Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 6 - Chapter 4

Early Winter of the Fifteenth Year

Quests

As the “role-playing” part of “tabletop role-playing game” suggests, a party’s goals must find their way to them within the fiction. This can come in the form of a destitute villager begging for help, a young damsel being chased, or a messenger bearing a request from a mysterious sender.

Though a GM will groan that the story can’t advance unless the quest is accepted, it is the role and privilege of the PCs to assess a quest-giver’s intent. The villager could be an exiled crook out for revenge; the girl might be a runaway thief; the letter might come from insurrectionists seeking to set the party on the path toward revolution.

Having a zentaur on her knees before me was quite the peculiar sight. With her hands on her lap and her head hung low, I figured this was as close as she could get to groveling.

“Please,” Dietrich squeezed out through gritted teeth. “Please...lend me some money!”

I scoffed and turned my attention out the window, blowing a puff of smoke into the pouring rain.

Some time had passed since the tournament incident. Konigstuhl was closer than ever, but we’d spent the past two weeks trapped in the same city—our every attempt to leave had been met with the worst of luck.

Just as we first tried to leave town, we’d been locked in by the city guard: some morons had, amazingly, managed to pull off a heist on an imperial tax caravan, and no one was allowed in or out during the manhunt for the culprits. I’d been utterly blindsided upon hearing the news; I knew we were pretty far out into the countryside, but that was just plain suicide. Their honor on the line, the imperial patrol held nothing back and froze everything in place, including us travelers. They weren’t going to let disguised bandits waltz up to the city and scout out their plans, after all.

Dietrich and I weren’t imperial messengers, nor were we troops, nor did we have a noble backer to negotiate our passage. Unable to leave, we’d headed back to our inn, where the keeper welcomed us back with a few words of consolation on our misfortune.

A few days later, a procession of knights paraded through town with severed heads adorning their spears. Glad to see the situation solved, we packed our bags...only to then receive word that the bridge we planned on taking had been destroyed. Apparently, the tax-raiders had used some mystic tool or another to blow the thing up in an attempt to slow down the authorities.

The local lord had gathered craftsmen from around the area and called for his pet mage—by my estimate, this city was too rural to afford a proper oikodomurge—to rebuild the passage. In the meantime, the whole route was closed.

Although there was a bridgeless detour, it came with a lot of extra ground to cover and had no inns to speak of on the way. With winter fast approaching, I couldn’t be asked to subject myself to the hassle. The magistrate’s official announcement assured the people that the bridge was an important local fixture and would be repaired as quickly as possible; with that in mind, the extra time and effort we’d spend taking the long route couldn’t be worth it.

Less than an hour after checking out of our lodging, we were back in the lobby. The proprietor eyed us with wonder and, overcome with pity, even gave us a small discount on our extended stay.

Finally, we caught word at the pub that the reconstruction was to be finished in one day’s time. Heading back to pack our things ready to finally resume our journey, we woke the next morning with a torrential storm rolling in. The frigid, wintry downpour was biting, and many an experienced wayfarer elected to delay their departure. We decided to defer to their expertise; in a world where a common cold could become life-threatening, trying to tough it out in the wet cold was the work of a fool.

I had to go downstairs and ask the innkeeper to cancel our checkout and let us extend our stay—again. Unable to hold back his incredulity any longer, he’d said, “Are you guys cursed or something? I’d go over to the church and ask for a talisman or something if I were you.”

The rain had poured for three days now with no end in sight. But, hey, them’s the breaks. Any sufficiently long journey was sure to have its share of stoppages; whether the God of Wind and Clouds was fighting with His brethren or simply in a sour mood, the weather was not something for us mortals to understand.

Besides, the trip from Konigstuhl to Berylin had been riddled with similar incidents. Though, I suppose in fairness, those had been caused by Lady Agrippina’s indolent distaste for stepping outdoors at all when it was so much as drizzling—I was probably best off not using that as my benchmark. It didn’t feel right putting that on the same level as the deluge I faced now.

“Hey! I’m begging you! Please, come on!”

“Hrm, I’ll need to prepare more pipe stuffing soon...”

“All I’ve had to eat for the past three days is plain porridge! I haven’t even had a sip of booze!”

Dietrich’s desperate plea went in one ear and out the next as I tapped my pipe on the windowsill to empty the ashes within. The mix I used for recreational smoking was near to bottoming out; I’d need to visit the town apothecary to get some herbs before we left.

“Ah, but heading outside in this rain is such a chore...”

“Come on, don’t ignore me! Hey, please?! One libra—just one! I’ll make do with the cheapest beer I can find!”

The proud Hildebrand warrior must’ve put her pride in storage somewhere. It was getting hard to ignore this numbskull in her entirety, though, so I shot her a derisive sideways glare; Dietrich didn’t even flinch and continued to shamelessly beg.

There was no need for me to expound on why she was groveling on the floor. She’d said it herself: she was so broke that she couldn’t even afford a drink.

An observant reader might remark, “Wait a second! I thought she won fifteen drachmae,” to which there was no defense. Unbelievably, this massive buffoon had managed to squander three times what my whole family made in a year in the span of less than a month.

And no, she had not bought any of the things she actually needed.

I’d let her be, thinking that she’d learn best from a costly mistake, but I hadn’t imagined it’d be this costly. I should’ve scolded her somewhere along the way.

Her lavish spending at the tournament had already gotten me worried, but her looseness with money legitimately boggled my mind. I understood that she probably hadn’t needed to save up in the closed world of her tribe, and she’d still had all the basics accounted for until her party abandoned her. But that she would be so audacious when she hadn’t even bought herself a change of clothes was so baffling that it wrapped around to fill me with awe.

Dietrich had spent the past month or so staying in nice inns, eating nice meals, and drinking nice liquors to her liking. When we took root in this city, a traveling merchant who was stuck here with us had sold her on a bunch of dubious junk. By the time I checked back in on her, she no longer had enough to buy her own damn sleeping mat.

Ugh. As much of a pain as it would’ve been, I should’ve gone with her when she said she was going for a walk...

“Pleeease! Seriously, hey! I can’t live like this! All you give me are the cheapest meals, and you won’t even let me drink anything! Don’t you think that’s too cruel?!”

“But smoking the stimulants when I’m not even tired is such a waste... Oh, and I’m running low on red tea too.”

I turned away once more and stuffed my pipe again—her pleading only grew more desperate.

I’d snapped when first hearing the news and, while I hadn’t moved us to a cheaper inn, I made sure her meals were nothing more than the bare minimum. Spoiling her here would do neither of us any good.

She’d had fifteen drachmae—fifteen. Put to dollars, that was something like two hundred grand. That put her in the upper earners of the Empire, and she could have easily retired to a small house in a minor city with enough spare change to start up a modest business on the side.

How in the name of every god in the skies had she managed to blow that kind of fortune in one month without buying any property or—I don’t know—maybe a single one of the many items she needed going forward? All she had was a bag full of crap to her name, and she wasn’t about to fool me into thinking it was worth what she’d paid. I wasn’t going to take care of her forever, and it was high time that I drilled some fiscal sense into her; a life of tedium was the perfect teaching tool.

“Oh, but it’s so cold outside.” I flashed a large silver piece in my palm. “If only there were someone I could trust to run my errands...”

“Me! I’ll do it! I’ll go get your stuff, so please!”

The gleaming coin reduced the so-called proud Hildebrand warrior into a gudgeon hooked on my line. I felt bad for the poor tutelary spirit watching over her.

“Go to the apothecary and ask for everything on this list, as well as two bags of red tea. The change is yours to keep.”

“Yay!”

I flicked the silver piece toward her, and she snatched it out of the air before it could reach the apex of its trajectory. I braced myself for a complaint from the guests below; Dietrich scrambled out the door in a clamorous frenzy.

It seemed forcing a heavy drinker off her nectar for three days straight had really weighed on her. I hadn’t known how much zentaurs loved liquor; I bet she could go pint for pint with a dvergar.

Too lazy to get up and close the door she’d left wide open, I pushed it shut with an Unseen Hand and relit my pipe. I took a long drag, swearing to myself that I’d make her earn her keep again—and next time, she was not allowed near her money.

If only things were so easy: Dietrich returned an hour later, having stopped by the bar before her errand and “accidentally spent all the money.” In response, I stamped a painful red hand onto her ass and tossed the moron out of the inn.

[Tips] Zentaurs are so infamous for their love of alcohol that they—and not dvergar—are the stereotypical drinkers of northern and eastern cultures.

At long last, the clouds began to part, and the innkeeper saw us off with words unthinkable for someone in his line of work: “I’ll be praying to the gods that you won’t come back.”

“Ugh, I need to make some money,” Dietrich sighed. “I thought I’d be fine since it’s so cold back home, but the Empire is pretty chilly too—especially after the rain.”

The Harvest Goddess was well into Her season of slumber, and I was snugly bundled up in a comfy set of winter wear. My traveling partner, on the other hand, was walking around wearing the same half-sleeved shirt I’d met her in. Despite my offers to buy her something warmer from a secondhand store, she’d refused on the grounds that it’d restrict her movement.

Zentaurs were as resilient to changing weather as their fully equine counterparts; they usually dressed light even in the dead of winter. According to Dietrich, she burned more calories this way—a fact I was not enthused about—but I couldn’t bring myself to force her if it was going to affect her performance in battle. I’d gotten her a large mantle for when it rained, but it was shocking to see that one piece of cloth was all she needed to stay warm. To be honest, I felt vicariously cold just looking at her, and I wished she’d layer up a little more.

“I’ll go see if there’s anything good,” Dietrich said, trotting ahead.

A handful of caravans were gathered up just before the city gates, waiting for bodyguards or hired help to answer the requests they’d posted on the nearby bulletin board. Excited to see a potential customer, some scribes loitering in the area came up to offer me their services; when I told them I could read, they spat on the ground and left. Courtesy sure is hard to come by in small towns.

Setting the rude copyists aside, I’d already taught Dietrich to read basic Rhinian, and she was busy looking through all the papers she could. Unfortunately, not many travelers wanted to push their luck in the harshest season, and the pickings were slim. Had I been alone, I probably would’ve been the one hiring a guide with a stagecoach to proceed.

“Hey, what about this one?”

She pulled a sheet of parchment off the wall and brought it over: though the job didn’t offer any daily wages, the payout for a safely completed journey was an earth-shattering drachma. Plus, in a wild stroke of good fortune, the destination was Innenstadt—the closest city to my hometown of Konigstuhl.

Innenstadt was an ancient city: originally an independent city-state, it was famed for its thousand-year-old city walls. Nicknamed the Old Town by the people of nearby cantons, it was the only real urban center in our area. The abundance of artisans living there made it cheap to buy necessary tools, and farm families like ours often made the trip to sell produce; everyone in the region regarded it well.

“That’s hardly seven days away,” I said. “A drachma for that is...quite the sum.”

“Says here you gotta pass an interview—and today’s the last day! We can’t pass this up!”

I was on the cusp of saying we ought to be wary, but I felt it might be a bit mean to douse Dietrich’s excitement, and decided to at least hear the other side out. Interviews went both ways: just as the employer would be scrutinizing us, it was an opportunity for us to scrutinize them. If the job seemed doable, we’d be a gold coin richer; if not, we could just refuse.

The requester’s carriage was parked by the gate guardpost. Not only was the coach suspended, but it was a double-horse buggy with traces of magic to boot. Still, I didn’t spot any family crests, and the exterior was a touch too plain to be a noble’s vehicle.

A handful of men with sour expressions walked past us as we approached—they’d probably just failed the interview in question. It seemed our quest-giver was cautious and selective. Plus one point.

“Are you here for the interview?”

The man waiting in front of the carriage was, for lack of a better term, an ill-fated-looking fellow. He was mensch, and a little older than myself. Though I suspected he’d be decently handsome in stylish clothes, my honest opinion of his plain appearance was that he looked like a background character to the point of stereotype. Despite seeming to be a nice person, I had little faith I’d be able to recall his features if asked to describe him from memory. I’d spoken at length in the past about how Miss Nakeisha’s face was too spotlessly pretty to stick in the mind, and he was the same, just painted in more mundane strokes.

That said, he was neatly kept and the sword at his belt looked to be of respectable make. While he wasn’t exactly tall, he filled out a tidy set of flaxen travel wear; more to the point, the movements of his gaze spoke to a trained eye.

His attention came first to my weapon and arms, then to my feet, and only then did he slowly look up to meet my gaze. Unlike the average layman, his first look at me was one of threat analysis.

Putting together his good posture with his impeccable servile palatial speech, I guessed he was probably some aristocrat’s private soldier. Er, actually, I’d forgotten his carriage didn’t have a coat of arms, and there didn’t seem to be any other bodyguards present—he was probably employed by a wealthy family that was not technically noble.

“That’s right,” Dietrich answered. “Wait, no guards? That sure is a nice carriage to be riding without an escort.”

“No guards, I’m afraid. Our employer was kind enough to permit us to use this carriage along with our leave, but our accompaniment ended up busy at the last minute, you see.”

“Dietrich,” I scolded, digging my elbow into her side. “Introductions first.”

Sticking out her tongue to make it clear she hadn’t done it on purpose, she quickly said, “I’m Dietrich of the Hildebrand tribe. And this is Er—”

“Erwin of Waltesch.” I jabbed her again. This dolt always forgot that I used an alias when dealing with strangers. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“The pleasure is mine. I am Rudolf of Fulda.”

The man politely returned my bow and began laying out the details of the job.

Rudolf and his childhood friend were servants of some influential house—keeping their employer’s name undisclosed was fairly standard—and had just been given a long leave of absence to honor many years of loyal service. As such, the pair were to head to their hometown of Innenstadt.

His childhood friend Bertha was the personal maid to the young lady of the house; they got along well, and the privileged daughter had arranged to let the pair borrow a carriage for the journey.

However, the family’s bodyguards would obviously have to stay behind in case the young lady or her parents ever needed to travel. The servants had instead been given a stipend with which they were to hire their own protection; alas, the mercenary crew they’d had their eyes on had left town just as they were preparing to depart, leaving them stuck searching for a quick replacement.

“You two seem capable,” Rudolf observed. “And we’ll be able to move along without delay, seeing as you are zentaur and you have your own steeds. Please give me one moment.”

After looking us over, he climbed up onto the carriage step, knocked on the window, and whispered inside. Though his mannerisms were a bit grand to speak to an old friend, being a pseudonoblewoman’s private maid put her in the upper castes of the household. Judging from his trimmed hair and fresh shave, Rudolf was more likely a valet or footman; it wasn’t too strange that he’d be reserved around someone who was akin to his boss.

...Or was it? It did feel a bit odd for a pair of lifelong friends on vacation. Still, it wasn’t anything that immediately raised the alarm.

“We would be most pleased to have you accompany us. I am Bertha of Fulda. It is ever so reassuring to have guards as formidable as you by our sides—I’m sure I shall be able to rest easy knowing I have your protection.”

The carriage door opened to a beautiful girl that was striking in all the ways Rudolf was not. Bertha, too, was a mensch, of similar age to her companion. Yet she was small and slender, and the air about her not that of a servant, but of the served. Her long face was pretty in all the ways the upper crust liked to be. Long, straight, golden locks that bore the hallmarks of delicate care flowed around two pale azure dots that shimmered like a calm lake. My lasting impression was one of a girl who knew nothing of hardship.

The combination of blonde hair with a gentle and genteel smile made my mind wander to Elisa. They weren’t strikingly similar or anything, but I couldn’t help but think that my tiny baby sister would soon grow up into a lady much like her.

