Chapter 45

Translator: Willia

Seen from atop the walls in the dead of night, the dozens of torches looked like ghost lights drifting through the darkness. With visibility so limited, the enemy seemed even more numerous.

As always, shields were indispensable in Siege Warfare. Some soldiers held them overhead while others worked furiously underneath, using the shields as a roof.

They brought shovels, pickaxes, and axes and began tearing away at the stones along the base of the wall. Naturally, arrows rained down from above, but by now the archers were so exhausted they could barely keep shooting.

Trying to stab downward with spears was dangerous, since the enemy could grab the shafts and yank them away. So the soldiers of Grinnen mostly attacked by bringing their spears down as though threshing grain.

There was almost no chance of killing anyone that way, though a lucky blow to the head could at least give someone a concussion.

Their most effective means of stopping the attackers was to throw down specially prepared Peat, then toss torches after it to set it alight.

As soon as the enemy pressed up against the walls, they did exactly that, and flames erupted in an instant. The area around the walls became bright as day.

“Aaaaaaargh!”

The men engulfed in flames screamed in agony. Many hurriedly threw away their shields when they caught fire. The smell of roasting meat spread through the air.

Once Peat caught fire, even pouring water over it would not put it out, so the attackers simply moved elsewhere and began digging beneath another section of the wall. Gunnar was among them, shoveling furiously alongside the soldiers.

The heat made his skin feel as though it were cooking, while the heavy burnt stench and acrid smoke left his eyes and nose stinging painfully.

The work was already exhausting enough to make him feel like he was dying, and now he could barely keep his eyes open or even breathe.

“Keep going! Keep going! Once the wall comes down, we win! Keep at iiiiiit!”

Tears streamed from Gunnar’s bloodshot eyes as he screamed with sheer desperation.

The duke’s soldiers had begun wondering whether any of this was actually accomplishing anything, but Gunnar’s shouting helped them steel themselves.

The people of Grinnen were just as desperate. This time the enemy had brought no ladders, which made it difficult for Valery to recklessly jump down among them.

As time passed, they eventually ran out of prepared Peat. There was still plenty of ordinary Peat, of course, but unless it was specially prepared by mixing it with other substances and drying it, it would not flare up all at once.

Valery brought over the heavy stones they had prepared and began hurling them down alongside the soldiers and the townswomen. Soldier and civilian alike, the entire city of Grinnen had joined forces to resist.

More and more attackers collapsed unconscious from exhaustion. The people of Grinnen were in somewhat better physical condition, but there were far fewer of them.

After fighting like that for hours, both sides felt as though they were losing their minds. Why did they have to go this far? More than anything, they desperately wanted to sleep.

And the harder they fought to force those thoughts away, the more vicious they became. Their hatred for one another continued to swell.

Once we get over that wall, we’ll kill every last one of them. I’ll never even speak to anyone from Eldeira again. Thoughts like those filled their heads. Burning hostility was what kept their utterly exhausted bodies moving.

Who knew how many hours they had kept up this senseless struggle? Dawn finally began to break. Around then, one section of the wall suddenly sagged with a jolt.

“That’s it! Keep digging! All the way through!”

The people of Grinnen, Valery included, turned toward it in alarm. Then that section of the wall came crashing down. One of the duke’s soldiers who had continued digging beneath it to the very end was crushed to death under the collapse.

The moment the wall fell, a single thought flashed through the minds of the people of Grinnen.

We’ve lost.

Their hearts sank. The duke’s forces, meanwhile, seemed to forget their crushing exhaustion as fresh strength welled up inside them.

“There’s a breach! It’s open over there!”

“Up! Get up there!”

The fallen section of wall had become a high mound of rubble, and beyond it lay the city itself. Some of those buried beneath the collapse were still alive, but instead of stopping to rescue them, the attackers simply trampled over them and surged up the rubble.

Then someone began cutting down the men pouring into the city.

It was Valery.

He split skulls and hewed through waists as he climbed onto the mound of rubble, then hacked wildly at the enemies scrambling upward as though killing rats.

