Chapter 141

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Every so often, one came across people who dressed far too extravagantly for their own good. They draped themselves in excessively fine clothes and jewelry to conceal their paltry self-esteem and flaunt their power and wealth. Usually, they were the newly rich.

But fine clothes and jewelry looked out of place on King Santonio for an entirely different reason.

Tall and powerfully built, he had a piercing gaze, a well-shaped brow and nose, a neatly trimmed beard, and black hair combed smoothly back. Armor would have suited him better than silk, gold, and jewels.

His sumptuous silks, thick rings, and necklace seemed instead to temper his fierce presence.

Ambition dwelled in the king’s eyes, and he made no attempt to hide it. He seemed to yearn for a greatness beyond mere kingship.

Somewhere on the vast plateau, banners of every color fluttered vigorously in the warm sunlight. The place looked like an army camp—which was precisely what it was.

There Ricard stood before the king, with the rugged men of Sinatria watching him.

His attire was no less splendid than the king’s. Indeed, he seemed even more conspicuous, enough to make their meeting look somewhat improper.

King Santonio sat on what looked like a cargo crate, but the lack of a throne did nothing to diminish his dignity.

With his prominent, raptorlike eyes and their piercing gaze, most people could not look him in the face, no matter where he sat.

Not Ricard. He simply met that gaze calmly. For a while, the two men regarded one another in silence, as though trying to see beyond outward appearances.

It was not a contest of wills, though it looked like one to the others.

Perhaps that was why Raimund and the handful of Order of Flame knights standing behind Ricard seemed more nervous than either of the men themselves.

Besides, the Order of Flame had never gone begging to a local king in all its centuries here. It had simply guarded the Empire’s borders. In truth, the order and the kings of Sinatria had always been distant with one another.

To the local people, the Order of Flame were outsiders, just as they had been hundreds of years ago.

The Sinatrians shared their religion, but did not belong to the Empire. Nor were they Salaman people. They were, quite literally, the native people who had inhabited Sinatria since ancient times, descendants of the old empire.

“El Cid...”

King Santonio was the first to speak, almost in a murmur. A hairline crack seemed to run through the seemingly solid silence.

“It is no easy thing to earn the respect of heathens. Yet I hear you are no knight, Ricard, son of Abelich?”

“That is correct. I have never been knighted.”

“Then in what capacity do you stand before me?”

“In none. I am merely myself. I requested this audience only because I have a favor to ask.”

“Speak.”

Countless eyes were fixed on Ricard, but he did not spare any of them a glance. He looked only at the king.

“Give me supplies. I will defeat my brother, who holds Karagosa Fortress, and put an end to his atrocities.”

“...”

The king did not answer. He merely regarded Ricard for a moment, then abruptly gave a snort of laughter. The knights, soldiers, and men-at-arms around him began to laugh as well.

It was laughter born of disbelief, and a kind of mockery.

King Santonio was not roaring with laughter, but he chuckled for some time before speaking.

“It pains me to see brothers preparing to fight, though my own circumstances are no different. I too have long been at war with my younger brother. But why should I make an enemy of the Red Reaper? You are his younger brother, yet you seem not to know how fearsome he is. I fear him. But I feel no shame in that, for every man here feels the same.”

What on earth had Bilter been doing here these past eight years to make everyone so afraid of him? Even this extraordinary king was wary of him.

Only then did Ricard turn his eyes from the king and look around.

They seemed to take it as an immutable fact that Bilter was not to be provoked. The very suggestion of fighting him had struck them as an absurd joke.

It was rather like having a tiger that never came down from its mountain, only for some unknown stranger to arrive one day and ask for money to go kill it.

The locals could hardly be anything but baffled. What if provoking it brought the tiger down on them? They could simply leave it alone.

Ricard thought for a moment. He realized that he could not persuade the king by appealing to what was right. Nor could he petulantly insist that his desire to stop Bilter was sincere and demand understanding.

A bargain with the king required a practical offer. Above all, he needed to show that he was every bit as fearsome himself.

“The Emperor has cast the Order of Flame aside. The bonds that held it no longer exist. Once I defeat my brother, I will lead the knights to Adelorn. Then Karagosa Fortress, the order’s ancient stronghold, will be yours. And I am not asking for aid without offering anything in return. If something is troubling you, I will resolve it. In exchange, give me supplies.”

