Volume 3 - CH 2.4

“Rolf!” cried a voice. “P-Pardon! A moment! If it pleases you!”

To it I turned and tarried, having been on my way to meet Lise and Volker. The battle was ended; the braves bustled fervently as they filed back into the fort. Out of the crowd emerged a young fellow of a Nafíl, looking not much older than I during my first days at the Order.

“It does,” I answered above the clamour, watching as he quickly came by. “What is it?”

“Th-this victory, it is owed to you! Our losses are little—not without your command could we’ve seen this day!” he sunnily said, face flustered and almost breathless. But having been worn by winters of lambastings rather than laudings, I couldn’t help but feel a bit flustered myself.

“Your praise gladdens the ears,” I returned. “…Though you’d best leave them for Lise’s and Volker’s. It’s their skill and command that carried our cause.”

“Oh, y-yes, of course! Our leaders’ll find no frail love from me, they won’t! But yours, Rolf—your shoulders shrink not beside theirs, if you get my meaning!” he expounded with passion. “Just as you didn’t shrink when the enemy gained the gates! ‘Mighty’ be my best word for it! What with your charging their file, and felling them with that fey sword of yours!”

I itched with unease at those words, as I felt my fencing unworthy of any acclaim yet. But to hear that I was “mighty”, that I did not “shrink” in the face of my foe—that well-earned my gratitude. For courage was my one regard I wished most to earn remembrance: in combat, in character, above all else and all others.

“And when you bade the gates be shut upon your exit—I feel a fable was unfurled before my eyes, if you know what I mean!” the fervent fellow continued. “The boldest of the brave, breaking into peril to protect the bastion! The stuff of legends!”

Joining the fray—not exactly the deed of a reasoned commander, I should admit, but I let it be. This youth was pouring into his praise his very heart; it’d be callous of me to throw cold water on him now.

“I only did as was demanded, but thank you,” I relented. “You know my name—what of yours?”

“Ah, aye! I’m Bruno!” he answered, bowing. “A pleasure!”

“Bruno, good lad,” I said back, presenting a hand to him. “Let’s give our all next we battle—together.”

“O-of course! Together!” And with both his own, he shook mine. A hale warmth was in his spirited grip. “Till then! Fair winds comfort you!”

And off he went with a spring in his steps. Soon in his place were both Lise and Volker, approaching with wisps of wonder in their eyes.

“Quite the devotee there,” remarked Lise.

“One I’m honoured to have, if true. It was a glad meeting,” I admitted. Cast upon me were yet stares of no small number, each nursing embers of doubt. I recalled then of Kunz. Of meeting him in Hensen, of being pressed by his arrant rage, his ill-salved sorrow. His was the smouldering stare most unforgettable of all.

A comfort, then, to know that in some like Bruno, there burned a fire of a friendlier ardour.

“His compliments be not queer, I think,” Volker added. “Many braves take heed of your sound succour at Hensen, Rolf—to note little of both your bloodless felling of this fastness and the fierceness of your fighting on this day.”

“Not just this day, then,” I proclaimed, looking intently at busied braves. “In all to come, I’ll strive to win their vouching.”

Through battle. Through resolute and unrelenting battle. For their cause, for their sacrifices—their future. And in so doing earn their trust, at last. This I trusted to be the rightwise way. Much hard work, then, laid ahead.

“Well… al-already you’ve won some, I’d say,” stammered Lise, curiously quiet. “A fair fight you’ve waged for us, Rolf. Most fair—brave even, and… and bea… b-beautiful… I-I confess.”

“‘Beautiful’?” I remarked, surprised. “I see. Glad to know there be a glint of beauty in my bladework, if one as beautiful as yourself vouches for—”

“Hya!?” she yelped, loudly and out-of-the-blue.

Was I rude, perchance? Likely so, looking at Lise. Splendid; once again I’ve let my mouth run off.

“Ehr, V-Volker! Y-your sweat was much succour itself, wasn’t it!?” she said, turning asudden to the war-chief. The topic had turned sour on her tongue, it seemed. “Mine was quite the easy task thanks to you!”

“As was mine,” answered Volker, grinning faintly. “A gainly hand it was that Rolf dealt us. I had but to play as promised.”

Not as gainly as he touted it to be, I should say. Nonetheless, all had gone to plan, for our foes, too, had played obediently the hand of our dealing. Time was a luxury lost to them; had they any more of it, wisdom might’ve cooled their heads and inspired them to the possibility of an ambush. And as well, the falsity of Morten’s report. All the better for us, then, that they sooner heeded haste than hesitation.

Foremost in the margrave’s mind was surely Morten’s telling of the Fiefguard’s triumphant return from Hensen. If it were a backstabbing trap that awaited them at Balasthea, then speed should’ve seen them saved. And so it was that the lord let loose his remaining men to trounce our “trap”, sparing time for neither prudence nor planning. No, not even for an investigation into the veracity of the two opposing reports… nor for properly organising his troops, for that matter.

