A melee in the dead of night was extremely dangerous, but the enemy mercenaries numbered only 20, while we had more than 100. It was easy work to gang up in teams of two or three and cut the mercenaries down one by one.
Caught off guard by the sudden ambush, the mercenaries resisted desperately, but they fell one after another to our merciless blades. Their captain found himself at a crossroads.
Surrender and rely on the mercenary code, or flee. He chose neither. Instead, he attacked Count Heinlein, who stood there trembling.
It seemed he planned to kill the count and run. Not a chance.
I stepped in at just the right moment to take the count alive.
Clang!
I knocked aside the captain’s sword with my halberd just as he was about to run the greedy, scheming old count palatine through. The captain staggered back several steps. Thanks to that, the count clung to life a little longer.
Even in the darkness, my senses were razor sharp, and I could predict exactly how my opponent would attack. His movements were plain as day, as if I had infrared goggles strapped over my eyes.
Clang! Clang!
The mercenary captain had considerable skill. He must have been through countless real battles, because even after losing his torch, he somehow kept parrying my halberd in the dark. But that was all he could do.
My finely honed Fühlen let me read his movements one step ahead. I struck at his upper body and broke his balance. Trained in German swordsmanship, the captain tried to close the distance.
But I used the halberd’s reach to deny him any ground whatsoever. The moment he went for a bind, trying to press his sword against my weapon, I thrust the spearpoint at him to keep him at bay.
"To run into someone this strong in a place like this!"
His ragged breathing and his anxiety both carried through my Fühlen. The moment he gathered his courage and closed in again, I hooked the axe blade of my halberd behind his knee.
His knee buckled, and as he staggered, I cracked the shaft against his head. His body tumbled wildly across the ground. I took a quick look around and saw Beort and Drek fighting like men possessed.
Ever since coming under the Baron of Rosenheim, they had been under pressure to prove themselves, and tonight that pressure had finally boiled over. If they got themselves killed doing it, it would all be for nothing.
Unlike the Gale Knights, who prioritized formation, the two of them ignored all coordination with the men around them.
They clearly weren’t used to group combat.
"My lord, watch your back!"
"These mercenaries are quite strong!"
Drek and two retainers were barely holding their own against a single mercenary. These mercenaries were hardened veterans of the battlefield. Underestimate them because of their small numbers, and you would pay dearly.
"Hold those torches up properly!"
"Don’t fight them alone! Keep formation and coordinate with the men around you!"
"You brainless idiots! Work together!"
The Gale Knights, anchored by the veterans, kept the mercenaries surrounded and calmly worked in concert to bring them down one at a time. Fighting at night by torchlight already imposed enough limitations on the fighting.
And my men were thoroughly accustomed to this kind of battle. The Hungarian mercenaries, having clawed their way through their own share of bloodbaths, meshed well with their comrades too. The problem was those two.
"Stop! Do not break formation and charge ahead!"
"What’s this barbarian yapping about?"
Barosi cut in front of the pair, trying to rein in their reckless charges.
For the future vice commander, it was the right call, but the problem was that Drek’s retainers couldn’t understand a word Barosi said. They thought he was getting in their way, and a quarrel broke out.
Naturally, Barosi had been called a barbarian often enough to know the word, and he nearly lost his temper. But with the fighting still going on, he swallowed his anger and backed off, so the quarrel didn’t escalate.
It seemed the misunderstanding came down to the language barrier.
That bad blood could grow into a serious fight later. Hmm, I’ll need to have a word with them. Whatever the reason, insulting Barosi as a barbarian was a grave offense, and the kind of behavior I hate most.
Beort and Drek had failed to manage their retainers properly.
"Whew. Nothing has gone right since I crossed into Beren."
The mercenary captain pulled himself up, realized how hopeless his situation was, and lowered his sword. Fighting on would only earn him a dog’s death. I didn’t know who had hired him, but he was handling this wisely.
"I surrender. Please honor the mercenary code."
"Your surrender is accepted. Cease the attack!"
The night battle ended in a crushing victory for our side. Fewer than ten mercenaries surrendered and were disarmed. The count tried to slip away in the confusion, but Debrecen Herto caught him.
"The mercenary code will be honored, but you are prisoners. Do you acknowledge this?"
"We acknowledge it. We will pay our ransom, so please do not take our arms and armor."
