Chapter 22: Chapter 22 – Message

One year later. I am 47.

The royal army moved out of the capital a year ago. Many of the king's vassals partly sent their troops to this army.

Although the nobles were a military caste and most of the influential nobles had their own troops in the service, but during the war this was far from enough. The main part of the army became residents of cities and villages. Moreover, they were not even provided with armor or weapons. If they wanted to live, they had to arm themselves as best they could.

Given that this entire army had to move on foot, their campaign took a whole year. Only now, they were finally not too far from Harin City.

The neighboring kingdom did not respond to my requests for help, which convinced me even more that it was all just a screen and the king agreed with them in advance. They, in turn, certainly were not opposed to us killing each other, hatching some of their plans.

However, during this year the situation has changed dramatically.

Spreading the news was problematic in these times, but I had my people everywhere and I wasn't the only one working in this direction. Months later, every ragamuffin knew all the ins and outs behind the attack. Naturally, we are talking about the version of events that I provided.

Although the majority of people did not care deeply about the problems of their neighbor, and even less they cared about problems of some noble somewhere out there, but there were really a lot of people who lived at the expense of my pawnshops. Therefore, there were many dissatisfied among the people.

It became more and more difficult to gather an army of peasants on the way in my direction. Moreover, even among those who joined earlier, more and more fugitives appeared.

One of the reasons for such courage of peasants was Duke Murphy. With the beginning of the campaign against my city, he declared his region a separate kingdom and appointed himself king. In fact, he openly announced his rebellion.

His first decree was a call to come to the defense of the city of Harin. At the same time, any person who joins the enemy will be executed on the spot. Therefore, people were between two fires, whoever they join, the other will execute them.

Although this caused some unrest in the area, most of the nobles supported Murphy.

Since the castle in the city of Harin was relatively small and the city walls of the huge new city were only under construction, it was decided to take open battle outside the city.

A temporary camp was set up and I became part of it. Although I didn't know much about the nuances of warfare, I agreed to act as Murphy's bodyguard.

The whole situation annoyed me a little. In the current realities, I was no longer the head of the situation. Murphy, Rashford and numerous other nobles took the initiative to protect their interests and raised a whole army.

Of course, I had nothing to complain about. Although they had their own reasons, but the main thing is that they essentially acted as defenders for my city. Therefore, not finding another way out of this situation, I just went with the flow.

I had some tricks up my sleeve, plus I left people to defend the city as well as a way to contact me instantly if something happened. Bertram also remained in the city.

I myself was in my field tent. I was wearing magnificent armor made of dark gold, and in the scabbard was a sword made of the same material. I literally pasted together everything I needed.

The dark gold was so strong that I couldn't destroy it with any of my attacks, so naturally the first thing all of Rock's labors went to was my personal defense. With this armor, I was not afraid even if two True Knights attacked me at the same time.

A contented Rock sat on my shoulder. He could eat whatever he wanted and how much he wanted. But he disdained to absorb his own remnants in the form of dark gold, or simply could not. For the same reason, I fed my old hand to Rock, and made myself a prosthesis from the same dark gold according to the old scheme. It was quite heavy but bearable for a Knight.

Rock has become for me the most important of all the treasures found among the garbage for many years, maybe except for meditation technique. In any case, I never parted with him and I did not care deeply about the views of other people in his direction.

I used a spell and a blue bird formed on my hand. She fluttered out of my hand and flew out of the tent. Soon she was already circling over the battlefield. After reading the following spell, my eyes were covered with mist, on the other hand, I could observe what was happening from the point of view of a bird.

Our army consisted of about 40 thousand people. Nevertheless, no small part of it included guild mercenaries of various stripes. They may not be comparable to the personal army of any lord, however, they were much better equipped and trained than ordinary peasants.

On the other side there was an enemy army and apparently their number did not exceed 50 thousand by much. Due to many problems with the campaign, provisions, deserters and so on, their army was much smaller than expected. Moreover, most of them were residents of cities and villages.

The king did not personally go on this punitive mission, but simply sent his vassals. In any case, at first glance we had an advantage.

Of course, I did not really wanted the death of so many people, it was a waste of precious resources. Unfortunately, I have not found a way to avoid this situation. King Ardel gave the order and no one will turn back without a fight.

Soon the signal of the enemy camp sounded and they rushed to the attack.

I watched as the motley crowds of peasants moved forward from enemy camp. As they were approaching our commons with bows began to send thousands of arrow. Crowds of people covered themselves from arrows with anything they could, others simply died. Nevertheless, there were so many enemies that the number of dead seemed like a drop in the ocean.

Finally Murphy also gave the go-ahead and the peasants on his side moved forward. Both sides kept cavalry and other trained troops, slowly sending them into battle.

A chaotic mess began, the battlefield quickly turned into a swamp of human bodies. It was difficult to understand who was killing whom in this confusion.

Murphy sent the rest of the troops to help, but the other side sent only a small detachment. I soon understood why.

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Among the opponent's detachment was Mage. He performed a spell and sent a black mist towards the combatants. The fog swirled in forms beyond description and had a radius of about 10 meters, but apparently the Mage continued to control it and the fog moved around the battlefield, frightening mortals.

All over the battlefield, the dead began to rise and attack everyone around. True, they acted more like brainless animals. Of course, that was enough to start even more chaos. People fled in horror in all directions, apparently the curse did not work on the living, or had a different effect.

I canceled the spell and got on my horse, after which I went to the battlefield. Finding a zombie who had gone far enough from the central part of the battle, I captured him and went back.

Soon I returned to my own camp and threw the dead man to the ground. Judging by the mental energy check, the dead man was afflicted with a curse. Apparently, the curse hit the dead first of all and partially restores something in their brain, giving the impression that they were resurrected.

The dead man growled and fought in a frenzy, his eyes were filled with blood and ugly black cracks appeared on his face. His screams attracted attention and soon Murphy and the rest of the command staff came to the noise.

Among the nobles were my old acquaintances. Earl Lawrence was part of the area and had little choice but to side with Murphy. He remained in the back rows and pretended to look at the sky. He was already about 60 years old.

Rashford was there too. He smiled and nodded politely when he saw me, I nodded back. He was already over 50, so he was gradually becoming an old man, although so far he looked quite good.

Looking at him, I seemed to feel the weight of the past years on me and sighed to myself.

- Mr. Tarrister, are these the living dead that were reported from the front? - Murphy asked.

The rest of the nobles reacted in different ways, but the faces of most turned pale imagining that such zombies filled the battlefield.

- Right. Apparently the king has a necromancer.

I began to prick the body of the dead man in various places, testing the reaction. Then I cut off his hand, it stopped moving. Then I cut off his head and the body of the dead man finally froze, only the head continued to growl even after the decapitation. The surrounding people were amazed at the sight of such a spectacle.

I was not particularly interested in such a curse. Obviously the Magician couldn't control the dead. Theoretically, it is possible to damage certain parts of the brain to make a puppet out of a person, but I was not particularly interested in research in this direction.

In any case, this spell was only useful for madmen who wanted to create havoc and kill crowds of mortals.

- Maybe we should give the order to chop off their heads? - suggested one of the nobles.

Although even Murphy showed me respect, not to mention the others, I couldn't just give orders. Thoughts about how to kill the nobles and seize power did not even occur to me. A waste of time that will only create chaos and nothing else. I had to explain.

- These dead people are completely brainless, slow and uncontrollable. It is enough just to give the order to retreat 500 meters. If they stop feeling alive in the area, they will simply disperse anywhere or attack our enemies.

Another noble tried to object.

- But the order to retreat can undermine morale, our troops may decide that we have lost and flee from the battlefield.

I sighed. Although I myself was a butcher, but for many of these nobles, the lives of tens of thousands of people meant nothing at all.

- The dead that gnaw off the faces of our fighters hit morale much more strongly. They will all die there without any benefit for us. - I replied.

- Maybe you could do something? After all, you are also a Mage. - Murphy offered uncertainly.

- With the already created dead, I can not do anything, so I propose the best solution to the problem.

Although I could try to suppress the curse, it was completely counterproductive. I had no intention of running around the battlefield and wasting my mental energy on something like that. Even killing these zombies would be easier.

They conferred a little more, but soon nevertheless decided to give the signal for retreat.

As expected for me, the enemy gave the signal to retreat before us.

I summoned my magic bird, which was already quite exhausted, after which I took out a small stone. It was almost the same as the one that once turned out to be a magical trap due to which I lost my arm.

After casting the spell, the stone hovered right in the body of the bird, after which I sent it flying and used the change of vision again.

The nobles around me got excited at the sight of the beautiful bird, admiring the magic, and started flooding me with compliments. At the same time, they hoped that I would strike at the enemy camp.

- There is nothing to rejoice, friends. This is just a small message. - I said with a wry smile and shook my head.

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