Holy Misunderstandings
"As expected...! I never imagined there would be so many who carried the strength God Himself bestows!"
The monks were overjoyed. Who would have thought they'd run into the Troll Slayer of Marcel in a place like this?
In this world, rumors spread along class lines. Nobles heard them from nobles, commoners from commoners, mercenaries from mercenaries, monks from monks. And those rumors traveled surprisingly fast — for many, they were the only means of obtaining information at all.
"And how did you hear of me?"
"From the warrior monks of the order who took part in the punitive expedition. Surely it was God who guided us to you."
They're uncomfortably friendly.
Johan felt a dull displeasure at the monks' manner. It was a fine thing that strangers bore him no hostility, but this much familiarity was frankly unnerving. They were treating him like an abbot leading their own flock.
"Do you know those monks, sir?"
"I don't believe so?"
Even the mercenaries who had followed him muttered among themselves, visibly astonished. A knight and a monk — the knight and the Church, that is — were not usually on intimate terms.
Politically the two were allies, but in their values they were opposites through and through. Knights pursued glory: they marched onto battlefields, felled their enemies, and extorted gold. They claimed to believe in God, yet never bestowed anything upon the truly wretched serfs, and they dearly loved the trial by combat and the tournament — the very practices the Church condemned. Naturally, Church and knighthood could not help but collide. One of the first things a newly appointed priest did in his parish was chase knights around preaching at them.
Of course, words rarely worked. To a knight, faith was a convenient ornament for exalting his own honor.
And yet the monks before him now fawned on Johan like some celebrated man of God.
Something has been... misunderstood here, I suspect.
Johan escorted the monks outside. No one could spend a night in a village where such a battle had taken place.
"Bishop-Count Mohsho sent you?"
"He did not send us. His Excellency spoke to us, and we set out of our own will."
Mohsho was a territory lying west of Count Abner's and Count Zarfen's lands — and it belonged to the Kingdom of Erance. The Bishopric of Mohsho was ruled by a man who was both bishop and count, but that made him no less a vassal and liege lord of the Erance king.
Startled, Johan turned to Suettlg.
"Is a lord permitted to send men into another's territory like this, whenever he pleases?"
"Of course he isn't. You know what sort of man Bishop-Count Mohsho is. A man clad head to toe in piety."
"And so?"
"He heard the serfs around here were suffering, and sent armed monks off without breathing a word to the Count. I'd wager my boots on it."
"......"
Sending men on behalf of villagers — fugitive serfs under Count Abner, no less — was a genuinely dangerous move. Within his own domain, a lord was a king in all but name. Meddling in another lord's territory was, naturally...
Which was precisely why he must have acted without informing the Count.
"They don't seem very frightened, though..."
"What would monks know of politics? They believe in nothing but God — what is there for them to fear?"
Suettlg clicked his tongue. It wasn't that he lacked faith himself, but he couldn't hold a candle to a monk. The Church's God — the God of the one true faith — was gentle and forgiving, but the men who believed in Him were not. This time the monks had come with good intentions, yet there were moments when the fanaticism monks and paladins displayed made Suettlg's skin crawl.
"We must seize them and confine them at once, my lord! They dared to act without the Count's leave!"
Inno practically leapt off the ground. The mere fact that monks had marched out without so much as a word to the Count had set his blood boiling.
"What do you think?"
"Locking them up would be the proper thing. But if you do, the blame lands on you and you alone."
"That was my thinking as well."
Cage monks who had come to do good works, and every ounce of censure would fall on Johan's head. And given how strangely familiar the monks' attitude was, Johan's reputation had apparently been... distorted somewhat.
"Did you perhaps serve in a monastic order once?"
"Do I look the type?"
"Well, now that you mention it..."
Suettlg accepted it without a moment's hesitation. Johan felt oddly insulted.
"We came here to exterminate monsters. We can hardly cage devout men of God over it. They'll cooperate with us until the work is done."
"But, my lord—"
"It's not as though I hold any authority to punish them, is it? We'll report the matter to the Count in due course."