Also of note was that Bertha’s skin was white—not just unexposed to long hours of sunlight, but thinly veiled in a layer of powder. Her lips were an unflattering red due to an excess of rouge, but that made sense: servants were expected to be purposefully gauche to some degree so as not to step on their masters’ toes.

I tried to examine her hands and wrists, but her winter gloves were too packed with cotton to glean anything. I would’ve been able to come to a definite conclusion if I could confirm the signs of menial labor—like cracked skin from working with cold water—but it was impossible to tell under such thick leather.

“I can’t imagine a bad actor would dare try anything with a magnificent zentaur warrior defending us. Rudolf here is very capable, you see, but I was worried because he doesn’t seem very scary, now does he?”

“Oh, Bertha, please...”

Her feminine palatial tongue was good—but was it too good? The intonation of her voice was certainly one that came from a privileged background, but it straddled the line between a blue-blooded girl’s and that of a thoroughly educated lady-in-waiting.

Hrm... Are you really a servant?

While I had my misgivings, I couldn’t deny that pseudonobles employed retainers that were often far more graceful than the heirs and heiresses of lesser noble and knight households. Compared to Kunigunde, the maid at the Bernkastel estate, Bertha’s class was nothing to write home about.

Mm... This is a tough call.

“Leave it to me! Most crooks’ll turn tail and run if I just stand up front. And I just took home a few first-place prizes at a tournament a few cities back.”

“My, how impressive!”

But, well, Dietrich seemed fully intent on taking the job, and I was fully intent on making her earn her keep; the drachma was tantalizing. Though a horse was out of the question, she could probably get a donkey for fifty librae and get most of her missing gear in order with whatever remained. We hadn’t decided whether we’d keep traveling together past my destination, but whether I was there for it or not, I couldn’t just let her keep running around without the means to make a living.

Plus, this was the first time Dietrich had ever shown any initiative when it came to earning money. I didn’t want to put her down. I may have had to swallow back a few doubts, but this was within my acceptable tolerance of risk: the deal was done, and we accepted the quest.

[Tips] Families with last names may technically be lower than all titled aristocrats on the social ladder, but they often boast much greater wealth and influence than those commanding lesser territories. At the end of the day, wielding power is a de facto exercise, and official labels mean little in the face of overwhelming money and manpower.

Two days had passed since accepting the escort mission. Although my doubts hadn’t cleared up, they had yet to progress into anything more than a gut feeling.

My confusion primarily stemmed from the possibility that Rudolf’s doting care for Bertha was the result of his being hopelessly in love. The only chore he asked of her was a shift of night watch, but it was easy to imagine why a lovestruck man would make himself busy spoiling the object of his affection. Yet on the other hand, women helping with laundry and cooking was a societal given: that she didn’t participate at all was definitely unusual.

Perhaps most brow-raising of all was that the two slept in two separate tents. Yes, an unwed man and woman of age sharing a tent was scandalous—but that was if they were upper class. An average commoner might indulge themselves with a personal tent if they were particularly well off, but I wouldn’t expect it from two childhood friends heading back to the same hometown they grew up in together.

Then again, it wasn’t enough to call foul by any means. As before, it would be perfectly fair to chalk things up to Rudolf’s trying to impress the girl of his dreams with a taste of luxury. Bertha had also turned out to be a bit of an airheaded romantic, and it made sense to me that a man who knew her well would want to provide her with privacy.

After a couple of days spent picking over the scenario in my head and making no progress, we’d finally crossed the repaired bridge when I heard a cacophony of hoofbeats echoing out behind us.

Working overtime to make up for the stretch of bad weather, the breathtaking blue of the sky stretched out unobstructed until it hit the faraway horizon; beyond it was the noise of four or five jockeys in a rush. Judging from sound alone, they were traveling light, without a vehicle or cargo.

I suspected they were imperial patrolmen: though restrictions were easing up a bit, many had remained in the area to hunt down any runaway convicts. We’d seen them pin the bandit chief’s bearded face to the castle walls in triumph back in town, but there had been surprisingly few men made forcibly taller on the racks. The knights had probably gotten word of some survivors or something; either way, it wasn’t strange to see them frantically riding around well after tax season.

Being the furthest back in our line, I pulled out a whistle and blew two quick peeps: Open a path. We common folk had no right of way if a noble, knight, or government agent needed to get through. Tugging at Polydeukes’s reins, I was ready to slow down and let the officers through when they finally entered my line of sight.

They were decidedly not imperial cavalry. You see, part of a patrolman’s duties was to look scary enough to dissuade any would-be criminals. To that end, they dressed in glorious armor and waved majestic flags announcing their presence—usually one each for their unit, knighthood, and the noble lord of their region. It was utterly impossible to mistake them for an off-duty knight, a noble’s personal force, or a mercenary.

That’s why I was absolutely certain that the group heading toward us was not an imperial patrol. Sure, they had full armor and helmets, long spears, and burly warhorses, but nothing on their persons identified them in any way.

Before I could waste any time thinking about it, I blew my whistle three more times: Full speed ahead!

Outside law enforcement, the idea of running around public roads in full armor with weapons bared was not very polite. Even mercenaries and adventurers were expected to dress as plainly as was reasonable, and sheathing any blade or pointy bit was a given. To do otherwise was to threaten passersby, and many people would take that as reason enough to preempt an attack.

Yet the five cavalrymen who’d come into view were charging straight at us fully armed. Even the charitable reading that they were emergency reinforcements hurrying to help fell apart: common sense would dictate that they slow down a notch and greet us so we wouldn’t get the wrong idea.

Forgoing any semblance of civility, I couldn’t shake the ill omen that this was some kind of ambush. The carriage had slowed down in confusion, but Dietrich managed to shout them along; I let them go on ahead as I drew Schutzwolfe from her sheath.

“Stop! Name yourselves!” I positioned myself to block the road, raising both my sword and voice to issue a word of warning.

They did not stop. In fact, they sped up. Had these been reinforcements rushing to a fight, then my salutation would’ve had them cursing under their breaths, but they would’ve had no choice but to stop and name their affiliation and destination. If they were noble, they could’ve just shouted me down with a mystically amplified, “Get out of the way, cretin!”

That they did neither meant one thing: they were the enemy, and we were the targets.

“Gods dammit, I knew it’d turn out this way!”

For as much as I’d complained about not being able to confirm my suspicions, I hadn’t said anything about wanting tangible proof I was right! I pulled Polydeukes for a quick turn and kicked him to take off—away from the enemies, of course.

Despite shifting into a pursuit, the five horsemen lined up in perfect formation with their weapons precisely synced together; I stood no chance one-on-five. I could’ve blown them to bits in one go with magic, but doing the same with a sword and shield was a tall order.

By fanning out in a zigzag pattern beginning with the vanguard in the center, their arrangement was specifically tailored to corralling a small enemy force of cavalry. Trying to dip past them on either flank would still get me caught, and breaking through the middle would see me skewered from two directions at once. At minimum, I’d need to be able to comfortably handle a one-versus-two on horseback to take them head-on.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t exactly an equestrian specialist. While my Jockeying skill kept me far out pf the depths of incompetence, I wasn’t confident about my chances against an experienced rider. The instability a moving steed introduced created a whole different dynamic from swinging a sword on stable ground.

Argh, if only I could use Unseen Hands, I could fight with total disregard for the issues of balance; if I hopped off Polydeukes, I’d probably just win the fight outright. Tragically, though, that would leave me with no recourse if any of them slipped past me.

The ban on spellcasting was proving to be a great challenge. Lady Agrippina had told me to be clever and all, but the difficulty of the task was finally setting in. Though, in fairness...the real task was just to look like I wasn’t a mage.

Tucking up, I reached into my saddlebag to pull out the trusty crossbow I’d fallen in love with this past year.

Come on... Come on! There has to be something!

I fired off a bolt just to keep them at bay. They dodged, obviously, but it bought me enough time for epiphany to strike: their horses were unarmored.

Hah, I’ve got just the thing.

Rifling through the saddlebag with an Unseen Hand, I opened up a small spice pouch. Entrusting one payload each to five Hands, directed fistfuls of seasoning went flying toward the enemy steeds.

“Whoa! What’s wrong?!”

“Hey now! Whoa!”

“Wha—hey?! Calm down!”

The horses went into a panic. The first in line suddenly reared, knocking its rider onto the ground; three more came crashing in from behind, either slamming into the horse or stumbling over the man. While the caboose managed to succeed in swerving away at the last minute, the horse was still too frenzied to be piloted.

Who could blame the poor beasts? After all, I’d interrupted their full-speed sprint by stuffing their noses full of horseradish; I could only imagine the awful burn they were feeling in their sensitive noses.

Horseradish had come into the Empire from its origins in the northern archipelago, and the stuff had a stinging, bitter acidity when grated to a paste. My tongue was growing up alongside my body, and I’d just so happened to get hooked on it recently as a way of adding flavor to cheap jerkies and sandwiches. Additionally, the painful burn mellowed out a bit when grated in bulk and left to sit, leaving me with a lot of stock; it seemed coincidence was on my side. I’d always known filling out the Miscellaneous column of my item sheet would do me favors eventually. I felt a bit bad for the poor horses, but they’d just have to take it up with the guys riding them into battle.

Phew, that settles that... Or so I thought, until I faced forward to find another two horsemen closing in ahead of me. Before I could even panic, the fighter’s instinct in my core sent me into action.

The first passed me on my right, aiming for my neck with a parting blow. I’d tossed the crossbow for my shield as soon as I’d seen them, and managed to deflect the strike while slicing at his torso with the sword in my other hand.

Not a moment later, the second one followed up on my left. Following through with my swing, I flipped Schutzwolfe to a backhand grip. I held my shield perpendicular to my body, diverting the thrust of his spear and opening him up for my counter. As he zoomed by, I took out a long chunk from his nape to his earlobe; with his windpipe popped open and a third of his neck gone, he let out a dying gasp like the squeak of a creaking door.

I turned around to see a nearly headless rider stumbling off on inertia and a lifeless corpse being dragged by the foot stuck in his stirrup. It seemed the first man I’d grazed hadn’t managed to untangle himself before being knocked out on the ground and had been yanked around to his death as a result. Obviously, the man whose head was only attached by a thread of flesh hadn’t made it either, and the force of gushing blood quickly pushed his body over.

“Wh-What the hell? How was I supposed to know they’d come from ahead?”

My mind finally caught up to my sympathetic nervous system, and my heart sped up like a fire alarm in surprise. Heaving and panting, I could feel a cold sweat run down my back. They hadn’t been a threat beyond countering by any means, but I hadn’t expected to be attacked from the front when that was the direction my allies were in. I’d let them go on ahead for a reason!

“Heeey! A couple of goons went—oh, you got ’em.”

Calming myself with deep breaths, the ally in question came trotting along. In lieu of her bow, she had her battle-axe in hand—still wrapped in cloth, by the way. She hadn’t managed to get it off by the time the enemy caught her, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t engaged them; that much was evident from the blood and guts pocking the brown hemp of the covering.

Dietrich herself was also absolutely dripping with blood. She’d put on her scalemail to look the part of a tough bodyguard, and the whole thing had been dyed a deep red-black. Someone had been waiting for us—someone strong.

“What’s the situation?” I asked. “Fill me in.”

“Well, I tried to let the carriage go on ahead, but they’d set up a roadblock with a fence of stakes and seven whole guys. It was really tough—I mean, I could’ve just jumped the fence and started swinging, but the carriage was stuck, you know?”

From there, our client had stopped to avoid a crash, and even more horsemen had jumped out from the foliage to charge the vehicle and snatch away Miss Bertha.

“What about Rudolf?”

“He had to pull the carriage back real hard and went tumbling. I saw him sorta catch his fall, but I’m having him rest up for now.”

“Then more importantly, Miss Bertha is—”

“Probably right there.”

I followed Dietrich’s pointer finger to a big black bag tied to the horse of the decapitated rider. Looking closely, the saddle was made for two, and the suspiciously humanoid sack in the back seat was wriggling around: it was indeed the lady we’d been hired to protect.

“H-Holy shit. Thank the gods I aimed for the jockey. If I’d gone for something flashy, she would’ve died.”

“I did everything I could, okay? There were just too many of them. It isn’t my fault they got to her.”

“Yeah, and it isn’t mine either.”

Who in their right mind could possibly find fault with us for our performance here? I’d been a bit suspect of the whole situation, of course, but seven cavalrymen and seven more infantry lying in wait was just ridiculous. There was no chance in hell three people plus a noncombatant could get through the whole thing without any slipups; even with a proper defensible position, a normal fighter would only be expected to stave off three enemies. If anyone was at fault here, it was the pair drawing out this unbelievable number of foes.

Neither of the kidnappers were in any condition for a heart-to-heart talk, and the survivors from the first five had probably already retreated. Unfortunately, I suspected the men who’d been manning the roadblock would be lucky just to be vaguely corpse-shaped; Dietrich’s weapon was even less suited to nonlethality than mine.

If only Lady Agrippina were here, I could’ve lopped off a head and asked her to extract the relevant info. Alas, psychosorcery was much too expensive for me to dip into.

“Is Rudolf in any shape to talk?”

“The way he fell was pretty ugly, but he’s conscious, at least. I say go for it.”

Then it looks like our contractor will be sitting on his knees for a while.

[Tips] Legend has it that the Emperor of Creation would force his vassals to kneel on their own feet whenever he chewed them out; this evolved to become the traditional imperial posture for a guilty party attempting to atone. Bone structures among Rhinian mensch are ill fit for the position, and it is considerably painful to maintain for extended periods of time.

Pulling the unconscious Miss Bertha off the horse, we picked up Rudolf and moved into a secluded wood a ways out from where we’d been ambushed. Things were sure to take a turn for the troublesome if an imperial patrol showed up, after all. Well, that, and the place was as dreadful a scene of carnage as one might expect, and we didn’t want the young lady waking up only to faint again; I considered myself more used to gore than most, and even I felt a bit sick looking at the bloodbath.

One of the horses drawing the carriage had snapped a leg in the emergency braking maneuver. Sad as it was, we couldn’t do much for it and put it out of its misery, linking up Castor to help pull the vehicle. My thoroughbred had spent the better part of his life doing the same for the madam, so I knew he’d be able to handle it, but he did seem a bit miffed about having to haul a heavy cart again.

Hopefully, the coming explanation would relieve him and I both of the burdens we carried.

“Now then,” I said, “I think we deserve the truth.”

“...Where should I even begin?”

Forcing Rudolf to kneel by the fireside, I’d pulled out my pipe just to look extra domineering. I honestly felt bad putting him through the wringer when we’d just popped his shoulder back into place, but the story was best set straight sooner rather than later. After staring daggers at him for a spell, he finally cracked, explaining that their request was genuine, but their backstories were not.

“I am, as I said, Rudolf of Fulda. But the clan I serve is no ordinary family... I work for House Wiesenmuhle.”

“The Wiesenmuhle?!”

“What’s that?”

The name Rudolf dropped was so shocking that I thought I was going to black out. House Wiesenmuhle was one of the most revered families in the history of the Trialist Empire of Rhine: they drew their lineage from one of the Thirteen Knights. So vital were their contributions to the foundation of the country that Emperor Richard himself had bestowed them with special knighthoods that placed them in direct service to the crown.

Half of those original thirteen had been lost to the sands of time, becoming testaments to the transience of glory. Yet of those that remained, the Wiesenmuhles could trace an uninterrupted bloodline all the way back to their founder, Sir Wiesenmuhle the Divine Arrow.

