Chapter 53 - An Awl in the Pocket Is Bound to Poke Out (2)

The king refused, and the Second Prince pressed him, saying he could not turn a blind eye to House Ballorhard.

In the end, before the Second Prince’s justification that House Ballorhard’s devotion and service had to be repaid, the king took one step back.

"I will dispatch two legion-class mercenary companies. I will not stop you from leading your knight order to the North, either. However, the knight orders and the central army will not move."

The meeting was concluded like that, and the king summoned the Second Prince separately to his bedchamber.

"Ballorhard must never fall."

Until just moments ago, he had acted as if he would send a single mercenary company and then forget about it, but now that they were alone, the king’s attitude changed as if he were a different person.

"I know. I only feel ashamed that what just happened may have damaged Your Majesty’s solemn dignity."

Even at the sudden change in attitude, the Second Prince showed not the slightest sign of surprise.

"I am already rolling in the mire. What does it matter if a little more filth gets on me?"

The king’s tone was calm.

But even so, he could not hide the self-loathing within it.

"I do not understand why Your Majesty insists on bearing the disgrace of being called a foolish ruler."

The Second Prince asked with a grave face.

"Bourgogne’s eyes and ears are everywhere."

The king’s voice lowered further.

"If I had readily said I would gather an army and send it to Ballorhard, the Empire would have thought the Royal Family had some other intent. Montpellier is not the sort to take at face value that House Ballorhard, which has firmly defended the kingdom for generations, suddenly asked for aid now."

"Then..."

"They would think the Royal Family had colluded with House Ballorhard. Perhaps they might even think Adrian’s actions at the banquet were the will of the Royal Family."

The eldest son who had bared his teeth at the Empire, the disturbance that had occurred just in time, and the perfect situation to misunderstand as a plot to recruit troops.

Even if that was not the case, it could become the best possible pretext for them to find fault.

"We can give up no more. We will not be robbed meaninglessly again. To do that, we must not give them even the smallest excuse."

How had the kingdom’s once-brilliant history come to be marked by such humiliation?

Deep sorrow filled the king’s wrinkled eyes.

"Maximilian. My son."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Maximilian knelt.

"What I will pass on to you is nothing but a hollow cause."

"I am only undeserving of the honor."

"From now on as well, walk the righteous path. If you do, those who still serve the name of Leonberk will naturally gather at your side."

He did not want people like Marquis Bielefeld to set with him in this generation, and he wanted them to stand wholly with the newly rising sun.

The king said it again and again.

"For that to happen, the North must stand firm."

Maximilian nodded with a resolute face.

"I will protect it without fail."

"It will not be easy. Count Ballorhard has already declared himself Adrian’s guardian, and the count I know is a man who will keep the words he has spoken no matter what."

The king advised him in a low voice.

"That place may be no different from enemy territory to you."

At the voice that somehow even carried a chill, Maximilian shut his mouth.

But it was plain that he could not accept his father’s attitude of defining even his brother as an enemy.

"Do not forget, Maximilian. Do not forget what harm the one you regard as your brother caused the kingdom."

"My brother was only thirteen years old then."

"That thirteen-year-old child moved his petty mouth and sold the kingdom’s future to the Empire."

"But..."

"I do not want to hear it."

A chill settled into the king’s tone.

"It is still vivid before my eyes! When I close my eyes, I see as if it were only yesterday the figures of those who broke their swords before me and severed their own circuits. Not once have I forgotten their bloody tears, nor Montpellier and that bastard’s laughter."

"Your Majesty. No. Father..."

"We prepared for decades. Before my eyes, all that effort was ruined in vain. The long-cherished wish of generations became meaningless."

His voice was low, yet its sorrow was more heart-rending than any scream.

Maximilian hesitated, then opened his mouth again.

"I heard my brother has repented of the past and is grinding his teeth in determination. From what I hear, he also achieved great merit in the North..."

