Chapter 10

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“Seeing if we can alter your image a bit.”

Neia sat frozen in her saddle as Saye reached across from her mount to fiddle with her hair. When she thought about it, she realised that it was rare for her to be touched by anyone outside of being jostled by allies or attacked by enemies in battle.

“Alter it into what?” Neia asked, “It’s not as if anyone will see me out here.”

“You have at least a hundred men looking at you every day,” Saye said. “Plus anyone you try to scare off with your crazy murdergaze.”

“…do you think the Nobles will show up?”

Saye snorted.

“If they can find us.”

Neia scanned as much of the horizon as she could while keeping her head still. Only two hours had passed since she and her men started driving the herd to the next pasture and they weren’t moving very fast. What were the chances that anyone would get lost trying to find a herd of two thousand cattle? It wasn’t as if Lanca were renowned for their stealth.

Saye stopped fussing with Neia’s hair and leaned back and forth as she carefully scrutinised her. The Bard, of course, always somehow looked perfect and her pleasant appearance truly was at odds with her grim worldview.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Saye?”

“That depends on what it is.”

“Um…well, it’s just that you seem to see the world as a much darker place than people in the Holy Kingdom do,” Neia said. “Where were you born?”

“A town in Re-Estize.”

That was much closer than Neia expected. Her guess had been somewhere in the City State Alliance, though she didn’t know what it was like there.

“Was it a bad place?” Neia asked.

Saye fell silent, staring at her with her topaz blue eyes for so long that Neia started to shift uncomfortably.

“Are you a virgin?” Saye asked.

“What?!”

Neia cringed at the volume of her own voice. She looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but the closest rancher was a speck in the distance.

“O-of course I am!”

Neia’s mind halted for a moment. She wasn’t sure if it was alright to be a virgin with how old she already was.

“B-but I haven’t really had the time to find anyone with all the–”

“I’m not,” Saye told her. “Over a year ago, while I was out on an errand for my mother, some men snatched me right off of the street in broad daylight and that was it.”

But she’s eleven right now…

“It took me weeks to work up the courage to tell my mother what happened,” Saye continued. “The next day, she abandoned us. Two days later, the landlord found out that she was gone and my brother and I were kicked out. We couldn’t pay the rent, after all.”

Whaaaaaaaaaat…

“I…I thought you might be from a sort of bad place, but I never–”

“It could have been worse.”

“How could it be worse than that?” Neia gaped at her.

“Well,” Saye counted off her fingers. “Men at least paid whenever I sold myself to save me and my brother from starving. We found a bit of high ground in a back alley to sleep on and anything could have happened to us while we were living there. Also, being captured and sold into slavery was a thing – it almost happened to us before we finally left.”

“That’s horrible!” Neia said, “Why didn’t anyone do anything?”

Neia didn’t know what was worse: the fact that Saye had gone through so much or the fact that she was so cavalier about it.

“Justice without strength is meaningless,” Saye shrugged. “That’s what you always say, isn’t it? In my hometown’s case, Justice was on the side of evil, and evil had more than enough strength to uphold justice. It wasn’t exactly unique in its circumstances, either. The way things are going, the Holy Kingdom is going to end up just like my old home.”

“But the Holy Kingdom isn’t anywhere near that bad…”

“Not yet,” Saye told her, “but it will be. It’s not as if everyone just wakes up one day and decides to be horrible. Things just keep getting worse and worse, little by little. A thousand little things grind you and everyone around you down, turning what you would consider horrible into normal.

“Slowly, but surely, everything that people used to consider ‘good’ is flipped on its head. Integrity is perceived as idiocy; generosity, gullibility. Morality is considered moronic. Those who stand up for what’s right are wrong and people genuinely believe that they deserve every bit of what happens to them when they’re gutted in the streets for their actions. That was the justice of my home.”

“I-I can’t believe that. It’s too crazy!”

Justice was justice. What Saye described definitely wasn’t it. Anyone in their right mind would–

“Is it?” Saye’s piercing gaze held Neia’s own, “Is it actually crazy? From what you’ve told me so far, you’re from a nice place where your ruler – well, your former ruler – did her best to lead a nation along the path of good. I can see the vestiges of her leadership in how the people of the Holy Kingdom speak, think, and act. But all of that now only serves to show how much Roble has changed.

