100. Don’t Run Away
It was two days after the end of the battle that the main force arrived at Cobville, which had become a mess. Naturally, the main force that arrived at Cobville could not help but be astonished at the horrific sight and the strong smell of blood everywhere .
April 27, 1213, a time when the sunlight would feel heavy as the day gradually dawned.
In a place where colorful wildflowers should have been in full bloom, crimson poppies were blooming in abundance. The knights who had led the troops instead of Narva exchanged glances, their cold sweat dripping down.
“Are there any survivors?”
“…The safety of the bishop is the priority. We need to find him first.”
Narva’s personal character was problematic, but considering his background and political connections, he was a person who could never be lost.
Since he was a stigma bearer and was classified as a close aide to the Pope, if rumors spread that he had died a horrible death due to insufficient support during the battle with the pagans, it was obvious who would be the first to be censored.
“Find His Grace!”
“We must find His Grace’s whereabouts at all costs! All of you…”
“Nari, he’s over there?”
“What?”
And just as the knights were urging the soldiers in their impatience, one soldier pointed to one side with a puzzled expression. Only then did the knights see a sight that they had failed to notice, blinded by their impatience.
Narva was standing alone at the entrance of the village, waving his hand leisurely.
“His Grace?”
“Come on!”
Even though it was a battlefield where a fierce battle had taken place, Narva’s appearance was completely relaxed. The knights felt a slight dizziness and were barely able to breathe a sigh of relief. If the bishop had died, how devastating the aftermath would have been .
It was a truly breathtaking moment.
Narva, the one who had led them here, seemed oblivious to such concerns. He beckoned to the main force with a satisfied smile, urging them to join him.
“There are more than a few corpses that need to be stripped!”
Indeed, his words rang true.
The main force, following Narva’s guidance into the depths of Coveville, could not conceal their astonishment. They had sensed that something sinister had occurred, but the reality far surpassed their wildest imaginations.
Corpses were piled up in the alleys, reaching as high as their thighs. Many were horrified to see an arm sticking out from beneath the rubble of a collapsed and damaged building.
However, even the soldiers who had been pale and trembling with fear had a change of heart as they approached the center of the town. The knights even admired the scene from atop their saddles, their eyes sweeping over the surroundings.
There was one thing they all had in common: their eyes sparkled with greed.
The knights immediately jumped down from their saddles and, after thoroughly searching the area, approached Narva with serious expressions.
“My lord, what is this?”
“These are the pagan raiders who landed in Coveville. They were all valiantly defeated by our detachment.”
“Your accomplishments are truly remarkable. To have defeated dozens of pagan raiders after such a forced march.”
“What are you talking about?”
Narva turned and pointed to a relatively intact building behind them, in the shade away from the sunlight. The knights’ gazes followed the tip of his finger, and they froze in an instant.
“Sixty over there.”
“….”
“There are about a hundred more if you go further. And about three hundred near the palisade at the far end. All in all, there seem to be over seven hundred, but I haven’t counted them all.”
Gulp.
Their eyes, which had been gleaming with greed, suddenly filled with astonishment. Those who had been salivating over the chain mail and gleaming weapons worn by the pagan raiders were now swallowing hard at the absurd body count.
The knights began to exchange glances under the visors of their helmets.
‘Could it be an exaggeration?’
‘But the numbers we can see with our own eyes seem to be around that…’
As the knights’ thoughts became entangled in confusion, Narva turned away again, a warm smile playing on his lips.
“Normally, there would be no need to distribute the spoils of war to those who stayed away from the battlefield. However, you did not avoid the battlefield because you were unwilling to fight.”
“….”
A few of the knights turned their heads slightly.
Narva continued, seemingly oblivious, “I commend you for your excellent leadership of the soldiers in my absence and for your commendable arrival while maintaining military discipline. I will therefore give you a special opportunity.”
“Special?”
“Opportunity?”
The knights naturally asked questions, surprised by his unexpected words.
Narva laughed, waving his hand dismissively despite his somewhat rude behavior.
From Noble mtl dot com
“Take charge of collecting the bodies. I will then distribute half of the spoils of war to you.”
***
The main force, which arrived later, was able to make contact with the detachment that had taken up position in a corner of the town while collecting the bodies.
Out of the 150 men excluding Narva, 38 had been killed in action.
Almost a third of their forces had lost their lives in the fierce battle. Even if they had won, it was hardly a victory worth celebrating. If they had lost so many men in a normal battle, there would have been talk of responsibility aimed at the commander.
If it had been a normal battle, that is.
The knights could not help but gape as they led their soldiers in piling up the bodies one by one. After spending almost half a day counting, their astonishment turned into awe.
Excluding the bodies presumed to be civilians, they counted a staggering 741 bodies with identifiable clothing.
If we consider the bodies that were mutilated or those that were unarmed due to the fierce fighting, the actual number of troops must have been more than this. It must have been around 800.
The knights began to look at Narva, who was not a spoil of war but in the village, with a new light.
‘With 150 men, they fought and won against 800 pagan warriors and more than half survived.’
‘It’s more than a feat, even though it wasn’t a head-on fight. Of course, it wasn’t the best way, but…’
They guessed that the opponent would try a pincer attack, cut them off first, waited calmly until they started looting, and then attacked when their discipline and formation were in disarray. In the process, they killed a few surviving civilians who got in the way , but that was understandable.
The knights, who knew the chaos and hardship of an actual battlefield, clicked their tongues as they looked at the survivors, who were huddled in rags, on Cobbleville’s side.
