The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing - Chapter 43

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 43: The Spiritual War (4)

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Squish, squish.

The unpleasant sound of military boots sinking into mud rang out.

Matej, a Taborite peasant soldier, spat out the grit in his mouth and followed behind the column.

Rain from several days earlier had turned the ground to slop. Cold water seeped through the gaps in his worn leather boots, chilling his toes to the bone.

Ondřej, walking beside him, pursed his lips and grumbled.

"Dammit, I thought we'd won the war. Why are they making us crawl back to that field?"

"The King summoned us. What choice do we have when someone that important calls?"

Matej answered without much interest and adjusted the flail slung over his shoulder.

The heavy iron ball, studded with iron nails and attached to the end of a wooden handle, clattered softly.

It had once been a farming tool for threshing wheat, but over the past few months, that lump of iron had crushed countless human skulls instead of seeds.

He was a Taborite infantryman.

More precisely, he was a farmer who had cast aside his sickle and plow and taken up arms to survive.

The hometown Matej remembered now existed only in ashes.

It had been around this time last year.

The day the first army of crusaders led by Emperor Sigismund descended upon his village.

Soldiers from Hungary who could not even speak his language swept through the village like a swarm of locusts. Hidden in the forest, Matej had been forced to watch his wife and daughter die without even being able to scream.

When he survived that hell and returned to his ruined village, warm comfort was not what awaited him.

'Hand over your tithes.'

The parish priest, with his greasy face, told him to search through the ashes and offer up wheat.

'Your family died? Then you must donate even more. That way, those poor souls can escape Purgatory sooner.'

The lord's steward went even further.

'If you can't pay your taxes, make up for them with your body. It's not the lord's fault that those bastards from Hungary invaded. You were simply unlucky, weren't you?'

Unlucky.

His family had died because he was simply unlucky.

And if he wanted them to go to Heaven, he had to pay.

That night, Matej smashed the priest's and steward's heads in with a stone, then left his ash-covered hometown behind.

That was how he had drifted to Tábor.

A place where everyone called one another brothers and sisters, with no rank or class.

A mad community that shared what it had and vowed to judge those pig-like nobles and corrupt priests according to God's will.

There, Matej had been treated like a person for the first time.

"Still, this King really is different."

Ondřej took a piece of dried meat from his coat and chewed as he spoke.

"His supply lines are incredible. We used to go hungry like it was part of our daily routine, but ever since this man became commander, my stomach hasn't growled once."

"...That's true."

Matej could not deny that.

Ordinary noble lords treated peasant soldiers as disposable tools. They were lucky to receive rotten oat porridge, let alone proper food, and it was common practice to put them on the front lines as arrow fodder.

Yet this King was different.

Every meal included warm soup with meat. He gave them tents and blankets. He even strictly forbade the looting of civilian homes during marches, instead handing soldiers silver coins to buy food.

Thanks to that, there was no need to loot.

No, they could not have done it even if they wanted to. The King had threatened to personally behead anyone caught looting.

Matej snorted.

'Even so, a King is still a King.'

The reason Matej had fought with his life on the line in the last battle was simple.

It was not because he liked the new King. He simply hated Sigismund enough to want him dead.

That speech the King had supposedly given in Prague?

Matej had not heard it, and he did not believe the honeyed words of important people in the first place. Once the war ended, they would surely put people like him back to work as tenant farmers as if nothing had happened.

"We've arrived."

The standard-bearer at the front waved a flag.

The view opened up, revealing the Letná Plain.

Only a few weeks ago, they had fought a bloody battle against the Emperor's army of one hundred thousand there.

Matej instinctively covered his nose.

Battlefields usually reeked of rotting corpses, blood, piss, and shit.

A hell covered by crows and crawling with maggots.

That was the aftermath of battle as he knew it.

But then.

"...Huh?"

There was no smell.

No, there was a scent, but it was not a revolting stench.

The smell of white lime powder.

And the faint scent of burning juniper drifted on the wind.

