CHAPTER 3 - II -

 

And so, the 27^th of January came with nothing happening.

 

The trickle of men from the other coalition member-countries continued.  When I woke up earlier, 20 men from Baltes (the Duke of Greene’s country) arrived.  Mid-way into noon, another 150 soldiers disguised in a merchant caravan reached us from Colveente.

 

“Greetings!” an officer from their group saluted me, “By any chance, my good man, do you know the man they call ‘Sir Kuro’?”

 

“That’d be me.”

 

“Oh?” the officer took an eyeful of me, who was wearing my usual casual overcoat and denim jeans.  Perhaps it took him a while to process that the unassuming man in front of him was the captain of the Paladin Guard Corps.  Finally, he exclaimed, “OH!”

 

“So, you realized?”

 

“My apologies, Sir Kuro!” the officer bowed repeatedly before me.

 

“No!  No!  It’s fine, really.” I chuckled, half-amused, “Please be at ease; I’m also a commoner like you.”

 

The officer straightened himself and took two unmarked pieces of paper from inside his breast pocket, “Sir, there are letters for you, one from Colveente, and one from the Holy Palatial Gardens as well.”

 

Hmm…two intelligence notes, huh?  But why is it addressed to me, and not to our spy-master?

 

I opened the letter from the Holy Palatial Gardens first, “Dear Kuro…”

 

“!!!” the officer was bewildered when he heard that.

 

“Oh, sorry, it’s a personal letter.” I quickly turned and skimmed through Maddie’s letter.

 

‘Dear Kuro…It’s been a while since you and Lily left, and without you, I feel so lonely.  So very, very lonely.  But I had to contend with the reality that you’re all doing this for me, for Lily, and for our futures together.’

 

Heh, Maddie still hadn’t given up on the ‘harem ending’, huh?

 

‘You’re a brave man, Kuro, and I really admire you for that.  In fact, I am so admiring you I always think about you…when I wake up, when I eat, when I bathe, when I change my clothes, when I feel hot, when I put fingers on my—’

 

Holy sh—

 

“…”

 

Hold on.  I guess I should stop there…for now.  The letter was getting weirder and creepier, and this wasn’t a yandere-erotic story, so I had to move on with the second one.

 

‘Sir Kuro.  My apologies, but apparently, the King of Calabria caught wind of our preparations and is getting suspicious.  As our confederation’s high-king, he is keeping a close watch on my territories.  I’m afraid the men with me can’t do anything but to ‘sit still’ for now.  Please continue your activities; information has reached me that the Empire is still in the dark about what’s happening.  Once again, I apologize for ruining your plans.  Duchess of Henristone.

 

P.S.:  My household really needs talented knights to serve me.  Apply now and get a 1% increase in your salary—’

 

Anyway, I handed over the Duchess of Henristone’s letter to Lily, who read it as I explained to her what happened.

 

“!!!”  

 

Lily’s terrible blushing told me I gave her the wrong letter, so I quickly took it away and handed her the real one.

 

“Sorry for the mess up.”

 

“That holy girl…” she clenched her fists as she trembled.

 

“Yeah…sorry for that…”

 

“No…” Lily was gnashing her teeth and sulking, “She’s getting ahead of me!  Let me tell you that, while thinking of you, I also mast—”

 

“So, about the Duchess’ letter …”

 

“Oh, right…I-I guess we should, erm, proceed with that.”

 

Well, I guess I’d ignore this display of stupidity for now…

 

Why am I surrounded by idiots?

 

 

With the sudden turn of events, Lily was forced to hold an emergency meeting.

 

“Your Highness, I believe that the more we wait, the more the Imperials gain their strength and prepare for an invasion of north Chersean kingdoms.” the Count of Brooke raised the point, “I, therefore, propose that we begin our raids now, while we wait for the rest of the army to assemble.”

 

“That would be impossible, Brooke!” the Prince of Stadtsberg told him, “With our few numbers, it’ll be hard to keep the pressure on the Imperials.  The most that we could do would only amount to irritating those guys and possibly provoke them into taking the offensive to us.”

 

“Grr…this system of checkpoints and patrols is really annoying!” the Count of Tillie exclaimed, “Who even invented such a thing?”

 

“And that Calabrian King too!  If I only could strangle him for colluding with the Imperials…” the Earl of Yaris couldn’t suppress his anger.

 

“It’s the way of war, wee lads!” the Prince answered, “Of course, unlike in training, your enemy wouldn’t sit still waiting for you to strike him!  He’ll do something so that he outwits you, especially that damned Emperor!  He’s a sly fox, and wouldn’t mind bowing before others if he could reach his goal through that.

