Chapter 87
Cadet William
The man who had introduced himself as William slowly began to explain.
“We are farmers who served under the Duchy of Yurei. As you know, ever since the Grand Council, Duke Yurei has imposed excessive taxes, and more and more people have been forced to abandon their homes.”
“I know that well enough. Nearly a hundred people like you have already entered my territory.”
“We also came to the far east in pursuit of a dream.”
“Did that dream include attacking a merchant caravan and murdering everyone in it?”
“I understand perfectly well why you might suspect us of that, Regent.”
One wrong word could cost him his head.
William swallowed hard and forced conviction into his voice.
“I swear that we had nothing to do with the attack. We only found the wagons because someone told us where they were.”
“Someone told you?”
“Yes.”
William explained what had happened.
“While we were traveling toward the principality, a group approached us. They were dressed much like us, but they were armed. We suspected they might be bandits who intended to steal what little we had left, so we remained wary. But they did nothing of the sort. Instead, they showed us kindness.”
“What kind of kindness?”
“They told us there was food nearby that could be given to the starving.”
Ferda tilted his head.
“You do not look foolish enough to believe something like that.”
“Would you believe me if I said we were desperate enough to?”
What would a desperate person not do?
Ferda decided to accept that much.
“Continue.”
“In any case… they led us to the horrific scene you saw. People were lying dead, fresh food was scattered across the ground, weapons we could use to defend ourselves had been left behind, and there were precious jewels as well.”
Ferda immediately grasped the intent behind those words and asked directly,
“You mentioned the jewels specifically to claim your innocence, did you not?”
“As I said before, we are starving refugees. We were hungry at that very moment, and gold cannot be eaten. That is why we did not touch it.”
“You still took things that could not be eaten.”
Ferda recalled the missing weapons.
“We needed a way to protect ourselves during the remainder of our journey. An attack had already taken place there, so there was no guarantee we would not be attacked as well.”
“So you gathered the food because it would otherwise spoil, and took the weapons because you needed a way to defend yourselves. Is that your claim?”
“Yes.”
Ferda looked at him and laughed derisively.
“Fine. Let us say those explanations are reasonable. Then what about the gold coin you took?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you take it in case we refused to accept you?”
“I do not understand what you mean…”
“Do not play innocent. How do you think we tracked you all the way here?”
William genuinely appeared confused.
Ferda could not tell whether the man was simply shameless or truly hearing about it for the first time.
“Lord Ferda.”
Isabella suddenly interjected.
“William was not the one who took the coin.”
“Then who was?”
Isabella pointed toward one of the refugees kneeling with his head lowered.
Her finger did not indicate the exact person clearly, but one man among them was trembling far more violently than the others.
That was enough to identify him.
“William. Bring that rat over here.”
“Yes.”
William pulled the man Ferda had indicated to his feet.
The man raised his lowered face.
Like a guilty thief unable to hide his own conscience, he was drenched in cold sweat.
William glared at him.
“Turn out your pockets.”
“…”
“Stop standing there and show him!”
With trembling hands, the man emptied his pockets.
Clink—
A single gold coin fell out.
Ferda picked it up.
There was no mistaking it for anything other than a coin used as currency.
“That is quite a fortune for a refugee to be carrying, is it not?”
William seized the man by the collar, his expression filled with betrayal.
“Evans! I told you not to touch any valuables! Did I not warn you that stealing from the dead would bring disaster upon us?!”
“I-I am sorry. But opportunities like that are rare, and who knows when another one might come? I thought taking just one gold coin would be harmless…”
“You fool! Do you have any idea how much trouble your actions have caused—?!”
“Enough.”
Ferda cut off their argument.
“End this farce and kneel.”
William and the man dropped to their knees once more.
The man called Evans trembled, while William pleaded by recounting everything he had done.
“Regent, please overlook the mistake born of this foolishness.”
“Why should I?”
“Although we could not bury the bodies for fear of interfering with the investigation, we gathered them all together and held funeral rites for them. We also realized that the wagons had been headed toward Count Consilus’s territory, so I personally went there to report the incident. If you take me with you, the people there will recognize me.”
“You reported it and performed funeral rites, so you want me to overlook what you did?”
“Please forgive the transgression of these foolish people and grant us another chance. God still dwells within their hearts.”
William appealed with a voice full of conviction.
But Ferda’s eyes remained endlessly cold as he looked down at him.
“The moment you touched property belonging to a merchant under this principality’s protection, you ceased to be mere refugees in my eyes. You are rats trying to sneak into my territory, and I have no reason to show you mercy. How can I be certain you did not take part in the murders?”
“…”
“Even if you arranged the bodies to honor the dead, that does not change the fact that you stole money from a merchant’s pocket. Claiming that you did it because you were hungry is nothing more than an excuse. If you become desperate again, you will steal again and keep stealing. Am I wrong?”
It was not a question William could answer with certainty.
Amid the uncomfortable silence, Ferda spoke again.
“However, there is one solution.”
William raised his head at that faint glimmer of hope.
“What is it?”
