Chapter 203

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 203
Chapter Title: Cesare's Predicament
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“Fire.”

At Cesare’s command, a volley of arrows rained down from the bushes, aimed at the heavy cavalry at the bottom of the hill.

- *Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack!*

With only about three hundred men, it wasn't the magnificent spectacle of a large-scale battle, but it was the most impressive display a local private army could muster.

And immediately after, Cesare realized his worries had not been unfounded.

- *Ting! T-ting!*

The sound itself was ominous.

- *T-t-ting-ting! T-ting!*

The silver armor of the Gallico cavalry had easily deflected the downpour of arrows. The screams of knights he had expected never came.

Not even the whinnying of agitated horses could be heard. These were true elite soldiers.

Cesare instinctively knew he was doomed. It was even before the Gallico knights turned their horses toward the mountain.

“All troops, retreat!”

A tenor voice commanded urgently. The soldiers, failing to grasp the situation, milled about in confusion. Cesare paid them no mind and turned his horse.

Issuing the retreat order before fleeing alone was his last shred of pride.

“Retreat inside the castle walls!”

He shouted it one more time for conscience's sake. It was called a retreat, but it was a rout.

It was also the moment the soldiers' self-fulfilling prophecy came true—the same soldiers who had stubbornly refused to use crossbows so they could plan their escape route in case of defeat.

- “Uwaaaah!”

- “Hey, hey! Move!”

- “Wait for me!”

The private soldiers of the Pisano fiefdom began to flee in a panic. Their commander, on his sleek black steed, was already racing past the mountainside.

- “That… that…!”

- “Damn it! And he calls himself a commander!”

- “That’s what you get from those nobles from the capital!”

They hurled curses, but it changed nothing. From now on, survival depended entirely on individual skill.

The unit formation had collapsed, and the commander was useless. The lord, the kingdom—they couldn't protect them. It was always like this.

Three hundred able-bodied men from a rural backwater threw down their bows and began to run for their lives.

* * *

After receiving her son’s letter and grasping the situation, Countess Rubina was tearfully pleading with the King.

“Your Majesty. This was an absurd plan from the start. To think we could stop the elite knights of the Gallico army with the private soldiers of a single fiefdom!”

“Ugh…”

It was true that she had flipped her stance as easily as turning over her hand, but in the end, it was the King himself who had given the final approval.

His last shred of pride kept him from pointing out, ‘You were the one who suggested sending Cesare to the border in the first place,’ so Leo III could only sigh deeply.

“What about the matter I brought up? Shouldn’t a reply have come by now?”

“Wait patiently, my lady. It has only been a few days!”

Unable to hold back, Leo III raised his voice.

“Your Majesty!”

Rubina looked at Leo III, her face welling with tears.

The unspoken cry of ‘How could you do this to me!’ seemed to hang in the air behind her words.

Ever since her ordeal in the dungeon, she would pointedly start coughing whenever she felt Leo III had crossed a line.

Claiming she’d caught a lung disease from inhaling so much mold. He was lucky she didn’t point a finger and blame him for catching syphilis.

Even now, as she took a sharp breath, ready to cough, Leo III scowled and turned his head away.

“Your Majesty. Count Marquez requests an audience.”

The attendant's voice at that moment was like sweet nectar from the heavens.

“Oh, send him in!”

Leo III was overjoyed to grant the audience.

The sight of Count Marquez striding in with such confidence was a welcome one. But Leo III soon came to regret his decision.

“Your Majesty. A reply has arrived regarding the matter you commanded.”

“Oh! All of them?”

“They all arrived this morning.”

“Good, let us hear their terms.”

This was the very matter Rubina had requested.

- “Please hire the condottieri!”

Condottieri. Captains of mercenary companies.

Foreign legions who led their own armed forces and pledged loyalty not to their employers, but to their employers’ gold.

They were a breed mocked as hellhounds, said to do anything for money.

Though they had not a shred of loyalty and demanded fees so high even a demon would be aghast, they were still cheaper than maintaining a standing army.

“The terms!”

When Count Marquez remained silent, the King pressed him impatiently.