The plain was unnaturally clean. The countless bodies were nowhere to be seen, and the trampled ground had been leveled and packed flat.

Then an unbelievable sight unfolded before him.

"What... is all that?"

Wooden crosses and graves stretched across the plain as far as the eye could see.

Hundreds of graves stood in neat rows and columns, as though an army had been drawn up for inspection.

At the center, atop the highest hill, a massive memorial rose as if to pierce the sky.

Instead of a cross, its summit bore a giant carved chalice, the symbol of the Hussites.

"Dear God..."

The soldiers murmured as they entered the burial ground.

Hussite priests dressed in black moved among the graves, swinging censers. They gave blessings in Czech, which the peasants could understand, rather than Latin.

"Return to God's embrace, brave brothers."

"Your blood has washed away your sins, and the flames of Purgatory shall not harm you."

"May God's warriors ascend to Heaven and find eternal rest."

Unless their families or acquaintances collected them, the bodies of mere peasant soldiers were usually left in the fields as food for beasts.

Otherwise, they were gathered together and burned for fear of disease.

Yet the King had recovered every soldier's body, and the priests he sent blessed each grave, praying that its occupant would go to Heaven.

As if possessed, Matej approached one of the graves.

With trembling eyes, he read the words carved into the marker.

He was not particularly literate. He could only slowly piece together a few Czech letters he had learned as a child while looking over the village priest's shoulder.

But the words written on those roughly carved wooden crosses were simple and clear.

[Jan. Warrior, blacksmith, and husband. You were the strongest support of our family.]

[Matthias. Baker. Went to the Lord's side after sharing bread with hungry neighbors.]

[Karel. Farmer and the finest father to two children.]

"......"

Matej stopped breathing.

These were not the graves of nobles or knights.

Before each earthen mound covered in turf stood a small but carefully carved wooden marker.

Not a single marker bore a noble surname containing "von."

Instead, there were common names.

The names heard every day in marketplaces, furrows, and taverns were carved into those markers.

Boom, boom, boom.

Heavy drumbeats shook the air over the Letná Plain.

Matej looked away from the marker and turned his head.

Before thousands of soldiers and bereaved families watching in silence, a man walked onto the platform.

Ulrich I.

The new King of Bohemia, the man the Pope called Satan's child.

Unlike other kings, he wore neither silk robes embroidered with splendid gold thread nor a crown studded with jewels.

Instead, he wore black plate armor, still stained with the dirt of the battlefield where he had stood beside his soldiers.

With only a red cloak, the symbol of the Hussites, draped over his shoulders, he slowly moved to the center of the platform.

The King spoke.

"Raise your heads, all of you."

There was no loudspeaker, yet his voice rang clearly in everyone's ears.

Not because his voice was loud, but because it carried a weight that pierced the listeners' hearts.

"Today, I confess before you that no grand words can comfort these deaths."

The King slowly swept his gaze over the bereaved families seated in the front row, then the soldiers standing behind them.

"The priests wish to bless this land by sprinkling holy water. But I dare not do so."

He pointed toward the mud-covered earth.

"Because the brave brothers who went before us have already blessed this ground with their red blood, making it holier than any holy water."

The King's voice gradually rose.

"They did not die for the petty land-grabbing games of lords. They fought until their final moments so they could live as human beings rather than slaves, and so their wives and children could live in a world where they would not be treated like beasts. Now, they lie at rest here."

The King clenched his fist and struck his steel breastplate.

Thump!

"That is why! It is now the nation's turn to answer them."

At the King's gesture, soldiers carried out heavy chests.

"Let the families called come forward!"

An administrator began reading from a list.

"Teresa, wife of Jan!"

A woman in shabby clothes walked trembling toward the platform, holding a child's hand.

She tried to fall before the King in a bow, but he stepped down from the platform and took her by the shoulders, raising her to her feet.

Then he placed a heavy leather pouch directly into her hands.

"Take it. This is not charity. It is fair compensation for the blood your husband shed. And this is a pension certificate entitling you to a monthly pension until your child comes of age."

