WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: HidingTurtle
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Wandering Knight and the Moving Castle ◈
Chapter 71: Northern Debut (3)
──────
“Support Sir Eugene!”
Haind led the main force in a fierce charge alongside the heavily armored cavalry.
Caught in the confusion, half the pirates turned to flee while the other half could not decide whether to throw down their weapons or fight.
Whether they fought or fled, they only got in one another’s way. All of them were trampled like rotten straw.
“Charge!”
“Cut them all down!”
The mercenaries fought with the ferocity of men possessed by knights.
Since being stationed in Northfork, they had not fought a proper battle aside from hunting with Eugene or clearing small monster dens. Even during the golem rampage, they had only arrived after everything was over.
Ordinary mercenaries would have been happy to earn easy money. These men, though, followed Eugene out of respect and ambition.
All of them had been plagued by the anxiety welling up in their hearts.
“Won’t we fail to get our contracts renewed at this rate?”
“N-no way. You know how loyal our knight is.”
“What loyalty would he have toward lowborn trash like us? He’s become proper friends with the Black Hand lot, so we might not even catch his eye anymore.”
“Those pointy-eared bastards only pull bowstrings. We’re the ones who’ll charge shoulder to shoulder with our knight!”
“So when was the last time we charged with him?”
“W-well...”
Because of such concerns, even Haind, who had charged alongside them, wondered why they were fighting so bravely.
The tribal warriors, seeing Eugene’s divine might in real battle for the first time, could not hide their admiration either.
He looked as though he were gripping a black storm in his hand and sweeping it through the enemy ranks.
“Is this how he smashed the golem?”
“The mercenaries said he dyed a Bugbear, so I thought it was a joke. It’s a shame I didn’t get to see it!”
Eugene’s presence on the battlefield far surpassed that of a single knight.
He looked like the legends the tribal elders had told them as children, given flesh and bone and shaped into human form.
“As expected, the deputy chieftain has a good eye for people.”
The warriors looked at their military leader with respect.
Nomadism, assassination, mercenary work. Their lives had been distilled from only the harshest and most dangerous things in the world.
The ability to choose powerful allies and winnable battles was a virtue more important than any other.
* * *
“Damn it! This is what happens when you join hands with mere pirates!”
Bruce, a knight of the Emperor, spat a curse at his miserable circumstances.
The pirates had been able to move so swiftly on land because Imperial Faction officials familiar with inland affairs had cooperated with them.
The Emperor was short on both money and troops. The warriors of the Inland Sea were a force he could not afford to abandon. Their ability to disrupt the rear made them especially valuable strategically.
“Where the hell did those bastards come from?”
With just a little more pressure, they could have captured the Noble Faction lord and delivered him to the capital. Bruce had put his heart into this operation, only for it to fall apart in an instant.
Yet the pirate captain, who had lost all his men, was twice as furious.
“Easy prey, my ass! I was the fool for trusting Roman nobles!”
The pirate captain cursed his past self for falling for their honeyed words. Still, there was no undoing what had already happened. For now, he had to run.
“We’re leaving first.”
“You accepted gold and a title from His Majesty, and now you want to flee?”
“It isn’t even a lordship. Aren’t you making too much of a mere knighthood?”
“What? A mere knighthood?!”
Bruce’s killing intent flared when the honor he had earned through blood and sweat was dismissed.
“Captain! There’s no time for this!”
“I’d love to tear you apart, grind you up, and drink you, but count yourself lucky.”
The pirate captain raised his middle finger at the raging Bruce, then spurred his horse and fled.
A pouch of gold, paid in advance as compensation, swung wildly from his saddle.
‘If I can just reach the Inland Sea and hide on an island, I can live in comfort for the rest of my life!’
The pirates drove their horses onward, clinging to that last hope.
The problem was that Eugene had been watching them from the start.
“The commander is fleeing. Capture them.”
“Leave it to us. We may not match your courage, Sir Knight, but we’re confident when it comes to catching men worth money.”
Rex grinned and led the mounted archers in pursuit.
They carried arrows coated in paralytic poison. For ages, those arrows had contributed greatly to the tribe’s finances.
“Idiots. Did they think they could escape the Black Hand Mercenary Company?”
Bruce sneered and spat at the pirate captain, who was screaming as he fled.
It was not that Bruce had stayed because he did not want to run. Being caught while involved in such dishonorable scheming would be the greatest humiliation.
Still, trying to escape the continent’s greatest mounted archers would only end with him being hunted down miserably.
