The knights

After her encounter with Graube, Nessa had been guided to the place where the knights of the northern grove were resting. Most of the knights provided for Graube's campaign had been assigned as branchers and other similar commanding positions but there were so many of them that the commanders had also formed two whole branches of knights as chock troops that barely saw any use.

Knights were oftentimes slow to move around because of the heavy armor and their opponent this time made full use of this fact to dodge any possible encounter with them. Because of that and the fact that the commanders knew this would happen, the knights mostly remained here doing nothing while they waited to be sent to defend a fortress or a town somewhere. They were mostly treated as a wall able to move around, as long as they were somewhere, the cursed-bloods would not attack the place.

Nessa thought it was a huge waste, the knights were elite warriors and yet, they were all sat there doing nothing. If they were all here however, how did so many of them die since this whole conflict started?

She was very curious to find out.

"What's up with all those different flags?" Laurie asked from her side while looking at the camp.

"It's the might of our dukedom, displayed in all its disorganized glory."

From were Nessa stood with her escort, the whole place was a mess of flags and coat of arms. The one that stood tallest was the Hasting flag, the winged shoe and crossed swords, it was heavily ornamented and flapped at the end of an impressive pole. All those knights were there to answer the call of house hasting so of course their flag was the prominent one. Around it however was a messy sea of flapping colorful cloth showing off dozens of different houses.

Duke Hasting brought here the few marquess in his territory who each brought a handful of counts and viscounts who all brought their own handful of barons who each brought dozens of baronets and small lords. All of those brought their own knights to add on to the pile and each wanted to display their own coat of arms so that everyone would know of their prestige and prowess.

The result was that in that small place where all the knights gathered, the view of the sky was almost fully blocked by fluttering flags and banners. Since each and everyone of the warriors here were nobles, the amount of gaudy tents and flashy ornaments covering them was impressive too. In particular, those that came from the southern edge of the duchy were greatly influenced by the strange fads going on in Bêtéclair and showed a disturbing amount of... originality. Nessa felt like she just stepped into a spectacular festival but it wasn't the case at all.

Even if they all set up their tents to impress and they all had a certain taste for the flashy, those people were still all nobles and knights, they knew how to fight, showed serious expressions and acted in dignity.

At this point, it would be pitiful if they weren't used to fighting. The northern grove was the place in the empire that saw the most fight in hundreds of years. It was also the place who raised the most knights aside from the many nurtured by the Muraciers themselves.

The three most likely place to see large groups of knights at once in the empire were Highsteel, Thronewoods imperial palace and the northern grove of Artefine. If not for this, there was no way a duke could amass more than three hundred knights at the same spot without leaving cities and fortresses defenceless.

Mostly everywhere else in the empire, knights were only used for the personal protection of the nobles or as an occupation for the idling nobles themselves. They'd lead groups of guards and patrol an important area, guard the doors to their master's quarters or lead an expedition to go hunt a dangerous beast in the territory they were in charge of.

Everything else including most of the monster hunting was done by the army and all managed by the very far reaching Muracier house. Nobles everywhere relied on their ridiculous amount of trained soldiers and guards to do all the work and so didn't need that much knights. In Grandbois, being a knight was more like a title to show off and compete in tournaments than it was a valorous task. Nessa wouldn't claim that their knights were weaker than others but they certainly didn't have the experience or the serious that the few hundreds knights amassed here did.

The only exceptions in Grandbois were the imperial knights because they were handpicked from the best of the best by the Muracier to guard the imperial palace but this was another story entirely.

Here in this camp, there were three-hundred nobles ready to fight and two hundred more were scattered throughout the troops as officers leading Steelwood soldiers. Those men and women were the pride of the northern grove and also its most valiant defenders. They all had vested interest in the protection of the territory as well because their own lands were part of it. Even the simplest of knight might own a plot of land with a few hunters living on it. If the cursed-bloods came and killed them, they'd lose all their income.