Anyone growing up in the Empire knew how the tale went. Wave after wave of enemy forces crashed toward the flank of the First Emperor’s army, but Sir Wiesenmuhle faced the onslaught alone; firing a blessed whistling arrow into the heavens, he put the horde’s horses to sleep and bought Richard time to win and regroup.

To this day, lower nobles bowed down to the Thirteen Knights. Why was one of the top dogs of the Empire here?

“I am a soldier and retainer in training at their estate. My mother had served as one of our lady’s—Lady Helena’s—wet nurses, and despite my common birth, I was given the great honor of growing up alongside her on account of our close age.”

Bertha’s true name was Helena von Wiesenmuhle. The youngest behind four brothers, she was the princess of the family; in fact, not only was she the only girl, but the last girl to be born into the main line had been three generations removed. Naturally, everyone including her extended family pampered her to the highest degree.

This was nuts. She was so famous that I’d already heard about her just from my tangential dealings in high society. I even knew the current Sir Wiesenmuhle oversaw jager operations for imperial audiences, and sometimes even advised His Imperial Majesty directly.

Why in the gods’ names...

“And what might such a fair lady be doing in the middle of nowhere? The Wiesenmuhle estate is a considerable distance east, and the family’s first princess ought to be socializing in Berylin at this time of year—I imagine she must be searching for a suitor soon.”

“The madam of the house hails from this region, and my lady was to spend her winter at a nearby estate, you see.”

“I wasn’t asking for logistics. I was asking for intent.”

“Well...” Rudolf made a face, and after much internal struggle, squeezed out, “It would seem we are eloping.”

Sigh. Yeah, figures. Here was a young, homely, unfortunate-looking man and a prim and proper lady unused to the world traveling alone by carriage; add in their awkwardness in plain clothes and the girl’s unfounded excitement, and that was pretty much the only explanation to be had.

I know, I know: I should’ve known. And, hey, I had suspected something. But, just—come on, one of the Thirteen Knights?!

“My lady recently received a proposal, you see, from Baron Attendorn.”

“Wait, Baron Attendorn? That...rings a bell.”

I’d come across the name in my time following Lady Agrippina into banquets; in fact, I’d even accompanied her to one where I’d met the man. I’d put together the four-piece combination of a VI: Superb—unchanged from when I’d been twelve—Memory stat and three skills: Name Recollection, Face Recollection, and Associative Memory. It hadn’t been cheap, but it wasn’t all too expensive for the end result of being able to recall tons of info from any one element. Despite knowing I wouldn’t work as a retainer forever, I’d invested in the extra skills thinking that a good memory would always be a boon going forward.

“Surely you must be talking about his grandson,” I said. “The baron is well into his golden years.”

The Baron Attendorn in my mind was a graying mensch. The Emperor handed out little golden badges to mensch nobles at age sixty as a small token of congratulations on a long life, and I didn’t even know how many years ago he’d gotten his.

I’d gotten a good look at him when he greeted Lady Agrippina at some feast or another. He’d been joined by his son and daughter-in-law, who were both middle aged themselves. The idea of the baron’s son marrying Miss Helena if his wife passed away wasn’t totally out of the question—though we’d need to hypothetically close our eyes to the gap in stature—but I witnessed the missus being very much alive.

Meanwhile, there was no universe in which a Wiesenmuhle girl would be taken as a mistress; her rank was simply too high. The only family that could get away with that would be House Graufrock: they’d need both imperial prestige and legendary military clout.

“You seem awfully well informed,” Rudolf said, raising his brow.

“Old connections,” I dismissed. “At any rate, the baron may be a widower, but the window for him to remarry has all but passed. The Attendorn inheritance is practically set in stone at this point, and I don’t see how he could negotiate for the hand of House Wiesenmuhle’s sole princess.”

“Yet my lady heard the news with her own two ears. And not just by herself—her maid and bodyguard corroborated the story.”

According to Miss Helena’s account, Sir Wiesenmuhle and Baron Attendorn had been in the middle of a private meeting in their estate’s tea room; not knowing of the guest, she’d gone searching for her father only to accidentally eavesdrop on their conversation. The knight had sent away his guards so that no one would be in earshot, and the thinner walls of the annex the tea room was located in meant the girl had had a clear chance to listen in.

Sitting herself down in the room next door, her curiosity had gotten the better of her and she’d mischievously put her ear to the wall in order to find out who the surprise visitor was. It was then that she discovered the agreement to marry her off to the baron, and the scheme to sneak her away had quickly followed.

“Then you mean to say that this idea was the work of all of her servants?”

“That’s correct. Unfortunately, the urgency of the situation meant that I was the only one able to accompany her. The others stayed behind to buy us more time...”

The thoughtlessness of it all made my head ache. Holding back these kinds of foolhardy plots was part of a faithful retainer’s duties.

“You don’t understand,” he insisted. “My lady was so overcome that she couldn’t so much as drink water for the next three days, and we at last caught her with a knife, ready to take matters into her own hands. The only choice we had left was to—”

“What about her parents?! If she was bedridden, then it should’ve been your place to appeal to them in your master’s stead!”

“The lord and lady returned to the capital immediately after the secret discussion!”

“Then pen the knight a damn letter!”

“We did! Yet all that came back was a roundabout nonanswer!”

Miss Helena had interpreted her father’s tiptoe response as confirmation that the worst was as she’d feared, eventually leading to the current situation. Her retainers had all been trained to place their loyalties with her first, and only then with the family; seeing beads of scarlet sprout from the tip of her blade had convinced every last one of them to cooperate.

Callous as it was to comment from the sidelines, poor Rudolf and company had been at a crossroads where both paths led to hell. They’d be branded kidnappers if they helped her escape—painting it as voluntary would harm the Wiesenmuhle name—and her suicidal attempts would slip past them eventually otherwise, where they’d be executed for failing to protect their master. Hysteric as she’d been, imprisoning their noble liege would be such a slight on her dignity that they would, again, be executed. They weren’t just backed into a corner; they were in a non-euclidean space where every corner had more corners.

Thank the gods the madam had the decency to at least give me two real options.

“I see,” I sighed. “Then do you at least have some kind of asylum to run to? You would need to escape beyond the Empire and its satellites to outrun one of the Thirteen.”

“Sir Wiesenmuhle is very sweet on his daughter, and he can just as easily adopt a girl from his wife’s extended family if he wishes to consummate a political marriage with Baron Attendorn. I suspect that if such a deal goes through, my lady may lay low for a year or two and return without penalty.”

Words unspoken made themselves loud behind the man’s thin smile. His lady would indeed return without penalty; he and his compatriots would not. They were all prepared to lay down their lives to uphold their lady’s honor. In fact, seeing as we’d been found, the rest of his friends were already... Perhaps it was best not to say.

“Okay, I get all that, but how’d you end up eloping? I thought you were just trying to get your master out of a marriage she doesn’t want.”

I didn’t know whether she simply didn’t understand the gravity of the situation at hand or her housecarl roots made her think that Rudolf’s actions were the obvious choice to prove his loyalty, but Dietrich retained an unconcerned attitude about the whole affair. What I would give for just a fraction of your nonchalance.

“Ah, well, you see... It would seem my lady mistakenly believes that I was the one to spur everyone into action in order to save her from the wicked marriage.”

“I can’t even begin to fathom how that would happen,” I interjected.

“It’s a very embarrassing story. I was her main playmate as a child, and she happened to remember a juvenile promise that we’d marry one day...”

Augh. I buried my forehead in a palm. It was one of those: a pair of kids read a book or listen to a saga about a knight who saves the princess, complete with a romantic proposal scene; they play pretend; and one of them takes it seriously, warping their perception of love for years to come. The tale was common enough—but having the daydreaming girl be a real noble princess was a genuine problem.

“That helped to get my lady on board, and everyone told me to keep quiet so as not to demotivate her as the plan went into action. In Lady Helena’s mind, I stole her away to elope, and the rest of her staff cooperated to cheer us on.”

Eyeing him for a moment, Dietrich asked, “And you’re okay with that?”

“I do love her dearly. But I have no fantastical notions of making fiction into fact—I know my place.”

Rudolf’s sad smile must have been the product of a long-fostered affection. His adoration was tempered by understanding, and the reality of their positions had crushed his emotions whole.

Sick of this charade as I was, my brain fired on all cylinders contemplating the best path forward. I had to admit that a seventeen-year-old girl being forcibly wed to a sixty-plus geezer was pitiable. The details of a family princess with shiny gold hair babied by her four older brothers also struck a chord with me, summoning Elisa’s face to stoke the flames of my compassion.

However, making an enemy out of one of the most powerful knighthoods in the entire Empire was too great a gamble. This was as scandalous as scandals got, so I could feed the story back to Lady Agrippina—as an ace in the hole when she needed good blackmail—to not be killed, but that was a steep price to pay just for survival. I didn’t want to go around spending more than what was in the proverbial bank.

The shortest route to resolution would be to knock Rudolf unconscious, wrap Miss Helena up, and head back the way we’d come. Depending on how well we negotiated, we could even expect to receive a thank-you bonus from the knights, as well as a bit of personal favor with the knight. The whole affair would surely leave a bitter taste in my mouth...but I was angry enough that I almost didn’t care.

A dishonest employer was a bad employer. Adventuring was full of sinister villains ripping off the mask with a sarcastic apology, and I’d endured my fair share of them, but that did not mean I had to accept it. Requests made under false pretenses were practically standard in campaigns that involved political elements, but it was worth considering how tabletop gamers actually responded to such developments.

Barring a few exceptions where the circumstances were particularly tear-jerking, we were a class of people ready to set off for revenge with single-minded zeal. My PCs had murdered countless backstabbers in the physical sense, and just as many in a social sense.

Make light of me, and you die—while it wouldn’t sound out of place as the code of honor for a trigger-happy samurai, this was an unforgettable maxim for all who dared to inhabit the mortal plane. Vengeance did not have to be immediate, but it did have to be guaranteed; otherwise, the cocky requester was sure to push another ludicrous quest in your direction.

“Let’s lend a hand. It’s not like we have to keep helping them forever.”

“What?”

Just as I got to the point where I’d begun contemplating rolling the dice to decide, Dietrich derailed my train of thought. I looked at her, dumbfounded, and she casually flapped her remaining horse ear in response.

“You have a plan if we can get you to Innenstadt, right? I mean, you’re not going to send her ten days away on horseback and pretend you’re done, are you? Back home, King Godwin woulda sent a whole army out by the day after, so.”

“I do. We knew we’d be caught if we all operated together, and a few fellow retainers have gone on ahead to prepare for a long-distance escape.”

The plan included a fake Innenstadt citizenship and a sympathetic mage who could concoct an elixir of disguise. Despite how hastily thrown together the plan had seemed, I guessed they did prepare some of the groundwork; I probably should have expected as much of a team with a Wiesenmuhle education.

“If we can reach Innenstadt, the rest will come together. I plan to remain in the city to confront Sir Wiesenmuhle, to beg him to consider my lady’s feelings. If that audience ends with this head removed from my body, then so be it.”

“But what about your family?” I asked. “You said you were lowborn: they’ll all die for your actions. If the man loves his daughter as much as the rumors say, then he’ll go after your third, fourth, or even fifth relations in retribution.”

“My father was a kinless orphan who died when I was very young, and my mother, the wet nurse, was an immigrant who came to the Empire alone. Three years ago, a passing plague took her back to the gods’ laps as well. All I have left to lose is my lady.”

Tragic resolution tinted his thin smile. At a loss for words, I could do nothing but heave a massive sigh.

“That’s what I call guts,” Dietrich said. “Come on, is abandoning them what it means to be a true warrior? Here’s a man’s man putting his life on the line out of loyalty, and he’s trying to save a young girl from marrying some rotting old fart to boot. Tossing them to the wolves sounds pretty heartless if you ask me.”

Dialing in on her strongest point, she passionately insisted that saving a maiden from a loveless marriage was exactly the stuff of legends—but did she really understand?

Whether within the Empire or beyond it, plenty of luckless young ladies found themselves married off to men as old as their grandfathers every day; the same could be said for the boys. The upper class never worried about their next meal or toiled until their bodies ached; the price for their comfort was universally paid in the emotional burdens responsibility carried. One had to ask: was an unwanted marriage any worse than living and dying knowing nothing but hunger? Was it a fate more cruel than huddling around an extinguished fire as a final chill seeped into the soul?

Bounty was begot only by those who had sown their own seeds. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how many commoners could have subsisted on the money it’d taken to raise Miss Helena. That may be the nature of feudal life, but context didn’t change the dynamic.

On top of that, Dietrich evidently didn’t understand the principle of good faith. I was willing to admit Rudolf and his friends were cool and manly and the like, but we were just the ones he’d roped into this mess. Perhaps her status as a foreign housecarl made it difficult to see the dangers, but I’d prefer if she spent more time looking after her own safety.

If the initial request was built on a lie, then who knew how many more lurked in its wake? Even in an unprovable hypothetical where Rudolf wasn’t lying anymore, there was still the possibility that this whole farce was built on a string of misconceptions.

That said, I had to acknowledge the reality that my traveling partner seemed very enthused to offer our help. Taking the story at face value, Miss Helena was indeed in a pitiable predicament; it was hard to pass up helping the damsel in distress now when I’d followed the trope to a tee for Miss Celia.

And Elisa’s image kept flashing in my mind.

Ugh... I wonder what my old tabletop party would have done?

Actually, I shouldn’t have asked: they would’ve been excited at the prospect of fighting strong foes and thrown themselves into battle to churn out gold and experience. Thinking about it was a waste of brain space. I’d spent too much of my past life chasing thrills and bloodshed to look for guidance there.

Truthfully, I was starting to sympathize with the two of them. Miss Helena truly did remind me of Elisa in some ways, and Rudolf’s readiness to lay down his life for the cause was admirable. Abandoning them entirely did, admittedly, gnaw at my conscience.

After all, had it been my sister being married away to a sixty-something geezer, I would’ve killed Lady Agrippina if it meant selling my soul to Lady Leizniz in the process.

Sighing for what felt like the umpteenth time today, I gave in: we would see the pair to Innenstadt.

[Tips] The joys and sorrows of marriage are but a daily affair in the realms of the privileged.

By the time night fell, we had abandoned the carriage and were slinking along on forgotten roads. On the former matter, we’d lost a horse and had to keep moving; the big box on wheels was going to be dead weight. On the latter, our stint on the main path had already gotten our VIP captured once; anything in public view was best written off entirely.

“We’re thinking about heading south.” As we circled a campfire, Miss Helena wrapped her hands around a cup of red tea and quietly spoke over the crackling flames. “Our destination awaits beyond the Southern Sea and the city-states on its west banks: the Southern Continent. If we can slip into the old Hierarchy I’m sure you’ve read about in ancient stories, my family will no longer be able to pursue us.”

From there, she and Rudolf would buy a farm and live a quiet life thereafter—delivered with a pure and innocent smile, her daydream was the product of a posy-filled head.

The Hierarchy traced its roots to the latter days of the Age of Antiquity. Although it had maintained unbroken, divinely conferred sovereignty for eons, frequent wars and infighting over lines of succession had curbed its prosperity. Facing a declining population, the gods at the helm lost an equivalent amount of power; worse still, they’d been forced to sue for peace in a treaty which opened their borders to foreign missionaries, weakening the nation further.

