Chapter 226: Infiltration
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 226: Infiltration
Bwooo—
The sound of a horn signaling a retreat echoed. After the right-flank cavalry took a devastating blow, King Arispo was the first to begin his withdrawal.
Judging by how Duke Philippe's forces were sluggish and hesitant, it didn't seem to be a coordinated retreat.
After all, hadn't his cavalry just broken through the enemy infantry's front line and started seeing results? It would be a shame to retreat just when they were about to have some real fun.
The problem was that if King Arispo pulled out, their numerical advantage would turn into a disadvantage. I could easily picture the Duke fuming at having an opportunity snatched from right under his nose.
With this, the relationship between the two men, which Vivian had barely managed to patch up, was bound to crack again.
"We're heading back too."
Duke Philippe would be extremely displeased with King Arispo's unilateral decision to retreat. If we weren't careful, we could get caught in the crossfire.
Strictly speaking, Duke Philippe was the one who caused this mess, but aren't humans always lenient with themselves and strict with others?
He would surely downplay his own fault and condemn King Arispo's retreat.
"It's a shame. If it had been Duke Philippe's cavalry that was annihilated, our objective would have been easier to achieve."
If Duke Philippe had been the one who was backstabbed, he would have been forced to pay more attention to his personal guard. That seemed to be what Van der Belt was thinking.
I shook my head.
"Quite the opposite. The ones with more to lose are always the most fearful. Besides, since he's the one who did the backstabbing, he'll have to worry about revenge."
The military camp we returned to was a mess. Wounded men were strewn about, groaning in pain, and the ground was slowly being stained red with their blood.
The confident air they'd had, trusting in their more than two-to-one numerical superiority, was nowhere to be seen.
The shadows of birds flickered across the land. Vultures, having caught the scent of blood, circled with the sun at their backs, looking down at the feast laid out on the ground below.
"Why did you retreat?! If we had kept attacking, we could have inflicted massive damage!"
King Arispo and Duke Philippe were facing off in the center of the camp, where the command tent was located. Duke Philippe had fired the first shot.
"So I was supposed to just stand by and watch the enemy's heavy cavalry grind my infantry to dust after they finished with my cavalry?!"
King Arispo didn't just take it. His face red, he pointed a finger and raged.
"How can you win a war if you're afraid of losing troops? A monarch must know how to sacrifice the few for the sake of the many."
At Duke Philippe's sarcasm, King Arispo's face turned red enough to explode.
"Don't talk so carelessly just because they're not your troops! This defeat is your responsibility! Didn't your left-flank cavalry's foolish decision throw my five thousand horsemen into the jaws of Duke Babel?!"
"My cavalry did its part!"
"Ha! Its part? You mean ignoring the plight of five thousand cavalrymen to take out a mere one or two thousand infantry? What a brilliant commander you are!"
At King Arispo's scathing criticism, Duke Philippe also began to lose his temper.
"If we hadn't retreated, we would have inflicted even greater losses! We might have even captured Duke Babel and ended the war in one fell swoop!"
"The enemy's heavy cavalry would have stormed my main camp first! If you have eyes, you couldn't have missed the difference in the quality of our cavalry!"
"So in the end, you tucked your tail and ran because you were scared of the enemy?"
"What? You bastard...!"
The argument between the two men had now devolved into an emotional squabble. The knights positioned like wings on either side of them placed their hands on their swords.
The atmosphere was so tense that if anyone drew their sword, even by accident, a civil war would erupt on the spot.
"Lady Vivian summons you."
Just then, a young woman who seemed out of place on a battlefield stepped between the two men. It was an intervention at the perfect moment, breaking the tension.
Suspecting Vivian was behind it, I quickly looked around. But no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find her.
In the meantime, the two men, having visited Vivian's tent—which was off-limits to everyone but them—turned their backs on each other with much calmer demeanors.
"Please, get it together. Properly!"
"You're one to talk!"
Of course, they didn't forget to get in one last jab.
I didn't know how Vivian had patched up the conflict, but it wasn't completely resolved.
It was merely a temporary fix. I could guarantee that if another trigger like today's presented itself, those two would point their swords at each other again.
"His Excellency summons you."
The situation had settled down, and I had just returned to the Belt family's tent. Jon, who had been attending a meeting to handle the aftermath, returned and relayed Duke Philippe's order.
Hiding his surprise, Van der Belt spoke on the way to Duke Philippe's tent.
"For him to summon us means..."
"Didn't I predict this would happen?"
"...They say you can know a lord by the men he keeps, right? I wonder just how great an emperor must be to have someone like you in his service."
I just shrugged. I wasn't shameless enough to sing my own praises.
"Sir Van, I need your help."
Duke Philippe was waiting for us in his personal tent, accompanied by two guard knights.
'He's added one more.'
He had one more guard knight than when we first met. It was proof that he still didn't trust us, but it was too early to be disappointed.
He couldn't keep pulling high-caliber personnel like knights for guard duty forever. Besides, we were in the middle of a war. An opportunity would come soon.
"Just give the order."
"We've decided to absorb the annihilated cavalry unit. I plan to divide the cavalry into two wings, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in taking command of one."
Even if they were defeated soldiers, there was no way King Arispo would have given up his cavalry easily. It seemed Vivian had stepped in late to sort things out.
In any case, it was a proposal that diverged from our objective. Van der Belt spoke cautiously.
"I would be honored to take on such a heavy responsibility, but... there is a problem."
"A problem?"
"I can't hold a sword because of the aftereffects of torture."
It was an excuse to avoid being drafted into the war. But Duke Philippe, who had previously seen Van's hands, mangled from torture, didn't doubt him.
"Is it a permanent problem?"
"They said the bones weren't damaged. Still, it doesn't change the fact that I can't wield a sword right now."
"That's a relief. Ah, is that why you sent your younger brother to the meeting in your place?"
Van der Belt nodded, placed a hand on my shoulder, and continued.
"Why not use this man instead?"
Van der Belt recommended me. Only then did the Duke's gaze, which had been ignoring me as if I were a sack of potatoes, finally land on me. He frowned.
"Didn't you say he was a waste on the battlefield? That his swordsmanship in armor is less than half as good as his dueling."
"Conversely, in a duel or a small-scale battle, he'll demonstrate more power than anyone."
"The problem is, this isn't that kind of situation."
"But you never know, do you? King Arispo has surely borne a grudge over this incident."
Duke Philippe, who had been looking displeased, paused. He seemed to ponder for a moment before speaking.
"Hmm, you said he was a master of the sword?"
"If he fights without armor, he's so skilled that even I couldn't guarantee an easy victory."
As Van der Belt vouched for me, the look in Duke Philippe's eyes changed slightly.
In the end, Duke Philippe nodded.
"Then I'll assign you both to my personal guard. Sir Van, as the senior, you will lead him well."
Pairing me with Van der Belt, who couldn't wield a sword, was proof that he didn't trust me.
We knew, but we feigned ignorance and bowed.
"We pledge our lives."
A guard knight and the personal guard were two different things. The former protected Duke Philippe at close range, like now, while the latter stood watch outside the tent.
Our first mission was also to guard Duke Philippe's empty tent while a strategy meeting was being held.
"It's a shame. This was a chance to make a good impression."
Van der Belt said, glancing at the command tent where the meeting was in full swing. It was just after a figure presumed to be Vivian had entered, her face hidden by a hood.
If we had attended the meeting as Duke Philippe's guards, we could have gotten acquainted with Vivian and laid the groundwork to become her guard knights later on.
"Don't be impatient. It's not as much as we wanted, but there's meaning in the fact that we've advanced a little."
"If we had attended the meeting, we would know their next move, and we could have used that to create a more advantageous position for ourselves."