“Good and evil matter less and less. It’s all about winning or losing. People stop thinking about how their actions will affect those around them and why they aren’t allowed to do certain things. All of that stuff doesn’t matter when one’s family is starving and power goes to those who seize it. Everything is allowed when the result is the only thing that matters. Those who get ahead of everyone else are the just; those who are left behind deserve everything that happens to them and aren’t worth thinking about. At best, they’re a sea of faceless nobodies whose desperation can be exploited and ‘realism’ becomes the mindless excuse that justifies everything that they do.”

A lump of guilt formed in the pit of Neia’s stomach. It was as if Saye was describing her. When she was kicked out of the Holy Order and turned away from the army, all she could think about was how they were hurting her and what they owed. She stopped caring about the important things despite knowing that she should. How she appeared to others and how it would affect her became more important than whether something was right or wrong. All she could think of was herself and how she might be able to survive.

There were those who didn’t fit Saye’s description, however.

“Mister Lousa isn’t like that,” Neia noted.

That’s right. When I was in that terrible place, Mister Lousa pulled me out. I never realised that I owe him so much more than just giving me a job. Everyone that works for him does.

He had done it so naturally, as well. It was what anyone should have done, yet it had somehow become a rare and remarkable thing. Maybe Saye was right about how the Holy Kingdom was changing.

“He’s not,” the Bard admitted. “But that’s probably the reason he’s being targeted. He’s a reminder of what the Holy Kingdom used to be. That means he’s an eyesore to those championing the new way of things. Just like that baker, Mister Juárez, he’ll probably stand for what’s right and the Nobles will find a way to gut him.”

But how?

She didn’t know how many men the Nobles would muster, but it was certainly not enough to control Mister Lousa’s territory. The villa was a long way into the territory, so any force sent to attack it would be detected far in advance. At best, they could focus on harassing the people and making life difficult.

“What’s that?”

Neia shaded her eyes against the midmorning sun, following Saye’s gaze to the shallow valley below them. Someone was slogging their way across the muddy creek winding its way along the bottom.

“It’s obviously not a rancher,” Neia said. “I can’t make out many details though. They’re holding a walking stick.”

“Or a spear,” Saye said.

The person disappeared into the thicket along the near bank. He reappeared several moments later.

A man with a stick or spear or something wearing a long outfit…a gambeson? That thing must be heavy after getting soaked like that.

The sun glinted off of the man’s cap as he disrobed to squeeze the water out of his outfit.

“Did you see that?” Neia asked.

“I don’t want to see that!” Saye answered.

“Th-that’s not what I meant! He was wearing some metal thing on his head. He’s probably an armsman.”

“Are we killing him?”

“Kill? No! Um, we should capture him and find out what he’s doing here.”

The bottom of the valley was only half a kilometre away, so they dismounted to sneak up on the intruder. Their mark seemed unaware of their approach and, when they reached him, he was basking in the same clearing they had last seen him in. His equipment was laid out over a boulder to dry in the sun.

“I was hoping he’d have put his clothing back on by now,” Neia grumbled.

“Isn’t it better if he’s naked?” Saye asked.

“Aren’t you the one that didn’t want to see anything?”

“Yeah, but now you want to catch him.”

They peered down from the tall grass, trying to figure out how they might do that. The man didn’t look much older than Neia was, but he lacked the physique of a professional warrior.

“How can he be so skinny and so hairy at the same time?” Saye asked.

“Do we need to talk about that?” Neia sent a frown in the Bard’s direction, “It looks like this guy is a spare or something similar that they picked up to fill the retinues sent north. If we take his stuff away, he should be easy for us to handle.”

She wondered what percentage of the southern nobility’s men in the north were like that. Though most of the north considered the south’s assistance in their recovery as an act of magnanimity, Neia slowly came to realise that it was far from charitable self-sacrifice. It was an opportunity for the southern nobility to spread their influence in ways that they had never dreamed of. Two or three generations’ worth of spares could be cleaned out from their lands and all sides would be indebted to them for it. With the way things were going, the north would ultimately end up as an effective tributary of the south.

