Crest of the Strongest Knight

Chapter 118 - Making Morale

"Looks like we're going to be down a knight for the siege."

Medrauta shrugged at Marilyn's remark as she rode alongside the senior knight, the two of them at the forefront of the small force they'd put together from the underground's volunteers. As they flew House Castellia's colors, Medrauta was obligated to ride into battle with them instead of the main attack force.

"Can't blame her," Medrauta said. "I dropped by this morning before the sortie and she said she needed some time with her lord. I imagine they had a long talk yesterday."

Marilyn grimaced. She wasn't sure what the relationship between Vera and Henri was, but it seemed to be more than friends, yet less than lovers. At times, they even seemed like family, but it wasn't her place to pry. "Yeah, I can imagine. I saw Dame Vera's face when she was escorting Henri to the church... I can't even begin to imagine how she's feeling with this whole civil war business going on coupled with her lord's betrayal."

"It's a shame we won't have her accompanying us on this siege, but that's all the more reason to win it." Medrauta replied. "We can't let her finish making up with Henri only to be confronted with Bastiche's troops marching toward Dietrich."

"...Speaking of Lord Henri, do we know what will happen to him?" Viviane asked, urging her horse forward to ride parallel with the knights. "Has the baron decided yet, do you think?"

"No, probably not." Marilyn admitted. "He'll most likely delay the decision as long as possible to give Vera and Henri some time to reconcile. I can't imagine he's in a hurry to execute his longtime friend, especially when there's a civil war to be had."

Viviane nodded before diverting her attention back to the march. She could only worry about a lord's fate so much when she was also in charge of supervising the ragtag bunch of criminals and vagabonds who had been rather haphazardly put together as a fighting force. Since the small band of volunteers marching behind her were wearing Castellia fief's colors, she had been placed in command of the armed force.

Although Marilyn would be the one who took the reins when the fighting actually started, Viviane was still required to at least keep up appearances during the march. Thankfully, the gruff-faced group behind Viviane didn't raise too much of a fuss as the young girl led them toward Revelo fief. It seemed the rapport they somehow managed to forge with One-Eyed Jack a few days earlier was helping as he appeared to be the one who most of the criminals deferred to.

Unfortunately, that peace would not last for long. More acclimated to sowing disorder and chaos, marching in an orderly formation for hours on end certainly wasn't the criminals' favorite form of exercise, nor did they find it particularly creative. It was around five hours into their march that the first signs of displeasure began making their ripples across the pseudo-mercenaries' formation.

"Oi, when are we gonna get there?"

"Holy shit, Jack. We've been on this shit for days and we're still gonna have to keep goin'?"

"Fuck me in the ass, they better be payin' top dollar if all we're gonna do is walk."

Viviane pursed her lips as she heard similar comments repeated throughout the ranks of her soldiers. It didn't take a seasoned commander to understand that it wouldn't bode well for the rest of their campaign if morale continued to drop at such a rapid pace. She spared a glance to the sky, noting the sun's position in the sky.

While she had once been oblivious to such methods of telling time, she'd learned how to do so after seeing Medrauta do the same so many times. With a bit of help from her knight, Viviane managed to guess that it'd only been five or so hours since they'd set off on their march. During that time, they'd made decent progress, but they were still severely lagging behind the main force due to their lack of training and discipline.