Chapter 25

Translator: Willia

Physical training was always worth it. To survive in real combat, stamina mattered far more than technique or finesse.

But that kind of training was always a test of oneself, forever grueling and painful, and it never got easier.

And so physical training built more than the body; it forged a strong will and an iron mind along with it.

What was it all for? Once, it might have been for running away. Not anymore.

Now it was to fight and win. Beyond that, to fight and win against himself, and ultimately, to become a better man.

Thinking that way, Arne ran again today. It would be a lie to say he felt no sadness, but at least he no longer had any lingering attachment to his family. They had lives of their own to live.

Yet unlike before, there were now many people running with him; they might not be dreaming the same dream, but they ran in order to dream together.

Valery, Skard, and the other soldiers.

Some of the soldiers, apparently moved and spurred on by the success of Valery's group, simply started running along without a second thought.

Some, not yet used to it, fell behind even without wearing a training vest; some tried to finish the course even if it meant walking; and some ran all the way to the end.

And though no one told them to, the ones in front pulled their straggling comrades along, and the stragglers refused to give up until the end.

In the end, everyone crossed the finish line, wearing bright, satisfied smiles.

"Idiots. What a bunch of damn fools."

Someone looked down on the scene from the castle on the hill. It was the Second Young Lord, Gutoerm.

"Everything's decided at birth anyway. Do they think running around like that will make them nobles?"

If that was how he saw it, that was his business; what actually soured his mood was that they had something he did not. A lean, healthy body.

"But weren't we all warriors back in Grandfather's day? We weren't even nobles then."

It was the eldest son, Gunnar, who said it, dipping bread into his wine as he ate.

"Are you stupid? We were a Jarl's house from back when we lived on the frozen land. We were always nobles. You think just anyone off the street gets to be a Duke?"

"Is that so?"

"Ugh, why do I even bother......"

While the two of them talked, the office door opened. And the office's true owner, Duke Sven, walked in.

He seemed to have summoned both sons in advance, and the moment their father entered, the two of them began to tense.

Duke Sven frowned at his eldest, Gunnar. He had been telling him not to eat in the office for over twenty years, and nothing ever changed.

As if he could no longer even be bothered to scold him, he sat down and went straight to the point.

"Which one of you is doing it?"

"Uh, I am......"

Gutoerm, the Second Young Lord, cautiously raised a hand as he answered.

"How many men do you need?"

"If you give me just two knights......"

"You think that'll be enough? Do you? Use your head. If you're cleaning something up, you do it properly and on time, or the vermin come crawling back. There are four large warehouses at the docks. Two men won't be enough to seize all of them. Take four knights, give each of them five soldiers, and go with twenty-four men total."

"If we take too many, the Marquis might......"

"The Marquis might what?"

"Ah, nothing."

"You think I have to tiptoe around that man?"

In truth, he was tiptoeing. But Duke Sven had his pride, and bringing up the Marquis to his face was not a wise choice.

Gutoerm fought the urge to fondle his own nipple. It was a kind of compulsion; he did it unconsciously to steady his nerves, but doing it now would only earn him a scolding.

He fidgeted with his hands as he answered.

"No. It's nothing."

"Draw up the roster yourself and leave first thing tomorrow morning. Once you've taken control, pull the men out bit by bit. And when I send a steward, that is when you come back."

"......Yes, understood, Father. But that, the Bastard, what do you mean to do about him?"

"Do about what?"

"Don't you think he's strutting around a little too pleased with himself?"

Duke Sven's face had already been creased with displeasure, and at Gutoerm's words it creased further still. He stared at his own son with something close to disgust.

Flinching under that gaze, Gutoerm shrank his bulky frame. All the while his hand kept drifting toward his nipple and dropping away again, over and over.

"Are you a child? Are you? Do your own job properly. This is exactly why you fell behind Ketil. What did I tell you? Don't let your feelings run your work. How did I end up with the likes of you as my Legitimate Heirs? When I think of Ketil, it isn't my fault; the problem is your mother. You're stupid because that woman is stupid. Do you understand?"

Duke Sven heaped such vicious abuse on his two sons that outright cursing might have been kinder. Comparing them to another man, dragging even their mother through the mud.

They would not have been human if they felt no resentment, yet the two sons dared not let it show.

"......"

"Do it without mistakes. There is no easier job than this. If you understand, both of you get out."

Gunnar and Gutoerm, grown men though they were, slunk out the door thoroughly cowed, like children who had just been scolded.

At any rate, Ketilmund's death stung Duke Sven more than he had expected, and more the longer he thought on it. The boy had truly been useful.

Perhaps that was why merely thinking of Knut made his blood boil. Naturally, that brought Knut's mother to mind as well, and his stomach twisted.