“The one who committed the crime must receive the proper punishment.”
Ferda picked up the sword beside him and threw it down in front of Evans.
“Wash away your sin with your blood.”
“W-What do you mean…?”
“Was that too difficult for you to understand? Then I will put it simply.”
Ferda drew a finger across his throat.
“Kill yourself.”
All color drained from Evans’s face.
“If you die, the others live. That is a more than fair exchange, is it not?”
“I-I…”
“Regent!”
William interrupted.
“He may be a fool, but he is a kindhearted man. He merely risked himself for his companions during this merciless winter. Please show him mercy.”
“I will not. Finish it quickly.”
Ferda remained firm, but William persisted.
“I am the representative of these refugees. Would you take one of my arms instead and allow your anger to end there?”
“One arm?”
Ferda looked displeased.
“What nonsense.”
“If that is not enough, then something else…”
“Did I not tell you? You are rats. Do you think I would be satisfied by cutting off one of the mother rat’s legs because one of her pups raided the granary?”
Only contempt could be seen in his eyes.
“Mother or child, leader or subordinate, a rat is still a rat. A life must be paid with a life. The only thing that can replace Evans’s life is your own.”
A life.
William glanced at Evans.
The man was trembling in terror.
He did not want to die.
That was only natural for any human being.
William closed his eyes and thought for a brief moment.
“Understood.”
William calmly accepted the condition and pulled the sword lying before Evans toward himself.
The refugees, who had been bowing their heads, immediately protested.
“W-What?!”
“You cannot do that!”
“After everything you did to bring us this far…!”
Bang—!
“Eek!”
An explosive sound burst from Ferda’s hand, silencing the commotion.
“There will be no second warning. Keep shouting if you wish to die in his place. As I said, rats are still rats.”
No one dared speak after that.
They knew their own lives were worth more to them than someone else’s.
When several minutes passed without another word, Ferda spoke with open contempt.
“This man stepped forward for all of you, yet none of you possesses even enough courage to step forward for him.”
Ferda pushed aside the sword lying before William.
Instead, he placed a hand on the man’s head.
“I will personally grant you a painless death. Do you have any last words?”
With death before him, William answered in a trembling voice.
“If you safely take them into the principality, I will have nothing more to say.”
“I have heard you.”
Mana gathered in Ferda’s hand.
A magical impact struck William’s head.
Boom!
With a heavy thud, William’s body collapsed limply.
William had never been an ordinary farmer.
Nor had he ever needed to become the leader of a group of refugees.
He had once been a knight cadet—a man who distinguished himself among his peers.
He understood honor and never neglected the responsibilities of those who possessed power.
His martial skill was also exceptional, and he had accumulated military achievements during the war against the Tatterdemalion King.
No one doubted that he would become a knight.
But his path had not been smooth.
The day of his investiture was drawing near.
More precisely, he had only one final trial left before becoming a knight.
That was when the Grand Council brought the war against the Tatterdemalion King to an end.
The fate of the defeated was always miserable.
That was especially true for the people living in Duke Yurei’s domain.
As the defeated party, Duke Yurei had been ordered to pay sixty thousand golden in reparations.
For an ordinary noble in peacetime, that might not have been an impossible sum.
But Duke Yurei had already spent heavily on the war.
To him, sixty thousand golden was an unbearable burden.
And by then, it was already too late to borrow the money from anyone else.
In the end, he began squeezing the surrounding villages dry to repay the debt.
That caused the number of refugees abandoning their homes to increase.
Duke Yurei had no intention of allowing that to continue.
Population was national power.
He ordered the refugees hunted down, captured, and enslaved.
Some were brutally executed in public as examples.
Tyranny began in the name of unity.
William was required to take part in that mission.
As the final trial separating him from knighthood, he was assigned to hunt escaped serfs.
William led the soldiers and eventually succeeded in tracking down the refugees.
When he first accepted the mission, he had been filled with righteous conviction.
Refugees were harmful.
When the territory was in chaos, citizens who fled instead of offering aid were unforgivable.
They were agitators, forces of evil, and villains who deserved punishment.
Yet the reality before him was different from his ideals.
No.
There was nothing complicated about it.
While burying himself in books and honor, he had simply refused to see what truly mattered.
The people supposedly trying to plunge the duchy into chaos were haggard and powerless.
Nothing remained on their bodies but skin and bone.
Even infants who should have been plump had no strength left to cry and could only gasp weakly for breath.
All they possessed were fire pokers and shovels.
Yet they were desperately resisting an armed force.
The reason was simple.
They wanted to live.
At that moment, William asked himself what he was truly supposed to uphold.
The people served their lord.
A king existed for the sake of the people.
What remained for a ruler who did not serve his people?
Faced with a mission that was simple yet unbearably cruel, William agonized.
Just once.
If he closed his eyes one final time and pretended not to know, his life would proceed smoothly.
In the end, he made his choice.
The sword meant to be turned against the refugees was instead raised against the soldiers who followed him.
William wounded his own men with his sword, making it appear as though he had been betrayed, then sent them away.