They’d traded blows with the Trialist Empire in the past over suzerainty of coastal city-states and holds on the Southern Sea. If I knew my history right, the Empire had dealt them a massive defeat three hundred years ago and had won a great deal of gold in the ensuing peace talks. I had seen the massive statue of gold they’d brought home standing tall in the imperial palace, its face censored to limit the output of hostile divine power.

Considering how we’d heartlessly marched off with one of their most prized holy relics, I doubted the average Hierarchical citizen had a very positive opinion of Rhinians. Yet I supposed it was still a better choice than the satellites, where war broke out at a moment’s notice, or the Kingdom of Seine, whose people knew us only from a never-ending history of squabbles.

Whether it was better than alternatives or not, the fact of the matter was that moving from the industrially gifted Empire to the struggling Hierarchy would be tough. The constant wars had supposedly stunted their national manufacturing capacity; I could believe it, seeing as the only products that made their way here were a smattering of aromatics, dyes, and silk. From what I understood, their equivalent to the Harvest Goddess blessed them with regular floods that kept their harvests strong enough to keep the state in one piece.

The downgrade in quality of life from our home nation would be immense, and the trip would probably take nearly a year to make. Could a pampered princess take that?

I glanced over at Rudolf, and he met my gaze with another tired smile and a small shake of the head: they weren’t actually going.

In that case, my best guess was that they planned to stop her in one of the satellite city-states not under imperial control. She wouldn’t enjoy the same luxury as at home, but it would be serviceable, and they could lie about how trouble in the region was anchoring the ships they needed or something as they waited for the storm to blow over.

With her subordinates’ dedication and care obvious to see, the sheer blindness of the lady herself was just so...ugh. Miss Celia had been comparable in her headlong nature, but at least she’d possessed the prudence to limit the number of people she involved as best she could.

“I have some talent with the needle,” Miss Helena went on. “The Hierarchy is famed for its silk, and so I hope to lessen our burdens by selling little embroideries. The needlework on Rudolf’s handkerchief is my own—won’t you please show them?”

At his master’s order, the man handed over the doily. It was certainly impressive work for a hobbyist noble, but if I were asked whether it’d sell to patrician clientele, the most I’d be able to muster would be a polite smile.

For better or for worse, it was okay. For reference, I didn’t share the lady’s refined sensibilities, but on a purely technical level, I could probably match her technique as I currently stood on the back of Dexterity alone. Her skill sat in a perfectly awkward valley where it was too great to be affordable by commoners, but too wanting to satisfy members of the upper crust.

You’ve got a tough road ahead, Rudolf.

I whipped up dinner with some of our rations, tuning out the details of an imaginary future to concentrate on our plan going forward. The main challenge would be to keep in the right general direction while limiting our outside contact to a minimum. Covering up all our horses’ tracks was impossible, but we’d be better off if we could at least hide some; a few detours through routes that might confuse trackers were probably in order.

After first interrogating Rudolf, we’d doubled back to the main road and had him examine the bodies. He hadn’t recognized any of them, and they hadn’t been carrying any identifying possessions either; when I went through their wallets, there wasn’t any noticeable pattern to the mints of the coins inside. It was safe to say they hadn’t been working directly for House Wiesenmuhle.

The head of the family had probably wanted to avoid causing an internal commotion. In an attempt to control information, he’d probably borrowed or hired local pawns from reputable sources. That, or there was simply a special unit within the clan dedicated to shadier work that Rudolf had never seen.

Whichever the case, they now knew the rough outline of our plan. Rudolf had assured us that his compatriots back home hadn’t been told anything from the Innenstadt squad—they’d divided up the work so that none of them could divulge any information about the others. Yet with our location revealed, the future was looking bleak.

If they cast a wide net, we risked being found even on the back roads. Once we got to the city, sneaking in would present its own host of challenges—that is, if we even made it there at all.

In an unfortunate turn of events, we had a river to cross if we wanted to reach Innenstadt. The only bridge in the area was located just by the main road, and they were obviously going to be waiting there.

Local farmers had probably put up their own smaller bridges known only to them, but despite being close to home, I was not local enough to know about them. In Japanese terms, this area would be “in the same city” as my childhood neighborhood: nobody knew the ins and outs of a street six stations down the line unless their primary hobby was going on walks.

Fording the river was a no-go. It was both too wide and too deep for the horses, and our sheltered princess would never survive a swim in the cooling weather. Seeing as we didn’t have the headway to build her a raft, our only options were to bet on luck and search for a passage or to try breaking through the inevitable barricade.

On top of all that, we were working on a time limit.

As I stirred the pot to keep the bits at the bottom from charring, I could see my breath puff into the air. The forest was always freezing at night, but it was even colder now than what I remembered from my time camping in the shelterbelts by Konigstuhl. At this rate, snow would fall sooner rather than later.

This region saw a decent amount of snow that rarely piled up; however, the gods had made Their temperament known in the past few weeks, and the odds were high that the Harvest Goddess would be tucked in for Her slumber this season. Fairies of winter and frost seemed to be running around as well, so I was absolutely sure the weather was going to worsen.

I was the picture of health, and worrying about a zentaur freezing was pretty much unnecessary. I mean, just look at her: Dietrich’s arms were still exposed at this very moment, and she didn’t care one bit. As a trained bodyguard, Rudolf was in good shape; if he had survived whatever plague had taken his mother, then he could probably tough it out.

Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said of the princess. One needed spare little thought to recognize how an orchid carefully grown under glass would fare in the harsh outdoors. Forget the coming snow: I was worried she’d catch a cold tonight.

I planned to lend her my heated stones, and we’d set up her tent next to the fire with the person on night watch keeping it alive. Yet the delicacy of a girl raised in the lap of luxury was unknowable—especially for a fragile mensch.

“Let’s do our best together, Rudolf.”

“...Yes, my lady.”

The heroic servant smiled to preserve his master’s happiness. From where I sat, I could do nothing but watch in silence.

[Tips] The weather often shifts with the gods’ moods. Staying divine rage and envy to sustain livable weather is but one part of the churches’ duties.

Having established that each of us—barring Miss Helena, of course—would take turns keeping watch so that we’d all get a chance to rest, I began laying out my sleeping bag in the big tent. Rudolf would take the first shift while Dietrich and I rested; after three hours I would take his spot; then finally Dietrich would see us to sunrise.

Considering how grave the situation was, I’d also asked Ursula to lend us a hand. Our enemies were no opportunistic thieves, after all. No matter how lightly I slept, I doubted a trained scout would have enough presence to wake me, and I was a little uncertain as to whether Rudolf could handle one by himself.

In order to keep our profile as low as possible, we’d slimmed down our camp: other than Dietrich’s tent, we’d only put up one of the smaller ones Rudolf and Miss Helena had brought. Our VIP slept in the personal tent, while two out of the three of us would take turns occupying the larger one.

As I laid out a big sheet of bedding for Dietrich—I’d bought it for her since the weather was getting so cold, but she definitely owed me this time—she slipped inside. I could hear the sound of clinking metals behind me: she was probably taking off her armor.

Personally, I planned to wear at least enough to jump into a fight at a moment’s notice. Yet before I could wonder why she’d forgo proper protection, the sound of cloth rubbing across skin followed.

Are you serious? Changing in a shared tent? I got up with a sigh—only for a hand to stop me by the shoulder.

“What’s up?”

The words Is something wrong? remained caught in the back of my throat. When I turned around, I came face-to-face with an unconcealed set of abs; I looked up to see two tremendous beacons of womanhood dangling before me.

Her sun-baked skin abruptly lightened around her chest, which was evidently tucked away in daily life to not impede her bowmanship. Unbound, its heft exceeded my imagination. Where the rest of her skin was dotted in tiny scars, those rolling hills showed no such blemishes as they rose and fell with the rhythm of her breathing.

We were so close that I could see every minute detail. Though I doubted the warrior paid much attention to personal care, her supple skin looked like it had never once gone dry; suddenly exposed to the cold air, faint goose bumps ran across its breadth.

The winter could likely be blamed once more for the light, jagged peaks at the top of the snowy mountains—or was it the same excitement that had warmed her to the point of radiating heat across the empty air? Her mensch upper half began to descend upon me, her cheeks faintly red, her eyes twinkling, and her mouth ever so slightly ajar. Slightly out of tempo, her breaths turned white as they entered the chilly night.

It was at this moment that I realized that Dietrich’s face was not as childlike as I’d led myself to believe. The immaturity I ordinarily felt must have been the product of the innocent pride always gleaming in her eyes; when her expression was as solemn as this, she truly did look the part of my senior.

Many times larger than any mensch’s, her heart pounded loudly enough for me to hear as she approached. Her hands reached out around me while I stood mesmerized, and just before her chill fingertips made contact with my neck...

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Oww?!”

I reached up to meet her stooping head with a flick to her forehead. A solid sound echoed into the tent, leaving a bright-red mark where I’d booped her. Dietrich had apparently not expected that, and recoiled while holding her forehead.

Although her faint blush, superhuman warmth, and thick musk had frozen me in place for a moment, I wasn’t gullible enough to be seduced by something like this.

Do you know how many times I’d seen the madam stark naked? My perception of beauty was broken, and not even in a good way: acknowledging her attractiveness wasn’t enough to overpower my sense of reason.

Putting the skills I’d learned in high society to full use, I donned my poker face, steadied my breathing, and held in the rosiness of my cheeks. From Dietrich’s perspective, I probably looked totally unfazed.

“The hell’s that for?!” she yelped.

“That’s my line. What’s gotten into you?”

Dietrich glared at me with teary eyes, but I was really the one who ought to have been confused. It was well known that demihumans tended to go into heat in seasonal patterns akin to their animalistic heritage, with little to no desire outside those periods; still, this was out of absolutely nowhere. Horses tended to mate from spring to fall: it was rather late for that.

“I mean, well... It’s just, um...”

“Their tragic love story got to you, huh?”

“Shut up!”

Bull’s-eye. Dietrich’s remaining ear twitched and her tail flapped around in discontent.

“What kinda man turns down an invitation from someone as hot as me, anyway? Any other guy would’ve been happy to wrestle all night long. You know, it’s kinda hurting my pride that you haven’t even tried to steal a peek when we’re staying in the same inns all the time.”

“You idiot. Do you understand the situation we’re in? That’s a total death flag!”

“Death...flag?”

Getting down and dirty when the going gets tough is textbook, page-one foreshadowing that you’re going to get murked. Did the God of Horror Movies beam horny signals into her brain or something? I wasn’t going to bite, but I could already envision the silhouette of someone raising a massive weapon being cast onto the side of our tent.

“Setting that aside,” I said, rerailing the conversation, “seriously, what’s gotten into you?”

“Well, I mean...how do I put it? Listening to them talk about their plans for the future made me want to take you home with me for real. Is that so wrong?”

“Ohh, right. I forgot about the nonsense you spouted when we first met.”

“It’s not nonsense!”

Hey, don’t get mad at me—it’s not my fault I didn’t take the babbling of a sore loser seriously. I could tell now that she wasn’t joking, but, I mean, come on. There was a process to this sort of thing: couldn’t she at least have tried flirting first?

“Watching them made me realize how nice you are and how much you’ve taught me. I mean, you saw how ditzy the girl was, right?”

“At least call her naive instead.”

“Whatever. Anyway, that helped me recognize that I really do want to bring you home and introduce you to everyone.”

Sitting down and making herself small, Dietrich began fiddling her fingers together—that the sudden shift in demeanor struck me as cute was a secret to remain unspoken.

“All the stuff you said got me thinking about why I wanted to become a warrior in the first place. It wasn’t just because I was born into the role, but because I had someone I looked up to. Looking back, I wasn’t living up to my ideals at all.”

“If you’ve already gotten that far, then you’re most of the way there. I’m sure that’s what the chief of your clan wanted you to learn when he sent you away.”

The risqué atmosphere had evaporated, but the signs of an earnest discussion took its place, so I sat down to face Dietrich properly. Thinking deeply about every word, she slowly but surely began to lay her heart bare.

As a child, she had been good at everything, but the best at nothing. The number one spot had always gone to someone else, and they’d invariably be the target of her envy and frustrations.

To be the best was to be the coolest—and so, Dietrich wanted to be the best. Tunneled in on this one idea, she’d found herself charging forward alone on a battlefield and sent away from her home.

“In the end, I just wanted recognition. I wanted people to look up to me, to want to be like me. That’s why I kept pushing myself to be better than everyone else.”

Frankly, I found it surprising that someone as skilled as her hadn’t been the best at anything among her people; yet it must have been true, as it was the source of all her troubles. She’d convinced herself that only the uncontested greatest deserved to be admired, and the insecurity that belief generated had backed her into a corner. All the while, the original reason she’d wanted to be the best at all had been lost to time.

“It’s like I was running a race without a finish line,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. “My dream wasn’t just to be the best, but to be a hero that everyone could look up to—and I never realized that I was doing all the wrong things to be that. You can’t be cool if you don’t have dignity and pride, right?”

The little zentaur girl had looked up to a hero who bettered himself no matter how much praise he received, and yet never looked down on the young crybaby who couldn’t seem to win anything.

Now, the grown zentaur woman had unearthed that long-buried dream and was ready to chase it once more.

“But you saw me for who I was. You thought about me: about what I should do and about what kind of person I am. I could’ve done without all the nagging, but...it made me really wanna take you with me.”

The last vestiges of her hardheaded shell crumbled off, leaving behind the face of a pure warrior. Dietrich had learned the true nature of the greatest goal a warrior could pursue, and she had transformed into a proud champion marching toward it.

“I see,” I said slowly. “So that’s what it was.”

I got up on my knees and crawled over, placing a hand on her head. Running my fingers through her glossy dapple-gray hair, I parted it in places to caress the scars beneath with great love. I brushed against the stump of her missing ear with gravity, as if to say, Nobody has given up on you: not your people, and not you.

The lesson was one close to a warrior’s being. “Do I have what it takes?” was a doubt that froze any forward momentum—it was a fighter’s death sentence.

“Then I guess there isn’t any more for me to teach you. Dietrich, you’ve grown strong. The nagging ends here.”

I’d second-guessed my decision to bring her along, wondering whether it was arrogant of me to try and reeducate what I thought to be diamond in the rough; now, I was truly grateful I had. My cheeks naturally pulled up into a smile, and she answered with a genuine grin of her own.

I had taken this wayward soul and returned her to her rightful place as a warrior—my idealistic daydreams had actually helped someone. Rare were the occasions that could match the joy I felt now.

All smiles, we basked in our mutual respect and acknowledgment. Finally, the zentaur warrior rose to her feet and proudly puffed up her chest.

“So, wanna do it?”

“Idiot.”

“Owww?!”

Joy quickly turned to disappointment as I flicked her on the forehead again.

“That wasn’t where this was going?!”

“Of course not, you dolt. Now put your tits away and go to bed already.”

“Dolt?! Okay, I know I’m not that smart, but don’t you think that’s a bit mean?!”

“Not at all. Keeping watch will be grueling if I don’t get enough sleep, anyway. You might be able to get away with just a few hours, but we mensch need a full night of rest.”

Sigh. Time to hit the sack. I’d invested in traits that minimized the sleep I needed, but my growing body needed all the shut-eye it could get. Napping during the day was off the table in our current situation, so I had to pack in the hours while I could.

“Hey, wait! Are you really gonna sleep when someone this hot is naked right beside you?! Hey—hey!”

“Shut up already. What are we gonna do if you wake up Miss Helena? You better take the next shift if you keep making all this noise.”

“I can’t believe it. He’s actually trying to sleep. Does this guy have anything between his legs?!”

