WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 82: The Paper Revolution (6)

──────

I leaned back against the throne, looking down indifferently at the old nobleman with his forehead pressed to the stone floor.

Oswald von Wolkenstein.

Naturally, it was a name I'd never heard before.

My specialty was chemical engineering, not the genealogy of the Holy Roman Empire or medieval literary history. I knew the broad currents of world history, but there was no way I could know every minor noble in Germany.

Still, the man before me claimed to have served as the Emperor's diplomat and to be a renowned figure who had traveled across Europe.

'Was he someone buried in a forgotten corner of history I don't know about?'

He must have been one of countless supporting figures in history who never made it into the textbooks, yet had made a name for himself in his own time.

"Raise your head."

At my quiet command, Oswald flinched and looked up. Fear and the faintest thread of hope mingled in his eyes.

"Tell me who you are and why you crawled all the way into this enemy land. Not a single lie. If I find deception on your tongue, the general beside me will tear it out."

It was no empty threat.

Jan Žižka stood beside me with his arms folded, openly radiating killing intent.

"......"

He was a man who loathed nobles, and he had even less mercy for those close to the Emperor.

The instant Oswald met Žižka's fierce eye, he sucked in a sharp breath.

His lips trembled as he began to spill out his story.

"I, I was born the second son of House Wolkenstein in Tyrol. I ran away from home at the age of ten and became a knight. After that... I wandered the world."

His account of his travels was exceedingly long.

Prussia, Lithuania, the Tatar steppes.

Lombardy in Italy, Aragon in Spain.

He even claimed to have crossed the Black Sea by ship to visit Jerusalem in the Holy Land and Cairo in Egypt.

I kept my expression blank, but inwardly marveled.

'What is this old man? Is he the Marco Polo of the fifteenth century?'

Few people in this era had traveled so extensively.

And he had not merely traveled. He had mingled with rulers across Europe and served as a diplomatic envoy, so his knowledge and language skills could not possibly be ordinary.

Calling him a living encyclopedia of medieval Europe would not be an exaggeration.

A rather interesting talent had rolled right to my doorstep.

"...In recognition of those achievements, I also served among the Emperor's aides at the Council of Constance. For the papal election and to resolve the Great Schism, do you know how much I wore my tongue down for that bastard Sigismund..."

Crunch.

A murderous sound tore through the audience chamber. Oswald's words stopped as though severed by a blade.

To my left, Jan Žižka ground his teeth, his presence blazing.

"The Council... of Constance?"

Killing intent surged from his eye.

"Then you were there as well. On the very day our great teacher, Jan Hus, was burned alive."

"Eek!"

For the people of Bohemia, the Council of Constance was a forbidden name.

It was where Jan Hus, their spiritual teacher, had been burned at the stake under the disgraceful accusation of heresy.

To Žižka, it was not a venue for diplomacy between the Emperor and bishops. It was nothing more than a disgusting den where the murderers who butchered his teacher gathered to raise their cups.

"N-No! That's a misunderstanding! I only attended as a low-ranking official under the Emperor's orders...!"

"Under the Emperor's orders? When that red fox swore to guarantee his safety, then turned the safe-conduct into worthless trash, do you think diplomatic lackeys like you were not there nodding along?"

As Žižka took a step forward, radiating killing intent, Oswald screamed in terror and crawled backward across the floor.

"G-General! Please calm down! Please, hear me out! I objected! I argued that the Emperor could not betray a safety guarantee he had personally promised, that he had to keep his word!"

Oswald desperately pleaded for his life.

"But what was I supposed to do when those bishops raised hell and that bastard Emperor washed his hands of it because it was too troublesome? I was only a diplomat!"

"That inaction was the crime! While you people wagged your tongues and raised your cups, the saint burned!"

Žižka looked ready to draw his mace and smash Oswald's head like a watermelon.

I lightly tapped the armrest of my throne with a finger.

"Enough."

My voice was neither loud nor quiet, yet Žižka's rampaging presence stopped as though it had all been a lie.

"Žižka, step back. The interrogation isn't over yet."

"...But, Your Majesty. That man is the Emperor's dog."

"A dog that was abandoned. And abandoned miserably."

I gestured toward Oswald.

"Continue. How did a loyal servant who wore down his tongue for the Emperor end up before me in such a sorry state?"

Crushed beneath Žižka's killing intent, Oswald panted before barely gathering himself enough to answer.

The story he told was a tragedy that laid bare the viciousness of medieval politics.

A dispute over inheritance.

Betrayal and abduction by a former lover.

And the utter inaction of the lords he had trusted.

"...They crushed my thumb and laughed. They asked whether I thought the Emperor would save me. They said the letters I sent had probably been used to wipe the Emperor's ass!"

Oswald raised his twisted finger as he vented his resentment.

"I sold everything I owned and barely escaped with my life. The Duke of Austria and Emperor Sigismund both threw me away like a worn-out shoe. To them, I was nothing but something to use and discard."

Large tears fell from his eyes and wet the stone floor.

"I want revenge! I remember every shameful secret of the Emperor, and I have a cunning tongue that can persuade Europe's kings! King of Bohemia! If you use me, I will spend the rest of my life driving a blade into the Emperor's heart!"

"Hmm..."

Resting my chin on my hand, I began to calculate.

An old nobleman burning with revenge.

