Chapter 15: The First Battle
People tend to have imaginations about places they haven’t experienced.
For instance, convents in male-only areas or monasteries in female-only areas are prime examples. The terms “male-only” and “female-only” inevitably raise expectations of a rather salacious and lascivious atmosphere. It makes it seem like all sorts of incidents are bound to happen.
Half of that may be wrong, but the other half is right. Based on the experience of visiting a convent as a young boy because my parents were acquainted with the mother superior, I can assert with certainty.
Monasteries are incredibly dull. Essentially, a vow of silence is enforced, so no one opens their mouths. They even tiptoe around, making as little noise as possible with their footsteps, just doing chores. To be fair, the constant working is somewhat understandable.
Simply put… there’s nothing to do in a monastery besides work. Living by monastery rules, it’s only natural that life becomes as gloomy as a city shrouded in a hazy smog. There was only one thing.
Secret sexual relations.
With no proper entertainment or amusements, people in the throes of lust were gathered together.
As a result, homosexuality ran rampant in the female-only monastery areas, and in the male-only convent areas, there were even ghastly rumors of nuns conceiving with visitors during one-night stands, then killing and burying the illegitimate infants, with piles of child remains being unearthed.
Of course, this was to some extent the monasteries’ own doing. When they admitted good-for-nothing bums with no interest in monastic life, just to receive donations from nobles, it was only natural for things to get murky.
From the perspective of a good-for-nothing bum going to muddy the waters… being sent to a monastery as a noble essentially meant this: You have no inheritance, so meekly crawl into the monastery and live out your life meekly until death.
Moreover, monastics are not even clergy like priests by principle. Monastics are simply lay people who live in the monastery and carry on a religious life. Unless they study separately and receive priestly ordination, it is difficult to amass influence, making it akin to a death sentence for a noble.
Perhaps for that reason, the only ones who came to see me off when I boarded the carriage were my immediate family members, Duke Aselton and Therver. Not a single vassal showed up.
Even the intelligence officer Captain Overth, whom I had been close with, deliberately stayed with the vassals out of concern that our secret affair might be exposed… Everything was going according to plan. I smiled contentedly while watching the servants load my belongings onto the carriage.
In contrast, Duke Aselton furrowed his brow as if unable to understand.
“Narva. Are you really set on the Templar Order?”
“Who said that?”
“Your brother has been boasting about it everywhere.”
It seems our unruly second brother Therver had already spread the rumor far and wide. According to Therver, I was a passionate noble youth who would take the monastic vows but never abandon my knightly dreams.
But dreams and reality differ. I had resolved to thoroughly shatter the perception of me as the young Narva who dreamed of the Apostle knights.
“I don’t have any lands to rule.”
“Even without lands to rule, you can still lead people. Narva, a knight’s dream can be achieved anywhere! This brother promises you that!!!”
“There are free knights who lead just people without lands.”
Usually, these free knights who lead their own gangs are called bandits. It’s the origin of the word ‘freelancer’ – you can think of it as them thrusting their lances wherever they go.
Living proof that freedom doesn’t always have a positive meaning.
“Brother, I don’t want to get ahead of myself before it’s even clear if I can become a monastic knight. Doesn’t one need to humbly work hard for even the slightest possibility?”
“Hmm. You seem to have the proper mindset as a warrior. If that is your resolve.”
Of course, I had no real intention of becoming a monastic knight. According to this body’s memories, knights are broadly divided into three types. One is the typical landed knight, another is the wandering free knight, and the last is the monastic knight who has sworn eternal crusade against the heathens.
As you can probably tell, the toughest and most demanding is the monastic knight. They are the closest counterpart to the holy knights of fantasy novels, but I haven’t heard any rumors of them wielding divine powers or miracles.
Holy knights who can’t use holy powers? If all they do is relentlessly wield swords, their skills must be exceptional, but I had not the slightest intention of doing it myself. Who would choose such a retarded class?
“Anyway, I’ll be sure to write you a letter once I’ve arrived safely. Please come visit me early on so I can establish a foothold.”
“Of course! Got to show our brother some spirit.”
“Therver, don’t neglect your duty of eradicating the raiders…”
Therver was puffing out his chest while Duke Aselton clicked his tongue. There were no cracks to be seen anywhere. It was a good thing the chances of being murdered in my sleep were low.
And so I boarded the carriage headed for the monastery.
***
A few hours into the carriage ride, deep regret began enveloping my entire body.
It was around when we reached the edge of the forest that the aftereffects I had been forcibly enduring came crashing down all at once. An unexpected obstacle had appeared. In hindsight, I realized I was extremely prone to motion sickness.
“Urrp. Ueaahck…”
Back when I lived in the 21st century, it was so severe that just the smell of a car seat would make my body tremble and a pungent saliva would well up in my mouth. It wasn’t just once or twice that I turned deathly pale, shivering uncontrollably before vomiting.
This was the case even in an era of paved asphalt roads and smooth rubber tires rolling along. Now, how would it be? The carriage was jostling along not a well-maintained road but a dirt path, shaking so vigorously that despite using the bedding I had brought as cushions, my body would occasionally float up.
