"The Belfort Shield Knights will join you!"
The Shield Knights, beaten to the punch by the Essen Knights attacking the south gate, fell in with us. And so, leading only three units—the Gale Knights, the Swiss assault squad, and the Shield Knights—I raced for the center of the inner keep.
Sporadic arrow fire kept coming, but it did little to slow us.
The inner keep was built heavily in the defenders’ favor. Even with the outer wall breached, reaching it meant winding through a maze of tangled passages, and the whole way arrows poured down from above.
For all its excellent defenses, it wasn’t doing its job at all. The side door opening when no one expected it had caused the entire line to collapse, and that had dealt the garrison a heavy shock.
Only natural.
Five days of merciless bombardment had pushed them to the psychological brink, and when the side door opened so absurdly and the enemy came flooding in, they couldn’t help but lose all will to fight.
For all the commanders’ desperate cries that the Duke’s army would pull back from Breisburg to relieve them, most of the defenders abandoned their posts and fled.
"How do we open the inner keep’s gate?"
"Commander, the gate’s opening right now!"
"What? It’s just opening on its own?"
Just as Anton said, the gate, which had been firmly lowered, was rising. Raising that thing should have been no small feat, yet it was going up without any difficulty at all?
It was the work of the surviving Hoenir agents.
The garrison threw themselves in our path, trying belatedly to stop us.
"Leto, that one there is the gate captain!"
I pointed out a juicy target to Leto, who’d been sulking ever since he failed to earn any ransom in the last battle. The gate captain was a noble.
Leto’s enormous halberd spun like a windmill and sent the charging soldiers flying in an instant. He turned three men to pulp in a single blow. With Leto fighting like a demon, the gate garrison was annihilated in moments.
The gate couldn’t be properly defended because the garrison, with so much ground to cover, was hopelessly undermanned. Prince Louis had dragged off even the stationed soldiers.
As a result, there was almost no force left to defend Radensdorf.
So the militia had joined in to help.
With the militia thrown in, the enemy looked more numerous inside the inner keep, but our side was all elites. If anything, three of theirs could barely handle one of ours.
"Aaargh!"
Whatever their rank or allegiance, there was no choice but to cut down soldiers who resisted. The face and helmet of one soldier who’d boldly lunged at me crumpled completely.
Caught clean by the axe blade of my halberd.
Without even a moment to wipe the blood splashed across my face, I drove the spear tip into the throat of another charging soldier, dropped him, then swept the blade down in a diagonal arc and crushed the last man standing.
I snaked my halberd around the spear of a thrusting defender, hooked his shaft, and yanked it clean out of his grip. Then he died, struck by the razor-sharp axe of my halberd.
"M-monster!"
"Stop him! Gaah!"
To take the inner keep completely alongside the Gale Knights, I pressed forward without hesitation, killing as I went. With Leto and me rampaging on the left and right, the militiamen who’d worked up the courage to defend their city lost all will to fight.
Bang!
"Get out here!"
Soldiers smashed in the doors of house after house and dragged people out by force.
Amid the screams and shouting, the townsfolk trembled in terror.
"Stop the looting! This is Altringen territory!"
"Damn it, don’t kill them and don’t rape them!"
Unlike other cities, Radensdorf was slated to become royal demesne, so the crown prince had strictly forbidden looting. The commanders screamed themselves hoarse trying to stop it, but whether the frenzied soldiers would actually obey was anyone’s guess.
The knights, too, were busy plundering.
Only the Gale Knights and the Swiss assault squad waited for orders. My own men were people of fine character, so it was no surprise they stood fast, but the Swiss mercenaries prized strict discipline.
They surely wanted to loot as well, but their rigid discipline and Alpine spirit reined in their desires. It was the pride and dignity of the Reisläufer, the finest mercenaries in the world.
That was exactly why I wanted to build an army armed with the same iron will as the Swiss mercenaries. Something like the Landsknecht, that mercenary outfit said to have been drawn mainly from southern Germany.
Of course, those men were infamous as the worst mercenaries around. But if I got there first and shaped them like the Gale Knights, wouldn’t they make fine rivals to the Swiss mercenaries?
Hmm, once I have men to spare, I should give it a try.
The mercenary business really was a tidy little earner, after all.
Once the inner keep’s garrison was all cleared out, one of Margareta’s vassals spoke to me.
"It seems our part is done."
"Going back to my sister-in-law?"
"Yes. Now we must protect our mistress from the occupying army."
"Then be sure to hang this banner up. The soldiers won’t intrude."
"Ah, thank you so much! I’ll pray to the holy Lord for your safety."
I sent Margareta’s vassals back. What I’d given them was two banners bearing my crest and the royal crest. I’d secured them from the crown prince beforehand.
Fly these, and not even the soldiers would dare set foot inside.
They and the Hoenir agents had been an enormous help. In fact, it was no exaggeration to call them the top contributors to this battle. I would be sure to report their feats to the crown prince in full detail.
I’d see to it they got rewarded handsomely.
Klaus, who led the surviving Hoenir agents, rushed to join me.
"This way leads to the prison tower!"
The prison tower was hidden deep within the inner keep, reached through a maze of winding paths. It was no ordinary prison; its defenses were said to be very thick, built to hold important figures.
"All units, assemble!"
The soldiers mopping up the stragglers received the signal and gathered. The Swiss assault squad, though, had already pushed into the palace within the inner keep and broken off. By now the palace was probably a sea of blood.
Klaus and his men guided us along the path toward the prison tower.
"Who’s guarding the prison tower?"
"The guard force usually holds it, but they’ve probably all fled."
"...I don’t think so."
"Sorry?"
What my Commander Scouter picked up was a unit known as Johannes’s personal guard. And they were holding the approach to the prison tower.
Klaus’s expression turned grave.
"If the guard is defending here instead of the palace..."
"It means there’s someone in the prison tower important enough for them to protect."
Was it simply because of Old Man Bertheim?
Or some third party that even Hoenir and I knew nothing about?
If that were the case, it made sense the guard would defend it personally. But Radensdorf had fallen regardless. Even if they stopped us, they couldn’t stop the units coming behind us.
And yet they held their ground, which meant...
"Plainly, they’re buying time."
I tightened my grip on the halberd.
Just as I was about to charge in, I saw the vassals who’d gone back to Margareta running toward us. Hm? Had my sister-in-law sent them back to help me?
But they were in a frantic rush.
"Lady Margareta has been taken by the personal guard!"
"What? What’s this now? Taken?"
"It seems our identities have been exposed!"
So the guard had learned that Margareta had been conspiring with the Grand Duke’s army and seized her? The fact that they hadn’t killed her meant they wanted to use her as a bargaining chip later.
She might genuinely be a useful one, too.
She was my father-in-law’s daughter, my wife’s elder sister.
"Help her, my lord! If anything happens to her!"
"Don’t worry. I’ll rescue her no matter what."
So now there was yet another reason I had to take the prison tower.
As I gripped my halberd tight, a quest suddenly materialized before my eyes.
[Marquis Bertheim Quest]
[Rescue Marquis Bertheim within the time limit]
[Time remaining: 32 minutes 15 seconds]
[Reward - 20,000 points, 20 gold coins]
[Item Reward - Marquis Bertheim’s Map]
[Danger Rating ★★★★☆]
What? A time limit?
Instinctively, I realized the old man was in danger.
I immediately used a Courage 200% Boost Scroll.