A deluge of northern insults involving my privates followed, but I simply tucked myself in until she inevitably gave up. Rolling onto the bedding I’d bought her, she took a pinch of my hair that had spilled out from my sleeping bag and played with it, whispering, “Don’t you think that I’ve given up.”

Swallowing back my curiosity on what she even wanted from someone half her size, I chuckled and silently dozed off.

Later on in life, I would learn that mensch arms are apparently well regarded among zentaurs, but that was a lesson for another day...

[Tips] Procreation between couples of differing racial backgrounds is less reliant on matching precise shapes and more on the sure delivery of package to receptacle. As such, it can be argued that physiques matter little in the grand scheme of conception.

Fortune and misfortune will cancel out in the end.

Some know-it-all had sung these words somewhere, sometime; yet now more than ever I found myself thinking that maybe they were right.

I mean, until now, the world had always demanded I repay any tiny stroke of good luck with a healthy helping of interest, so it’d been hard to believe. However, as we were struggling to find a crossing two days into our lives on the lam, we came across a group of hunters.

Winter was hunting season. One group of magistrate-backed huntsmen had been chasing down a wild boar when we ended up right in their path. Driven mad from the pursuit, it attacked us and we had no choice but to put it down; it was dead by the time the huntsmen caught up. Explaining to the men that we didn’t have any license to take down big game in the area, I offered to hand over the kill in exchange for a bit of guidance—to which they happily agreed, telling us of a nearby bridge.

Though it was a little ways out, there was supposedly a local bridge if we headed north for three days. A woodsman had built it specifically for them, and it was sturdy enough to support the weight of a wagon carrying a full load of timber.

Things were looking up. The bridge was off the beaten path, only known to locals: the odds were good that there would be no lookout there. If nothing else, it was worth checking out.

“Want me to go on ahead and see?” Dietrich asked as soon as the hunters left.

“No, I think we should stick together for now. Being split up would be the worst-case scenario if they find us.”

A three-day jaunt wasn’t worth the risk. Turning back toward the main road wouldn’t yield us any new options anyway, so it’d be safer to begin a new search for alternatives from the local bridge if it came to that.

Still, we needed to hurry. The biting cold grew worse with every day, and all the cotton in the world stuffing my coat wouldn’t change that. Heated stones were becoming less and less effective; snow was surely soon to come.

“Are you okay, my lady?”

“I’m—ngh,” Miss Helena coughed. “Ahem. I’m fine, Rudolf. The air was just a tad chilly against my throat.”

As I’d feared, Miss Helena was losing out to the elements. Although she had yet to develop a fever or any lasting symptoms, it was clear that she was beginning to come down with something.

The light cough she’d exhibited just now was one sign, and the other—as ungentlemanly as it was to point out—was that she was having trouble with her bowel movements. I didn’t know whether she couldn’t get over the mental barrier of doing her business outside or if all the stress was having physical effects on her body, but her bathroom breaks were blatantly and worryingly few.

“I’m sorry, my lady. As crude as it would have been, I should have packed something thicker than this fur coat...”

“Please, Rudolf. I was the one who picked this, remember?”

Yet her spirited smile and lack of complaints proved she was strong. It was an impressive feat for a well-to-do lady to spend days without a toilet, a bath, or the simple ability to wash her hair and still keep her composure. I really admired her self-control. Her head was still full of posies, but it was clear that those mental flowers were blooming with great majesty.

“Spring is heralded by the cold: the warm winds sweeping across the Harvest Goddess’s luscious locks are a privilege won by braving freezing gales.”

Figuring that it would be boorish to point out that the worst of the gales had yet to come, I let the lovebirds be and went on ahead.

[Tips] According to Rhinian mythos, the winter begins when the Harvest Goddess enters Her yearly slumber; Her antagonistic sister, the Silverglaze Goddess, then arrives to claim providence over winter and cold.

As an aside, the pair’s bad blood stems from a love affair in which the Harvest Goddess won the hand of Her present husband, the God of Winds and Clouds. Unwilling to cede Her feelings, the Silverglaze Goddess is said to intertwine her wintriness with His domain while Her sister sleeps, giving rise to the snows of the season.

When chasing prey, encirclement is a key technique: hunters will often band together to more efficiently trap a mark in an enclosed area.

The thing is, the technique works just as well for hunting humans.

First, a person known as a beater is tasked with running ahead and chasing the target into the main force of the party; from there, the hunters can spring their trap any way they want.

And we found ourselves perfectly caught in one such ambush.

“This is bad... We’re pretty much completely surrounded.”

Two days had passed since we’d run into the huntsmen. We’d set up camp on pace to reach the bridge by midday the next day, but things had hit a snag. Despite everything progressing smoothly on the first day, we’d begun to notice stalkers in the distance the day after, and our current path seemed to be playing right into their hands.

“We can’t go any farther north,” I said. “They’re slowly closing in on the west, and we can’t turn back south either...”

“Looks like we got ratted out,” Dietrich said. “Well, I guess we do stand out.”

“That sounds about right. Dammit, they’re way too good at this.”

I agreed with Dietrich: the huntsmen had probably snitched on our location. They’d acted perfectly natural when speaking to us, so I suspected that they’d been stopped by our pursuers for questioning afterward, on their way home.

We had a foreign zentaur and three whole horses for our tiny party: this was not a composition someone would run into twice. Asking around had probably been a cakewalk—I doubted they even needed a description of our likenesses.

Equipped with the information they’d gotten out of the hunting party, our enemies seemed to have decided that chasing us around the woods was a needless endeavor. Instead, they were slowly restricting our options until we were in the palm of their hand.

“I dunno if they’re good at this or not,” Dietrich said, “but man, do they have a ton of people. Every squad we’ve spotted had at least four. What kinda assassins work in droves like this?”

“Come to think of it...”

I hadn’t noticed until now, but they did seem to have more people than they should’ve. All the squads had indeed been composed of four or more, and they’d been fully kitted out to boot. My experience facing nobles’ pet armies armed to the teeth with the best money could buy had made me numb to a more sensible estimate of strength.

Did this mean that the Wiesenmuhles had abandoned secrecy? A house of the Thirteen Knights was sure to have more than a dozen subsidiary knighthoods under its wing, each with at least twenty trained soldiers ready to deploy. If they were willing to bring all their own forces into the scandal, then they could mobilize hundreds of people to put together a massive manhunt...but that was a big if.

Knight households weren’t just responsible for keeping a standing reserve of troops in case an emergency struck: they were magistrates in their own rights, obligated to keep the peace with their own forces. No matter how important the first princess of the main branch was, she wasn’t going to prompt an all-out response.

At most, they could probably send out about a hundred people—calling commoners to arms wasn’t feasible without a good excuse—which, judging from the scope of the encirclement, didn’t add up. They’d need much more manpower to pull off something of this scale.

On top of that, they’d made their move with curious alacrity. Setting the initial ambush on the main road aside, it was impossible to put together a force of this size in less than ten days, Thirteen Knights or otherwise. The only authorities capable of throwing together this many people in a slapdash expedition were the aristocrats at the top of the social ladder who oversaw massive territories and kept four digits worth of people in their standing armies.

Had Sir Wiesenmuhle begged his lord for help? Would a knight of his stature risk losing that much face just to save one daughter? Honestly, looking at how obviously spoiled the girl was, I couldn’t rule that possibility out.

“What’s the move?” Dietrich asked. “Wanna give up on the bridge and bust open the net somewhere else? We could try another route.”

“No, that’s not happening. They’re all coordinating together, so they’ll be able to read our next move based on where we break through in their formation. Besides, we don’t have any way of knowing for sure that they don’t have a second or third layer, and we’ll be cooked if they pin us against the river.”

Our best bet was to gun it for the bridge. They’d probably blockaded it, but if we could get past that, any victory in battle would be a substantial one. Assuming we could destroy the bridge behind us—as big of a pain as that would be to the poor local workers—we’d be able to leave our pursuers in the dust as we raced to Innenstadt. That way, the pair would be safer after reaching the city too.

The one silver lining was that the enemy didn’t have a skilled magus on their side. If they’d been able to trace Miss Helena’s existential signature with pinpoint accuracy, we would’ve been drowning in a sea of blood and combat by now; if they’d brought out a professor, we might as well lie down and surrender. Hell, even a noncombatant oikodomurge could probably box us in with a few layers of walls too tall to climb and put us into checkmate.

Still, I couldn’t shake the question: how had they mobilized so many troops in such little time?

We turned in for the night in order to save as much energy for the big day as we could, forgoing a fire to stay concealed. Alas, Miss Helena was finally succumbing to the frigid winter, and her irregular coughs kept waking me up throughout the night.

Awaking on meager rest thanks to both the stress and cold, we saddled up for the decisive showdown. I rode Castor while Rudolf manned Polydeukes; the one that had been pulling the carriage was refitted as a packhorse to carry all the saddlebags. If worse came to worst, we’d leave the luggage and hurry ahead.

Abandoning all the gear I’d prepared for my future would be painful, but nothing I owned could buy me back my life. If nothing else, I had enough funds to rebuild if I lost it all.

“My lady, please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Ack,” she coughed. “I’m sorry, Rudolf. But fret not, I’ll be fine. The tea Erwin gave me helped a little.”

Miss Helena was with Rudolf. Part of it was because a lady without proper riding gear would struggle to straddle a horse, but the main reason was that she’d finally broken out into a light fever.

I’d brewed some elderflower and chamomile teas in preparation—they were thankfully mainstays in my pipe box—but she wouldn’t truly begin to recover until she could rest easy in a warm environment. We needed to get her to Innenstadt as soon as possible. I wasn’t about to fight my way through an enemy barricade just to have the damsel in distress die of pneumonia.

Knowing that we were surrounded, we abandoned the tricky, winding pathfinding we’d been employing before and headed straight to the location of the bridge—when suddenly, a piercing noise cut through the forest. Like the shrill ripping of cloth amplified tenfold, a whistling arrow zipped through the air.

This was no ceremonial arrow designed for a sustained, flutelike cry; it was the penetrating sound of a military instrument meant to be heard over the cacophony of war. It could only mean one thing: their target was here, and they wanted the whole forest to know it.

“Already?!” I shouted. “Dammit, run! Full speed ahead!”

Being found as soon as we gave up on hiding was nothing but bad luck. I kicked Castor’s sides and brought him into a gallop; a beat later, Rudolf did the same for Polydeukes and pulled the packhorse along by the rein.

“The rear’s all yours!”

“You betcha! This is just what a zentaur’s made for!”

Leaving our backside to Dietrich, we took a linear formation and sprinted through the woods. The weighty clap of a bowstring rang out behind me, and then the devastating sound of splitting wood echoed from farther out.

“Tch, how clever of them. They’re hiding behind cover at a distance! None of them look like they’re approaching!”

“Looks like they’re not pushing their luck... They’re well trained,” I grumbled. “That’s fine—focus on maintaining speed! We’re going to use the roads!”

Instead of taking the initiative to approach, our enemies hid behind cover in positions that restricted our ability to break through their ranks. Dodging trees in the forest, then, was wasted effort; I steered our party onto a small dirt path we’d discovered a few days prior.

“Whoa?! That was close!”

Just before I was about to break through a perfectly horse-sized opening in the foliage, a bad feeling gripped my mind. Letting instinct take the helm, I fired a crossbow bolt into the root of a nearby tree; a pressure-sensitive trap sprung, raising a taut rope into the air. Had I kept going unaware, Castor’s back legs would’ve been totally tangled.

Leaping over the obstacle, I brought down Schutzwolfe to clear the path for the rest of the party. They’d likely set up similar snares all across the forest—these workaholics must’ve been up all night preparing for us.

I slipped past three more traps, cursing our lack of a dedicated scout with each one. One was a simple rope like the first, but the other two were pitfalls; though they were certainly dangerous, none were sinister enough to lead to immediate death. Just as our condition for failure was the loss of Miss Helena, so too was her safety a sticking point for the enemy. That was no doubt the reason their traps were sparse and nonlethal. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded if they kept this softhearted approach up.

“We’re about to hit the road! Watch out for arrows!”

Finally past all the traps, we made our way onto the dirt path—cavalry promptly leapt out of the shrubbery on the other side. They knew we’d use this road and had been lying in wait for us.

The horsemen ran after us, firing another whistling arrow into the air: this time, they shot three of them, each a few beats after the last. Mixing into the clamor of hoofbeats, the arrows further sullied the crisp serenity of the pale blue skies.

Those arrows were some kind of code. Having a handful of canned plans that could be enacted based on the timing and type of whistling arrows was standard practice—wait. It was only standard practice for military personnel: were these actually Wiesenmuhle knights?!

“No way! It bounced off?!” Turning back at Dietrich’s incredulous cry, I saw that someone had, indeed, managed to take a shot from her cannon of a bow and survive.

Five horsemen were hot on our tail. All of the horses were covered in majestic armor, and the riders each boasted a full set of their own. Yet despite the gleaming splendor of their equipment, it was very practical: I could make out enchantments and blessings woven into the metal.

The vanguard who’d taken Dietrich’s arrow was equipped with a lance and greatshield. His shield had been warped out of shape, his balance was out of sorts, and he looked to be in awful pain—I suspected he’d dislocated his shoulder. He began moving to cede his frontward position, but that he’d survived a shot from Dietrich at this range at all proved he was a formidable adversary.

“No, no, no, what?!” I shouted. “What the hell is this?! Why the hell is a real heavy knight out here?!”

“My arrow... They have some real fancy gear!”

“I can see that! A normal shield would’ve crumpled like paper—or, what? You don’t expect me to believe you can’t pierce a half-assed shield, do you?!”

“Of course I can! I’ve shot straight through a shield, armor, and person all at once before!”

That is not an image I wanted in my head right now!

Back to the point, it was apparent that their lavish, uniformly designed armor was built with high-quality metal and further bolstered via mystic or divine means; I refused to accept that some random schmuck could get their hands on equipment that turned a one-hit kill into a mere popped shoulder socket. Shields were ultimately expendable wares, and that theirs were evidently more protective than entire sets of regular armor spoke to their deep pockets.

“Shit!” Dietrich cursed. “Go! Down! Arrrgh, just die already!”

Indescribable sounds of banging metal kept ringing out behind me, but the number of pursuers failed to change no matter how many times I turned to check. Every time Dietrich nocked another arrow, they scrambled their movement to divert her aim such that they could deflect the shot with angled shields. Although every hit put a deep dent into the metal sheets, they were sturdy enough to protect the cavalrymen wielding them.

“Ugh, I can’t get through! They move around to use their shields even when I aim for the horses! I hate fighting imperial knights like this!”

Veterans of the Second Eastern Conquest had endured the onslaught of countless horse archers; it was only natural that those who survived would be masters of counterplay. From the invention of barbed wire to the adoption of specialized strategies, the modern Empire was a nation with a monomaniacal fixation on crushing light cavalry.

“That’s fine, just keep shooting! Don’t let them gain an inch!”

Barking my orders, I dug into Castor to pick up the pace. Reinforcements had followed the sound of the arrows, and they were beginning to arrive—both at our sides and in front of us. I parried spears, trampled foes, cut down the infantry in our way, and shot down the snipers in the trees. What was this, a bullet hell?!

“Wha—there’s more?!” Judging from Dietrich’s hollering, it seemed the rear flank had received backup too. Glancing over my shoulder, I counted fifteen riders chasing us. “You’ve gotta be kidding! This isn’t normal, is it?!”

“Of course it’s not normal! The God of Trials has it out for us!”

