Chapter 93. Territorial War (4)
Meanwhile, the field in front of Ronalp’s lord’s castle was soaked in blood.
The blue blood of trolls mixed with the red blood of humans, staining the soil a grotesque color.
From a hill overlooking that field, Count Ronalp rested his longsword on his shoulder and observed the trolls’ main force.
“Looks like we’ve nearly finished cleaning them up. About a hundred left.”
Just as he said, the Long-Armed Blue Trolls were on the verge of extinction.
The King of the Brown Bears had led his warriors forward, driving the trolls into human territory.
But humans had many knights even stronger than trolls.
From Ronalp’s perspective, they were extremely fortunate that no Great Chieftain-class troll had appeared.
“But the knight order’s losses are far too severe.”
The Ronalp Knight Commander spoke grimly.
Of the ninety knights, thirty-eight were dead and thirty-two seriously injured.
Only twenty Ronalp knights remained standing here.
Half of those had minor injuries.
The losses among the soldiers had not even been fully counted.
Count Ronalp turned his head.
Across the field stretching toward the lord’s castle stood the flags and tents of Dijon and Ferrand.
Fifty-six knights from Dijon remained.
Forty-four from Ferrand.
If not for them, Ronalp might have been completely devastated.
Count Ronalp swallowed his sigh and spoke.
“Let’s go. We finish this battle.”
“Yes, my lord. Everyone, battle formation!”
Ronalp’s standard-bearer waved the flag vigorously.
A total of roughly one hundred and twenty knights from the three territories lined up their warhorses in horizontal ranks.
Behind them, approximately thirteen hundred soldiers carrying long spears arranged themselves into ordered rows.
To one side, Orly’s mages gathered and spread cold magic over the trolls.
Fssssss.
It was too weak to call a blizzard.
Too strong to call ordinary frost.
That spell became the signal.
The trumpeter blew his horn with all his strength.
BWOOOOOO!
“Charge!”
“Waaaaaaah!”
One hundred and twenty warhorses charged forward at once.
It was not a wedge formation.
It was a three-row horizontal formation.
They intended to annihilate the trolls with this single charge.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
The hoofbeats shook the earth.
The trolls lifted clubs and rocks, preparing for the final collision.
Then an utterly unexpected roar echoed from behind them.
ROOOAR!
Kekekekekek!
Nine Brown Bears and roughly six hundred lizardmen appeared behind the troll formation.
At the same time, the chief of the Camargue Lizardmen felt like he was dying.
More than a thousand lizardman warriors had set out.
After casualties and stragglers, only around six hundred remained.
The Brown Bears that had attacked one by one were so powerful that killing even a single bear caused heavy losses.
Others had fallen to the humans’ strange fire.
Still others had been caught in exploding flames.
Those strange wooden monsters kept appearing endlessly.
Even worse, after they barely managed to reorganize and catch up, the bears and humans had clearly rested and were running well again.
They had relied on their naturally fast species traits to pursue them.
And then,
What the hell is that?!
A hundred trolls stood ahead with their backs toward them.
Beyond the trolls, more than a thousand humans were charging toward them.
The Camargue chief felt dizzy.
Humans! Those humans are trying to wipe us out!
Just as humans tended to see all monsters as basically the same, lizardmen tended to see humans the same way.
Ronalp Territory?
Marcel Territory?
He neither knew nor cared.
He had no idea why trolls were here.
The only thing he saw was that his current enemy was “humans.”
“Warriors of Camargue! Kill all those humans! Kerrererek!”
“Kekekekekek!”
Then the humans who had been fleeing suddenly threw High Priest Adder onto the ground.
“Kueek! I’m dying!”
Adder screamed as she landed right in the middle of the troll formation.
Then the nine Brown Bears carrying humans circled around the charging cavalry.
Eric had aimed at the weakness of a horizontal cavalry charge, its inability to make sudden directional changes.
Naturally, the Camargue chief knew nothing about such tactics.
“They fled behind their own side! Spread out and stop the humans! Protect the High Priest!”
“High Priest! Save the High Priest!”
“For Naga!”
“Long live mighty Camargue!”
“May Naga bless us!”
The lizardmen surged forward and lined up beside the trolls to meet the cavalry charge.
Gueek?
The trolls, heads covered in frost, sniffled in confusion.