Seeing that Johan would not be moved, Inno turned to Stefan instead.
"Sir Stefan. They acted entirely on their own—"
"Sir Johan seems to be in the right of it."
"...Yes, sir."
When Stefan said that, Inno had no recourse. If the Count came pressing for answers later, all he could do was insist, I did warn them, sir.
Beside him, his son Gerwolf opened his mouth with painful awkwardness.
"Th-that man..."
"!"
Inno nearly jumped. Surely Gerwolf wasn't about to say something — here of all moments — as a knight of the Count?
"...Sir Johan is right, sir. Tha's what I'm thinkin' too."
"Well. My thanks, Sir Gerwolf. Ah — and good work in the fight."
"Thank you, sir."
Gerwolf waved a hand, grinning with satisfaction. Thanks to the cloth Johan had wrapped his hands in the moment they returned, his torn grip barely hurt at all.
Inno stared at his son, his soul leaving his body. What on earth had the boy eaten?
Meanwhile, Suettlg was thinking something rather different.
...Hold on. Did this bastard drink that water I gave him... again?
"Come to think of it — dispatching men into another lord's territory so freely..."
"Nothing worth gaping at. The Empire's west falls under Erance's influence, and its south under the Catalian city-states. The Abner family itself, for that matter, is a distant cousin of the Erance king."
This was a land where, the moment a territorial war broke out, kingdoms and empires and city-states alike all slipped in to meddle from the shadows. The noble houses were entangled with one another like a spider's web, and national borders meant nothing. There were cases where nobles from half a dozen realms had squabbled over a single countship.
"That said, I doubt Bishop-Count Mohsho staged this out of some shallow scheme to send monks here and drum up influence. The Count will understand that too, so even if it comes to light, it'll be smoothed over. By the way — what were you doing this morning? I didn't see you anywhere."
"Morning prayers. With the monks."
"......"
Suettlg clamped his mouth shut. He was fighting down a burst of laughter.
"You actually prayed?"
"Why else would I have been there?"
"No — you? Truly? Do you even know the prayers by heart?"
"Most of them."
At that, Suettlg was astonished all over again.
Did he genuinely mean to become a priest when he was young?
The oblivious monks had beamed with delight at the chance to invite Johan to join their morning devotion. Their prior had gone one step further and granted him the honor of opening the first verse...
And so Johan had begun the prayer reciting the passages he had learned from Father Valberga.
"O Lord, open Thou my lips, that my mouth may proclaim Thy praise..."
"I cannot fathom why the monks carry on like this. They look at me as though I were some... wandering warrior-monk doing penance."
"Hm. I'll admit I was surprised too. Monks rarely behave that way. The knight-monks from the expedition must have thought the world of you. No harm in it, mind. Better than being cursed as some godless wretch."
"Praying daily and living frugally isn't a bad thing, you say? What kind of nonsense is that?"
"Good for the body and good for the soul, I tell you. Do your penance while you're young. Coveting your desires is for old men."
Grumbling at Suettlg's patent nonsense, Johan gathered the mercenaries. Dawn had broken — it was time to survey the village.
The mercenaries clicked their tongues anew at the sight of the boar. However one looked at it, the thing deserved to be classified as a monster. And he had killed it alone...
"Can't rightly tell who the monster is here."
"You mad? Watch your mouth. What if we all get flogged on your account?"
"N-no, it just slipped out."
"Gather the goblin corpses to one side and burn them! The rest of you, search the village cellars!"
The monks had camped in the ruined village intending to hunt down the goblins' warren. The villagers were gone, but the houses still stood — fine shelter against the night wind. Then dusk had fallen, and goblins had suddenly come boiling out of every corner of the village. The vermin had clearly been dwelling beneath it all along.
"Get the fires ready. We'll smoke them out."
"Move aside, you clumsy oaf. How's smoke supposed to come off that?"
The veteran mercenaries prepared green wood for smoking. Toss burning saplings down into the dark, and the goblins would come streaming out like a pack of feral dogs.
"...They're not coming out, sir?"
"What?"
"They've fled, plainly enough."
