A Fief by the Sea
"The centaurs are master hunters, and the Alchia Tribe is the finest of them all. Surely they fed the Werewolf King a potent venom, one strong enough to keep even him from moving."
"Ooh..."
Aclada marveled. So they think we have a trick like that up our sleeves?
Of course, it was impossible. Monsters were not only keen-sensed but possessed formidable vitality. They rarely touched poisoned prey in the first place, and even if they did, the odds were good they'd simply shrug it off.
The Duke was skeptical as well.
"Well? What say you?"
"No, my lord Duke."
The eldest stepped back with a disappointed expression. Next came the second. She insisted that the tribal warriors must have herded the werewolves like game animals, driving them down one by one.
Wild beasts, after a long chase, would collapse from exhaustion. If the werewolves had done the same, they could have been taken without a wound on their hides.
"You lack knowledge of monsters. Monsters are not beasts — they do not die of exhaustion that way. And a werewolf is so savage that the sight of hunters closing in only spurs it to attack, not flee. What say you, Sir Johan?"
"You are mistaken, my lord."
The second bit her lip and withdrew, and the third simply gave up on the spot. He would rather appear humble than humiliated. The Duke, of course, saw straight through the ploy.
"Being wrong is forgivable. Refusing to answer is not."
"F-forgive me."
"Enough. What do you think?"
At last, the fourth spoke up.
"I was curious, so I asked Sir Johan about it beforehand."
"......"
"......"
At their sibling's words, the others could only think, why didn't we think of that? Who would have guessed the answer would come out like that?
Abandoning the guesswork and openly admitting one's own shortcomings was, it turned out, another way to make oneself shine. Who knew how effective it would be, but it certainly looked better than the string of wrong answers that had come before.
"Did he, now? And so?"
"So... I believe he wrestled the werewolf down and strangled it to take it alive."
The Duke stumbled in his seat for an instant. The answer was so unexpected that he briefly lost his balance. At this rare display from their father, his children stared in astonishment.
...Wasn't that the answer he'd handed us himself?
"Did he tell you that? You're quite the mischievous one, Sir. There was no need to keep it such a secret."
"Er... my lord Duke. That is how he took it."
"...?"
Before Johan could speak again, the drunk warriors standing nearby, their mouths itching to contribute, blurted it out first.
"That is truly how it was taken, my lord Duke! You should have seen it with your own eyes!"
"He flattened the damned werewolf in a single blow as it lunged, then strangled the beast into submission!"
"......"
At the outlandish answer, the entire House of Brudhe sank into a silence thick with shock. The first to climb out of it was the Duke.
"Blessed be the knight who advances without fear before any monster. May fortune favor you, Sir."
"B-blessings upon you!"
The Duke's children echoed him one after another, but their voices rang loudly of bewilderment.
Who on earth would have believed it was the truth!
'I'll leave the gamekeeper be.'
The Duke resolved to spare the unfortunate huntsman. It hadn't been the man's fault, after all.
* * *
The luxurious feast ended, and when dawn broke, the Duke announced the most magnificent kill of the hunt to the assembled company. The warriors had to march before the Duke's procession, parading their quarry through the city and beyond its walls like men showing off a trophy.
The warriors who received their shares of gold and silver coins as a reward for their valor looked utterly delighted.
It was rare to find a warrior here who wasn't strapped for coin. And even the wealthy few could hardly fail to be pleased by a prize like this.
As Aclada walked along grinning, Johan eyed him curiously.
"That happy, is it?"
"Hm? Ah — it's not the gold, Sir Johan. What do you take me for? I was laughing remembering the faces the Stars of Brudhe made."
"A fine hobby you have there."
"How many more times in my life will I get to see faces like that? Though speaking of which, Sir — did the Duke say nothing to you privately?"
Thanks to Johan's intercession, the warriors had received their rewards too, but unless the Duke was a fool, that couldn't be the end of it.
Even a lord who saved face for others in public had to slip something extra, behind closed doors, to the warriors he truly intended to use. A lord who didn't was no lord at all.