Afterward, he cut the throat of the horse he had ridden and fed its meat to the refugees.
He could no longer become a knight.
Yet William did not regret it.
He had never doubted that this was the very reason he had taken up the sword.
For that reason, he did not consider even this death meaningless.
“Gah!”
William jolted upright like a man awakening from a terrible nightmare.
He had been certain he was dead, so there should have been no chance of waking again.
He patted down his body and muttered,
“Is this… the afterlife?”
“You are still among the living.”
“Gah!”
William startled once more.
The voice that had mocked and despised him came from beside him.
When he turned his head, Ferda was there.
“You were unconscious for an hour.”
The hatred William had seen in Ferda’s eyes earlier was nowhere to be found.
For a moment, he wondered whether he truly had crossed into another world.
“I-I am not dead?”
“Of course not. What struck your head was a common stun spell.”
“Why did you not kill me…?”
“Because it would have been a waste to kill a well-trained knight.”
William’s eyes widened.
Ferda looked at him as though he were pathetic.
“Did you think you had hidden it well? It was so obvious that it nearly brought tears to my eyes.”
“I see…”
In hindsight, it was hardly strange.
William wore half-plate armor and carried a sword, after all.
“But I am not a knight. At best, I am nothing more than a failed knight cadet.”
“Even a knight cadet would not normally be found mixed among refugees.”
“That is true.”
“Then you betrayed your lord.”
William smiled bitterly.
“I committed an act worthy of death. A knight betraying his own master…”
It was unmistakably treason, and William did not deny it.
“It does not matter. Did you not just call yourself a mere cadet?”
“That is true, but…”
“You were never formally knighted, so there was no true betrayal. You are merely an ordinary deserter.”
Ferda came from a knightly family and understood such distinctions well.
“I have a question for a man who has just returned from death.”
“Ask me.”
“Was it worth it?”
Ferda turned his head.
The refugees were there.
They were happily sharing the stew among themselves.
“You sacrificed yourself for them, yet not one of them was willing to sacrifice themselves for you. Were they still worth dying for?”
William remembered exactly what Ferda meant.
When he had stood at the edge of death, Ferda had told anyone willing to take his place to break their silence.
Yet not a single person had spoken.
It was the sort of thing that could have inspired a deep sense of betrayal.
“No one wishes to die.”
Even so, William smiled.
“That is why I lead them.”
He had betrayed his lord, but not his convictions.
“I see.”
Ferda watched his contented expression for a moment before turning away.
Beside him knelt another man.
It was Evans, the man who had stolen the single gold coin.
“Your name was Evans, correct?”
“Yes? Y-Yes, it is!”
The kneeling man nodded furiously.
“This man took responsibility for your foolish actions. What do you believe that means?”
“I-I owe him a debt.”
“You owe him nothing less than your life. From this day forward, you will become William’s loyal servant. Should he die, I will personally show you what a truly miserable life looks like. Do you understand?”
“Y-Yes! I understand! I will carve those words into my heart!”
Having said all he wished to say, Ferda rose.
“Then I will see you again, Sir William.”
“Yes. Please travel safely.”
As Ferda walked away, one word continued echoing in William’s ears.
“Sir…?”
Sir.
A title reserved for knights.
Yet William had never become one.
Had Ferda simply made a mistake?
Or did it mean that he truly recognized William as a knight?
For the present William, it was a question without an answer.
The caravan attack appeared to have ended without yielding any meaningful clues.
Just as Ferda was about to return to the castle with Luri, Isabella called out to him.
“Regent, we found people during our questioning who may serve as witnesses. I believe you should hear what they have to say.”
Her tone suggested that the information was important.
Standing beside her were a woman and a child.
Ferda addressed the woman.
“Do you have something to tell me?”
“Forgive me, but it is not I. My child knows something…”
The person Ferda needed to question was a six-year-old boy with a runny nose.
“What is your name?”
“I’m Ian.”
“You should say, ‘My name is Ian.’ Regent, please forgive him. He is still too young to know proper manners…”
“I do not care about trivial forms of address. Ian, do you have something to tell me?”
“…”
The boy nodded.
“It was when the Grim Reaper man and the knight man were talking to each other.”
“The Grim Reaper man?”
The woman answered in the child’s place.
“He was wearing a black robe, so that is what my son thought he looked like.”
“I see. Continue.”
“Yes. The Grim Reaper man rode away on a horse, and I saw him drop something. I don’t think anyone else noticed, so I secretly picked it up to give to my mother.”
“What did he drop?”
“Th-This.”
The woman took out the item she had been keeping and showed it to Ferda.
It was a scarf.
The scarf was made of green fabric and appeared unremarkable at first glance.
But when Ferda saw the emblem embroidered in one corner, his opinion changed.
‘This is…’
Ferda narrowed his eyes.
Unless he was mistaken, the distinctive scales-shaped crest belonged to the Pascal family.
‘And the version with two swords crossed behind it…’
There was no doubt.
It was the emblem of the Pascal Mercenary Company.
“…”