Going through the camp, it was obvious to see whose land were situated north of here because they looked much more nervous than the others. Obviously, the way things were going would be very displeasing for them. Except for those big nobles who held an easily defensible town or fortress, all their holdings were in grave danger. It was easy for Nessa to imagine how frustrated they were feeling right now because she was feeling the exact same. Her family perceived taxes from all of it after all, every time a noble in the northern grove got hit, the pain would transfer to the Hasting house too.

She intended to fix the current tense and frustrating situation herself.

She got to work right away after getting there. To achieve anything, a great amount of information and organization was necessary. She needed to understand what she was dealing with and what she could work with.

At her own request, she was given a lot of documents from Graube and his council to examine and study in order to understand the situation but she didn't want to limit herself to what was on those parchments. She took over the order of knights for now and had every notable knights and higher nobles come in to tell her what they knew and their impressions about everything. She spend a total of six whole days doing that and reading through all the documents.

She learned a whole lot of important details during this time. The most important of them was of course the inner workings of the enemy. She had some basic knowledge of the tribes before then because it wasn't really something anyone kept secret and the cursed-blood servant of Emp knew a whole lot about them for having been born in one but she hadn't actively searched for the real details before now.

First of all, she learned that the tribes weren't some unified entity. They shared information and sometimes coordinated their attacks and incursions but more often then not, they just worked with their own tribal group.

To understand their strategy and tactics, one had to know well their particular tribe as well as their current ruler. This made this whole thing rather complicated to deal with because there were dozens of them and every time the army managed to get some good victory and killed a chief, a new one took the vacant position and changed their whole tactics.

Even though they were few in numbers, they seemed to be everywhere at once because of this and Graube had to assign a good subordinate to study and elaborate strategies against a single tribe each. Then he would compile all their predictions together and organize the troops to best defend against what his assortment of people believed would happen next.

His way of dealing with this was flawed from the start, Nessa really didn't like it. The general was dancing to their tune.

If she was to compare this to a sword fight, it would be easy to understand her viewpoint. The most important thing she had to learn when mastering the first stage of the royal sword dance was to set her own pace for the fight and trick her opponent into following it. That way, she was in control of the entire dance.

Here, the tribes were doing the same thing, they were doing whatever they wanted and Graube just tried to answer to the best of his abilities instead of setting up a dance of his own.

He had decided to give up on the idea in the beginning because despite his massive amount of troops, he couldn't lock-down all the north and whatever move he made, at least a few tribes would slip by and do something unexpected.

He had lost a lot of supplies that way in the beginning and it was one of those slip-ups that resulted in the tragic ambush that cost the lives of one of her mothers, a brother and two sisters at the hands of Drekans as they traveled from Folcourse to Barspring. He must have felt his position being at risk then, she remembered how savage her father looked when he heard the news, it was before her brother Philips was born. She guessed the only reason Graube was still in charge was because of his family name and the fact he changed his tactics around right away.

She agreed that they had to know what all the tribes leaders were thinking and doing but she disagreed about what they did with the information. Their troops were too fragmented to deal any decisive blows and the chain of command was a big mess because of how many small armed groups they had to keep track of. If the great general had been here himself, Nessa was sure that he could have just kept track of everything by himself. Graube needing the help of dozens of officers just to follow what was going on only served to prove he wasn't fit to be the next great general.

At the same time though, she had never actually seen a real great general in action, she had never even met the current one. Maybe he was no better? After all, he couldn't even see that this place required his attention so how good could he possibly be? Everyone in the empire relied on them so much but maybe they were wrong. If they only amounted to this much then maybe the Imperial family was right to put into question the real utility of that archaic household.

