Chapter 18: Refugees and Bandits (4)
Knight Commander Axel came to my office and handed me a sheet of paper.
“My Lord, this is a report from the messenger.”
There was a letter written on the paper.
[To our great lord.]
[I am the village chief of Hobion. Our village has been occupied by the ‘Black Wolf Band,’ and we have been taken hostage. There are 82 of us in total, including 21 children. Please have mercy on us and save us.]
I frowned and asked Axel,
“Have you read this?”
“Yes, My Lord. It is clearly a trap. If you march out, they will most likely aim for your life.”
“That’s what I think too.”
Axel pressed his lips together and exhaled heavily through his nose.
“I don’t like the idea, but I recommend conscripting a large number of people from the territory before launching the subjugation.”
It was a safe method.
But it was also useless.
Those Black Wolf Band bastards would run away the moment we marched out with a huge conscript army.
Then they would simply take another village hostage.
If we did things that way, we would only waste time and money for nothing.
“No conscription. We’ll use another method.”
“No matter what method we use right now, it will still be dangerous.”
I thought about the other options.
We could try a diversion, or I could act as bait.
There were plenty of possible plans.
But I couldn’t imagine the enemy falling for any of them.
If their leader really is a knight, some half-baked trick won’t work. Going straight at them might actually be better.
After thinking it over, I gave Axel instructions on how to organize the subjugation force.
It would consist only of knights and regular soldiers.
This time, we would do things the standard way.
Hobion.
A mountain village occupied by the Black Wolf Band.
“Move faster! We don’t have much time!”
The bandits shouted at the villagers.
They were reinforcing the wooden palisade surrounding the village and digging traps beneath it.
The village chief of Hobion gritted his teeth as he carried lumber.
Damn bastards! They’re just as poor and ragged as we are!
He couldn’t understand why they had taken over such a poor mountain village whose main foods were rye and oats.
On top of that, the villagers were constantly being forced to work like slaves or beaten by the bandits.
More than ten villagers had already been injured.
If I’d known this would happen, maybe we should’ve tried resisting...
He knew they would all have been slaughtered if they had resisted.
But right now, complaining to himself was the only thing keeping him sane.
The village chief clicked his tongue and shook his head.
He desperately hoped that their lord, Eric Marcel—the man said to have received a god’s blessing—would appear soon and kill every last one of these bandits.
Just then, one of the bandits pointed toward the sky.
A pigeon was descending from above.
“Boss, a pigeon has arrived from the lord’s castle.”
The pigeon had been equipped with a magic tool.
Thanks to it, the bird could fly directly toward the matching marker without getting lost.
That made it possible to send messages safely from the lord’s castle all the way to this remote mountain village.
A bandit removed the letter tied around the pigeon’s ankle.
The leader, Anton, approached him impatiently.
“What does it say?”
“That lord bastard has marched out with knights and soldiers. Pierre isn’t with him, just as expected, and Knight Commander Axel is leading the front.”
Anton burst into laughter.
“Hahaha! Soon, this land will have a new lord—and it’ll be me!”
He was nothing more than the leader of a bandit group, yet he casually spoke about cutting off a lord’s head.
But neither the bandits around him nor the villagers dared to object.
Anton clenched his fist and laughed loudly before giving orders to his men.
“Make sure everything is ready. The decisive battle is coming soon.”
“Yes, Boss!”
Even if his opponent was a lord, there wouldn’t be much he could do if the Black Wolf Band defended the village.
Once the subjugation force suffered enough losses, Anton believed he would have a chance to cut off the lord’s head.
His fist trembled slightly at the thought that Eric would soon die by his hand.
He was already excited at the idea of returning triumphantly to Dijon after taking Eric’s head.
Of course, that was nothing more than Anton’s own delusion.
My subjugation force and I left the lord’s castle.
After camping for two nights, we finally reached Hobion.
“Whew... It’s far. Really far. A backwater like this doesn’t even have buses or subways.”
My legs hurt, so I grumbled for no real reason.
While my men were setting up camp, I studied the wooden palisade surrounding the village and estimated the enemy’s defenses.
They’ve prepared this pretty well. This is going to be annoying.
I needed the opinion of someone who had actually fought against barricades and wooden defenses before.
“Call Raul.”
A soldier immediately ran off to find him.
If I had to choose the person among my subordinates with the most actual battlefield experience, it would definitely be Raul.
He had wandered across battlefields as a mercenary.
Since he was currently my chief security advisor, I decided to ask him first.
“My Lord, you called for me?”
I pointed toward the palisade.
“Can we smash through that wall and charge in?”
“Not with this number of troops. We would need more men.”
He pointed toward the bottom of the palisade.
“There are traps underneath. We won’t even be able to reach the wall unless we fill them in first.”
“What if we do fill them in?”
“It’ll still be difficult. They probably built an earthen wall behind the palisade, or supported it with heavy wooden beams. Breaking through enemies standing above us and climbing over that wall would be difficult even with four or five times their strength.”
So in the end, this was basically a siege.
An ordinary mountain village had suddenly turned into a fortress.
Just then, someone climbed onto the top of the palisade.
I sensed him with my mana perception.
He seemed to be around the middle rank of Sword Expert.
I pointed at him and spoke to Raul.
“Looks like that guy is their leader.”
“Hmm. His level is higher than mine.”
“You can tell?”
To sense the difference in someone’s realm, you needed to be skilled in handling mana.
Unless someone was an experienced knight at least at the upper rank of Sword Expert, it was usually difficult to do.
Raul made a vague gesture with his hands.
“You sort of do this... and this... and somehow you can tell.”
Wasn’t that the kind of thing geniuses always said?
I already knew he was talented, but hearing him say that still made me chuckle.
“Then why are you still only an upper-rank Sword User?”
“I wonder that myself.”
“What do you mean, ‘I wonder that myself’? It’s because you don’t train. Look at Martin. He trains all the time, so his realm is higher than yours.”
“Sir Martin is a genius, though.”
As far as I was concerned, they were both the same kind of genius.
Martin’s weakness was that he was bad at applying what he learned.
Raul’s weakness was that he was lazy.
If the two of them ever reached the same realm, they would probably help each other improve tremendously.
“Raul, once we return to the lord’s castle, train under Sir Pierre.”
Raul recoiled.
“What?! No! Sir Pierre beats people!”
“Getting beaten is how you grow stronger.”
Raul stared at me.
“Where did you learn such an old-man thing to say?”
Old man?
How did he know?
Did I actually smell like one?
I started sniffing my clothes.
At that moment, the bandit leader standing on top of the palisade shouted.
“I am Anton, leader of the Black Wolf Band! Which one of you is the lord?! Come fight me!”
As soon as they heard him, Martin and Axel rushed toward me to protect me.
After seeing the two of them move, Anton immediately realized where I was.
