Opportunity Is an Arrow
The problem was that Duke Ulrike wasn't in Count Abner's territory at the moment.
She had taken her army on campaign.
"The war only just ended. How long has it been?"
"Hardly surprising, is it?"
Suetleug wore a look of deep displeasure. "Do you think I don't know how nobles love their wars? What surprises me is the timing. It's winter, for goodness' sake..."
Wars were supposed to begin in spring, be fought through summer, and plunder the enemy's lands in autumn. Starting one in winter was the sort of thing only an idiot would do. Where, after all, was the food to feed an army supposed to come from?
"Whoever started it must have a plan."
"I suppose that's true. Like that mage whose head you took off. Is there anyone in this world without a plan? Even that knight over there has one, apparently."
Though facing a different direction than Suetleug, Johan was chewing over the very same problem.
As the Count's heir, Ulrike had received several territories as her personal property upon coming of age — an inheritance granted in advance, precisely so that she would have forces of her own to command. She was hardly someone who lacked the means to raise an army.
The reason was easy enough to guess. House Abner had suffered losses because of Count Zarfen, and they would want compensation for that somewhere. From whoever happened to be available.
But wasn't the timing far too soon?
When someone raised an army in such haste, it usually meant they had confidence in something. Johan wondered what exactly Ulrike was relying on.
It concerned him all the more given that he was about to meet her face to face and say, one of the rights to the lands you're set to inherit actually belongs to me.
"At least you're bringing the mercenaries with you. Never go alone. Unless you want to die like a dog."
Suetleug's perfectly reasonable advice sounded strangely ominous.
Not all the news was ominous, however. A messenger arrived for Johan quite unexpectedly.
"What is it?"
"Count Abner has sent me."
Only after the customary praise of Sir Stefan had been delivered, the rewards handed out, and the mercenaries who had successfully completed the punitive campaign compensated, did the messenger seek Johan out separately.
Inside the wax-sealed letter was a message of remarkable brevity.
If you keep Stefan alive, I swear I shall repay you.
— Count Abner
"......"
Johan's expression turned complicated. What was the Count playing at, sending this?
He was, after all, on his way to negotiate with Ulrike right now.
I see. He's telling me not to shop around anywhere else.
If negotiations with Ulrike fell through and Stefan was handed over to some other power, Johan might have walked away unscathed, but Stefan's odds of surviving would have plummeted. Ulrike left Stefan alone only so long as Stefan left her property alone. The moment he started thrashing about with her inheritance in his grip, things changed.
Keep Ulrike from killing Stefan. Tidy the whole mess up for me!
'Hard, or easy? I honestly can't tell.'
But one thing was certain: Count Abner had made amends. A debt like that was bound to prove useful.
"And this as well."
"?"
Johan took the certificate the messenger held out — a promissory note, redeemable for coin at any merchant house.
"I wasn't owed any wages from the Count. What's this for?"
"He said it was a personal token of his gratitude."
"I see... understood. I'll take it under advisement."
Johan found himself envying Stefan all over again.
Whatever his intelligence, the man's luck had surely been a birthright!
East of Count Abner's territory stood Saint-Darge Castle.
With the mountain range sprawling beneath it, it was one of the vital choke points that travelers from the west had to pass through on their way to the Empire's heartland.
The Lord of Saint-Darge and House Abner had clashed any number of times over the years. The reason a mere castellan could afford to act so brazenly toward Abner — a house holding several territories to its name — came down to one thing.
A dependable backer.
The Lord of Saint-Darge held his land by direct grant from the Emperor himself.
The powerful high lords might have sneered at the Emperor, but that didn't mean the Emperor was a man without strength. He simply lacked the power he claimed to have — he was, in his own right, as much a high lord as any of them. In the first place, no one who wasn't a high lord could have bought the support of the Prince-Electors with gold.
And yet now, Duke Ulrike was sweeping across his lands as if such considerations were beneath her notice entirely.
"Good choice."
The village headman groveled before her, trembling from head to toe. Piled in front of him were silver coins, scraped together from the village down to its last farthing.