 

“Well, we know the emperor is like that.  We have to solve our problems with the missing men.” Lily steered the talk back on its course, “What do you suggest we do for this issue?”

 

“Your Highness Princess Lilyhaven…” it was the Count of Brooke, “What do you say about we ask for a bit more reinforcement from your kingdom?  Aren’t you a friend of Nerfes’ current king?”

 

“As much as I’d like to do that, Your Excellency, the king of Nerfes cannot send more soldiers than he already did.  My family is blocking the move in the council, not unless we are sure of victory in this endeavor.”

 

“Damn it…”

 

As they were deliberating their options, my mind was racing to find the solutions.  I agree with the Count of Brooke’s conclusion that we need to go on the offensive as soon as possible, but with us still building our numerical strength, I doubt if we could really put our plans into effect.

 

Think Kuro, think…

 

If we’re having problems with the numbers of men, then…we can hire them, right?

 

“Your Excellency!” I called the Duke of Greene’s attention.

 

“Sir Kuro?”

 

“How much gold do we still have?”

 

“For now, we still have around…26,000 gold left in our purse.” the Duke of Greene explained, “But I doubt it would last for long since the upkeep of our men is taking the lion’s share of our budget.”

 

“What do you say if we hire men instead?”

 

“You mean, mercenaries?”

 

“Sir Kuro…” it was Lily, “I think we shouldn’t waste our limited resources on doubtful soldiers.”

 

“Well, it’s not like they’ll really fight for us.” I proposed, “What I mean for them is to be our ‘force-multipliers’.”

 

“…”  

 

Everyone gathered around me to hear my explanations about the word I used.  Lily had this ‘Here he goes again…’ expression on her face.

 

I enjoy seeing her like that…

 

Anyway, I continued to elaborate, “Here’s what I mean; the mercenaries will not actually do the real fighting for us.  They are like ‘reserves’ in case the conflict turns in for the worse, but in the best case, they’ll just stay so that the Imperials would think we got the numbers to fight them toe-to-toe.”

 

“Oh…so that’s what you mean by force-multipliers.”

 

“Exactly, Your Excellency the Count of Tillie!”

 

“But, mercenaries are expensive.” the Duke of Greene pointed out, like a real economist, “Don’t you think that while waiting, their maintenance would be an additional burden to our stretched budget?”

 

“Well, for that, I propose we begin the raids as soon as we reached the minimal number of required men.  Not only we could begin implementing the second phase of our strategy, but we could also replenish our lost supplies and money by plunder.”

 

“Plunder?” Lily’s face was suddenly drained of blood.  We both knew that Maddie disapproved of plunder…but then, it’s the plunder of the ‘innocents’ whom she didn’t like.

 

“I guess the plunder of our enemies would be reasonable,” I reassured her, and she reluctantly relented.  Well, during the medieval ages in Europe, plundering was considered a fair act of the victors to the vanquished.  In fact, the nobility’s armies back then were largely composed of levies and mercenaries, which depend on the amount of plunder they could get from the conquered territories to pay the men.

 

That’s why the infamous 1527 Sack of Rome happened.  The Holy Roman Emperor back then, Charles V, could not pay his mercenaries, and so they attacked and looted Rome.

 

While Maddie’s policy of preventing the plunder of civilians was a good thing, in times like this it could spell-out the difference between keeping your men, or making them betray you and turn to the enemy.  I guess permitting these people to loot and plunder their dead and wounded opponents would be reasonable compensation for them.

 

I explained to them the benefits of making such a move.  The other nobles liked the idea, especially the Prince of Stadtsberg, who was always vocal in his approval of me.  Lily was still apprehensive, but in the end, I guess she knew we had little choice and finally gave her permission to hire mercenaries.

 

However…

 

“I’ll permit it as long as Sir Kuro would be the one who would search for them.” she declared, “As you know, he can judge the characters of a person well.”

 

“!!!”  I was left speechless by that statement.  Honestly, I’m not that good of a judge for a person, much more a mercenary.  However, as much as I wanted to disagree and hand back the responsibility, I had to say ‘yes’ in the end.

 

For one, I’m the only commoner in their circle, and working with mercenaries was what someone of the same status as me could do best.  And second, I guess this was my punishment for proposing such harsh measures, in contrast to Maddie’s ‘pacifist’ policies.

 

Great revenge, Lily!

 

“…”

 

Anyway, not that it’s a bad thing.  The important thing was, we could finally get things moving.