The First to Arrive
He had lost his mind and made an absurd blunder. To slip up like that in front of a knight.
It wasn't as if mercenaries automatically groveled before every knight they met.
A mercenary band of a few dozen might have to, but the envoy of a company numbering in the hundreds could afford to be arrogant in a knight's presence.
The problem was that a few hundred more soldiers stood behind that knight!
When the savage tribesmen of the East rapped their knuckles against their scabbards, eyes glittering, the mercenary's legs went weak and he couldn't lift his head.
"Enough. I'll overlook the slip of the tongue. Go back and deliver your message."
"Y-yes... thank you."
The mercenary scrambled onto his horse and fled. Johan noted two things about him: he had a horse, and he was fairly well armed.
"Which company is he from?"
"The Verago Company, sir," Marco answered.
The Verago Company was a sizable outfit whose captain had even earned a knighthood. If the Duke had counted them among his forces for the punitive expedition, their competence was presumably assured.
"They wouldn't have exceeded the heavens, would they?"
"They'd have been issued a recruitment license, so if they scraped together every warm body they could before the campaign, their numbers could well have swollen. ...Are you worried about a clash, sir?"
"My lashing wasn't exactly a sociable greeting."
"Unless the man's lost his mind, he won't dare start a fight."
"Sir Marco. I haven't lived all that long, but if I've learned one thing, it's that the world is crawling with madmen."
Aclada burst out laughing at that.
"Tighten the watch. Euclia, I'd like you to cover the rear."
"■■ ■■■ ■■■■."
"Hmm. Not a word of that. What does it mean?"
"He says you should give commands, not requests."
"Right. My mistake. Take the rear, and pass the word to the others to raise their vigilance. We've reached the point where running into enemies would surprise no one."
"So anyway, Captain, that knight bastard and his savage bastard—"
"Save the whining for your own tent."
The mercenary captain Gurerik, called the Red Axe, plucked a bristle from his stiff beard as he spoke.
"Run into some strange knight and now we've got a headache."
"Isn't he a laugh? If he's going to talk like a monk, he should've gone to a monastery. Who does he think he is, a bloody priest?"
"Captain! The knight was insolent to you, and you just take it? Let's ignore him! You've got a knighthood too, Captain!"
"That's right! Screw that two-bit knight, let's hit the village!"
"Hah hah hah. Look at this one."
Gurerik stared at the whipped mercenary with something like admiration. When the man met his gaze with expectant eyes, Gurerik backhanded him across the jaw.
"Gahk!"
"And who's being insolent now, hm?"
Among rough men like these, holding one's position required violence and fear. Seizing his opportunity, Gurerik beat the mercenary savagely.
Once the man couldn't move his limbs, Gurerik jerked his chin. A slave dragged the mercenary out and dumped him outside the tent.
The atmosphere grew considerably more respectful. The centurions swallowed hard.
"You lot... can run your mouths all you like, but *I'm* the one who answers for it. Why? Because this company is mine. The Duke holds me accountable, the Count holds me accountable. It'd be lovely if it all ended with you lot swinging from a gallows, but does anything ever end that neatly?"
"We're sorry, Captain!"
"Next time you open your mouths, at least know who you're talking to before you spew shit. Understood?"
"Understood!"
He looked like nothing more than a coarse, fat mercenary, but Gurerik had rolled through battlefields more than most. No ordinary experience let a mercenary rise all the way to a knighthood.
The moment he'd arrived at Bayen, Gurerik had gathered every scrap of rumor he could. He knew exactly who Johan was.
Given the man's results in the tournament and the hunt, it was easy to understand why the Duke had granted him the banneret's rank and lavished favor on him.
Provoking a man basking in the Duke's favor would be madness. The knight's behavior grated on him, sure—but plenty of nobles were far more insufferable. He could stomach it.
"Supplies still holding?"
"Yes... sir."