It was protection money that should have gone to their rightful lord. But an enraged army was currently glaring down at the village, hungry for plunder, and a single word from Duke Ulrike would have set the whole place ablaze in an instant.
Besides, at bottom, all of this was the fault of a lord who had failed to protect them. Why else did they pay their tribute so punctually, and offer up their labor, year after year?
"No troops sallied out, then?"
"No, my lady. They wouldn't have had the time to hire mercenaries. They sent a messenger to deliver a warning, but..."
"Idiots, the lot of them. They still haven't grasped the situation. The plunder's finished — we march on Saint-Darge Castle! Let us have a proper look at this lord's face!"
The army answered her cry with a roar. An employer who paid in gold and offered endless opportunities for plunder was always popular.
"...This feels strangely familiar."
"Shut your mouth."
At Johan's remark, Stefan growled, his face flushing red. Even to Johan's eyes, the situation did look painfully similar.
There they were, besieging a castle — the very blunder that had gotten him so absurdly humiliated at Boson Castle in Count Zarfen's lands!
Saint-Darge was smaller than Boson, certainly, and its defenses weaker. But a castle was a castle. The army could only encircle it and wait; no one dared to storm the walls.
The discipline is on another level, though.
The army Stefan had once led had looked loose and full of gaps. The force Duke Ulrike commanded now was its exact opposite.
"Even a rough count puts it past a thousand men... I see."
"?"
"You'd best be careful. Ulrike is receiving support from the royal house of Erance. That much is certain."
"!"
The confidence to attack without a care for who stood behind her — Emperor or no.
There was only one possible source of it: backing from a high lord of comparable standing.
"Is that actually true?"
"It may not be. But Ulrike has precious few places she could seek support from, and everyone knows the King of Erance takes a keen interest in the Empire's affairs."
Your misfortune is my happiness.
Should the Emperor and his high lords fall to fighting one another, the King of Erance would be a very happy man indeed.
"And the Emperor... as you well know, he's made far too many enemies. He has fires enough to put out without meddling here."
"But if he simply stands by, his authority will sink to rock bottom."
"Checkmate either way. Though it's no more than he deserves."
While the two of them murmured, knights came out from the camp to receive them. Perhaps because of the ambiguous status of Johan, Suetleug, and Stefan, their manner was cautious.
"Please, come inside."
"Isn't this a touch disrespectful?"
Suetleug spoke with a low, simmering anger.
Inside the command tent stood crossbowmen with their bolts already loaded, along with armed knights. They looked brimming with the resolve to throw their bodies into the path of any danger.
No custom anywhere welcomed a guest like this.
"Forgive the discourtesy. I'm something of a coward."
Duke Ulrike answered without so much as blinking. From her standpoint, it was only natural.
The story of the fool Stefan, so drunk on his own name that he'd been captured by a lone unarmored knight while swaggering about, was already common knowledge everywhere.
She had no intention of becoming her family's second fool.
"You should have reined yourself in, then!"
"Let us not adjudicate past grievances here."
Having answered Suetleug's whisper, Johan stepped forward.
He'd never intended to take her hostage in the first place, but this setup made it look outright impossible.
"Have you been well, Duke Ulrike?"
"I've been perfectly well, Sir Johan. Glad to see you again."
Johan studied her expression. It was, undeniably, bright and cheerful.
So the Count did give her his word.
Well, telling Stefan to die or go to the Silent Monastery had conveyed the message more certainly than a hundred polite sentences ever could. Knowing that no more of her property could leak away, her composure made perfect sense.
...Which makes bringing up the tax rights even more awkward.
It felt like dumping a bucket of cold water on someone in the middle of a delightful mood.
"Any regrets?"
"?"
"You should have accepted my offer back then. We'd both have been so much happier for it."
At Ulrike's words, Suetleug looked puzzled, while Stefan's face went crimson with fury and fear.
Only Johan and Stefan understood what that offer had meant.
"But that chance is gone. Opportunity is like an arrow — once loosed, it never comes back to hand. I do hope the honor you gained in its place was worth the price."
"It wasn't really for the sake of honor..."
"Never mind that. Answer this first: you refuse."
"?"