“...None of them have accepted.”

“What?”

Leo III stared at Count Marquez with a dumbfounded expression.

“Variati, Garozzo, Fontarini. None of them?”

As Leo III listed the names of the three star condottieri, Count Marquez slowly nodded.

“The last to state his refusal was Variati of the Iron Armor. The reason for refusal was the same for all three.”

“Are they saying the pay is insufficient?”

The Kingdom of Etruscan had presented the mercenary captains with a maximum price and ordered them to bid within that limit.

The ceiling set by Palazzo Carlo wasn't an especially generous amount. Leo III regretted not offering more.

But Count Marquez shook his head.

“It is not a matter of money.”

“Then what! What else could those money-crazed bastards possibly care about besides gold!”

In that instant, a myriad of terrible scenarios flashed through Leo III’s mind.

Is it because they don’t want to antagonize the Kingdom of Gallico, whose power grows by the day? Do they see Etruscan as such a pushover?

Or is it me? Do I seem so lacking in dignity for doting on Rubina and making Cesare my nephew? So much so that even the gold-chasing hounds want nothing to do with me?

“Their reason was that they could not dispatch their armies to a place where a plague is spreading.”

“...Ah.”

A mercenary captain’s greatest asset is his well-trained troops.

Each and every man was like a well-oiled war machine, having spent more than a decade rolling around on the battlefield.

Conversely, this meant they were difficult to replace if they died.

The condottieri were already heavily criticized for taking lukewarm, safe routes even when a complete victory was within reach, fearing their forces might be harmed.

“If the Black Death were to spread among their men, the condottieri would be left with no recourse. All three refused unequivocally.”

“…”

This was the fate of a nation without a standing army.

The mercenaries he thought he could call upon at any time were refusing his request, no matter how much gold he offered.

Leo III fell silent and glanced sideways. There stood Countess Rubina.

“Your Majesty…! What about our Cesare!”

Rubina threw a fit, oblivious to the fact that her own actions had sent her son into the jaws of death.

Or perhaps, she knew but didn't want to know.

Leo III couldn't appear weak in front of his woman. He flew into a rage and commanded Count Marquez.

“Useless fools! Contact all the other condottieri besides Variati, Garozzo, and Fontarini! Tell them they can have as much gold as they want! Quickly!”

The rest were ones they had already concluded were unsuitable—either because their relationship with Etruscan was poor, they were too close to Gallico, or their mercenary companies were too small to face heavy cavalry.

But the King had to show Countess Rubina something.

Realizing this, Count Marquez did not object and simply bowed his head.

“...Yes, Your Majesty.”

But a sliver of doubt lingered in his mind.

‘Sending out messages might soothe his mistress’s heart, but sending them like this won’t bring reinforcements.’

He slightly raised his head and stole a glance at the King.

‘His dalliances are one thing. But what in the world is he going to do about the border…?’

* * *

After suffering a miserable defeat in his first-ever battle, Cesare returned to the castle and immediately wrote a letter to Countess Rubina.

It described the disastrous defeat and begged her to plead with His Majesty the King to get him out of there—to send reinforcements, send a replacement, do whatever it took.

Public opinion in the castle was in an uproar. Even if it was just a small raiding party, 300 men was a significant portion of the forces the Pisano fiefdom could currently field.

And their commander had abandoned those troops on the battlefield and returned alone.

Of course, since they were local men, a good number of them managed to make it back. A little over a hundred returned to the castle alive.

It was a considerable number, considering they had fled on foot from cavalry.

But their survival made things worse.

- “You won’t believe it, but the Duke of Pisano!”

The rumor that Duke Cesare of Pisano’s handsome black steed was the first to show its tail and flee the battlefield spread like wildfire throughout the castle, passed from one survivor to the next.

Cesare’s very presence in the Pisano fiefdom became an ordeal.

He couldn't be sure if it was true or not, but it felt like everyone from the ducal chamberlain to the serfs he passed on the street was casting cold, reproachful glances his way.

Cesare was extremely sensitive to the opinions of others.

What others thought of him had a direct impact on his mood and happiness day to day.

To him now, the Pisano fiefdom was hell.