Going back to the subject, she had received a lot of parchments detailing most of the tribes but she didn't need information on all of them. While Graube was trying to keep up with the dance imposed by these cursed-bloods, she would go strike them directly instead. She didn't need to know what they were all doing, she would just hunt one and strike it down definitively. Then, she would just move on to the next, eventually, there would be no one left to slip around their defences. She'd just hunt them all one at a time

She didn't understand why Graube wasn't doing exactly that. Wasn't that an obvious strategy? All the knights were just sitting here doing nothing while they could be chasing down entire tribes. That they ran away in front of the knights wasn't a real excuse either, there had to be a way to get them.

Maybe it was just a question of finding the right target, going after laomillians in heavy armor was just idiotic after all, they were too quick. In that case, she had some good choices of prey for her knights like the drekan tribe, the bear tribe, the toad tribe and so on.

She gathered the information she had on the slower and bulkier races, those easier to catch and explored her possibilities. They all had their own strengths and weaknesses not only related to their race but their tribe themselves. Between all her choices of target, the drekans were the most dangerous.

Those lizard-men were stronger than humans, had scales instead of skin that were harder than most leather and able to resist the blades of most soldiers.They also had sharp claws that could work as weapon even when they were disarmed. They were few but each of their warriors was at least as strong as any of her knights. They were like fierce monsters standing upright. She held a grudge against their tribe because of how they ambushed her family before but she understood they weren't a good first target for her plans. They were just too dangerous to face on her first real battle.

The bear tribe wasn't a much better target. They were giants standing almost as tall as two men each and had the matching strength. She believed they could be killed much more easily than the drekans because they didn't have stone-hard scales covering them, they were more like very hairy humans, but she had another reason to reject taking them as her first target. Their tribe leaders were always surprisingly cunning and diplomatic. She believed that cornering them might take some time and if she did, a lot of other tribes would show up from nowhere to provide support and disturbance because of their chief relations. She might be able to use them as bait to deal a massive blow at once to the tribes but she would need much more preparations and many more knights than she had access to for that.

The reason Graube hadn't done anything like that yet was because the bear tribe warriors tended to stay far in the back unless they had a definite advantage. Trying to track them with enough forces to counter the sudden support from the other tribes would leave the whole line full of holes the smaller tribe would be able to slip through to attack further into the kingdom. His objective wasn't to eliminate as many cursed-blood as possible but to limit the damage done to the northern grove as much as possible instead.

At least, that was what he pretended.

According to what she believed, he would be more than willing to rush in and strike the bears tribe even if the cost ended up being huge. The reason he hadn't done so yet was simply because all his advisors were against it and he needed their support in his bid to get the tittle of great general.

Going back to what she learned about the tribes, there were many other good targets still like the bull tribe or the bone cracker tribe but she ended up choosing to fight the toad tribe first with her primary reason being that they disgusted her.

Since most of those large races tribes were equally good targets, there was no strategic reason to choose one of them over the others so her tastes were as good a reason as any.

The toad tribe wasn't a big one but its individuals were all huge. They weren't mountains of man like the bears however, they were all made up of belly. They looked like a bunch of overfed freaks one might see in a curiosity show. They had wide unhinged mouths drippings with saliva and ridiculous tongues they used to wrap up things with to swallow them whole. It was just utterly disgusting to see.

What their warriors usually did was to target a village or a smaller camp, charge inside, tie up everyone they didn't just kill and eat all their supplies right there in front of them. Apparently they believed that eating the food of the defeated in front of them was a form of punishment and torture. There were some rumors saying that some of them were cannibals but Nessa wasn't sure whether that was true or not. As for what happened to the prisoners if they didn't get eaten along with their supplies, she heard they were mostly used as bait to catch bigger monsters instead. In the end it didn't matter, if one got caught by them they didn't survive and she hated the idea.

Her plan to catch them couldn't be any simpler. All she had to do was to ambush them as they attacked some place. She could look at all the places they attacked before to infer where they would strike next or at least place out an alluring bait in the general area and wait for them to fall for it. She would have all her knights hide somehow and wait for the right time to strike. However strong they were, they'd be overwhelmed by hundreds of knights at once.