Swordsmanship hardly mattered now. With the enemy packed together that densely, every stroke killed one man, sometimes two.

Broken weapons, severed limbs, and corpses piled up across the ground, blocking the attackers and preventing them from climbing freely.

Even before that became a problem, however, the enemy had already been intimidated by Valery’s absurd display of power, just as they had been the day before.

This was ridiculous......

Standing beneath the dim light of dawn, Valery tore off his helmet and shouted. His wet platinum-blond hair clung to his face, but it did nothing to diminish his fierce authority.

“Anyone who thinks he can take me, come up here!”

No one dared take him up on it. The people of Grinnen, on the other hand, found their courage surging at the very moment everything had seemed hopeless. Forgetting their exhaustion, they shouted until their chests felt ready to burst.

“Salt Prince! Salt Prince!”

The momentum seemed to swing completely.

All because of Valery alone.

To the enemy, all the suffering they had endured through the night now seemed utterly meaningless, leaving them hollow and despairing. The defenders, meanwhile, felt hope and courage surging through them.

Valery himself was exhausted after fighting all night, but at that moment, he did not feel tired at all.

“That sword......! That’s the problem......!”

Gunnar muttered as he headed toward the fallen section of wall. They had nearly done it, yet they still could not break through there. It was maddening.

“Hey! Bastard! Stop hiding behind Dwarven Steel like a coward! Fight me fair and square!”

“Don’t make me laugh! You’re the one who should withdraw! Do that, and I’ll at least spare your life!”

“Grrrgh!”

Gunnar was furious, but he was not stupid enough to charge someone wielding Dwarven Steel. He had at least that much sense.

Then someone spoke to Gunnar.

It was Count Winddale.

He looked awful after spending the night swinging a pickaxe on the front line. His surcoat was singed, and his face was filthy with soot and sweat.

“We’ve done all we can. We’ll be going.”

“What? What do you mean, going?”

“I mean we’re withdrawing.”

“B-but you can’t......”

“Look around you. Look how many casualties we’ve taken.”

Gunnar looked around. There were bodies everywhere, along with men sprawled on the ground groaning in pain. Others were carrying the wounded on their backs toward the rear.

They would need an accurate count later, but at the very least, dozens seemed to have been killed or wounded in this Siege Warfare.

Of course, losing soldiers might have been acceptable if they captured the city, but if they kept taking losses without accomplishing anything, their hold on power would be at risk. That was true for the Duke, and equally true for the Count.

That was the nature of an army. It was a means of attack and defense, but it was also an instrument of rule.

“F-for now, let’s fall back. But please, don’t withdraw completely. Please. Please......”

Gunnar pleaded desperately, almost clinging to him. Count Winddale clearly did not like it, but he did not insist to the bitter end.

After finally persuading Count Winddale, Gunnar had the army fall back for the time being. Valery remained standing atop the mound of rubble until the very end, watching the enemy retreat.

The sun slowly rose in the east, illuminating the entire scene.

Valery returned to the city and gave orders.

“Put up ropes to block that breach for now. And dig a wide, deep pit on this side of it.”

Ropes would hardly stop the enemy, but they could at least hinder their advance and help create a bottleneck. Then they could fight the attackers around the pit on the inside.

Arne was the one who carried out Valery’s orders. Instead of using soldiers, he gathered people from the city and had them stretch layer after layer of the thick ropes normally used to moor ships across the collapsed section like a wall, while others dug a pit behind it.

Valery went somewhere quiet, sat down, and rested with his head bowed. He must have nodded off, because when someone approached, he jerked awake in surprise.

It felt as though he had merely blinked once, yet the colors of the world had changed. It had clearly been daytime before, but now the sky was glowing with sunset.

“Tired?”

Valery looked up and saw Knut.

“I didn’t realize it, but I guess I was pretty tired.”

Valery, Arne, and Skard had gone nearly two days without sleep, fighting day and night.