If the king could gain Karagosa Fortress, he could vastly extend his kingdom’s power. But by any reasonable standard, the proposal was preposterous.

“Hahahahaha!”

Sure enough, no sooner had Ricard finished than King Santonio threw back his head and roared with laughter. His troops laughed loudly along with him. Was the offer really that absurd?

After a hearty bout of laughter, the king finally composed himself enough to speak.

“I like you. You are forthright and honest. But El Cid Ricard, do you see that castle over there?”

King Santonio raised a hand and pointed. Those standing in the way stepped aside.

Far below the plateau stood a sturdy fortress. Somehow, Sinatria had an astonishing number of impregnable strongholds that could not even be imitated with present-day techniques.

They were the result of the old empire’s remarkable architectural skill and countless expansions over the long years.

Perhaps that was why this land had remained divided for so long, locked in endless war.

“That fortress is called Leonia. It has been giving me trouble. Over the past ten years, I have defeated my younger brother in battle time and again, yet every time I have been forced to withdraw because of it. Will you rid me of that worry?”

In this day and age, taking a castle by storm was virtually impossible. All the more so with a fortress that formidable.

The only option was to surround it and starve it out, but with stockpiled food and a secure water supply, the defenders could hold out for years.

The besieging army was made up of people too. They needed food, drink, and money to keep going. In the end, they could no longer sustain the siege and had no choice but to withdraw.

The king’s present camp was something of a rear position; a separate force was surrounding Leonia Fortress. Looking down from the heights, Ricard judged that they numbered at least several thousand.

He studied the distant fortress in silence, then turned back to the king and asked,

“What is the deadline?”

“... What?”

“I will take it within three days. Will you promise to provide supplies if I do?”

Ricard announced this impossible feat so matter-of-factly that King Santonio looked momentarily dumbfounded.

“I have ears, and I have heard of your exceptional skill. You killed four knights of Valensha in an instant, they say. But confidence and empty boasting are different things. Even if I were to be most generous about a boast, there are some I can excuse as high spirits, and others I cannot.”

“Then in three days, you will know whether it was an empty boast.”

Ricard’s expression still had not changed.

No one could tell whether he was insulting the king or not. Silence fell over the gathering, broken only by the flutter of banners in the wind.

All trace of laughter had vanished from King Santonio’s face. His distinctive, prominent eyes fixed on Ricard in something very close to a glare. Ricard met that gaze without agitation.

After staring at him for some time, the king spoke.

“I promise.”

“Then I will see you again in three days.”

Without making any further gesture of respect to the king, Ricard turned and walked away. Judging by their splendid appearances alone, it looked as though two kings had met for a discussion and were now parting.

He mounted his red horse and began riding down from the heights. Raimund and the Order of Flame knights hurried onto their own horses and caught up with him.

“Do you have some clever plan?”

“No.”

Ricard said no as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Raimund and the knights could only blink in disbelief. They felt they ought to be angry, but they were too bewildered even for that.

“W-what do you mean? If you insult the king, we will be lucky to escape with our lives, never mind win his favor.”

“Dragging this out won’t solve anything. For now, let’s watch and observe. When they expose a weakness, we exploit it with everything we have.”

Easy enough to say. If that were so simple, would the king have spent the past ten years struggling, as he had said?

But when it came to fighting, Ricard had never seen things as ordinary men did.

As he had said, dragging things out would not solve anything. On the contrary, precisely because so much time had passed, these men might have developed a blind spot.

Still, was this confidence or madness? Raimund and the knights, who had yet to grow accustomed to Ricard, wondered whether they needed to reassess the man.

Ricard entered the camp surrounding Leonia Fortress. When he said the king had sent them, the commander there assumed that he and the knights had been hired as something like mercenaries.

He gave them a tent and paid them little further attention. In short, Ricard and the Order of Flame knights were left sitting in camp with nothing to do. They had no authority to command, either.

While Raimund burned with anxiety, Ricard calmly looked around the camp.

His armor and battle robe were so splendid that every soldier stared at him, wondering who he was. By appearance alone, he seemed far more than a commander—more like the king of a neighboring country.

But as the sun sank from its zenith and the soldiers began preparing supper, the drawbridge of distant Leonia Fortress lowered, and someone rode out.

He wore mail and a green surcoat conspicuous even at that distance. A dragon-shaped crest adorned his great helm.

At the sight of him, soldiers hastily began moving their cooking pots and scrambling for cover. Wondering what was happening, Ricard and the knights stopped one of them to ask.

