Chapter 175
Chapter 175
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 175
Chapter Title: 54. As Splendidly as Flames (2)
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"Long live His Majesty the King!"
The cheers of the soldiers pierced the ears of the king as he gazed down at the enemy general, whose eyes had rolled back as he collapsed.
"You remain as formidable as ever, Your Majesty."
A low voice slipped in amid the clamor.
It was the voice of Count Shrumhilde Strugart, commander of the Royal Knight Order.
"Spare me the honeyed words."
The king replied without turning his head.
He had aimed for the heart, but the arrow had merely struck the chest. Even with a royal bow, he hadn't managed to kill the enemy outright. His hands had surely grown stiff.
"Hitting an enemy general from a hundred paces away—how could that be mere flattery? Even renowned archers couldn't do it easily."
"It's not enough. Not nearly enough. If it had been Margarita, she would have struck between his eyes, not just the chest."
"Her Majesty the Queen was renowned as an archer even among the Ballerhards."
The king let out a scoffing laugh at that.
Suddenly, he recalled the crown princess selection banquet where he had first met his wife.
Unlike the other women, she showed no interest in the event at all, her reluctance plain as day, as if she'd been dragged there against her will.
Even her dress seemed forced upon her; she looked utterly awkward in it. That image lingered in his heart, prompting him to plead with his late father to summon her back to the palace.
When they met again, she had cropped her hair short like a man and was dressed not in a gown but in ranger gear, fully armed.
'Second Company Commander of the Ballerhard Rangers, Margarita Ballerhard, greets Your Highness the Crown Prince.'
She introduced herself not as a daughter of the Ballerhard family, but as a ranger company commander.
It was a blatant protest against any notion of marriage into the royal family.
To a prince who had only seen young ladies primped and waiting eagerly for selection, she was a fresh shock in herself—and he fell completely for her.
From that day on, he found every excuse to visit the north where she was stationed.
But nothing came easy.
Finding pretexts to journey to the distant north as crown prince was one thing; winning over her heart, as cold as the north's harsh winters, was another.
Still, he persisted in his courtship, and finally earned her conditional consent.
'I have no intention of entrusting my life to a weak-willed man.'
If he could surpass her in archery, she would accept him. Until then, he wasn't to so much as look her way again.
From that day, he hired archery instructors.
Having no natural talent for martial arts to begin with, his progress was agonizingly slow. Even so, after three years of effort, he could hit a target fifty paces away eight times out of ten.
He rushed north at once. There, he met her again—now unable to hide her womanly figure any longer.
Without so much as a greeting after so long, she led him straight to a secluded clearing.
They held an archery duel there, and by heaven's grace—or sheer luck—he exceeded his usual skill, landing nine out of ten arrows on target.
She, meanwhile, hit eight.
He won the wager and was finally able to become betrothed to her.
Much later, he learned she was an archer who could hit targets at a hundred paces with every shot, not fifty.
When he asked why she'd gone easy on him, she merely smiled in response.
After taking her as crown princess, he felt like he owned the world in happiness—but in truth, he had nothing.
The kingdom had already become little more than an imperial province, and there was nothing he could do.
Every attempt to restore the kingdom's vitality and escape the empire's clutches brought misfortune. Intruders even scaled the palace walls, swords aimed at him and his wife.
Loyal retainers died protecting them.
The surviving loyalists saw calamity befall their houses, one by one retiring to their estates. Their vacancies were filled by those little better than imperial lackeys.
Each time he saw the corpses of knights who had given their lives like mere grass for their sovereign, each time he watched the families of the once-loyal crumble away, each time he saw the indelible scars etched on the body of the woman he had promised to cherish like a flower...
He wavered, and more than once considered abandoning the kingdom's independence altogether.
Each time, it was the queen who lifted him back up.
Sometimes she scolded him fiercely, sometimes soothed him like a child. Sometimes she clasped his hand tight and vowed to forge ahead together.
Thanks to her, he never gave up and devoted his life to the kingdom's independence.
But even that one lifetime, even the remaining loyalists sacrificing theirs, left independence a distant dream.
As time wore on, his resolve wore thin.
At some point, he found himself accustomed to loss and humiliation.
He thought he had done his best, but it was mere rationalization from a powerless man.
After losing the knights he had secretly trained, he wasted his days resenting only his young eldest son.
That time was so heartbreakingly regrettable.
If only he had been firmer, more capable...
He wouldn't have squandered it.
Gazing at the empire's vast army arrayed beneath the walls, he cursed his past foolish, weak self.
He would never be like that again.
Until his dying breath, he would live every moment fully.
And right now, what he needed to do was protect the kingdom from the enemy's vanguard.
Gripping his bow firmly, he stood resolute on the ramparts, glaring at the foe.
He saw the struck enemy general being carried off by knights to the rear. From the limp arm and motionless back, it was clear he was now truly dead.
"The enemy general is dead!"
the king bellowed.
The knights and soldiers on the walls roared in triumph.
"Death to the empire's dogs!"
"Iron fists for the enemy!"
As the kingdom's forces cheered, the imperial army began its retreat.
Having lost their legion commander to an unexpected sniper shot, the imperial army withdrew—but it was merely a temporary retreat.
The vacancy left by the 17th Legion Commander, who had led six legions to reach this point, was quickly filled by another. They pitched camp on the plains visible from the fortress and prepared for a full assault.
Enormous siege rams were forged, siege ladders and archer towers assembled on the spot.
But they never got to properly use the siege weapons they'd painstakingly brought and built.
As dawn broke, around the time even the sentries couldn't fight off sleep and nodded off...
