Chapter 438: Swords Are for Wrestlers

On a cold winter night, I sat in front of a campfire, taking my ease in its warmth. Back in my own territory, it wouldn’t have mattered whether I lit a bonfire or threw a whole cookout, but here we were, smack in the middle of enemy land.

Sitting around a fire in a place like this, relaxing as if we owned it, was flat-out insane. The Hungarian riders, who knew a thing or two about raiding, clicked their tongues and said they couldn’t hope to match my nerve.

After Vandred, we’d plundered two more villages, Pollen and Bizi, in exactly the same way.

Quarrels broke out among the villagers over who had handed things over and who hadn’t, and a few men who resisted got roughed up, but remarkably, we hadn’t killed a single one of them.

Herto had gone out on patrol. There was no major threat in the area, but keeping watch anyway was the mark of a fine officer. Barosi, warming himself at the fire with me, kept stealing glances my way.

"The Heir of the Eagle seems to have a lot on his mind."

Barosi, who took enormous pride in the Szolnok name, one of Hungary’s old noble houses, looked sheepish. He probably had all kinds of questions about this plundering. It bore no resemblance to the plundering he knew.

"Forgive me, my lord. I can’t make out your purpose at all."

"Isn’t it odd to come out plundering without knowing why?"

"But this isn’t plundering, it’s extortion. We haven’t killed anyone or laid a hand on a woman. I’ve never in my life heard of plundering done this way."

Squeezing property out of people with threats was plundering, plain and simple, but to my men it was an incomprehensibly soft approach, and a spectacularly boring one. Slaughter and rape had been cut right out of it.

"This is how your lord does things. I’m sorry it doesn’t suit you."

"That isn’t what I meant. I only wonder why you’d show mercy even to your enemies."

"Put simply, to strip the Brist family’s influence out of Basel."

A lord’s absolute power comes from his land.

And history had taught me just how frightening the will of the common people could be. I had watched with my own eyes as the Geerhilt family of Baschurten lost their grip on the northern part of their own territory.

"Plundering can strip away their influence?"

"Can’t you guess why I’m advertising our position so openly?"

"Are you deliberately trying to draw an attack...?"

"That’s right. We’ve hit three villages, so word will have reached whichever local lord holds this district by now."

"Isn’t that far too dangerous? We’re in the heart of enemy territory!"

By any normal standard it would have been madness, but the Commander Scouter alerted me the instant an enemy entered the radar’s range. That gave me plenty of time to prepare.

"Speaking of which, we have guests."

I spotted a small band of riders approaching the south side of our camp. Herto’s reconnaissance unit, of all things, was off searching to the north. It showed just how hard keeping watch at night could be.

Barosi looked baffled at the mention of guests. Then, when a group of horsemen came cautiously forward under a white flag, he nearly fainted from shock. Herto hadn’t reported a thing, so how had I known without leaving my seat?

"I am Rupert, knight of Wischelbach. Whose cavalry are you?"

This knight had real backbone.

Riding into a camp of over a hundred men and demanding to know whose men they were, right to their faces, took nerve, and that nerve impressed me enough that I greeted him personally. I didn’t forget the role I was playing, either.

"Basel’s friendly neighbor, the Lord of Rosenheim."

"Rosenheim? W-wait, that crest, surely..."

The knight of Wischelbach recognized the Streit family crest and the Rosenheim crest, and the discovery of who we were left him stunned. He had the face of a man who’d ordered a simple lunch and been handed a thousand-dollar tasting menu.

"I can’t turn away a guest who comes calling in the middle of the night. Have a cup."

I served wine to the dumbstruck knight. I’d banned my men from drinking, but hosting a guest was another matter. Rupert and his men seemed utterly at a loss as to how to take this.

"Why is the Lord of Rosenheim in a place like this?"

"You do know we’re at war?"

"Wischelbach already served the forty days of campaign duty the Count of Basel demanded during the last civil war. We have no obligation to involve ourselves in a private war like this, and no reason to spend Wischelbach’s precious soldiers on it!"

It was a matter of course for a vassal to be summoned to his liege’s wars, but only within the number of days of service owed each year. The Count of Basel had already worked his vassals’ armies past their forty days during the civil war.

That was why he’d paid out of his own purse to hire Swiss mercenaries and field them. He surely had help from the Swiss Confederation too, but apart from the Lord of Birsfelden, not one vassal had answered his call.

"Still, by law, you and I are at war. And I came into your territory to take revenge on the Count of Basel. I plundered the villages of Vandred, Pollen, and Bizi."

"Oh, Lord! God in heaven!"

Was he crossing himself for the people of Wischelbach, picturing them massacred by a hostile lord? We hadn’t killed anyone, but plundered was plundered, and Rupert flew into a rage.

"You loot our land and then camp here as if it’s nothing! My lord will never forgive this! Even if I die on this spot, I’ll show you the spirit of Wischelbach!"

Rupert and his men drew their swords.

My men, who had been waiting for exactly that, drew as one and surrounded them.

I took the halberd one of my men handed me.

"My lord! He isn’t worthy of you! Let me handle him!"

"I’ll face him myself, out of respect for the courage of a knight who walked in here on his own two feet. You take his men. They haven’t flinched, so they’ve clearly seen real fighting."

The bold knight’s men were nothing to sneeze at, either. Rupert settled into Ochs and focused on defense. Hm, it had been a while since I’d seen that stance: sword raised above the head, point aimed forward for the thrust.

As armor improved, swordsmanship shifted from cutting to battering. Armored combat, in which you cracked a man’s helmet with the blunt pommel to rattle his brain, came into fashion, but it was still less efficient than using a proper blunt weapon.

The reason knights clung to the sword was the belief that this cross-shaped weapon was the true weapon of a knight of Christ. But that was slowly starting to change.

Ever since I, hailed as the finest knight in Beren, made the halberd my weapon of choice, halberds and other polearms had surged in popularity. The best knight alive discarding the symbolism of the sword had been the signal.

I brought the halberd down in a light arc.

Clang!

Rupert was ready and knocked it aside, deflecting it out and away. But that wasn’t enough to fully turn aside a halberd. Its heavy head drove him back relentlessly, blow after blow.

Locked into defense, Rupert was watching for the moment I raised the halberd again for a heavy downward strike. His longsword, riding along the haft, slid smoothly inward.

Hm, so he’d read my next move through Fühlen, had he?

A fine winding, that counter off a bound blade.

The point of his longsword came in precisely at the gap in my helmet, as if nothing short of a killing blow would do. But I have Fühlen too. Any trained swordsman can feel it, for that matter.

A true master doesn’t merely weigh several possibilities; he controls even the attacks he can’t predict. In that sense, Rupert had been hasty. I caught the blade of his longsword and pulled.

His weight had already shifted forward, so a hook of my leg sent him over in an instant. Rupert went airborne, pitched forward, and rolled hard across the ground. Worse still, he lost his sword.

"Ngh!"

The foundation of German swordsmanship isn’t swinging, it’s wrestling. Most swordsmen were skilled wrestlers, and they never neglected training their legs, since breaking each other’s balance was the whole game.

My legs are strong as steel and firm as pine.

There’s no path to a powerful lower body but endless training.