7 (4)

“How many died?”

Louis spoke heavily. He had succeeded in taking control of everything, but one regret was that a considerable number of his cavalrymen had been cut down by Dekal.

Dekal truly was a man capable of leading a legion. He had shown prowess beyond Louis’s expectations. Thanks to that, Louis lost many of the soldiers he had painstakingly trained to form the cavalry. In any case, Dekal was dead—just as Louis had planned… Even so, he was human; having killed an elder “brother” with whom he’d exchanged greetings as a child—and who might have been pleasant company without the shackles of rank—his spirits could not help but sink.

Sensing Louis’s low mood, attendants and subordinates tried to move several times more carefully than usual. The dice had already been thrown. If Louis fell, all of them were fated to vanish under the executioner’s blade.

“Thirty-six.”

He had killed thirty-six by himself—unarmed—against well-trained soldiers in full kit. It was horrifying. If Dekal had been a Sword Master rather than a Sword Expert?

‘Hoo…’

Even so, with the invention called the stirrup, those thirty-six did not deal Louis a fatal blow.

Louis closed the notification window. The city trembled in fear. Because of whom? Because they feared Louis. A few years ago, such a reaction from the citizens would have been unimaginable—was he supposed to take pleasure in it? Louis twirled his pen with a bitter look.

Fortunately, despite this drop in satisfaction, overall city Happiness hovered near 0.

‘Cutting it close.’

It was razor-thin. If it dipped into the negative, even army operations would be affected, so he had to be especially careful.

“Lord Louis, it’s time for the speech.”

A pretty maid forced a smile as she spoke. Without even looking at her, Louis turned his back and flicked his hand. That was assent.

No sooner had his father died than Fred was riding hard toward the Pontina directly-ruled domain, having issued further orders to his men. First priority was, of course, Dekal’s recall. He worried, but Fred trusted Dekal more than anyone—raised together like childhood best friends.

No one knew better than Fred that his younger brothers would not acknowledge his succession. He was heading to the Pontina demesne chiefly to secure the king’s sanction.

Rain drizzled on. Mud gurgled and wept; Fred spat. Ptui.

‘Damn it, Father. I told you to make it clear.’

Fred had pestered his father that the ducal domain would split. But Remitri only muttered that only the strongest should rise.

‘Damn it… “nobility of force,” is it? We can’t break free of the Duchy of Eron. By your will, Pontina will be torn by civil war. Even the lowborn know what that means.’

Was this resentment? Fred could not discern the swell of emotions. Just then, a subordinate appeared with a letter.

‘Hoo… news from Dekal, it seems.’

Thinking of Dekal brightened him a little. With two legions under him, Fred planned to entrust one wing again to his childhood companion.

“Enter.”

“Yes, my lord.”

With Remitri dead, even the forms of address among Fred’s men had shifted naturally. In a better mood at receiving Dekal’s letter, Fred uncrossed his legs, drank a glass of water, and said:

“Speak.”

“R-report. Dekal… is dead.”

“W-what?”

“On the day Duke Remitri died, in the city of Proia, Dekal attempted a surprise attack on Consul Louis and failed. He was killed.”

Silence. A vein stood out on Fred’s brow; he slammed the cup onto the floor.

“What nonsense is that!!!”

His pitch was enough to tear ears, and as a Sword Expert he exuded a killing aura that seemed ready to grind everything around him.

Under Fred’s glare, the subordinate’s heart hammered madly; he smashed his already bowed head against the filthy floor.

“Forgive me.”

Gunpowder caught in Fred’s emotions. Driven mad by murderous impulse, he shouted again:

“Say it again!! What on earth happened?”

“Forgive me, Lord Fred. I will be frank. Word is that Dekal attacked Consul Louis head-on and was beheaded.”

Fred was at a loss for words. A long silence. The beheading of his childhood companion shocked him to the core.

“W-what did you say? B-beheaded?”

“Yes. We must plan at once. As for the military alliance with Consul Louis—”

Boom!

Fred split the table with his bare hand. His honed, steel-like palm crumpled the frail wood, and not satisfied, he drew his sword and slashed about. A nearby slave became the pitiable target; the man’s head thumped into the air and rolled across the floor. Blood sprayed like rain across Fred’s face. Tasting it, Fred muttered:

‘Damn… damn… that bastard, that whelp. I pampered him and this is what I get.’

Adjutant Jodan quickly realized his lord had lost control and strode inside, but the pressure crushed him to his knees. He had never seen Fred’s emotions run so wild.

“What is going on?”

Jodan asked in a restrained voice to the messenger.

