Chapter 53
Chapter 53
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 53
Chapter Title: A Needle in the Pocket Can't Stay Hidden (2)
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The King refused, but the Second Prince pushed forward, insisting he couldn't ignore House Ballerhard. In the end, the King yielded a step before the Second Prince's righteous claim that they must reward House Ballerhard's devotion and service.
"I will dispatch two legion-scale mercenary bands. I won't stop you from leading your knight order north. However, the knight order and central army will not move."
The meeting concluded on that note, and the King called the Second Prince to his chambers separately.
"House Ballerhard must never fall."
Just moments ago, he had acted as if sending one mercenary band would be enough and then forgetting about it entirely, but now with two, the King's attitude had changed completely, like a different person.
"I know. I only feel guilty that Your Majesty's dignity may have been wounded by what happened just now."
The Second Prince showed no surprise at the sudden shift in demeanor.
"I'm already wallowing in the muck. What does a bit more filth matter?"
The King's tone was flat. But even so, he couldn't hide the self-loathing it carried.
"I don't understand why Your Majesty insists on bearing the stigma of a dark ruler."
The Second Prince asked with a somber expression.
"Burgundy's eyes and ears are everywhere."
The King's voice lowered further.
"If I had readily gathered troops and sent them to Ballerhard, the Empire would suspect the royal family has other intentions. No one in Montpellier—who has steadfastly guarded the kingdom for generations—would believe House Ballerhard's sudden request for aid at this point."
"Then..."
"They'd think the royal family and House Ballerhard are in cahoots. They might even interpret Idrian's actions at the banquet as the royal family's will."
The eldest son baring his teeth at the Empire, the timely outbreak of chaos—it was the perfect setup for them to assume a conspiracy to muster forces. Even if not, it was an ideal pretext to seize upon.
"I can't give any more. I won't let them take even one more thing in vain. To prevent that, we mustn't give them the slightest pretext."
How had the kingdom's glorious history come to be stained with such humiliation? Grief welled in the wrinkles around the King's eyes.
"Maximilian, my son."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Maximilian knelt.
"All I can bequeath to you is an empty title."
"I am deeply honored."
"Continue down the righteous path. Those who still honor the Leonberger name will naturally gather to your side."
People like Marquis Villepeldt didn't want to fade away with this generation alongside him; they wished to stand fully with the newly rising sun.
These were words the King had repeated many times.
"For that, the north must hold firm."
Maximilian nodded with a resolute face.
"I will protect it without fail."
"It won't be easy. Count Ballerhard has already declared himself Idrian's guardian, and the count I know is a man who keeps his word no matter what."
The King quietly cautioned him.
"That place may be no different from an enemy camp for you."
Maximilian fell silent at the voice laced with chill. But his face clearly showed he couldn't accept his father's stance of deeming even his brother an enemy.
"Don't forget, Maximilian. The harm that man you call brother has wrought upon the kingdom."
"He was only thirteen at the time."
"That thirteen-year-old brat pettily wagged his tongue and sold the kingdom's future to the Empire."
"But..."
"I don't want to hear it."
Coldness crept into the King's tone.
"It's still vivid in my mind! The sight of them breaking swords before me, severing their own rings—closing my eyes brings it back like yesterday. I've never once forgotten their bloody tears, or Montpellier and that bastard's sneer."
"Your Majesty... no, Father..."
"We prepared for decades. That effort crumbled before our eyes. Generations of aspirations ended in futility."
A low voice, more heartrending than any cry. Maximilian hesitated before speaking again.
"I've heard that my brother regrets his past and is filled with remorse. They say he made great contributions in the north..."
"It's not remorse—he's forgotten it."
The King was firm.
"Even if he honed his sword in bitter resolve now, what meaning does it have at this point?"
Seeing the King's eyes flushed red, Maximilian shut his mouth.
Those once-loyal men could never forge rings again. Should he now tell them to learn mana heart techniques like lowly mercenaries?
And even if they accepted, how many more years of endurance would they face? Not even a hundred or a thousand Idrains could replace them.
The King breathed heavily. Composing himself belatedly, he forced a flat tone.
"Never defend that child before me again."
But the voice dripping with frost was even colder than before, if anything.
