“Get out of the way!”“Kyaaak!”
Every winter, the people of Snowhill took up spears and joined the knights in subjugating the beasts of the Allos Mountains.
But they were no match for heavily armed cavalry.
“Make as much chaos as you can! We need the lord’s troops to come out of the castle!”
“Yes, Centurion!”
The leader of the raiders, still called a centurion.
He had no intention of laying siege with a mere fifty cavalrymen. So he was causing as much disturbance in the territory as possible, waiting for the lord’s forces to emerge from the castle.
Dududududu!
Hooves trampled across the Snowhill territory.
The main road leading to the lord’s castle.
The cavalry charged along that road.
“Hya!”
“Kill them all!”
Dududududu!
Then, the gates of the lord’s castle opened.
Creeeak—
Clop. Clop.
Dawi rode out slowly on Malmari.
Behind Dawi came twelve knights in full plate armor.
“Oh-ho…?”
The leader’s eyes caught Malmari’s massive size.
But he did not attack Dawi right away and instead turned his horse’s head.
“Keep looting!”
“Yes!”
Dawi and the knights had no choice but to leave the vicinity of the castle and pursue them.
If the enemies had come near the castle, the guards waiting atop the walls had planned to shoot arrows, but that plan had gone up in smoke.
As Dawi and the knights chased them down the main road, the raiders suddenly turned their horses around.
At a fair distance from each other, Dawi and the raider leader faced one another.
‘Come to think of it…I have to kill people.’
Dawi had never killed a person. He had killed countless zombies and animals, but still.
The moment he realized he had to commit murder, his hands began to tremble faintly.
‘Did I make a mistake saying I wanted the horses? Was I blinded by greed?’
For an instant, regret washed over Dawi.
Then—
“Kyaaaak!”
A woman was dragged out of a house by her hair.
One cavalryman drew the tip of his spear across her throat.
As if telling Dawi to watch closely, he stared straight ahead while doing it.
The woman collapsed, blood spurting from her neck.
‘Right. This isn’t Earth.’
The level of civilization was barely medieval. And even that had collapsed due to the zombie outbreak.
There were people who deserved to die, situations where killing was the only way to live…and times when one killed for one’s own benefit.
‘I’ll be taking your horses, then.’
Dawi hardened his resolve.
“Sir Hans. The moment their charge stops will be our chance. I’ll stop their charge.”
They were heavily armed, but they were not knights. According to the butler, the flags on their lances symbolized the imperial cavalry.
In other words, they were men with wartime experience. But they were not men who had awakened mana circulation. If they were, they would have been carrying the flag of the imperial knight order, not the imperial cavalry.
Once the cavalry’s breakthrough power was gone, they would be easy prey for Snowhill’s knights.
“Can you stop a cavalry charge by yourself?”
At Hans’s question, Dawi answered calmly.
“Yes. I should probably be able to stop them well enough.”
As he answered, Dawi urged Malmari slightly forward.
Clop. Clop.
Dawi moved ahead of the knights and shouldered his gun.
Click!
“Charge!!”
At the leader’s shout, the cavalry began to run.
Dudududududu!
In the middle of the road, directly in the path of the charging cavalry, Dawi and Malmari stood motionless.
‘I have to kill. That’s how I live.’
‘But murder isn’t very romantic.’
‘Still, it’d be nice to have livestock besides geese and ducks on the ranch.’
‘And…protecting people is romantic.’
The muzzle of the shotgun aimed at the leader riding at the very front.
Dudududududu!
The distance between Dawi and the cavalry narrowed. The knights, the people of the territory, and the baroness in the lord’s castle watched with bated breath.
When the distance reached about fifty meters, the leader shouted.
“Sweep them all away!!”
And Dawi’s shotgun spat fire.
Bang—!
‘Thunder…?’
As the leader had that thought, his body was already in the air.
The force of the buckshot had knocked him from his horse.
Whoosh—crash, crash, crash! Crunch!
The leader’s body rolled across the ground, then was trampled under horse hooves, crushed and broken.
A single shot fired by Dawi.
Its effect did not end there.
This was another world without gunpowder weapons.
The horses here had never heard the explosion of gunpowder before. To horses, sensitive animals by nature, the sound of thunder from so close by inspired extreme terror.
“Neighhh!!”
“Frrr-neighhh!!”
Startled by the thunderous sound, the horses reared up and went into a frenzy.
“Uwaaah!”
“You beasts! Calm down!!”
“Damn it! He was a mage?!!”
Watching the scene, Hans muttered.
“The charge…stopped.”
Bang—!
Dawi fired again. The sound snapped Hans back to his senses.
“This is no time to stand around. Knights! Charge! Knock them off their horses!”
“Uwaaaaa!!”
The twelve knights rushed in.
A haze of mana rose around them.
“Mana circulation?! Don’t tell me all twelve of them are knights?”
“What kind of tiny territory has more than ten knights!!”
“Hup!”