Rather than take an arrow to the leg or buttocks and have a noose slipped around his neck like an animal, he intended to fight like a knight.
“Bruce of House Urban is here! Enemy commander! If you are no coward, come out and settle this like a knight!”
Only a Squire and a few guards remained around him. Hoping for an honorable end, Bruce proudly pointed his sword at the enemies lined up before him.
All he received in return were looks as though they were watching an idiot.
“Is he stupid?”
“He must not have seen our knight fight while he was hanging around with pirates.”
Bruce’s face turned red at the mercenaries’ insult. Ordinarily, they would not have dared meet his eyes.
Then a huge knight riding a Barsian warhorse emerged from among the mercenaries.
“I am Eugene Mayer, the commander. Are you the leader of the pirates?”
“I am not their leader! I am an honorable knight of His Majesty the Emperor!”
“Then what were those men who just fled?”
Eugene jerked his chin in the direction the pirate captain had escaped.
“I do not even wish to speak of such vile trash!”
“That’s not something a man who shared meals with that trash while raiding can say.”
“Shut up! I am different from them!”
Eugene shrugged.
“Perhaps. How could I persuade someone who believes he’s clean even after rolling around with prostitutes?”
“...”
Knights of this era were not particularly skilled at verbal sparring.
The mercenaries snickered at their employer’s words, and Bruce refused to become any more of a laughingstock.
“I will see whether your skill is as impressive as that tongue of yours! Do not get too full of yourself just because you killed a few pirates!”
Bruce charged with spear and shield, and Eugene kicked Might’s flanks, charging to meet him.
‘What a monster.’
Bruce shouted bravely, but the sight of Eugene’s weapon made his blood run cold.
The massive black long-handled flail was a weapon that inspired fear at first sight. It was steel magic no living creature could escape.
Crunch!
“Argh!”
Sure enough, before Bruce’s spear could even reach him, the flail struck first, shattering Bruce’s shield and wrist.
Eugene grabbed the knight by the collar as he tried to resist with one hand, then threw him toward the mercenaries behind him.
“I can still fight... Aaargh!”
“Stomp him! Stomp him!”
“Ha ha ha!”
The excited mercenaries forced the knight to the ground, stomped on him dozens of times, then bound him tightly.
“Sir Bruce!”
“Damn it.”
The remaining Squire and guards had no value as prisoners. Realizing their fate, they prepared for a final stand.
“We will handle them.”
Eugene stepped back to watch the two Dark Elf knights’ skills.
“May fortune follow you.”
“Thank you!”
“We will not disappoint you!”
Spurred on by Eugene’s praise, the knights charged.
The knight with the spear used a two-handed grip from the start and pierced a guard through the chest.
Crunch!
As the spear broke, the knight threw a dagger into the neck of another guard rushing in beside the corpse.
“Gurgle!”
Blood foam bubbled from the guard’s throat as they collapsed, making even Eugene admire the sight.
‘They certainly fight in a distinctive way.’
Throwing a dagger was an unusual technique for knights, though thrown spears were another matter.
To kill an enemy through quick improvisation in mounted combat, they must have trained extensively.
The knight wielding the greatsword cut off a Squire’s head in three exchanges, then seized the spear of a guard trying to stab the knight in the side and pulled the guard from their horse.
Crack!
As the guard struggled to rise, the greatsword plunged into their head, splitting helmet and skull down to the collarbone.
“Can trash like you do nothing but target people’s sides and backs?”
The tribal knight pivoted, then swung the greatsword backward.
Slice!
Another guard trying to stab the tribal knight in the back blankly watched both arms fly into the air.
Thump!
The tribal knight drew a second spear and killed the guard with a lance charge that sent them flying.
At the festival, Eugene had handled them like new recruits. On an ordinary battlefield, they were butchers.
* * *
Bruce, reduced to a ragged state and forced to kneel, glared at Eugene with venom in his eyes.
“If you are going to kill me, then kill me! Rather than beg for my life, I would die with honor... Mmph!”
“Judging by the way he speaks, he seems to be from a decent house. We should get a high price for him.”
Rex said this as he personally shoved a gag into Bruce’s mouth.
“I-I am a noble appointed by His Majesty the Emperor. S-so... I have the right to a guaranteed ransom...”
The pirate captain, who had also been captured, trembled as he desperately tried to recall the lines he had memorized.
Seeing Bruce stare at the pirate captain as though he were ridiculous, Eugene roughly understood the situation.
“You’re a pirate, right? You have no house to pay your ransom.”
“...!”