"Go. To the north. Before Montpellier interferes."
"As Your Majesty wills."
The King waved him off.
The King slumped in his chair looked a decade older in that brief moment, frail and aged.
"May Your Majesty remain in good health."
Maximilian bowed his head and left the chambers.
"Haa."
Standing before the door, sighing deeply, he then headed somewhere else.
Preparations for departure had been completed before dawn.
When the first battle broke out in Ballerhard territory, the dispatched messenger had long since relayed the news to the capital. The King had secretly disguised elite troops as mercenaries and stationed them not far from Earl Ellen's domain.
Among them were knights and soldiers from the central army, as well as knights from the Iron Lion Knight Order. Additionally, three thousand mercenaries centered around the renowned Silver Fox Mercenary Band across the continent had finished contracting and were on standby.
But though the troops were ready, they couldn't march out immediately.
They needed to put on a show of preparations to allay suspicion.
A day felt like a month, a week like a year. Finally, permission to depart came.
There was no grand send-off ceremony. To minimize chaos, the Second Prince and his support forces quietly set off north.
"Hurry!"
The Second Prince pressed on urgently. They had already been delayed considerably. There was no time to dawdle. In the worst case, they could lose the shield of Ballerhard and face a monster horde on open plains.
Stragglers fell behind one after another. But the Second Prince never slowed his pace. They had no choice but to accept some losses. This was a true emergency.
By the time they reached the northern edge of the central region bordering the north, they had suffered losses nearing ten percent of their total force.
Nearly four hundred troops and over a hundred wagons couldn't keep up with the forced march and fell behind.
The Second Prince instructed the central region's nobles to gather them and send them north. The lords, busy with their own war preparations, acknowledged his words and wished him luck.
How much further did they go? The temperature plummeted. Yellow plains gave way to vast white snowfields.
It wasn't just the scenery that changed.
Clatter, clatter.
Wagons struggled through the snowdrifts. Figures in thick furs, with only their eyes peeking out, trudged alongside.
Two cavalrymen from the vanguard broke formation and approached them. After a brief exchange, they returned to report.
"They're refugees coming down from southern Ballerhard."
"Refugees..."
Maximilian's expression shifted. His face paled with sudden anxiety—had Ballerhard already been reduced to rubble?
"Winter Castle still holds firm. Count Ballerhard, Excellency, issued an evacuation order in preparation for any contingency."
Evacuating the populace before the battle's outcome was decided meant they were even considering the fall of Winter Castle.
Maximilian bit his lip.
"We must hurry even more."
They quickened their pace, slowed briefly by the abrupt climate shift.
The soldiers passing the rattling wagons wore complicated expressions.
They too felt it. That they were heading to the battlefield.
The further north they went, the more refugees they encountered on the road. What started as families of one or two soon swelled to groups of hundreds.
Maximilian pressed on, questioning the refugees about the front lines.
"We don't know much. The soldiers told us to leave, so we just did."
But none of the refugees knew the front's situation well.
His heart grew ever more impatient. As if mocking him, a blizzard then raged.
Startled by their first blizzard, Maximilian calmly led the troops. They pushed through the storm.
Whoooosh.
Amid the howling gale deafening even their ears, a faint noise came from afar.
"...Snow-covered moun... frozen val... blood-soaked... walls are silent... ha!"
At first, he couldn't tell if it was wind or something else. But soon, Maximilian realized it was singing.
The sound grew closer.
Even through the blizzard, it rang out boldly—a clear military song.
"Ballerhard soldiers?"
At Maximilian's question, a knight standing tall amid the storm dashed forward.
The boisterous singing cut off abruptly. Soon after, the knight returned with soldiers wrapped in furs and wearing snowshoes.
"At ease! Third Legion, Ballerhard Ranger Company! 17th Platoon! Yorden! It's an honor to meet Your Highness the Second Prince!"
The Ballerhard ranger, giving a rough salute with his thickly gloved hand, spoke in a cheerful tone.
"We heard from the long-range patrol about a large force detected and rushed here hoping it might be reinforcements from the capital. But the weather had to be like this."
The ranger gestured. In the blizzard-limited visibility, other rangers appeared and vanished repeatedly.
