Chapter 113: 112

How Will Spring Come Without Winter’s Passing? (3)

The king saw his eldest son: An arrogant and energetic young prince.

Prince Adrian reminded the king of himself when he was young. He had thought that he would be able to protect the kingdom from the empire’s exploitation and bring about its revival.

He could not, for there was nothing for him to do other than try to hold on. The kingdom had been robbed through many generations under the guise of the treaty, and it had already become a wreck. Massive tariffs were imposed on all transactions that occurred in the kingdom, and the profits from them were directed to the empire. Due to such unscrupulous tariffs, foreign merchants seeking to do business with the kingdom were unable to do so. The kingdom suffered a chronic shortage of supplies due to this.

Mines were established all over the realm by private prospectors, and the trade in the expensive body parts of monsters flourished. The empire had set out to deliberately reduce the power of the royal family and empower the nobles. As a result, the royal family lost all their taxation rights over the nobility, and many private businesses became famous as they grew in power and wealth.

The treasury of the royal family suffered a constant depletion, while the nobility accumulated wealth by extorting the commoners in their lands. The kingdom that had once stood united under the might of the Leonberger family no longer existed. All of that had transpired in the last hundred years.

The twelve legions of the four cardinal directions that support the royal family had also become shades of their past glory. Only four of them maintained their capacity of 2,000 soldiers.

They were the northern Legion of Winter Castle, the eastern legion of the Red Salt Coast Fortress, the southern legion of the Charismatic Citadel, and the Central Legion in the capital.

The other eight legions were so disorganized that even calling them regular armies was an embarrassment.

In some, almost half the troops up to the majority of them were conscripts who served the nobles and mercenaries who had long-term contracts. And it was in such a state of affairs that the news of troubles in the north arrived.

The king immediately set his mind to the task to dispatch reinforcements. The southern legions on the border, which can be said to be the best armed and armored legions, could not dare to leave the border unprotected. The easter legions, which could swiftly land in the north if they boarded the fleet’s vessels, could not move an inch due to imperial pressure.

The Northern Legion was, of course, stationed in Winter Castle, and therefore not a concern. The only dispatchable force that remained was the Central Legion, and despite the relative safety of the royal road, it was no simple choice to deploy this vital line of defense in aid of the north.

Of the tens of thousands of troops of the kingdom, there was no single legion that was not tied down in one way or another.

Eventually, the king readied a portion of the Central Legion and the Templar Knights, despite the enticing power vacuum this would create in the region of the capital. This scant force was strengthened with mercenaries, at considerable cost.

That was the best the king could at the time. He believed that once this force joined up with their up-country counterparts, the shield of the kingdom would hold fast and protect the north.

His supposition proved to be naught but an illusion.

The lords of the north did not deploy their forces, and Winter Castle eventually fell.

Because of this, the north was left exposed and utterly defenseless against the orcish horde.

The northern region had to be reclaimed, but that was a practical impossibility. The royal troops did not number nearly enough to drive out all the orcs, and the nobles of the center would never deploy their troops if they were to march north.

Thus, a defensive line was formed all along the Rhinethes River, with the forces concentrated at the bridge that spanned it. And only then, when a fire was lit under their feet, did the central nobles allow their troops to be deployed.

Only after hearing that close to 10,000 soldiers had been stationed on the defensive line did the king start to breathe easy. He thought that 10,000 troops could take full advantage of the narrow bridge and so block the orcs from advancing.

Once more, his prediction proved to be mistaken.

The Warlord, the King of the Orcs, almost shattered the defensive line due to his unearthly and incomprehensible presence. The entire kingdom came close to being destroyed by the orcs.

In retrospect, it was no exaggeration to say that the kingdom had been driven to the brink of destruction. It was the eldest son that the king so despised who had humbled him by preventing the kingdom’s ruin. His eldest son had turned the tide by attacking the orcs, and his eldest son had rallied the northern troops, newly transformed into a fierce fighting force, to bolster the line of defense moments before it collapsed.

And now this selfsame son was asking him: “Why did you abandon the north?”

The king sighed as he saw the fires of blame rage in Prince Adrian’s eyes.

There was so much to say.

As an excuse, he could say that his power had been weakened by the pressure of the empire. He could spread the blame and say that the Balahard family did not properly deploy or control the families under their command.

He could state that the lords of the north had forsaken their responsibilities, or that the central nobles, who dared not cross the river and march north, were not free from blame.

There were many excuses, such as the fact that a monster called the Warlord, that no one had known about, had chosen to invade. He could cite the financial pressures that the treasury faced or a whole slew of other excuses.

Yet, he was not able to let one of them slip from his mouth. For now, he knew that that was all they were: Mere excuses.

The king opened and closed his mouth several times as he looked at the prince. He looked into a sad face with sharp eyes. Suddenly, he realized that the face he was looking at was not unfamiliar.