'If you were not a Duke, my lord, you would be a man capable of nothing.'

Those sneering eyes. That manner of speech, as if she thought him beneath her. And on top of it all, she had dared to try to kill him.

She must have meant to swallow this house whole. He would never hand it over. Not even in death would the Third Young Lord become Heir.

"I'll have to drive him out, or something...... Nothing ever goes right."

West of the city of Torvik, near the docks, lay a bed of reeds. It was best not to venture in carelessly.

No one could say how far it stretched, and no one knew when they might sink into the marsh and die without a soul ever knowing.

It had likely buried many a story. The reeds swaying in the wind seemed to whisper those secrets.

And within that reed bed, standing some distance apart and facing each other, were two people. Each time the reeds swayed back and forth, they appeared and vanished from each other's view.

One wore a mask that showed only his eyes; the other wore a hood pulled down low.

From the hooded one's exposed lower face and jawline alone, one could glimpse that he was strikingly handsome. It was none other than Valery. And the masked one was a man of the Black Hand.

"Tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, the Second Young Lord will set out with troops."

Valery said.

"How many?"

"Four knights and twenty soldiers."

Valery knew the numbers exactly because, from inside the citadel, everything was in plain view. How many soldiers had been drawn from the barracks, how many knights were preparing in the guest wing.

"So. What is it you want?"

The Black Hand man asked. Theirs seemed a relationship of trading information back and forth, but Valery's answer went far beyond anything expected.

"Kill the Second Young Lord. The knights and soldiers with him. All of them."

Shhhaaaa......

The wind stirred the reeds. It sounded like waves breaking, as if grinding the spoken words to dust.

The Black Hand man said.

"......Forgive me, I don't quite follow. Is this boldness, fearlessness, or thoughtlessness?"

"Half-hearted sabotage won't end this easily. If it drags into a long fight, you people won't last in the end. Whatever else Duke Sven may be, his tenacity is beyond question. Better, then, to seize control of the whole board."

"And killing the Second Young Lord lets us control the board?"

"Yes. That would leave only two Legitimate Heirs. The First Young Lord and the Third. Duke Sven hates the Third Young Lord worse than a stranger, so in practice only one remains. The Duke may be tenacious, but he is not brave. He's a coward. He has never once tested his own courage, so he doesn't even know he's a coward. But when the Second Young Lord dies, his true nature will show. He'll grow rash and misjudge, or shrink so far into himself that he'll do nothing even while the world laughs at him."

Valery had faced Duke Sven in the Succession War, before regression. What he had learned then, beyond any doubt, was that the man was a coward.

Even when Valery deliberately showed openings in the movement or encampment of his army, the Duke dithered, unable to decide, and let every opportunity slip away.

It was the classic mark of a man who did all his thinking at a desk. Duke Sven excelled only at setting people against one another and using them; he had no idea how to fight a war in which he had to be ready to lose everything.

Leading men from the front while arrows rained down on him was something a coward could never do, not in this life or the next.

Valery, by contrast, had done everything.

Burning an entire city and slaughtering its people may have been cruel, but the conviction that he would sooner burn a city than lose a single soldier drew unconditional loyalty from his men.

And beyond that, even in Siege Warfare he climbed the ladders at the very front, or charged with a spear in hand alongside his knights, or held the line shoulder to shoulder with the Infantry.

In other words, as cruel and cold-blooded as he was, he was just as unsparing of himself in leading from the front.

That was how he had become King; a man content to sit back on his cleverness could never have emerged the final victor of that brutal Succession War.

Truly, to become King, one had to be capable of everything. The very justification for the War of Royal Succession, after all, was to raise up the King most surpassing in strength, courage, and wisdom.

For the Black Hand as it now stood, however, being told to kill the Second Young Lord sounded like far too heavy a burden.

"......The risk of acting on your word alone is beyond absurd. If things don't go as you say, won't the Duke's fury fall squarely on us?"

"Weren't you planning to use me as your Pawn anyway? Then you should have expected that I'd use you in return. If you can't manage even that much, you're worth nothing to me at all."

Valery and the Black Hand were not, at present, in a trade relationship. It was something like an alliance; more precisely, a relationship of mutual use, holding only so far as their interests aligned.

Both Valery and the Black Hand had wanted The Ball-Ripper removed; the Black Hand wanted a monopoly on the docks, and Valery wanted the Second Young Lord removed. Interests of that sort.

"Use the Marquis. Dress your men like regulars, and burn it all down as if you meant to build the warehouses anew. Peat, once lit, does not go out. Steer the Second Young Lord onto a boat and drown him on his way back. Then, depending on how one looks at it, it could pass for an accident. While the Duke and the Marquis snarl at each other, all you have to do is reap the profit in between."