As a result of my insides being turned upside down several times, the escort had to stop.
The knight Sir Topa, with his protruding goat-like beard and tasked with ensuring this escort’s safety, exchanged awkward looks with the attendants.
“Is the Young Master always this severe?”
“Well, I’ve never heard rumors of him going outside.”
“This is troubling… Although the Young Master was disowned for an unsavory reason, he is undoubtedly of Povius blood. Seeing him suffer like this doesn’t sit well with me. We should rest here for a bit. Everyone, prepare to make a campfire.”
I raised my hand, gasping for breath. A wordless gesture telling them not to bother. Then, I gathered the bile-mixed saliva pooling in my mouth, ptooh, spat it out, and opened my lips.
“It’s fine. I’ll just rest my eyes inside the carriage, so let’s keep going.”
“Are you sure you’ll be alright, Young Master?”
“You still call me Young Master even after I was disowned.”
“For you to be in your right mind after such an insult would be strange. If the culprit wasn’t the brutish Yubas, but rather I was that husband, I would have slapped him silly. No, I may have even drawn my sword on him.”
It seems Sir Topa takes a sympathetic view towards me. Sir Topa is a noble who values honor, and as a knight, has the concept of honor killings ingrained in him as a local. He even gritted his teeth as if imagining killing both wife and child.
“And yet you endured it well, Young Master. All of Povius is indebted to you. Seeing them blindly criticize you when they don’t know better leaves me troubled.”
“Indebted?”
“Any further and it could have led to war. Whether you were conscious of it or not, you must have judged it so and held back.”
Truer words were never spoken by accident. While I had stumbled upon the right answer, I didn’t know what known facts led him to think that way. At least since Therver thought similarly, it seemed knights would likely be well-disposed towards me.
I wet my lips with water from a leather pouch, spat it out onto the road, and continued speaking.
“If that’s the case, then good. Let’s depart again. We have a long way to go.”
“Yes! Everyone, move out!”
But motion sickness doesn’t go away that easily. At best, vomiting once made the dizziness subside slightly. I had no leeway to worry about others. Perhaps my sour expression showed, as John who rode with me seemed uneasy.
“If you have nothing to do, practice reloading the crossbow.”
“W-well, about that. Sir Topa instructed not to do anything that could threaten Young Master’s well-being.”
“Then just practice drawing and resetting the drawstring without loading bolts. That much should be fine.”
Up to this point, I noticed John’s expression shift peculiarly. As someone with a keen sense for oddities, he seemed to intuit that something was amiss.
“Um, Young Master.”
John began glancing this way as he slowly reset the crossbow’s drawstring after pulling it back.
“Come to think of it, I’ve heard that crossbows aren’t used for hunting because they cause too much damage to the prey.”
“Wasn’t it said to be for sport? A hunt where such things don’t need to be considered.”
Hunters may need to do so to preserve the pelt and meat to sell. But for a hunt where the pelt and meat aren’t the goal, being overkill with force was fine. Yet our Jon seemed to have formed an odd imagination.
He suddenly welled up with tears and deeply bowed his head.
“What’s the matter? If you have some troubles weighing on your mind, I’ll gladly listen.”
“I miss the dedicated maid who attended to you…”
“?”
For a moment I wondered if John had feelings for Edwina, hence his longing. But it was merely:
“If the maid was here, I could have gotten off the carriage and walked outside.”
“John, you’re being granted a privilege. Everyone else is walking while you’re riding in the carriage, isn’t that an advantage?”
This fool was talking nonsense out of complacency. In a soft voice, I listed the facts to appeal to John’s reason. Objectively speaking, John, you are indulging in tremendous luxury.
John then wiped his tears with his sleeve, raised his head, and looked at me with sparkling eyes.
“Then can I switch with that friend outside?”
“Cough.”
“…”
After that, Jon silently continued practicing reloading the crossbow. I surrendered my body to the rocking of the carriage, swaying about. An awkward silence ensued for a while.
Bored from constantly drawing the crossbow’s string, Jon absentmindedly looked outside. Following his gaze, the sun was setting over the lush navy blue forest.
A flock of birds taking flight from the forest happened to be the highlight of this scenery. John opened his mouth wide in pure admiration.
“Wow, it’s a wonderful sight with the birds flying in flocks.”
“They’re coming.”
“What?”
From the forest where the sun was setting, a flock of birds took flight. A sight one might see in a nature documentary, but from the perspective of being targeted, I could only view it with paranoia.
Just before sunset, obscured by the backlight and shadows of the forest, they could approach without their exact location being detected. Once it turned completely dark, they would swiftly move in for the kill.
“John, go tell Sir Topa that the enemy will come from the west.”
“Pardon? …The enemy?”
“After delivering that, you’ll reload all the crossbows in the carriage.”
“There are five of them!”
To John’s baffling remark, I gave him a simple answer:
“Then should I be the one to reload them?”
“…”
“Do it if you want to live.”
The most important thing in battle is setting a clear objective. For this battle, I set the objective as enduring for the allotted time. The question was the enemy’s caliber.
Gazing at the forest swaying in the wind, I tapped my forehead with my index finger.
Yubas.
The time had finally come to confront those bastards head-on.
