The road to Eisten went smoothly. A total of 58 cavalrymen (50 members, 5 lieutenants, 2 Vice Commanders, 1 Commander) crossed the fields and pressed forward without hesitation. Most of the supplies fit into our saddlebags.

It was a bandit suppression in the local area—no need to bring along massive supplies.

If we ran short, we could cover it with the campaign pay. If costs absolutely had to keep mounting, I could just requisition on-site with judicial authority. In which case the Finance Minister would clutch the back of his neck. Hmm. Should I go for it?

But when we reached Viktor’s home, charred ash, the remains of half-burned beams, and dishes scattered in disarray were all that was left to remind us anyone had lived there. The picturesque place had been reduced to ruins.

Fiel and I watched Viktor as he stood there blankly staring at the scene. If the cozy home where I rested in peace had been so brutally destroyed, I would have felt the same devastation.

Viktor turned over the wreckage of the bed. Meanwhile, Fiel directed the men to keep watch around the perimeter. From a storage compartment beneath the bed, a plate cuirass and a chainmail shirt emerged.

"Thankfully, my armor seems to be intact."

The rain had been pouring that day, so by good fortune the fire hadn’t consumed everything. I had the men help him put it on. Then a member who had been keeping watch nearby dragged someone over.

"Please, spare me! I haven’t done anything wrong!"

"Goodness, Toby! Let the boy go!"

It turned out to be the very shepherd boy who had warned Viktor about Simon and Natalie’s danger. I had asked him to watch the house, and apparently he was still around. He looked filthy and disheveled.

Viktor stepped in to calm the member holding Toby.

"You’re safe. Thank goodness. Now, was it the Berten gang who did this to my house?"

"I’m not sure. I was eating the cheese Simon had hidden when suddenly people I’d never seen before barged in and set the fire."

"It wasn’t Berten? Are you sure?"

"I never forget a face! They were total strangers. Thankfully it rained and the fire went out, but that knight over there told me to keep guarding the house, so I kept waiting."

What an admirable boy. But Toby had been away from home for two days and was trembling with anxiety that his family would beat him senseless when he got back. So I gave him a silver coin—the kind of magic that would keep his family’s anger at bay.

Toby’s eyes went wide as saucers when he received it.

"That’s your reward for your hardship. If you take that home, your family won’t be harsh with you."

"T-t-thank you, sir knight! Thank you! Wow!"

Overjoyed, Toby took off running across the fields.

He was a local, so he’d surely know how to get back safely.

In any case, going so far as to burn down Viktor’s home meant this wasn’t a simple grudge. It was clearly a planned crime. Were the arsonists the ones who had absorbed Berten, or the ones who had been pulling the gang’s strings?

The identity of those bastards might be the key to this whole affair.

Caw! Caw!

When we arrived at the battlefield, the birds were having a feast. The weapons and gear had been cleanly stripped, and many of the corpses lay naked. A very common sight on a battlefield. They strip the dead down to the underwear.

It was ironic that this carnage had become someone else’s windfall.

Flap-flap!

As we approached, the crows and vultures taking flight made it clear they didn’t appreciate the unwelcome visitors. The decayed corpses were so badly damaged that they gave off a sickening stench. Bearing it, Viktor checked the faces one by one. Most had had their eyes pecked out, but he recognized a few.

"Apart from the leader, all the Berten members I knew seem to be dead. But these others—I don’t recognize them. Men I’ve never seen around here."

Where they were from and why they had joined Berten was a complete mystery.

"Where’s Berten’s hideout?"

"There’s an old house up on that mountain. It’s where these guys often gathered."

I directed Viktor, who knew the area well, to search the old house that had served as their hideout and the surrounding area. Two squads under his command dismounted and entered the woods.

It was easy to assume that cavalrymen only knew how to fight from horseback, but dismounting to fight was nearly as common. Even the French heavy cavalry didn’t hesitate to dismount and fight on foot.

When a cavalry charge failed and escape was cut off, the next-best option was to dismount and fight head-on. So most cavalrymen could fight on the ground just as capably as infantry.

Thirty minutes had passed since they entered.

Fiel seemed to find the silence unsettling.

"Vice Commander Falkenheim went in. Why is it still so quiet?"

"It’s one of two things. Either they surrendered, or they ran."

But looking at the face of the member sprinting back breathlessly, it didn’t seem to be either.

"There are nothing but corpses."

"...Killed each other off?"

"From the wounds, it looks like they were slaughtered wholesale."

The slain were all from Eisten. They were young men Viktor was acquainted with. He explained that they had been close to the Berten gang but hadn’t officially joined.

But dying here meant, in the end, that they had thrown in with Berten. They were clearly in league with the bandits who had tried to kill the Falkenheim family—but why had they been slaughtered?

Every one of them wore a face frozen in terror. The plump rats that had grown fat gnawing on the corpses were utterly disgusting. We even found the corpse of Jhoan Berten, the supposed leader of the gang.

Well, what do you know. Berten had been wiped out without me lifting a finger. If I were a knight who hated trouble and liked to claim credit, I’d have stopped here. But I’d caught a scent.

Not the scent of rotting corpses, but the heavy scent of conspiracy.

This was clearly a cleanup. Dead men tell no tales.

I had the Searcher Scouter, but it tracked designated targets, so without information on these men, tracking was impossible. The same went for the dead. There was nothing I could do at the moment.

Behind the old house, there was another corpse slumped over a wooden barrel. His back had been slashed, and from blood loss, a great deal of blood had blackened and congealed on the barrel and the ground.

Viktor seemed even more troubled at the sight.

"This one is Sebastian. He was Simon’s friend. He shouldn’t be here."

Simon’s friend? What had been his reason for getting mixed up with Berten? But the Searcher Scouter alerted me to a small space beneath the barrel. So I moved Sebastian’s body and the barrel aside.

When I opened the small door, I found a boy lying unconscious inside. Blood had seeped down and soaked the bottom, but he seemed to be alive. Viktor was shocked at the sight.

"...Why is Sebastian’s little brother in here?"

"This dead man’s little brother?"

"Yes. But how did the two of them end up here?"

For now, I sent someone to fetch water from a nearby stream. We had to wake the boy up.

When I splashed water on his face, he writhed in pain and mumbled,

"Ugh! Please! Spare me!"

"Snap out of it. The men trying to kill you are gone."

"Aaagh! Please!"

His eyes flying open, trembling like a leaf, the boy couldn’t escape his terror and just curled into himself. Goodness. It seemed I wouldn’t be getting any answers out of the last survivor just yet.

But when the boy saw Sebastian’s body lying on the ground, he reacted violently.

"B-brother? I’m sorry! Brother! I said I was sorry! Please don’t die!"

He clung to the body and shook it wildly.

But his dead brother could not come back. And the dehydrated boy collapsed again. In the end, we pitched a tent nearby and waited for him to recover. Thankfully, the boy woke up before long.

This time, I had him drink water slowly.

He seemed to have recovered to some extent.

But I could feel anxiety and fear in the eyes looking back at us.

We’re not the bad guys here. So go on, talk.

"Do you recognize me?"

"V-Viktor, sir! W-where’s my brother?"

"He’s dead. He must have been trying to protect you."

"Ugh, I shouldn’t have shaken my brother off and come here."

It had suddenly turned into a confessional.

"They killed everyone! Those bastards! The Black Wolves!"

He said it was the work of madmen who wore only black. After the men they had sent out to "collect tolls" didn’t return, the Black Wolves suddenly turned on everyone—Berten and all the local young men alike.

Sebastian, who had picked that very moment to come fetch his brother, had met a horrid end. He had managed to save his brother, but he himself hadn’t escaped death.

It really did look like Berten had been used by these people.

But Black Wolves? The name felt familiar. I was sure I’d seen it on the list.

So I quietly checked the list of violent criminals. Schwarz Wolf, a group of mercenary criminals, were wanted for committing robbery, arson, plunder, and rape in the border fief of Count Essenbach, and had since crossed into the Breisburg royal demesne.

Unlike Essenbach, no one here was actively trying to apprehend them. It was a common tactic of robber knights—commit crimes in one fief, then flee to another. Most violent criminals operated this way.

But of all things, Schwarz Wolf.

What made it worse was that my name shared a word with theirs.

"Viktor, this is their work."

"A fanatical group obsessed with black..."

It looked like hunting season had arrived.

Now that I had information on the targets, I activated the Searcher Scouter. I picked up the traces of slaughter and the footprints they had left behind two days ago.

Those footprints led to Eisten.