Snores rose into the clear blue sky as Neia and Saye took the intruder’s stuff and hid it away. Once they were ready, Saye took his spear and pointed it at him while Neia tiptoed up to his side. His eyes popped open when she poked his ribs with the toe of her boot.

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“Don’t move!” Neia shouted.

The man sat up. Saye shifted the spear to the side, but not before it opened a gash across his ribs.

“Aiiiiyeeeee!!!”

An ear-splitting shriek echoed up the valley. The man clutched his side with a moan. He brought up his bloodstained hand and went deathly pale.

“Oh, gods, ya stuck me! Why would ya do somethin’ like that?!”

“I stuck you?” Saye scowled, “You stuck yourself!”

No, he didn’t even get stuck.

It was just a cut. He might get a scar from it, but he wasn’t going to die or anything.

“Didn’t ya learn anythin’ from the army?” The man sobbed, “Yer not supposed to point weapons at people like that!”

He had a point. Or did he? It was basic weapons safety, but, in this case, he was the enemy. Saye was too young to have been in the army, anyway.

“There’s so much blood!” The man cried, “I just got married and I’m going to die!”

“You’re not going to die,” Saye rolled her eyes. “Neia, heal him.”

“Me?” Neia frowned.

“Yeah,” Saye replied. “You were a Squire, right?”

“I was…”

“Then just, you know…cast a healing spell?”

“What?” Neia said.

“What?” Said the man.

“What?” Saye furrowed her brow.

It was probably a misunderstanding. Re-Estize wasn’t known for its Paladins, so it was understandable that someone from there would make wild assumptions about what different members of the Holy Order could do.

Neia took a roll of cloth from a belt pouch and knelt beside the wounded man.

“Hold still and I’ll–ugh, stop flopping around! Just sit still while I dress your wound!”

The man eventually quieted down. As she moved to bandage him, however, something disturbing caught her attention. Neia’s eyes went from the man’s waist to his face, then her hand came up to close her open collar.

“You’re…you’re both really pretty,” the man said.

Saye flipped her spear over and bonked him on the head. The man fell limp.

“Didn’t he say he was married?” Neia said.

He should have been saving his compliments for his wife.

“I told you boys are awful,” Saye replied. “What are we going to do with him?”

“Tie him up and question him, I guess,” Neia detached a coil of rope from her belt. “Can you do the questioning part?”

“Sure,” Saye said.

After experimenting for a bit, they ended up tying the man’s wrists and ankles to his spear and carried it between them. Halfway back up the valley, one of her ranchers rode in from the southwest. He eyed the mostly-naked captive tied to the pole for a few moments.

“I thought I heard some yellin’ this way,” he said, “but now I’m afraid to ask.”

“We found us a man,” Saye licked her lips.

“I see…”

“No, you don’t!” Neia said hurriedly, “We spotted this guy coming up from behind us. Have you seen livery like this before?”

The rancher examined the man’s gambeson, which they had tied around his waist. Aside from the red and blue cloth armour, he didn’t have any other pieces of livery for them to identify him by.

“Nothin’ comes to mind,” he said. “But ain’t these colours different from the fellows we stopped the other day?”

“They are,” Neia nodded. “I’m worried that they might have called in their friends after what happened.”

A low rumble rose from the rancher’s throat. His eyes scanned the vista behind them before returning to their captive.

“We haven’t noticed anyone trailin’ us from our position,” he said. “If it’s true, though, what will we do?”

“It depends on what they’re doing,” Neia said. “Since we left, they might be trying to come in on the same road again. This guy could be a sentry sent to make sure we don’t double back on them unawares.”

“Did the man we sent to Mister Lousa come back yet?”

Neia shook her head. The new rider they sent to update Mister Lousa on the border situation had left early that morning, but the herd was going in the opposite direction.

“Why didn’t we just stay where we were?” Saye asked, “We left the border wide open.”

“‘Cause we couldn’t, Miss Saye,” the rancher answered. “If we stayed, the herd would have grazed the pasture down to the roots. If we stayed longer than that, they would’ve starved. Our job is to make sure Mister Lousa’s cattle stay on schedule for delivery. We don’t have anyone assigned to watch out for our neighbours – not that we ever thought it was necessary.”