"He did not repent. He forgot."

The king was firm.

"And even if he has ground his teeth and polished his sword, what meaning does that have now?"

Seeing the king’s eyes burning red, Maximilian shut his mouth.

Those loyal men had now become people who could never again form circuits.

Should he tell them now, at this late hour, to at least learn the mana of the heart like low-grade mercenaries?

And even if they accepted, how many long years would they have to endure?

Even if there were a hundred or a thousand Adrians, he could not replace them.

The king breathed heavily.

Belatedly composing his expression, the king spoke in a tone he struggled to keep calm.

"Never defend that child before me again."

But the voice dripping with cold was even worse than before, not less.

"Go. To the North. Before Montpellier interferes."

"I shall do as you will."

The king waved his hand.

The king, slumped limply in his chair, looked as if he had aged ten years in the brief span of time.

"May you be in good health."

Maximilian bowed his head and left the chamber.

"Haa."

Standing before the door, he let out deep sigh after deep sigh, then headed somewhere else again.

* * *

The preparations for the march had been finished long ago.

When the first battle occurred in Ballorhard, the messenger who had been dispatched had already delivered the news to The Capital.

The king had secretly disguised elite forces as mercenary companies and placed them not far from Ellen County.

Among them were knights and soldiers of the central army, as well as knights of the Iron Lion Knights.

In addition, three thousand mercenaries, led mainly by the Silver Fox Mercenaries, who were fairly well known even on the continent, had completed their contracts and were standing by.

But though the troops were ready, they could not march out immediately.

To deceive watching eyes, they needed to make some show of preparation.

A day felt like a month, and a week felt like a year.

And at last, permission to march was granted.

There was no noisy departure ceremony.

To minimize confusion, the Second Prince and the reinforcement troops quietly set out for the North.

"Hurry!"

The Second Prince hurried the road.

A considerable amount of time had already been delayed.

There was no time to dawdle.

In the worst case, they might lose the shield called Ballorhard and face a great army of monsters on the plains.

Stragglers appeared one after another.

But the Second Prince never slowed his pace.

They had no choice but to accept a certain number of stragglers.

Right now, it was quite literally an emergency.

By the time they arrived at the edge of the central region adjacent to the North, they had suffered losses amounting to nearly one-tenth of the total force.

Around four hundred troops and a hundred wagons failed to keep up with the forced march and fell behind.

The Second Prince instructed the nobles of the central region to gather them up and come north.

The lords, who were in the middle of frantically preparing for war, said they understood the prince’s words and wished him fortune in battle.

How much farther had they gone like that?

The temperature dropped sharply.

Instead of yellow plains, a pure white snowfield appeared.

The scenery was not the only thing that had changed.

CLATTER, CLATTER.

Wagons appeared, struggling through the snowfield.

People with only their eyes peeking out beneath thick fur clothes were trudging down the road.

Two cavalrymen at the vanguard broke away from the column and approached them.

After they seemed to speak for a moment, the cavalrymen returned and reported.

"They say they are refugees coming down from southern Ballorhard."

"Refugees, you say..."

Maximilian’s expression changed.

His face suddenly turned anxious, as if worried that Ballorhard might already have been reduced to ruins.

"They say Winter Castle still stands firm. They say His Excellency Count Ballorhard issued an evacuation order in preparation for any unforeseen event."

The fact that the people of his domain had been evacuated before victory or defeat had even been decided meant that he had even taken into account the possibility that Winter Castle might fall.

Maximilian bit his lip.

"We must hurry even more."

He quickened again the pace he had briefly slowed because of the sudden change in climate.

The expressions of the soldiers passing by the clattering wagons were complicated.

They, too, could feel it.

The fact that they were heading to a battlefield.

The farther north they went, the more refugees they encountered on the road.

At first, the groups had only been one or two families, but at some point they became large groups of several hundred.

Maximilian continued onward while asking the refugees about the situation at the front.

