Chapter 73
Chapter 73
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 73
Chapter Title: 24. Half, and Half (1)
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"S-Stab it!"
Someone screamed like a banshee. It wasn't the voice of the spear unit officer. But the soldiers, gripped by terror as much as any scream, had no reason left to discern whose voice it was.
The spearmen thrust their spears out in a frenzy.
"Argh!"
The heavy infantry who had barely blocked the orc warriors' charge cried out as their allies' spears struck their backs. At the same moment, the orc warriors smashed down on their shields once more.
The allied forces' front line, which had been hanging on by a thread, collapsed in an instant.
"All knights, advance!"
At that moment, someone shouted.
It was a clear voice, sharply distinct from the terrified screams. The second prince, Maximilian.
The knights joined the fray a beat late. Their swords, gleaming with radiant light, cleaved through the orc warriors. They pushed the front line back into place, filling the gaps left by the heavy infantry.
"These damn pests!"
Bernard Ilai spat as he severed an orc warrior's neck.
"Leave the front to the knights and clean up the rear!"
The knight Arwen Kirguyen shouted. An orc warrior, its chest pierced by her sword, thrashed wildly.
Crunch.
She twisted her blade free and let out a lion's roar.
"Deal with the fallen orcs yourselves!"
The soldiers snapped to attention at her resonant command, thrusting spears into the downed orc warriors on the ground.
Arwen's gaze turned far ahead.
Thanks to the knights taking the heavy infantry's places, they could reform the front line. But the problem was the orc warriors who had already plunged into the heart of their formation.
In that short time, a considerable number of orcs had burrowed between the soldiers. Because of these rampaging orcs, the frontline soldiers couldn't properly support the knights, too busy watching their backs.
No matter how skilled the knights were, an axe would split their skulls, and a spear would tear their lungs and guts. They had to clear the rear as quickly as possible so the heavy infantry could properly back up the knights.
Arwen busily swung her sword.
She targeted the orc warriors' lower bodies with focus. An orc with its legs severed would be manageable even for regular soldiers.
She swept through the area, slicing off orc warriors' legs left and right.
Bernard Ilai followed her, striking their lower bodies the same way.
The legless orcs screamed before being hacked apart by the soldiers' spears and swords.
Bernard spat curses amid the acrid stench of blood assaulting his nose.
"Blood stench! Piss stench! Damn corpse reek!"
As Bernard, who hadn't stopped talking, flew into a rage, an orc's hand axe hurtled toward the back of his head.
"Watch your head!"
Clang. The axe bounced off Arwen's sword.
"Whew! Thanks!"
Bernard rolled on the ground, then sliced off the leg of an orc warrior about to strike the lady knight's back.
"No need for thanks..."
Slash.
Bernard twisted his waist at the ominous chill. An orc warrior clutching a short spear had its throat slit by Arwen's sword and toppled backward.
"What was that?"
Arwen asked, wiping blood from her face.
"Nothing."
Bernard grabbed his sword with an awkward expression.
After slicing through orc warriors' legs for a while, Bernard shouted.
"Seriously! Making us do all the work!"
He grumbled endlessly toward someone.
"That damn prince..."
Slash.
A streak of blue sword light grazed Bernard's cheek.
"Watch your mouth."
Bernard shut his lips at Arwen's icy glare.
"You think so highly of him."
But soon enough, he started yapping again, his face twisted like a sulky boy's.
"Damn it!"
At the same moment Bernard was cursing the one who left them to suffer alone, that very person was resting in some abandoned fortress in the southern battlefield.
Someone tapped his shoulder.
"Hm?"
He turned, wondering which insolent fool dared touch a prince's shoulder, and saw a woman with a green cloak pulled tightly over her head.
The elf who had cleared a path for him and the knights during their retreat after the failed operation. She was one of the nineteen sword maidens of the Yew Clan assigned to him by Sigrun—a sword maiden clan.
Her name was Gunne, was it?
"What?"