Overwhelmed by the stunning number of foes, Rudolf had lost the gift of speech; meanwhile, the only thing Dietrich and I had shouted in the past few minutes was earsplitting complaints.

Among the heavy cavalry were knights in majestic, gold-trimmed armor—the kind that just screamed, “I’m a boss enemy!”—just casually mixed into the crowd. The GM’s extravagant ill will was so palpable today that it sent a cold sweat running down my back.

You have infinite resources. We players do not. You’re supposed to dish out a challenge with that in mind, remember?!

Not only did they have a bunch of commanders, but there were so many unnamed mobs that I couldn’t get to the big guys. Dietrich’s powerful covering fire was keeping them at bay behind us and I was poking holes in the fence of spears to slip through up front; still, we were teetering on a razor-thin edge.

By my estimate, I wouldn’t be able to break completely through their ranks even with my arcane arsenal. Those fancy sets of armor would obviously be packed with magic resistance, and heat was one of the most basic things any enchanted gear protected against.

I’d seen it myself. After the masked nobleman had ravaged my equipment, Lady Franziska had been kind enough to introduce me to a well-respected smith in town. There, they’d happened to have a nearly finished set of armor out on display, and I’d been so enamored that I’d asked all kinds of questions about it. According to the smith, it could endure molten steel without so much as charring.

Mystic thermite and arcane napalm were unlikely to faze them unless I could land a direct hit. Not to mention the fact that many such armors were enchanted to shrug off projectiles; I wasn’t even totally sure whether the darts would stick.

My magical flashbangs would probably be effective, but using them to buy time was a bit of a waste. I only had so many, and they wouldn’t do me any good if the grunts kept us enclosed for long enough for the heavy hitters to recover.

I’ll save my spells for when I charge headfirst into the fray. A parlor trick caught on to attracts no crowds—the lesson finally hit home.

“All right, the end’s in sight!”

The swarm may have been slowly closing in on us, but we were finally approaching the edge of the forest. Past the final opening, I could see a bridge just barely wide enough for a carriage built over the currents of a large river.

But between us and it were a handful of knights, lined up with spears at the ready; we had more horsemen on our tail than ever, with light cavalry mixing in, ready to close the distance. Things were looking dire...

Oh, all right, all right. This was a bit too showy for my tastes, but the situation called for a flashy solution.

“Dietrich, come up front!”

“What?! Who’s gonna hold the rear?!”

“Just come!”

“Ah, fine—fine!”

Firing three simultaneous arrows in a last-second volley, Dietrich managed to make the enemy vanguard stumble, thus slowing down the whole procession by fractions of a second. Then she sprinted to the front at full speed.

“I’m leaving Castor to you!”

“Wha—wait! They’ve got spears at the ready!”

“And I’m about to break their formation! Trust me and go straight!”

We broke free from the foliage. With the bridge just seconds away, I unlocked all my shackles.

An Unseen Hand zoomed right into the linemen’s faces with a flashbang catalyst at the ready. Out of nowhere, they were assaulted with the radiance of the midday sun and the roar of a jet engine. Unable to see and jostled by the deafening noise, the foot soldiers inevitably crumbled.

“I’ll leave the rest to you! Don’t worry, I won’t let a single one of them through!”

“Erich?!”

After we stampeded over the dazed spearmen, I leapt off my saddle and onto the thin railing near the mouth of the bridge. Dietrich would get her scolding for using my real name later; for now, I was just proud that she hadn’t slowed down in hesitation.

Polydeukes flew by, with Rudolf still atop and Miss Helena in his arms; then came the poor packhorse, frothing at the mouth in exhaustion. Had the bridge been any farther out, we would’ve had to leave the poor thing in the dust.

Upon seeing everyone to safety, I stuck one dart of precious thermite into each of the bridge’s piers. The reliable foundation braving the river’s currents went up in flames, and the ropes and planks holding the pillars together burned with it. The trusty bridge’s long tenure came to an abrupt end as almost half the bridge fell into the water below. A good horse or a demihuman with strong legs could still clear the opening with a running start, but I didn’t intend to give anyone that luxury.

Three foot soldiers who’d been outside the flashbang’s range ran toward me, and I cut them down in an instant. Flicking the blood off my blade, I marked a line in the dirt and shouted, “I shall cut down any who dare cross this line!”

The rest of their forces came barreling out from the forest but had to stop to not trample their allies, still reeling on the ground from the light and sound.

Now the real battle could begin. I literally had my back to a wall—technically a river—but, well, I was of a mind to see what they’d got. No matter how many there were, I doubted they’d be as well coordinated as the Berylinian city guard; they couldn’t even compare to the masked magus of the sewer, that freak monster at the Liplar viscounty, or Lady Agrippina.

“Take another step,” I declared, raising Schutzwolfe, “and I’ll test whether the God of Trials has given you His favor!”

“Don’t stop!” a voice barked from the back of the crowd. “A lone swordsman cannot match our valor! The God of Trials shall only weep if you balk at the presence of an enemy!”

“Yes sir!” they all shouted.

“Fear not for your lives! Our lives shine brightest with the glimmer of a spearhead!”

The man’s orders roused the shirking soldiers, and they quickly regrouped in proper formation. Archers climbed into trees, infantry stepped up with their spears, and the back line readied their swords in preparation for a melee.

I was impressed: they quickly positioned themselves in a way that would leverage their numerical advantage against a strong singular foe. Specifically, their arrangement was tailored against mercenary zweihander tactics; swinging wide to cover space was standard in a one-on-many, and they were ready to stifle the style.

The commander’s voice sounded young, but had a dependable timbre and carried across the battlefield well. He called for his men to rise to the occasion with a lofty speech that betrayed a distinctly privileged background.

Every little detail only worsened my suspicions, but it was too late to settle things with words. The ring dangling on my necklace had missed its opportunity to shine.

All that remained was to carve out a happy ending with the tip of my blade.

Filed in a horizontal line, the spearmen synced their breathing; a volley of arrows rained forth from their backs, and they charged alongside the covering fire.

Reading that they’d take the opportunity to shoot, I sprinted forward to dodge the brunt of the projectiles, only using my shield to block the few that would have hit. From there, I wormed my way in between the infantry’s ranks. I swatted away spears on the left with my shield and redirected thrusts on my right with my sword; the ones sweeping my legs got stamped into the ground, and the ones swinging overhead rolled off the round parts of my armor and helm.

One man on my left tried to whack me on the head as hard as he could, but I’d seen it coming. Catching the hit with an Unseen Hand, I slowed his weapon down to the point where it barely patted my helmet. I bet he was utterly confused: his all-out swing had turned into a love tap for no discernible reason.

Navigating through a sideways storm of polearms, I cut spears by the handle to make myself space and close distances. A sword swiped at me from behind the first line of spearmen, and I wrenched it away with Schutzwolfe’s handle guard; at the same time, I was pushing another man’s face in with the edge of my shield.

With a little room to work with, it was time to let loose like a tornado. I ripped through the rabble, severing limbs, slashing faces, and bashing people unconscious. Any attack that came my way was invariably stopped by my sword, my shield, or one of their own friends. With no other option, I simply unleashed the whole of my martial skill on the men standing in my way.

“What’s the matter?!” I roared. “I might as well be fighting stray mutts if all you’re gonna do is stand there and die!”

The provocation was more to psych myself up than to berate them. Jumping into a sea of enemies with a body as squishy as mine was undeniably scary, and while I’d grown used to conquering my fear, it was important to stimulate myself where I could.

Lose sight of fear and you die; let it swallow you and you die. To win, you have to tame it—turn it into both armor and bridle.

Sir Lambert’s words echoed in the depths of my mind as I swung my sword as I’d practiced thousands of times. Each strike thinned the enemy horde, nourishing the earth at my feet in ever-darkening shades of red.

Fighting in close quarters, I began half-swording, slamming the handle or tip of my blade into whoever was in range to take it; throwing in elbows and shield bashes, I ran amok in the enemy formation. Those who lost their balance were mercilessly stomped on; those who fell on their rears got a kick to the jaw; those who went flying always did so right into their own comrades.

My top priority was to quickly dispatch anyone who approached, not to deliver a finishing blow. Despite how flashy I was being, I doubted I’d actually killed anyone yet; for all the eyes I’d crushed and arms I’d broken, the growing number of groans mixing into the constant screams proved most were still alive.

“H-He’s a devil!”

“A demon—he’s a sword demon! An ogre in mensch skin!”

As I spilled enough blood to drench me from head to toe, the proud army’s will to fight started to fall apart. My horrific appearance and the pained moans of their friends caused the ones still standing to let up on their torrential offensive.

With the melee settling down, the archers mercilessly made use of the newly opened lines of sight. I swatted away one arrow and blocked another with a hapless infantryman yet to flee—it sank straight into his thigh with a painful squelch—only for the cavalry to take their turn and charge.

Both the light and heavy knights linked up in formation, running at me in a line. Their lances were far longer than the smaller spears of the foot soldiers who’d swatted at us in the forest, and their speed would make it incredibly difficult to dodge.

I guess it’s time to pull out the trump card.

“Whoa!”

“What the?!”

“Augh!”

Deciding that my moment had come, I put my plan into action. Embiggened by the Giant’s Palm add-on, a fleet of Hands grabbed the many spears lying on the ground; slotting each into the groove between invisible fingers, I summoned an impromptu phalanx in the blink of an eye.

Every kid has pretended to be a comic-book hero or a needle-throwing assassin with pencils sticking out of a fist before—this was that, but with real spears. Each of my six Hands had four polearms, for a total of twenty-four. Digging the other ends into the ground for leverage, I’d built myself a fort of blades.

Packed tighter than any manned line of spears could be, my defenses skewered one knight after another. Some horses tripped and crashed over the makeshift fence, while others came to a screeching halt, throwing their jockey onto the ground. The vanguard was stuck, bringing all those behind them to a screeching halt; without their speed, the cavalry were just extra large targets.

Since I could only make crude maneuvers with the balled fists, I shrank my Hands back to regular size and equipped each with a single spear to precisely knock the remaining riders off their steeds.

One of my Hands got the honor of holding Schutzwolfe as I uttered her cursed name.

“You’re up.”

Space neither tore nor split: the Craving Blade appeared in my hands without any forewarning, singing her discordant song of love.

She’d been nagging me for a while now, saying that if I was going to frolic on such a blood-soaked stage, why did it have to be with the wolf’s fang? That old sword would grow dull no matter how perfect my technique was; I was better off using her instead.

You sure are possessive, for a sword. As much as I would’ve liked to keep this secret weapon a secret, I took the cursed blade in hand and ran in to terrorize the knights before they could regain their footing.

“What the hell happ—argh?!”

The Craving Blade had shrunk to Schutzwolfe’s size to make space for my shield—though I’d been told this form vexed her—and I thrust the one-handed sword straight into a fallen knight’s armpit to get around his armor.

One down... Or so I’d thought, but the man struggled through the pain and tried to grab me with his other arm. Left with no choice, I swung hard into his helmet to knock him out. I couldn’t do this sort of thing with my dad’s trusty blade out of fear it’d bend, so I had to hand it to the Craving Blade for her unyielding durability.

Robbed of their mounts, the knights rose and unsheathed their swords; even those who’d managed to keep their steeds around recognized that the opportunity to charge had passed and stepped down to join the fight.

Damn, their motivation is sky-high. My whole plan had been to chop up a few dozen guys until the rest of them got too scared to go on, but they weren’t showing even the slightest signs of retreating.

The main general didn’t seem to mind having his precious troops torn to shreds either. Those who could still fight regrouped around him, and he was still issuing commands left and right; judging from his demeanor, it looked like even more reinforcements were on the way. How many hundreds of people had they roped into this wild goose chase?

That a noble family had thrown all pride out the window to hunt us down terrified me. But what freaked me out even more was that he didn’t seem like he was doing this out of some misguided need to save face after being whooped by a single enemy. I sensed a purer pride on the line: the will to win, no matter what it took.

In which case, I guessed there was only one path forward: take the big boss’s head. These weren’t random crooks who’d scatter as soon as I took out their commander; I’d still have to fight off his more loyal retainers out for vengeance. Still, it beat having to fight every single one of them to the last.

Plus, put in TRPG terms, that general gave some kind of AoE buff to his allies. So long as he was around, his subordinates would shrug off morale checks until the cows came home. While it was risky to ignore adds and aim straight for the boss, I had to eliminate him before I lost the war of attrition.

Ugh, this is why I hate fighting hordes!

I clashed swords with a charging knight, and something unthinkable happened.

“What?! M-My ancestral heirloom!”

My Hybrid Sword Arts were Divine, and my Dexterity was the product of Divine Favor. Doubling up on my strongest stat with Enchanting Artistry, I could cut through a random schmuck and their weapon both with a half-hearted swing. This time I was serious, and I’d paired my attack with the Craving Blade...yet my sword had gotten stuck only a third of the way through my opponent’s blade!

Looking closer, I noticed that the knight’s sword had arcane engravings on its hilt that were faintly glowing as they unleashed their power. Enchanting equipment with written words wasn’t particularly complicated as far as magecraft went, but the mana flowing out from within was ancient. Packed with magically enhanced sharpness, durability, rigidity, and more, it was decked out with an expensive set of bells and whistles.

This man was wielding a mystic blade! Unlike the Craving Blade, it was man-made and expensive. Tabletop gamers were prone to seeing enchanted weapons as merely something to set apart novice dungeon divers from tested adventurers, but they were priceless in this world. A good mystic blade was almost never taken into public as an everyday carry, and to craft a new one took a master bladesmith and mage working in tandem.

The words “ancestral heirloom” had slipped out of the man’s mouth; pair that with all of their lavish armor, and it was painfully apparent that these were no ordinary knights. Whose bad side had we gotten on? If they hailed from the barony that had started this whole debacle, though, then only the head of household’s bodyguards would have this kind of gear. Something didn’t add up...

Yet that could wait. As magnificent as the sword was, I wouldn’t go easy on a foe in battle. Putting my waist into it, I snapped the rest of the blade off.

“What’s the matter?” I jeered. “Go on, choose. Is your pride worth losing your family treasure?”

The other knights at the ready stirred faintly. Upon closer inspection, they too had a glorious set of weaponry: mystic swords, divine swords, and simply masterful works of smithing adorned their hands. Though none of them laid down their arms, I could tell they’d thought about what might happen next.

Nobody wanted to be remembered for losing a precious relic passed down for generations. If they did, victory wouldn’t be enough to avoid a trial by relatives; at worst, they could lose their spot at the top of their respective families.

That they retained their stances and continued watching for a chance to strike spoke volumes to their loyalty and dignity as fighters. Even the worst-case scenario had only given them a moment’s pause.

What a pain. How was I going to break past them, and then past the final cluster of foot soldiers guarding the general?

I’d confirmed in close quarters that their armor had blessings preventing blindness and deafness. Battlefields were full of mudslinging, and the wind and rain relentlessly pelted the eyes, especially on horseback; meanwhile, cannons and large-scale spells were a constant threat to soldiers’ ears. I’d been looking to hire a priest to do the same for me one day, so I knew divine protection existed. So long as they fit into whatever jurisdiction the god in question presided over, my remaining two flashbang catalysts weren’t going to help.

I had two sticks of thermite remaining, which I was saving for an enemy I couldn’t cut down. I also had one package of napalm, but I couldn’t use it to clear the small fry without blocking my own path forward. Lastly, I couldn’t justify using the Daisy Petal spell, given the radius. While I’d improved the containment barrier from the last time I’d used it, I still wasn’t broken enough to make it so that I could shrug off the effects if I was close by.

