When I first saw the six bronze cannons slumbering in the armory, I was very taken aback, because they looked nothing like what I’d imagined. Far from having wheels, they were simple in shape, stacked atop wooden planks.

There were even several rings, like hoops, fitted around the barrels. What were these for? They looked like fingers adorned with several rings.

Transporting them was a big problem too. In the end, rather than carelessly handling them myself, I decided to call in experts. The Duchy of Beren has exactly one artillery unit.

One of a kind: the Royal Artillery Corps.

The unit’s name was tremendously grandiose, but that grandiose name was literally all there was to it.

Since the Grand Duke didn’t use cannons at all, they had been all but forgotten. These artillerymen—now soldiers in name only—had once been elite, trained and selected by an artillery officer the Holy Roman Emperor had sent at the time.

The trouble was that these elite soldiers had no opportunity to shine and ended up cast aside like yesterday’s leftovers. So when I requested the Royal Artillery Corps’s cooperation, at first they couldn’t believe it, as if they’d misheard.

"You mean to deploy us onto the battlefield? Truly?"

"The cannon is a weapon handled by artillerymen, not by knights."

"Oh, heavens! God! Lord! To think there’s someone who knows that!"

Their standing was so low that even with a civil war breaking out, far from being called up, people wondered whether such a unit even existed. So for a war hero and the foremost knight of the duchy to suddenly summon them was, from their standpoint, utterly unthinkable.

It was also the moment the Royal Artillery Corps, which had been treated as an unwanted burden, first revealed itself to the world. And what a band of strange fellows it was. It seemed that as the numbers dwindled, only the oddballs remained.

"Verflucht nochmal, I can’t calm down! To think a noble knight would summon us!"

The Royal Artillery commander was my equal in rank, but he didn’t seem to think so at all. Mutual respect was the principle, but at this point it felt like I’d gained eccentric subordinate number one.

"You idiots! Our unit has no future, you said? The Gale Knight came in person, so what’s this about no future?! Marco, didn’t I tell you that if I held out to the end, the day would come when the sun shines on us?"

"You did say that. Though more than half of it was cursing."

"Those idiot Schwein didn’t even deserve to seize their chance!"

The Royal Artillery commander’s name was Schneider von Gerdelhansen, and the vice commander was Marco von Nutien, apparently. Schneider spat out curses brimming with emotion at finally having the chance to introduce himself.

He went tearing around inside the unit like a madman all by himself, but astonishingly the unit members, as if they saw this every day, took it in stride. Vice commander Marco said to me:

"Our commander’s mouth is a bit rough, but he’s not a bad man."

"More to the point, could he calm down? We’re making no headway in the conversation at all."

"Commander, if you don’t shut up, the Gale Knight says he’ll just leave."

"What?! No! I’ll keep my mouth shut, so please don’t go!"

In any case, the Royal Artillery commander left quite an impression on me—though not the usual kind. First, I had them transport all the cannons, cannonballs, gunpowder, and so on from the armory.

When they’d gathered at the palace parade ground, the six cannons had doubled to twelve. Strange. There had clearly been six in the armory, so where had the other six come from?

So I asked, and artillery commander Schneider answered with a bright smile.

"We pried off the ones on the ramparts too, hehe."

"Commander, I clearly tried to stop him."

...Well, they’d already been pried off, so what could be done.

I’d figured he’d cause trouble, but this much I could tolerate.

I ordered the artillerymen to move the cannons quickly before the palace gatekeeper found out. What that old man had permitted was the six in the armory. Before putting any more strain on the old man’s heart, we bolted.

The artillerymen carefully moved them onto the carts one at a time, as if enshrining sacred relics.

They scoured every corner for gunpowder too and made off with all of it. But the problem was the cannonballs.

Up until now I’d believed there was nothing more expensive than gunpowder, but there was something even more expensive: the stone cannonballs, each one carved by hand.

"From what I understand, it was about a hundred silver coins apiece, is that right?"

"And that’s after bargaining the price down."

What? A hundred silver coins apiece? Are you insane?

The cannonballs we were loading up came to a mere sixty.

