The Gale Knights I led, along with the Falkenheim family’s wagon, raced along without rest. We were slowed by having to match the wagon’s pace, but it looked like we’d reach Breisburg in half a day.

Thankfully, Viktor’s daughter-in-law had come to her senses and was applying salve to her husband’s wounds and bandaging them with the emergency kit I’d given her. She seemed pretty practiced at it, as though this wasn’t the first or second time.

After confirming that the young couple was safe, Viktor seemed to catch his breath. I matched my horse’s stride to his packhorse’s. Mont Blanc protested with a snort, as if asking why we were crawling along like a slug.

"Calmed down a bit?"

"Yes. Thank you so much for your help. I will never forget this kindness."

"Saving my father’s friend is the natural thing to do."

Viktor’s eyes were warm and gentle, like a man fondly looking at the splendidly grown son of an old friend. I felt awkward and just smiled. He may have been my father’s friend, but the gap in our stations was vast.

Anyway, I had set off thinking it would be a casual scouting trip and never imagined we’d end up in a fight. It was lucky I’d brought 15 men along as escort. Fate didn’t want Viktor to die.

Honestly, I had planned to bring around 30 men out for "training," but the Finance Department had shot it down. The Finance Minister had given me an earful, telling me to do my training near the order’s headquarters.

So I’d brought along only the 15 men I had the personal authority to lead out on my own.

"Who are those bastards, anyway?"

"They’re a gang of thugs from Eisten who call themselves Berten."

Young men with no jobs or nothing to do had banded together, supposedly acting as a militia of sorts, but the group had degenerated into a criminal organization. Their numbers had been small, so they’d never carried out raids like this before. Yet there were at least 20 men in the group that had attacked Viktor’s son and daughter-in-law.

Considering that my own fief of Feuzen could only muster around 25 to 30 soldiers, that was nothing to scoff at. It was a force the duchy army would have to deal with. Eisten was royal demesne.

If the rest of Berten’s gang was still holed up in their hideout, they could pose a threat to Eisten. So I planned to call up the order and personally take them out. Putting down the Berten gang would serve as an accomplishment while doubling as training for the order.

But the cloudy weather kept getting darker.

Storm clouds were gathering.

Krrrrumble!

Whoosh!

Of all times, just as we were transporting a wounded man by wagon, the rain came pouring down. The problem was that the wagon had no cover, leaving the patient fully exposed. So I urgently ordered the men to find shelter, and we spotted a small village made up of a few houses.

Viktor seemed to know the place. His expression hardened.

"Oh no, that’s a Scharfrichter village."

Scharfrichter meant executioner. They couldn’t live within cities, so they gathered with their kin on the outskirts and formed villages. In plain terms, it was an outcasts’ settlement. Naturally, even visiting such a place was practically taboo. They were called a cursed clan that fed on human blood.

But there was no choice.

"Anton, go and ask if they’ll let us stay until the rain lets up."

"Y-you’re really going into that village?"

"If the patient keeps getting rained on, he’ll die of hypothermia. Hurry."

Anton might not have known what hypothermia was, but he had no choice but to take a few of the men and head into the village. The village was thrown into chaos at the arrival of armed cavalry.

Anton brought back what looked like a village elder.

The way Anton and the men kept their distance from the old executioner spoke volumes about how executioners were treated in society. I, of course, held no such prejudice.

"For an honored personage to come to the humble Hünrich’s village, I scarcely know what to do with myself."

"Skip the formalities. More importantly, do you have an empty house? We have a wounded man and need to stay until the rain lets up."

"There is an empty place. I shall guide you there. I beg of you, please show us mercy."

The old executioner desperately begged me for mercy as if his life depended on it. I had no particular feelings about these people, but to them I was a figure perched in the clouds, and I was leading armed cavalry to boot. They couldn’t help being terrified. I’d unintentionally caused them trouble.

"I’m sorry, my lord. Because of my son, you’ve come to such an ill-omened place..."

"Enough. The first thing we need to do is light a fire and warm him up."

