Chapter 393 — Setting the Ambush
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
"Armor and sword?" The woman knight blinked, then looked down at the alloy armor on her body — stamped with the Cecil steel mark, faint magical radiance flowing in its seams, strange in shape yet full of a sense of beauty — and at the Molten-Cleave Sword at her waist, and nodded without thinking. "They are fine things... At first, when I took off the armor handed down in my family and put on this 'standard-issue equipment,' I felt a little regret, but now I think they truly are good goods — this sword especially is far better than my old fine-steel blade."
"Do you see those soldiers? Every one of them has a set like it," Walder said, pointing with his chin at the Cecil soldiers busy about the position. "I have asked around: a common soldier's armor and blade differ hardly at all from an officer's; the latter merely have a few more gilt patterns and slightly better magical materials. Do you know what that means?"
The woman knight's face turned thoughtful.
"It means that once a man puts on this armor and takes up this Molten-Cleave Sword, five or six common soldiers can bring down a Transcendent knight like you — and that still counts your advantage in swordsmanship and battle experience. If they use thermal ray guns and grenades, you could likely not handle even two. Elsewhere a Transcendent knight may well stand against a hundred, but here you are at most a soldier who fights a bit better than the rest."
Margarita: "..."
"So the lord keeps us out of the battle not because he does not trust us, but because he does not need us," Walder said, casting his gaze into the distance and letting out a soft breath. "But he lets us watch, lets us learn alongside them — which shows he hopes that one day we may be of use. What he needs is not one knight who can fight, but a company of knights who will learn of their own accord and keep pace with him. Do you understand?"
"...I understand."
"Good," Walder said, smiling as he nodded. "Then let us watch quietly, and see just how the Cecil men make war..."
A messenger came up onto the hill, ran to Philip, and put the latest intelligence into his hand.
Philip unfolded it and saw several lines written in a woman's hand:
"Count Horsman's domain sends fifty thousand south, via Wangshao Road–Gravelstone Ridge, expected to arrive on the XXth."
Philip nodded and casually crumbled the slip to dust that scattered on the wind.
"Send out scouts to give warning along Gravelstone Ridge; use smoke for signals."
...
At the same hour, at the forest's edge on the south bank of the Whitewater River in Cecil, Byron stood on a camouflaged gun position, watching soldiers lay blankets of woven leaves and vines over the acceleration rails of the railguns, one after another.
This middle-aged knight of mercenary origin had none of a noble's bearing about him; a stick clamped in his teeth, he leaned slantwise against a half-dead black beech, turning over in his mind how to pass this tedious stretch of time. Firing the guns was a joy, but the waiting for prey before the firing was bitter hard to endure.
As though someone somewhere had heard his heart, he saw a messenger part the shrubs, step onto the position, and come straight toward him.
He waved to the man from afar: "Yo, Barnico, what good news?"
"My lord, definite intelligence," the messenger said, coming before Byron, saluting, and reporting. "Count Pebo leads twenty thousand this way along the Whitewater; they will pass the ambush point in two days."
"Ho, twenty thousand," Byron whistled. "Not bad at all. Two thousand against twenty thousand on our side — a good deal easier than Philip's lot. His is three thousand against fifty thousand, I hear."
The messenger spoke without thinking: "Lord Philip has the Kant knights as well..."