Chapter 217: Let the Heavens Put Out the Fire
This time something called a training scroll appeared. I hadn’t even seen it in the shop, but if I used it, could I get double the training effect for a week? I should put it to use in gunner training.
"My lord, those men are Scottish mercenaries and Saxon mercenaries."
"Is that so? Their dress is distinctive, but can you tell from that alone?"
"In the mercenary business, knowing your competitors is basic."
The mercenary business was a leading trend among medieval startups, and there were a great many competitors to match. The Essenbach dragoons cursed the Scottish mercenaries as low quality, but as men who wouldn’t hesitate at dirty work.
They scorned the Saxon mercenaries as womanizers. Pensler, the Beren Lance Cavalry commander, was a former Saxon mercenary, a philanderer who was very fond of widows, so the dragoons’ assessment made sense.
But these men were all the same.
Savage bastards who loved their legal plunder.
"Shall we attack them? We Essenbach dragoons will take the lead!"
"Good. But rape, murder, and arson are forbidden. Only plunder is allowed."
"Now, what kind of plunder is that? At least let us have the women..."
I stared steadily at the dragoon lieutenant grinning slyly. The eyes of the man trying to win a staring contest with me trembled violently, and before long he backed down. It was thanks to F-Rank Lord (Intimidation 20%) activating.
"Recall the terms of the contract we made. However, you may kill those bearing arms."
"Ahem, fine. We’ll do as the contract says. But you must yield half the spoils to us."
The Essenbach dragoons let out a war cry and entered Leben. Fiel seemed to have his anger boil over at the dragoons’ habit of constantly demanding rights. The same went for Viktor and the other lieutenants.
"Are all mercenaries like that? Knowing battle only as a way to make money."
"That’s what mercenaries are. Fiel, we don’t wage war for the sake of spoils, do we?"
"That’s true, but shouldn’t we set something aside for our men too?"
"He said it with his own mouth, didn’t he? That he’d only take half. And bulky spoils are useless."
I understood the worry that the greedy dragoons would monopolize all the spoils, leaving our men to do all the hard work and come away with nothing, but the spoils at a supply base aren’t worth as much as you’d think.
Unless there happened to be a fine thoroughbred among them. We’d at least have to sack something like the Count of Baschurten’s castle to take spoils worthy of the name. And I intended to lavish special bonuses on my men.
The masters of the other borrowed cavalry would see them taken care of. Of course, they too had the right to acquire spoils. But unlike the dragoons, they had no intention of entering blazing Leben.
They’d caught on to my intent.
The hard work could just be left to the Essenbach dragoons.
"Fiel, Viktor. Seal off the village entrance and cut down any armed troops that try to flee. If townspeople or unarmed civilians come out, hold them as prisoners for now."
"Understood. But how shall we deal with the fire spreading through the village?"
"Hmm, it looks like rain’s coming soon, so I’ll leave it to the heavens."
Dark clouds had begun to gather. It was unusual weather for early winter, but if it poured, I held out hope the inferno covering Leben would be put out. The Leben assault operation went all too easily.
"Damn it! Where did these bastards spring from?!"
"Hahaha! Saxon sons of bitches! Hand it all over!"
While the Essenbach dragoons diligently fought the enemy mercenaries inside Leben over the spoils, I waited quietly outside. Throwing yourself into a melee in those flames out of a hunger for war merit is a foolish thing to do.
It was enough just to deal with anyone fleeing out of Leben. In the end the Saxon and Scottish mercenaries, pushed back by the Essenbach dragoons, began to retreat. But the encirclement was already complete.
"All forces, attack! Don’t let a single one of them escape alive!"
Hoooorrraaaay!
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
All the waiting cavalry surged toward the enemy mercenaries pouring out of Leben. Seeing that forces other than the Essenbach dragoons had them surrounded, the mercenaries were thrown into great panic.
The Saxon and Scottish mercenaries were infantry.