“Lord Fred’s childhood companion attacked Consul Louis and died.”

If it was a childhood companion, it could only be Dekal. “Damn,” Jodan muttered, then stood at once.

“My lord, compose yourself. At this rate, you will be made a laughingstock by Consul Louis.”

“Compose myself? How… can I?!”

Jodan seized Fred’s arms brimming with killing intent.

“If you intend to continue rampaging like a butcher, then cut me down. That would be right.”

“Y-you…”

“Strike me down!”

“You cur.”

Fred kicked Jodan—no ordinary kick, but that of a Sword Expert. Hit square in the solar plexus, Jodan let out a tightly suppressed groan and rolled across the floor. He staggered up, showed a sudden fit of breathlessness, then gagged and retched. The blow would bruise him badly—he might need convalescence—but with iron discipline he endured.

A long silence. Only Jodan’s retching echoed, when Fred slumped onto the broken chair.

“Forgive me.”

It was no small thing for a lord to apologize to a subordinate—proof of trust between them. Watching Fred regain control, Jodan spoke plainly:

“We must maintain the military alliance with Consul Louis.”

Fred answered by reflex:

“You—”

“We must. Do not forget that the worst case is a three-to-one situation, my lord.”

Hearing that, Fred ground his teeth.

‘Damn you… Louis…’

The last time he met him, Louis had grown so much that the Fred who knew the old Louis could only click his tongue.

And now?

If anything, he had grown even craftier. Inheriting Pontina whole, the biggest obstacle might not be Pierre, but Louis.

Pierre—lord of Kayani, the only port city in Pontina. Receiving a letter from a spy infiltrated in Proia, he swallowed calmly.

‘Dekal is dead.’

Pierre nudged a knight on the chessboard before him and smiled.

‘My useless little brother has, for the first time, given me something of use.’

A pawn dangled from his fingers, then clicked forward one square.

“Pressure.”

“Understood.”

Marquis Gangpireu—the man amassing power abnormally—barked a single order:

“Advance.”

He was a man of great ambition. He wanted the Duchy of Eron entirely. He believed the starting point was now. Clack-clack—the sounds of soldiers and heavy gear filled the air like a harmony. This moment was both a war of succession and, at the same time, the onset of a territorial war.

Rain fell. It had been coming for days, hounding them like a tiresome stalker. Humidity climbed. The steppe churned. Louis looked from the ocean-green plain to the sky. As if forbidding fratricide, the heavens seemed ready to thunder. Even if that was heaven’s will, men who obeyed it would not be men.

“Infantry ahead. They’re forming ranks.”

Louis lowered his visor. This was the first sortie of the heavy cavalry led by Louis himself. The target: Pierre’s regular infantry, pressing Louis’s frontier. The reason he deployed heavy cavalry immediately in this first engagement was simple.

‘Annihilation.’

He planned to wipe out the enemy infantry to the last man. If even one survived, word would spread that Louis fielded heavy cavalry; if none did, the story would be different. Lured by Louis’s bait, the enemy infantry had been drawn deep into an area poorly connected to their signaling network.

‘Just how easy do they think I am, to charge in like that?’

Louis gave thanks to his past self, snorted, and snapped his visor shut. Tak.

Thunder cracked, and rain began to fall. Louis stuck out his tongue to taste the drops, then raised his hand at once.

“All units, charge.”

A surprise strike by heavy cavalry from high ground over a prairie—tactically flawless. At Louis’s command, the troops slid into motion. In the lead, crouched low like a predator, was Kaiser.

The first battle of the war of succession opened.

A roaring of hooves shook heaven and earth. The ground shivered; Louis, feet firm in the stirrups, raced at full speed with perfect stability. The rain thickened—from shower to sheets in moments.

The first impact was not rain, but blood. With the panicked drumming of enemy war drums, the heavy cavalry slammed down like a comet.

“Wh-what is that!!!”

“Cavalry!!!”

“Damn it, not ordinary cavalry!!”

“Louis has cavalry like that?”

“Form every line!!!”

“N-no.”

Leaving that final word, Galsha, the Commander of a Thousand, swallowed dryly in the rain, defying Pierre’s order.

With Swordsmanship at level 4, Louis was more skilled than most heavy cavalrymen. No one knew the sources of horsemanship knowledge better than he.

The rain began to sizzle across the earth. As the view turned murky, Louis’s lance caught—torso or head, bone and all—and hurled something straight ahead.

‘So it begins.’

As the victim’s scream and the syrupy blood on his lance tangled with the rain, Louis smashed through everything and kept charging.