“If I surrendered, would the fighting stop?”

Valery gave a faint laugh and shook his head.

“They wanted Grinnen itself from the start. This has nothing to do with you. Why? Feeling guilty because it seems like you’re not doing anything?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean, you’re not doing anything? You’re the one keeping order.”

Whenever war broke out, there were always people who tried to take advantage of the chaos to pull something inside the city.

Knut was currently hunting those people down and either killing or punishing them. In other words, he was hardly doing nothing.

Of course, even so, he was not being pushed to his physical limits or placed in as much danger as those fighting on the front lines.

“Say...... just suppose......”

Knut struggled to begin whatever he wanted to say.

“What if my elder brother......”

Just as Knut began to speak, a soldier came running toward Valery in a hurry. Knut swallowed the rest of what he had been about to say.

“Prince, you need to come. The enemy has appeared again.”

That damned “Prince”. No matter how many times he told them to stop, they simply could not seem to drop it.

Half resigned, Valery struggled to his feet and headed for the walls.

Once he climbed up, he saw fresh troops arriving at the enemy encampment in the distance.

It was the Silverreach Mercenary Company.

They had brought something with them: siege equipment that had been disassembled for transport. Siege Hammers, Siege Towers, things like that. Apparently they intended to assemble them on site.

There were things that revealed the caliber of an army at a glance. How well it chose its position, the shape of its formations, how solid its encampment was, and whether it possessed the skill to dismantle and reassemble siege equipment.

One glance was enough to tell that they were professional mercenaries. They were not merely bodies gathered to fill out the numbers. These were men with extensive real combat experience. On top of that, they had yet to fight even once during this Siege Warfare, so they were still brimming with strength.

For the first time, Valery felt despair at the sight.

The people of Grinnen were full of hope, busily stretching ropes across the collapsed section, digging pits, preparing food, and carrying various supplies back and forth.

But Valery knew.

Once those men joined the assault, Grinnen would no longer be able to hold.

If they brought in a Battering Ram and Siege Towers, at least two sections would be breached. They would attack through the already collapsed section again as well.

That meant defending three places at once. No matter how hard Valery fought alone, could he really hold all three?

He doubted it, but Valery still intended to do everything he could. He ordered carts and stones piled behind the city gates to block them completely. If the gates were going to be breached anyway, this was better.

Given enough time, the enemy would clear away the obstacles and break through there as well, but Grinnen had too few defenders. They needed to shrink the front as much as possible. Their only chance was to force the enemy to come at them in stages and defeat each group separately.

He also ordered them to leave only a narrow passage behind the wall, barely wide enough for one person to pass through, and dig trenches to create a second defensive line. They would wear the enemy down there, then counterattack. That was the improvised battle plan Valery came up with.

But would it be enough?

Could he really be satisfied that this was all he needed to do?

Part of him wondered whether he should charge on horseback again, but the enemy encampment was already complete, making it difficult to get in and back out.

A hollow sense of futility slowly crept into his chest.

It gradually grew stronger, threatening to push aside his will to fight.

Cold calculations ran through his mind, telling him over and over that the best outcome was for at least him and his friends to survive. He did not know whether those calculations were truly correct, but they sapped his resolve all the same.

Then the faint thought of one final measure crossed his mind.

Torvald had once said there might come a time when he would have to offer up his heart.

Regin had said that drinking Dragon’s Blood could make a person’s heart burst and kill them.

The word heart connected the two men’s words.

Put together, they meant that he had to be prepared to die.

He had fought prepared for death before, but this was different.

How could he put it?

It was a matter of choice.

Was that choice hope? A sense of duty? Or rebellion against his own cynicism and cowardice?

Valery gathered his friends first.

He spoke to Arne, Skard, Yorik, and Knut.

“I have Dragon’s Blood. If I drink it, I might gain superhuman strength like an Einheri, but I might also die. If I drink it and die...... whether you keep fighting to the end or leave is up to you. Even if you leave, I won’t blame you.”

It sounded like a last will.

