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“Long live his Majesty the King!” the soldiers shouted into the king’s ears as he looked at the enemy-filled field.

“You still have the skill, your Majesty,” a quiet voice spoke in between the shouts. It was the voice of Count Schmilde Stuttgart, the commander of the palace knights.

“Don’t even speak such words,” came the king’s answer, without him turning his head.

The fact was that Lionel Leonberger had not aimed for the man’s heart, even if he did hit it. His shot did not kill the enemy immediately, and he knew he had fired with a stiff hand.

“Sire, you hit an enemy on the field over a hundred yards away, so how can words of praise not flow from my mouth? Even renowned archers can’t easily do it.”

“Not enough, not enough. If it were Margarita, she would’ve hit him between the eyebrows, not in the chest.”

“Isn’t the queen a famous archer in Balahard?”

The king laughed as he heard those words.

All of a sudden, the king recalled when he had first met her at a banquet thrown in his honor as Crown Prince.

Unlike other women, Margarita didn’t seem to be interested in the banquet, and Lionel was reluctantly attracted to her. He could see that even her dress had been foisted upon her with force, and the way in which her chest heaved reinforced her appearance of feeling awkward in such formal clothing. Her appearance was striking, and Lionel had asked that she would return to the royal palace.

When they met again, she had cut her hair short like a man’s, and she was armed as a ranger and wore no fancy dress.

“I, Margarita Balahard, Second Company Commander of the Balahard Rangers, greets his Highness the Crown Prince.”

She introduced herself as a Ranger Company Commander, not as a member of the Balahard family. It was an outright demonstration by her that marriage into the royal family was not welcomed. Margarita was a fresh shock to Lionel, who had only seen beautifully dressed young girls awaiting marriage up till then, and he completely fell for her. From that day on, Prince Lionel made all kinds of excuses to go visit Margarita in the north. It was never easy: Finding a justification for the Crown Prince to visit the north; and winning her heart, which was as cold as the harsh winters of the north.

Still, he persevered in his courtship and was finally able to obtain conditional permission from her.

“I have no intention of entrusting my life to a weak man. If you go beyond me in the art of archery, I may accept your heart. Until then, don’t even think about seeing me again.”

Prince Lionel hired an archery tutor on that very day.

His progress was slow due to his inherently low capability in the martial arts. Still, after three years of hard work, he was able to hit a target at fifty yards eight out of ten times.

He headed straight to the north, where he met Margarita again, now so grown that she was unable to hide her womanly charms. She led him straight to an empty courtyard without even greeting him after such a long time apart.

They had an archery contest there, and Lionel was able to hit the target with nine of the ten arrows, one more than his usual rate, and he figured that the brisk northern air must’ve aided him.

And Margarita got eight shots in total. Lionel won the bet and was eventually able to marry her.

It was only until later that he learned his wife did not have good skill at only fifty yards, but rather a hundred. When he asked her why he had won, she had merely laughed instead of answering.

After Margarita’s acceptance as Crown Princess, Lionel was happy, as if the world had been given to him. But in actual fact, he had nothing: The kingdom was already an imperial province, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Whenever he tried to do something to guide Leonberg’s spirit in the right direction and escape the empire’s boot, something unfortunate would occur. There were even those who entered the royal palace with daggers aiming at his throat and other agents who swung the imperial sword all over the kingdom.

Loyal men died trying to protect Lionel and Margarita, and then even the surviving loyalists started suffering bad luck in their families, causing one or two of them to fail at their duties. The vacancy left by these loyalists was occupied by those who were no less than lords of the empire.

Whenever Lionel remembered the corpses of those knights who gave their lives for their king and every time he recalls the families of those loyal to him fall one by one… Whenever he saw the permanent scars on the woman who he had sworn to cherish and protect like the most precious of flowers – each of those memories always shook him to the core. The time also came when Lionel had wanted to give up on his quest for an independent Leonberg, and it was the queen who raised him up during those times. Sometimes she cried out and chided him, and other times, she spoke as if to soothe her child. There were times when they held hands tightly and promised that they would see things through together.

Thanks to that, King Lionel was able to devote his entire life to Leonberg’s independence without giving up. However, he only had one life and so few devoted loyalists remaining to him, so the path to independence would be long and hard. As time passed, his will was worn away, and at some point, he became used to being robbed and tolerated constant insults. He had thought that he had done his best, yet in the end, he knew that saying that was just a rationalization for his helplessness. After losing the secretly trained knights, his eldest son was forced to spend many years being resented. That was the most tragic time of all, and Lionel wished that he had only been a little firmer, a little more competent. If so, his son wouldn’t have had to spend that time in vain. As King Lionel watched the empire’s large army lining up beyond the walls, he knew he was not in a position where he could afford to be cursing his foolish and weak self.

I will never be that man again. I will remain faithful until the day that my life is over.

And what he had to do at this moment was to defend the kingdom from the enemy’s vanguard.

Holding his bow firmly, King Lionel Leonberger stood on the wall and stared out at the enemy.

He saw that the man struck by his arrow was being carried away by knights who retreated to the rear. As the king studied the man’s limp body, with his sagging hands, it was clear that he was dead.

“Their commander has been stained red!” the king shouted.

Knights and soldiers upon the wall began to shout as well.

“Death to the empire’s dogs!”

“Let’s smash the enemy!”

The imperial army began to withdraw, leaving the cries of the kingdom’s army behind them.

* * *

After losing the legion commander to a dishonorable sniper, the imperial army withdrew, but theirs was only a temporary retreat. The commander of the 17th legion had served as the overall commander of the six legions; his vacancy was quickly filled by another legion commander. The army encamped on the plain overlooking the citadel, and they began preparing for a full-scale siege.

A great siege ram was constructed, as well as siege ladders and a tower that would house archers. However, the imperials couldn’t even come to use the siege weapons that they had lugged here and constructed under heavy labor. Dawn came, and the soldiers on guard could no longer overcome their drowsiness as they nodded off.

Flames erupted on the edges of the Imperial Army’s camp.

“They’re here!”

One moment later, the guards announced the presence of the enemy.

The soldiers and knights were woken from their deep sleep and headed for the outskirts where the fires were raging, and all they could see were the remains of destroyed siege weapons and the hideous sight of corpses scattered about.

The enemies had already escaped.

The legion commanders swooped in and captured all the on-call knights who had failed to notice the night assault.

“A pa… paladin was leading the enemy,” a knight announced as he crawled on his knees, telling the commanders that they were given no choice.

However, the legion commanders’ expressions were only cold, for the commander of the 17th had been killed, and now even the siege engines were destroyed – all only after a day upon arriving at the battlefield.

It was a loss that the commanders could not have imagined, and they knew that they had to set an example to curb such weak discipline and skill. They decided that the throats of the fourteen knights who had been put in charge of guarding throughout the night had to be cut.

“I don’t understand this nervousness, as our foe is a weak country.”

“A lion does its best when it comes to catching a rabbit, but I believe this lapse has arisen because the great power gap between our respective armies made our men lax.”

“From now on, we should enforce discipline and force our soldiers to become engaged in this war with all seriousness that we can muster.”

The legion commanders immediately called a meeting.

“A rat will bite the cat if it is in trouble, and this is exactly the case. The fact that the enemies have done so much so soon means that we have them cornered,” Degaulle said, adding that the enemy lives in castles of straw and is desperate to avoid the flames. The legion commanders also firmly believed that the enemy’s further ploys would be in vain, as they were now on the alert.

“By the way, it looks as if the heavens are looking down upon us,” Degaulle said, and the commanders frowned at him, for they had suffered so much damage already. However, Degaulle did not raise a single eyebrow as he looked at the discomfited faces of the legion commanders. They continued talking.

“Anyway, their mad king does not know the subject of war. I can’t think how the nobles of this weak kingdom can follow the will of this king in sincerity.”

“Their main army must be small.”

“If you kill the king, then this war ends,” said Degaulle, “and the King of Leonberg is in that citadel.”

The faces of the commanders were hardened, that tension got released at once.

“Do you now see why I said that the heavens are smiling down upon us?” came Degaulle’s triumphant chatter. “Several legion commanders now have the chance of capturing the enemy’s monarch.”