“What is all this sudden commotion?”

“It’s Tauso, the elder of the Green Dragon brothers. They take turns coming in the morning and evening to tear through the camp, and there’s nothing we can do. They’ve already killed five of our noble knights.”

“You mean he attacks alone?”

Raimund asked in disbelief.

Defenders did sometimes send small bands of picked men out to attack a besieging army, but that was less about defeating the enemy than harassing them so they could not rest easy. It also raised the defenders’ morale.

But attacking alone? Such things had occasionally happened in tribal times. There had indeed been a style of fighting in which a lone rider charged the enemy, almost as a sacrificial offering, to raise his own side’s morale.

Yet this was not even a night raid. He was doing it openly, with the sun still shining brightly?

Unlike the baffled knights, Ricard narrowed his eyes and observed. He carefully watched not only the knight, but also what the people on the walls were doing, and such details as how long it took the drawbridge to lower.

At last, the man called Tauso advanced slowly with a swagger, carrying a lance with a pennon. Sunlight flashed on its blade.

The distance was close in one sense, but far in another. While some units scrambled in panic as he approached, others made preparations to fight back. Under the feudal system, the quality of troops varied greatly depending on where they came from.

Here and there, men bustled about, knights hurriedly donning their equipment while squires brought their horses.

But from Tauso’s perspective, it was obvious which units were weak and which were strong. He approached slowly, then suddenly spurred his horse toward a unit milling about in confusion.

CLIP-CLOP! CLIP-CLOP! CLIP-CLOP! CLIP-CLOP!

They had put up barriers of sorts by driving stakes into the ground, but those were meant to stop a formed unit. They presented no obstacle to a lone charging rider.

CLIP-CLOP! CLIP-CLOP! CLIP-CLOP! CLIP-CLOP!

THUD!

“Aagh!”

He burst in as though he owned the place and ran a soldier through with his lance, killing him. Without slowing, he trampled through the camp at will. Tents crashed down and pots clattered across the ground in utter chaos.

Some soldiers tried to resist with spears and billhooks, but Tauso simply rode them down with swift charges or swung his battle-axe from above, splitting their skulls.

The startled soldiers scattered. Whenever knights capable of putting up a fight pursued him to kill him, he darted elsewhere, leaving them tangled up among their own men and unable to give proper chase.

One lord with a little sense sent his troops outside the camp to cut off Tauso’s retreat.

But sealing off his escape completely would have required the entire army to act in concert. With only that lord’s own troops, they could not cover such a wide area.

All the while, the enemy shouted cheers from the walls of the distant fortress.

After rampaging to his heart’s content, Tauso pulled on his reins and galloped back toward the fortress.

The lord’s troops stationed to cut off his retreat tried to stop him, but facing a huge charging warhorse was no easy task without a deep formation.

In the end, another knight bravely charged out to meet him. But Tauso hurled his battle-axe from a distance.

The allied knight raised his shield to block it, but the force of the axe knocked him off balance.

CLANG!

Seizing that opening, Tauso closed in swiftly, hooked him with an arm, and dragged him from the saddle. The knight fell from his galloping horse and broke his neck, dying on the spot.

CRACK!

RAAAAAAH!

A great cheer rose from the enemy fortress. Watching Tauso from afar, Ricard thought the man was rather good.

As Tauso approached the fortress, a small escort came out to meet him and brought him across the drawbridge. He had torn through an army of thousands all by himself and returned unscathed.

The losses were not particularly heavy, but their pride and morale were naturally in tatters. Cries of “Fuck,” “Bastard,” and “Shit” rose from soldiers all around. The thick cloud of dust Tauso had kicked up settled over them, making them feel all the more foul.

“A truly valiant man...”

Raimund himself was a brave and accomplished knight, but Tauso’s courage was rare indeed.

Ricard, however, had been watching the entire affair from a different perspective. He was calculating the distance. If he killed the man and charged straight on, could he get there before the drawbridge rose?

Finally, having completed the calculations in his head based on experience, he spoke.

“We may be able to take the fortress tomorrow, rather than in three days.”

Raimund answered as though nothing could surprise him anymore.

“Yes, of course.”

Ricard was exceptionally skilled and a man of fine character, Raimund thought, but his boasting was every bit as impressive. Well, no man could have everything.

Of course, tomorrow’s sun would show whether it was an empty boast.