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After that, Carls could no longer plead with the queen to descend from the wall.

She wouldn’t listen, anyway, and the situation did not allow any opportunity for her to make a withdrawal: The vast outer castle walls were barely guarded by the unsatisfactory amount of troops, and the number of foes who had just entered battle was considerable. If all the imperial knights concentrated on this section of the wall spread themselves out, then the other sections of the wall would fall in an instant.

The queen realized what role she was playing better than anyone else. That was why she shouted from time to time, making sure the enemy was aware of her presence.

She even switched tactics and lured enemies to her if it proved necessary.

“Move east!” she ordered, and Carls and the other palace knights cleared the way with all their might. And when the queen stopped, they would stand by her and cleave into the crowd of enemies. Carls heavily breathed as he cut down another foe, and when he looked around, he noticed that the other palace knights were also breathing hard. The dazzling light upon their swords gradually faded. Carls clenched his teeth.

Even the queen was fighting, firing her bow with bloody fingers. Carls, as a knight, didn’t dare show any weakness.

“Hold a while,” the queen ordered as Carls began to squeeze more mana from his rings.

“I want to see you hold on!”

Carls had no time to think of whether he could hold on. He simply continued to cut down foes with all his might. That’s when there was a tumult within the city, and then came the sound of countless footsteps which ascended the stairs to the wall.

“Queen Margarita! As commanded, I have gathered all capable citizens,” the Great Marshal reported, and the dozens of knights in his service had also appeared.

“Two thousand citizens of the royal road! All are fully armed and ready for battle! Just give the order!” the marshal exclaimed, and the queen’s order was energetic.

“There is no need to wait. Eliminate the enemy on the wall.”

“They’ll do a good job,” the marshal shouted as he jumped up from where he had knelt before the queen. “Citizens of the capital! Help your allied knights and soldiers drive out the enemies!”

There came shouts from all sides.

“Beat the imperial dogs!”

“Protect the queen!”

The citizen militia who climbed the walls was not as professional as those who had learned the martial arts, but their spirits were high.

They were prepared to die as they gripped their swords and spears, and the imperial troops were pushed back, unable to withstand the frenzied momentum. But where could they go if they stepped back over the narrow wall? Driven to the wall’s edge, they clenched their teeth and attacked the militia.

“Ouch!”

“My arm!”

Citizens died in no time as the imperial army’s offensive rose with poisonous intent.

“The capital garrison! What are you doing! Are you going to stand back and watch while the citizens you swore to protect die under enemy blades?”

The defenders of the capital had taken a breather when the militia had rushed in; they now—with angry faces—stabbed their swords and spears at the imperial troops.

Knights let their sword auras blaze as they slashed out. The imperial troops dared not face the momentum of the defenders, and they withdrew from the walls.

And so was the first battle against the imperial army besieging the capital ended.

However, the crisis was not over yet, and when the day next day came, the besiegers attacked the walls with greater zest than the previous day.

Soldiers and citizens of the capital alike resisted the assaults. At the front were the soldiers and militia who wielded their swords, and from the rear, women and children throwing stones or pouring scalding oil.

“Three days at most! Two days if they manage it! If we hold out until that time, the Templar Knights will come,” the commander cried out, reminding all of the incoming reinforcements.

But they weren’t the only ones who knew of the existence of the reinforcements, as the imperial enemy were also aware of the elite knights and their support troops who were marching through the kingdom. The imperial forces were desperate to occupy the capital and capture the Leonbergers before the relief force arrived.

The battle continued day and night.

“Hold on one more day!”

The noble palace knights fell as they resisted the pincers of the imperial knights with all their strength, and the courageous knights of the capital took the lead and died while fighting.

The capital guard, central army, and the high-spirited citizen militia, as well as the women and children who had rolled up their sleeves to protect themselves, fell one by one under the fierce enemy assault.

“Sir Carls,” said the queen, who had not descended from the wall for the past three days. She might have been exhausted, but her iron-hard voice bored into Carls Ulrich’s heart.

“Now the time has come, and you will have to do your favor for me, Sir Knight.”

Even if she hoped it wasn’t the end, the queen was preparing for it.

“I can’t flee. How dare I …” Carls begged to be released from the request in a desperate voice.

“If the enemies cross the outer walls and narrow their siege, there will be no chance. Do what you have to do.”

“What will you do, Queen Margarita!”

