WeTried Translations

Translator: Nemui

Editor: Nemui

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◈ Friedrich's Battlefield

Chapter 125: A Great Father, A Great King

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After receiving word of the siege of Arnsberg fortress, Crown Princess Claudia Edelstein’s decisions had been swift enough and sufficient.

First, she sent the Ferdinand Regiment, the rapid response force, to the fortress as reinforcements. Then she issued orders to Viscount Gustav Eichberger, urging the formation of further reinforcements centered on the Royal Guard. She proceeded with preparations to call up militia from the royal capital and its environs, organize a force approaching three thousand, and send it into the Beiral Plains.

At the same time, she sent messengers to each noble territory in the kingdom’s west, ordering them to mobilize their domain forces, and if necessary conscripts from among their people, to further strengthen the defense of the Northern Plains. If more than a thousand troops in total gathered in the Northern Plains, then even if the enemy had a separate detachment, they would be able to prevent its entry, and depending on the situation, they could advance south from the north into the Beiral Plains and serve as support.

The skillful offensive of the Arelian side surpassed all those responses.

Arnsberg fortress had fallen. Both the Ferdinand Regiment and Hildegard Regiment had been defeated and driven back.

Count Matthias Hosenfeld had died in battle.

Those terrible reports, delivered over two round trips by hawk messenger, shook the royal castle to its core. The news seemed to announce the beginning of the end for the Kingdom of Edelstein, and everyone from the court nobles to the servants of the royal house received a tremendous shock.

Even if such despairing news arrived, the Edelstein royal house, as the ruler of the kingdom, could not simply give up on the situation. First, they had to continue rear support for the two regiments whose annihilation had been prevented by the efforts of their frontline commanders. Then they had to swiftly send the reinforcements still being organized and establish a new defensive line.

While pushing those preparations forward in haste, Claudia also had to think even farther ahead, to the coming decisive battle. To preparations for a decisive battle that would be fought under conditions far worse than expected.

In the royal council, military officials including Gustav, as well as ministerial civil officials such as Marquis Helmut Dahlmeier, the Minister of Finance, and Count Alphonse Barten, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, had gathered.

How should they lay a defensive line under the current conditions, harsher than anyone had imagined? How should they fight the coming decisive battle? How many troops could they gather? How much rear support would be needed to maintain those troops? How much money and supplies would be necessary to make such preparations?

Claudia was steadily dealing with the mountain of issues, at times while her retainers clashed over their opinions, when the chief steward of the royal household rushed up to her, completely halting the flow of the meeting.

“…Your Highness.”

The elderly chief steward had burst into the solemn council chamber. Her face was pale. Though she was not panicking, she looked as though she had come bearing an extraordinary report, and as though she feared something.

It was the first time Claudia had ever seen that calm, seasoned direct retainer wear such a face. The matter was urgent enough that even the Royal Guard knights did not stop her from entering. The calm chief steward was shaken, and she was approaching the crown princess even if it meant stopping the royal council.

Claudia guessed what the report must be and opened her eyes wide. At her ear, the chief steward spoke the words she had expected.

“His Majesty’s condition has suddenly changed, and he is in critical state. Please hurry to His Majesty’s side.”

The chief steward’s voice trembled slightly. At a time when nothing but ill news was arriving from outside, perhaps what she feared was having to bring ill news from within the castle as well. Claudia understood that feeling very well.

Now?

After losing the keystone of the border defense, after losing the hero, would they now lose the great king on top of that?

Even if he was old and could no longer act, the wise King Sigismund possessed an unshakable power by the very fact of his existence as the symbol of the Kingdom of Edelstein. That king was about to leave this world.

Would God take a great king from this country at this very moment?

Suppressing that lament, Claudia kept her expressionless mask in place and opened her mouth.

“…Understood.”

Declaring the royal council suspended, Claudia left the chamber.

・・・・・・

The king’s bedchamber, to which she hurried, had already begun to carry the air of death.

“…Your Majesty.”

“You have come, Claudia. I am glad you made it before I croaked.”

Claudia’s call was heavy, but Sigismund answered with a joke mixed into his words, and his voice was surprisingly calm.

His body was wasted. His skin had withered. Over the past year and a half or so, her father, once a valiant king, had grown still weaker until he could only be described as barely clinging to life. There was no vitality left in him, enough that anyone could see he was on the verge of death. Yet now his eyes were open, and his mind seemed clear. Seeing him like a speaking corpse, Claudia understood that medicine had been used.

Now that this medicine had been used, her father had little time left. When the candle of the brief vitality remaining to him melted away, the light of his life would go out.

Holding hands with Queen Alexia, who sat beside him, Sigismund wore a sardonic smile.

