Chapter 448: Let Him Run

An ambush is a tactic that pays off handsomely as long as the target never sees it coming, but it has one blind spot: once the target knows where you are, the ambushers find it extremely difficult to adapt.

Swinging a halberd in the woods is a bad idea, so for the first time in a while I drew my cavalry sword, light as a feather by comparison. I swept through the startled enemy like a raging storm, and the ambush force collapsed in moments.

When you move from battlefield to battlefield and face countless enemies, sometimes their faces lodge in your mind as clearly as photographs. Young soldiers, old soldiers, middle-aged soldiers. And children.

Mid-swing, I realized that the face of the soldier who had collapsed in front of me was startlingly young, and I stopped. The boy soldier looking up at me had eyes full of terror. His trousers were soaked through.

"...Go."

"Eeek!"

The boy screamed and fled. There aren’t enough men of fighting age, so children like him get dragged to the battlefield too. That’s the reality. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but it’s all karma coming back on us nobles. Pure karma.

"Aaaargh!"

"Nekem van egy!"

...Oh, for fuck’s sake.

One of my riders cut down the boy I’d let run, without a shred of mercy. Damn it. I can’t blame the man for it, either. As it stands, people already call me soft for showing enemies even a scrap of pity.

But maybe that was the signal.

The enemy couldn’t hold out against the indiscriminate slaughter.

"You men! Don’t run!"

"To hell with this, you want us all to die here?!"

"Run! The Gale Knight is here!"

"The devil from the east! Ungarn! It’s Ungarn!"

The soldiers of Landschaft turned and fled, every last one of them, and my Hungarian riders turned into demons, slashing wildly at the backs of the fleeing men. Another lingering habit from their nomadic roots.

In the middle of the chaos, Ted reported to me.

"Master! The enemy commander is running!"

"Can’t let him go. Reconnaissance unit, follow me!"

I led my personal squad and the reconnaissance unit in pursuit of the Baron of Landschaft, who was fleeing in the opposite direction. Now that we were clear of the trees, I sheathed the cavalry sword and pulled the halberd off Chrysos’s saddle.

Mmm, that heavy weight really is better.

The cavalry sword has become far too light for me.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

It turned into a running chase. The baron fled with everything he had, and we couldn’t quite close the gap. When a fleeing rider commits and pushes his horse to the limit, even the Gale Knights have trouble catching him.

Then Ted pulled the arquebus off his saddle. He carried that thing around like a lucky charm, and I’d often wondered whether he’d ever actually use it. Ted calmly struck his flint.

Keeping your balance on a galloping horse while working a flint to light a match cord is practically an acrobat’s trick. After a few failures he finally managed it and fixed the burning cord in place.

Ted was a sharpshooter with the arquebus by anyone’s reckoning. He’d earned distinction at the battle of Feuzen by picking off enemy commanders one by one. But lighting the thing in the saddle wasn’t enough for him, and now he meant to shoot from horseback as well?

Was that even possible?

Simply firing an arquebus is hard enough.

Bang!

I worried Ted’s horse might spook, but thankfully it only flinched and never bucked. Hmm, had Ted deliberately picked a mount that doesn’t startle at gunpowder?

Neigghhh!

Chrysos and the rest of our horses were startled by the shot and veered off course. We brought them back under control and closed ranks again. Astonishingly, the ball had struck the Baron of Landschaft dead on.

When the baron tumbled from his horse, the fleeing enemy riders panicked and froze. Then they drew their swords and charged us as we bore down on them. My halberd split a brave rider’s head in two.

Crunch! Crash!

The riders closest to the baron threw themselves into his defense, but the situation was hopeless. Some of them held us off bravely while the rest tried to get their lord onto a horse and away.

We surrounded them in an instant and overwhelmed them completely.

Their efforts were as futile as pouring water into a sieve.

Enough blood had been spilled.

So I called on them to surrender.

"Surrender."

"..."

"Your baron has been shot. Without treatment, he won’t last long."

In the end, the loyal riders surrendered. Their liege’s life hung in the balance. Having riders like that made the baron a far luckier noble than he deserved to be.

"Ngh, damn it."

"Count yourself lucky it hit your shoulder."

The Baron of Landschaft looked absolutely livid.

I had my men strip his armor off by force.

"Arschloch! That hurts! Take it off gently, you bastards!"

"Baron of Landschaft, how about you shut up?"

"You wouldn’t take it any better with a ball in you!"

The Baron of Landschaft is relatively young. Mid-twenties, and somehow the way he talks and carries himself is exactly like Michael. But his howling about the pain got so grating that I eventually resorted to violence.

Thwack!

The baron went limp.

Finally, some quiet.

"How dare you do that to our lord!"

"Baron of Rosenheim!"

The baron’s surrendered riders objected, but they’d been disarmed and my men were watching them with murder in their eyes, so protest was all they could manage. First I examined the wound. Hmm, the armor had kept the shoulder from being completely shattered.

I’m no expert in medicine, but I do know you disinfect a wound. I brought over alcohol and poured it straight in, which jolted the unconscious baron awake, howling about the pain all over again.

"Fuuuuuuck!"

I know it hurts. Could you shut up anyway? In the end I fetched a cloth and gagged him. My men had a rough time holding down the thrashing baron. I used a sterilized dagger to dig out the embedded ball.

Knowing nothing whatsoever about surgery, I had no choice but to root around in the wound to get that lump of lead out. Did I hit a nerve? A bone? Who cares. As long as he stays alive, it’s fine.

"Mmph?! Mmmph! Mmph!"

"Damn, the blood’s really pouring out."

Time for the Streit field treatment. I pulled out the emergency kit I’d bought with points for exactly this kind of moment, sprinkled on the hemostatic agent, and wrapped him up tight in bandages. Thankfully, it seemed to go fine.

I only use this kit on men I absolutely have to keep alive. Using it too often draws attention. It’s no guarantee of survival, but it raises the odds considerably, and that’s what matters.

Noble prisoners are extremely valuable.

You can’t just kill a walking vending machine.

I’ve saved a number of my own seriously wounded men using modern hemostatics and anesthetics, but there are limits to that too. Points are finite, and the wounded are many.

So mostly what I did was pass various bits of knowledge along indirectly to Arzt, the court physician. Always disinfect the wound. Disinfect your instruments too. Use clean bandages. And so on.

Thanks to that, the death rate among our wounded dropped dramatically. It beats rinsing used bandages in water, rewrapping them, and praying to the Lord by about a million times.