"We don’t rightly know, sir. The soldiers told us to leave, so we’re just leaving."

But among the refugees, there was no one who knew the situation at the front well.

His heart grew even more impatient.

But as if mocking Maximilian’s feelings, a blizzard swept in.

Though he was flustered by the first blizzard he had ever experienced in his life, Maximilian calmly led the soldiers.

Forcing their way through the blizzard, they continued to move.

WHOOOOSH.

Amid the sound of the cutting wind that even made his ears ring, a faint noise came from far away.

"...en mountain... frozen vall... soaked in... no words..."

At first, he could not tell whether it was the sound of the wind or something else.

But as time passed, Maximilian realized it was singing.

"Snow-covered mountain! Frozen valley! Soaked with red blood! The wall says not a word! Ha!"

The sound was growing closer and closer.

"Only the dawn-blown! Horn of the charge rings out! Ha!"

"All through the blizzard-swept winter! We wander in search of warmth! Ha!"

"The only place to warm our bodies! Is by a dark green firewood blaze! Heave-ho!"

"Standing before it! Until my body burns away! I wait for spring to come! Ha!"

"Oh! Spring! Come quickly! Before my body becomes a handful of ash!"

"Oh! Spring! Come quickly! Before my body becomes a handful of ash!"

Ringing out vigorously even through the blizzard, it was unmistakably a military cadence.

"Are they soldiers of Ballorhard?"

At Maximilian’s question, one knight who had been standing tall even in the blizzard quickly dashed out.

The noisy cadence abruptly stopped.

And not long after, the knight appeared with soldiers wrapped tightly in fur clothes and wearing snowshoes.

"Saaalute! Ballorhard Ranger company, 17th Platoon, attached to the 3rd Legion! Yorden! It is an honor to meet Your Highness the Second Prince!"

The Ballorhard Ranger, giving a rough salute with a hand in a thick fur glove, spoke in a glad tone.

"We heard from the long-range patrol that a large force had been detected, and we thought it might be the reinforcements that left The Capital, so we were hurrying over, but of all things the weather turned out like this."

The Ranger gestured.

Within the visibility limited by the blizzard, other Rangers repeatedly appeared and disappeared.

"For now, it seems impossible to bring the wagons along through the blizzard, so please move ahead first. We will retrieve the wagons separately later."

Maximilian hesitated, then followed the Ranger’s words.

In his opinion as well, it was impossible to bring the wagons along through the blizzard.

"All troops, move out!"

"Left and right! Front and rear! Move while checking for anyone falling behind!"

At his words, the commanders shouted in unison.

Not long after, the order was delivered through the entire column, and the arduous march through the blizzard began.

"Only the dawn-blown! Horn of the charge rings out! Ha!"

"All through the blizzard-swept winter! We wander in search of warmth! Ha!"

In the terrible visibility where the blizzard made it impossible to see even a few meters ahead, only the military cadence sung by the Rangers stationed at intervals throughout the column told them they were moving properly.

"I heard that the men of the North were rough-natured and taciturn, but it seems that was not true."

Sir Erhim Kilinger, the Vice-Commander of the Iron Lion Knights who was disguised as a mercenary, clicked his tongue.

"Their mouths never rest for even a moment."

Maximilian, too, found the Rangers’ behavior of singing military cadences without rest equally curious, so he called the Ranger platoon leader who had been going ahead.

"Ah, this, you mean? It is the military cadence of the 3rd Legion, 『Poem of Winter』. Isn’t it splendid?"

The platoon leader spoke with an easy grin.

"When we sing this, it somehow feels like our bodies get a little warmer, so we sing it hard while marching."

Maximilian nodded, and the platoon leader spoke as if he had just remembered.

"Ah, right. The one who composed this military cadence was His Highness the First Prince. We added the later parts however we liked, but the first two verses are His Highness the First Prince’s work."

"My brother did?"