The legion commanders were now in a hurry, for even now, the other imperial legions were heading to this citadel. If the citadel and king both were captured before the other commanders arrived, the reward would be given to those present.

Shortly before, they had worried about the discipline of the soldiers and the knights; now, they forgot all about the cutting of the fourteen knight’s throats to set an example.

But not everyone was blind to the truth. Malcoy de Marseille, commander of the 84th Legion, was the youngest present, yet remained within the higher echelons of command. He merely watched on as the other legion commanders spoke out so expressively as if they already held the head of King Leonberger in their hands.

“I have some arrangements to make within my legion,” said Malcoy, getting up and telling the others he had business to attend to as he left the meeting.

“Tchu, there goes someone who couldn’t properly serve his master, and yet he leads a legion. At times, I think his Majesty’s compassion is excessive.”

“The second princeps was the one his Majesty most cherished before his death, so he must have respected that old bond and allowed him to live.”

“Despite his Majesty’s mercy, it is just a shame that we share command with one so sloppy.”

“Well, he might have begged not to be become a commander on the margins, wishing to continue serving at Hwangdo. Otherwise, how do you explain his current lack of enthusiasm?”

“If that’s really the case, he’s a truly desperate person. A man who does not appreciate imperial grace after leaving a princeps to die in a ruined country, a man with nowhere to go.”

The legion commanders all disliked their younger counterpart, who was in his thirties and had once stood at the center of power.

But they soon forgot all about him as they returned to the topic of the citadel and once more started talking about the glories that will soon settle upon their shoulders.

* * *

“Marseille, why are you back already?” the lieutenant asked with wide eyes as he saw Malcoy appear early.

“A honey-tongued man is leading our legions into fire.”

“You are referring to that senior knight from the fortress.”

“That single knight has a tongue that is three times smoother than those of the nobles in Hwangdo, and the foolish commanders are not able to make use of their own minds whenever he talks.”

The lieutenant looked at his master with some embarrassment.

“This war will not end so easily,” Malcoy sighed.

“Contrary to the words of the senior knight, the Leonberg Army is not a pushover. Their stated demeanor is no different from those who have lowered themselves while waiting for the right time to strike – and the statement that they act very harshly only to the knights and soldiers of their own kingdom means that they try to maintain military discipline even if difficult times. It must be so.”

Believing this, Malcoy showed no hesitation in criticizing the high-ranking knight who regarded the enemy as nothing but a simple chore to be completed, as well as the legion commanders who have already defeated the enemy in their minds due to their foolishness.

“They have been sharpening their swords and biding their time, while the empire only rusted and rotted in the days of prolonged peace. If you cannot fix the rotten mentality of the commanders, things here will fare no better than they did in Dotrin.”

“If this is the problem, should Malcoy-nim not come to the fore and lead them?”

“No use. If I tell it to them, they won’t listen, and they won’t see the truth of my words until they experience it themselves.”

The lieutenant smiled bitterly at Malcoy’s lament.

This was because the lieutenant knew that Malcoy had been the only person who expressed concern to his superiors over the suspicious behavior of the Dotrin Army, who had all abandoned their forts at the same time during the First Dotrin Invasion.

However, the second princeps did not heed Malcoy’s warnings, and he ended up dying under a pile of stones. Then, the survivors said that it was all Malcoy’s fault for making such ominous predictions. In the end, he was stripped from his prestigious position as a central commander in Hwangdo and relegated to the command of a border legion.

“If you sense a trap and they don’t, it seems that the people in high command don’t know any better than these lesser commanders.”

“It’s clear as day, so let’s summon all our frontline officers.”

“What do you wish to do?” asked the lieutenant.

“Before the foolish legion commanders die in their game of power, at least we should try to save our legion.”

“Then, if we are lucky enough to have the other legion commanders killed, will you assume command?”

“I don’t want it. I don’t have the will for it. After his Highness the Second Princeps died, all of his arrogance was transferred to his country. It’s just enough for us to return home with our lives.”

“It’s a shame – to let your talents go to waste.”

“Don’t be cheeky, rather do what I ordered you to do.”

The lieutenant left the barracks.

“Damn. If I have no luck, the responsibility of defeat will be thrust upon me again,” the commander, alone now, sighed as if the world was ending.