He remembered that, not so long ago, he had seen that selfsame face.

Before he had ascended to the throne, it was the same face he employed as he had looked at his father, the king. It had been an exact mirror of Adrian’s.

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The moment that he realized this, the king was able to understand his firstborn son for the first time. All he had to was recall his feelings toward the previous king.

Numerous thoughts flooded into King Lionel’s mind as they mixed with his emotions of the past.

Among them, he recognized the self-deception of a father who chose to blame all his ills on a little prince who had not known better. A father who had turned away from reality. He also felt a sense of healing as he saw the monarch he had been: A king who had averted his eyes from successive misjudgments and had dismissed the prince who had saved the realm.

The king closed his eyes as he was swept away in that buffeting tide of endless emotion.

His answer was predetermined; it had been decided from the moment that Adrian had asked the question.

He knew that even if he covered the fruit with the bowl, even if he used excuses to cover up his failings, his eldest son would still stand before him. A son who was doing everything he could to rectify his own mistakes.

The king should have admitted it long ago, but he could not.

As Adrian’s sins had been so great, the king had focused on them rather than recognizing his own mistakes. He had been unwilling to re-foster his old feelings and reveal his true heart and had so lost the distinction between public and private.

He had to correct it now.

The king sighed, and with that sigh, he let go of his ego and all his stubborn emotions.

He emptied his heart and emptied himself once more, for doing so only once proved insufficient.

Only then was King Lionel Leonberger able to answer his son’s question.

He had tried his best in difficult circumstances, but in the end, all his efforts had failed.

He had tried to respond to the rapidly changing situation but was unable to get the job done properly.

All such failings are the culmination of his sin of being unable to properly lead the nobles as a monarch.

It was the culmination of such staggering incompetence that it was hard to comprehend. He knew all too well that the recent history of the kingdom might sound like one long excuse.

Any royal difficulty which is expounded upon might merely sound like a feckless and dreadful self-rationalization.

The king said all these things to Prince Adrian. And when all his tales had been told, and after much time had passed, the first prince quietly stood from his seat.

There were no words of understanding or criticism.

Instead of eliciting a response, the king just stared at the prince who now stood before him.

It had seemed as if the prince would leave, but he stood still for a while. Then, after some time, he said something unexpected.

“There are five-hundred people who are training to become full knights at Winter Castle.”

The king’s eyes widened.

“Some of them are known to you.”

The prince’s statement was too inconceivable to be understood immediately.

“Gwain Gust.”

The king had been merely listening to the prince’s words, but he now instinctively leapt upright from his seat. Seeing such a reaction, the prince said, “He and his three-hundred comrades are at Winter Castle.”

Before the king could say anything, the prince added, “They are still on the level of apprentice knights, but they will soon reach the level of formal knights.”

And with that, the prince simply left.

‘Choolkuf!’

The king did not allow himself to sit on his throne even after the doors had closed.

A slight whisper, which had escaped from the prince’s lips before he had left, now rang through King Lionel’s head like rolling thunder.

“I think it’s best if Your Majesty accepts their oath this time.”

The king was completely lost.

“Gwain and the knights?”

He repeated those words several times.

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Suddenly, he sagged onto his throne with a collapsed face.

“Now the empire needs no justification…?”

The king did not know whether he sighed or groaned.

What were Adrian’s reasons?

Nothing was clear.

* * *

“We have left the capital, m’lord.”

As Gung Jungbaek heard the coachman’s words, he called the carriage to a halt.

The former royal courtier opened the window and took a moment to appreciate the sight of the sprawling capital. The position of royal courtier, which had been filled by his family from generation to generation, has now ended with him.

It was something he had planned long ago, but now that it had become a reality, he was in a fresh mood.

His mind had felt cluttered these past few days, but now it was cleared.

“I don’t want to play in the big waters anymore, Your Majesty. I seek retirement near a peaceful stream.”

Jungbaek had told the king that the entire affair had discouraged him and that he now wanted to live a quiet life. Of course, he held no such intention. He had already planned his exile in the empire. He had every intention to spend his old age as a nobleman of great power.

To be sure, he hadn’t planned to do this from the beginning.

His family has served the Leonberger royal family from generation to generation, and he had been raised by his father as a faithful servant to the Leonbergers.

It was about four years ago that his thoughts had changed on the matter.

His family had kept double ledgers since time immemorial to ease the taxing labor of keeping the accounts of an entire kingdom. Due to their long devotion to the royal family, they were trusted to calculate the cost of their own services; and being loyal and humble folk, their salaries did not greatly reduce the Leonbergers’ finances.

It was on a normal day that Jungbaek was going through the family ledger. He was thinking of taking a very small sum from the royal treasury due to his unfailing loyalty and years of service.

However, he suddenly became suspicious as to the existence of an incongruity in the records. The sums added up perfectly, and there was no disparity in the ledger where income and expenditure were concerned.

