A week had passed since we took Radensdorf.
Enough time to move past Grandfather’s death.
I sent word of Marquis Bertheim’s passing to Hilda and Wilhelm Göring. I worried the news would devastate Göring, who had been anxiously awaiting the return of the master he’d served for decades.
Hilda would grieve too, but she would pull through bravely. For our child’s sake, if nothing else. As for me, having been draped in a whole string of titles, I shed most of them.
Schneider was tapped as artillery commander, and the combined cavalry was disbanded. I stepped down as aide to the supreme commander as well. My only remaining title now is commander of the Gale Knights.
And the Duke of Radensdorf surrendered.
Perhaps he decided further resistance was pointless, but with the rebel leader’s surrender, the rebel nobles who had been resisting sporadically in the east surrendered as well.
The grand duke is said to be on his way to Radensdorf with the duke in tow, and the crown prince is preparing a welcome ceremony and a massive victory banquet to match. These days, so much as catching a glimpse of the crown prince is next to impossible.
Only when the grand duke officially declares the war’s end at Radensdorf will this wretched civil war finally be over. But with the duke’s surrender, it was the nobles and knights who grew restless instead.
"The Gale Knight is trying to hog all the glory!"
"It’s a royal conspiracy to deny us our chance!"
"This is an injustice against us nobles!"
A consensus formed among them that I was monopolizing all the glory. It was utter nonsense, but the crown prince told me to take this chance to relax, and delegated the small, tedious tasks to the nobles.
It wasn’t just done to appease the nobles clamoring to pad their merit at this late stage. The truth was, only Radensdorf itself had been stabilized; the surrounding areas were practically lawless.
Deserters were running rampant. The mercenaries in particular, having gone unpaid, had begun raiding villages, and the damage was snowballing.
So a stage was set for the merit-starved nobles to earn their glory by mopping up the raiders. I’d taken all the major achievements, so those little scraps were shoved off onto them, you could say.
I’ve been through hell all this time, so now I’m going to rest. Once the war ends, I plan to return to Feuzen, hole up, and laze around with Hilda. I don’t want to travel anywhere anymore.
Tent life is fine once or twice, but I’m not a nomad.
"A craftsman who maintained the ducal family’s arms and armor?"
"Yes. He’s called a master artisan here in Radensdorf, so I’m certain he’ll be to your liking."
"Good. Lead the way."
Wenzenberg of Strasbourg boasted with full confidence. I was visiting Radensdorf’s workshop district with my attendants in tow. The purpose was to repair my plate armor.
Wenzenberg had come to enjoy the status of monopoly merchant by supplying our scarce gunpowder, but since I managed him so closely, he’d been squeezed hard on taxes. I took a full eighty percent.
The reason he couldn’t even protest was that Wenzenberg was deeply afraid of me. He surely never wanted to relive the terror of the day my mind-reading trick laid bare everything, down to his hidden assets.
Still, even while being taxed mercilessly, he made considerable profits handling large-scale military supplies and war spoils. That’s because I didn’t just use the stick; I gave him a decent carrot too.
"Still no luck finding the saltpeter maker I asked about?"
"My apologies. Most of the makers seem to prefer France."
"If even one of them came over to us, it would be worth it."
The German lands are not a good place to do business. In France, where the nobility’s power has weakened, tariffs between territories are uniform, but in the German lands, every territory has its own strong character, so tariffs vary wildly.
With tariffs, tolls, and market taxes all due, commerce itself was no easy business except for the few wealthy merchants who’d secured tariff exemption privileges. Thank goodness for the Main River, at least.
It’s no exaggeration to call the Main River the lifeline of the Duchy of Beren.
The saltpeter makers keep turning down my offers, likely because they’ve judged that setting up business in a tiny territory like Feuzen won’t bring them much profit.
Even so, I urged Wenzenberg to keep searching.
Someone will bite eventually. And even if he’s a fraud, I can spot it.
"My name is Radensschmidt."
"An old blacksmith family of Radensdorf?"
"Yes. I am the twelfth-generation master."