But this was a battle.
For now, they had to crush the enemy in front of them.
The humans.
CRAAAASH!
Knights and monsters collided head-on.
I rode a Brown Bear around behind the knights charging in a horizontal formation.
There was a wide gap between the mounted knights and the soldiers running behind them.
We entered through that gap.
“Keep running! Make a wide turn and get behind the soldiers!”
Without colliding with anything, we passed through to the opposite side, then circled behind the infantry.
A sudden Brown Bear drift.
If viewed from above, our route would have looked like an S.
Ronalp’s soldiers stared at us with expressions that clearly said, What the hell are those?!
But they were charging.
Their strict military discipline actually helped us.
Even though I rode a Brown Bear nearby, the soldiers kept their eyes forward and continued their charge.
Their commanders also had no new orders from Count Ronalp, so they simply kept moving ahead.
After completely slipping behind them,
we encountered a group of isolated mages.
“What the hell are those?!”
“That’s the emblem of Orly Mage Tower! They look like mages!”
Orly?
As far as I knew, the Orly Mage Tower Master had recently betrayed the “royalist faction” and grown close to the King’s father-in-law, Count Calais.
They were so close that they were called “the two leaders of the noble faction.”
That meant Orly was currently an enemy and competitor.
The mages in front of me were their subordinates.
“Keep going, run straight through them!”
ROOOOOAR!
Sorry, but they were also blocking my path.
So I did not bother stopping.
We simply trampled straight over them.
They had just finished casting a major spell.
Before they could do more than stammer, “Uh, uh,” nine enormous Brown Bears crushed them underfoot.
After finishing our rampage, we finally stopped and looked back.
Knights, trolls, and lizardmen were tangled together in combat.
Soldiers surrounded the battle, thrusting long spears.
Raul stared at the sight with admiration.
“Wow. What a magnificent scene. Monsters and humans fighting to the death. Beautiful.”
“Looks like nobody cares about us anymore.”
Martin made a serious suggestion.
“Should we join the battle? We have the Brown Bears. Count Ronalp should be there.”
The strongest individual on this battlefield was the Brown Bear leader I was riding.
The other eight bears were also Upper-rank Sword Expert-level fighters.
Count Ronalp might be a Sword Master, but I had no idea how many exchanges he could survive against them.
However, this was not something I had agreed upon with the Brown Bear King.
And judging from the current battle, the humans looked like they might be annihilated even without us joining.
There were several fairly strong trolls and lizardmen.
Most importantly, if my identity was exposed here, it would become troublesome.
The lord’s castle was close enough that eliminating every witness would be impossible.
“It’s tempting, but we have an agreement. We won’t waste time here. Head straight into the Great Forest. We’ll meet the Brown Bear King.”
“Yes, my lord.”
ROOOAR!
We entered the forest and ran toward the Great Forest.
But before we even got close,
we encountered the King of the Brown Bears, Blago.
He had apparently been watching from afar and approached us.
Good work, ‘King’ of the southern lands.
“We brought the sacred relic as promised.”
Martin removed the bag from his back and tied it around Blago’s neck with a long rope.
Blago immediately burst into delighted laughter.
Uha, uha! At last, the sacred relic of Ursus!
Actually, that’s a blessing from the Toad God... Ah, forget it. Not my problem.
Blago could handle that himself.
“Our agreement is fulfilled, right? We’ll return to the southern lands now.”
It is. Thank you, Eric. Make sure you attend my hundredth birthday next year.
“I’ll see you next year. Have lots of sons.”
Uha, uha, uha!
With that, we returned to Marcel Territory.
Our steps felt wonderfully light after achieving such a major victory.
On the battlefield where humans, trolls, and lizardmen had collided,
Count Ronalp sat heavily on the ground and surveyed the area.
Only a small number of humans remained standing on two feet.
Seven knights survived.
About five hundred soldiers remained.
Even among them, more than half were wounded.
The battlefield had been extremely unfavorable to the humans.
Still, maintaining discipline and formation had ultimately brought them victory.
The cold magic of the Orly mages had also helped tremendously.
The remaining cold had slowed the lizardmen, even if only slightly.
The lizardmen had fought chaotically without proper order.
Once roughly half of them, including their chief, were killed, they grabbed the white lizard and fled.
