Veteran of the Northern Front - Chapter 12

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Asakusa

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◈ Veteran of the Northern Front ◈

Chapter 12: New Recruit Initiation (2)

──────

In the eastern Empire stood House Allen, a viscount’s family.

Marcus had originally been one of its pages.

“Marcus, the head maid is calling for you. Hurry along.”

“Yes.”

Because his looks were too refined for a commoner, people sometimes wondered whether he was the illegitimate child of some noble house. But he could not give them an answer.

He did not know where he came from.

He did not even know who his parents were.

“Head Maid, why did you call for me?”

“Just in time. Could you take this basket to old Kal, the gardener? There’s wheat bread inside, so you should eat with him too.”

“Thank you.”

Life at the viscount’s estate was not bad. The maids would occasionally brush past him and touch him in unpleasant ways, but he could endure that much.

“Oh, Marcus. The Young Lord’s lesson will begin soon, so make sure you are not late.”

“Yes. I will remember.”

He attended those lessons to take the beatings whenever the Young Lord made a mistake, but he still enjoyed that time.

There, he could learn about a world he could never have known within the estate.

Of all the lessons, knight training was his favorite.

“Before we begin training today, I will teach the Young Lord about chivalry.”

“What? Can’t we just play today? I hate things that make my head hurt!”

“Ahaha... The Viscount will scold me. Please, just this once.”

“Tch!”

As a page, all he did was observe the Young Lord’s training and occasionally serve as an opponent when the Young Lord grew bored. Even so, it was enough to ease the thirst rising within him.

‘So that is how you hold a sword.’

‘And that is how you swing it there...’

The knights’ footwork, movements, and where and when they put their strength into a strike.

He watched their forms closely and broadened his understanding. At night, he trained his own body using the methods the knights had demonstrated for the Young Lord.

Yet, strangely enough, the knights’ movements began to seem odd to him at some point.

‘Why would you thrust toward your opponent there?’

‘Wouldn’t it be more efficient to take a step back, deflect the attack, and counter?’

‘There, you could just...’

He found the answer as he grew older.

He possessed a talent unlike that of ordinary people.

The kind found in those commonly called geniuses.

＊＊＊＊＊

Marcus did not regain consciousness until the sun had fully set.

“!!!!!!!!!!”

Perhaps he had been having a nightmare.

He jolted upright.

“You’re awake now?”

“Where am I...?”

“The barracks. The others worked hard carrying you here.”

He was currently covered in around eight blankets. Worried that Marcus might fall ill because he had not adapted to the northern cold, the squad members had given him their own blankets.

As a result, they were now sleeping under furs instead.

“You look like you have a lot to say. We might wake the others, so should we talk outside first?”

“...All right.”

Leaving the squad members snoring behind us, I gestured for him to come outside, and he obediently followed.

I sat on a wooden plank outside the barracks and asked him,

“You look troubled.”

“....................”

He was probably thinking something like this.

That technique had caught him off guard because he had never seen it before.

If we fought again, he could win.

He was likely reviewing the fight little by little, looking for a way to beat me.

But then,

“What? You can’t accept that you lost?”

“...No. I did lose.”

Marcus was not the kind of person who could not accept defeat and make pathetic excuses.

“Still, I will win next time.”

“Heh. All right. I’ll look forward to it.”

A man who drove himself to improve by using defeat as fertilizer.

That was the Marcus I knew.

He had accepted his defeat cleanly.

It seemed like we could finally speak honestly with each other, but something still appeared to bother him.

“Is this place... normally like this?”

I tilted my head at Marcus’s question.

“What do you mean, normally like this?”

“I heard roughly what happens to penal soldiers conscripted to the Northern Front. That barbarians attack day and night, and that people run away using the comrades beside them as shields whenever things turn bad. That no one can be trusted.”

“Hmm.”

Listening to him, I thought I understood why he was asking.

“The barbarians do attack at all hours, though perhaps not day and night. As for using comrades as shields and running away, I can’t say there are none like that.”

I glanced toward the barracks.

“But at least our people are not.”

“I see.”

Marcus had spent his entire life wary of others to conceal his talent. From his perspective, the squad members who had shown him kindness despite getting beaten by him must have felt strange.

“Are you surprised because we are so different from the rumors? Or are you worried that those guys might have some other motive?”

His body flinched as though I had hit the mark.

“To be honest... yes.”

“Our people have foul mouths, but they are warmhearted. They won’t be the first to stab you in the back, so don’t worry too much.”

“Commander...”

“Just call me Ubel.”

“Ubel, do you trust me?”

“Of course. If I don’t trust the people under me, who would I trust?”

“You do not know why I became a penal soldier. You do not know what crime I committed.”

I knew exactly what crime had made him a penal soldier.

I also knew all about his past.

But I pretended not to.

“Does that matter?”

“What?”

What mattered to me was not his crime or his past, but Marcus himself.

“What you did before coming here, what kind of person you were, what does any of that matter? We are all penal soldiers here anyway.”

“...................”

“What matters is the present, not the past. And once I decide to trust someone, I believe in trusting them until the end.”

“...What if they betray you?”

“Then I suppose I would have to blame my own judgment. You cannot refuse to trust anyone just because you fear betrayal.”

“!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

A strange light entered Marcus’s eyes.

I did not know exactly what it was, but it seemed my words had made him realize something.

Soon after, he unexpectedly began to tell me about his past.

“...I was a page in a noble house.”

I already knew about Marcus’s background, but I listened as if I did not.

