Chapter 41: Abundant Spoils of War

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Baron Antayas also learned from the bandit captives and the villagers who had been rescued of the Schwabian Duchy’s shocking conspiracy against the County of Burgundy.

To ensure the stability of Alsburg, Baron Antayas ordered the army that had retaken the territory to remain stationed there. He also retained Yate’s patrol force to assist in the town’s defense, paying them fifty pfennigs a day. Every day, Yate rode with Ron and accompanied the cavalry led by Sir Drury on patrols around Alsburg, guarding against a surprise attack by the Schwabian army.

While stationed in Alsburg, Baron Antayas sent cavalry north to Besançon with an urgent report for the court. Yate also took the opportunity to write a letter to the court’s Minister of Public Order, reporting everything that had happened since he had taken office as a patrol officer. At Baron Antayas’s suggestion, their letters described the battle as follows: Baron Antayas had led his forces to the rescue, repelled the bandits from the Bozhe Mountains who had come to attack Alsburg, and learned from the captured bandits of a plot by the Duchy of Schwabia, incited by the Duchy of Lombardy, to invade the borderlands. They requested that the court dispatch troops as soon as possible to garrison the eastern frontier.

For the next seven or eight days, nothing unusual occurred around Alsburg. Baron Antayas summoned several physicians and priests from various parts of his domain to treat the officers and soldiers wounded in the fighting. Although the patrol force was also assigned a physician, Yate refused the man’s assistance—for the physician was forever eager to cut people open and bleed them—and instead insisted on cleaning the wounded soldiers’ injuries and changing their bandages every day. At night, he would secretly apply poultices of crushed herbs to those who had suffered external wounds.

Despite exhausting himself treating the wounded soldiers of the patrol force, Yate was unable to save the man whose skin had been scalded by boiling sewage. The soldier’s flesh had already begun to rot, and he eventually died.

By then, three soldiers of the patrol force had been killed in battle. As the weather gradually warmed, their bodies could not be preserved and transported back to the valley for burial. Yate therefore found a level patch of ground outside Alsburg and buried the three men there in simple graves.

The patrol force had suffered too many casualties. Although Odo did everything he could to provide the soldiers with hearty meals and raise their spirits with a constantly changing menu—even occasionally adding light beer to their dinners—the patrol soldiers could not escape the gloom that descended upon them after the deaths and injuries of their comrades, nor the emotional collapse that followed the strain of extreme tension.

There was little Yate could do about it. After all, many of the patrol soldiers had still been ordinary farmers, shepherds, or laborers only a few months earlier...

On the fifteenth day of their stationing in Alsburg, there was still no sign of movement in the surrounding area. Baron Antayas was beginning to struggle under the enormous daily expense of maintaining an army of nearly a hundred men. The peasant soldiers whose terms of service were nearly over insisted on going home, arguing that the spring wheat had just been sown and needed weeding and irrigation. Left with no choice, Baron Antayas could only leave Household Knight Drury with ten town guards to garrison Alsburg, where barely more than twenty households remained, and then dismiss all the troops who had answered the call...

On the night before the army was disbanded, a banquet was held in Alsburg. Everyone received pork, mutton, and light beer purchased by the baron from various regions. The lord’s wooden hall was especially lively. Besides the commanders of the various units, several soldiers who had distinguished themselves in the battle to retake Alsburg were also invited to the feast.

After several rounds of drinks, Baron Antayas came over to Yate with a cup in his hand and drank a beer with him.

“Yate, are you truly determined to leave? If you stay and help me garrison this place for another month, I will provide food and drink for all of you, and I will also pay you a lump sum of one thousand eight hundred pfennigs in military wages. Only one month. Once I return and recruit enough soldiers and peasants to guard Alsburg, you may leave.”

Yate rose and filled the baron’s cup, then raised his own in return.

“My lord, fighting alongside a great warrior such as yourself and helping to drive back the demons of hell will be the greatest honor of my life. I shall praise your valor forever. As for your invitation to remain and garrison the town, please forgive me, but I cannot accept. The court appointed me to patrol the southern frontier and maintain public order. The fighting here is over, while the southern lands are still in turmoil, filled with refugees and bandits. I must return south and fulfill my duty.”

Yate saw the disappointment in Baron Antayas’s eyes. There was a very real possibility that Schwabia would send a great army across the border, yet the baron had no troops available to him at present. His small force of town guards was needed to defend Andermatt Keep, the fortress in the southeastern mountains of the county, while the rest of his domain’s forces would require a long time to recover from the battle in which Alsburg had been retaken. Before the court could respond, he needed at least a month to recruit soldiers and peasants to garrison this strategic border town.

Yate lowered his head and thought for a long while. Then he looked up at Baron Antayas.

“My lord, I may have a way to ease your present predicament. I wonder whether you would be willing to hear it.”

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“Let me hear it.”

“Since last year, large numbers of refugees have been pouring into the regions south of Tynetz. I will be patrolling the southern frontier in the days ahead. If you trust me, you could provide me with a sum of money and provisions, and I could recruit refugees and soldiers for you throughout the lands south of Tynetz...”

A glimmer of delight flashed through Baron Antayas’s eyes. He pulled over a wooden stool beside Yate and sat down.

“Tell me specifically. How do you intend to recruit refugees and soldiers?”

...

At noon the following day, several armies hurried back along the road from Alsburg to Andermatt Keep. They drove cattle and horses, carried money, provisions, and supplies, and transported the badly wounded. Upon reaching the keep, the various forces each returned to their own domains, villages, and settlements.