She quickly started working on the groundwork for her plan while she collected more information on everything else. For now, all she needed was to find out which way they were likely to go after their most recent recorded attack. She needed a local hunter who would know what sort of beast were in the region and where the toad tribe was most likely to get them. Knowing that, she'd be able to guess where they were likely to strike next and if they had enough time, they might even be able to catch them while they were hunting and rescue some of the captured villagers before they got eaten by wild beasts.

While this was happening, she listened to what all the knights and nobles around here had to say about the losses they incurred. None of them had a complete understanding of the situation but many had some interesting things to say.

At least, she gathered that there was probably not any dark conspiracy happening behind the scene.

The losses seemed to be a result of circumstances, of bad luck and of the general uselessness of the general. Maybe that last one was a bit biased because of her own feelings but it was obvious that he had a hand in that.

She heard that most of the knights died defending shorthanded fortifications or leading branches of soldiers. Because the soldiers were stretched so thinly already, they didn't have enough manpower to man every single fort and towns in the northern grove so they mostly left the task to squads of knights. The knights couldn't move around fast anyway so they were perfect to take the role of defenders of key points in this way.

The problem lied in the fact the tribes knew that the knights were stronger than normal soldiers but also much more important than them in the eyes of the empire so they took every occasion they got to kill off some of them. The tribes would group up suddenly, either led by the bear tribe or the wolf tribe, and assault a place where they could smell a weakness. Whether they failed or won, they would still manage to kill a few knights and then retreat in a hurry and scatter into the woods.

This was only one of their many tactics however.

They would also look for a lone squad of knight protecting a convoy of supply or escorting an important figure and swarm them in the night when they wouldn't have the time to put on their armors. They would look for isolated branches and aim for the knight commanding them before running off again. They even placed traps all over the woods to corner the knights and kill them easily.

A count Nessa spoke with told her about a scene he directly witnessed where some cursed blood shaman turned the forest floor into mud thick enough to let ordinary soldiers walk relatively unhindered but let the knights sink down like in quicksand. He said that most of the twenty knights he commended at he time got killed while they were trapped into the mud.

Essentially, the cursed-bloods were doing exactly what she wanted the army to do against them. They targeted the important people one at a time and slowly removed all threats in front of them. They were disorganized but driven and meticulous.

One could say that the fault wasn't in Graube's hands because the enemy was targeting the knights and nobles specifically but it wouldn't right. Since he knew that it was the case, he should be doing something about it instead of just watching it happen.

From what Nessa could tell, he wasn't too bothered about it because the troops weren't suffering too many losses overall, he didn't see the problem. If he only looked at the numbers, a group of a hundred and thirty people got attacked and only twenty died before the cursed-blood ran, leaving behind a few dead of their own. He saw it as a victory instead of a loss, the knights had no real value for him because they weren't his own.

The cursed-blood didn't have thousands of warriors on their side after all. As long as the knights could take down two or three of them each before dying then the end result would be a victory for the empire.

From what she was told, the higher ups in the army insisted that small groups of soldiers, reinforcements and caravans of supplies were more likely to be attacked and needed the help of the more powerful knights to defend them. A logical move the knights mostly agreed with.

They were told to not hesitate to use the soldiers under their command to take out as many cursed-blood as they could if they showed up and retreat if they needed to but it often didn't work out as they hoped.

The proud knights often refused to run in front of savages as they believed they could take them on. They would also fall for the usual mentality that they would be taken captive for ransom like in any other conflict. One stronger cursed-blood was all it took to turn the situation around however and those tribesmen almost never took prisoners, they didn't bother with the empire's money at all. If their warrior defeated the knight, they'd behead him on the spot or skewer him and take some prize to bring back to the tribe.

Other knights fell for the opposite and tried to run when they saw the situation turn dire, those had a higher survival rate as long as they were strong enough to not be slowed down by their armor but their honor would take a strong hit. They'd end up being called cowards by the other nobles and their strength would be put into question.

