Chapter 451: All of Basel Is Mine
My skills had grown beyond all comparison since our last duel, and the Lightning Knight was completely thrown. While Handendorf scrambled just to keep up his guard, I caught the halberd’s hook in a gap in his armor at the joint and yanked hard.
A halberd is so devastating against cavalry because its hook makes pulling a rider down easy. That holds true even in mounted combat. Handendorf lost his balance and fell from his horse.
The moment he tried to scramble back to his feet, I cracked him over the skull with the halberd. It was excellent at wrecking enemy armor, but it worked just as well as a blunt weapon.
After that, countless knights threw themselves at me. They were hungry to make a name for themselves by bringing me down, but I cut through them mercilessly, as if I’d become Samson himself. Captured knights are valuable, so I dealt with most of them simply by unhorsing them.
At last, the Count of Basel came into view.
"Damn it, how can this be! Is that truly a man?!"
"My lord! Get out of here! That thing is a monster!"
"It’s a demon risen from purgatory! We have to flee!"
"Aaagh! My army, beaten by a lowly duchy knight!"
He couldn’t seem to believe this unreal turn of events. No wonder. He’d fielded over two thousand troops and some two hundred heavy cavalry, only to watch it all collapse under a single charge from 150 light cavalry.
The battle had been decided the moment we broke through the heavy cavalry and slaughtered the infantry. Terrified by the brutal power of the Gale Knights, which they’d only heard about in rumors, the soldiers began surrendering or fleeing.
Even the commanders gave up the fight.
A single breakthrough brought it all crashing down.
"My lord! The Count of Basel is running!"
"We have to catch him, quickly!"
"Leave him. We’re going to Landschaft."
"What?"
Catching the enemy’s supreme commander as he fled with his tail between his legs would end this war, but then I wouldn’t be able to plunder the remaining territories, which was the most important part. I needed to earn the plunderer trait.
"After being crushed this badly, the Count of Basel will either shut himself up in his castle or go begging to the Swiss Confederation."
"My lord! If the Swiss Confederation joins in too, won’t the war grow far too big?"
"Even within the Confederation, their interests are divided, so we have time."
As Barosi feared, a Swiss Confederation invasion was an unpredictable factor. If I hadn’t learned about the Confederation’s internal situation from the provincial lords I’d captured, I would have been worried about a large-scale invasion.
The only canton that had joined hands with the Count of Basel was Zurich, the leading power of the Swiss Confederation. Zurich’s influence is certainly enormous, but its grand strategy has failed, so the anti-Zurich faction won’t just sit back and watch anymore.
And even if they do come, well, I still have one Cavalry Breakthrough 200% and one Courage 200% Boost Scroll left, so 150 riders would be more than enough to wreck a Swiss Confederation army.
"We won!"
"Streit! Streit!"
My men went wild over this unbelievable victory. We’d made another legend, and once word of this battle spread across Basel, its people would come to fear the Gale Knights.
But as they cleaned up the battlefield, my men began to have doubts.
"The moment that lance hit me, I thought, this is it, I’m dead, and then the lance snapped."
"You too? Tsk tsk, those Basel bastards must carry junk lances."
"A horse in barding slammed into my unarmored horse, and my horse won. How does that make sense?"
"Come to think of it, I don’t even know how we won."
With one thing after another defying common sense, my men arrived at a single conclusion: the Gale Knight was a great knight beloved by the Lord. In the Middle Ages, tie something to religion and anything was possible.
"That’s it! It was a feat only possible because he’s blessed by the Lord!"
"The Gale Knight has received the Lord’s grace! No doubt about it!"
"Of course! That’s why we won! We’re the Lord’s cavalry!"
"Streit! Gale Knights! The Lord’s cavalry! The army of miracles!"
"Is that what they’re calling themselves now?"
"Yes. Isn’t it all thanks to your power, my lord, you who have received the holy Lord’s grace?"
"..."
Barosi’s eyes were full of unshakable faith.
...If that settles it for them, fine by me.
Since the feat made no sense by any ordinary standard, Barosi and the rest of my men explained it as the Lord’s grace. It was really the system, but there was no way they could know that, so it was a reasonable conclusion for them to reach.