Once they returned to Neia’s position on the ridge, they tethered the man to a shade tree and roused him. He looked around himself groggily.

“Ugh…where am I?”

“You were caught and shipped to the Crusader States,” Saye told him.

“Th-the Crusader States?” The man’s eyes went wide, “But I just got married! Oh, gods, I don’t want to be eaten by the Undead!”

She didn’t specify which Crusader State, but their captive seemed terrified nonetheless.

“If you don’t want to be fed to a Vampire,” Saye scowled, “then tell us what we want to know!”

“Aiiiieeee!!! Please, not a Vampire! I’ll tell you anything!”

“Why did you cross into the ranchland?”

“It was Sir Penedo! He sent us out to find some men being led by an evil whore!”

What?!

“Why?” Saye asked, pacing back and forth in front of him.

“Because she challenged the Nobles. He wants her put in chains and crawled naked to the town where she’ll be punished for her crimes.”

“That sounds serious,” Saye said gravely. “How many men did he send to do this?”

“Twenty Knights,” the man replied.

Twenty?!

Just how many Nobles were involved in the plot against Mister Lousa? Her company had no hope of winning a battle against twenty Knights.

“I see,” Saye stopped directly in front of the man. “Thank you for letting us know.”

“Then–”

“For your sins, you will be fed to the Wights.”

The man jumped to his feet and bolted. Unfortunately for him, the tree was in the opposite direction of Saye and he knocked himself out. Saye leaned forward to examine him before turning with a shrug.

“I got your answers,” she said. “What now?”

“…I don’t know.” Neia replied, “This is completely messed up!”

“You’re not going to fight them?”

“I don’t want to fight my own people…”

“In that case,” Saye said, “go ahead and strip while I look for some chains.”

“Argh, fine!” Neia turned to the rancher standing beside her, “Go to the wrangler and tell him to distribute our spare horses between the men. Let any of our people you come across know what’s happening. I want two men from each camp to meet me here.”

Neia went to look over their captive’s equipment once the rancher confirmed her orders and rode off. He wasn’t a professional and his equipment was about the same as what someone would wear while they served their time in the army.

“What are you thinking?” Saye asked.

“I’m trying to figure out how we can get through this,” Neia answered. “The men coming to join us will act as the rearguard, but I’m not sure whether we can lose our pursuers.”

“Lose them? Why not just beat them? It’s just twenty Knights, right?”

She blinked at the Bard’s outrageous statement.

“Saye,” Neia asked, “doesn’t Re-Estize have Knights?”

“It depends where you are…”

“In the Holy Kingdom,” Neia told her, “a ‘Knight’ in this context refers to a Knight and their retinue. ‘Twenty Knights’ is anywhere between twelve hundred and sixteen hundred men.”

“Oh.”

It was a stupid number of people to fight. Every Knight would have fifty to sixty infantry and a dozen or two cavalry with them.

“Since this guy is pretty normal looking,” Neia gestured at their captive, “I was thinking that the Knight retinues that the Nobles sent after us aren’t the real, professional ones. If that’s the case, it would give us a whole lot more room to work with.”

“I guess we won’t know for sure until we see them.”

She didn’t like the uncertainty, but Saye was right. At least there was a good chance of conducting mounted reconnaissance without being dragged into a fight.

The company’s wrangler came by to deliver their spare horses and half of her rearguard forces came with him. Neia wasn’t sure if the Knights had brought their own spare mounts but, if they didn’t, it would be another undeniable advantage in her company’s favour.

“That one of ‘em?” Carlos dismounted near the tree.

“Yes,” Neia said. “As you can see, he’s not a professional warrior. I’m hoping that’s the case with most of their forces. Did anyone spot any today so far?”

Her men shook their heads. A part of her was relieved at the response, but there were potentially several troubling explanations as to why they hadn’t encountered any intruders.

“Let’s figure out how they’re deployed first,” she said. “This guy came from across the valley here. We’ll assume that he was the furthest along and spread out over this ridge. Get ready to move at a moment’s notice, though – he may have been sent to mislead us so they could flank us with their main force elsewhere.”