Flames erupted on the outskirts of the imperial camp.
"Enemy raid!"
The sentries raised the alarm a beat too late.
The deeply sleeping soldiers and knights roused themselves and rushed toward the blazing outskirts.
But all they found were the wreckage of destroyed siege engines and mutilated corpses.
The attackers had already slipped away.
The legion commanders rounded up every knight on duty who had failed to detect the night raid and forced them to their knees.
"A P-Paladin was leading the enemy."
One knight crawled forward on his knees, excusing that there was nothing they could have done.
But the legion commanders' faces remained ice-cold.
The 17th Legion Commander had died from overconfidence, and now even their hard-won siege weapons were destroyed.
It was damage sustained just one day after arriving on the battlefield.
A loss the commanders hadn't even imagined.
They needed to make an example to restore discipline and morale.
In the end, the heads of fourteen knights responsible for the night watch rolled.
"It seems everyone is letting their guard down because the enemy is such a weak little kingdom."
"Even a lion hunting a single rabbit gives its all. With such a power disparity, these issues arise."
"From now on, we must tighten discipline and ensure the soldiers approach the war with gravity."
The legion commanders immediately convened a meeting.
"Even a cornered rat will bite a cat—this is exactly that situation. Their desperation means they're truly backed into a corner."
Senior Knight Degol of the 41st Legion claimed the enemy was grasping at straws in fury, that they'd succeeded this time by luck alone, but there would be no next.
The commanders, too, firmly believed that now alert, they wouldn't be caught off-guard again so easily.
"It seems heaven itself watches over the legion commanders."
Having just suffered major losses, the commanders frowned at Degol's words—what nonsense was this?
But Degol didn't bat an eye at their displeasure.
"It's just the mad king overstepping his bounds anyway. There's no way the timid kingdom nobles will truly follow his will."
"Get to the point, briefly."
"Capture the king, and this war ends. And conveniently, Leonberger's king is right there in the fortress."
The commanders' stiff expressions instantly relaxed.
"Now do you understand why I said heaven favors you?"
Degol boasted triumphantly.
"Gentlemen, you now hold the once-in-a-lifetime chance to capture the enemy's head."
The commanders grew urgent.
Imperial forces were steadily arriving even now. If they didn't take the fortress and seize the king before they did, the glory might be stolen away.
They completely forgot how they'd just beheaded fourteen knights to correct the soldiers' and knights' lax attitudes.
Not everyone was so blinded by thoughts of glory, though.
Malcoy de Marseille, the youngest and least influential 84th Legion Commander—who always sat at the foot of the table—hadn't uttered a single word throughout the meeting.
He merely watched expressionlessly as the others chattered like they'd already mounted Leonberger's king's head on their own hands.
"I have urgent legion business—excuse me."
He even rose midway through, claiming other duties.
"Tch. For someone who couldn't even serve his master properly to lead a legion... His Majesty's mercy is sometimes too much."
"The fallen 2nd Imperial Prince was dear to His Majesty, so he took in his retainer and opened a path to survival."
"To respond to such benevolence with such a crooked attitude—truly lamentable."
"He might see his demotion from a rising star in the capital to a frontier soldier as a slight. Otherwise, how could he lack such zeal?"
The commanders deeply disapproved of the young thirties legion commander, who unlike them had once stood at the heart of power.
But they quickly forgot, launching into talk of the honors awaiting after taking the fortress.
"Lord Marseille. Why so soon?"
His adjutant widened his eyes at his return, far earlier than expected.
"One silver-tongued snake is dragging the legions into the fire."
"You mean that senior knight from the fortress."
"A knight who wags his tongue better than capital nobles—fooled the dimwit commanders into losing their heads."
The adjutant looked troubled at his superior.
"This war won't end easily."
Malcoy sighed.
"Contrary to that senior knight's words, Leonberger's kingdom forces are no mere rabble. The servility they showed before was the cunning of those biding their time, crouching low—and their reputed harshness toward their own knights and soldiers means they maintained iron discipline even in hardship."
Dismissing the enemy as rabble and preening like victory was assured made the senior knight and commanders the true fools, Malcoy didn't hesitate to criticize.
"They've sharpened their blades while waiting; the empire has rusted through from long peace, rotting away. Mark my words—if they don't fix that rotten mindset, the empire will end up like it did in Dottrin."
"Why not step up and lead them yourself, Lord Malcoy?"
"Useless. They won't listen, and I'd only get the short end."
The adjutant gave a wry smile at Malcoy's lament.
He knew his superior had been the only one in the Dottrin campaign to voice suspicions about the enemy surrendering fortresses too readily.
But the 2nd Imperial Prince ignored the warnings, only to be crushed beneath rubble in ignominy. The survivors pinned the disaster on the unlucky prophet, demoting him from capital power player to frontier legion commander.
"If even the high and mighty can't recognize true talent, I guess rank doesn't sharpen eyesight."
"Enough prattle—go summon the frontline commanders now."
"What do you plan?"
Malcoy replied nonchalantly.
"Before those idiot commanders get everyone killed chasing glory, at least save our legion."
"And if luck strikes and the others fall, you take command?"
"I neither hope for nor want it. With His Highness the 2nd Prince gone, I've lost all ties to this damned empire. Just surviving to go home is enough."
"Such talent going to waste is a shame."
"Don't get cheeky—do as ordered first."
After grimacing once, the adjutant left the tent at Malcoy's urging.
"Damn it. If luck's bad, I'll shoulder the defeat again."
Alone, the legion commander heaved a sigh that could sink the earth.