Looks like I’ll have to grit my teeth and do this the old-fashioned way.

Or so I’d thought: out of the blue, a terrifying presence came barreling toward me from behind. It took me a second to react, because the bloodlust coming my way wasn’t directed at me; an arrow split the air just to my left—zooming toward the knights, crumpling the breastplate of a heavily armored man and sending him flying into the background.

“What the hell was that?!”

“Look! The other one doubled back!”

Indeed, the arrow had come from the zentaur galloping across the remaining parts of the bridge: Dietrich had returned.

“I thought I told that idiot to go on ahead!”

She fired off three more shots in quick succession to subdue the archers in the trees, and then sprinted at full speed. Kicking off with enough force to crack the planks underhoof, the fully armored zentaur’s sprint further worsened the stability of what foundation remained; the whole bridge began to sway, unable to fight the flow of the river.

“Yeeeaaargh!”

With one final step, she delivered the bridge its last rites; yet its sacrifice begot a beautiful jump worthy of being immortalized on canvas. Her short gray hair shone brightly under the blue sky, and her underside glowed from the surface glimmer of the river below.

Despite her hulking equine frame, she stuck a graceful landing. She cracked the plank she landed on, but didn’t snap it in half, letting her reach this side of the shore. Taking the greataxe off her back with her left hand, she extended her right arm toward me.

“Hop on!”

I instinctively grabbed her hand. Unlike when I climbed onto the Dioscuri, there wasn’t a stirrup to rest my weight on. I let go of one spear and used a Hand to boost myself up, with Dietrich pulling me to get me the rest of the way there. As hard as it was to seat myself without a saddle, she was doing a good enough job of not bouncing up and down that I didn’t have to worry about falling off.

“Are you sure about this?!”

Although I’d taken the ride in the spur of the moment, I had to ask. A zentaur’s back was a holy place: I couldn’t even count the number of times Dietrich had grumbled about her tutelary spirit when she had to lug around her own stuff.

“How can I call myself a real warrior if I leave you here and run?! I wanna be the best—and the best doesn’t run from a fight!”

As she curved wide left in order to sidestep the enemy, Dietrich turned back to look at me. Amidst the ferocity in her expression was a distinct glow of pride: she was no longer the bum she’d been when we first met. Her smile was that of someone who’d remembered what it means to chase the pinnacle of her craft—she was a hero-to-be.

“Yeah... Yeah! Looking cooler than ever, Dietrich!”

“Then let’s finish this off in style! Where’re we headed?!”

“The general! Go for the guy in the fanciest armor!”

“Roger that! Oh, and don’t you fall off on me! I’ve never done this before, so I dunno how to hold back for a passenger!”

Following orders to a tee, she ran straight past the knights that had surrounded me in a loose semicircle. Just to make sure they couldn’t give chase, I left a package of arcane napalm in our tracks; even if we made it to the commander, we’d struggle if a group of strong knights came in to surround us.

“Hold up, you’re a mage?!”

“Something like that!”

“Tell me sooner! That’s so unfair! How come you’re good with a sword and magic?!”

“Look, I’ve got my own stuff going on, okay?!”

Despite her complaints, Dietrich ran straight toward the chief knight. Though he wasn’t far, the distance was exacerbated by our having to fight our way through goons. Now, more than ever, I felt guilty for having questioned five- to ten-second rounds of combat in TRPGs as too long.

“Men, to your positions! Hold your ground!”

“Yes, sir!”

The dozens of infantry who’d stayed out of the knights’ way quickly rallied into another wall of spears. Tightly packed, they became a prickly mountain without a single hole in sight. They’d posted up at the mouth of the forest and completely blockaded the opening: our two options were to slow down and slip into the foliage or take the fight straight into their arms.

“That’s...a bit scary! Not that it’s enough to make a Hildebrand warrior flinch, though!”

“Just charge straight in! I’ll break them up!”

Right beside the general, a mounted priest in lavish armor began to pray. Knowing I had to act fast, I tossed a Handful of flashbang toward the phalanx. Seventy-five thousand candelas burnt the foot soldiers’ eyes once more; the priest’s petition for an Arrow Ward came in just too late.

An Arrow Ward was a catchall miracle that deflected projectiles. Little packets of arcane catalysts were well within its scope, so I was glad I’d tossed my flashbang in time. I suspected the priest had waited until the last second because he didn’t have any other fellow holy men to extend the divine protection’s duration if it ran out too soon.

I respected the decision. In our current situation, the only thing we could seemingly do was chuck spears from afar or have Dietrich switch back to her bow. Choosing to cut off our access to projectiles when our only other choice was to get skewered on a human-size pincushion was smart.

However, he’d acted too late. He should’ve activated the miracle as soon as we ran past the knights. I didn’t know if he was scared of whatever price his god would demand for Their services, but the best play in these scenarios was always to respect your opponents and go all out from the beginning.

A warm breeze lapped at us as we zoomed past the groveling infantry. Arrow Wards were winds which robbed projectiles of their momentum and sent them off in completely different directions, but they had no effect on something the size of a horse; if they did, the front line holding ground would’ve been swept away too.

“Wow, this is great! If this is a magic tool, you’ve gotta sell me one! I bet I’d make a killing if I ran around using this back up north!”

“Not the time! Something’s coming!”

The enemy commander’s unit had slowly been backing up this whole while. Though the light cavalry leading the VIP procession had been hit with residual light and sound, the five or so people next to the chief were clad in debuff-blocking armor.

To make matters worse, they’d been hiding an ace up their sleeve: a giant fireball came soaring toward us.

Fire was as primitive as it was violent; almost none of the sentient races could resist its destruction. Shooting it at an enemy was perhaps the most basic option in all offensive spellcasting.

I’d figured they’d have a mage. They were no magus, but having a lethal attack was enough to be a real threat. They didn’t match up to me, let alone come remotely close to Mika—part of the spell was propped up on hedge magic instead of true magic—but running into this now, of all times, was a conundrum.

My flashy one-on-many approach had burned up most of my mana reserves, and I didn’t have the chops to erase someone else’s magic on an empty tank. Hold on, this was bad: if Dietrich didn’t dodge this, we were going to be a charred dinner.

“Hmph, that’s all you got?!”

Yet the dauntless zentaur did not dodge: she simply ran straight into the path of flames. Before I could even ask what the hell she thought she was doing, the fireball scattered as if it had crashed into an invisible wall.

“The village shaman blessed every scale to protect me! Everyone knows nothing ruins a fun fight like half-assed magic!”

Out of nowhere, an antimagic blessing had activated. Looking closely, I saw that each tiny plate of her scale armor was imbued with some archipelagic rune. Glowing in faint red writing, there was one for projectiles, poison, and all sorts of other things—including magic. Deep and fervent prayer had gone into every single one.

What terrific defense! Any spell woven together by an amateur and targeted at the wearer would be caught by the keepers of reality early, and its effects would wither away.

With gear like this, it was no wonder the knights stationed on the Empire’s northern front feared the housecarls of the polar islands. They refuted magic at its very foundation, preferring to beat their foes to death with more primitive means. History-book authors claimed that the Empire refused to set out against them despite hundreds of years of bad blood, and not only for the nonexistent Rhinian navy—I could very much see why!

“Graaaaaagh! Get outta my waaay!”

A horrific noise perhaps best described as a gathunk echoed out as a heavy knight went flying. Dietrich’s full swing had sent the full-grown armored soldier packing like a rag doll. His neck bent at inhuman angles, and his enchanted, blessed armor split wide open; even his horse staggered after the blow.

Strength really, truly did solve just about any problem.

“Sir, please retreat! Leave us and regroup afterward!”

“But then you lot will—”

“Please, just go!”

The final few blocked the path as we tried to advance toward the chief knight. They moved in to block Dietrich from the front and to swing for her comparatively open back—but we tore straight through them.

The knight obstructing our path with a massive halberd in hand was crushed under the freakish might of Dietrich’s overhead swing. The two who’d come in for our flanks were cut down by the Craving Blade in her full two-handed glory.

“That armor sure looks heavy!”

The priest tried to strike with a spiked club—Hey, it’s Lord Mace! Hi, Lord Mace!—and the mage tried weaving another fireball, but to no avail. We trampled over them both and rushed down the man in charge.

“No matter what you do,” I shouted, “don’t kill him! No matter what!”

“Seriously?! That’s such a pain...”

“Then don’t touch him—you can’t hold back with your weapon anyway! Get me up next to him!”

“Fine, I get it! Just don’t kick me, okay?! I bet that hurts!”

Unlike when I rode my trusty steeds, I signaled Dietrich to accelerate by slightly squeezing with my legs. I’d already figured that digging a spur into her would hurt, since she wasn’t used to it, and it hadn’t taken me long to notice she was worried about it after mounting her.

Upon lining up with the final knight, I could tell that he was scowling even through his helmet. Like hell I’ll let you regroup with more reinforcements.

“You brutes!” he shouted.

“All your underlings are gone! Come on, aren’t you going to avenge them?!”

“Grr, you bastards!”

I taunted the handsomely equipped knight so that he wouldn’t focus solely on retreating, and managed to get him to pull out his sword. Overflowing with godly power, he swung at us immediately. As I’d surmised from the quality of his subordinates’ gear, his weapon was particularly nice. I wasn’t well versed enough in theology to know the extent of its blessings, but I could tell that, at minimum, the Sun God had consecrated it to banish evil and never so much as chip.

A worthy opponent. I, too, had an invulnerable sword, and I parried his with my own. The godly blade glowed with heavenly light, and my cursed sword cried out in anger.

Phew, that had me worried for a second. I’d feared that the two might cancel each other out and both shatter, or that the Father God’s power might have a special bonus against my deeply heinous-looking sword.

But boy, was his weapon cool... In fact, it was so cool that I definitely would’ve looked like the villain to any third-party observer.

He tried to bat me off Dietrich’s back or take down the zentaur herself, but I blocked every attempt and returned a flurry of counters. The impressive resistances of his doubly bolstered—both mystic and miraculous—defenses meant that the Craving Blade did not strike true, even with my skill. Still, I was at least scoring his armor.

If only he hadn’t been so well equipped, I could’ve just yanked him off his horse by the collar with an Unseen Hand.

“Grgh! Ah! Why?! Why, God?! Why must You hand me such impossible trials?!”

The difficulties of fighting on horseback were largely mitigated thanks to Dietrich moving to match my balance. Reading which way I’d shift, she adjusted her posture so that I could swing true even without a saddle or stirrups. I wasn’t as stable as when I was on solid ground, of course, but she more than compensated for my meager Jockeying abilities.

Slowly but surely, I whittled the knight down until his movements began to dull. While I had to admit that he was skilled, he was clearly a better leader than fighter. As a benchmark, I wouldn’t be able to fell him in one strike if he focused entirely on defending, but there was no universe in which he could kill me.

“God! Why must you rend me apart from the lovely Helena so?!”

...Excuse me?

I finally managed to Disarm him, and he lost his balance, tumbling off his horse with a sorrowful cry. But, whatever—that was fine. We won, his armor would probably keep him alive, blah, blah, blah.

Could we go back to what he’d just said?!

“Dietrich, turn around! Now! Hurry!”

“Wha—huh?! I can’t stop on a dime like that! And quit shaking my shoulder!”

The unbelievable statement had me steering Dietrich around in a frenzy. The dismounted knight wobbled to his feet, throwing away his warped helmet in spite.

What he unveiled was a Prince Charming chiseled from white marble. His noble features were well defined, and the gentle waves of his golden hair sparkled even through the grime of battle. Two deep green eyes betrayed a sharp yet honest personality, though they currently burned with the will to keep fighting.

“Scoundrels! This isn’t over! I shall defeat you and save Lady Helena! Come at me, cravens! I’ll show you the honor of the Sternberg name!”

I scrambled off Dietrich’s back and sidestepped the man’s dazed attack, sweeping him off his feet. As he fell, I grabbed his right arm and got him right in the joints.

With that done, I—somewhat forcefully—pulled him to his feet.

“Excuse me,” I said. “May I have a word?”

“I have no words for a filthy kidnapper! Take me as a hostage if you must—I will never give up! My life means nothing until the fair Helena rests in safety!”

Is it just me...or is our story really not lining up?

[Tips] Very few people can create enchanted swords on their own: a magus with deep interests in metallurgy might be able to, and ordained Metal God clergy specialized in sword-making may choose to add blessings during the smithing process. As such, the prices for such weapons are astronomical—the cheapest will still easily rival the price for a newly built mansion.

“...So you mean to tell me that this whole affair has been the product of a misunderstanding?”

“I swear it upon the name of my former master, Count Agrippina von Ubiorum.”

I found myself sitting on a camp stool within a hastily pitched tent, face-to-face with a pretty boy fit to lead in a shojo manga—one who was discontentedly scratching his head. Ignoble as the gesture was, I could sympathize: I’d be doing the same if I could get away with it.

This had been a misunderstanding of catastrophic proportions, and both sides had incurred losses too great to be written off as a joke. It hurt my brain just trying to figure out where to start unraveling.

Perhaps the logical first step was to introduce Sir Bertram von Sternberg: heir apparent to the Sternberg county, he currently led his own knighthood, pledging his allegiance to his own father. In his spare time, the dashing nineteen-year-old was preparing himself to take the reins of the county in due time.

After explaining the reality of the situation to the man, insisting that I wasn’t lying until he lost the breath to refute me, and begrudgingly pulling out my ace in the hole—how many times was I going to have to use this thing?—to prove my identity, he’d finally caved. Somehow managing to calm his yet-battle-hungry subordinates, Sir Bertram had called for an impromptu conference to set the story straight.

To begin, we had been working under false pretenses. Miss Helena had, indeed, been at the center of marriage talks, yet the groom-to-be was not the aging Baron Attendorn.

I’d held my share of suspicions about the arrangement, and sure enough, the whole affair was the product of a perfect storm of bad luck.

You see, Baron Attendorn was just the middleman: he had played the role of a particularly prestigious carrier pigeon in the dealings between one handsome Sir Bertram and the princess of House Wiesenmuhle. Miss Helena then jumped to conclusions after overhearing bits and pieces of the story, and her father put the final nail in the coffin by insisting upon keeping the proposal a secret to wow his daughter with a wonderful surprise—one, might I add, that no one had asked for.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess. Engagements were up there with funerals and weddings proper for “events least fit to be sprung as a surprise.” How, in the name of all that was or had ever been holy, could you possibly fumble a situation this simple to the point of causing dozens and dozens of bloody injuries?

“We thankfully haven’t had any casualties, but just about everyone is gravely wounded.” Sir Bertram spoke in a daze. “How much in church donations will it take to heal them all? How many houses will teeter on the cusp of ruin trying to reequip their men? I suppose I must ask father to help me petition for an iatrurge...”

It seemed that the soldiers’ absurdly fancy gear had kept any of them from kicking the bucket, but quite a few of them were halfway to death—well, maybe a little more than halfway. Nearly as many had suffered damage to heirloom weapons or armor; the whole state of affairs was too atrocious to even laugh at.

In fact, if Sir Wiesenmuhle had popped out the bushes with a “Ta-dah!” and a prank’d sign, I think I would have killed him on the spot.

Jokes aside, the truth was that that very same Sir Wiesenmuhle had recognized how jumbled the situation had gotten and hatched the worst plan of all time to correct it. Seeing as the engagement was all but set in stone, he’d decided to let Sir Bertram deliver the news himself in bombastic fashion—for presumably no other reason than the fact that it’d be entertaining. That was why the future count was in the area at all, accompanied by his finest men.