Valery laid the plan out down to the particulars.

Hearing it, the Black Hand man was struck dumb for a moment, feasibility aside.

He looked Valery up and down anew before speaking.

"Where in the world did you learn such things? Did the Count of Winsloe teach you?"

"I learned it from people like you."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Does it matter? Whether you do it or not is yours to decide. If the Second Young Lord comes through unharmed, then you and I have no further business. That's all."

Firm, cold, merciless. It was not arrogance, nor the scars of before regression; perhaps it was simply something inborn, a matter of temperament. He was just that kind of person.

It was as if both men were keen-edged swords, each trying to wield the other, but one was dancing along the blade's edge while the other fretted over cutting his own hand.

The Black Hand had been utterly outmatched. In presence, in resolve, in discernment, all of it.

He had known Valery was no ordinary man at their first meeting, but now, at this second one, he had the distinct feeling that this boy was truly beyond anything they could handle.

Still, why would Valery want the Second Young Lord removed? As far as the Black Hand member could judge, Valery seemed to be backing the Third Young Lord, Knut, as Heir.

And once the Third Young Lord became Duke, he would seize power as his closest confidant. That appeared to be the goal.

"I will answer you with results."

He said.

Valery did not reply or nod; he simply turned to go. The answer, after all, would come as results.

But before he left, he stopped, turned back to the man, and spoke again.

"You told me once that you'd give me valuable information. And in the end, it was useless to me. That business about the Second Young Lord and Winsloe."

"I remember."

"Then let me give you one piece of valuable information in return. How you people will fall."

"......"

"An organization that guards its secrets like its own life and runs itself closed off can never grow past a certain size. Which means that when an army comes crashing in, there will be nothing you can do. You won't be able to offer the slightest resistance as they kill, burn, and plunder at will. That is your limit."

To stop an army when it came, an entire city had to stand together. Repairing the walls, stockpiling food, securing supplies, Siege Defense; things of that kind.

But the Black Hand could do none of it. Of course, it was precisely because they could not that a turning point had come in Valery's life, before regression.

"What army would ever come here? Mountains above us, marshland all around."

"Who knows. No one knows what the world will become when the King dies. Everyone acts as if the King will live forever. I can't imagine why."

With those words, Valery turned and walked away. The soft scuff of his footsteps sounded for a moment, and then the reeds quickly hid him from view.

Then, as always, two others who had been hiding nearby, apart from the one who had spoken with Valery, revealed themselves.

"I'm for it. Using the Marquis sounds fine to me. A war of attrition with the Duke only bleeds us. And it's not as if we can give up the docks."

"I'm for it too, in principle, but what if they slap on another Trade Embargo?"

"Then we do a little smuggling, that's all."

The Ball-Ripper's purpose had been to torment people, so he had blocked even smuggling; the Thieves' Guild, however, existed purely to turn a profit.

A Trade Embargo would obviously mean losses. But losing the docks would mean greater losses still.

"And you? For? Against?"

"It's majority rule, isn't it? Then there's no helping it."

What exactly they were weighing for and against was anyone's guess, but it was most likely the killing of the Second Young Lord.

"Still, he's a frightening one. No line he won't cross. Speaking of the King's death out loud. Does he not care if he falls into Hell?"

It was generally believed that the King guided people into Heaven, so even the roughest thug did not dare speak profanely of the King.

"He challenged The Ball-Ripper to one-on-one combat in the first place. That alone takes no ordinary nerve."

The Ball-Ripper had spent his days running and hiding, and his epithet was a little laughable, but it had been hard to believe anyone in the world could beat him one on one.

That owed something to how narrow their horizons were, of course, but the man had not built his infamy across the region for nothing.

What was more, they had never dared attempt an assassination, because if by some chance it failed, there was no telling what havoc he might wreak.

In other words, even the Black Hand had feared The Ball-Ripper.

"And he won. At fourteen, no less. At this point, wouldn't we be better off just throwing in with him? Should we put our full weight behind the Third Young Lord ourselves?"

"Calm down. No. That's beyond our ability."

"By the way, that thing he said about the organization's limit. It doesn't sit right with me."

"Because he isn't wrong."

But even though they knew he was not wrong, there was nothing they could do about it. Crossing that limit would require changing the very structure of the organization.

To become something other than a Thieves' Guild required vision and knowledge, and above all, desperation. It was not something one could do simply by wishing to.

"Let's just pray the King lives a long, long life. O King, may you enjoy Long Life and Prosperity, and lead us into Heaven."

Half of it was a joke. The other half was to soothe their unease. Soon their figures, too, disappeared.

The reed bed rippled in the wind as it always did, whispering its secrets, but no human ear could make them out.

Shhhaaaa......