"Then we move! And tell those bastards to cut back on the drinking. Time the greenhorns learned a little reality too."
"Understood."
Several centurions snickered among themselves.
When they'd been recruited, they'd heard nothing but sweet talk—but mercenary work was, by nature, the kind of thing a man couldn't do with a clear head.
For the first few days they'd been plied with meat and drink to keep them docile. But once the column was far enough from home that running wasn't a real option, the mask could come off.
"Pick one man out of every ten-man squad for the lash. Restore some discipline."
"Yes, sir!"
They were a textbook Imperial mercenary company—everything Johan's column was not.
"There's a few of them ahead, sir."
"An ambush?"
"No. Villagers, come to pay tribute."
At Aclada's report, Johan's face soured.
"The mercenaries haven't attacked anyone, have they?"
"Haven't seen hide nor hair of them, Sir Knight. I don't much trust Imperials, but I don't think those ones mean to attack."
"Right. I worried for nothing. Satisfied?"
"Haha. That's not exactly what I was fishing for, but I'll take it all the same."
Johan clicked his tongue and accepted the money from the village headman. Word had evidently spread—villages were now sending people out before the army even arrived.
With an army this close, there was bound to be collateral damage. Better to pay up front, they'd decided.
-B-but, Sir Knight, we heard a rumor... that you're buying grain...
-That's right. Livestock, grain, drink, herbs—bring whatever you have to sell, and you'll be paid a fair price.
-Well, you see, wheat prices have been rather high lately...
-Have you lost your damn mind, man? Do you think you'll still be running that mouth after my arrow goes through it? Where do you get off haggling with me?
-F-forgive me! The usual price! You'll have the usual price!
After sending the headman on his way, Johan took out his map and checked their position.
Hm? We made better time than I thought.
It was a crude map, far beneath Johan's standards, but even it told him they were only a day or two from Umdim.
Count Ganelwood's vanguard should have departed first, followed by the mercenaries...
"No sign of the vanguard nearby, then?"
"No, sir."
"Don't tell me we're actually first."
"It's possible, I believe."
Marco spoke up. Even by the reckoning of a man who'd campaigned several times, Johan's pace of advance was undeniably fast. Most commanders moved slower, forever pausing to plunder or sort out supply.
"Hah... I wasn't even particularly trying, and we got here first. I suppose I'll be hearing some praise."
First to arrive, first over the walls, first through the gates—there were rewards for all of it. Johan hadn't especially coveted the honors, but there was no harm in collecting.
"We halt here for the day. Get the camp ready."
"You're heading out again?"
"You're welcome to come along. Do you want to come?"
"No. Honestly, it's been deathly boring."
Johan snorted at Aclada's bluntness.
"I'll take Sir Gerdolf and be back. Hold the camp."
It was only natural Aclada found it tedious. Every time the column halted, Johan sat down to draw a fresh map.
For centaurs, who recorded nearly everything by oral tradition, paper and ink were strange artifacts indeed.
Then again, my method is so unusual the others might not make heads or tails of it.
"Gerdolf. Bored?"
"Yes."
"...Sorry for dragging you along."
Gerdolf was loyal, but he was also honest.
Bored was bored!
"Th-those goddamn mongrel curs..."
"Shall I issue a formal reprimand?"
"N-no need. It would only b-backfire."
Count Ganelwood spoke through his sweat. The village they had just passed through had been utterly razed.
The Count understood the need for supply and self-provisioning as well as any commander. But this was, by any reading, the mercenaries running fat with greed.
Take what you need, then show some restraint—not strip a village down to the last root. Blind greed was one thing; this was beyond the pale.
And yet he could not forbid it. It was one of the customary rights mercenaries claimed as their own. Ban it, and discontent would boil over.
Between serfs and soldiers, he had to look after the soldiers.
"Te-tell the stragglers they'll be punished severely. Th-that much, they'll understand. Have any enemies been sighted?"