"If you pay the ransom, nothing will be taken from you."
Their numbers had dropped from about 20 to 10, so the ransom they paid would shrink accordingly, but there was no changing the fact that this was a devastating loss for them. A failed contract strikes directly at a mercenary’s reputation. The captain removed his helmet.
"May I ask who it is that attacked us?"
"I am the Baron of Rosenheim, Streit."
"...The Gale Knight!"
The mercenaries were stunned. Clearly, they had never imagined it.
It made sense. They had just learned that the man they had desperately fought in the dark was the finest knight and a prince of Beren. The captain’s composure gave way to fluster. Was it because I was the last opponent he had ever expected?
"Answer my questions. Why did you attack Count Heinlein?"
"My apologies, but I cannot disclose a client’s contract."
"Hm. So you’ll protect your reputation."
Surrendering and divulging a client’s contract were entirely different matters. In that regard, the captain held firmly to his professional integrity even under pressure.
"If the contract had been to face the Gale Knight, I never would have accepted it."
"Neither of us knew about the other. I find this whole situation absurd myself."
He seemed like a man with the makings of a proper mercenary business.
His disposition was calculation (neutral), which wasn’t bad either.
"You’re a mercenary with his head on straight. What’s your name?"
"This humble man is called Schlieffen of Mainz."
A surname that reminded me of the Schlieffen Plan from World War I.
In this era, it was a common surname among hunter families. He said he had been hired by the Duchy of Roden to fight Burgundy. He had then crossed over to join the Beren civil war, only to miss the hiring window.
Apparently, plenty of mercenaries came up empty because the war ended sooner than expected, and this Schlieffen of Mainz was one of them. We had crossed blades, but I thought highly of how much he valued his professional reputation.
And so my attention turned to Count Heinlein.
I brushed the dirt and bits of weeds off the count’s shoulders myself as I spoke.
"What an unexpected place to see you, Count. Have you been well?"
"If not for you, Baron, I’d have climbed the stairway to heaven. Thank you for saving me."
My men and the mercenaries watched, bewildered, as Count Heinlein and I smiled and exchanged pleasantries. But while our mouths were smiling, our eyes were not.
The twitch at the corner of his eye betrayed his fury.
Of course. Greedy men fear death above all else.
"Catholic doctrine teaches us not to commit the seven deadly sins. One of them is greed. And the end that awaits a man guilty of greed is not the stairway to heaven, Count. It’s purgatory."
"We’re all steeped in the sin of greed! You think being a baron makes you any different?!"
Count Heinlein’s voice turned hostile.
Looks like the mask is off. So much for courtesy.
"Which is why, as the Lord teaches, I intend to follow the virtue of temperance."
This world is full of greed and desire. That’s why sinning is human nature, and why religion teaches that only the virtues of temperance and self-denial, which keep greed at arm’s length, can overcome it.
"Why didn’t you head straight for Schafen? This is the road to Dellingen."
"With everything exposed, fleeing to Schafen would have been foolish."
"If you’d made it to Dellingen, you’d have been a real headache for me. But here we are."
With the help of Count Neustadt’s family in Dellingen, he could have stayed hidden for quite a while. But before he could even cross into Dellingen, he was attacked by the mercenaries.
I glanced at the mercenary captain, who was still keeping his mouth shut, and asked.
"Why did those mercenaries attack you?"
"They were the escort sent from Breisburg."
Hmm. With the civil war leaving bandits and deserters crawling all over the roads, an old noble riding the highway with only a handful of retainers would have made a juicy target.
But the problem was that this escort had actually been contracted to attack the count. Count Heinlein glared daggers at Captain Schlieffen as he spoke.
"The escort was a lie from the start! They’re assassins sent to eliminate me!"
"Do you have any idea who sent them?"
"Who else but that scheming old fox!"
Count Heinlein’s voice cracked with rage. According to the letters Beort had recovered, the two of them were bound by money. The count had been funding the Finance Minister’s bid to be reinstated.
But then he got tangled up with the Rijeka family and caught my eye, and in the middle of being relentlessly hunted, he begged the Finance Minister for help escaping Radensdorf.
After so many years in court politics, the Finance Minister still had his connections alive and well, so he hired a mercenary unit through some channel and sent them to the count. Except in reality, they were assassins.