"It's obvious. That's what Sir Stefan is thinking. The punitive campaign failed, he won't go to the Silent Monastery, so he's dragged his mercenaries here hoping to atone by serving under my banner. I have no need of it."
Suetleug, who had been listening, spoke up. "You can't be so well off that you'd turn away the help of two hundred mercenaries..."
"It would be welcome, yes. But I have no wish to be entangled with that useless knight. So take your mercenaries and leave. If you wish to come again, come without him."
Ulrike pointed at Stefan as she said it.
Two hundred mercenaries would have been useful. But she refused to hand Stefan so much as a trifling share of the credit.
All of the burden, none of the reward.
That was precisely what Stefan was to her.
"Duke Ulrike."
"What? Do you have more to say?"
"First, a correction is in order... the punitive campaign was a success."
"......"
For the first time in his life, Stefan felt the pure thrill of vindication. The expression that crossed Ulrike's face a heartbeat later was exactly what such a moment deserved.
"...You should have said so at the outset. Clearly. Yes. I was underestimating your ability."
Come to think of it, the Sage of the Ipael River was hardly someone Stefan could have summoned on his own authority. It must have been Johan who called him.
"Thank you."
"So? Did you come here to boast of your success?"
"What I'm about to say would be better discussed in priva—"
"My lady!"
The mercenary captain flung back the tent flap and hurried in.
"The Lord of Saint-Darge wishes to surrender!"
"!"
Thanks to that, the private meeting with Johan was postponed. With the castle lord offering to surrender, that naturally took precedence over everything else.
"Faster than I expected."
"That is thanks to your command, my lady."
"I did nothing but sit and wait. Spare me the empty flattery."
The same caustic tongue as Count Abner, down to the last syllable.
Still, it wasn't entirely wrong.
A besieged castellan had few options available. He could hold out and die, or he could surrender.
The Lord of Saint-Darge had chosen the latter.
The gates opened, and a delegation bearing the white flag emerged. Ulrike found herself smiling despite her best efforts. No one could keep from smiling in a moment like this.
"The terms of surrender?"
"Here they are..."
The envoys' faces were dark and haggard. Having held out through the siege only to come crawling out to surrender, it was only natural. Ulrike signaled with a tilt of her chin, and her subordinates took the document and began to read it over.
Meanwhile Johan watched idly from the back. Stefan asked him quietly:
"...Think the negotiation will go well?"
"Hard to say. On pure logic, it should. But people aren't creatures that think with their heads alone... Honestly, couldn't you have made a few less enemies?"
"You think I gathered them on purpose?!"
"Being a fool is a sin too. If it were me, I'd have been careful about every breath I took."
"That's quite enough pointless chatter. There are too many ears about."
Johan nodded at Suetleug's words. Bickering here would accomplish nothing anyway. The negotiation would be settled in his face-to-face meeting with Ulrike.
"...?"
Something about the envoys' expressions struck Johan as off. He'd seen those faces somewhere before.
And in that instant, he understood why they looked so familiar.
"Gerdolf!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
"Take the mercenaries and seal the left flank!"
Before the words had even left his mouth, Johan was sprinting like a madman. There was no time to find a horse and mount it.
Their expressions had looked familiar because they were thinking the exact same thing Johan himself had once thought.
Ambush!
Those lunatics!
But the meaning behind it was the very opposite of his own.
Johan had built up a legitimate justification in front of witnesses, brandishing the honor of knighthood as his shield. Because the justification lay with him, the knights present had accepted what he'd done.
But these men were marching out as a surrender delegation intending to spring a trap. That was disgrace enough to forfeit any claim to being treated as fellow nobility.
Even Ulrike — of all people — had never imagined her opponent would stoop to something like this...
"Ulrike!"
"What? Have you lost your mind?"
Ulrike turned at the sound of Johan's voice, wearing an expression of pure incredulity. He didn't even say 'Duke' — were we ever that close?
"Get back! Now!"
"What nonsense are you—"
Ulrike stopped mid-sentence. A cold, slithering sensation brushed across her mind.
"Seize Duke Ulrike!!"
Every last one of the haggard envoys drew their weapons. With the savage eyes of beasts, they hurled themselves at her.