With no time to savor the triumph of overcoming a formidable enemy, I pulled a torch from the wall and ran down the passage the enemies had fled through. Traces of battle and several enemy corpses lay scattered everywhere.
"...Damn it."
And there was the body of one of my men, too.
There was nothing I could do except close his wide-open eyes. Having sent yet another of my men to the Lord, I allowed myself a brief moment of mourning.
It is my duty to make sure my men’s deaths were not in vain. The deeper I pushed into the darkness-filled passage, the louder the sounds of clashing blades grew.
The corpses of enemies and of my own men grew more numerous.
My men had the Guard commander’s party surrounded.
As I approached, the men who spotted me opened a path. A knight was holding a woman in a fine dress hostage. I identified them through the Manager Scouter.
They were the Guard commander, Antonio, and Margareta. Off to the other side stood Ulrich, his hands bound, and a beautiful girl presumed to be the Bavarian princess. A princess of the Wittelsbachs, was it?
As befitted a family famous for producing handsome men and beautiful women for generations, her striking beauty seemed to light up everything around her. Of course, the current situation was about as far from romantic as it could get.
Antonio was likely holding out with Margareta as a hostage because he believed the black knight Schwarz would surely come. With most of the Guard knights taken down, escape must have been impossible.
It was, quite literally, his last resort.
Unfortunately for him, when I appeared instead of the black knight he’d been waiting for, the atmosphere turned icy in an instant. Antonio glared at me with wide eyes, his bewilderment plain on his face.
"Waiting for that black knight?"
"The Gale Knight? How are you here?"
I made a show of displaying Schwarz’s halberd to Antonio. The moment he recognized that magnificent masterwork known as the Halberd of Hades, the color drained from his face, leaving only despair.
My eyes met Margareta’s and Ulrich’s. Ulrich gave me a silent nod. Margareta gently closed her eyes as if in agreement. It meant: never mind our lives—fight.
They truly were the children of the War Minister, head of the House of Count Steiner.
"Surrender. There is no escape for you."
"Have you forgotten I have a hostage?"
"Don’t bluff. If a fight breaks out here, do you really think the Bavarian princess you’re supposed to protect will come out unharmed? Think carefully."
When I pointedly gestured at the Bavarian princess, conflict rippled across Antonio’s face. If he had no one to protect, he’d have resisted with reckless abandon, but as things stood, he absolutely could not fight me.
Then the Bavarian princess, who had been keeping silent, asked me a question.
"Are you the famous Gale Knight?"
"I am. It is an honor that a noble princess knows my humble reputation."
My eyes remained fixed on Antonio, but I paid my respects to the Bavarian princess. Consternation now crept into Antonio’s despair-stricken face as well.
"Princess! Stand back!"
Exchanging introductions in a life-or-death standoff was rather absurd, I’ll admit. This Bavarian princess’s disposition was resolute (neutral). The defining trait of Resolute is being extremely firm and unyielding.
"Antonio, it seems your plan has fallen apart, so why not surrender? I don’t wish to stay in this foul-smelling underground passage any longer. My dress is ruined, too."
"...Do you not understand that if you are captured, Princess, this becomes a much bigger problem?"
"That’s for my uncle to sort out, not something for me to worry about. Do you think I came to Beren of my own free will in the first place? You and I are both nothing more than chess pieces moved by our masters’ decisions."
"..."
The princess smiled cynically and pressed Antonio to surrender. After agonizing over it, Antonio finally lowered his sword and let it fall to the floor. Thank heavens things didn’t get any more complicated.
But then Margareta, freed from the threat, drove her fist into Antonio’s cheek. Not an open palm—a fist. And a remarkably fast, precise one at that.
Thwack!
The punch must have carried real force, because Antonio, knocked to the ground, stared up at Margareta in a daze. Cradling her fist, Margareta glared down at him for a moment with contempt in her eyes, then walked over to us.
"My lady! You’re bleeding!"
"Don’t make a fuss."
Her retainers rushed over at once and offered Margareta a handkerchief. Looking annoyed, she wrapped the handkerchief around her wounded neck. My men were stunned that a noble lady had flattened the Guard commander with her fists.
Ulrich, released from his bindings, said to Margareta,
"I thought you’d mellowed out after getting married, but that temper of yours hasn’t gone anywhere."
"Hmph, one punch is a cheap price for daring to leave a wound on a lady’s neck."
I’d heard Hilda was afraid of her eldest sister. I think I would be too.
Margareta’s disposition was ambition (neutral), and her drive seemed formidable as well.
With Antonio’s surrender, the Guard laid down their arms.
While my men restrained them, Antonio spoke to me.
"Schwarz was a fighter so fearsome they called him the Reaper. In all my life, I had never seen anyone so strong. I never saw his like even in Italy."
Fighters of that caliber are rare indeed.
He was called the black knight, but he wasn’t of knightly origin, so it seems the duke had kept him hidden as a secret weapon. Otherwise, Schwarz would have earned tremendous fame, like Leto.
It was not the finest knight of Radensdorf—the one who died to Leto in a single blow—but Schwarz who would have stood as the strongest fighter representing this region. Yet I had defeated Schwarz, and I claimed his weapon as a trophy.
As I gazed at the Halberd of Hades in my hands, Antonio continued,
"I was certain that with him there, any pursuer could be stopped. To think there was an even greater monster out there. The renown of the Gale Knight was no lie."
Recognition from an enemy doesn’t bring me much joy. More than that, I wanted to know who was personally responsible for torturing Marquis Bertheim. I grabbed Antonio roughly by the collar.
"Were you the one who did that to Marquis Bertheim?"
"I was. Out of respect for the marquis, I handled it myself."
"Grr, that old man and I were very close, you see."
"...So that was our fatal mistake."
A snarl escaped me as rage seized me with the urge to tear Antonio limb from limb. But killing a noble who has surrendered is taboo, and Grandfather didn’t want revenge.
Above all, Antonio’s value as a witness was high.
Still, if I didn’t land at least one punch, I doubted I could hold my rage in check.
Thwack!
Struck by my fist, loaded with 200% strength, Antonio slumped over without even managing a scream. I flung him down roughly and handed him off to my men. Seeing a side of me they’d never witnessed, my men eyed me warily.
Amid the murderous atmosphere, the Bavarian princess spoke to me.
"I have seen countless knights at the Bavarian palace, but that black knight was among the most skilled I have ever laid eyes on. To defeat such a man, the knights of Beren must be more capable than I thought."
To address me while my bloodlust still hung in the air—this princess clearly had nerve.
"...On the way here, I found the bodies of what appeared to be your attendants, Princess."
"They opposed taking me through the underground passage. So Antonio killed them."
"They served at your side, yet you seem quite unmoved."
"Naturally. They weren’t my attendants—they were spies."
So the Wittelsbachs had used the Bavarian princess to siphon out Radensdorf’s internal information. Through the Manager Scouter, I confirmed she wasn’t lying.
"Sir Streit, if you don’t mind, might I entrust my protection to you?"
She wanted me to be her bodyguard? For a mere knight it would be a tremendous honor, but I’m no mere knight. I’m a lord bearing any number of titles, and I have no time to idle away attending to a princess.
"I am deeply honored, but I have much work to do."
"A capable knight is in demand everywhere, I’m sure. But I have taken a liking to you."
"I dislike you."
Being told to her face that I disliked her seemed to come as quite a shock to this princess of stunning beauty. Her very existence handed Bavaria a justification for war, so it wouldn’t have been strange for one to break out at any moment.