Miklos sometimes dreams about that day. It is not something he would forget. He saw it and he winced each time he remembers it
For a child to see someone who he loves and cares about to be subjected under such torture that ripped parts the skin and create scars all over the back of such a man that he admired…..the memory seared itself into his mind
One of his father friends was whipped in the village square for not able to reach the quota.
That night, his father sharpens the mining pick.
His father did not hide what he was doing. Then he called his friends that he had met for many nights before
And on that night they went to the supervisor house and kill them. The head is then presented to the leader of the rebel army who then accepted his father as one of the captains.
Before going away, his father and his men with hundreds of men of the rebel army rushed to the castle.
The castle was easily broken because they have a man on the inside, and the moment they are inside, all of the nobles there are killed
That was the first time he had killed. However, that was clearly not the first time his father had killed.
You never forget your first. But each time he remembers it, he did not feel regret. He saw for himself how decadent and how debauched the nobles are.
Some are too young to engage in such debauchery, but it is clear given time, that they would do the same thing
Some of the nobles he found worships evil things.
Some ate babies and some torture women and children in their basement for their sick twisted pleasure.
For this kind of nobles, he had no regret killing them. That was the day how he saw the mask of the nobility stripped away.
Are all nobles evils?
Truthfully, he does not know.
But most that he met are lower than beast.
He would learn later of course that sometimes, it is the position and the world that created such beast.
There is no law governing this beast and the laws they created is nothing but private law for them.
A set of laws for them and a set of laws for the rest of them. And it is because of this, they could engage with all kinds of debauched manner with impunity.
And his father threw a torch and from the stables the fire engulfed the entire castle.
That night fire rose all over the residence of the nobles.
And chaos engulfed Matra. The night was young and by dawn almost all of the residence of the nobles' manors has been attacked.
And thousand was following under the banner of Dozsa.
Miklos still remember that day.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
Of course, now his father is already dead.
But that was another story.
As for him, he also joins the rebel army and after a year, he is now a spotter, a tracker and sometimes a hunter.
He is already nineteen of age.
And now, today, a few months away from reaching the age of twenty, he is on the verge of life and death and everywhere he looks, he saw death and destruction.
Today, is a battle of desperation.
The royal army had brought a large force to eradicate them. From what he heard a few lords had even come, barons and counts, the middle peerage lords.
"This is not good at all"
The fact that the kingdom is suffering not only internal but external crisis, actually help their rebellion.
After all, they were not the only rebellion in the land, but they were the omnes that is more prominent in the central region.
And the most organized.
Of course, this is compared to the other rebellion forces all over the country. But now, some of these lords suddenly gathered to fight them
It means they take them with high regard.
Miklos does not know what the higher up thinks with this sudden surge of high regard
Some of them might even think it is a good thing
But Miklos is a common person, a peasant and he knew someone who is being by high regard, is like a thorn stuck inside one's throat.
One must remove it or allied with it.
But clearly noble army and royal army could not ally with a rebel.
The objective is different and the desire is different hence, the way would be to remove them from the equation
he did not want the forces of the land to regard the rebellion force highly.
The more they underestimate the rebel forces, the better.
But rarely the desire of small people like him would be heard or be fulfilled.
The world is big, one-person wish could not change the general trend and could not change the desire of the powerful people of the world
Just like how they raise taxes without looking at the people and wage war according to their likes and dislike.
Not everyone is stupid and not everyone is shortsighted.
And the lords that came here today to eradicate the rebel army, most of them gather probably because of interest but probably also because they knew that they could no longer let the rebels have an easy time
They also have reputation to uphold.
This battle…..this is unlike any battle that he had fought before.
This battle is more intense and the force that they encountered is unlike the force they encounter before
These people are serious in trying to kill them
before they would attack cities and nobles' compound and only have a few thousand men chasing or attacking them.
They have attack manor and castle.
Some castles are easy to take, and some are not. And unlike royal army, they did not have siege weapon
Not to mention even the royal army did not have that much siege weapons.
The lords that do have a power to establish siege weapons are usually powerful lords and Dukes
They have the money and the manpower to support such endeavours but for the barons and counts, not all of them have learned men from the Holy Empire.
The Valendian empire had collapsed hundreds of years ago, and the land is still digesting the knowledge that came out of there
Only the learned men further west learn the method of the army of the Valendian empire.
One of such method is siege weapons powerful enough to bring down powerful walls.
For forces like them they need to do scaling the walls and inside help when fighting against nobles who hide in a castle.
Especially those lords and barons that have castle high in the hills and mountains, carving through the mountain rivers
Of course, the rebel army rarely targeted these kinds of structures.
The rebel army grows by attacking the weak nobles and incorporating the people while at the same time inciting internal rebellion and instigating people in the inside of the castle to join the cause
Miklos might not know much about the inner workings of the rebel army.
But he knows enough.
But he did not know the strategy of the rebel army
He is not high enough in the chain of command. He is a tracker, a soldier slightly special above normal soldiers.
He is also a scout.
And because of his position he sometime knows more than the other soldiers.
But this does not mean he understand why certain castles must be captured why certain places must be defended and why they must attack certain place
But he had experienced his fair share of battle.
And this time, this time it is quite different.
This time, the royal army come in full force.
Not quite the royal army. It is not the king's army. It is the nobles' armies.
In the past he did not understand this difference.
But now, he had understood.
The royal armies usually belong to the king and the loyal armies that defend the capital and the lords that is close to the capital.
Miklos also learns just because the noble is given title by the kings, does not mean all the lords is loyal to the king.
The king has different approach when dealing with certain lords and there are lords that he could easily order and there are some lords he could not easily order
There are lords that would follow him through thick and thin and there are lords that would stab him in the back
This rebellion far away from the capital, one wonders, whether the king is worried or happy.
All of this is something he only learned after being exposed to the nature of royalties and nobilities and something he had learned from the veterans that served in the rebel army.
There are even rumours that the dukes himself send armies.
Though this is just a rumour he heard and he is not sure whether this is true or not. But if its true, this is a battle that would determine their life and death
A duke army is sometimes even more terrifying than the royal army.
Maybe, it is a news deliberately spread by the enemy to mess with their morale. But Miklos believed that the duke did not send an army. If not the disparity of the quantity of soldiers would not be by this much.
Ten-thousand-armed men fighting against thirty thousand men.
..