Chapter 441: Land on Your Back

The lord ordered the gate opened, and I turned my horse without hesitation.

Behind me, the heir and his knights were carrying on about avenging their humiliation. Whether the poison had taken hold remained to be seen. There was a reason I was retreating with my back wide open.

"Knights of Wischelbach, attack!"

"No, Rudolf! Come back!"

The poison worked beautifully. The gate had opened and the refugees were streaming in, all well and good, and then the heir led the knights out to attack in defiance of his father’s order.

"My lord! They’ve suddenly come out!"

"The stage we wanted is set. Shall we entertain our guests?"

"Leave it to me! Riders, wheel about!"

Naturally, I’d been waiting for this, and I met the heir and the Knights of Wischelbach head-on. The gap in battlefield experience alone was enormous, so despite their initial fire, they were pushed back from the start.

"My blade will break the gale!"

"Good spirit. Come on, then, young heir."

Rudolf (20) was a young heir, but he was still much older than me (16). I handled him with my halberd at an easy pace, steering the fight toward wearing him down. If the heir died, everything would get badly tangled.

Facing Sir Heindel after he’d lost both his son and his reason could cost me plenty. That was why I was holding back, and Rudolf, sensing I wasn’t giving my all, took offense.

"Fight me properly, Gale Knight!"

"Going easy on you is hard work, you know."

"What?! I’ll kill you!"

The foundation of swordsmanship is a cool head.

Unable to contain the blood boiling in him like a volcano, Rudolf charged me recklessly. My Chrysos slammed into the heir’s sleek horse. The contest between horses matters too.

All my horses are vicious by nature, and the best of them is Chrysos, who beat that lunatic Mont Blanc into submission. This sharp-tempered, savage mare only pretends to be docile in front of me.

Rudolf’s upper body rocked wildly in the saddle.

Just as I was about to put him down with ease, another force came pouring out of the castle.

"Release my son, Gale Knight!"

Old as he was, Heindel came charging in on horseback. The Gale Knights, who had surrounded the Knights of Wischelbach and were beating them one-sidedly, wheeled instantly and crashed into Heindel’s cavalry.

Crunch! Bang!

Neeeigh!

"Hahaha! We’ll show these bumpkins what Magyar riders can do!"

"Szolnok! Take the right! I’m going left! Hyah!"

Barosi and Herto ranged across the field like fish returned to water. To meet Heindel, who was bearing down on me as if he meant to eat me alive, I cracked Rudolf hard in the ribs with the haft and knocked him out of the saddle.

I made sure he landed on his back. It was the first time I’d learned how much work it takes to hold back enough to capture a man instead of killing him. I caught Heindel’s sword on my halberd, and the old lord turned out to have real skill.

Clang! Claaang! Clang!

"I took you for Wischelbach’s coward of a lord, but you can fight."

"This old man was once the sword of the Brist family!"

"So I see! If you were a little younger, this would have been a good match."

He slipped past my halberd with a veteran’s skill and closed in, but the strength his years had stolen from him left too great a gap to bridge. I pinned his blade in an instant and lifted his foot out of the stirrup with the top of my own.

Heindel lost his balance and tipped over, and the weight of his armor finished the job. I struck his helmet with the flat of the axe head, and he went limp and dropped from the saddle. Again, I made sure he landed on his back.

Landing headfirst can kill a man.

In the end, the fight closed as a lopsided victory for us.

This was precisely why Heindel had called facing the Gale Knight in an open field madness. The captured knights, unable to believe how completely they’d been beaten, looked back at the open gate and gave up.

With both the lord and his heir taken prisoner, Wischelbach surrendered.

"Hahaha, my lord! We won!"

"They gave us a fair bit of trouble, but we’ve taken Wischelbach. That’s what matters."

"It’d be more fun if we could loot to our hearts’ content, but I suppose you’ll be taking only half again, my lord."

"So you have a complaint about your lord’s policy?"

"How could I? I’ve come to see that plundering like this, where overwhelming strength and mercy go hand in hand, actually frightens the enemy more."

When things go well, everything looks good.

Honestly, since I still carried a modern man’s values, brutal plundering was deeply unpleasant to me. Looting civilians, massacre, arson, rape. How could I ever give those orders myself?

But I’m a lord, and avoiding plunder entirely would mean handicapping myself. So I found a compromise: kill no one, violate no one, and take only half. Plundering with restraint.

My men still had trouble understanding it, but the payout from even this restrained version was rich enough that no serious resentment built up. What proved hard to restrain were their primal urges. In the end, some of them caused trouble.

"...No wonder they held out so long."

Two girls stripped naked and sobbing, their mother beside them, and their brother and father beaten bloody. The first thing I saw upon entering the city was my own men in the middle of an attempted rape. Unbelievable.

"We caught them right before it happened, so if you’d take that into account..."

"Sir Szolnok, you want me to let off men who smeared filth on my name?"

"I’ll hang them upside down and flog them immediately!"

"They need to be humiliated if they’re never going to disobey an order again. Do it in the square."

In the end, five of my men were flogged in front of the people of Wischelbach. As compensation, the victims’ household was exempted from the plundering. Hm, strike the wound first, then apply the salve.

"That must have been terrifying. My men are rough by nature. Please forgive them."

"N-no, my lord. We’re grateful that you took action at all, Baron."

Heindel and Rudolf still hadn’t come around, so it was Lady Heindel who came to the negotiating table. She was famously well respected in this region, but in front of me she was scared stiff.

She was also considerably younger than her husband. Sixties for him, thirties for her? Heindel must have been quite the man to keep up with a young wife. Well, it’s hardly a rare arrangement in noble circles.

Nobles on their deathbeds take teenage brides all the time.

"As a special consideration, I’ll release all the captured soldiers without taking their arms. It’s my small kindness, so that the Lady of Wischelbach isn’t left struggling to defend the town without armed men."

It was an utterly shameless line, given that I had no use for commoner prisoners and was handing them back under the pretense of generosity. Whether she saw through it or not, the lady’s eyes never left me.

"On behalf of Wischelbach, I thank you for your magnanimity, Baron."

"The lord, the heir, and the knights, however, I can’t release."

"May I not pay their ransom now?"

"Until this war ends, I intend to hold every local lord in Basel. There will be no ransom talks until then. Blame the Count of Basel for calling me into this land, my lady."

Lady Heindel dabbed at her tears. On the surface, it was the heartrending picture of a woman fearing for her husband and son, but it was also a calculated noblewoman’s performance. Beneath it, I sensed an intent to seduce.

No wonder her posture had struck me as oddly alluring.

So she meant to use her charms. Not a chance.

"As a rule, a captured lord’s castle counts among the spoils. That means I have the legal right to take the property inside it. But as with your people, I’ll take only half."

"The fate of Wischelbach rests in your hands, Baron. And I, too, could..."

She was about to say something disastrous.

"That’s far enough, my lady. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that."

"...But my husband and my son will have to endure the cruelty of captivity. If I don’t step forward and soothe you, Baron, I dare not imagine what might be done to them. Ohhh."

She seemed to think I’d torture her husband and son.

They were noble prisoners, to be housed with courtesy. As if I’d ever do such a thing.

"As Baron Rosenheim, I stake my honor on a promise to treat your husband and son with full courtesy. So please, my lady, don’t worry yourself so much."

"Thank you, Baron. Thank you."

Since I’d staked my honor on it, Lady Heindel seemed genuinely moved.

A noble staking his honor. In this world, there was no more certain promise than that.