Alas, the damsel in distress had convinced herself she was eloping with her retainer, and the pair had no small number of accomplices. Sir Wiesenmuhle had panicked: at this rate, both he and his prospective new in-laws would be slapped in the face with a double serving of embarrassment. He sent out a few troops in a hurry, but in a sorry twist, they were driven off by a pair of bodyguards-for-hire. Realizing he wouldn’t be able to handle this on his own, he bit the bullet and opened up to his contacts at House Sternberg...

And told them that his daughter had been kidnapped.

Sir Bertram had fallen in love with Miss Helena at first sight upon catching a glimpse at a Berylinian ball, and the thought that his beautiful fiancée might be hurt just as they were to be wed did not sit well with him. Rallying his men alongside an army on loan from Sir Wiesenmuhle, he’d thrown everything he had into this ludicrous game of tag.

I bet that would’ve made for a truly dramatic proposal, had things gone well. If only.

“My head... Oh, my head...”

You and me both. Mind if I take a break to go hurl?

“Who am I meant to blame? Sir Wiesenmuhle? Am I meant to condemn my own father-in-law?”

Well, uh...yeah. If anyone was to blame, it was certainly him. That the silver medal went to the fair Miss Helena made it hard to make any real comment.

“Perhaps,” I warily said, “you may be able to use this as an ace in the hole in future dealings with your in-laws.”

“No, I... I can’t even do that. What would His Majesty say about me if word reached him?”

To shield the Emperor with their finest soldiers was a noble’s duty; this episode was clearly an affront to that ideal. What self-respecting count could admit that he decimated his own prized army over a series of events that would seem unbelievable in a theatrical comedy? Even if His Majesty let him off with a mere warning, the Sternberg name would be in shambles; it was easy to imagine them being unofficially cast away from high society.

Finally tightening up his expression with tragic resolution, Sir Bertram declared, “This never happened. I’ll make sure of it, even if I have to borrow Sir Wiesenmuhle’s hand to do so.”

“I believe that would be for the best,” I agreed.

The circumstances were unacceptable, but Houses Sternberg and Wiesenmuhle were too deeply intertwined to back out now. Baron Attendorn may not have been high enough in standing to take Miss Helena as a mistress, but he was more than influential enough to play the part of a mediator; with him involved, the engagement couldn’t simply be canceled on a whim.

That was why this event would produce no deaths, no injuries, and not even a single scratch on the knights’ gear. The Wiesenmuhle coffers would feel a little lighter, or perhaps their warehouses would seem a little more spacious, but they’d figure it out. They were an ancient family: I’m sure they could rifle through old spoils of war to produce a few divine blades to reequip their men.

“Sir Erich, may I ask a favor?”

“Worry not, I shall keep the matter to myself. You can expect no more than a letter congratulating your marriage from Her Excellency.”

That I still drew breath was a fatal thorn in his side. The only reason I was still alive was because I’d been fortunate enough to avoid any unsurvivable predicaments—that, and they simply didn’t have the strength to kill me.

At this range on solid ground, I could do Sir Bertram in at any moment. He’d stationed his men a little ways away, so I could annihilate the bulk of them in an instant with the Daisy Petals, and mopping up the rest would be child’s play. This disparity in power was the main thing preventing him from treating me as a witness that needed to be forcibly silenced.

Violence really, truly did solve just about any problem...huh. Déjà vu.

They also knew that I could use magic, and the risk that I might leak information through some mysterious wizardry if they tried anything funny meant all they could do was pray I was telling the truth. After all, Sir Bertram’s mage wasn’t adept enough to counter that sort of spellcasting, if his fireball was anything to go off.

All my leverage combined left me sitting pretty despite the cold sweat running down my back.

“’Scuse me. I went and found them.”

Just as the awkwardness of watching the future count despair at the task at hand was beginning to get uncomfortable, Dietrich returned...

“Excuse my entrance, Sir Bertram.”

“Oh! Is it truly her?!”

...along with Rudolf, carrying a bundled up Miss Helena in his arms. I’d asked her to bring them back while I explained the situation. Luckily, the packhorse had given out shortly after clearing the bridge, and they’d apparently been pretty easy to track down.

“Wh-Who are you?”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, O fair Helena. My name is Bertram Eugen Lebol von Sternberg, and I am your fiancé.”

“Huh? Fiancé? Mine?”

“That’s right. I’ve come to take you home. Oh, you’re bright red—you must’ve caught a cold. The weather must have been terribly hard on you.” Turning his attention to Rudolf, he ordered, “You there, hand her to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Helena was passed from one set of arms to another, and the sudden appearance of a handsome young man in her bleary line of sight had her dazed.

I couldn’t blame her. Amidst a rapid turn of events, her addled mind was suddenly subjected to a real Prince Charming here to whisk her away. A princess packing as many flowers in her head as Miss Helena was sure to let the magical developments sink her into a dreamy stupor; the fever alone had her halfway there.

“Don’t worry, I shall call for a doctor at once. He may not be a specialist, but one of my men knows a little healing magic.”

“Oh... Um, thank you very much.”

The girl’s cheeks grew rosier than the product of sickness alone. Rudolf gazed on with great sadness, but also with a tinge of relief; he then attempted to back out of the tent.

“Ah, wait! Rudolf, what about you? You must be tired too...and you were so cold. Won’t you see the doctor with me?”

“No, my lady, you need not worry about me. I was not cold so much as you were feverish. I pray you to hurry to the physician and rest easy.”

The retainer politely pushed back the hand reaching out to him from the blanket cocoon and slipped out of the tent.

I bowed once to Sir Bertram and did the same, taking Dietrich with me. Seeing the reality of the situation and Rudolf’s expression had seemingly given her something to think about, and she quietly followed my lead.

The three of us walked a short distance away, hiding in a blind spot to evade the daggered glares of the soldiers preparing to leave. I found Castor and Polydeukes waiting for us there: they, too, could feel the bad atmosphere, and looked to be relieved when they saw me approaching.

“Well,” I sighed, “that’s that.”

“So... So you’re telling me the princess goes home and it’s ‘The End’? What? Are we really leaving it at that?”

Dietrich didn’t seem quite satisfied, and honestly, I was sharing the load. Still, I wasn’t about to wrap myself up in any more trouble than I already had. Worsening this scandal by turning into a real kidnapper wasn’t in my agenda.

“This is how it was meant to be. My lady will return home, and it seems she’s found herself a caring husband to take care of her. Isn’t this exactly what we all wanted?”

“But Rudolf!”

“Thank you, Miss Dietrich, but it’s fine—really. I even got to enjoy a fleeting dream: be it just to carry her as it may, to hold her in my arms offered me a moment of bliss.”

“But... Are you really okay with that?”

The zentaur squinted her eyes as if to ask the man whether he was giving up; the loyal servant shook his head as if to answer that there was nothing to give up on.

“The fairy tales end with the knight whisking away the princess in a Happily Ever After, but the truth is that it is that After which is the real challenge. The sheltered princess can’t keep up with the knight’s way of life; the lowly knight can’t provide for the princess. That’s why this is the real storybook ending.”

And the two lived happily ever after—The End. A textbook ending, but it rarely conveyed the reality of an after-story. Had Miss Helena gone with Rudolf, the odds were good that she’d have grown sick of him during their ensuing life on the lam.

We were talking about a girl whose meals conveniently appeared before her and whose empty plates vanished without any effort on her part; others came to dress her when she wished to change clothes, and merchants visited her residence if she wished to shop. Even accompanied by a handful of servants, life in the countryside would be unbearable for her. Rudolf had said they’d swiped some gems and mystic tools to sell, but how long that could fund the Wiesenmuhle princess’s patience was anyone’s guess.

While Miss Helena had naively spoken about how she’d help provide via her needlework, she could only say that now because she knew nothing of true toil. Without expensive lotions or ointments, the skin on her hands would crack from the labor; would she still be able to hold her head high then?

“I’m content with the short-lived dream I was able to live. And my lady is now living her own: her dashing fiancé came to save her with breathtaking bravery.”

“Rudolf...”

“Don’t you think that’s a happier ending for everyone?”

The poor luck carved into his expression hadn’t changed from when we’d first met. Yet something in Rudolf’s smile seemed refreshed, almost—as if he’d unloaded a massive burden from his shoulders. It was odd to think that the burden in question was everything he’d built up in his life until now.

“But then where’s your happy ending?” Dietrich said with a grimace. “...Ugh.”

“You may be able to ask to be referred to Sir Bertram,” I suggested.

The man shook his head. A servant who betrays his master’s trust loses it forevermore, he said, and he further sighed that any employment with one of the affiliated parties would just see him take the fall for something sooner or later.

“I still have this,” Rudolf said, patting the sword at his hip. “This, and the memory of a wonderful dream. That’s more than enough to get along in this world. The crew waiting at Innenstadt are in the same boat. You know, maybe I’ll invite them to join me as adventurers or wandering knights.”

He smiled a lifeless smile. If nothing else, he wanted to see off the people he’d entangled without worrying us. Trying to put up a strong front, he pulled out his purse.

“Here is your reward. It isn’t nearly enough for all you’ve done, but please take it as a token of my appreciation.”

Taking the pouch in hand, I opened it to see what must have been all the money he and Miss Helena had prepared. A few gold coins were sprinkled amid a mountain of silver.

“I can’t take this,” I said, pushing it back into his hands. “We didn’t finish your request: the job was to see Miss Helena to Innenstadt. In which case, you don’t owe us anything.”

“B-But—”

“Then don’t mind if I do.” Dietrich plucked the wallet out of Rudolf’s hands before he could try and hand it to me again. “You need to get to Innenstadt either way, right? I don’t wanna part ways here just to have them figure, ‘Hey, while we’re at it,’ and try to keep you quiet. We two can handle ourselves if they do, but—no offense—I’m kinda worried about leaving you on your own.”

“Are you sure?” Rudolf asked.

“Sure I’m sure. Besides, I’ve made my peace: I still don’t have what it takes to drag this little runt back home.” Playing with the weighty sack of coins, the zentaur warrior drooped her good ear and glared my way. “Can’t believe you were going easy on me. I’m still leagues away from being the kinda woman who can threaten your life, and, well, how am I supposed to get there if I stick around and let you take all the real fights for yourself?”

“I wasn’t holding back, per se,” I said with a shrug. “I just wasn’t going all out.”

Dietrich punched me in the shoulder for my cheeky excuse. I could’ve avoided it, but I’d let her have this one. Despite this being a product of my promise to the madam, I couldn’t deny that I’d hurt her pride as a fighter.

“Plus, Erich only helped ’cause I was so gung ho about it, so it’s my duty to see things through. That’s what being a cool warrior’s all about, right?”

“Yeah. I respect that, Dietrich.”

“Would it kill you to compliment me as a woman, at least at the end?”

Waving off the sulking zentaur, I pulled out a little pouch of my own and tossed it at Rudolf.

“Take it. Consider it a severance bonus.”

With a nice jingle, my winnings from the tournament a few towns back landed in his hands. I’d left it all in the original packaging because I hadn’t needed the money for anything, but this was a good chance to put it to use. A man and his friends setting off on their own could use all the help they could get.

“Wha—huh?! But this is—”

“Hey! No fair! You never lent me any money!”

That tiny pouch had five drachmae in it. With that, they’d be able to buy up the gear they needed and still have a few weeks’ worth of meals to spare. The rest was up to them and fate.

“Hold it, Rudolf! Gimme that! It’s too much for you!”

“Huh?! No, shouldn’t we be giving this back?!”

“Use part of that to buy Dietrich some new equipment, please. You can use the rest to buy a new horse for that carriage, if you’d like, but be careful: zentaur gear costs a lot. And make sure you hold the purse strings. Dietrich isn’t allowed to have any more than one silver piece at a time.”

I placed great emphasis on Rudolf controlling the finances. We were talking about the kind of fool who couldn’t even finish a shopping run without giving into the temptations of booze; who knew what kind of garbage she’d magic perfectly good gold coins into next?

The two of them squabbled over the bag for a bit until I whipped them into order. I forced the luckless man to accept the gift and stash it away, and made it very, very clear to the warrior that she was not to touch the money.

“All right,” I said, “it’s about time we head off.”

“Yep. Guess we gotta jump the bridge again...”

“Speaking of which, I’m impressed you were able to do that while carrying Miss Helena, Rudolf.”

“Oh, please, I’m no jockey. Your horse was just so impressive that it cleared the gap without any input on my part.”

Blind spot or otherwise, our chatter was sure to draw the attention of the vengeful soldiers eventually; we decided to head out before any of them could disobey their orders to cease fighting.

We hopped over the bridge and recovered the packhorse—it was looking a little better for wear now—and all the luggage it carried. Despite Dietrich’s grumbling that he ought to just take them for his loyal service, Rudolf insisted on leaving his lady’s belongings nearer to the bridge, so we doubled back a short ways, where he unloaded one of his saddlebags.

“That’s everything.”

Content that he’d accounted for all her belongings, the man clapped his hands free of dirt. It seemed to me that he shook off the last of his attachments with the dust, leaving everything packed in one abandoned saddlebag.

“Apologies for the wait,” he said. “Mr. Erich, are you...?”

“Getting home has always been my main goal, and I only took this request on the side. Stopping by Innenstadt would take me farther out from here—so it looks like this is where we part ways.”

This was supposed to be a way of making back some of the change I’d spent on the way home; what a detour it had become. Additionally, I’d ended up losing money in the process. I guess I was just a big softie.

But in order to not lose any more, I’d need to get home before the first snowfall.

“I guess so,” Dietrich said. “Well, you can relax and leave this guy to me.”

“Don’t cause him any trouble, okay? Keep the liquor to one libra a day. And don’t throw any tantrums just because you want snacks. Oh, and when you’re drinking on the road—”

“I’m taking care of him, dammit!”

Dietrich could huff and puff all she pleased, but when I asked her how many times she’d acted like a child on our journey, the fully grown zentaur turned away with a pout. She really needed to understand that my impression of her fiscal sense was that of a five-year-old in a candy aisle.

“Farewell,” I said at last. “I wish you the best, Dietrich, warrior of the Hildebrand tribe.”

“Yeah. See you again, Erich, warrior of Konigstuhl...and one of my heroes.”

I bumped my fist against hers, and she reached around for a hug—but not before I could block her incoming face with my hand. It was wedged between her lips and mine, and as she placed a kiss on my inner knuckles, so too did she place a grumpy gaze on me.

Hey, it was better than a flick to the forehead, right?

Truth be told, she had stolen my heart for a moment. When she’d finally awoken to what she truly wanted to be, and assumed the dignity and responsibility to pursue her ideals, she had been simply beautiful.

“Not quite.”

“Y’know, you could’ve given me that one.”

Slipping out of her arms, I jumped onto Polydeukes before she could say any more, taking off with Castor’s reins in my hand.

“Oh, jeez! The next time we meet, I’ll drag you back home kicking and screaming! I’ll get so strong that you won’t be able to lift a finger against me!”

“Sounds good! I’ll be looking forward to it! Feel free to challenge me anytime!”

A warrior’s goodbye must never be dreary.

Basking in the joy of seeing one of my own sprung back to life, I rode toward home. Every single episode we’d come across had been an absolute clusterfuck, but you know what? Looking back, it hadn’t been all too bad.

[Tips] All’s well that ends well—Happily Ever After. Fairy tales use this magical defense to dispel all doubt and ease all fear; yet what truly matters most is how the heroes prepare for whatever story may come after.