“Is it because you’ve lived so faithfully to your desires? You’re terrible at hiding what you’re thinking.”
At Rex’s signal, tribal warriors grabbed the pirate captain by the hair and dragged him away.
“You do not need to interrogate him yourself. Separating the valuable ones from the worthless ones is our specialty.”
“Wow, these pirates were carrying quite a lot.”
The tribal warriors smiled at the spoils scattered everywhere.
Even while fleeing, the pirates had clung to both the goods they had looted and the payment Bruce had received from the Emperor to deliver to them.
Then a messenger rode over from the noble army on the other side.
“Sir Knight, Baron Yones requests an audience.”
Yones’s fief bordered Northfork.
“Sir, normally those we rescued should come to us, but the situation is not good right now.”
“I know.”
As Haind said, the battle had been so desperate that none of Yones’s knights had escaped unharmed. Even the baron’s horse had an arrow lodged in its rump.
“Thank you for your assistance. I am Baron Yones.”
When Eugene approached, a young man with a boyish face greeted him first.
“I am Eugene of House Mayer. I also came after hearing House Est’s call for help.”
“Sir Eugene?! The Victor Knight!”
Baron Yones cried out as though he might leap into the air.
“I saw you fight and knew it must be you. There could not be another knight with such courage!”
The baron dismounted and approached. Eugene also got down from his horse, since he could not look down on another lord from the saddle.
“It is an honor to meet you. I am sorry I could not send a gift when you took up your post. My house was in such disarray at the time.”
“Was that not a time of confusion because of the sudden war? Do not worry about it.”
Baron Yones was strangely friendly.
“No. Such an honorable knight had taken up a lordship. I should have made time somehow, even if I had none to spare.”
‘What is with this man?’
Eugene was baffled. The baron’s attitude went beyond friendliness or respect and bordered on subservience.
Yet to a young lord who had nearly died in his first real battle, Eugene looked less like a rescuer and more like a guardian angel.
“Are you also looking for a new liege, Sir Eugene?”
“A new liege?”
“There are many lords in the north without lieges at present. I am one of them.”
The lord Baron Yones had served had apparently been promised something behind closed doors, because that former liege declared for the Imperial Faction after the civil war began.
“Our fief was surrounded by the Noble Faction, so we had no choice but to break our vassal contract.”
“A wise decision. Otherwise, you would have been attacked and raided from every direction.”
After hearing the circumstances, the baron nodded at Eugene’s words with a resentful expression.
Minor lords did not care whether it was the Imperial Faction or the Noble Faction. They only wanted to rule their own fiefs and live comfortably.
Being dragged into the interests of those above them and made to suffer was a terrible nuisance.
“So you are searching for a powerful lord with whom to form a new vassal contract.”
“Yes. I have already asked Duke Ismar to accept me as a vassal.”
The duke who ruled the north was always the most sought-after choice.
“Did Duke Ismar say he would accept?”
“Duke Ismar said the matter would be considered favorably, but did not give a definite answer. Duke Ismar must be suspicious of me.”
“Duke Ismar will be pleased if you help Baron Est.”
“That is right.”
Baron Est was Duke Ismar’s vassal. Baron Yones seemed to want to use this chance to prove his sincerity and loyalty.
“Let us move somewhere else first. This is not a place for a long conversation.”
The day was beginning to fade. Monsters drawn by the smell of blood could appear at any time.
* * *
Baron Yones rode beside Eugene with an enraptured expression.
His gaze settled on the strong, beautiful tribal women warriors.
“This is my first time seeing Dark Elves.”
Countless demi-humans lived across the continent. Of them all, the people who inspired the greatest fantasies were undoubtedly the fair folk of the forest.
Their beautiful appearances, along with their frequent and flattering depictions in epic poems, fairy tales, plays, and bards’ songs, made that inevitable.
Even the Black Hand Mercenary Company’s notorious reputation could not hide their combat prowess, achievements, and beauty.
There was no end to the nobles captivated by them, especially hot-blooded young people. Baron Yones’s gaze was full of longing.
“Have you never hired them?”
“Our house could never afford them!”
The baron waved his hands as though the idea were absurd.
“They are certainly expensive friends, both in price and temperament.”
Their pride and skill were both unmatched, and their fees were enormous. A house needed to be at least a viscount’s to even consider hiring them.
‘He would fall over in shock if he heard how much I pay them. It might make him jealous for no reason.’
Eugene had finally formed a good relationship with the baron, so he kept quiet, worried the atmosphere would become awkward.
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