“...I can’t go on like this. I can’t stand being here any longer.”

But his mother’s reply to his letter, which begged her to speak to the King and find a way for him to return to the capital, was firm.

- “Do not return. If you must die, die in the Pisano fiefdom.”

Cesare had done his best to keep it a secret that he was going to the fiefdom and that he would be in charge of defending the border.

He didn't tell anyone, and he procured supplies and rations discreetly.

But Countess Rubina had a loose tongue.

Unable to resist bragging about her son, she had let it slip in the San Carlo social circles where she had become a central figure.

“His Majesty the King sent the Duke of Pisano to his fiefdom to defend the border, you know?”

“It seems he has grand plans for the Duke of Pisano. Congratulations, Countess.”

After Cesare was granted the de Carlo surname and elevated to a duke, those trying to curry favor with the mother and son never addressed them as ‘Duke Cesare’ or ‘Countess Rubina’.

They had gained a proper title to be proud of.

Rubina took this as a sign that she had truly been accepted into high society, that she was finally in no way inferior to Queen Marguerite.

“Hohoho. Who can know the King’s mind? But who knows? Perhaps one day he’ll be appointed commander-in-chief?”

“There is no one more suited than the Duke of Pisano.”

“How wonderful!”

Cesare could not, under any circumstances, return to the capital without an achievement to his name.

Instead, what Rubina sent up to the Pisano fiefdom were the private soldiers sent by feudal lords from across the land.

Unable to hire condottieri, Leo III issued a levy order to all the lords of the realm.

「Border Defense. The lords of each region are to fulfill their oaths of fealty.」

However, fulfilling an oath of fealty requires fealty in the first place.

Excuses flooded in from all over the country. Old age… The Black Death has broken out in the fiefdom… Food supplies…

In the end, only 1,500 soldiers, scraped together from the northern and central regions where the plague was less prevalent, arrived at the capital.

Leo III was furious, but what couldn't be done, couldn't be done. The King dispatched all 1,500 men to the Pisano fiefdom.

He was the bastard son sent to the border without much thought, but now Cesare had become Leo III’s only hope.

* * *

- *Grind!*

In the Duke of Pisano’s bedchamber—a room with high ceilings, sparsely decorated with tapestries and crammed with antique furniture that, to Cesare’s taste, was long out of fashion—only the sound of Cesare grinding his teeth could be heard.

There was nothing he could do. He wanted to die. Just then, someone knocked on the door.

- *Knock, knock.*

“Who is it!”

Cesare yelled, his voice laced with irritation.

“Your Grace, you have a visitor.”

“A visitor?”

“A lady from the capital.”

Cesare’s scowl deepened.

It had been a long time since he had more or less given up his philandering ways.

Not that he had suddenly become a monk, but by his standards at least, he hadn't done anything recently that would warrant a woman clinging to him like a stalker.

“What woman could possibly…”

The daughter of Viscount Benedetto? He’d only met her briefly, almost a year ago. There was hardly any physical contact.

To chase him all the way to a border city over something like that, she’d have to be insane.

Lady Ragusa? Ah, she might be capable of it. But if she were going to do something crazy, she would have done it long ago, not now, almost half a year later.

“Tell her I won’t see her.”

Well, it didn't matter who it was. If he didn't see her, problem solved.

He pulled the covers over his head and turned over. He hadn't had a drink, but his head was throbbing.

If he had his way, he’d be downing a bottle of white wine right now—no. Today felt like a day for hard liquor.

Yes. He could have finished a whole bottle of grappa, but a sliver of responsibility held him back.

“Um… Your Grace.”

“Ugh, what is it!”

“The lady says she will wait until you agree to see her.”

The message the visitor had actually asked him to deliver was, ‘You will regret it if you don’t come out,’ but not having the nerve to relay it so bluntly, the attendant had softened the words.

Cesare shuddered. A stalker with no shame?!

“Ah! Who the hell is this crazy bitch!”

“She says she is Lady Ariadne de Mare, daughter of Cardinal de Mare.”

“!”

Cesare threw off the covers and shot up from the enormous bed.