The Middle Ages were the age of Christianity, so it was only natural for them to think in religious terms.
The clergy might condemn us with something like "How dare you call yourselves the holy army of the Lord?!", but a knight’s oath itself makes him a warrior of Christ and Saint Peter, so it wasn’t really a problem.
Stories of knights who won through the Lord’s grace were common enough anyway.
More pressing matters came first, so I tallied up the order’s losses.
My men’s casualties were five dead and ten wounded. There were no casualties at all during the charge, but once we stopped and the invincibility wore off, we took losses fighting the enemy’s guard.
There was no way to know the enemy’s exact losses, but a rough count of the bodies strewn across the field came to around five hundred. By any measure, it was a perfect victory for the Gale Knights, but the deaths of my men still weighed on me.
"When can your families in Bavaria get here?"
"They set out around the start of Lent, so they should arrive by early March at the latest."
After the Magyars were established, Barosi and Herto sent letters to their families still in Bavaria, telling them to come to Rosenheim. Surprisingly, there were no real restrictions on crossing borders.
No, even if there had been, nobody could have enforced them. The reality was that no one knew who was moving where, or how. And His Majesty the Handsome, of Bavaria’s House of Wittelsbach, wouldn’t give these Hungarian refugees a second thought.
The Beren border, however, might grow restless, so I sent a letter to the grand duke in advance, letting him know that Hungarian refugees would be crossing into Beren and asking him to keep them safe.
Earlier this year, I’d been roped into an unexpected trip to Austria as part of the Duke of Altringen’s retinue, so the grand duke would grant a favor this small without a word. The border lords would be on edge, but I wasn’t worried.
Touching the Hungarian refugees would mean picking a fight with me, and right now there isn’t a prince in the east with the guts for that. And once word gets out about how the County of Basel was laid to waste, they’ll just look the other way.
"..."
"..."
The captured Lightning Knight Handendorf and the Baron of Landschaft glared at each other for a long time. They got along so badly that anyone watching would have taken them for sworn enemies.
Well, a man with a Justice (good) disposition and one with an Ambitious (evil) disposition were never going to be friends. I sipped Rosenheim wine and leisurely watched their battle of wills. The battlefield cleanup still wasn’t finished, after all.
"You disobeyed our liege’s orders, set an ambush, and still got yourself captured?"
"You got wrecked in a handful of exchanges, and you’re criticizing me?"
"Baron of Landschaft, if you’d just followed our liege’s orders properly, we might have won."
"Even if I had followed orders, do you really think we could have beaten that lunatic who broke through the heavy cavalry and smashed our liege’s army? I saw everything from his back!"
"Is that something to brag about?"
Handendorf was a polite, courteous knight, but in front of the Baron of Landschaft he openly showed his disgust. If I hadn’t been there, the two of them probably would have come to blows.
"Hmph, at least I used my head and attacked the Gale Knight in my own way. But you were captured without even putting up a fight. How can you hold your head up?"
"The Gale Knight is the finest knight in Beren. There’s no shame at all in losing to him. What I’m pointing out is your selfishness in defying our liege’s orders! The previous Baron of Landschaft was a man worthy of respect, yet his successor turned out like this!"
"You dare insult me, you bastard?! You have no legitimacy!"
"What?! I am the rightful lord of Birsfelden! Where do you get off spouting that nonsense!"
"Don’t make me laugh! Isn’t the legitimacy problem exactly why you became our liege’s dog?! What noble in Basel doesn’t know that?! You filthy mongrel!"
"You’ll be thrown into purgatory to rot!"
When it turned into personal attacks, I slammed the halberd beside me down between them. Bang! Then I pulled it out of the floor and quietly separated the two of them.
"Baron of Landschaft, once the battlefield is cleaned up, I’ll be heading to your lands."
"Grrr, so you let our liege escape on purpose so you could plunder my lands?"
"Not only your lands, but Birsfelden as well."
Now all of Basel was as good as mine.
I wonder how this land’s master will respond, now that he’s run away.