Chapter 211

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 211
Chapter Title: The Just Reward for Sacrifice
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Facing Greta, Ariadne recalled a moment from the past.

- "Well now, my lady fiancée, you've come."

The shepherd boy—no, the young man—outside the castle was a simple soul.

No matter what kind of act he put on for outsiders, when he was alone with her, he treated her with the utmost respect.

- "You've made a great decision, you have."

- "Not at all. The same could be said for both of us."

In her past life, Count Cesare needed a messenger who could freely move in and out of San Carlo Castle without being detected to prepare for his coup.

His men were under close surveillance by Crown Prince Alfonso's people.

In the end, the person he chose was his own fiancée.

Ariadne pretended to be having an affair with the shepherd outside the castle, leaving through the gates every single evening.

She would feign modesty, pulling a thick robe over her head and glancing around, but in reality, she flaunted her "purpose" by carrying items one might bring to a lover, as if for all to see.

- "What'll happen when this is all over? You're a noble lady. If your reputation is tarnished because of a fellow like me..."

The shepherd, rumored to be Ariadne's lover, was sitting alone with her inside his hut, waiting for the messenger from Cesare's forces.

The shepherd sat on a wooden chair a good three *piedi* away from her, his gaze politely directed downwards.

- "A reputation is just passing gossip. Cesare knows the truth. He will take responsibility for me. I'm not worried."

The shepherd nodded.

- "That's right. Once this is all over..."

- "That may be true for me, but why did you volunteer for this?"

Ariadne was enduring all this humiliation because she was going to become queen.

She looked at the shepherd, who was too loyal and uninterested in luxuries to have been persuaded by gold, and asked.

- "...I wanted to change the world."

- "Pardon?"

- "I'm originally from the south, you see. Soon as I was old enough, I ran away from home like a fugitive and came to the capital."

The shepherd calmly told her his story—that he was the illegitimate son of a southern knight and had been tormented by his father's legal wife and her children since he was young.

It was a story Ariadne could fully empathize with.

- "I can understand why they couldn't stand the sight of me. If I were my eldest brother, I'd have hated me too. But."

The shepherd was quite athletic, but he could never become a knight.

It was because he could never find a knight willing to dub a squire who had not received God's blessing.

He had been fed and clothed in that house, but he could not inherit a single coin of his father's fortune.

His only hope was that the legal wife might, out of pity, give him some charity if he was lucky.

He didn't ask for much.

But when his mother, who had been semi-forcibly cast out of the house after his father died, fell gravely ill with a fever, the wife refused to even help with the medical bills, and he was enraged.

He spat at the wife, who claimed she had 'no obligation to care for a former servant living outside the house,' stormed out of the main estate, and moved in with his mother.

After nursing his fever-stricken mother for ten days, he caught the illness himself.

When it was all over, all he had left was his deceased mother and his own crippled body.

- "They block you from doing anything because you're illegitimate, but then they won't even take care of you. What else is that but telling you to go out and die?"

He burst out in frustration.

- "I'm not asking to live in luxury. They should at least let me live like a human being. They wouldn't even let me help with the village farm work, saying it would tarnish the family's honor, but then they turn their backs when I need help... Am I... am I not even a person?"

A fire sparked in the shepherd's simple eyes.

- "If Count Cesare succeeds, he will usher in a new world."

A world where even illegitimate sons could have any profession without restriction. A world where you could inherit a share proportional to your contribution to the family. A world without fear for your livelihood.

- "If the noblest person in the land comes from the same background as us, surely he'll look after us and understand the hardships we face!"

Cesare had gone through all the same things.

The things he couldn't do because he was illegitimate. The matters he couldn't involve himself in. The days he had to live quietly, as if he didn't exist, burying his talents. Ariadne knew all of this well.

The shepherd stroked his right foot, which had lost all its muscle and become like a block of wood.

- "With my body in this state... I thought there was nothing left for me to do. But then, he said he needed even a fellow like me!"

His eyes sparkled as he spoke.

- "If I can lend a hand in changing the world, I could die tomorrow with no regrets!"

The young shepherd, who had proclaimed that contributing to the greater good without any personal gain was enough, eventually died.

It wasn't the 'tomorrow' he had braced himself for, but he didn't live to see the new year.

In the chaos immediately following Cesare's coup, Crown Prince Alfonso's faction made a final, desperate move.

Countess Marquez, on the prince's side, discovered that the shepherd and Ariadne had been the contacts communicating with the external garrison. To make an example of him, albeit belatedly, she had the shepherd beheaded, his entire body flayed, and hung from a tree in the village.

After the coup succeeded and things had somewhat settled down, Ariadne went outside the castle walls to retrieve his body for a funeral, but she couldn't hide her shock and horror at the shepherd's gruesome corpse.

- "Why are you so shaken? What, did you really have something going on with that shepherd fellow?"

- "...Stop your pointless chatter."

- "What, are you crying?"

The survivor's prognosis wasn't much better. In the end, Cesare cast Ariadne aside and took the beautiful Isabella as his queen.

That was when Ariadne learned how meaningless an individual's sacrifice for a greater cause could be.

The shepherd's hut was small and old, but it was cozy in its own way.

Despite his limp, he raised several sheepdogs, and his favorite among them followed him as if it were human.

He would touch his nose to the dog's, smell its fur, and share his evening meal of turnip soup with mutton fat.

The shepherd's life was simple, but it contained small joys.

Now he was hanging from a tree, his skin flayed.

Ariadne took in the shepherd's dog and brought it to the royal palace, but the dog could never adjust.

- "What's with that ugly dog?"

- "I'm going to raise it."

- "There are so many small, beautiful purebreds. Why are you raising a mutt like that in the palace? Do you have no intention of fitting into high society?"

A few days later, a palace handmaiden reported that the dog had run out through an open gate.

Ariadne suspected it might not have truly run away, but there was nothing she could do.

- "...I see."

That shepherd was dead. The dog was gone. At the time, there was nothing more she could do.

"Let me go!"

But the Greta before her was still alive.

"Greta, I appreciate your sentiment, I truly do. But not everyone who gets the plague dies, do they?"

One in ten miraculously survives.

"We can find a way to spread the plague among the Gallican army. You don't have to be the one to go."

It was a blatant lie. For the past few days, Ariadne had been searching for a way to infect the Gallican army. The army was constantly on the move.

It was difficult to think of any method to introduce an infection source into a moving army other than infiltration by a person.

The Gallican army's route was top secret, and they moved with extreme caution to avoid infectious diseases, mainly through open fields. Whether selling them supplies or leaking secrets, using a person was the only way.

"...We both know that sending a person is the surest way. Why are you being so kind to me?"

Ariadne wasn't being kind to Greta.

She didn't want the weight of Greta's blood on her hands. She remembered the shepherd's mangled corpse. She didn't want the same thing to happen again because of her.

"My lady. If we don't defeat those bastards, there will be no next year for us."

Greta tried to persuade Ariadne.

"Let's say this year's harvest is a wash. If they keep rampaging through our lands, we won't be able to sow next year's crops either. I know you have a lot of grain, my lady. But it's not an endless supply, is it? Can you feed all the people of Etruscan next year too?"

As Ariadne stood speechless, Greta continued.

"Honestly, for people like us, it doesn't matter if the king becomes a Gallican."

Ariadne shuddered at those words. The Gallican invasion. Yes, Alfonso. Alfonso's crown. The crown she had sworn to protect in this life.

"But if those bastards invade San Carlo, they'll burn it, pillage it, and create chaos, won't they?"

Greta had grown close with foreigners who had fled the Moor Empire while living at the almshouse. She had heard plenty about the horrors of war from the refugees.

"Then who dies first? Who suffers the most? They'll kill all the men and rape and kill the women."

"...But what about you? If you die, none of that will matter to you."

The sacking of the capital would happen after Greta was already dead.

"Honestly, my lady. Why are you so soft?"

Greta raised her voice.

"I said I'll go! When someone offers you cake, you should just close your eyes and eat it! Do you think I'm going to mess this up?"

The very fact that she was scolding Ariadne like this proved she was no ordinary person.

Greta was certainly not the type to bungle the job in a panic.

"Do I seem untrustworthy to you?"

Ariadne shook her head. Greta glared at her and said.

"If you feel sorry for me, then spread my name far and wide. Tell everyone that we can live well because of the noble sacrifice of the great Greta. Build a basilica in my name, and yes, getting into the history books would be nice! Could I be canonized as a saint? Saint Greta of San Carlo?"

It was half a joke, half serious. She wanted to reach in death the greatness she could not achieve in life.

Ariadne had lived long enough to know how meaningless it was to sacrifice one's life for the desire to become great.

But faced with the sweet temptation and the girl's own insistence, she closed her eyes.

"Stop with that gloomy face. If you're sorry, then at least give a round of applause for Saint Greta of San Carlo."

Ariadne couldn't help but let out a small laugh.

"Go on, clap."

As the lady on the first floor raised her hands in the cold wind and clapped as instructed, Greta, on the second floor, cackled.

"Wow, the country bumpkin Greta has really made it. Getting applause from a noble lady."

"I'm not a noble, you know."

"Close enough. You're not in a position to argue with me right now, my lady, so just be quiet."

Greta boasted, cracking a joke. A cold breeze passed, and she coughed slightly.

"You soft-hearted lady, just send Sancha to me. I'll have to leave by tomorrow at the latest."

She had to reach the Gallican army before the signs of her illness became obvious, before the swelling in her lymph nodes appeared and her hands and feet began to turn black.

* * *

Shortly after Ariadne met with Cesare and secured the location of the Gallican army and permission to pass through the castle gates, a girl wearing a worn shawl and a hooded cape walked out of the north gate of San Carlo. It was Greta.

With sacks of grain slung over both sides of a donkey, she headed north at a brisk pace.

The grain inside the sacks looked perfectly fine on the outside, but it had actually been rinsed in water mixed with the feces of plague victims, then dried with their bedsheets and towels used to wipe their bodily fluids.

According to ancient texts, some strains of the plague could only be transmitted through animal bites, but the version that had landed in the Kingdom of Etruscan had a slightly lower mortality rate and could be spread through a patient's cough or bodily fluids.

If she was lucky, the grain would be cooked improperly and wipe out the soldiers who ate it in one fell swoop. Even if she wasn't, it would start with the cooks and spread from there.

*Just like this... straight north, and in two hours, the Gallican army...*

They were also struggling with supplies. They wouldn't just ignore a young girl carrying grain.

Sure enough, after a little over an hour, she heard an unintelligible foreign language.

- "Squad leader! Sacks of grain!"

Greta knew instinctively. *They're here.*

The sound of horse hooves drew closer.

Clutching the donkey's reins, Greta dropped to her knees in the direction of the hoofbeats. A dozen cavalrymen on horseback surrounded her.

"Spare me! Please, just spare my life!"

*My life is forfeit. Today is the day you bastards die.*