“Really? Then how did you become a penal soldier? I checked, and you were brought here for insulting a noble.”

“One day, the Young Lord must have been bored. He dragged me to the sparring grounds.”

It was not uncommon for immature nobles to beat up their attendants under the excuse of training. Marcus had likely planned to take a few hits as usual and let it end there.

“But that day, I felt especially strange. My entire body burned like fire, and my heart pounded madly.”

It was likely a sign of mana awakening.

“My vision went dark for a moment. When I opened my eyes again, the Young Lord was lying on the ground, staring at me with a terrified expression.”

“So you defeated him in the spar without realizing it.”

“Yes. When the news spread, the entire estate was in uproar.”

In a way, it was natural. The family heir who had received knight training for years had lost to a page who had never even received proper instruction. That was not something they could easily overlook.

“I was dragged away by the estate guards and imprisoned. Then the lord and the Young Lord came to see me.”

“........................”

“They said I was a beast who did not know gratitude for being taken in and raised. They said I had stained their honor and should pay for it with my life. I did not know noble honor was such a thing.”

Marcus had learned about honor through chivalry, so the two men’s words and behavior must have been difficult for him to understand.

The honor they spoke of was not sincerity, courtesy, or humility, as chivalry taught. It was merely their own reputation and prestige.

“Then, fortunately, an aide argued that I should be shown mercy and sent to become a penal soldier in the north. That is how I survived and came here.”

At first glance, the aide sounded like a good person.

In reality, it had merely been a way to have Marcus killed without dirtying their own hands.

Perhaps Marcus knew that as well.

He could not hide a bitter laugh as he told the story.

“You have been through a lot.”

“No. More importantly, how did you come to the north, Ubel? I believe you said you were from a noble family.”

“Me? Well...”

Had he lowered his guard around me?

Despite the cold night air that chilled us to the bone, we kept talking like friends reunited after a long time.

＊

We did not finish chatting until nearly dawn.

Marcus stood up first, said goodbye, and headed into the barracks. I remained outside a little longer to enjoy the dawn air.

Because he had opened his heart to me, we had been able to talk about many things.

‘I thought he was just a blunt guy.’

Contrary to appearances, once he got going, he could not stop talking.

‘Listening to him, he even feels a little like an old man in a young body.’

That probably meant he had been carrying a great deal inside.

If I had to describe Marcus’s life in one saying, it would be this: The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

‘What a rough life.’

No.

Come to think of it, was everyone here not the same?

‘Who here has an easy story?’

I was no different.

The original owner of this body had become a penal soldier because of schemes by his stepmother and half-brother, while I had possessed the body of someone like that. Looking only at our circumstances, mine might have been even worse.

Penal soldiers, people said to live at the bottom of society just above slaves.

Others might see us as corpses waiting to die.

But I had no intention of dying.

Nor did I intend to let the people under me die.

It was not pointless meddling.

‘There are limits to what one person can do.’

But what everyone could do together was limitless.

The next day, Marcus had become a completely different person.

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah.”

The sharp atmosphere around him had vanished.

He even wore a faint smile.

The squad members whispered at the sight of him greeting me with such respectful manners.

“That bastard got beaten once and turned into a different person.”

“Seriously. Until yesterday, he looked like he wouldn’t bleed even if you cut him.”

Perhaps because they remembered what Marcus had done to them the day before, the squad members could not easily approach him despite his changed attitude.

But not everyone was like that.

“Hey, kid.”

“...Were you calling me?”

“Of course I was. You’re the youngest one. Was I supposed to be calling myself?”

As if he had forgotten everything that had happened the day before, Max spoke with a confident expression.

“The youngest handles the ten-person squad’s laundry. Go wash up and get moving.”

Max held out a grimy cloth garment, and Marcus stared at it quietly.

The squad members worried that Marcus might fly into a rage at this sudden development, but what happened next surprised them all.

“Where should I wash it?”

“If you go to the edge of the camp, there is a small stream. Wash it there. The youngest members from other ten-person squads go every morning too, so hurry if you don’t want to stand in line.”

“All right.”

His gentle attitude was utterly unlike the cold person he had been yesterday.

Then Max frowned and opened his mouth again.

“No, but this bastard has been talking casually since earlier. Hey, how old are you... mmph!”

“Hey, hey!”

“This bastard always ruins the mood by saying something unnecessary at the end!”

The squad members hurriedly covered Max’s mouth. In that opening, Ren awkwardly spoke to Marcus.

“Ah! I’ll help you. Let’s go together.”

“Thank you.”

“Hehe, no problem. It was originally my job anyway.”

“You don’t need to speak formally to me. Speak casually.”

“R-really? Then I will.”

Ren and Marcus were the same age, so it was not strange for them to speak casually to each other.

Marcus had never been sociable and had always been blunt and worried, but perhaps he had changed his mind after the previous night. He adapted quickly to the unit, and before long, he was mingling naturally with the others.

“Hey, Marcus. Have you ever played cards?”

“...Not once.”

“What? This bastard won’t do. Hey, sit over here. I’ll teach you.”

Seeing Marcus play cards with the others after Max dragged him over was truly a rare sight.

‘Usually, any group gets awkward when a newcomer joins.’

It was a relief that he seemed to be settling in without any major trouble.

That was not all.

Marcus also showed remarkable adaptability in training.

“Marcus, you bastard! Slow down!”

“The whole formation is falling apart trying to keep up with you!”

“...All right.”

It was as if he had three hearts. Even his basic stamina was extraordinary.