"Not yet. What did you receive?"
"A promise of fine horses and flocks of sheep. But you've no need for such things, have you, Sir? It's not as if the tribe is anywhere nearby."
"Hmm..."
Johan had a nose for these things. He could already sense that the Duke was preparing something.
It would surely be no bad offer — but if he could, he wanted to know in advance.
* * *
"My guess is he'll hand you command of soldiers."
While Johan played with the werewolves out on the grassland, Swetelg and the others had spent their time touring the city, mingling with the nobility.
Thanks to that, they'd gotten a clear read on what the eastern lords were thinking.
"The Duke's power looks overwhelming, but there's more instability beneath the surface than you'd expect. From the south all the way east — rebellion and invasion, again and again."
The lands around here were firmly pacified, but the territories farther south and east had to be seen as balanced on a knife's edge.
Great kingdoms and small ones that spent their time hacking at each other — it was almost embarrassing to call them kingdoms. Nameless nomadic tribes. The city-states of the Catalia Peninsula, ever wary of the Duke...
There were plenty of powers nearby who could conspire together at a moment's notice, and so the Duke had no choice but to tread ever more carefully.
"Seeing him look after the tribes beyond his borders, I thought as much."
"It wouldn't surprise me one bit if he put soldiers under your command."
Flattery had its place, but those who seized their chance to defy the Duke and bare their teeth at him demanded a far harsher answer.
And Johan was the Duke's newly forged, razor-sharp blade. Any man would want to swing such a blade at least once.
"Putting down rebellions isn't terribly difficult, my lord. What I'd personally like to do is strike at the Emperor's own cities and towns."
"That's out of the question. Though it's true the Duke and Kardirian are hardly on good terms."
It was Kaenerna who spoke. She too had been lavishly feted everywhere she went, no less than Swetelg, but her experience had been a different one.
"Still, he has no particular wish to fight right now."
The Duke was an elector of the Empire, but his interests lay beyond it. With more land than he could govern in a lifetime sitting idle, he had no desire to entangle himself in the Empire's internal quarrels.
Even to Kaenerna, who under ordinary circumstances would have been treated far more coldly, the nobles extended a measure of courtesy — along with a veiled message.
'Promise the Duke fair compensation, and we will not join the Empire's internal wars!'
"So the Emperor agreed?"
"...How would I know that? I'm stuck here."
Kaenerna said, exasperated. Bound up in this place as she was, how was she supposed to know the Emperor's decision?
"I'm asking for your judgment, then."
"My judgment would be... he probably paid up."
With the western and southern lords already sharpening their knives, making an enemy of yet another elector would have been madness.
Just as votes had been bought and sold among the electors when choosing the Emperor himself, such bargains were far from unusual in these affairs.
Johan let his face fall in disappointment. If the Duke ever did set his sights on the Emperor's lands, Johan had been planning to fight eagerly beneath his banner.
"Don't get greedy. The original goal was a knighthood, wasn't it? You've already achieved several times over what you set out for."
"True enough, my lord."
* * *
"I shall confer upon you the title of Banneret, and grant you Dorak and Palmon as your fief."
"...?!"
As if he'd overheard Swetelg's speculation, the Duke summoned Johan and dropped the bombshell.
Johan stiffened from head to toe as he spoke.
"My lord Duke, I have yet to render you any true service beneath your banner."
A Banneret bearing the Duke's own standard was close to an honorary post — that much he could have accepted readily.
But a fief, out of nowhere?
To receive land as a knight, one had to become the liege's hound in word and deed, devoting one's full strength to him. Johan had performed wonders in the tournament and on the hunt alike, but reputation alone was not enough.
Poison lurked within every offer too good to be true.
Whether he read that wariness in Johan's face or not, the Duke gave a wry smile.
"I've always known you were cleverer than the other knights, but at times like this it's more inconvenient than anything? Don't worry. Hear me out, and it will make sense."
The Duke spread out a map and traced the two villages with his finger. Both were port towns bordering the sea, lying at the very southernmost reach of the duchy.
