WeTried Translations

Translator: Nemui

Editor: Nemui

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◈ Friedrich's Battlefield

Chapter 136: Winter Interlude (1)

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Winter deepened, but the kingdom's preparations did not stop.

Supplies were gathered in the western royal demesne and in the capital. Wagons, horses, fodder, weapons, spare armor, grain, medicine, tents, and every other thing an army required were counted and moved. Across the kingdom, military messengers and noble retainers rode from town to town during the warmer hours of the day.

One such messenger came to Volga, a town in the Viscounty of Dofen.

The domain knight who stood in the town square carried himself stiffly in the cold.

"By order of the viscount, Volga must provide at least ten conscripts. Departure will be in late winter. I will also go to the front, but domain troops and conscripts will be organized separately. Those who volunteer may step forward now. If there are not enough volunteers, the remainder will be chosen by lot."

The square grew noisy.

The people of Volga had already heard the rumors. Merchants, travelers, and men who had seen the battlefield coronation with their own eyes had brought the story home. The king had died. The hero Matthias had died. The princess had been crowned queen before the army and sworn to lead the kingdom to victory.

For many, the war had felt distant until then. Now it felt as though the time had come to decide what they themselves would do.

One man stepped forward.

Then another.

Several of them were men who had witnessed Claudia's coronation. Their decision stirred others, and soon more volunteers followed.

Bruno also stepped forward.

His wife caught his sleeve.

"Bruno."

She was pregnant. Their marriage was still new, and her face showed anger, fear, and helplessness all at once.

"If you die, what happens to everything you worked for? There are other men. Why must it be you?"

Bruno scratched his cheek and smiled awkwardly.

"You worry about me now."

"Of course I do."

At first, she had not. Her brother had been killed by bandits, and then she had been told she might have to marry Bruno, the cousin who had long been known as a delinquent. She had looked at him coldly then.

But Bruno had worked. He had endured, learned, and changed. His marriage had been the moment when all those efforts were finally recognized.

"I worked so I could inherit the household in my cousin's place," he said. "Not just the fields and the house. The duties too. A self-farming household has to stand as one of the faces of the town."

"That does not mean you have to go to war."

"If I run away again, what was all that for?"

His voice was quiet.

"When the bandits came, Volga gave up once. We were saved by an orphan youth named Friedrich. Lord Matthias is dead now, and Friedrich inherited his place. If Friedrich comes back here someday, am I supposed to tell him I abandoned my duty because I was scared?"

His wife lowered her eyes.

"I am not going because I want to die. I am going because I want to protect this town, this land, you, and the child. If men like me push the harshest duty onto someone else, how can we call ourselves pillars of the town?"

He placed his hand over hers.

"I am doing this for you. I am going to war so that war does not come to Volga."

She did not smile. But after a long silence, she released his sleeve.

In the end, seventeen men volunteered. The lot was still drawn, and ten were chosen.

Bruno's name was among them.

Far to the west, in the eastern Loire region of Arelia, similar calls for conscripts rang through villages near the Yudit Mountains.

The region was pastoral and had escaped direct devastation except for the Beiral Plains. Even so, the burden was heavy because it lay close to the coming battlefield. Men were conscripted, and food was requisitioned. The army paid fair prices, sometimes even slightly generous prices compared with the plundering of the previous Loire war, but anxiety still spread.

In winter, villagers entered the forests more often to gather what food and fuel they could.

That was when strange stories began.

A red-bodied thing, not human, carrying a torch.

A red monster that breathed fire.

A creature with red skin and a tail, eating something roasted in the dark.

The details changed from village to village, but the common points were the same. It had a red body. It was not human. It controlled fire.

At first, people laughed.

Then other villages reported similar sightings.

The rumor settled into a name.

Yudit devils.

They had come down from the mountains.

Villagers pleaded with soldiers and officials to hunt them, but the military dismissed the stories as superstition. An army preparing for a decisive battle had no time to chase winter rumors.

Then the devils were seen near villages at night, breathing fire beyond the fields.

Fear grew. Men whispered that Lord Matthias was dead, that the orphan he had adopted had inherited him, and that the same orphan had once been rumored to be a Yudit devil. As soon as that mysterious young man replaced the hero, devils descended from the mountains.

Was that coincidence?

The legends of the Yudit devils were old and inconsistent. Some said they ate people alive. Some said they roasted people first. Some said they spread curses and disease. The less certain the details were, the more terrifying the imagination became.

And then, in late winter, the sightings suddenly stopped.

That made the fear worse.

The military still did not treat it as a matter worth reporting up the chain. Among the villages near the mountains, however, the name Yudit devil continued to spread in whispers.

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