The Devil-Cursed Bastard
The delegation wasn't wearing proper armor. It was meant to lower Ulrike's guard.
Their numbers were paltry as well — a dozen or so. If the murderous host of Ulrike's army arrayed behind her came crashing down on them, they'd be ground into paste.
But all of that would change the moment they seized Ulrike.
Ulrike, stepping forward to receive the surrender delegation!
All they had to do was grab her. Around Ulrike stood only a handful of off-guard knights and a few clerks.
It was more than enough to snatch her in a surprise attack!
Thud!
Damn it all!
The man leading the delegation ground his teeth. A landless lesser noble, he'd taken this mission as his one shot at advancement.
All he needed was to stretch out his arm and seize the Ulrike standing right there...
But some mad knight behind her had started bellowing at the top of his lungs, and Ulrike had slipped out of reach. His hand, as a result, wound around pitifully in empty air.
It didn't matter, though. Ulrike's army was far in the rear, while they were pressed right up against her.
"B-block them! Stop them!"
As Ulrike frantically scrambled backward, the knights and clerks beside her finally grasped the situation and moved. They were so desperate they threw their bodies forward before anything else.
Shff!
But the delegation's swordsmanship was no joke. Short blades stabbed in from every direction, hunting the armored knights' exposed vitals. These were clearly swordsmen who had properly trained in short-sword technique at a guild.
No matter how well a body was covered, it couldn't be covered completely. When four blades drove in from four sides at once, the knight went down with a scream.
What went for the knights went no differently for the clerks. They were felled in a single stroke each.
In an instant, the screen guarding Ulrike's front vanished. Even Ulrike couldn't help breaking into a cold sweat at this.
And then Johan arrived.
"Huh?"
Thwack!
At the sound of a blade punching through flesh from somewhere behind him, one of the ambushers looked down at his own body with an expression of pure bewilderment.
A longsword was buried in his chest.
Johan had thrown it mid-charge. The ambusher who had been lunging in at the very front died on the spot.
"You son of a bitch, how dare—!"
Another ambusher hurled himself at Johan with a curse. Johan had thrown his longsword away — he was fighting bare-handed. True, he wore a thick chain mail, but if he couldn't handle opponents like this, he'd have no business calling himself a swordsman.
Wham!
Johan slipped in close, caught the man's short sword on the armored section of his forearm, and drove his fist into him at full power. The ambusher's skull caved in and he dropped dead.
Watching from behind, Ulrike's eyes went wide.
The Troll-Slayer of Marcel!
Somehow, suddenly, she understood exactly how that title had been earned.
"Stay behind me! They can't kill you while you're back there!"
"!"
Ulrike grasped what Johan meant and pressed herself behind him. If she stayed apart and got seized as a hostage, there'd be nothing Johan could do either.
"Kill them! Kill them and take her!"
The ambushers screamed like cornered animals. They, too, understood their situation all too well.
If they failed to take Ulrike before the soldiers came running up, the fate awaiting them would be so horrific that death would be a mercy!
When the bastards came swarming wildly in from every side, Johan glanced around him.
Fighting and holding out was fine. But if Ulrike got wrested away from him, the whole thing meant nothing.
"...!"
Johan kicked out at a tent pole. It was a temporary, open-sided structure — not staked deep enough to survive a full-force kick...
CRACK!
The tent collapsed forward, entangling the ambushers.
"!"
Johan hefted the pole and swung it into the charging men, one after another. A massive, long pole was a devastating weapon in its own right. The ambushers, armed with nothing but short swords, couldn't get inside its reach.
"That devil-cursed bastard...!"
One of the ambushers muttered under his breath.
The way he saw it, Johan had made a pact with a demon. What else could explain that monstrous strength?
A castle had more than just its main gate. It also had hidden sally ports.
Invisible from the outside, these concealed gates were strategically vital — secret messengers slipped out through them, and lords used them to flee in a pinch.
And one of this hidden gate's roles was, precisely, as the exit for the strike force.
No fool would simply stand there and take a raid that came marching out the front gate.
The castle's cavalry emerged warily through the hidden gate.
Their objective was simple.
If the delegation ambushed and seized Ulrike, the cavalry would come crashing in and drag her back inside the walls. All they had to do was buy that window of time.
Except...
"...?"
"!"
The cavalry, who had circled around to approach, recoiled in horror. The situation looked wrong no matter how they looked at it.
The delegation was nowhere to be seen, and Ulrike's army had pressed right up against the walls, radiating murderous intent.
"To the Laan gate! We break out through the Laan gate!"
"Circling back! Circle around!"
Their leader was quick to read the room, and so they managed to wheel their horses around instead of charging in.
The rule was to return through a different hidden gate after a raid. They hastily turned and galloped for the opposite sally port.
"Lord Gerdolf! Your orders!"
"Kill them all. Every last one."
Gerdolf bellowed out a feral growl. He had just understood why Johan had told him to bring the mercenaries here.
Kill those bastards — that's the order, isn't it!
Gerdolf grinned savagely and charged. He could see the enemy's faces blanching white at the unexpected counterattack. It was a beautiful sight.
"Ugh."
"Why on earth do you fight like such a brute?!"
Suetlg took hold of Johan's arm and inspected it. Thankfully, nothing seemed torn — no muscle, no bone.
To pull off that kind of lunacy and walk away untouched — God Himself was lending a hand.
"I needed a long weapon, and there was nothing else within reach."
"Other than being a little tired, you're fine. No need to worry."
Suetlg made a revolted face.
Even for a man of tremendous strength, pulling a stunt like that should have left him bedridden for days, or at least with something broken somewhere.
Yet Johan seemed to have come out of it with nothing but mild fatigue.
If that wasn't God's blessing, what was it?