Thirty minutes later, another captive joined the first. He wore the same livery and was about as unremarkable.

“We caught him a kilometre south of here,” the rancher who brought him in said.

“What was he doing?”

“Just walkin’, I guess? He threw down his weapon and surrendered as soon as we rode up to him.”

What’s going on here?

Something was off, but Neia couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Should I question him?” Saye asked.

“I’ll do it,” Neia answered, “something’s been bothering me…”

“Don’t make him faint before you get your answer.”

Neia shot the Bard a look, but Saye only smiled back. The new captive, however, shied away in terror as Neia approached.

“Where are the rest of your people?” She asked.

“I-I don’t know.”

“If you don’t cooperate…” Neia frowned.

“I-I don’t know!” The man cried, “I don’t even know where I am! Please don’t kill me!”

She exchanged a look with her men, who shook their heads unknowingly in reply.

How can that be? Unless…

She turned her attention back to the captive.

“What do your parents do?” She asked.

“My folks? They’re Tailors.”

“What about you? Before you came north, I mean.”

“I helped my family do this and that. Then there was the army. Thank the gods I came back from that.”

Neia turned away, thoroughly confused.

Why would they do that? No, it doesn’t matter why.

“We’re going on the offensive,” she said.

“Didn’t you just tell me that they had at least twelve hundred men?” Saye asked.

“I did, but that doesn’t matter if they can’t find us.”

“Whaddya mean by ‘they can’t find us’?” Carlos asked, “It’s not as if we don’t leave a trail of thousands of cowpies wherever we go.”

“I know it sounds weird,” Neia said, “but that’s probably what’s happening. Saye, it’s as I said earlier, right? They’re filling the ranks of these northern retinues with spares.”

“You might be right about that,” Saye said, “but wouldn’t they use the spares of ranchers or foresters if they needed someone to find us?”

“That’s the thing,” Neia replied. “All those guys are working. The south is fully developed and doesn’t have any forests left. All they have are copses so foresters and hunters are scarce. The same idea applies to ranchers, though that’s because ranchers aren’t like Farmers where you need hundreds of people in a single village. Any that they brought up here will be working to bring prosperity to the lands managed by the southerners; not scouting for their retinues.”

Carlos and the other ranchers gathered near the tree twisted her faces in reaction to words.

“That’s pretty silly of them,” Carlos said. “You wouldn’t send a Farmer into a forest to hunt beasts, would you?”

“Some might,” Neia replied, “but most would know better than to do that. My father once told me that there’s nature everywhere, but most people don’t consider the lands of the Holy Kingdom the same way as they might a wild forest. It’s just farms or pastures with villages and towns nearby. Additionally, he got to know how the Nobles’ heads worked because they were given positions of command so often. The vast majority of them only see things in terms of ‘fighting strength’ or maybe just aesthetically pleasing ranks that they lead in some overly romanticised way. Reconnaissance is an ignoble role assigned to any random commoner.”

“So they don’t differentiate between jobs?” Saye frowned.

“Only in the ways that they’ve learned. Most of them are regular Nobles so ‘soldier’ is a thing just like ‘Tailor’, ‘Farmer’, or ‘Miner’. Ranchers, hunters, and foresters similarly become ‘soldiers’ when they join the army and they never make the connection that they’re supposed to be used as scouts and skirmishers. All rank-and-file infantry are the same to them. That’s why my father always had to fight to get the right people in his platoon.”

The Holy Order had a twist on the same problem before the war. Whenever they needed a tracker, scout, or wilderness guide, they would often skip right over the army’s scouts and employ local hunters or Rangers from the Adventurer Guild.

Carlos drummed the stock of his crossbow with an unreadable look on his face. That look was shared by every single rancher present.

“So,” he said, “you’re basically saying that all those people are lost.”

Neia nodded. It was unbelievably stupid, but that was pretty much what was probably going on.

Carlos returned to his mount and vaulted back into his saddle.

“In that case,” he said. “It’s time to round up some idiots.”

The small army that Neia previously considered an impossible challenge had all at once been transformed into prey. She hoped that the Nobles would give up before the day was done.