"Pushing wagons through this blizzard seems impossible, so please move ahead first. We'll recover them later."
Maximilian hesitated but followed the ranger's advice. Even he thought dragging wagons through the storm was impractical.
"All forces, move out!"
"Left and right! Front and rear! Check for stragglers as we go!"
Commanders echoed his order. Soon, it rippled through the ranks, and the grueling march through the blizzard began.
In visibility so poor they could barely see a few meters ahead, the rangers stationed throughout the column sang on, signaling they were on course.
"They say northern men are rough and taciturn, but that seems untrue."
Erhim Kiringger, vice-commander of the Iron Lion Knight Order disguised as mercenaries, clicked his tongue.
"They never shut up."
Maximilian found the rangers' nonstop singing equally curious and called over the platoon leader ahead.
"Ah, this? It's the Third Legion's song 'Winter Castle.' Cool, right?"
The platoon leader grinned good-naturedly.
"Singing it makes you feel warmer somehow, so we belt it out during marches."
As Maximilian nodded, the platoon leader added as if it just occurred to him.
"Oh, right. His Highness the First Prince composed this song. We added the later verses ourselves, but the first two are his work."
"My brother did?"
Maximilian's eyes widened round.
He had never imagined his brother composed the song the rangers were singing. Moreover, the ranger's tone when mentioning his brother was oddly intimate.
Erhim Kiringger sensed the nuance too, his expression peculiar.
"There's another song His Highness the First Prince made, called 'Orc Hunter.' Want to hear it?"
Without waiting for a reply, the ranger platoon leader cleared his throat.
"Rangers! Load one round of battle song! The song is 'Orc Hunter'! One, twooo, threeee!"
From behind, the rangers bellowed. Their pitch was atrocious, hardly tuneful, but the platoon leader and rangers sang with genuine enthusiasm.
Maximilian and Erhim Kiringger exchanged glances, their faces a mix of odd feelings at the rangers' unexpected side.
But for all their loose tongues, the rangers were true rangers.
They navigated unerringly despite poor visibility. Without them, Maximilian shuddered to think how lost they'd be.
"Even on the day His Highness the First Prince came, a blizzard like this raged."
The ranger platoon leader spoke with fresh reminiscence.
Maximilian felt that peculiar sensation again. The platoon leader's constant "His Highness the First Prince" grated unfamiliarly.
"Back then, His Highness carried a straggler and marched for a full day. Luckily, no need this time."
Under the platoon leader's frank gaze, Maximilian felt tempted to knock over a healthy soldier just to carry them.
He smiled awkwardly as the ranger turned forward and resumed singing.
What a relentlessly chatty fellow.
They marched on for a while longer, and miraculously, the blizzard stopped.
"This bastard always does this. Makes us suffer every hardship, then quits right as we reach the castle. It was exactly like this when His Highness the First Prince arrived—he was so indignant."
The giggling platoon leader pointed ahead.
"That's the northernmost fortress, Winter Castle!"
Maximilian froze solid.
The ranger's tone was upbeat, but the scene before them was neither cheerful nor beautiful.
Corpses everywhere. Half-burned corpses, fully charred skeletons, frozen intact bodies—the vast expanse before the massive castle was piled with the dead.
"Urk."
Maximilian gritted his teeth against the acrid stench and blood reek. Then, a group of men appeared from afar.
A handsome man covered head to toe in blood—the ranger platoon leader snapped a crisp salute.
"At eeease! Back from recon, sir?"
The man nodded.
"But you don't look like you just scouted."
"Some pests stuck to me midway."
"Another big haul?"
"Quit asking!"
The man barked, but the platoon leader grinned ear to ear.
"Who are these guys? Oh! Reinforcements from the central finally?"
The platoon leader's eyes widened.
"That's His Highness the Second Prince..."
The platoon leader's eyes darted left and right. Maximilian met his gaze, dumbfounded.
"This is His Highness the First Prince... Do the two of you not know each other?"
The First and Second Princes looked at each other as if by appointment.
One stared blankly since he wasn't in his memory at all, while the other gaped at the transformed appearance, awkward from the long reunion.
The most awkward, embarrassing brotherly reunion imaginable.
"Huh. Now that you mention it, you really do look alike."
The older brother was the first to break the tension.