88 — 9 (8)

“What’s your name?”

With a pale face, Mihoff spat up blood once and barely answered.

“…Reiner Mihoff.”

“Your tone is too short. I’ll ask again—what is your name?”

For a brief moment, a hint of killing intent flickered in the unseen depths of Louis’s eyes. Mihoff did not miss it. Others might have, but he had been born with a natural talent for sensing mana. The thought crossed his mind that he might die here.

“…Reiner Mihoff, my lord.”

Looking down at him, Louis spoke firmly.

“To tell you one thing, I cannot look kindly on the man who dealt a mortal wound to my blood. At the same time, Pontina Fred was also my enemy, so I have not yet decided how to dispose of you. From here on, your own conduct will decide whether you live or die.”

“…”

“How much of the regular army remains?”

Behind Louis’s question lay another: whether Marquis Gangpireu’s children had any troops left they could muster.

After a brief hesitation, Mihoff answered honestly.

“None.”

Louis could not yet be absolutely certain of the statement’s truth, but if he assumed for the moment that it was, then all five cities could be considered completely defenseless. Marquis Haidek Gangpireu had been lord of five cities. From this point on, Louis’s task was to seize them as quickly as possible.

Any faction worth the name had powerful friends. Before the king or other factions could move to check him, if Louis occupied every city except the original marquisate that had first been granted to Gangpireu, he could reap enormous gains from the remaining four.

And that seemed easily achievable. Louis had a large number of siege weapons prepared for assaults on fortified cities. To break the outer walls of a city with no regular troops, a simple advance would suffice.

Boromir, seeing Louis’s interest in Mihoff, felt pleased to know his judgment had been correct. Kaiser and Anok had already pulled back with troops in order to pursue the fleeing enemy, and with Gaion off reorganizing the battlefield, only Boromir remained here.

“Boromir, lock this man up.”

“I obey.”

Louis retook the city of Grad. Even though rain still fell, the streets were packed with citizens. The people were ecstatic. Everyone shouted Louis’s name. Had Louis entered here after defeating Fred instead, the reaction would not have been like this; in that sense, he owed a certain debt to Marquis Gangpireu.

After all, this place had long belonged to House Pontina, and being ruled by Marquis Gangpireu had never sat well with them. Louis entered the governor’s residence. From the entrance onward, the attendants who would henceforth serve him stood in rows, bowing their heads. Louis walked between them.

Inside the residence, the hearth fire blazed. Like rum mixed into a drink, the warm air eased the tension from Louis’s body. After days of rain, such comfort felt like pure luxury. His last visit here resurfaced in vivid detail. Fred had sat in the lion-skin-draped chair.

As Louis had come through the door back then, he had racked his brain nonstop over how he might obtain warhorses from his older brother. Now, many things had changed. So many that even he felt dazed when he thought about it. No wonder—Louis was now a duke. Duke Louis of Pontina. A position he had won by defeating his splendid brothers and Marquis Gangpireu.

Louis sat where Fred had once sat. The frost in his body and heart began to melt. A brief rest was always sweet. Once they finished a short period of refitting in Grad, he would have to move again to strip Marquis Gangpireu’s lands from him entirely.

Attendants came in before Louis, knelt, and stated their names and positions. Louis closed his eyes and listened half-heartedly. Even so, not one of the attendants who paid their respects showed the slightest hint of displeasure. In that brief span, word had already spread of how Louis had subdued Marquis Gangpireu.

To them, he was not an arrogant new master, but a weary hero returned from war. That was how the attendants saw Louis. Among them, the maidservants all showed strong affection toward him. It was rarer to find a woman who did not harbor yearning feelings for him. And it was not only they who felt that way; any woman who heard the news or saw Louis entering the residence found her heart drawn to him.

For young women of marriageable age, it was only natural to be attracted to Louis, who had proven his ability perfectly in dire straits and inherited the highest rank at a young age.

Yet a small minority always existed. Some wondered whether Louis could truly manage the vast Pontina domain, looking on with skepticism. A few scions of houses under House Pontina hated him blindly—or more precisely, they were jealous. But whether they did or did not, the overall tide was not something easily resisted.

Among the young noble ladies of Grad in particular, none who had braved the rain just to glimpse Louis failed to murmur that they wanted to marry him. By custom, Louis ought to have held a banquet to receive the nobles’ oaths of loyalty, but awkwardly, this was not enemy territory—and above all, with three members of House Pontina having died, funerals had to come first.

So while noble ladies spun fantasies, losing sleep as they fretted over how to charm Louis or show him their prettiest side, Louis did something cruel from their point of view: he took oaths of loyalty from only a handful of key nobles and immediately began preparing for a renewed advance. The expected casualties from the coming campaign were minimal—in effect, it would be like raiding empty cities.

Grad’s audience chamber. The atmosphere there was utterly different from that of Louis’s previous office—bleak, almost. Two elderly nobles were present in the room. The swords, armor, and ancestral portraits on the walls seemed to be watching Louis’s steps, as if to see whether he would do well from now on.

The dead never spoke; among the living, there were six people present in the room. One, naturally, was Louis. Aside from the two elders, the rest were attendants. The man with eagle-like eyes who regarded Louis with very calm composure was the head of House Bitel. He had long remained in Grad in service to House Pontina.

Naturally, he had poured his zeal and devotion out for Fred. Having not taken part in the war, he had only a rough sketch of what sort of person Louis was, and he assumed that luck had played a large part in things as he entered this room. His nephew, who had been on the battlefield, had praised Louis fervently, but the head of House Bitel had found that enthusiasm suspicious and had not believed it.

That thought lasted only a moment. As soon as he entered the room, he found that he could not move. The other elder felt the same. This man, lord of House Sbah, looked easygoing even at a glance—and indeed, he was.

He had followed House Pontina as a whole rather than Fred as an individual, so more than the drastic change itself, he felt deep gratitude toward Louis for removing Marquis Gangpireu, who had briefly ruled here. Having refused any cooperation with the Marquis whatsoever, he had been confined to his home until Louis reclaimed Grad.

“I called you because I had something to say in private.”

Louis looked back and forth between the two elderly lords. One was terrified; the other, Louis could tell at a glance, stood on his side. Their houses formed the core of Grad’s power structure. As a rule, it was far better to continue using them than to sweep them away.

When Fred had held this seat, Louis’s position relative to them had been ambiguous—he could not speak down to them freely. Now, by both law and custom, he could—and more than that, after his rapid growth through war, Louis had become someone who could completely overpower their presence without any awkwardness whatsoever.

“Speak, Duke Louis. I am ready to do anything you ask,” said the amiable lord of House Sbah.

“Ah, I heard as soon as I arrived that you suffered for refusing to cooperate with Marquis Gangpireu. I will remember your loyalty.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

Feeling somehow left behind, the head of House Bitel could not keep his expression from souring.