"Sob... Your Majesty..."

"Feed and clothe your child with this money. It cannot fully fill the place your husband left behind, but at least beneath Bohemia's sky, my soldier's family will never go hungry. I swear it in my name."

The woman clutched the pouch and sobbed.

They were tears of sorrow, but also tears of relief.

The peasant soldiers watching nearby stared wide-eyed.

"Dear God, how much is that?"

"Looks like a year's wages."

"And they're even giving her a pension."

Ondřej, beside Matej, gaped as he muttered.

"Hey... Matej. Maybe I should've just died."

"Are you insane? Say something that makes sense."

Matej scolded him, but his heart was pounding violently.

When his wife and daughter died, the priest who came to him had demanded money.

But this King was giving it.

'It's real. It wasn't just a rumor.'

The King had not lied.

He treated his soldiers not as disposable tools, but as subjects for whom he was responsible.

As compensation was handed to hundreds of bereaved families, the mood on the plain changed completely.

The gloomy, heavy air from before disappeared, replaced by something hot that was difficult to put into words.

Once every presentation was over, the King climbed onto the platform again.

Then he raised his hand in a firm salute toward the sky.

"This is the path our heroes take. Give them the greatest honors."

At that moment, the cannons lined up on both sides of the plain raised their muzzles toward the sky as one.

"All forces! Fire the salute!"

Boom! Boom-boom-boom!

Dozens of cannons erupted at once.

Those weapons of death that had once hurled fire at their enemies had become instruments sending their comrades off.

White gunsmoke billowed like clouds and covered the sky.

Through the smoke, the Hussite banners and the banners of the Lion of Bohemia fluttered fiercely.

No one told the soldiers to do so, yet they raised their weapons and shouted.

"Waaaaah!"

"Long live the Steel King!"

"Long live Bohemia!"

Matej, too, clenched his fist and looked up at the sky.

The smell of gunsmoke was acrid, but it did not disgust him at all.

A thought suddenly came to him.

'If this were my death...'

It would not mean being thrown onto the roadside and becoming food for crows.

If the King himself saw him off, if his family was fed for the rest of their lives, if he rose to the sky with the sound of thunder before his comrades' eyes.

'...Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.'

Once the ceremony ended, the crowd began to disperse.

Matej and Ondřej trudged down the muddy road together.

By the time they reached Prague, Ondřej asked him, "Hey, Matej. What are you going to do now?"

"What do you mean? Go home."

"Home? You don't have a home. You said it all burned down."

"...I'll build it again. The land is still there. I'll go plow the fields, sow seeds... I'm done with this damned war."

Matej spoke with forced firmness.

That was right. A farmer should live by working the soil. He was sick of killing people.

With the few silver coins the King had given him, he could probably build a small hut.

"Right? I'm thinking of going home and finding myself another wife, too."

They walked on as they spoke, then stopped at a fork in the road.

The road to the left passed through Prague and led out of the city.

The road to the right... led to the barracks.

A large tent had been set up at the entrance to that road.

[Bohemian Regular Army Recruitment]

[Pay: 60 Groschen + hazard pay separate]

[Three meals a day provided]

[Family allowance provided]

A fairly long line had already formed in front of the tent.

Young men who had watched the memorial service moments ago were clamoring to enlist before anyone else.

Matej looked at the road to the left.

A free but barren land where he might starve to death at any time. An uneasy life where a lord or the Church might exploit him again at any moment.

Then he looked at the road to the right.

Hard training and discipline awaited him there, but at least his family would not go hungry, and even if he died, he would not be thrown away like a dog.

"......"

Matej could not make his feet move.

"Hey, Ondřej."

"Yeah?"

"Come to think of it..."

Matej scratched his chin.

"Even if I go plow fields now, there's nothing to plant in winter, is there?"

"Well... yeah?"

"Wouldn't it be better to at least... get fed through the winter?"

Ondřej snickered. March had already passed, and he knew spring would arrive soon.

"What an excuse."

"Ah, shut up. Are you coming or not?"