When he saw that there was no one else nearby, Odo could no longer contain his excitement. He rode up beside Yate, who was at the head of the column, and reported in a low, eager voice what they had dug out of the stable beside the lord’s wooden hall before leaving Alsburg.

“My lord, we made a fortune this time!”

During the war, Yate had learned from the bandit chief about the treasure he had hidden away. He had told only Odo and Ron, ordering them to keep the matter secret. With so many people coming and going during their stay in Alsburg, Yate had never found an opportunity to retrieve the bandit chief’s hidden wealth from the stable. But on the night before their departure, Yate had unusually volunteered for night watch duty. While everyone else was asleep, he took the opportunity to send Odo and Ron quietly into the stable to recover the treasure.

The bandit chief had not lied to Yate. The gold, silver, and jewels hidden in the stable far exceeded what had been looted from Alsburg. A preliminary count yielded five gold bars, forty-five silver marks, and sixty-three deniers, worth more than thirteen thousand pfennigs in total.

There was also a gold cross with an ivory inlay and a gilded silver chain, two small cups cast from gold, three silver serving plates, an emerald, a strand of agate beads, and a delicate porcelain vial. Even Yate, who had seen a fair amount of the world, could not estimate the value of such exquisite and magnificent treasures. Their worth should be no less than that of the coins.

As they continued on their way, they reached a fork in the road near Andermatt Keep, where the road leading west branched off. Sir Chloe rode his warhorse over to the patrol force and sought out Yate.

“Yate, I won’t be returning to Andermatt with the main force. From here, it’s only a day and a half west to Beninken. I have already taken my leave of the baron. Now I’ll say farewell to you as well. If you ever visit Beninken, I will welcome you with the highest honors.”

The middle-aged knight Chloe was one of the few nobles willing to befriend a commoner like Yate. Chloe himself was a capable battlefield commander and held Yate and the formidable patrol force he led in high regard. Moreover, Yate had spoken on Chloe’s behalf when the spoils were divided, and the two had spent much time together during their stay in Alsburg. Their personal friendship had grown close.

Yate dismounted and bowed respectfully to Sir Chloe.

“Honored Sir Chloe, I shall always remember the bond we forged while fighting side by side and sharing life and death. May God watch over you.”

...

After a brief day of rest at Andermatt Keep, Baron Antayas paid Yate the remaining two-thirds of the provisions and wages he had promised for the expedition. He also advanced Yate one thousand pfennigs to recruit refugees and soldiers. In return, Yate promised to recruit thirty refugees and fifteen soldiers for Baron Antayas within twenty days. Once the task was completed, Yate would receive either five hundred pfennigs or an equivalent amount of grain.

At dawn the next day, Yate had finished organizing all the supplies and set off with the patrol force on the return journey.

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The twenty-one people, one wagon, two horses, and two mules who had set out had become eighteen soldiers, some standing and some lying down, fifteen prisoners serving as laborers, four wagons piled high with goods, four horses, two mules, one ox, and loads of grain and supplies carried on everyone’s shoulders and backs.

The price they had paid was enormous, but so were their gains...

After traveling for a day, Yate ordered Odo and Bas to take the animals, wagons, supplies, and patrol soldiers and hurry ahead with the prisoners to the wooden fort in the valley. Their purposes were twofold: to continue treating the wounded and restore the soldiers’ morale, and to deliver the prisoners—who were to be kept under strict guard—to the old steward Cooper, so that they could atone through hard labor.

Yate had already told the prisoners who might still be redeemed that if they honestly accepted slavery and worked with all their might, they could eventually regain their freedom.

Yate himself, meanwhile, led Ron and Kazak, the two men with the best riding skills, northward. They carried some of the money and jewels, along with the heads of several bandit chiefs and lesser leaders. The soldiers could rest for a while after the war, but Yate himself could not yet stop. There were still many things waiting for him to do...

...

The three men reached Tynetz in less than two days of hard riding. By then, large numbers of refugees from the south had begun pouring into Tynetz once again. Law and order had grown even more chaotic. Every day, refugees were arrested by the town guards for theft, robbery, and causing disturbances, and the prison in Tynetz was already overcrowded.

Several months had passed, and the aftereffects of the looting of the Wincheston Estate had begun to emerge. When Yate and the others arrived at Tynetz City Hall, Viscount Pierre refused to receive him. Instead, he ordered the newly appointed magistrate to inform Yate of the court’s decree: he was to return all property taken from the Wincheston Estate and was forbidden to enter the lands belonging to the estate.

Yate, of course, had no intention of carrying out such a feeble punishment. Yet the heads he had brought with him failed to earn him even a single copper coin. Viscount Pierre’s men also made it clear that Yate should not expect to obtain any further weapons or material support from the city of Tynetz. The Deputy Chancellor of the Court had privately ordered Pierre to isolate this patrol officer appointed directly by the Minister of Public Order. Unwilling to offend the deputy chancellor, Pierre had no choice but to obey.

The heads of the bandit chiefs in Yate’s possession had become useless, and Tynetz Prefecture no longer welcomed the members of the patrol force. Yate had no choice but to hand the bandits’ heads over to the newly appointed magistrate of Tynetz, then leave the city and spend the night in the open country north of the walls.

Having been thoroughly rebuffed in Tynetz, Yate and the others continued north toward Lucernes...

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