And an abrupt one at that.

“......What the hell are you talking about?”

Skard asked, too dumbfounded to say anything else.

But Valery offered no further explanation. He mounted Snow and galloped toward the mercenary company’s building.

Clop-clop-clop-clop.

His friends hurried after him.

When Valery reached the mercenary company’s building, he rummaged through his belongings. Before long, he found a small vial.

His friends arrived as well and watched, still bewildered.

When he pulled out the stopper, an utterly unfamiliar smell immediately spread through the room. It was a mixture of the thick, raw smell of blood and a heavy burnt odor that seemed to press down upon him.

Valery tipped the vial back and drank it in one swallow.

The mercury-like liquid reached his throat and went down with a gulp.

At first, its uniquely unsettling scent surged up into his nose, making his face twist instinctively.

Then pain struck, as though someone had wrapped a hand around his heart and squeezed with all their strength.

“Urgh!”

Valery clutched his chest without thinking and collapsed.

His startled friends hurriedly caught him and carried him to the bed.

Valery squeezed his eyes shut in agony.

At first, the pain felt as though his heart were being crushed.

Then it felt as though his heart itself were burning.

“Uuugh......!”

He felt the pain originating in his heart spread through his entire body in an instant.

The force rushing outward seemed to burn through every single blood vessel along the way.

Once the pain became that intense, he could not even groan.

When the force that seemed ready to burn his entire body reached his head, light flashed before his tightly shut eyes, and a scene appeared.

There was a figure with a robe pulled over his head.

When he turned around, his entire face was made of light, making him seem inhuman.

Yet despite that radiant appearance, his voice was bitter.

‘I was loved by all things, so it is only natural that I die for all things, Mother.’

That scene passed.

Next, he saw a woman cutting open her own pregnant belly with a knife.

A child emerged, one far too large to seem newly born.

The moment he came out, he severed his own umbilical cord, walked, and spoke.

The child kissed his dying mother, then bowed to her and said,

‘My body is still small and my strength weak, so I cannot avenge you yet. Once I am grown, I will surely take revenge and honor the spirits of Father and Mother. Please, rest in peace.’

After watching his mother die, the child ventured alone into the wilderness.

Next, Valery saw a dying man.

A woman stood over him. The two looked so alike they might have been twins, and both were beautiful enough to make the eyes ache.

‘Who in this world could ever understand us? You’re the only one I ever loved.’

The woman spoke.

‘......I only made it this far because of you. Sorry. I think I’ll rest first......’

‘Don’t be sad. When our child in my belly grows up, he’ll surely avenge you.’

‘No more revenge...... Let our child be happy...... Please......’

With those words, the man died.

That scene passed as well, and another unfolded before Valery’s eyes.

This time, there was another man.

He looked almost identical to the man who had died in the previous scene, but he was much younger.

He shouted at the same woman who had vowed revenge, his voice somewhere between a scream and a plea.

‘You already avenged Father! Isn’t that enough!? How long are you going to control me however you please!? I’m not Father! I’m your son, not your husband! You poor, wretched woman!’

‘Happiness!? You would abandon your own mother for something so worthless!?’

The woman glared at him with a gaze full of venom, then threw herself into a blazing fire without hesitation.

As she burned to death, she branded a mark onto the man’s heart that would never fade for the rest of his life.

‘Then go! Go find that precious happiness of yours! But if you fail to become happy, you’ll never be able to die!’

With those words, unbearable sorrow crashed over Valery.

It was a grief, misery, and tragedy so immense that the pain of his burning heart seemed like nothing by comparison.

Tears streamed endlessly from his tightly shut eyes.

He gritted his teeth and endured it, though he no longer knew what he was enduring it for.

When he opened his eyes, light burst from both pupils as though blasting outward.

His friends, who had been pacing anxiously around him, recoiled in terror at the sight of his eyes and fell backward.

“Gasp!”

But Valery’s eyes immediately rolled back, and he lost consciousness.

Fortunately, he was still breathing.