When he asked her business, Gunne extended both hands forward and moved them busily.
It was elven sign language.
He couldn't help but frown.
Deciphering the difficult signs already grated on his nerves.
But he didn't snap at Gunne.
Her tongue had been cut out, leaving her unable to speak. And Sigrun had been the one to cut it.
She stayed by his side out of necessity for him and the elder high elf, but her master was unfortunately a paranoid wreck who trusted not even her own subordinates.
And that paranoid had the power to ruin lives.
This time, it was the sword maidens' tongues that had been ruined.
The mad elf Sigrun, fearing the sword maidens might steal his poems first, had severed their tongues.
A catastrophe born of obsession, possessiveness, and malice in perfect harmony.
The pitiful ones were the sword maidens, and the one suffering was him.
"South? Enemy? Hm... warrior? No, battle?"
He barely interpreted her signs and furrowed his brow.
Just now. Message.
Gunne's hands moved frantically.
Right behind, other, orcs.
His eyes and mind busied themselves in tandem.
She raised her hand like a blade and swung it a couple times.
This meant war.
Snap.
Clasping her hands and bowing her head in prayer meant lord or king.
"War... lord?"
Combining the two words conjured the name of the bastard he'd gladly grind to dust.
Warlord. The orc king who toppled Winter Castle had nearly reached the Raintes River defense line.
"Everyone, pack up!"
The rangers and knights resting languidly nearby changed expressions.
Their eyes questioned him. He nodded.
Blue light exploded from the knights' eyes. Fire lit in the rangers' gazes.
"When we catch him, we'll chop him up and scatter the pieces at Winter Castle."
"Mount his head at the gates."
The knights growled through gritted teeth.
"His eyeballs are mine."
The Black Spear Cavalry captain, one eye hollowed out, interjected.
Seeing the knights unburdened by their past defeat, he thought to himself that it would happen as they wished.
He would make it so.
Someone might ask him.
Why boast with mere words when the one who barely survived fighting alongside Quad Chain knights was just talk?
It wasn't wrong.
The defeat was fact, and nearly becoming a broken man from the Warlord's aura was also fact.
But that didn't make his resolve empty bravado.
Before, he saw the Warlord as something to defeat in fair combat.
To fight squarely, win, and claim equal standing.
It was an utterly righteous, upright notion, born from half his life as a holy sword.
Looking back now, how utterly hollow.
His essence was not a holy sword, but a demonic one.
His goal was not victory in battle, but annihilation of the foe.
He wouldn't fight the Warlord to win and take his rank.
He would kill him and seize it.
Tan his hide into armor, grind his bones into a sword.
Steal his rank and everything he had as spoils.
Yes. In other words, this was a hunt.
"Avenge the commander!"
"Reclaim Winter Castle!"
"Death to the orcs!"
He watched the knights, their zeal bordering on madness.
The drive was over, perfectly timed.
Both prey and hunters were ready.
All that remained was to claim the prey's neck.
"March!"
At his command, Winter Castle's men roared.
Maximilian twitched an eyebrow.
"In just the past week, our losses are enough to shatter an entire legion. Eight hundred twenty-three soldiers fallen, and the wounded at least double that."
"We need to gather more forces. We can't hold the defense line like this."
Until recently, these same staff officers who claimed they could handle twice the orcs now chorused the need for reinforcements.
His mood was strange.
The fallen weighed on his chest like a boulder, heartbreaking. Yet a peculiar thrill rose simultaneously.
"Send a herald to the capital requesting more central army deployments, and urge the central houses that haven't joined yet to commit now!"
The reinforcements they so desperately wanted were what Winter Castle's soldiers had awaited in agony. Watching the fear and despair begin to spread made his mouth water.
Winter Castle's men had fought for months against double the enemy with half this force.
"The knights are at the end of their endurance. They need rest. Rotation troops are essential."
The Iron Lions, Winter Knights, and Black Spear Cavalry knights had craved rest just as badly. Without rotations, they'd fought through mana depletion and gut-wrenching pain.