The Edene Sea was a kind of inland sea — the city-states of the Catalia Peninsula crowding its western shores, a scatter of minor duchies and kingdoms pressed along its east.
It was almost embarrassing to call this the southern edge of the Duke's domain. It sat in a position where anyone, from city-state to duchy, might reach out and snatch it without seeming strange.
'A place where being stolen and stealing in return would surprise no one.'
"The city above these two villages, Umdim, was once a city sworn to my service. But whether it grew to scorn the name of Brudhe, or whether it had some other patron it trusted... it delayed the taxes it owed me and expelled my men. So tell me, Sir. What do you think I ought to do?"
Territories tangled in layers of rights and inheritance were a headache to look at, let alone to rule. Generations of succession and secession had woven this map together, knot by knot.
Left to his own inclinations, the Duke would have washed his hands of the whole mess — but no such choice existed for a noble. It was unthinkable, both for his name and for his gold.
"I believe you must show them the name of Brudhe, my lord."
"Just so. Well said."
The Duke wore a handsome smile and clapped Johan on the shoulder.
"Umdim has risen in revolt — you understand, then, that the villages beneath it can hardly be loyal to me either. These two are no exception."
In other words: the two villages gave the Duke his justification, but in truth they lay beyond his grasp.
Take them back with your own hands, then!
Once it was put that way, Johan could accept it. The terms weren't too generous after all. A lord handing out justifications was a rare gift, granted...
'But it's still dangerous.'
Storming a city was not the work of the handful of mercenaries Johan commanded. It would take forces several times, even tens of times, larger.
When Johan's face clouded with deliberation, the Duke decided to play his final card. This knight had the patience to hold himself back even with succulent prey dangled before his nose.
"For the subjugation of Umdim, soldiers are being gathered separately. However highly I regard you, I cannot grant you the post of supreme commander. Another will lead the army."
"!"
At the Duke's words, Johan felt a weight lift from his shoulders. Raising an army and assaulting a city alone would have been madness — but joining the forces of other nobles and fighting alongside them was manageable.
'Once Umdim falls, the remaining villages will have no one left to defend them. They'd be mine for the taking.'
Besides, he liked the location, facing the open sea. Wasn't this a place from which he could ship goods by vessel at will? And then there was...
'It would put me within reach of the Kettana Merchant Guild too.'
The holdings were humble for now, but as a foothold of one kind or another, their usefulness felt considerable. Perhaps reading the thought behind Johan's eyes, the Duke spoke.
"There's an old saying, that second sons and below of landless houses go east in the Empire, or to the Holy Land. The east welcomes great warriors. With ability alone, one can win glory to one's heart's content — all the more so for a knight of your caliber."
"Thank you, my lord."
Though the Duke heaped praise upon him, Johan had already recovered his composure.
"When do we depart?"
"As soon as the snow melts. Until then, rest, and help gather soldiers."
"Understood. I shall keep it ever in mind."
* * *
Swetelg was startled by Johan's words. He'd told the man not to get greedy barely a moment ago — and now here he was, returning with an offer like this.
"What do you make of the Duke's intent?"
"At first I wondered what he was playing at... but in the end, isn't it obvious? He wants a knight worth his salt, one who'll swear him fealty, planted right in that region."
Umdim and the lands around it were absurdly easy to betray. A single shift of the wind, and that territory would flip its allegiance.
And even without betrayal, there was trouble enough — enemies swarmed on every side. Put a fool in charge, and the fief would be snatched away before he could so much as cry out.
From the Duke's standpoint, what he wanted was a trustworthy vassal holding that region firm and paying him tribute.
And that vassal was Johan.
With no family or faction entangled with the neighboring powers behind him, he would owe his loyalty to the Duke alone — and in valor and cunning alike, there seemed little to fault.
"...Hold on. Now that I think of it, aren't the Emperor's own lands down at the southern end of the peninsula? A ship from here would put them within arm's reach, no?"
"Save that thinking for later. Is that what matters right now?"