So shaking off cavalry was impossible.
Crunch! Crunch!
Fiel at the vanguard built a powerful wedge formation with the Steinhof knights and split the enemy mercenary band in two in a single stroke. Behind him the Euz and Belfort cavalry charged in, and behind them the Gale Knights plunged forward.
It wasn’t a fierce fight but a one-sided slaughter.
Naturally the mercenaries gave up fleeing and threw down their weapons.
"W-we surrender! Our mercenary band surrenders!"
In my anger I wanted to execute every mercenary who’d carried out slaughter and plunder, but killing surrendered mercenaries violates the mercenary code, so my reputation among mercenaries could plummet.
But one thing was certain: a surrendered mercenary had to offer me a ransom to be released. If they couldn’t pay, they’d have to work as mercenaries for free, which of course can’t be relied on, so a ransom is usually taken instead.
In the case of the Hungarian dragoons who’d raided northern Breisburg, they’d had the means to pay ransom, so they could be released legally, but Michael, who needed light cavalry, ended up rehiring them.
There were exceptional cases like that, but I had no intention of forgiving what these men had done. Moreover, carrying out plunder on their own without their employer’s orders was no different from a band of bandits.
The battle ended one-sidedly, but Leben was still burning, and the surviving townspeople struggled to put out the fire by any means they could. We could only watch.
The rain we wanted so badly still hadn’t fallen from the dark clouds.
I summoned the Saxon and Scottish mercenary captains and negotiated.
"All your spoils are mine. Do you acknowledge it?"
"...We acknowledge it. Take it in place of our ransom."
Hmm, crude-sounding French.
Just then the Essenbach dragoon lieutenant cut in.
"Nonsense! Spoils and ransom are clearly different things! You’re trying to deceive my lord!"
"Who’s deceiving anyone?! The value of the spoils we acquired is enormous!"
"Don’t go interpreting what’s plainly stated in the mercenary code however you please!"
Just as European nobles officially follow the Salic Law, the mercenary code was likewise a reference point mercenaries followed as if it were law. And thanks to this code, they could receive proper treatment.
While the heated argument between the Essenbach dragoon lieutenant and the Saxon mercenary captain dragged on for a good while, Fiel was mobilizing his men to put out the fire. Mostly all they could do was knock down houses to keep it from spreading, though.
"Shut up! Hand over both the spoils and the ransom, you womanizing bastard!"
"What? Did you leave your sense of professional courtesy back in the Main River?!"
"Barbaric Germanic bastards, the lot of you. We Scots abide by the mercenary code."
"Barbaric? You sodomite bastards in skirts stay out of it! Savages who don’t even wear underwear!"
"What?! How dare you insult our sacred attire!"
Insults flew back and forth, and the funny thing was that all three were babbling in French. Even within German, the south and north differ, and Scots differs from English too. Still, at least there was a language they had in common.
In the end they brawled in French, the common tongue. Fistfights broke out among the mercenaries. Viktor, who’d come outside, shrugged and let it be, saying it was a matter to be settled after they’d fought to their hearts’ content.
As I kept watching the sky, rain slowly began to fall.
Shhhhh!
And quite a heavy amount at that.
The weather turned sharply cold, but with the village serving as a giant campfire, I didn’t even feel the chill.
Thanks to the rain, the fire went out a good while later. Leben’s condition was very dire. Only about twenty houses at most remained, most of them on the outskirts. The center had been reduced entirely to ashes.
Leben’s population was apparently about 300, and a village larger than Feuzen had fallen to a far smaller number of mercenaries because the townspeople had let them in thinking they were allies, only to bring disaster upon themselves. Nominally, they were allies.
The village chief had died, and so had the estate manager. With most of the men dead, the women who’d been harmed wailed and cursed their lord, and there were cases of them taking their own lives.
If I’d been even a little late, Feuzen would have ended up like this.
The chilling feeling and the dizzying, gut-wrenching sensation are enough just once.
