WeTried Translations

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◈ Prince of Rage ◈

Chapter 45

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At midnight, the dozens of torches seen from atop the walls looked like floating ghost lights. With visibility so limited, the enemy seemed even more numerous.

As always, shields were essential in a siege. Some soldiers held them overhead, making a roof beneath which others worked feverishly.

They brought shovels, pickaxes, and axes, then began hacking away at the foundation stones below the wall. Naturally, arrows rained down from above, but by now the archers were too exhausted to keep shooting.

It was too dangerous to stab down with spears, since the enemy could grab the shafts and pull them. So Gringen's soldiers mainly struck downward with their spears as though threshing grain.

It had little killing power, though an occasional hit to the head could cause a concussion.

Their strongest means of interference was throwing specially prepared peat and torches down to set it ablaze.

They did so whenever the enemy approached the wall, and flames surged up at once. The area around the walls became as bright as day.

“Ahhhhh!”

Enemies engulfed in flames let out agonized screams. Many had to hurriedly throw off their shields after they caught fire. The smell of roasting meat spread through the air.

Once peat caught fire, even water could not put it out. The enemy would then move elsewhere and begin digging beneath the wall again. Gunnar was among them, working hard with a shovel alongside the soldiers.

The heat felt as though it were cooking his skin, while the acrid smoke and stench of burning made his eyes and nose sting.

The work was already exhausting enough to kill them. They could barely keep their eyes open, and even breathing was painful.

“Keep going! Keep going! Once the wall falls, we win! Keep goinggg!”

Tears streamed from Gunnar's bloodshot eyes as he shouted himself hoarse.

The Duke's soldiers wondered whether this was really accomplishing anything, but Gunnar's cries steeled their resolve.

Gringen's side was equally desperate. This time, the enemy had not brought ladders, so Valerie could not recklessly jump down either.

As time passed, they ran out of peat. There was plenty of ordinary peat, of course, but unless it was mixed with other materials and dried beforehand, it would not flare up all at once.

Valerie brought out prepared heavy stones and hurled them down with the soldiers and women. Every person in Gringen, soldiers and civilians alike, joined forces to resist.

More and more enemies collapsed from exhaustion. Gringen's people were in better physical condition, but they were badly outnumbered.

After fighting for hours, both sides felt as though they would lose their minds. They began to wonder why they had to go this far. More than anything, they desperately wanted to sleep.

Yet the more they forced those thoughts aside and fought on, the more enraged they became. Hatred for one another steadily grew.

Once they got over the wall, they would kill them all. They would never speak to anyone from Eldeira again. Those were the thoughts that filled them. What drove their bodies past their limits was burning hostility.

How many hours had they been doing this foolish thing? Dawn began to break, and around then, one section of the wall suddenly gave way with a heavy rattle.

“We did it! Keep digging! Dig all the way through!”

Valerie and the people of Gringen turned toward it in alarm. Then that section of the wall collapsed completely. The Duke's soldier, still digging beneath it, was crushed to death.

As the wall fell, Gringen's people felt their hearts sink at the thought that they had lost. The Duke's army seemed to forget its extreme fatigue as strength surged through them.

“It’s open! It’s open over there!”

“Climb! Climb!”

Where the wall had fallen, the pile of rubble stood high enough to climb over and enter the city. Some people trapped beneath the collapsed wall were still alive, but rather than rescue them, the soldiers simply trampled over them in a rush.

Then someone began cutting down those pouring into the city.

It was Valerie.

Splitting heads and cutting through waists, he stood atop the rubble and brought his sword down wildly on the enemies climbing up like rats.

Swordsmanship did not matter now. Still, the enemies were packed together so tightly that every swing killed one man, sometimes two.

Broken weapons, severed limbs, and corpses piled up on the ground, blocking the enemy from climbing freely.

More than that, Valerie's absurd display of strength had intimidated them just as it had the day before.

This was ridiculous...

Standing in the dim light of dawn, Valerie threw off his helmet and shouted. His wet platinum hair clung to his face, but it could not hide his fierce majesty.

“Anyone confident enough, come up!”

No one dared climb up just because he said so. On the other hand, at that most desperate moment, the people of Gringen were filled with courage. Forgetting their fatigue, they shouted until their chests felt ready to burst.

“Salt Prince! Salt Prince!”

The momentum seemed to shift at once, all because of Valerie alone.

From the enemy's perspective, all their suffering through the night had been meaningless, leaving them empty and despairing. Their opponents, meanwhile, were filled with hope and courage.

Valerie himself was exhausted from fighting all night, but at this moment, he did not feel tired at all.

“That sword...! That’s the problem...!”

Gunnar muttered as he headed toward the collapsed wall. Everything had nearly worked, yet they could not break through there.

“Hey! You illegitimate child! Don’t use dwarf steel like a coward! Fight fair!”