Still, he felt that something was awry.

He straight away took his family’s ledger and went to compare its figures with those in the royal ledger.

At first, he thought that someone was fraudulently misappropriating the royal supplies.

The burning desire to close the hole in the royal treasury beset him, and so he secretly pursued the ledger.

Tracking the discrepancy wasn’t easy.

He traced the movement of supplies, which had been split into two and transport companies, sources of supply and distribution, and brokers that brokered on behalf of other brokers.

Still, Jungbaek did not give up as he continued to compare his family’s ledger with the royal one, and he traced the shortfall.

After a long year of pursuing them, he finally discovered the final destination of the goods.

His success did not bring him any happiness.

Each person has a secret, and some secrets are so great that others cannot handle them. This case was exactly like that. Surprisingly, the royal family was covertly training three hundred knights.

For Jungbaek, a man who only thought in numbers, the royal secret lay too heavy on his mind and heart. He couldn’t stand it. He was afraid that, if he had discovered the royal family’s secret, others could do so as well. The royal family knowing that he knew was not the problem. His family had served the Leonbergers for generations, and he would not be dismissed just because he had stumbled onto a royal secret.

The problem was the empire.

Every night he had a nightmare of being kidnapped, tortured, and killed by an imperial agent.

Jungbaek suffered an extreme nervous breakdown until, finally, the lines between nightmare and reality became blurred. It was a struggle for him to keep on living.

So, he decided to go to the imperial ambassador and report his findings.

His honeymoon relationship with the imperial ambassador began on that day.

Jungbaek’s sin of reporting the Leonbergers’ secret was obfuscated by the foolishness of the first prince.

At first, the royal courtier couldn’t sleep because of his guilt. But the state of affairs was already irreversible, and the imperial ambassador continued to demand confidential information from him.

After making a few reports, Jungbaek’s guilt started to fade, and then a time came when he felt it no more.

As he thought about the events now, he knew that his choice at the time had been correct. It is far better to live as an imperial nobleman than to spend your entire life playing servant to the Leonberger royal family.

Certainly, his plan hadn’t been to flee from the capital through the night like a chased dog, but this was no great problem. He had been promised an imperial title four years ago, and a manor, in exchange for sharing the secrets of the royal family.

All that he had to do now was escape this thrice-damned country and spend the remainder of his splendid life in the empire.

“Well? Move on,” he commanded. He had been so wrapped up in thoughts of his rosy future that he had failed to realize that the carriage was not moving.

“Are you there?”

“Yes, m’lord.”

“Why aren’t we moving yet?”

“The mercenaries m’lord hired haven’t shown up yet… Oh, they’re coming now.”

Upon hearing the coachman’s observation, Gung Jungbaek swung the carriage door open and stepped outside.

He saw a group of riders in the distance, all of them cloaked, approaching through the darkness. Jungbaek forced his lips into a kindly smile. It might be an excessive attitude to display in the greeting of one’s lessers, but in this case, he had to smile.

The riders are his protectors, after all. In fact, they are the special guards hand-picked by the Marquis of Montpellier, knights, and soldiers of the empire.

As he is set to become an imperial nobleman, wouldn’t it be prudent to develop a close relationship with these military men on the journey?

The horses galloped through the dust kicked up by their hooves and finally came to a halt before Jungbaek.

So violent was the halt that Jungbaek was showered with dirt, but he did not so much as cough, let alone show any disgust.

“Are you Sirs Arles and Theorn? Well anyway, you rode hard through the night, and you did well,” the smiling former royal courtier greeted the imperial knights, still smiling broadly. And then, his body stiffened in fear. The face of the man who was now exposed under the torchlight from the carriage belonged neither to Sir Arles, nor to Sir Theorn.

“Is that how you greet me? No matter, I didn’t come here with good intentions,” said the man garbed in a long cloak.

“Well, I… Why is Your Highness here?”

The first prince raised his hood and said, “The ones you are waiting for aren’t coming.”

The moment that Jungbaek heard that, he knew. The imperial ambassador had sold him out.

As soon as this knowledge struck him, he sagged down on the road.

“Your Highness!? Please, don’t chase the little thief just to miss the great thief!”

And then Gung Jungbaek begged desperately, not even realizing that he was swallowing dirt.

“No,” the prince said.

A single scream sounded, and it was not the former courtier’s. Crouching, flinching, Jungbaek summoned and squeezed out a sliver of courage that did not truly exist and managed to open his eyes.

A bloody man was lying on the ground, flat on his face.

Now Jungbaek opened his eyes until they almost popped from their sockets.

The man with the bloodied clothes who was crying in the dirt was the Marquis of Montpellier, ambassador of the empire.

The first prince squatted down until his eyes were level with Jungbaek’s.

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“A big thief and a little thief. Which is which?” he mused, and added, “Only the little thief will keep his life.”

Jungbaek understood: Only one man would be spared.

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