If the lizardmen had not retreated partway through the battle, Count Ronalp would probably have died as well.
Naturally, the Long-Armed Blue Trolls had fought to the bitter end.
They were now extinct.
Count Ronalp was furious over the terrible losses.
But something else bothered him even more.
Those strange bears that had appeared right before the collision.
One of the bears had clearly been stronger than him.
If that creature had joined the battle too, they would unquestionably have been annihilated.
What the hell were those things? Were the figures riding the bears humans? Why did they simply pass through? Why did they let me live?
No matter how much he thought, he could not understand the sequence of events.
Then a voice came from behind him.
“My lord! My lord! You’re alive!”
He turned.
Countess Karin Ronalp and their second daughter, Anna, were running toward him in armor.
Anna was a genuine knight.
But because there would be a succession crisis if every heir died, she had been left behind to defend the lord’s castle.
Karin was merely wearing pretty armor for appearances.
“Yeah. I’m alive. But my body’s a mess. I don’t even know where I’m hurt anymore. I can barely feel anything. Can’t stand.”
At those words, Anna hurriedly removed her gauntlets and began feeling around Count Ronalp’s body.
After checking him thoroughly, she sighed in relief.
“Fortunately, there are only about a dozen tears. Your right shoulder bone, five ribs, and your left shin are broken.”
Karin stared in shock.
She looked at Anna, who was wiping dark blood off her hands.
“Th, that’s fortunate...?”
“Yes. Of course it is. Nothing was cut off. Father, let’s go eat. We need to check whether your internal organs ruptured.”
Karin stared at the ignorant father and daughter in horror.
If his intestines had ruptured, eating would cause the abdomen to rot and kill him.
Actually, if there was internal bleeding, he might die within two days anyway.
She immediately decided they needed to summon priests.
Count Ronalp was placed on a wagon and called Karin over.
“If Eric Marcel invades, surrender. Negotiate the conditions. Our knight order has been wiped out. Damn it, I’m ashamed to face my father’s grave.”
The Ronalp Knight Order now consisted only of thirty-two seriously wounded knights.
The Knight Commander was among the fifty-eight dead.
“Yes, my lord...”
Karin sighed.
The cumulative deaths among allied knights were fifty-five from Dijon and forty-eight from Ferrand.
Five Orly mages had been flattened into pancakes and pressed into the earth.
Including regular soldiers and conscripted territorial residents, more than seventeen hundred people had died.
There would be compensation for all of them.
Deaths during a territorial war normally did not require compensation.
But these people had died while supposedly providing pure assistance against a monster invasion.
Compensation would have to be paid.
Even the conscripted territorial residents would need condolence payments.
If Ronalp had to pay compensation and condolence money for all those deaths, the Ronalp family would obviously go bankrupt.
The royal family bore some responsibility after reclaiming their old Margrave title, so it would probably pay around half the total.
But not enough to avoid bankruptcy.
We have no choice but to surrender, give up part of the territory, and push the compensation burden onto Count Marcel.
It would be best to guarantee Eric certain rights in exchange for his bloodless entry into Ronalp’s lord’s castle.
Could we at least keep a quarter of Ronalp Territory? Heavens, how cruel. Gods, why did you send trolls immediately after we declared war?
She felt completely miserable.
Following the wagon back toward the lord’s castle, Karin’s slumped back looked utterly pitiful.
When we arrived in front of Marcel’s lord’s castle, Bixby appeared riding a Brown Bear and shouted angrily.
“Human Land Lord! Why didn’t you come to the rendezvous point! Do you know how many days I waited?!”
I had forgotten something.
We had taken the cargo vessels along the Rhone and passed right by the rendezvous point.
Because of that, Bixby had apparently camped for several days with one knight and one Brown Bear.
I considered apologizing.
But I had my dignity as a lord to maintain.
So I held out several silver coins.
“Buy yourself some clothes.”
“...Oh, you really shouldn’t have. Thank you, my lord.”
What?
Why was he suddenly speaking properly?
So everything until now had been an act.
“You little bastard.”
“Human Land Lord, I’m going back.”
Bixby, eleven years old, fled while riding the Brown Bear.
I chuckled at his retreating figure and entered the lord’s castle.
It was time to summon the entire Marcel Knight Order.