Hans put strength into his thighs and leaped high.
Whoosh—
Jumping up to the height of a horse, Hans struck down at a cavalryman’s neck.
Crack!
“You sons of bitches!!”
“Die!!”
The people of Snowhill did not remain idle either.
They had only suffered because they could not stop a cavalry charge.
The people who had fought beasts every winter were not weak.
Pierced by spears, bound by nooses—
The cavalrymen fell from their horses and were beaten by the people in a group lynching.
Thud! Thud! Crack!
“Ghaaak!”
“Spare me..!”
“Kuhak!”
Dawi finished reloading and fired again.
Bang! Bang! Clack.
Bang! Bang!
Cavalry who could not run were easy prey. The cavalrymen were quickly dealt with, and the roughly forty surviving horses were led to the stables of the lord’s castle.
Dawi and the knights searched the merchant ship the raiders had supposedly arrived on.
Bang!
“Kuhak!”
It was not difficult to deal with the ones who had remained on the merchant ship.
The problem was—
“P-please spare us!”
“We were captured and brought here!”
“Please spare us!”
There were prisoners.
‘Rather than prisoners…are they slaves?’
Judging from their state, it seemed they had handled all sorts of chores aboard the ship.
“Sir Hans, what should we do?”
“Sigh… What else can we do? We’ll have to accept them as people of the territory. The problem is them.”
Where Hans pointed, there were dwarves.
“I don’t know if the Stone Mountain dwarves will accept them. They’re always short on food over there, aren’t they?”
The dwarves were in a place even more lacking in food than the Snowhill territory.
Thanks to Dawi’s ranch, Snowhill’s food situation had improved somewhat. And waterway construction was underway to increase production. But it would take time for those results to appear. As such, the amount of food flowing to the dwarves was still not much.
“…I see.”
“Whew… For now, let’s take everyone to the lord’s castle.”
.
.
.
After returning to the lord’s castle, Dawi checked the horses.
‘There seem to be about forty of them… That’s too many, isn’t it?’
The horses were packed tightly into the lord’s castle stables.
‘That’s not a number the ranch can handle.’
It would be hard for Dawi to manage alone, and there was no room on the ranch to raise forty horses.
‘As for space, I can make some by cutting down trees, but that’ll take quite a while too…’
While Dawi was agonizing, the baroness was watching his expression.
‘It would be good if the knights had horses… Could we receive just twelve?’
Hans and the other knights were also swallowing as they looked at the horses. A knight, after all, ought to have at least one horse.
“Hmm… How many of these are mares?”
Dawi decided to take only the mares. The reason Dawi wanted to raise horses was because of Malmari.
‘If Malmari’s children take after him…even if they only take after half of him, they’ll be the finest steeds.’
Dawi planned to breed Malmari’s descendants and create the greatest horse bloodline on the continent.
‘The horses from my ranch will become the finest steed bloodline.’
Of course, the only place to live would be the Snowhill territory, but still.
“There are ten mares. Five stallions, and the rest are geldings.”
‘Ten… I can manage that somehow.’
“I’ll take only the mares. Would that be all right?”
At Dawi’s words, the baroness widened her eyes and stared at him.
“Are you serious?”
Hans and the knights also whipped their heads around to look at Dawi.
“Yes. Ah… If raising them would be too much of a burden for the territory, then I’ll take them all. It can’t be helped.”
“No! Not at all. The territory can raise them. Horses eat fresh gra—I mean, weeds often enough, and now we’ll be growing rye and barley in the territory too.”
Rye and barley seeds had been planted starting from the areas where waterways had been installed. The results of the farming would likely come in autumn.
“Of course, the ownership of the hay all belongs to Sir Baroque, but you’ll sell it to the territory, won’t you?”
“Ah, of course. I’ll use only what the ranch needs and give you the rest. Then the horses…”
“Would it be acceptable for Sir Baroque’s ranch to take the ten mares, and for the territory to take the rest?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
The baroness silently looked at Dawi as he expressed his thanks.
“…Why are you looking at me like that?”
“We’re the ones who should be thanking you. These horses were all Sir Baroque’s to begin with. But still, we cannot simply receive them for free. Hmm…”
As the baroness pondered, the butler approached.
“The questioning of the prisoners is complete. Their places of origin vary. The women handled chores like cleaning and cooking aboard the ship, and…hm…”
Most of the prisoners on the ship had been women. The rest were dwarves.
It was obvious what kind of treatment the female prisoners must have suffered on the ship.
“…And the dwarves seem to have handled ship repairs, armor and weapon maintenance, and horse care.”
Dawi lifted his head at the butler’s words.
‘They managed the horses?’
He had just acquired ten mares as it was.
‘They’ll need to be impregnated with Malmari’s offspring…and it would be good to have workers who know how to care for horses.’
On top of that, if those workers had experience repairing ships and were skilled with wood and metal?
‘…I definitely want to hire them for the ranch.’