Maximilian’s eyes widened.

Because he had never even imagined that the cadence the Rangers were singing had been composed by his own brother.

On top of that, the Ranger’s tone when speaking of his brother was strangely familiar.

Erhim Kilinger must have felt that subtle emotion as well, because his expression turned odd.

"Besides this one, there is another cadence His Highness the First Prince composed. Would you like to hear it?"

Before Maximilian could answer, the Ranger platoon leader cleared his throat.

"Rangers! Load one military cadence! Cadence is 「The Man Who Kills Orcs」, one, two, three!"

"Pile up green corpses! Raise a mountain!"

From behind them, the Rangers screamed at the top of their lungs.

Their pitch was a mess, impossible to call good even as empty praise, but the Ranger platoon leader and the Rangers truly screamed with excitement.

Maximilian and Erhim Kilinger exchanged looks.

Their faces showed complicated feelings at the Rangers’ appearance, which was different from what they had expected.

But however thoughtless his mouth was, a Ranger was certainly a Ranger.

Even when they could not see properly ahead, he had no hesitation in finding their direction and moving forward.

If they had not been there, Maximilian could not even see how they would have managed.

"On the day His Highness the First Prince arrived, there was a blizzard just like this, you know."

The Ranger platoon leader spoke with a face full of fresh emotion.

Maximilian once again felt a strange sensation.

It was because he could not get used to the Ranger platoon leader’s attitude of saying His Highness the First Prince, His Highness the First Prince at the end of every sentence.

"Back then, His Highness the First Prince carried a soldier who had fallen behind on his back and walked for an entire day. Fortunately, it does not seem that will happen this time."

Looking at the Ranger platoon leader staring fixedly at him, Maximilian felt as if he ought to knock down a perfectly fine soldier if he had to, just so he could carry him on his back.

As Maximilian smiled awkwardly, the Ranger looked forward again and sang the military cadence.

He truly was a man who chattered on tiresomely.

After they advanced like that for a long while, the blizzard stopped as if by a lie.

"This bastard always does this, doesn’t it? Makes us suffer every possible hardship, then stops as soon as we reach the castle. It was exactly like this when His Highness the First Prince came too, and oh, how wronged he felt."

The Ranger platoon leader chuckled and pointed ahead.

"That place is Winter Castle, the northern front-line fortress!"

Maximilian froze where he stood.

The Ranger’s tone was cheerful, but the scene revealed before them was neither pleasant nor beautiful.

Corpses were everywhere.

Half-burned corpses, corpses burned to the bone, corpses frozen solid and preserved in their original forms—the front of the enormous castle was filled entirely with corpses.

"Ugh."

As Maximilian clenched his teeth against the acrid smell and the stench of blood, a group of men appeared in the distance.

A handsome man covered in blood from head to toe approached, and the Ranger platoon leader gave a disciplined military salute.

"Saaaalute! Were you out on reconnaissance, sir?"

The man nodded.

"But you do not look like you only went on reconnaissance, sir."

"There were a few bothersome bastards clinging to us on the way."

"Did you have another little fight, sir?"

"Ah, stop asking already!"

The man shouted, but the Ranger platoon leader grinned as if he found it delightful.

"But who are these guys? Oh! Did reinforcements finally come from the central region?"

The Ranger platoon leader’s eyes widened.

"This is His Highness the Second Prince..."

The platoon leader’s eyes busily rolled left and right.

Maximilian, with a dumbfounded face, met that gaze.

"This is His Highness the First Prince... Do the two of you perhaps not know each other?"

The First Prince and the Second Prince looked at each other as if by prior agreement.

One side had no memory to begin with, so he merely stared blankly, and the other looked both surprised by how much he had changed and awkward because it had been so long.

It was the most awkward and embarrassing reunion of brothers in the world.

"Wow. Now that I look, you really do resemble each other quite a bit."

The one who broke the awkward mood first was the elder brother.