“I lived in the capital as a noble lady for decades, but it seems that my soul still lives in the harsh storms of the north.”

Carls Ulrich’s heart sank as he heard that. This was because he knew what it meant to have a northern soul. They were a valiant clan that would bleed out on a snowy field and still has the strength to go on fighting. The queen was about to die along with the now-crumbling capital.

“Your Majesty must take care of the princes and princesses so that both his Majesty and his Highness can stay strong! How can the mother of the country share her destiny with those dying upon the wall!”

“My brother also fell into the blizzard trying to protect his walls, and so did my father and grandfather. It is not a new thing for my family to share the destiny of the wall.”

“Live and plan for the future! The queen can live on and do more!”

The queen smiled gently as she looked at the now-weeping Carls.

“If I leave, their anger will remain intact, and they will take it out on the citizens of the capital. Those who burn down the capital will scatter upon the winds like migrating birds, and Leonberg will have to fight hard with the empire while such troublesome seeds still exist in our lands.”

The queen said that someone had to remain and hold the imperials back until the Templars arrived. She emphasized that only she could play that role.

“Go ahead. The nets that are spread will still be thin, but they will soon become tighter.”

“The western wall has fallen!” one of the soldiers of the capital guard shouted in terror just as the queen finished speaking.

“There is no time to delay,” the queen said as she pushed Carls on his back. “Please, please… I hope to see you again. There are a hundred cavalrymen and knights before the north gate.”

Carls Ulrich turned away and left, and dozens of palace knights followed him under the order of the queen. The queen looked at their receding backs and grabbed her bow, and stared at her enemies.

She held the bow with fingers so crushed that their shape was unrecognizable. Then she drew back the bowstring, her face stern.

One, two, three arrows were loosed one after the other. Four, five, six. Every time a missile flew through the air, an imperial died, but far more defenders and citizens were dying. Seven, eight.

Suddenly, an old memory passed through Margarita’s head. She remembered the face of a man who looked at her with a proud expression, as if he held the world in his hands, even though he had just missed a target by a foot at fifty yards.

The Balahards can hit that target with their eyes closed, so Margarita had experienced a hard time, trying to hold back her laughter, hunching her shoulders, and suppressing a giggle.

Eventually, she shot two arrows off-target because she was trying not to laugh.

“You told me how great an archer you are. How did you miss those two shots on that day?”##

As time passed, the man became a king, and he always wondered about that day’s events. She never dared tell him that she had made a mistake while holding back her laughter because he had been so funny.

She couldn’t say that her bow had shaken without her knowledge because the one who would become king couldn’t get a woman. And so, Margarita had just laughed.

The man misunderstood, thinking she had missed because she had been so pleased with him. She had laughed again because that was even funnier.

Margarita forgot her pain after smiling so much and slowly drew the bowstring back with her crushed fingers. She held her breath as she aimed at an enemy.

“Fwoo,” the queen took a short breath and stopped her breathing. At that moment, the arrow was loosed, and it pierced through the air, and this time, it was not off-target, like on that day so many years past. An unwitting knight had climbed up the wall and was encouraging his soldiers—he died as the arrow struck into his armor.

Neither did Margarita’s eleventh or twelfth shot missed their targets.

“Thirteen. Fourteen,” the queen muttered softly. “Fifteen.” Each arrow that left her bow ended a life. ‘Crwak!’ the moment she tried to go for her sixteenth kill, the bowstring snapped, and the bow cracked. The northern bow had done its best in the harsh battles of the past three days. Margarita threw her lifelong love to the floor and drew the sword sheathed at her waist.

“The queen is over there!” imperial troops shouted as they saw her, and they flocked to her.

“I am sorry. So many promising people are dying hard deaths to protect their masters,” said the queen.

“Don’t say that. Every moment of our service has brought me honor,” one of the remaining palace knights said. “I wish to serve your Majesty all the way. I will greet hell in advance! Please be careful.”

“Infinite respect to Queen Margarita!”

That being said, the palace knights lighted their swords and rushed at the enemies. The imperial soldiers could not advance with vigor, faced with the charge of the kingdom’s elite knights who were prepared for death.

It is, of course, impossible to block ten hands with one, so in the end, the knights all died, fighting fiercely as the pincer of the imperial knights closed in upon them.

The citizens of the capital filled the gap left by the death of the palace knights.

“My Queen! We’ll but time! Hurry up and get to safety!”