Judging by the story alone, he would make a fine protagonist for a third-rate revenge tale.

But I was not an amateur who made appointments based on sentiment.

If I set aside his emotional appeal and judged him solely as a resource in terms of profit and loss, where did his value lie?

'A diplomat? Not likely. He's already a kite with a broken string.'

As he had said himself, he was bankrupt, expelled from his family, and cut off from every connection within the Empire. If a man like that went as Bohemia's envoy, what king would treat him as an honored guest?

Rumors that the King of Bohemia entrusted a traitor with high office would only increase the diplomatic risk.

'An informant? That isn't much better.'

He claimed to know the Emperor's deepest secrets, but information was valuable only when it was fresh.

The situation would have changed while he was locked in prison, and stale tales from the past were unlikely to be worth more than fodder for tavern gossip.

Above all, this man had been born an Imperial noble.

Could someone steeped in privilege to the bone truly fit with my radical reform policies?

'He's too valuable to discard, yet too limited to use.'

It would be a waste to kill him, but I had no suitable use for him.

Just as I considered feeding him and sending him away as a teacher in some rural estate, János Hunyadi spoke.

"My lord."

János came to my side and handed me a sheet of paper.

"Take a look at this."

"What is it?"

"Something that man was selling in the market."

I took the paper János handed me.

The finest white paper produced at the Sternberg paper mill.

It was covered in sheet music and lyrics scrawled in charcoal.

I slowly read through the lyrics.

[ The Emperor is a debtor, he mortgaged his lands in Hungary~

Then tucked his tail and ran from Bohemia~

He kneels before the Pope and fawns~

But on the battlefield, cannon fire makes him piss himself~ ]

"Hmm..."

The corners of my lips rose before I knew it.

It was vulgar and childish.

But it was catchy.

Instead of difficult political rhetoric, it picked out and mixed together precisely the sort of things ordinary people would love to tear apart over drinks.

It had rhythm, too, along with humor that struck exactly at the heart of satire.

I set the paper down and looked at Oswald again.

I began to see a completely different possibility in the shabby old man.

'This man's talent wasn't in diplomacy.'

His experience traveling across Europe, meeting countless people, and winning their hearts.

The hypocrisy and contradictions he had witnessed in the Emperor and Pope at the pinnacle of power.

And the ability to refine all of it into the language that would excite the public most.

This was a profession that did not exist in the fifteenth century.

No, it was a rare talent even in the twenty-first.

I folded the paper with a sharp snap and rose.

"Sir Oswald."

At my call, he startled and looked up.

"Y-Yes, Your Majesty!"

"I understand your sincerity. But I have no intention of using you as a diplomat."

Despair filled Oswald's eyes.

"B-But, Your Majesty! I can still..."

"But."

I waved the paper in my hand.

"With this talent, it's another matter."

"Th-That was only something I scribbled to keep myself fed..."

"It was entertaining. Very provocative."

I slowly descended the steps and stood before him.

"You said you wanted revenge on the Emperor?"

"Yes! Even if my flesh and bones burn away..."

"Stabbing someone with a blade isn't the only form of revenge. Poisoning someone isn't the only form of assassination."

I bent forward and met his eyes.

"Death is brief, but if you carve up a man's honor, he remains a laughingstock forever, even after death. Would you use that three-inch tongue and pen of yours to turn the Emperor into the filthiest, most ridiculous fool in history?"

Oswald stared up at me blankly.

"Carve up... his honor?"

"Yes. I intend to put a new weapon in your hands."

I spoke as though making a declaration.

"Make a newspaper."

Oswald blinked at the word he had heard for the first time in his life.

"A, a newspaper...?"

"It means paper containing new information. Every day, or every week, you print and distribute stories about what's happening in the world."

I explained my plan to him.

"Print it on Sternberg paper using Gutenberg's printing press. You will fill it with content. The Emperor's filthy private life, the corruption of the papacy, the hypocrisy of the nobility... and even the progress being made in our Bohemia."

Oswald's mouth fell open.

A world where his writing could be reproduced in tens of thousands of copies and spread like the wind.

It was something he had never even imagined.

"If a diplomat whispers into a king's ear, a journalist shouts to tens of thousands of people at once. Do you have any desire to awaken the public with your writing and make our enemies grind their teeth?"

"Ah..."

Life slowly returned to Oswald's eyes.

No, beyond life, a mad thrill was beginning to fill them.

His writing and songs would be printed onto thousands, tens of thousands of sheets and spread across all of Europe.

People reading his words and snickering in taverns, marketplaces, and even the Emperor's court.

For a minstrel, what revenge, fulfillment, or reward could be more thrilling than that?

"That... wouldn't simply be me speaking alone."

Oswald muttered in a trembling voice.

"You mean to give wings to my voice. Wings that will fly farther than any arrow and sink deeper than any blade..."

"Will you do it?"

A brief silence.

Oswald's whole body trembled with excitement.

The joy of an artist who had spent his life seeking someone who would recognize his talent, and the exhilaration of finding the most elegant and cruel way to take revenge on the world that had abandoned him.

Oswald pressed his head to the floor once more.

This time, it was not fear but joyous submission.

"Your Majesty! Please accept my soul... no, my tongue and fingers! Even if every finger I have left is crushed, I will print newspapers for Your Majesty for the rest of my life!"

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried