Chapter 98: Suspicion and Evil
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 98: Suspicion and Evil
The next day, the three successors gathered again in the command tent. The atmosphere was tense, as they had drawn swords on each other the day before.
“If you set an example as an elder of the family, you can completely dispel the suspicion that you colluded with the spy. What do you think, Uncle?”
“Are you telling me to stand at the vanguard? Aha, so this was your scheme all along!”
“What nonsense are you spouting now?”
“Wasn't that ridiculously clumsy spy actually sent by you? A pathetic trick to push me into the vanguard!”
“Seriously. You call that an excuse?”
Andrill watched the blatant confrontation between his uncle and his half-brother. They, too, must have known in their heads that Allen was the most likely culprit.
However, they couldn't shake off the demon of doubt that had taken root in their hearts.
Everything was going according to Allen's letter.
‘Not moving for three days must also be part of his plan.’
He knew that if he moved first, his uncle and half-brother would join forces, and if he waited, the conflict between the two would deepen. Allen was a man who knew how to be patient for a decisive victory.
Andrill was suddenly reminded of a lion hiding in the dense reeds.
The lion's cold eyes, fixed on its prey without the slightest movement, resembled Allen's, which he had faced in the past.
‘He is not my enemy.’
He forced himself to erase the image from his mind. There was no need to be afraid. He didn't have the slightest intention of antagonizing him.
Rather, he was someone to cooperate with for their mutual benefit. So, it would be fine to think of him as an ally.
Of course, if Allen had heard this, he would have probably wondered what kind of bullshit he was thinking.
“Uncle. Brother. Fighting amongst ourselves is what the enemy wants.”
Only after Andrill stepped in did the two men's sharp war of nerves cease.
Attendants who had been waiting brought their meals into the tent.
The mealtime had been significantly delayed due to their bickering. Perhaps thanks to the delicious food, the atmosphere eased up a little.
“Gah—”
On the contrary, there was also someone whose throat was blocked.
A knight eating next to Aden clutched his throat. The color drained from his face, and only a silent scream came from his mouth.
“You! What's wrong?! Don't tell me, did something get stuck in your throat?”
The knight, as if to say that wasn't it, slapped away the hand of his lord, Aden, and staggered to his feet. Then he struggled, still clutching his throat.
The white foam seeping from the corner of his mouth made it clear this was no simple choking.
“Po-poison—!”
Aden and his vassals, who had been trying to help him, jumped back in shock. It was the same for Antonius and his vassals, who had been smirking as if it served him right.
“Ugh—”
“Blech—”
Everyone inside the tent began to retch.
In the meantime, the poisoned knight collapsed onto the table and moved no more. Fortunately, there was only one victim.
After emptying their stomachs, both sides glared at each other in the wrecked command tent.
Everyone's hands were on the swords at their waists. Aden, with a pale face, rambled incoherently.
“It was me, it was aimed at me! What Gentry ate was my meal…!”
Ever since joining forces with his rivals, Aden had been swapping meals with his vassals.
Aden, who barely managed to calm himself, immediately pointed an accusing finger at Antonius.
“Uncle…! You'd better explain this well!”
“Ha, since the fake spy didn't work, now you plan to frame me for a dishonorable act like assassination! This is why I hate bastards…”
Antonius clicked his tongue in contempt. Aden, who had nearly died, reacted sensitively.
Shing.
As Aden drew his sword, both sides drew theirs and pointed them at each other.
“Look who's talking! Aren't you being too shameless! If I die, the person who stands to gain the most is none other than you, Uncle! When your collusion with the enemy was discovered, you decided to take matters into your own hands, didn't you!”
“Nonsense! In fact, isn't everything from the spy to the poisoning your own fabrication! You intend to corner me by painting me as some honorless cur!”
“What!? Are you saying I poisoned my most trusted knight with my own hands?”
“Wouldn't that be the best way to avoid suspicion that it was a setup! But you underestimated me. I'm not one to fall for the tricks of a bastard who has abandoned all morality, blinded by treasure!”
“You, you… Do you think you can just say whatever you want!”
Aden glared at Antonius, then took the dead knight and left the command tent.
Antonius had the support of the knightly families, and Aden knew he would lose if a sword fight broke out here.
Aden immediately moved his camp upstream along the Rhine River. His forces numbered three hundred, about half of the allied army.
They were men who had no trust in each other from the beginning. Their hearts were filled with a hard knot of suspicion.
The two men decided the other was the culprit before even looking for the person who had poisoned the food. Even though the real culprit was someone else.
‘Again, it's just as he said.’
The real culprit, Andrill, couldn't be happy even though the search for the perpetrator had fizzled out. It was because everything was unfolding according to Allen's letter.
Allen knew that Aden was cautious and suspicious. And that he would be careful with his meals.
Aden thought he had avoided assassination through his own wisdom, but the target was never Aden in the first place; it was his knight.
Why? Because if Aden died, Antonius, who had the strongest faction, would begin his solo run.
From Allen's perspective, who was aiming for their mutual destruction, that was something that couldn't be allowed to happen.
What surprised Andrill was that Allen, whom he had met for the first time at the jousting tournament, understood his half-brother better than he did.
‘Perhaps my plan too… No, that can't be.’
Andrill tried to deny the possibility that came to mind. If he acknowledged it, wouldn't the future be too bleak?
His thoughts were cut short. It was because Antonius spoke to him once the surroundings were somewhat cleaned up.
“You should make your stance clear now. You can't obtain the count's title with your own strength. So, support me. I'll give you a suitable territory and title in return.”
Andrill's forces numbered only a hundred men. On his own, he had to worry about surviving against Antonius or Aden, let alone becoming count.
Nevertheless, Antonius tried to win Andrill over. Andrill knew why.
“Are you really planning to fight Aden? When the enemy is right before our eyes.”
It was because if his hundred men went to Aden, their forces would be equal to Antonius's. Conversely, if they went to Antonius, his victory would be assured.
“Of course, I'll deal with the enemy first. However, now that that bastard Aden has shown his true colors, there's no harm in preparing in advance, is there?”
That evening, Aden, who secretly visited Andrill's tent, said the same thing.
“You saw his shameless face too. As if colluding with the enemy wasn't enough, he tried to kill me and then blamed me for it. That man will do anything for the count's title. And after me, his next target will be you. You must join forces with me, if only to survive. Aren't we in the same boat?”
Aden tried to build a sense of kinship by pointing out they were both bastards. Of course, like Antonius, he also promised material rewards.
Andrill sneered inwardly. Wasn't Aden the one who, despite being a bastard himself, had insulted his mother, calling her a whore, and persecuted him?
In any case, both of them were all smooth talk, but in the end, they would surely try to cast him aside once he had served his purpose.
“I will follow you, Brother.”
Yet, the reason he chose Aden was because it was Allen's instruction. Aden, with a bright face, eagerly grabbed Andrill's hand.
“Good, good thinking. Yes, those in the same boat should help each other out!”
“Of course.”
The two men faced each other and smiled, hiding their dark inner thoughts.
The two sides didn't fight immediately. With a powerful enemy like Allen before them, and with the distance between them growing, the conflict seemed to temporarily calm down.
“The, the enemy is retreating!”
But it didn't last long.
Allen's army, which had been in a standoff across the Rhine River, began to withdraw. A spy who arrived a beat late revealed the truth.
“A rebellion! A rebellion has broken out in Palanti!”
The news was that while Allen and his henchmen were away, Baron Debussy and his mother had joined forces with the existing vassals to start a rebellion.
“…He won't be able to pay attention to this side for a while.”
Though his voice was low like the morning mist, there was no one in the command tent who did not hear Antonius's words.
For a moment, silence fell upon the tent, and tension filled the air.
The three successors, who had gathered due to the sudden turn of events, glanced at each other. Now that their common enemy was gone, only one thing remained.
Who would become the count?
“Ahem. Uncle, you should disband your troops now.”
Aden broke the silence. Antonius let out a smirk.
“What are you talking about! The enemy could be pretending to retreat only to attack. I will guard this place, so you two disband your forces. It's not like you can afford to maintain them anyway.”
“Haha, thank you for your concern, but I can still hold out for another year.”
The two men, who had fallen silent again and were glaring at each other as if to kill, simultaneously snorted and turned their backs.
They continued to maintain their armies under the pretext that it might be one of Allen's schemes. The only thing that changed was that their vigilance was now directed at each other.
The tension mounted like a tightly drawn string, to the point that even the common soldiers knew the enemy had changed.
An atmosphere suggesting something was about to happen dominated both camps.
However, no one expected that it would all begin with a very small incident.
“Lord Antonius! It's an infectious disease!”
On the morning of the third day of the standoff, Antonius, who had been thinking it was about time to settle things, was startled by his vassal's words.
In this era of undeveloped medicine, an infectious disease was more terrifying than a knight's sword.
“The scholar says it's from drinking dirty water!”
“What nonsense is this! We're upstream on the Rhine River, how could the water possibly get dirty…!”
“Aden's army is above us, sir.”
“…!”
The camp of Aden and Andrill's alliance was further upstream than Antonius's.
Because they had been careless with the water upstream, a waterborne disease had begun to spread through Antonius's army.
Antonius's face hardened.
“Don't tell me… it wasn't intentional, was it?”
Suspicion had already taken root in Antonius's heart.
“Even if it's a coincidence, we must take some measures! We need clean water to maintain our troops!”
His vassal was right. It didn't matter whether it was a coincidence or intentional.
If he kept losing soldiers to the disease, Aden was not the type to miss this opportunity, even if it was a coincidence.
“Prepare for an attack.”
Antonius made his decision.
Meanwhile, Aden's army, which was nearby, also noticed the commotion in Antonius's camp.
“They're preparing to attack!”
“Prepare for battle! Prepare for battle!”
After a short while, both camps had finished their preparations and faced each other.
There was no need for more talk. Hadn't the two of them already blatantly revealed their inner thoughts to each other?
“Attack!”
“Attack!”
Antonius and Aden sounded the advance trumpets at almost the same time.
Arrows rained down first, followed by the infantry from both sides. A small cavalry unit positioned on the right flank made a wide detour to target the infantry's side.
The tide of battle flowed in Antonius's favor. Although the disease had reduced his numbers to be similar to Aden's, his support base had always been the count's knightly families.
In other words, he had many high-quality troops like knights. The momentum of his cavalry, in particular, was sharp enough to pierce through the enemy infantry in a single blow.
“Andrill! Now!”
Aden was not unaware of this. That's why he had organized Andrill's forces as a reserve to block the cavalry charge.
And now was the time to deploy those reserves. However…
“Retreat—!”
Andrill did the opposite and retreated. Aden, realizing too late that he had been had, raised his voice towards the distant Andrill.
“You son of a bitch! Do you think you can survive by running away! Get back here!”
Antonius was the successor closest to the count's title, possessing both legitimacy and power.
Even if he suffered losses in defeating Aden here, he would still have enough strength left to easily deal with the weakest candidate, Andrill.
Aden thought the foolish Andrill didn't know that. But Andrill knew everything.
“Hurry! Quickly!”
Andrill ignored his half-brother's screams and picked up the pace. The only thing he was worried about was Allen's unfathomably deep schemes.
And just as he feared, Allen was taking in the whole scene at a glance.
As I watched the battle unfold from the bushes on the right side of the road across the Rhine River, my vassals began to speak up one by one.
“Andrill has betrayed us!”
“That insidious bastard! I knew he'd pull something like this, he was always two-faced!”
“We must pursue him quickly! Andrill will aim for a fisherman's gain by raiding an empty house!”
The original promise was that when I attacked from the rear, Andrill would support me from within.
But as soon as the battle broke out, Andrill fled without a second glance.
“Well, if he intended to become the count, he should have cooperated with the other successors to drive me out. After all, he can't beat me with just a hundred men. But instead, he cooperated with me to induce the mutual destruction of his rivals. Why do you think that is?”
Everyone was struck dumb. Even Muel, who had some sense, was away on a mission I had given him.
I clicked my tongue. My territory was expanding, but my vassals were all knights who only knew how to use brute force.
“There's only one reason. His goal must be something he can't do while his rivals are still around. I have a rough idea of what it is. And I've already made preparations. So for now, we'll deal with the enemy first.”
Just then, the civil war seemed to be coming to an end. The victor was Antonius.
With Andrill's betrayal at the last minute, Aden's army was thrown into disarray, and Antonius didn't miss the opportunity to press his advantage and claim victory.
The only achievement of Aden's army was reducing Antonius's forces by nearly a hundred men.
“Now, I am Count Broua!”
Antonius shouted, holding Aden's severed head high.
“Lord Antonius! It's the enemy!”
Just then, a knight who spotted us raised his voice. But by then, we were already crossing the bridge.
Busy with their civil war, they had left the strategically important bridge wide open for us to pass. I could see Antonius's bewildered face.
“St-stop them! There aren't many of them!”
It was a wise judgment. It was true that I had disbanded my troops to make them believe I had retreated. In the end, all that remained were the thirty cavalrymen I had borrowed from Dresden.
On the other hand, Antonius's army, though exhausted, still maintained a force of nearly two hundred.
Their losses in knights were also small. Therefore, thirty cavalrymen were an opponent they could easily block.
‘That's what he must be thinking.’
But is that really the case? At the head was me, strong enough to take on several knights by myself, and behind me followed thirty of the Margrave's heavy cavalry.
The minimum requirements for a proper shock tactic had been met.
I swung my sword at an enemy knight who was bravely charging at me. Was he not at the jousting tournament? The knight fearlessly raised his sword to block.
Sparks flew, and the man's face turned pale as he belatedly realized the immense power behind my sword.
But it was too late. Trollsverd wasn't satisfied with just breaking his sword; it split his body. A fatal wound that nearly cut his torso in half.
The man died without even letting out a scream. The one fortunate thing was that he wouldn't be lonely. His comrades would soon follow.
“Annihilate the enemy!”
Unable to stop my charge, the enemy's formation crumbled, and the heavy cavalry, not missing the opening, charged in and began to crush the enemy.