Chapter 114:Battle of Ramdas Plain (1)

The aftermath of the ashes of Einhorn was quite significant.

Thanks to that, Keldric wasn’t in a good mood throughout his departure from Einhorn.

The thought that Carlton Village could have ended up the same way left a bitter taste in his mouth.

However, Keldric wasn’t one to crumble at the despair of others, and the journey had to continue.

“Snow…”

As they traveled west from Einhorn, patches of melted snow became visible.

Keldric paid close attention to them. Even though the north wind was coming and a blizzard was imminent, was the weather on the western border of Einhorn usually this mild?

“Signs of people.”

“…Indeed.”

Upon closer inspection, it was evident that these were traces of campfires.

Keldric could find signs of snow being cleared in various places nearby. It wasn’t that the snow had melted, but that people had cleared it by hand.

Seeing this, Alyssa half-opened her eyes. She stared intently at something beside the road, then had a soldier clear away some of the snow there.

“Lord Keldric, take a look at this.”

“This is…”

Keldric slowly steered Boreas closer, and indeed.

Thinly covered with snow, it was horse dung.

Normally, horse dung was left scattered about, but a disciplined army or mercenary group would dig a shallow pit and collect it there.

What appeared before Keldric was a shallow pit. Inside, horse dung was piled haphazardly.

“Who is it?”

“I’m not sure either… It seems those who ride horses stayed here.”

Traces of a campfire, signs of clearing snow and camping, and even traces of burying a lot of horse dung.

At this point, only a fool wouldn’t know. Keldric realized that a third party he didn’t know about had intervened.

As a matter of fact, Baron Gottfried’s forces were already on the verge of annihilation.

In this situation, for the many cavalry units Baron Gottfried had hidden to come to his rescue was something that would only happen in a novel.

There were two possibilities. One was that a horse trader with a huge number of horses had passed by, or another party involved in this territorial war was moving around here with cavalry.

And Keldric predicted that it was not the former, at least.

What horse trader in their right mind would wander around recklessly during this war? They would be stripped clean by bandits licking their lips.

‘There’s no one who would be wandering around here…’

It was clear that a third party, neither Baron Gottfried’s forces nor Lord Lothar’s army, had intervened, but Keldric couldn’t easily guess who they were.

It was best not to jump to conclusions. Rather than examining the horse dung closely right away, it was better to finish what they were doing first.

“From now on, we’ll move cautiously. Group three cavalrymen together and have them go half a League ahead of us.”

Keldric was wary of an unknown force.

Diverting three of the five precious cavalrymen in the detachment to scout ahead was a part of that wariness.

In other words, it was a light reconnaissance. Even though they didn’t have many to spare, there was no harm in being careful.

It would be impossible to fight off bandits if they appeared, but at least escaping would be easier.

The three cavalrymen rode ahead, disappearing beyond the snowy plains.

Keldric waited until they were out of sight before moving again. The soldiers, who had taken a short break, trudged along behind him.

After walking for a while, the sun began to set and the sky turned crimson.

“Find a campsite.”

While the soldiers busily cleared snow to find a suitable campsite, Keldric, watching the sunset, had a mixture of anxiety and trouble in his eyes.

He had clearly prevented Baron Gottfried from returning to his territory, and the journey was smooth. But he was still uneasy.

His anxious gaze turned westward. The horizon was dyed red as the sun set. Above it, something dark and indistinct was stirring.

“Those are…”

As they got a little closer and looked more closely, it was the three cavalrymen Keldric had sent out to scout earlier.

But something was strange. As the three of them got closer, their expressions were urgent and they seemed to be in a hurry.

“L, Lord Keldric! Lord Henri!”

And the reason was soon revealed.

“There are League infantrymen ahead!”

☩   ☩   ☩   ☩   ☩   ☩   ☩

League people. People from the League.

Slightly red faces, thick platinum blonde or blonde hair, and a fearless, brave nature made them natural warriors.

Where on earth did these League people come from?

If you go east of the Empire, there is a place called the Kingdom of Polonia.

Further east, there are descendants of ancient barbarians who settled inland, and they are the League people.

“Their camp is about 1 League away, and there are at least a hundred of them. They were all on horseback.”

The scout said, trembling with fear. Keldric and Lord Henri exchanged serious glances.

A hundred or so cavalrymen was an enormous force the likes of which they had never seen.

Nearly five hundred soldiers fought in the battle near Schafendorf, but a hundred cavalrymen was a completely different story.

Cavalrymen were terrifying just by their presence. From the perspective of infantry, it was not easy to deal with cavalry.

At best, they could stab them with spears or knock them off their horses with axes or curved spear blades.

Besides that, if they shot arrows, most enemies would retreat, but that was only half true for cavalry.

They were a type of soldier who used their innate mobility to stir up the enemy lines. It was difficult to subdue a group of cavalry running around the battlefield with archers.

That many troublesome soldiers, a hundred in all, was practically a disaster.

“If a hundred people are riding horses, wouldn’t there be problems with supplies and changing horses?”

Lord Henri raised a valid question. The scout then replied with an even darker expression.

“Yes. So, it seemed that there was a separate force pulling wagons along with them.”

“Speak clearly. Did they exist? Or do you think they did?”

“Th, they existed. I saw them.”

Keldric didn’t know the League people’s supply system.

However, he knew that a hundred cavalrymen would need a lot of supplies, and that they enjoyed looting to get them.

Supplies in this period were basically crude. Most of them were carried by wagons, but even those roads were uneven, and the dirt roads in the north were truly terrible.