I chuckled.
"That's something I can tell without even seeing it."
Vivian's mediation was just a temporary fix. The source of their conflict was the throne, something neither would ever concede.
It was a conflict that would only end when one of them was dead. So, both would try to preserve their own forces while forcing the dangerous roles onto the other.
Since both sides had the same stance, how could they possibly reach a conclusion easily? Indeed, Van der Belt was surprised when the meeting showed no signs of ending late into the night.
"It really is happening just as you said."
"It's ridiculous. The war isn't even over, yet they're already thinking about what comes after? With that kind of mentality, how could they possibly win, even with more than double the forces?"
"So, will they just fall apart like this?"
"That depends on Vivian."
The fate of this alliance will be decided by how Vivian coordinates the two sides.
'Still, she won't just sit back and take it.'
Now that Piole and her heavy cavalry have appeared, she must have realized there's no turning back.
If she can't prevent the allied forces from fracturing, Vivian's defeat is certain. If she uses that fact, she should be able to persuade the two men.
Of course, I had no intention of letting them recover so easily. When the meeting continued until dawn, I switched shifts with another guard and secretly headed to the rear of the camp.
In the rear of the camp were the merchants in charge of supplies and the pimps who had brought along prostitutes.
"Execute the plan."
After paying a pimp and entering a makeshift brothel, I gave the order to a waiting prostitute. She was an informant under Boatman's control.
Three days later, near midnight. While the marathon meeting continued without a conclusion, a commotion broke out in one corner of the camp.
"A spy!"
One of Duke Philippe's knights captured a suspicious individual, and a secret letter was found on him.
The problem was the letter's contents.
"'Attack in three days at midnight, and cause a disturbance from within'? Does this mean there's a traitor among us! Who is it! Who is the traitor!"
Duke Philippe, who received the letter, flew into a rage and looked around. Then, spotting King Arispo, who had come to see what the commotion was about, he glared at him.
He wasn't the traitor, so the only one who could be was King Arispo. That's what he was thinking.
"How dare you suspect me!"
"We'll find out once we interrogate this bastard!"
The spy, exhausted from all manner of torture, never revealed the traitor's identity before he died. It was because he truly didn't know who the traitor was.
His role, from the beginning, was simply to plant a fake letter in a specific location.
"Isn't this just a setup? I'm saying you used torture as an excuse to kill the only spy who knew the truth, for fear of your little play being exposed!"
King Arispo emphasized that the spy had been discovered in an area under Duke Philippe's jurisdiction.
"Ha! If the letter was meant for me, why would I have been the one to catch the spy and make an issue of it!"
"You would have only shared your collusion with the enemy among your key officers! So the knight who caught the spy knew nothing and mistakenly thought he was earning merit!"
"Stop with your absurd accusations! Do you think I don't know that you're the traitor colluding with the enemy!"
The relationship Vivian had barely stitched back together was tearing apart again. Perhaps because of her clumsy handiwork, the state of their relationship seemed even worse than before.
"Isn't this a rather crude attempt to sow discord? If they thought about it for even a moment, they'd realize something is strange."
Van der Belt whispered. We were watching the situation carefully from a distance.
"You think they don't know that?"
"Then why..."
"Emotion always overwhelms reason."
The fake letter's role was to stir the suspicion that had taken root in a corner of Duke Philippe's mind. Causing a rift was only a secondary objective.
"I need to reinforce my guard."
Duke Philippe turned away coldly and immediately reinforced his guard. From then on, he began to take his personal guard with him whenever he went anywhere, no matter how trivial the matter.
But he couldn't pull any more high-caliber personnel like knights for guard duty, so we, as members of the personal guard, were given the chance to protect him at close range.
'Vivian...'
As a result, I was finally able to see Vivian. It happened when I entered the tent where the strategy meeting was being held, as one of Duke Philippe's guards.