Suettlg delivered his verdict once the village had been cleared and the reports came in. The mercenary captains wore equally baffled expressions.
"They're... the stubborn sort. They don't usually run."
"Hm."
Goblins were tenacious vermin; even when a punitive force arrived, they would normally dig in and hold out to the bitter end. And yet they had simply vanished, clean as a whistle.
"Truly frightened, it seems."
"Ah...!"
"Of course...!"
The mercenaries who had been there understood at once.
Frankly, if they had been goblins and seen that thing, they'd have cut and run too!
"I don't know what exactly Sir Johan did in there, but the goblins have fled regardless — which means we must think about what comes next."
Suettlg pointed toward the mountains near the village.
"We search the mountains."
The mercenaries sighed in unison. Veteran or greenhorn, crawling through mountains hunting for a monster's lair was tedious, thankless work nobody wanted. And this was ground where extermination attempts had failed again and again.
The lair would be devilishly hard to find.
"Can't we just loose dogs on their trail?"
"You a southerner, boy? Goblins fool even dogs — they smear themselves with mud and spit, and..."
Grrrrr.
The captains stopped mid-sentence. Karamaf had let out a deep, weighty rumble.
"C-could the wolf you keep track them, sir?"
"Confident fellow, it seems."
Karamaf lifted his head with noble pride. The mercenaries marveled. A knight's wolf really was a different breed of beast.
Johan, however, was a touch worried. If the wolf strutted up before the whole punitive force and then failed...
Can it actually find them properly?
"I didn't say this in front of the mercenaries, but..."
"?"
"I suppose I'd best say it now. Those boars — no matter how I turn it over in my mind, something's wrong with them."
"You mean they're beyond what goblins could manage as beasts?"
"Manage them? Oh, they could manage them. But in all my years I've never seen a goblin clever enough to keep several like that in one pack. Beasts that savage can't be kept together. They can't stomach each other trespassing on their territory."
"Then..."
"I suspect there's something with truly exceptional skill up in that mountain. A master of beast-handling."
"...And why would such a one be living among goblins in the mountains?"
"That's my worry too. With a talent like that, he could go offer himself to a noble and be set for life."
Johan moved, Suettlg's words turning over in his head. He understood now why the mage had spoken to him alone. For all their rough manner of living, mercenaries were deeply superstitious and easily spooked. Had that come from Suettlg in front of them all, they'd have spent the whole climb trembling at shadows.
Grrr!
Karamaf, nose full of goblin stench as he climbed the mountainside, swept a massive forepaw and sent dirt spraying — and a cave mouth, wide enough for two or three men to pass abreast, lay revealed.
"Those skills are no joke."
"No kidding. How'd he find a goblin den, I'd like to know."
The mercenaries murmured as they readied themselves for battle. Fighting their way into caves like this was mercenary bread and butter.
But Johan and Gerwolf stepped up to the front.
"S-Sir. Surely you're not going in yourself?"
"Then what?"
"Er... that is..."
"Save the useless words. Line up the mercenaries who're going in. We enter as soon as they're ready."
"We'll f-fight hard, sir."
"Admirable, Sir Gerwolf. That's how a knight should be."
At the announcement that Johan himself would be entering, the mercenaries found their hands double-checking every strap of their gear without conscious thought.
A knight could not show himself a disgrace before his employer. And if that knight was about to walk into a den like this — all the more so.
Three hours later.
Johan emerged from the cave alongside the mercenaries. His shield and mace were caked thick with dried goblin blood.
"All out?"
"Yes, sir!"
"We rest briefly, then move to the next den. Rest, but don't get careless."
The mercenaries waiting outside stared at their comrades' faces, puzzled. They all wore the expression of men who had just met a ghost in there.
"What, did you run into a troll in there instead of goblins?"
"N-no, it's not that..."
"?"
"Are they wounded? No — they look fine?"
"Did they never even draw their swords? Not one drop of blood on them. What is this, a stroll?"
"Greenhorns..."
Swish. Slash.
"Did he smash every last one from the front himself?"