Chapter 77: Phantom Thief Dauphin (21). Farewell Beneath the Full Moon
To the lords of the Birka Kingdom, the Knights of Sarnos were nothing short of enviable.
“Haah, if only I had a knight order like that... no, even just one knight like them!”
“Damn it, I won’t even ask for a full knight—just give me a single trainee and I’d be grateful...!”
When speaking of the value of a fourth-tier knight, people often used the phrase “worth a hundred men.”
It meant that a single knight of that level was equivalent to commanding a hundred soldiers.
Of course, that didn’t mean one knight could literally face a hundred men head-on and win. But with hit-and-run tactics or psychological warfare to crush morale, the phrase wasn’t all that far-fetched.
In that sense, the Sarnos family—who boasted more than a hundred fourth-tier knights—possessed a military force so overwhelming that it was a symbol of terror to most lords.
Imagine the Count of Sarnos sent a hundred knights against a noble he disliked.
To resist, that noble would need to gather ten thousand troops. Since most couldn’t muster more than a few dozen standing soldiers, they’d have to conscript peasants and commoners.
And that act of conscription was already a loss.
It meant pulling productive workers—those who toiled and paid taxes—away from the fields to do something that produced no economic value.
Worse still, you’d have to feed and house those conscripts. Maybe even arm them.