None of the proud nobles of the northern grove wanted to admit that the warriors from the tribe could best them in battle. If they had to run then they must not be real knights. Some would rather die taking down their opponent than to live with the shame of getting forced to flee from a savage.

The key difference here would be that in a classic battle, they'd charge in with the soldiers and wreak havoc into the enemy lines until they either won or the commanders called for retreat. If they were forced to pull back, they could say anywhere that they would have kept going if not for the orders and so their reputation was safeguarded. In the event that they failed and got captured, the opponent would ask their house to pay a ridiculous price to have them sent back home. They'd be seriously shamed but they would still live.

None of that applied or worked here and that was why the knights died much more than they should. There had to be someone who would take the blame for defeat and allow them to retreat when they had to or they would just keep dying there to preserve their dignity.

There should be no such problem here with her plan since she would be in charge. All she had to do was to remember to not fall into the same mindset even though failure would hinder her in her objective.

She would be the one taking the blame for defeat or retreat so the knights would be more willing to fall back before things turned too dire. With that said however, she didn't intend to retreat. As long as everything went as she wanted it to, she would not face defeat.

She obviously knew that everyone always thought the same as she did now but she was still confident in her ability to succeed. All she had to do was to prepare everything properly.

That was why she felt optimistic about the outcome. She didn't think that organizing everything was that hard at all and it really wasn't, or rather, it wouldn't be if not for a few nuisance.

Here in this part of the camp filled with knights and nobles, she had to face an unexpected factor that sometimes helped and sometimes bothered her greatly. She continuously had to face men who happened to also be suitors or people related to them.

Her father had worked really hard it seemed to find her many potential husbands and since all of them were from important houses, most were represented here or even directly present. The noble who worried about her opinion the other day when she barged in on their reunion was one of them for example but he was far from the only one.

Every time she was about to make some speech or try to speak about some serious matters there would always be a few that embarrassed themselves trying to do whatever it was they thought they were doing. Impress her or seduce her, just raise the image she had of them or simply befriend her? She couldn't tell, they were all acting like idiots.

Other older men were all making pained faces at the awful things the younger guys pulled and Laurie just looked at them all in plain disgust with the other few female knights. Nessa felt harassed a good half of the time she spent in that camp. When they were just staring it wasn't so bad because she could just ignore them and keep working but some did such senseless thing that it forced her quite a few times to just waste time to deal with them.

There was one time a guy had an entire cart of flower delivered to her tent. It might have felt romantic if she had at least known him but here they were unwanted and she just felt annoyed. She set them all on fire.

That was one of the least frustrating things they did too because they seemed to get bolder by the day. They each saw what the others did and how she ruthlessly rejected them and instead of just giving up, they all decided it must not have been enough and tried something bigger.

At some point, she had to stop reacting to whatever they did at all because she started to get afraid of what they might do next. She would just scowl at anyone doing anything suspicious or being strangely friendly with her and refrained from saying anything more.

She got so many gifts she didn't know what in the ancestors she should do with them, she kept being stopped on her way to anywhere at all and made to hear poems and songs. One son of a marquess thought it was a brilliant idea to interrupt a meeting about their next course of action to bring out a lute and sing about her beauty and grace while dancing.

"Oh our lady, fair as a fairy!

There would be for me no greater chance

No prettier sight than to glimpse at her dance!"

His song went on and on like that, such an awkward thing. Every time they did something like that she grew more and more annoyed.

The worst were those who kept boasting about themselves in front of her. A few were just crazy bold and planted themselves right in front of her to do it as if she had nothing better to do. The first time this happened, she thought that the guy wanted to ambush her but in the end, he just wanted to tell her all about his talent with a sword and how he could fend off so many clawed purple-cap at once.

Sometimes, she just tried to ignore them and walk around but they kept moving in front of her to block her path. They couldn't stop her physically by touching her because it would be a grave offence considering their status but nothing stopped them from always being on her heels or blocking her path to talk. They had so much to say about their prowess on the battlefield, their talent in whatever form of art they were practicing, how their house could boast of this or that and even sometimes about their prowess in a bed.