"Soldier morale is plummeting. No one wants to hold the line."
He pictured the rangers' faces. Frostbitten, battered, clinging to the walls. Stubborn holdouts who hadn't left the battlements since the fighting began.
How utterly hollow.
Just one week. Only seven days since the battle started. Yet they acted like faithless doomsayers awaiting the end.
"If we'd only sent aid to Winter Castle back then..."
Someone mentioned Winter Castle. Nobles glared icily at the lord who clapped a hand over his mouth mid-sentence.
Winter Castle was their reverse scale.
A reminder of irredeemable folly, the spark of self-inflicted disaster. A brand on the foolish.
Mentioning it dragged up the truth they'd ignored.
The calamity on the central lands wasn't heaven-sent, but man-made.
But alas. The real disaster hadn't even begun.
"This dawn, an ominous presence was detected across the river, a day or two away."
Count Richter Lichten, the Silver Lion who had never once attended a meeting, spoke up abruptly.
"An ominous presence...?"
"At minimum, a Quad Chain-level knight, perhaps more."
The nobles, pale-faced, pressed the count for details. But he stared at the second prince instead of answering.
His eyes asked if he knew what it was.
Maximilian exhaled heavily.
"The Warlord, king of the orcs, has finally arrived."
His voice sank like a dying breath.
"He's the monster who crushed the late Count Ballerhard."
The meeting hall froze.
Warlord.
A name heard many times, a disaster none had acknowledged. Now striding right up to their doorstep.
"Th-Thank goodness Count Lichten is here."
One noble forced a laugh.
"I've never crossed swords with the late Count Ballerhard, but from afar, he was no inferior to me."
But the forced hope crumbled pathetically before the old knight's blunt truth.
If the late count couldn't, neither could he.
"We must request kingdom aid immediately."
The commander said. With reinforcements already requested, they grasped what he meant by "aid."
Not mentioning it outright for the man's dignity, but if one Silver Lion wasn't enough, request another.
The nobles fell silent. They all knew.
Even if they requested a Silver Lion from the capital now, he couldn't arrive in time.
The disaster loomed close, hope too distant to grasp.
Silence, a monstrous beast, devoured the tent. All mouths shut.
"I have a way."
Then a voice pierced the beast's belly.
The second prince, Maximilian.
"If he appears, have Count Lichten hold him."
Since the late count had already fallen to him, it could sound like asking the prince to buy time even at death's cost.
"If Your Highness commands it."
But the count's reply was calm.
Did he trust himself not to die? Was his loyalty to the royal family beyond death? Or was he simply detached from it? Maximilian couldn't tell.
But one thing he was sure of:
"Not a duel to the death."
His request wouldn't exceed the count's abilities.
"Just keep him pinned."
The count's eyes gleamed.
"Buy time, you mean. Do you have another plan?"
Maximilian nodded.
"Yes."
"May I ask what?"
The commander brightened, chiming in.
"There are others to face the Warlord."
The nobles cheered at Maximilian's words.
But only briefly. One asked cautiously.
"If such people exist, why not kill the orc king sooner?"
The mood sank. They deemed the question valid themselves.
Maximilian pondered.
[Dangerous! Didn't you nearly get in huge trouble already?!]
He recalled his brother's words before departing.
[I should have fought my way from the start, but imitating weaklings backfired.]
Unfathomable. He asked again. His brother's explanation:
[Couldn't then, but can now.]
Equally cryptic.
Unable to say that, Maximilian answered after thought.
"A sword we couldn't use then, but can now."
He couldn't reveal all. The nobles' blind distrust of his brother would twist truth to lies.
Better to gloss over vaguely.
"Perhaps some hidden hermit in the north?"
Fortunately, the nobles supplied their own convincing answer.
"A hermit..."
Maximilian found the noble's inference quite plausible.
If a capable one hiding their true self was a hermit,
Then his brother was surely one.