Hert bit into a flatbread made from refined wheat flour and baked on a griddle, and his eyes grew slightly hot. How long had it been since he last ate this? Ever since leaving the Orc Kingdom, the centaurs had had no choice in what they ate, and they had nearly forgotten even the taste of the refined wheat flour they once loved.
"How long do you think it'll take the enemy to reach High Mountain Keep?" Richard used a spoon to mash the salted beef, then scraped up a spoonful of jam and sandwiched them in the flatbread before tearing off a fierce bite.
"They definitely won't be here soon." Hert gave a disdainful laugh. "Wildlanders are a bunch of bastards who only take advantage without ever accepting a loss. Just organizing their military provisions will take them several days of squabbling. I'd say it'll be at least ten days."
Annie breathed a sigh of relief. Ten days would be enough time to wait for the guild's reinforcements, then withdraw at their leisure. She was a merchant, and getting inexplicably dragged into a war did not serve her interests. She was also a woman, and she could not bear to make her badly battered guards endure another trial.
"They really are an amateur outfit, but High Mountain Keep can't let down its guard just because we underestimate the enemy. Since we know a fight will come sooner or later, we'll double the sentries starting today. The warriors will rest in shifts and remain on combat duty," Richard said.
"My lord is wise." Hert promptly offered up some flattery.
"To be honest, I've wanted to beat them up for a long time. I just never found the chance. Now they've actually gathered together and delivered themselves to our doorstep. We might as well deal with them all at once. Hahaha!" Richard threw back his head and laughed three times.
Gunther stacked three flatbreads into a pile and swallowed half of them in one bite. Startled by the sudden laughter, he choked so badly he nearly rolled his eyes back, then hurriedly picked up his beer and gulped it down.
"By the way, Hert, what weapons are centaurs good at using?"
"My lord, centaurs are all excellent archers. We can put an arrow through a rabbit's eye from a hundred paces away." Hert rubbed his hands together. "But bows are delicate weapons. Our clan has been separated from our homeland for a long time, and we don't have many usable war bows left."
"Your clan... Ah, wait." Richard suddenly noticed the obvious problem. "Your clan can't consist only of adult warriors, can it? Where are all the other old people, children, women, and others?"
The twenty-one centaurs who had joined High Mountain Keep were all adult males. They clearly did not match the age and gender composition a tribe ought to have.
"They..." Hert blinked twice, looking especially innocent. "They're slower on their feet, and they're also driving quite a few herds of livestock. They fell behind, so it'll probably be several more days before they arrive."
Richard looked at that honest face and immediately understood. This bastard is trying to hedge his risks!
If Richard defeated the native coalition, Hert could justifiably bring the rest of his tribe into High Mountain Keep. But if the native coalition overturned Richard, Hert could easily flee with some young warriors. After all, they had four legs!
Who would have thought? In this day and age, just how much smarter was anyone than anyone else?
He looked like a simpleton, but he had more schemes than a monkey. He was putting the principle of never keeping all your eggs in one basket into perfect practice.
"Then remember to tell the sentries. We don't want any misunderstandings." They had come all this way to risk their lives for him, so Richard was not so narrow-minded that he could not tolerate this little bit of caution.
"Miss Annie." He tapped his knuckles against the pinewood table, calling back the Half-Elf, who was clearly lost in thought. "I'd like to know whether your guild can lend High Mountain Keep five hundred gold coins."
Richard had reached the point where he had so many lice that he no longer itched, and so much debt that he no longer worried about it. He had completely adopted a devil-may-care attitude toward his finances. Since he already owed fifteen hundred gold coins, borrowing another five hundred was no big deal.
The advantage of borrowing money to develop an army instead of gambling was that he did not have to worry about loan sharks coming to collect. After all, he had an army.
"No problem. I can make the decision on five hundred gold coins myself."
Moneylending was also one of the core businesses of the Voya Merchant Guild, but Annie did not mention interest at all. The Half-Elf was under someone else's roof and had no choice but to bow her head.
"High Mountain Keep will always be grateful for your generosity." Richard nodded his thanks, affecting a convincing aristocratic tone.
After the meal, Richard clapped Hert on the shoulder and assured him that the bows and arrows would arrive immediately. He also instructed him to start training the centaurs tomorrow and regain their feel for the weapons. Then he took the five hundred gold coins Annie had handed over and entered his room.
The bows and arrows used by centaurs were somewhat different from the equipment of ordinary horse archers.
The expensive longbow was universally acknowledged as the strongest bow among the mainstream military equipment of the time. It was famous for its long range and great power. Equipped with a half-pound armor-piercing arrowhead, it could even shoot straight through a knight's Plate Armor from fifty paces away.
But because riders could not brace their feet and exert force as easily while sitting on horseback, human horse archers could not use longbows at all. They had to settle for short horse bows, whose range and accuracy were both far inferior. Contrary to many people's intuitive impression, because of the difference in equipment, horse archers would be at a disadvantage if they directly exchanged fire with infantry archers.
For humans, the agility of cavalry and the power of longbows were like white roses and red roses—a contradiction that could never be resolved. To have one, they had to give up the other.
But this principle did not apply to centaurs. In this field, they were born with the Creator God's favor. Thanks to their special horse-and-man body structure, centaurs could fire longbows while running, combining agility with power. They were more than a little stronger than ordinary horse archers!
Richard opened the System Panel. The heavy, gleaming gold coins vanished without a trace, while the shop's balance simultaneously increased by five hundred thousand Denars.
Centaurs' Yew Longbows cost fifteen thousand Denars each, so he bought twenty-one, one for every centaur. Conical White-Feathered Arrows cost eight hundred Denars per quiver, and forty quivers were the bare minimum.
A fortune in the eyes of ordinary commoners was only enough to make a sound when used to arm an army. In the blink of an eye, more than half of it was gone. A famous general had once said that war was all about burning money, but Richard thought that was utter nonsense, because money could not possibly burn that quickly.
High Mountain Keep's pioneering undertaking was like a bottomless pit that devoured gold, and at present, its returns remained nowhere in sight.
Richard was disheartened for a long while and could not recover. He had originally thought that being a lord meant castles, maids, and endless banquets with noble ladies. In reality, he had not seen a trace of any of that. All he had gotten was endless worry and debts he could never repay. He might as well have become a bandit; the prospects would have been better.
The angrier he became, the more he thought about it. He kicked over the empty chest that had held the gold coins, then flopped onto the bed and fell asleep.
The next morning.
The Yew Longbows were distributed among the centaurs, and Hert began leading his clansmen in vigorous training.
Richard watched them practice. As befitted a tribe renowned for its archery, even the dozen or so most awkward Centaur Herdsmen could, once they found their feel for the weapon, twist sideways and hit wooden posts as thick as bowls from fifty paces away while running at full speed.
An expert could see the skill in it. This level was far beyond the so-called feat of shooting a target through a willow leaf from a hundred paces. In the eyes of centaurs, the skill of elite human archers probably counted as nothing more than amateur dabbling.
Before you continue