‘…It was the best way. If they had started rescuing the survivors, they would have lost the advantage of surprise they had gained and their formation would have collapsed instead.’
They could understand and sympathize, but it was not an easy story to tell.
What was important here was Narva’s chilling judgment. It was a fearsome determination, even though the opponents were civilians and pagans suspected of heresy. The idea of annihilating the enemy in one swoop fell with fewer numbers was close to madness.
How could he have made such a decision?
The answer spread through the soldiers’ gossip. The soldiers from the special forces, who had risen up after overcoming the grief of their comrades’ deaths, began to testify to what they had seen with their own eyes.
“The pagans’ necks were cut open with a single flash of the sword!”
The soldiers talked about the light that led the way and cut a path through the front, the flash of the blade that could truly be called a sword light.
“He just threw it as it came, and it sucked right in. Even those who were far away fell down.”
The salvation that cut through the wind at the moment of fear, behind the shield that was crushed or split by the ax.
“When his hands were free? He just grabbed the guy who was running at him, knocked him down, and took his weapon. He used it to fight the enemy in front of him.”
The spirit that made him fight without hesitation, regardless of the type of weapon he was holding.
“Later, he seemed to regret the effort of killing them, so he just cut off their hands or made them cry out in pain. He threw them away in that state and threw them at us. As if…”
As if the alpha wolf bit the prey’s neck and brought it to the pack. Anyone would think so when they recalled the sight of him throwing away the enemies who were wriggling after their tendons were cut or their arms were torn off, without looking back.
Of course, it was too absurd a tale to believe.
The soldiers of the main force dismissed it as nonsense, saying that it didn’t make sense, but as they began to remove the armor from the piled-up corpses, they had no choice but to believe it little by little.
One of the soldiers lifted up a chain mail soaked in blood and examined it here and there, and his face turned pale.
“This. There’s almost no damage to the armor?”
“…f*ck, is that rumor true?”
Until now, Narva was nothing more or less than a bishop who worked hard among the soldiers.
Even among the knights, Narva was just a younger brother with a strange personality, somewhat like Terver. They thought that there was a reason why Terver favored him even when faced with the results of his training.
It was at this moment that the existence of Narva was fully imprinted on them.
They met him for the first time, stripped of all the modifiers such as the third son of King Athelston, the younger brother of the strongest knight Terver, and the aide to the Pope.
“Oh, light of humanity, cover them with your light.”
The sight of Narva holding a necklace in the middle of the village filled with corpses and reciting a prayer for the dead.
“For God does the work of God, and man does the work of man.”
The sight of his obsidian-like eyes burning strangely as he looked beyond the flowing river.
‘I’m hooked.’
Without knowing what was really going on in his head.
***
When the aftermath and the hunting for spoils of war were somewhat finished, Narva set up a base camp in Cobbleville and began to deal with the aftermath.
He called in the knights and discussed future plans in a temporary headquarters, which was a dilapidated but intact building. Only one person, Husten, was excluded because he was busy admonishing his son with his absent-minded mind.
“I will hire the survivors as laborers. The wages will be the food that will be distributed.”
There were about 200 survivors in Cobbleville, including children.
Originally, the population was well over 500, including refugees, but more than half of them died in the short time of looting. If they sent them elsewhere, the notoriety of Cobbleville would spread, and if they left them alone, 200 mouths would eat up the supplies.
Fortunately, the proportion of young men who could work was higher than expected. Ironically, it was because the pagans’ manhunt was driven by practicality.
The pagans killed all the old men they couldn’t use right away, most of the children who were difficult to support, and the women who were less beautiful and merciless. On the other hand, the young men were relatively intact, to the extent that they cut the tendons of their legs or feet to use them as labor.
Narva had already planned what to do with them.
“The laborers will repair the fences of Coveville and create a blockade across the river using nets and wood.”
“A blockade… sir?”
The knights asked cautiously, flinching.
Narva realized why they were skeptical and nodded slowly, resting his chin on his hand.
“Coveville is useful not only to the enemy but also to our side. It is located in the middle of the Heze River and has a bend, so there is relatively plenty of time to catch the enemy. The enemy cannot move straight across the river and must come around in a semicircle. It is the most suitable stronghold to find the enemy coming up the river in advance and warn the surrounding area.”
“However, Coveville has the disadvantage that it is not easy to block landings. Wasn’t it actually exposed to looting this time?”
“That’s what makes Coveville more important.”
“?”
Despite the argument of the grey-haired knight, Narva remained calm.
“It’s a place that’s difficult for us to defend but easy for them to defend. However, it is a place that we must defend for the safety of the upper reaches of the Heze River. Coveville is a place that is regrettable in many ways. “
“…”
“But it’s a valuable enough area as a rear base.”
“Rear? …Your Excellency, surely not?!”
The knight, who had been blinking his eyes as if he had heard something absurd, soon realized the meaning of the words and opened his mouth wide. The other knights reacted the same way.
Narva finally put his chin on the table and said,
“We have defeated this force, so I don’t know the extent of their size, but it must be considerable damage. If they get carried away, it will be easy to push them, but on the contrary, it is their habit to be more sensitive to defeat and loss. Their leader will move all of them, either to protect his authority or because he cannot bear any more losses.
Furthermore, if our movement to fortify the Heze River is confirmed, they will make one choice.”
“Retreat.”
“Challenge.”
The black shoulder mantle shook slightly against the questioning gazes.
“But… what do you plan to do if they retreat?”
“I will send out as many scouts as possible from the main force that arrives later and find traces of them.”
At that moment, Narva’s fierce gaze swept over the knights.
“If they don’t challenge, I will.”
Good.