In the midst of all that, to be responsible for a hundred cavalrymen….. he had to admit that the person behind them was quite a big shot.

“It might be Count Lassau.”

Alyssa, practically the only intellectual in the group, offered a plausible guess.

Keldric nodded silently. Certainly, Count Lassau would have that much wealth and power.

He had just inherited the countship, which had been nominal, so he wouldn’t be rich, but the story would be different if he had the Emperor and other influential nobles backing him.

“Count Lassau makes sense. If there’s anyone who could bring in so many League people, it would definitely be Count Lassau.”

“Isn’t Count Lassau thinking about what will happen afterwards? Those many League people won’t just go back.”

Lord Henri’s words contained a somewhat bleak future.

If those many League mercenaries didn’t return even after the territorial war was over, it was surely because they intended to make a big score.

Whether the territorial war was won or lost was a separate issue that didn’t matter much.

After all, they were the type of people for whom looting was formalized due to the state of the country. It was hard to imagine that they would just take their wages and go back.

‘A dog would sooner stop eating shit.’

Keldric fully agreed with that statement.

He hadn’t faced the League people all that much so far, but he had still seen them to some extent.

“So, what should we do?”

Keldric suddenly asked. Alyssa and Lord Henri, who had been offering their opinions so gently, immediately clammed up.

“Talking won’t do any good, and if we leave them alone, they might push in to reclaim Count Gottfried.”

“Ugh… the situation has become very difficult.”

Lord Henri scratched his matted blonde hair. Performing the role of a detachment for days on end was a terrible ordeal.

The soldiers had rested for a while in Lunt, but that wasn’t enough.

In the first place, even if the soldiers were well-rested and well-fed, it was absurd to face a large cavalry force of a hundred men.

“There’s no choice. We have to wait for Lord Lothar.”

In the end, there was only one option to choose. For Lord Lothar to reorganize his army and come here as soon as possible.

When Lord Lothar’s army came, they would have roughly the same number of soldiers as before.

Two hundred soldiers, and a hundred or so cavalrymen.

It was hard to tell who would win when the two sides clashed.

Besides, the other side didn’t just have cavalry. There were also soldiers who came to pull the wagons for supplies.

They were not to be ignored either. To operate that many cavalrymen, they would need a huge amount of supplies.

“The war situation is not good.”

Keldric whispered lowly. If the soldiers heard, their morale might drop.

Lord Henri nodded in agreement. No matter how brave a knight was, a hundred cavalrymen was too many.

“No, how on earth did that many soldiers get here?”

“They must have crossed the North Sea. Count Lassau or Bishop Rutbeck must have supported them.”

Whatever the case, it was a bleak reality.

Keldric suppressed the sigh that was about to burst out.

One mountain after another, after Baron Gottfried’s forces came many foreign mercenaries.

But even if a bad war situation was predicted, they had to do what they had to do first.

“We should send a messenger as soon as it gets light, and we should go back to Lunt.”

“To Lunt? Wouldn’t it be better to keep scouting them in this area…”

“That’s dangerous, and meaningless. Since they’re all on horseback, it’ll be difficult to follow them.”

Lord Henri, who had been arguing, quietly understood. Keldric’s words were backed by that much logic.

In the end, the small meeting ended there.

Keldric, who had hurried to bed, was soon lost in thought, listening to Alyssa’s heavy breathing next to him.

‘Maybe…’

The seed of that thought was a sense of crisis.

It felt like an unprecedentedly great sense of crisis was approaching.

☩   ☩   ☩   ☩   ☩   ☩   ☩

As soon as it dawned, Keldric led the detachment back to Lunt.

And he spent the next four days there.

To return to Schafendorf, it was necessary to be aware of the League mercenaries’ invasion, and that role was Keldric’s.

As a result of staying in Lunt with an uneasy heart for four days, Keldric was able to meet Lord Rutger, whose face had become half its size in a few days.

“Lord Keldric! I’ve already heard the news the messenger brought! League people, what does that mean?”

“Lord Rutger. First of all, I want to meet Lord Lothar…”

“Ah, right. Come this way.”

The army that Lord Lothar had scraped together again numbered a little over two hundred.

It was certainly a great number. Without knowing for sure, Baron Yaben was probably half ruined.

The army that Lord Lothar led had temporarily set up a Military Camp near Lunt.

That many soldiers couldn’t rush into Lunt all at once.

However, Lord Rutger and other knights were a different story.

Keldric followed Lord Rutger to the village chief’s house in Lunt.

Unlike the outside, where the wind was starting to feel like it would cut into your skin, the house had a warm warmth.

“Ah, Lord Keldric. It’s been a while.”

There sat Lord Lothar, sipping wine with an air of utter ease.

Keldric’s expression turned slightly sour.

Surely he’d heard the news about the large cavalry force, so how could he be so relaxed?

“So, there are that many horsemen, you say?”

“Yes. That’s what the scout reported.”

“Then there’s no problem.”

Could it be that this naive young master was hiding some kind of secret weapon?

Keldric secretly harbored a vague hope.

“No matter how many lowly bandits live by plunder, how much of a problem could they be? They’ll piss their pants and run at your charge.”

And that hope was betrayed in spectacular fashion. Keldric’s brow furrowed.

‘This idiot…’

The young, unnecessarily confident, and stubbornly proud heir before him was truly a flower grown in a greenhouse.

Keldric thought, perhaps this battle will be the most difficult one yet.