“You well-whip’d our foes to a fever’d haste, Rolf—horses hying to a cliff-edge their eyes had scant time to see, as it were,” Volker went on. “A gesture of genius, I admit.”

“But with your chase, they had no chance of changing course, Volker,” I returned. “Your command was most commendable; that’s my admittance.”

“Let us leave it at that, then. Pelting such praises as we do only passes precious time.”

“You have a point,” I relented, chuckling. I felt then a smile growing on my face—slight, but warm with gladness. On the side was Lise, also smiling at us, if not rather awkwardly.

♰

Coldly from his office did the margrave take in the ill-tiding. Yet again did the word “defeat” nip his nerves. The sorry sight of his Fiefguard, retreating from their rout, crushed all comfort that denial and self-deception might have afforded him.

Long had he held them in high regard, his military men. The Fiefguard: mighty defenders of this march of Ström. The honour was well-warranted. For many a time have they forayed bravely into Nafílim country and came back brimming with hard-earned boons. Why, the margrave even fancied them no less fearsome than the knights of the Orders.

Such pride—now all but pulverised.

Rolf’s was but a small force, a pack of Nafílim no larger than a nipple of a legion. Those were Morten’s words. Oh, the lies laced in them! And if lies they were, so it must be that the margrave’s forayers were indeed hewn down at Hensen.

…So it must be that the victors of that vying, vicious as they were bristlingly abundant, were now come to his doorstep.

Hensen, then, was a reeking failure of a raid. Would that he trusted to the contrary! Not the maunderings of Morten the fool, no, but the fled Fiefguardsmen’s grovelling details of their defeat! A bitter truth beholding the loss of a hundred-score soldiers!

Now were the tables turned. Now did the Nafílim mean to march on Arbel, aggression against which the fief-burgh might have had shields enough to guard… had the margrave not bitten the bait so capriciously. His losses only seemed to mount: of the thousand soldiers he had sent to break Balasthea today, not much more than three-hundred returned to Arbel alive.

A force once thrice-thousand strong, now nine-times decimated. And amongst the remnants themselves were the wounded and battle-unworthy; the “small force”, then, was not Rolf’s, no—it was the margrave’s.

By such meagre numbers shall Arbel be ill-delivered from this dire plight. The realisation racked and grated at the margrave to no end.

Bang!—upon the desk: a furious fist.

“Damn it all!!” barked the lord, after which a Fiefguard commander then entered the room.

“M’liege…” he said sheepishly.

“I know,” sighed the margrave. “We are cornered—defence be our only road in this ruction.”

“What of Central?” the commander suggested. “Might we seek their succour, m’liege?”

“Already a courier bears my call to Redelberne, but it shall be days ere deliverance comes. Days!”

Days, indeed. Deadly and terrible days of defending against the Nafílim with just an enfeebled Fiefguard. And in that struggle, Arbel would fold long before its walls were aught more than a distant twinkle in the eyes of Central’s reinforcements. The foe, then, seemed the clear and uncontested victor, even as the horns of battle were yet unblown.

“Nay… the last card lies yet unplayed,” hissed the margrave, as though relenting after being wrung dry of all pride. “The sellswords of Zaharte—they shall see this through.”

Heretofore had the margrave defended his fief with naught but the soldiery of this land. He well-wore the feat as a prideful pin, but today was the day it was torn from his lapel, and to grope after it would imperil the whole of the province itself. So instead, he sought the services of the foresaid free company, which, on this occasion, so happened to be sojourning within Ström’s borders.

“Ah, but of course! The vaunted Zaharte Battalion!”

Sunlit expectation scintillated through the commander’s voice, a clear contrast to his lord’s contempt. Rightfully so, for the mercenaries of Zaharte were highly regarded. Though they branded themselves a battalion, their number hardly beseemed the term: not more than a hundred was their count, yet quality corroborated their ferocity, enough to rival a real battalion in strength.

Foremost amongst them were the Östbergs, the twin heads of the horde. Brother and sister they were, and in the minds of all Londosians, readily renowned as a force to be reckoned with upon the battlefield.

Such free companies roamed the realm, seeking coin for combat wheresoever they went. From time to time would they tarry in a province before braving the wilderness once more. That the Zaharte Battalion of fame would find Ström its waterhole for this whirlwind of a while was, to the margrave, a windfall, without a doubt.

“Indeed. An envoy of theirs arrives presently,” revealed the lord. “We must join with their muddied hands and rally our remnants for a reprisal. By my very soul shall this land be delivered—as Yoná is my witness.”

“As it shall, m’liege!”

In invoking the holy name of the Deiva did the margrave attempt to buoy his buried spirits. Yet buried they remained. Irritation, regret, wrath—spiteful worms all wriggling and writhing in his clouded bosom.