It was a family with a remarkably long history. Commoner family or not, a lineage stretching back twelve generations deserved genuine respect. For reference, I’m the fourth generation of the Streit family.
But the craftsman’s wife and daughter, who had come out to greet us with him, took one look at me and started whispering to each other. When my eyes met theirs, their faces turned bright red. What was with those looks, as if they were gazing at someone they idolized?
"Hm, you’ve treated this masterwork armor quite roughly."
My armor was in a shambles. Driven by the single-minded resolve to save Grandfather, I had charged in headlong again and again like a madman, and my armor had suffered this badly as a result.
First, the crossbowmen’s attacks had punched holes in the arm, shoulder, and thigh guards. And my death match with the black knight had left so many scratches and dents that the armor wasn’t fit to wear around anymore.
"Venetian make takes a long time to repair, so you’ll need to give me ample time."
"I won’t hound you to rush, so restore it as good as new."
After leaving my armor with the craftsman, I stopped by the plaza for a bit. Radensdorf’s Grand Plaza was every bit as vast as Breisburg’s, and just as crowded. But today, the crowd was packed unusually thick.
Hm, it seems some street musicians are putting on a performance.
Well then, shall we hear what song they’re singing?
"The wolf from the west! The great knight! We call him the Gale Knight!"
"Oh! Wicked apostle of Satan, steeped in darkness! Taste the blade of the gale!"
"Lovely princess, you weep the nights away, waiting for your wolf!"
"When the darkness lifts and the radiant sun shines down, the wolf shall drink the princess’s tears!"
"Oh! Beloved princess, great knight! May their love be eternal!"
...I didn’t just mishear that, did I?
The Gale Knight? Why are they singing about the Gale Knight?
The lyrics were alarming enough that I turned to look at my men. Anton and the others desperately averted their eyes. Why were these idiots acting like this all of a sudden? Wenzenberg was even clapping along in delight.
"They’re performing the Gale Knight Heroic Ballad, Part Four! What luck, hahaha!"
"That’s supposed to be my heroic ballad? No—why?"
"Pardon? Well, isn’t the Gale Knight Heroic Ballad famous?"
Wenzenberg answered my question with a question.
What on earth was going on here?
Had I ever performed heroics thrilling enough to send the citizens of Radensdorf into a frenzy? No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t recall any. If anything, I was the one who had beaten down the citizen militia.
Anton and the men, squirming where they stood, finally came clean.
"The truth is, the men and I were bragging about your exploits at a tavern a little while back."
"And the musicians there got so fired up that we ran our mouths even more."
"We told them you crushed the enemy single-handedly, defeated the terrifying black knight, and captured the princess. But somewhere along the way the story got adapted, and now they’re singing something completely different."
So this was all their doing.
If Hilda got the wrong idea, I’d string them all up.
The great Gale Knight who rescues a princess kidnapped by an apostle of Satan? I hadn’t rescued her—I had taken her prisoner. This went beyond distortion; it was a complete rewrite.
And who loved whom, exactly?
Listening closely to Part Four of the ballad, it turned out the princess and I were in love with each other. The masses adore love stories between knights and princesses, and the street musicians had clearly rewritten the lyrics to suit the public’s taste.
Wenzenberg, who had been so engrossed in the ballad, began stealing nervous glances at me.
"C-Commander! P-Please calm down!"
"I gave you idiots leave, and you went blabbing stories like that at a tavern?"
"F-Forgive us! We’ll never run our mouths again!"
"Your training has been lacking, hasn’t it? Today’s the day we fix that."
With a heavy heart, like a general executing his own beloved officer, I raised my fists at my men.
"When the darkness lifts and the radiant sun shines down, the wolf shall drink the princess’s tears!"
"Gahk! C-Commander! Argh!"
"Oh! Beloved princess, great knight! May their love be eternal!"
"Aaagh! Spare me!"
The wails of Anton and the men were completely drowned out by the crowd singing along. But regardless of my fury, the Gale Knight Heroic Ballad, Part Four, spread like wildfire across all of Radensdorf.