"None yet, my lord... though I expect they'll either surrender or hole up inside the city."
The Count judged it quite likely that Umdim would sue for mercy and capitulate before any real fighting began.
The neighboring cities and petty kingdoms had no strength to spare for intervention. Confronted with an army of this size in their isolation, surrendering would hardly be strange.
"S-so it may be. But we must stay alert regardless."
"Understood. Leave it to me."
"Sir! We're under raid! The Barba Company in the east has been ambushed!"
"!"
Sir Carpati started. He did not think the Barba Company sloppy enough to be caught off guard—but there were always a few who blundered, who let their guard slip.
"Their strength?"
"Just under a hundred, they say—cavalry and centaurs mixed, savage tribesmen all! They concentrated on the mercenaries' supplies and merchants, it seems..."
Count Ganelwood, listening in, forgot himself and marveled aloud. So this was how one put savages to work!
They'd be smashed in a straight fight, but for hamstringing an army's advance they were more than enough. It wasn't merely the materiel—the fear of being the next to suffer slowed every column to a crawl.
"Clever of them, hiring savages."
"H-hired, I doubt. This smacks of the p-petty kingdoms. Th-those people would be capable of it. We tighten the gaps between columns and slow the pace. Have the s-scouting screens doubled."
The Count responded at once.
Better to arrive late than be made a fool of. Mercifully, his reputation had nowhere left to fall—even a rumor that he'd been frightened out of his wits cost him nothing.
"Understood."
"And—Sir Carpati. I would have you escort Lord Lepiata."
Sir Carpati nodded. Lord Lepiata commanded troops of his own, but honestly, the boy made him uneasy. With him riding at the boy's side, his mind would rest far easier.
"H-His Grace said the boy could live or die as he pleased. But we can never allow it. Not ever."
Even if the Duke meant it, a vassal could not. When the reckoning came, it would fall on his own head.
As Sir Carpati withdrew, he added,
"Ah—I must see that the vanguard is warned as well."
"Yes, my lord. At once."
When Johan's column reached the very outskirts of Umdim, any doubt vanished: they were first. People who caught sight of the army were screaming and fleeing into the city.
Aclada wore the expression of a man whose fingers were itching.
"Shall we chase them down?"
"How much coin do you think we'd shake out of a few panicked peasants? Tend to what needs doing first."
Storming the walls was not the whole of a siege. Most sieges were, in truth, exquisitely boring affairs.
The walls don't look all that high...
But no matter how many meters they stood, attempting to force them with a force this size would be madness—especially without siege engines.
Johan resolved to do only what could be done.
Yet his arrival sent ripples far larger than he anticipated. What was happening inside the walls, Johan couldn't know—but the people of Umdim could imagine nothing but the worst.
"Garrison commander! What in God's name is the meaning of this!"
"Compose yourself, my lord. It is merely the vanguard arriving. There are scarcely that many of them."
"Scarcely that many? They fill the horizon to its edge! And have you not heard what the ones who fled in are saying? They say there are Eastern savages among them!"
Even scraped together to the last man, Umdim's garrison numbered less than a thousand—and that was after the rumors had spurred a hasty round of new mercenary hires.
The mercenaries, for their part, had enough sense not to leap eagerly into a losing fight.
The only man he could rely on was the garrison commander, a man from one of the petty kingdoms. A lesser noble by birth, he had the connections to call for reinforcement.
"Ha... you must have mistaken horsemen for something else. The savages are no pushover, I grant you, but unless the Duke himself has come in person, these heavy bodies would never—huh."
"?"
The garrison commander looked down below the walls and went white. Centaurs. There was no mistaking them—the savage tribes of the East had come.
What? How?
The petty kingdoms that had clashed with the tribes for generations had absorbed a good deal of savage ways into themselves—but the Empire had not. The Duke might have pursued a policy of conciliation, but for them to take the field for him? This, he had never imagined.