"So, what is Lord Ulrike up to now?"
"Seething from the roots of her hair and preparing her revenge. And she's asking for you."
"Let's go together, then."
"No. I'll stay here."
"She'll give you thanks, not harm."
"All the more reason you can go alone and come back. I'll pass."
Suetlg had little desire to meet with Ulrike.
For Johan, entangling himself with her politically would yield plenty. But Suetlg wanted nothing from her.
If anything, the more dealings there were, the more it would be Ulrike ordering Suetlg about.
"Lord Ulrike wishes to see you."
"Have her wait a moment. I need to talk Suetlg into it."
"Her Grace wishes to see you alone, my lord...?"
"......"
Suetlg's expression turned exquisitely complicated. He hadn't wanted to meet her — and yet now that she wasn't asking for him, he felt oddly stung.
"Then I'll go alone and come back."
"Just be careful you don't get eaten alive."
Near Ulrike's tent, the surviving ambushers were bound to posts.
They were scheduled to be executed shortly, in the cruelest fashion possible, before the castle walls.
"My lord. Welcome."
"Our sincerest thanks for your valor this day."
The knights, still trembling with fury, fell silent the moment Johan appeared and bowed with proper courtesy. That was how extraordinary his feat had been.
Had he not held off and cut down the ambushers alone, Ulrike might truly have been taken hostage. Just imagining it made their stomachs drop.
"?"
Johan eyed the knights strangely. He was supposed to enter, yet none of them made a move to disarm him.
"Shouldn't you be taking my weapons?"
"Her Grace has granted permission. Please, go right in."
Perplexed, Johan stepped inside. Ulrike was alone in the tent, hunched over a map, scribbling something. She looked up as he entered.
"You'll want something, won't you?"
"?"
"A reward. Or did you charge out there without even thinking of it?"
Johan answered her with an unbothered expression.
"Not really. I'd just like to wrap up what I came here to do."
He had intervened because things went badly wrong for him too if Ulrike got dragged off — he hadn't been scheming for anything in that moment. Johan wasn't nearly that clever.
Ulrike's face soured at his words.
A man ruthlessly strict with his own ledgers was bound to be irritated when the other party refused to play by them.
From her perspective, the fact that Johan hadn't demanded payment up front was deeply displeasing. It left her feeling perpetually in his debt.
"You can speak freely."
"I'm fine. Unlike last time, this is a formal occasion. I'll keep to protocol."
That made Ulrike even more irritated. Johan was baffled.
Wasn't that exactly the kind of answer she was supposed to want?
"...Out with it, then."
"The truth is, I hold the tax rights to Heincut village."
"......"
Ulrike sank into quiet thought. Ten seconds later, she spoke.
"Tell Stefan he's a dead man."
"Actually, I've come to negotiate about that."
"You shameless wretch! So that's what you were thinking when you joined this punitive campaign..."
Ulrike realized she'd misjudged him.
She should have known the moment that idiot younger brother of hers emptied his coffers to hire mercenaries.
It was never about military glory. He simply intended to sell off the rights to his own fief, and sell them well.
"Ser Stefan has already agreed. I intend to sell these tax rights to you, my lady."
"To me?"
"Yes. Are you not the rightful owner of that land, after all?"
"Spare me the flattery. It won't work on me. And what if I don't feel like buying?"
"Then I'd have no choice but to find someone else. Bishop-Count Mohshow would do nicely, or perhaps one of the trading houses... Plenty of people want tax rights. My lady, I only ask that you understand — I am trying to return your rightful property to you. This is goodwill."
But Johan was right.
Letting spite push the tax rights into someone else's hands would be a pure loss.
"And one more thing."
"?"
"If you buy the tax rights, I ask that you spare Stefan's life."
"Did he offer you his ass?! That sister of his was the same — why is it every last one of you feels compelled to coddle that little bastard?!"
Ulrike finally exploded.
The way Johan kept circling back to Stefan irritated her beyond all reason.
Then, mid-rant, she understood.
She was jealous. That worthless younger brother of hers possessed a knight she didn't.
"He didn't offer me his ass... but a promise is a promise. I intend to keep it."
"Fine! Say I buy the tax rights. Say I split the money with you. And then? And then I kill Stefan anyway?"
"Then there wouldn't be anything I could do about it, would there."
Johan answered with perfect calm. The unexpected reply left Ulrike flustered.
"Wh... what?"
"I'm not Stefan's father. I can hardly trail after him for the rest of his life guarding his back. If you kill him, then that's that."
"......"
"If you want to break your promise, my lady, do as you please. It's no concern of mine. My promise to Stefan never went that far."
At his words, Ulrike felt an inexplicable sense of defeat.
The final decision was clearly in her hands, yet she found herself unable to argue with a single word he'd said.
Standing before Johan, the words 'I don't care about promises — I'm going to kill Stefan' simply would not come out of her mouth.
"...Fine. He lives. He's a man I lost any reason to kill ages ago anyway. Tell him this: the next time he slinks around in front of me, I'll take his head."
"Even without me saying a word, I suspect he's learned his lesson."
"Ha! If that fool were capable of learning anything, I wouldn't have been trying to kill him in the first place."
Ulrike took several deep breaths before speaking again.
"We've covered your business. Now for mine. You weren't the least bit curious why I called you here?"
"Ah — yes. Extremely curious."
This absolute bastard...
Johan had a real talent for being polite in the most infuriating way possible. Ulrike held her tongue and pressed on.
"Have you any thought of accepting a grant of land?"
"...!"
"Hold on. Before you get excited, hear me out. I have no habit of lying to the man who'll receive my land. But you won't get it for free. If you want it, you'll have to fight a few more battles."
"Such as attacking that castle, for instance?"
"Exactly."