“Don't be ridiculous! You withdraw instead! Then I’ll spare your life!”

“Grrrgh!”

Gunnar was furious, but he was not foolish enough to rush at dwarf steel. He had that much sense.

Then someone spoke to Gunnar. It was the Count of Windale. The Count had also been working at the front with a pickaxe, and looked terrible. Their surcoat was scorched, while soot and sweat smeared their face.

“We have done all we can. We will leave.”

“What? You’re leaving?”

“I mean we are withdrawing.”

“Y-you can’t...”

“Look around you. Look at the casualties.”

Gunnar looked around. Corpses lay everywhere, and more than a few people were sprawled on the ground groaning. Others carried wounded soldiers toward the rear.

They would need a proper count to know for certain, but at least dozens appeared to have been killed or wounded in this siege.

It would be one thing if they could take the city despite the losses, but if they achieved no further results, their power would be endangered. That was true for both the Duke and the Count.

That was how armies worked. They were tools for attack and defense, but they were also tools of rule.

“L-let’s fall back for now. But please, do not withdraw. Please. Please...”

Gunnar pleaded as though clinging to them. The Count of Windale did not seem pleased, but did not insist to the end.

After barely calming the Count of Windale, Gunnar pulled the army back for the time being. Valerie remained standing atop the rubble until the end, watching the enemy retreat.

The sun slowly rose in the east, illuminating the entire scene.

Valerie returned to the city and gave orders.

“Put up ropes to block that opening, however roughly. Then dig a wide, deep pit below it.”

Ropes alone could hardly stop the enemy, but they could at least hinder their entry and create a bottleneck. They would deal with the enemy from behind pits dug farther inside.

Arne carried out Valerie's orders. Rather than using soldiers, he had the townspeople layer thick mooring ropes across the collapsed section like a wall, then dig pits behind them.

Valerie went somewhere quiet, sat down, and rested with his head bowed. He must have dozed off, because he jerked awake when someone approached.

It felt as though he had only blinked once, but the color of the world had changed. It had clearly been daytime, yet the sun was now setting.

“Tired?”

When he raised his head, Knut stood there.

“I didn’t realize how tired I was.”

Valerie, Arne, and Skard had all been fighting day and night for nearly two days without sleep.

“If I surrender, would the fighting end?”

Valerie gave a short laugh and shook his head.

“Gringen itself is their goal from the start. You have nothing to do with it. Why? Do you feel guilty because it seems like you’re the only one not doing anything?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean, you’re not doing anything? You’re maintaining order.”

When war broke out, there were always people who used the chaos as an excuse to do strange things within the city.

Knut was rooting out such people and killing or punishing them. In other words, he was not doing nothing.

Of course, even so, he was not as exhausted or in as much danger as those fighting on the front line.

“If, you know, if...”

Knut struggled to begin whatever he wanted to say.

“What if my brother...”

Just as Knut began to speak, a soldier hurried toward Valerie. Knut swallowed the rest of his words.

“Your Highness, you need to come. The enemy has appeared again.”

That damned “Your Highness.” Even if he told them to stop, people could hardly bring themselves to stop calling him that.

Half resigned, Valerie laboriously rose and headed for the wall.

From the wall, he saw fresh troops arriving at the enemy camp in the distance.

It was the Silverrich Mercenary Company.

They had brought dismantled siege equipment, including battering rams and siege towers. It appeared they intended to assemble them on site.

There were certain things that revealed an army's quality: its choice of position, the appearance of its formations, the solidity of its camp, and its ability to dismantle and assemble siege equipment.

They were clearly professional mercenaries. They were not merely people gathered to make up the numbers, but people with extensive real combat experience. Moreover, they had not fought in this siege even once, so they were full of strength.

Seeing them, Valerie felt despair for the first time. The people of Gringen were filled with hope, busily stringing ropes across the collapsed section, digging pits, preparing food, and carrying various materials. But Valerie knew that once those mercenaries joined the battle, they could no longer hold them back.

Once the battering rams and siege towers were deployed, at least two places would be breached. And they would attack the collapsed section again.

That meant they would have to defend three places. No matter how desperately Valerie fought alone, could he defend them all?

He had doubts, but Valerie intended to do everything he could. He ordered carts and stones piled behind the city gate to block it completely. If it was going to be breached anyway, this was better.

Given time, the enemy would remove the obstacles and eventually break through that as well. But they had few people, so it was better to shorten the front as much as possible. He thought they had no choice but to force the enemy to come in stages and defeat them one at a time.

He also ordered them to leave only a narrow passage behind the wall, wide enough for a person to pass through, and dig trenches to form a second line of defense. His improvised plan was to pile up losses here, then counterattack.

But would this be enough? Could he be satisfied that this was sufficient?

He considered mounting Snow and charging again, but the enemy camp was already complete, making it difficult to get in and out.