The citizens were pierced and sliced apart as they faced foes that not even the palace knights could best.

“It was an honor to be with you,” the queen said.

“Don’t say that! We will surely beat these rats back. So come on, get out of this place-” the big man with the loud voice died as a sword ripped into his throat.

“Protect the queen!” the men shouted as they formed a wall with their bodies. It was a fleshy wall and the blades of the imperial knights easily cleaved through it, leaving bloody corpses in their wake. The gaps were filled by women, the maids of the royal palace who held daggers which they could not even stab with properly. The maids were trembling, but they did not get out of the way. The knights of the empire spat out abuse as they faced the maids. Things had reached this point, but it didn’t seem as if the imperial knights were going to proclaim a newfound chivalry to exist in their breasts.

“Go back! I am not one who hides behind my people, but the one who should stand at their lead,” the queen ordered the maids as she fixed her sword, but they didn’t get out of the way.

The imperial knights stepped back, making way for spear-wielding soldiers. Their eyes were full of base desires as they saw the maids, possessing a beauty that the soldiers couldn’t even dream of.

“What you have to preserve is not my comfort, but your lives,” came the harsh, blade-like words of the queen.

‘Pshwoo~ Pop! Pop!’ a flared flashed into the sky from afar. The first one was followed by another. The first signal meant that both the princes and princesses had safely escaped the capital, and the second meant that the Great Marshal was making his escape after recovering the surviving troops. The third flare was to be fired by the queen, but she did not fire it, nor did she turn around and flee. She never held the intention of escaping the capital from the beginning. Someone was needed to remain and draw the attention of the imperials while the others escaped, and, if possible, draw out the battle until the Templars arrived.

And Queen Margarita believed that this role was her own to fulfill. It had worked: The Imperial Army didn’t seem to care about the two groups who have escaped from the capital because their attention was focused upon the city walls. Margarita was confident that she had accomplished her mission quite well.

She knew that the final moment was imminent. Soldiers turned their spears aside as they started to push against the maids. While the maids were being pushed, and as they fell, they did not resist with their daggers. They knew they could not best the fierce soldiers, and they felt ashamed.

So, they chose to hug the soldiers and thrust themselves from the wall, rather than surviving as cowards for the rest of their days.

Twenty maids grasped soldiers, all plunging to their deaths in that deadly embrace.

Soldiers looked down the wall with haggard faces, and the knights who had retired for a bit came forward and advised the queen to surrender.

“If you surrender, we will spare your life. Of course, you will have to endure shame.”

Queen Margarita dropped her sword.

The imperial knights believed she had surrendered—this was not true.

“You want me to fade out as if all is lost? That is not enough. I will burn out like the greatest flame, to the very last moment!”

Instead of surrendering herself into the hands of the imperial knights, Margarita walked to the edge of the wall.

“Don’t! Stop it!” the knights shouted as they rushed in.

Before the knights could catch the queen, she threw herself from the wall.

Margarita closed her eyes.

I’ll go ahead and wait for you. Please do everything… and only come to me later.

* * *

“Margarita Balahard was born as the eldest daughter of the formidable Balahard Family. She left the north for the First Palace at the relatively young age of 17, becoming the spouse of his eminence, the Crown Prince Lionel Leonberger.

Margarita Balahard possessed the requisite wisdom and gentility to serve as the Mother of the Country. Her only flaw came in the person of the First Prince Adrian Leonberger, who eventually developed into the Hero of the North after he had formed great discipline and conquered the adverse elements of his personality.

In the war against the Burgundy Empire, Queen Margarita saved the royal capital, which was almost razed due to the dark works of the Burgundy imperial family. Queen Margarita defended the spirit of Leonberg by defiantly throwing herself from the walls.

It was at the age of 39 that Queen Margarita committed herself to the defense of the royal capital, with the number of imperial soldiers slain by her virtuous arrows reaching the mark of 150. The imperial knights and commanders who lost their lives due to her true and unwavering aim reached a whopping 70. When these figures became publicly known, no one was surprised.

And so did Queen Margarita end her life, burning fierce to the very end, and the Leonberg forces, after her death… “

*Excerpt from ‘The Life of Queen Margarita Balahard-Leonberger,’ from the ‘Records of the Lions of the North and the Leonberger Family,’ which Niccolo Marchiadel has composed from events he had personally witnessed and experienced and described as objectively as possible.