Each cannonball had to be individually carved by craftsmen.

What’s more, the cannonball specifications differed for each cannon, so it was important to carve them to match.

Aghast at this enormous cost, I went ahead and hired those thirty stonemasons under the Administrative Department’s name.

I was curious what face the Administrative Minister would make when the cannonball bill arrived, but I trusted he’d cooperate to that degree.

But the problem lay somewhere completely unexpected.

"...You’ve only fired ten rounds up to now?"

"Could we possibly train while wasting expensive gunpowder and cannonballs?"

"Dammit, you’d been reduced to a unit that existed in name only, so of course they slashed the budget."

"Scheiße! That’s exactly it! Those damned bureaucrat bastards!"

What now? Should I shelve the cannon plan? Far from taking a solid fortress with cannons, it looked like I was the one about to be taken.

My confidence wavered sharply.

Because if this failed, the backlash would be no joke.

Then Schneider, who’d been reading my expression, gave Marco a glance, and Marco brought out an enormous number of scrolls. What was all this? Marco unrolled one and showed it to me.

It was a document densely recording, day by day, the cannon angles, the amount of gunpowder loaded, barrel cooling times, and so on. There was only one thing this could mean.

That they’d done that many rounds of repetitive training.

So there was a reason the foul-mouthed artillery commander’s disposition was honesty (good).

"Ahem! You may not trust us, but we’ve trained on this every single day without fail."

"The problem was that it was all dry practice—never the real thing. Because of that, a lot of members couldn’t endure it and quit, didn’t they?"

"Fick dich! We don’t need gutless bastards in the Royal Artillery Corps!"

Although actual live fire came to only ten rounds, it was also proof that they’d done countless dry-fire drills all the while. It really did seem like they hadn’t missed a single day.

Hmm, at this level, wouldn’t it be all right to take a gamble on them?

With this evidence of their honest, steady dedication, I found myself wanting to trust them.

"...You’re prepared to stake your lives, I trust?"

I’ll match that resolve, so steel yourselves as well.

Meeting my gaze, Royal Artillery commander Schneider set his jaw with resolve.

"If we’re going to be forgotten like this anyway, we’re as good as dead! I’ll stake my life!"

"Haah, I’ve had nothing but trouble getting tangled up with the commander, and now I have to stake my life too?"

"What? Of course you do! Surely you all aren’t thinking of running off like rats?"

"Why would we run now, after all this? We’ll stake our lives together too!"

Marco and the other thirty Royal Artillery members all staked their lives, every one of them. It didn’t mean I’d actually kill them if they failed, just that such resolve was needed.

So I set about properly forming the unit.

With logistics transport reduced by the civil war, work in Breisburg had dwindled and the city had become a land of the unemployed. In that situation, the moment I posted a recruitment notice, they poured in by the hundreds.

Anton and the bureaucrats the Administrative Department had sent to help broke out in a sweat.

With no time to weigh dispositions, they gave a quick once-over, filtered out only the vicious sorts, and hired the rest.

That way we hired two hundred and increased the carts to a full fifty. On top of that we procured sturdy wagons. Because when there’s something to move on the battlefield, having wagons makes it far more convenient.

And we also loaded up a full supply of mysterious wooden planks.

There was no time even to ask what they were. A week had already passed. After all that effort, we managed to equip everything: the food for the men and horses, hay, and other miscellaneous materiel.

To take this long even though we’d hurried.

"Thank you for supporting us with manpower, Viscount."

"Not at all. Since I’m in charge of the capital’s defense, I apologize for not being able to support you more."

The Capital Sentinel commander, Viscount Loewenbert, supported me with a hundred non-combat personnel. They were necessary, since they could assist the artillery and be put to work on all sorts of minor tasks.

In the medieval era, the very concept of an engineer didn’t exist, so it was common to pick out non-combat personnel and deploy them separately. Buoyed by the viscount’s support, we finally finished all our preparations and headed for Baschurten.

A total of three hundred and fifty people were on the move.

The travel time alone took a full four days.

Even by then, Baschurten Castle stood firm.

It couldn’t have been a better debut stage.