A sense of emptiness slowly rose within his chest. It steadily gained strength, trying to drive out his will to fight.

Cold calculations ran through his mind. His brain kept telling him that the best option was for only him and his friends to survive. Whether those calculations were accurate or not, they eroded his resolve.

Then a very faint last resort crossed his mind. Thorvald's words that there might come a time when he had to offer up his heart, and Regin's words that drinking dragon's blood would make his heart burst and kill him.

The word “heart” connected the words of the two men. Put together, they meant he might have to prepare himself for death.

He had fought prepared for death until now, but this was different. How should he put it? It was a matter of choice. Was that choice hope, a sense of duty, or rebellion against his own cynicism and cowardice?

Valerie gathered his friends. He spoke to Arne, Skard, Yorick, and Knut.

“I have dragon's blood. If I drink it, I might gain superhuman strength like an Einheri, but I might die. If I drink it and die... you can choose whether to fight to the end or leave. Even if you leave, I won’t resent you.”

It sounded like a will.

And a sudden one at that.

“...What are you talking about?”

Skard asked, too dumbfounded to say anything else.

Without offering further explanation, Valerie mounted Snow and rode toward the mercenary company's building.

Clop-clop-clop-clop.

His friends hurried after him.

When Valerie arrived at the mercenary company’s building, he rummaged through his belongings. Before long, he found a small vial. His friends had all arrived and watched in bewilderment.

When he removed the stopper, an unfamiliar smell spread through the room. It was a mixture of the thick, fishy stench unique to blood and a heavy smell of burning that seemed to press down on them.

Valerie tipped back the vial and drank it in one gulp. The mercury-like liquid reached his throat and slid down.

At first, its unsettling scent rose into his nose, making him frown without thinking. Then pain struck as though someone had clenched his heart tightly in their hand.

“Urgh!”

Valerie collapsed, clutching his heart before he realized it. His startled friends quickly picked him up and carried him to a bed.

Valerie squeezed his eyes shut in agony. At first, it felt as though his heart was being crushed. Then it felt as though it were burning.

“Uuugh...!”

He felt pain originating from his heart spread through his whole body in an instant. It felt as though that spreading force was burning every blood vessel.

The pain became so severe that he could no longer even groan. When the force that seemed ready to burn his entire body reached his head, a flash appeared before his tightly shut eyes, and he saw a scene.

A person stood there, wrapped in a robe that covered them from head to toe. When the figure turned, their face seemed to be made entirely of light, as though they were not human.

Yet a bitter voice, utterly unsuited to that radiant appearance, spoke.

‘Loved by all things, so it is only natural that I die for all things, Mother.’

After that scene passed, he saw a woman cutting open her own pregnant belly with a knife.

A large child, too large to seem newly born, emerged from it. As soon as the child came out, they cut their own umbilical cord, walked, and spoke.

The child kissed their dying mother, then bowed and said,

‘My body is still small and my strength is weak, so I cannot avenge you immediately. Once I have grown, I will surely take revenge and honor the spirits of Father and Mother. Please rest in peace.’

After watching their mother die, the child went alone into the wilderness.

Next, he saw a dying man. A woman stood looking down at him. The man and woman were both so beautiful that looking at them made his eyes hurt, and they looked identical, as though they were twins.

‘Who in the world could understand us? You’re the only one I ever loved.’

The woman spoke.

‘...I held on until now because of you. Sorry. I think I’ll rest first...’

‘Don’t be sad. When the child in my womb grows up, our child will surely take revenge.’

‘No more revenge... Let our child be happy... Please...’

With those words, the man breathed his last.

That scene passed as well, and another unfolded before Valerie.

This time, it was another man. He looked almost identical to the man who had died in the previous scene, but much younger.

He shouted at the woman who had spoken of taking revenge, as though screaming in anguish or begging her.

‘You already avenged Father, didn’t you? How long will you control me as you please!? I’m not Father! I’m your son, not your husband, you pitiful woman!’

‘Happiness!? Would you abandon this mother over something so trivial!?’

The woman glared at him with the most venomous eyes, then threw herself into the flames without hesitation. As she burned to death, she branded his heart with a mark that would never fade for the rest of his life.

‘Then leave and seek out that precious happiness of yours! But if you are not happy, you will never die!’

With those words, unbearable sorrow crashed over Valerie. It was a sorrow, misery, and tragedy so immense that the pain of his burning heart felt like nothing.

Tears streamed endlessly from his tightly shut eyes. He clenched his teeth and endured, but he did not know what he was enduring for.

When he opened his eyes, light burst from his pupils as though exploding outward.

His friends, who had been anxiously worrying over Valerie, saw that light in his eyes and fell backward in fright.

“Gasp!”

But Valerie’s eyes rolled back, and he fainted. Fortunately, he was still breathing.

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