.
"Oh dear, Master Mage. Are you quite all right?"
"Do I look all right? Ugh..."
He had handled too many secrets at once, and the backlash had come for his body. Wrestling nature's mysteries with a mortal frame was no small undertaking. With his vision swimming, Suetleug groped for his staff.
"That was truly magnificent. I never knew magic was so powerful until today."
"Sounds like the knights charged in. Is your master among them?"
"Yes, sir."
"And it seems they took the troll without losing anyone. Hah."
Suetleug wore a look of quiet pride. To fell a troll with the poison he had provided—this, too, must be the guidance of providence.
The battlefield was wrapped up without further incident.
With victory in hand, the punitive force cut down the enemies who turned tail and fled, and once they caught their breath, they began taking prisoners instead. Several mercenary companies asked permission and sent their quickest soldiers out to reap a fat harvest. From equipment down to slaves, everything would become their property.
"Master Mage, truly, well fought. Without you, this punitive expedition would have been a far harder affair!"
"If you have leisure enough to flatter me, go sing the knights' praises instead."
Suetleug chided the captain of the hundred guard. If the knights returned from their desperate struggle with the troll only to hear the mage hogging the credit, there was no telling what their twisted tempers might produce.
In truth, they were probably already sour. After all, they'd been given hardly any support while taking down the troll...
"Sage, thanks to you my friend's life was saved. Today I learned that the title Sage of the Ipael River is no empty honor."
"Thank you, Lord Suetleug! I'll be sure to tell Count Bartok."
"?"
But the knights' reaction when they returned was a little strange.
It wasn't 'you sent no support while we fought a troll—do you want us dead?', nor was it 'our contribution was the greatest, so we pick what we want from the spoils—don't skim, unless you're fond of your necks.'
Gratitude.
Suetleug, who had never once in his life seen knights express thanks, recoiled in alarm.
Did the troll beat them senseless? Are they mad?
"If not for the water of life you gave us, Sage, my friend would have..."
"......"
Suetleug's face went rigid.
The moment he heard those words, he understood exactly what had happened.
Feeding it to a street pig would have been less of a waste!
Listening to the report from Johan and the knights, the captain of the hundred blinked rapidly. Suetleug, standing beside him, wore an equally incredulous expression.
"You killed the troll... with what, exactly?"
"N—no, Master Mage. That's not what matters right now. Didn't you hear? Baron Einben masterminded the whole affair. We must return to the city at once and report."
"Ah. Right... So, again—what did you kill the troll with?"
The captain was honestly, desperately curious about how the troll had been dispatched, but his duty as commander came first. Swallowing his curiosity, he organized the evidence surrounding Baron Einben.
They would need to report directly to the magistrate without delay.
"So the Emperor was behind it, after all."
"How do you think Marcel will react?"
"Hard to say. There are pro-Emperor and anti-Emperor factions even within the city, and this time the hand was caught red-handed, plain as day... The pro-Imperial factions won't be able to open their mouths. The council of elders will decide, of course—exile if they're measured, something considerably bloodier if they're not."
Suetleug drew a finger across his throat as he spoke. The Emperor's people still had a foothold in the city, but in a situation like this, they could only pray those factions didn't try to cling to power.
"More to the point—you tore the troll apart with your bare hands?"
Even Suetleug would never have believed it had he not heard it directly from the elf knights and the brothers of the order.
The elf knights, wild with excitement, kept chattering on about how 'Sir Johan seized the troll and tore it apart, then took its head clean off—and the part about Baron Einben putting him up to it hardly matters, but the way he tore the troll apart was...' So it seemed Johan had performed some genuinely extraordinary feat of arms.
Knights were simple creatures. They wouldn't spare a glance for anyone beneath them, but they were generous toward their own kind—how much more so toward a knight greater than themselves.
Johan had clearly overwhelmed them with sheer ability.
"Yes. It just sort of happened."
'Just sort of happened'? What kind of man wrestles a troll in a contest of raw strength?
"...Well, good for you. You'll be famous as the Troll Slayer—the man who cut a troll down in a single stroke. Yes. Having your brutish arm-wrestling immortalized in a bard's song is no great blessing... All the same, you'd best watch yourself for a while."
"?"
"Sudden fame always drags trouble along behind it. Though I suppose there's no use worrying about that just yet. Rest and enjoy yourself for now. The city won't let this matter end quietly, either."
Now that the bandits had been exposed as the Emperor's agents, Marcel would doubtless exalt the punitive force all the higher and rub the Emperor's nose in his own scheming.
And what fit such splendid celebration better than a knight?
"The elves will be pleased."
"...Ah, right. That reminds me—you gave the water I gave you to that fellow. I told you to drink it, so why did you go pouring it down someone else's throat!?"
"Come now, Master Mage, you have a reputation to consider. How could I not save him? You know Count Bartok personally, after all."
"Gratitude like a kick in the teeth, that is."
Suetleug could not argue with Johan's reasoning. Saving Count Bartok's knight had certainly been the right call. Considering the Count's pride, it would surely return to Johan as fitting reward.
But that was that, and the elf knights being insufferable was another matter entirely.
"It went to a good cause, so could you fill the flask for me again?"
"...I'll consider it."
The triumph, a celebration honoring those who returned victorious from war, was a tradition reaching back to antiquity.
It lacked the splendor of the Imperial-era triumphs, certainly, but the punitive force's parade was more than enough to capture the whole city's attention. The atmosphere was half festival, half spectacle.
"Give praise to the honorable knights! The knights who rendered the greatest service in the purge!"
The knights marched at the front, and at the very rear came the mercenaries captured in this affair, dragged along in chains. The citizens jeered and hurled stones and rotten refuse at them.
Agitators planted throughout the procession bellowed the knights' deeds and the reason a bandit horde had been preying on the roads near the city.
The goal was twofold: to exalt the knights while fanning the flames of hatred toward the Emperor.
Cursing the Emperor was one thing, but the crowds marveled most at the name they were hearing for the first time—Johan. Nothing was as fresh or as captivating as the exploits of an unknown knight.
"Cut off a troll's head, all by himself? Do you believe that?"
"What kind of talk is that... he's a knight, isn't he? Of course he's a cut above layabouts like us."
"Knight or no, taking a troll alone is..."
"Suspicious as hell, you are. The knights standing next to him helped, obviously. Either way, he took it down—that's what counts. Right?"
"Well, fair enough."
The naive and the cunning received the story differently, but on one point, every last one of them agreed.
Whatever help he'd received, however he'd done it—taking down a troll was a mighty feat indeed!
The nickname Troll Slayer was already circulating among the people. By the end of the day, whenever Johan's name was spoken, the title would follow: the Troll Slayer of Marcel.