They were all certain that in the end, she would have to chose one of them and because of how her father was in a hurry to have her married off, they believed that she would have to pick a man very soon. All of them wanted the connection with the Hasting house or possibly just her and knowing that she would soon have to make a decision, they were all desperate to improve their value in her eyes.

Even the man who Graube had assigned to bring her any and all documents she might want was like that and he happened to be the absolute worst. Nessa was almost certain that Graube did it on purpose to get on her nerves.

That man's name was Noirantel, the same Noirantel that was in another group back in school. What made that man the worst of the worst wasn't that he was one of those that liked to boast about themselves, even though he was. The true reason was that he was the son of the current duke of the western grove, the heir at that. He shared the same rank she did and it made him so much more bold than the others.

Back in school, he was just a guy she rarely ever saw and they didn't spare much of a glance towards each other but back then, he had not realized who she was and hadn't heard about the potential wedding. Getting someone like her as his bride would surely please his house and grow its prestige, she knew how to perform the legendary royal sword dance after all and had a fitting status for him.

Back in school, he hadn't left any impression on her. He was defeated by Emp when he was still a beginner and didn't know any good techniques so he was probably only mediocre in term of strength. Of course, he must have improved since then but he hadn't passed the training of Aminui Muracier so he was probably weaker than her by a good margin.

The only other thing she remembered about him was that a girl slapped him once. She had never learned why but it made her think he was probably unreliable or offending or at least, that something was wrong with him. Finally, she knew that the eastern and western grove were always in conflict over mostly everything.

The duke of the eastern grove being the man overseeing the school, she knew what sort of man he was and what he preached. She had many occasion to speak with him and hear about him from Emp so she had a certain understanding of him. She agreed with many of his opinions, more so now that she developed such frustration towards Graube. This meant that if the western grove aligned against the old man, they would have opinions often opposed to her own.

All of that reasoning didn't hold back the man in the least and he kept coming at her over and over again. He'd try his best to spend time alone with her so she had to be careful about having at least one or two other knights with her at all times. He'd spread rumors about how they were so close back in school which she had to deny time and again.

He even pinned her against a wall one time to speak to her with only two fingers of space separating them.

"Lady Hasting, no, Vanessa, don't we make a picturesque couple like this? A woman of your beauty and status couldn't possibly give her heart to someone of a lesser rank than mine and I'm confident that I can match you perfectly if you only gave me a chance. Instead of struggling here where you have no future, couldn't you just come back with me to my western grove? I'm certain you would love it just as much as Folcourse and the northern grove. We could be happy."

That time she didn't know how to react, she was taken completely by surprise. Who would do that sort of thing after all? Pin a lady against a wall was so improper some of the stiffer nobles might get a heart attack from it. Thankfully, Laurie came to her rescue and harassed him about his misconduct until he was convinced to let her go. She'd have liked to push him off strongly or have Laurie throw him away but he was still the son of a duke. If she reacted too violently, she would be the one to get in trouble even though he was the one being forceful.

Her heart kept beating like crazy even after he was gone. Not out of love of course, out of embarrassment and frustration instead.

She didn't know how to get rid of all that undesirable attention. She just wanted them all to stop and focus on freeing their territory from the invading cursed-blood. Now was not the time to think about marriage! She kept saying it to everyone and gave them all clear rejections and yet they all still kept going. If they wanted to impress her, they should do something truly helpful instead of wasting her time!

She tried her very best to keep her calm and endure while she planned the coming fight. Maybe the battle would cool everyone down? She certainly hoped so. Despite all the interference, she managed to find out the place where they would most likely meet the toad tribe warriors and ordered everyone to march.

She felt rather hurt when the knights all looked at their seniors to know if they should listen to her or not but kept her misgivings to herself. She'd make it so blood would rain down on them to unwind.