The place we were guided to was a shabby house thick with dust from neglect, but this was no time to be picky. Once the fire was lit in the hearth, the inside grew bright.

The men kept watch like sentries, wary of any executioner clansmen drawing near. But there was no need. The Hünrich villagers retreated into their own homes of their own accord. The rain was coming down hard, after all.

While Natalie tended devotedly to Simon, Viktor and I moved to another room. With the rain still falling, I figured this was my chance to hear the rest of the story he’d been about to tell.

"Aseldorf and I were on patrol that night. The tide of the war was turning against us, and morale was dropping fast, so we had to walk the patrol ourselves to encourage the men."

That was when my father, who had stepped into the woods to relieve himself, happened to spot the Lord of Rosenheim secretly meeting with a knight who looked to be in his mid-twenties. Sensing something off about the atmosphere, my father called Viktor over to spy on them with him.

"Buy time so that His Highness the Crown Prince can escape."

"...Is that the ending he wants? So he sent you as the messenger."

"Please answer me first."

"If my death has any worth, then when Resurrection Day comes, the wrong knots between us shall come undone. Tell him I am already resolved."

The moonlight had been bright that night.

So Viktor had witnessed the bitterness on the Lord of Rosenheim’s face. After the knight left, Viktor asked the Lord about the knight’s identity and what the conversation had meant.

But the Lord of Rosenheim said nothing.

He only told them that he would help my father and Viktor escape.

"The Lord then formed a death squad. Naturally, Aseldorf and I joined as well. The Lord tried to send us back, but we said if we died, we’d die together—of course we wouldn’t leave."

Both men already had heirs, so even if they died, their family lines wouldn’t end. With that weight off their shoulders, they joined and fought to the death as part of the rearguard to cover the army’s retreat.

I got to hear the desperate, vivid account of the battle that day. I could picture the warriors casting aside their lives, falling valiantly to protect their comrades’ backs.

The Lord of Rosenheim had led a small cavalry force in fierce combat, but clashed with the enemy cavalry and was unhorsed. My father, while protecting the Lord, had killed two Burgundian knights before being struck down by the spear of an unnamed soldier. Even the Lord, who had resisted to the very end, finally ran out of strength.

Enraged by the deaths of my father and the Lord, Viktor charged in, but most of the death squad had already been wiped out. The survivors were taken captive while still resisting. Viktor himself was knocked unconscious by a shield blow to the head.

"When I came to, I was in the prisoner camp. The comrades who had survived, including myself... only 13 of us. More than 200 brothers in arms had died right there. All of them. Every one of them..."

He was speaking calmly, but I could hear in his voice just how devastating and bitter the experience had been. The enemy’s commander had paid them his respects. He’d given them his assurance that ransom negotiations were underway and they’d be home before long. Apart from Viktor, every one of the prisoners was a commoner, yet the enemy commander had extended them that courtesy all the same.

"We never recovered the Lord’s remains. By some grace, only Aseldorf’s sword and two daggers were returned. That longsword you carry, my lord, is the one I sent."

"So you were the one who returned it to me."

In the original setting, all I’d known was that it was the only relic that had come back. I hadn’t learned until today that Viktor was the one who had sent it. I drew the longsword and showed it to him.

This longsword, engraved with the family crest, was a precious partner that had shared life and death with me. After becoming a mounted knight, I rarely used it anymore, but it still held great symbolic meaning. And it bore the family crest.

Viktor’s eyes carried a deep longing as he gazed at the longsword.

"That sword was a gift from the Lord of Rosenheim to Aseldorf. Italian-made, they said, crafted by a renowned master in Pisa. That’s why the edge is still keen even now."

"That explains it. The condition seemed unusually good for a sword that had been through war."

The exterior looked like an ordinary longsword, but the quality was outstanding. Italian artisans of this era were widely regarded as the best in Europe. My plate armor was Venetian-made too. Venice and the Italian city-states were famously known for competing to produce master craftsmen. At this time, Venice was outpacing them all.

And as it turned out, the ransom negotiations had been led by old Marquis Bertheim. He had personally brought back all 13 of the prisoners during the exchange. He’d never told me that part of the story.