“I have heard of the current state of the border region. Of Lord Hosenfeld’s death in battle as well. To think that hero would depart before me, even if only by a slight margin… If possible, I would have liked to see the end of the battle against the Kingdom of Arelia, but that is a dream no longer granted to me. It cannot be helped. I will watch from God’s side instead.”

Sigismund spoke in a light tone, as though he had missed a play he had been looking forward to. Perhaps he had never expected from the beginning that he would be able to witness the conclusion with his own eyes.

“It seems I will be the monarch who leaves the throne amid the harshest situation this kingdom has ever faced. And you will be the monarch who takes the crown amid the harshest situation this kingdom has ever faced. Truly, what was God thinking to grant you such a fate?”

Sigismund spoke with a bitter smile. Claudia approached his bedside, knelt on one knee, and steeled herself with tragic resolve.

“Your Majesty. As the one who will inherit the throne of this country, I swear here that I will surely…”

“You need not win. You need not protect it.”

Sigismund cut off Claudia’s words.

At her father’s words, which she had never expected, Claudia opened her eyes wide.

“The Kingdom of Loire, once our old enemy, and the Kingdom of Novakia, once our ally, no longer exist. Looking farther back through the ages, even the great Kingdom of Lutetia fell. No country lasts forever. History tells us that… The time will one day come for our Kingdom of Edelstein to fall as well. Only God knows when that will be.”

While Claudia sat stunned, Sigismund spoke as he looked at the ceiling.

Then he turned his gaze toward his daughter again.

“Simply because you were born as my first child in this house, I have forced a great destiny and responsibility upon you. On top of that, while you are overwhelmed in national strength by the hegemon of a neighboring country burning with abnormal ambition, I have no intention of placing a curse on you by telling you that you must still protect this country without fail… In any case, I know that even if I say nothing, you will do everything in your power and try to fulfill your mission. That is precisely why I will say this.”

Sigismund reached his hand toward Claudia. With a hand as thin and bony as a dead branch, he stroked Claudia’s cheek.

“Act as you think best, and do as you please. Go all out without worrying about the result. My daughter.”

“…Yes, Father. I was happy to be your daughter.”

They exchanged those words not as king and crown princess, but as father and daughter.

“That is my line. Being your father was one of the greatest joys of my life… Now, I will spend the time I have left with Alexia.”

Claudia bowed to Sigismund, met her father’s eyes one last time, and departed.

The final image of her father that Claudia saw while he still lived was one that retained the dignity of a monarch in his expression and eyes, even as his body had grown weak and withered. To Claudia, until the final moment, he had been a great father and a great king.

・・・・・・

Watching the back of his beloved daughter as she left, Sigismund then met Alexia’s eyes. At last weakness and dependence appeared in his expression, and he exchanged smiles with his beloved wife of several decades.

“…Was I a good king? Was I a good husband and a good father?”

“Yes, of course you were.”

To Sigismund’s question, Alexia answered without hesitation, her voice full of affection.

“Your name will remain in history alongside your great achievements. And the love and memories you gave us will remain in our hearts… I will see the end of this war and the future of this country, and one day I will go to you. But I am a little worried.”

“Worried? About what?”

“Because you are so lonely by nature. I will not be able to stay at your side for a while.”

Saying so, Alexia gently kissed Sigismund.

A quiet time, a peaceful final moment, flowed on.

・・・・・・

After leaving her father’s bedchamber, Claudia climbed a tower in one corner of the main hall.

From here, she could see all of the royal capital Sankt Waltrude. The beautiful city at the center of the Kingdom of Edelstein still knew nothing of the fall of the border region, and it continued to enjoy its prosperity in beauty.

Would the flames of war reach this royal capital? Or would they be stopped at the defensive line to which the two regiments had retreated, then pushed back again to the Beiral Plains?

Would King Childebert Arelia, the cause of this war, be slain, and the flames of war themselves extinguished?

All of it would be decided by the coming decisive battle. By the efforts of the commanders, knights, and soldiers who would face that decisive battle. And most of all, by her own work in moving the country toward that battle.

They would prepare for the decisive battle, and when the time came, they would strike it with the kingdom’s full strength. That basic strategy had not changed. However, the way they would meet that battle was far worse than expected. It would be hard to say the chances of victory were high. Rather, one should say they were low.

Then would it end here? Would this country, having lost its great king, eventually exhaust its strength and be annexed like the other countries of the western continent? Had its turn simply been last?

That could not be. As the one who would become the new queen of this country, she could not accept such a fate. It was not because her position forced it upon her. She herself believed it.

That was why she had to think.

As queen, as this country’s new protector, what could she do for the coming decisive battle?

What had she learned until now from her great father, the king? Think.

As Claudia looked over the royal capital and let the capital’s wind wash over her, turning her thoughts again and again, one plan eventually descended upon her like divine revelation.

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