Ariadne jumped down from her horse in a hurry. The gentle mare was startled and twitched a little, but there was no time to take care of it.
Ariadne grabbed the boy's hand and asked him. Although she tried to suppress her voice as much as possible, she could not hide her excitement.
“You see this?”
The boy looked straight at Ariadne with sparkling eyes.
“It shines so beautifully!”
He was a typical kid his age, eager to show off what he knew.
“I’ve never seen anyone like you in the Central Continent!”
And every word the boy gave was the information Ariadne had been desperately searching for.
“Someone like me? Is there anyone else with shining fingertips?”
“There aren’t many in my hometown, but there are often!”
There were many things to ask. Ariadne wanted to move to a quieter place with the boy first.
“Where do you live?”
But the ten-year-old was not a smooth conversationalist. Instead of giving the address, the boy just said what he wanted to say.
“Sister, you’re really amazing! But something’s a little weird?”
“What’s strange?”
“There’s only one ‘sign’!”
“‘Sign’...?”
Her ears perked up.
"This!"
The boy pointed to the area under her left eye. Ariadne absentmindedly touched the area under her eye. It was the exact spot where the mysterious bloodshot tear stain had appeared at the same time as her return.
“There should be multiple ‘marks’?”
The words of the gypsy woman of old who had cried out came to mind again.
“You are half and half!”
“What do you mean, half and half? Does that have anything to do with it?”
Looking at Ariadne who was asking urgently, the slovenly boy lifted a finger and put it to his lips.
"Shhhh!"
The child innocently looked up at the sky.
“They are watching from heaven!”
The arm of the gypsy woman dried up like a mummy. The corpse of the former maid, Giada, flies away as ashes. Ariadne shuddered.
Meanwhile, the boy was very encouraged by the fact that an adult was listening to his story.
“Let me tell you this. Have you ever turned down an offer recently, Sister?”
“Proposal? What proposal?”
She receives a dozen offers a day, ranging from requests to hire a relative to proposals to open a business in the South.
“Maybe he asked you to sacrifice yourself for the tribe.”
It was a nation, not a tribe, but she understood it perfectly. Ariadne had only received one similar offer.
But, perhaps because he thought his pretty older sister didn't believe him, the boy kept dropping hints.
“Well, it has to do with what goes into your mouth. Food, but also money and power and things like that...”
Ariadne was impressed. She decided to give the boy what he wanted.
“...That’s amazing. How did you know?”
“I am the direct descendant of the strongest Salman of Balasa Ordo! This is a piece of cake!”
The boy, smiling with pride, whispered in Ariadne's ear as if telling her a secret.
“When making important decisions, follow the halo. Didn’t the halo-like it when you refused?”
She never specifically asked him about the halo... But thinking about it, it was definitely like that.
When she defeated Camellia's father, Baron Castiglione, and prevented the Lord of Gaeta from surrendering to the Kingdom of Gallico, the glow of her fingertips gave her enthusiastic support.
It danced so hard all afternoon that her eyes hurt.
After sharply rejecting Cesare, the Duke of Pisano's offer, and returning to his room, nothing happened.
It was so quiet that she'd believe it was a depressed teenage girl who had locked herself in her room.
“Accept the meaning of the halo.”
“Is it right to follow?”
It was a sweet story to hear. It seemed like there were absolute guidelines.
It's a relief to know that there are instructions she can follow without having to think about it.
“They don’t always say the right thing... but this time they’re right. They’ll be right for a while.”
Ariadne was quite embarrassed.
"What?"
“Sometimes it lies. It's not a good girl. But my sister hasn’t reached the turning point yet. You probably haven’t reached it yet.”
Are the halos lying?
“Is there a human-like doctor in the light swarm?”
Ariadne grabbed the boy's hand and asked him. Although she tried to suppress her voice as much as possible, she could not hide her excitement.
“You see this?”
The boy looked straight at Ariadne with sparkling eyes.
“It shines so beautifully!”
He was a typical kid his age, eager to show off what he knew.
“I’ve never seen anyone like you in the Central Continent!”
And every word the boy gave was the information Ariadne had been desperately searching for.
“Someone like me? Is there anyone else with shining fingertips?”
“There aren’t many in my hometown, but there are often!”
There were many things to ask. Ariadne wanted to move to a quieter place with the boy first.
“Where do you live?”
But the ten-year-old was not a smooth conversationalist. Instead of giving the address, the boy just said what he wanted to say.
“Sister, you’re really amazing! But something’s a little weird?”
“What’s strange?”
“There’s only one ‘sign’!”
“‘Sign’...?”
Her ears perked up.
"This!"
The boy pointed to the area under her left eye. Ariadne absentmindedly touched the area under her eye. It was the exact spot where the mysterious bloodshot tear stain had appeared at the same time as her return.
“There should be multiple ‘marks’?”
The words of the gypsy woman of old who had cried out came to mind again.
“You are half and half!”
“What do you mean, half and half? Does that have anything to do with it?”
Looking at Ariadne who was asking urgently, the slovenly boy lifted a finger and put it to his lips.
"Shhhh!"
The child innocently looked up at the sky.
“They are watching from heaven!”
The arm of the gypsy woman dried up like a mummy. The corpse of the former maid, Giada, flies away as ashes. Ariadne shuddered.
Meanwhile, the boy was very encouraged by the fact that an adult was listening to his story.
“Let me tell you this. Have you ever turned down an offer recently, Sister?”
“Proposal? What proposal?”
She receives a dozen offers a day, ranging from requests to hire a relative to proposals to open a business in the South.
“Maybe he asked you to sacrifice yourself for the tribe.”
It was a nation, not a tribe, but she understood it perfectly. Ariadne had only received one similar offer.
But, perhaps because he thought his pretty older sister didn't believe him, the boy kept dropping hints.
“Well, it has to do with what goes into your mouth. Food, but also money and power and things like that...”
Ariadne was impressed. She decided to give the boy what he wanted.
“...That’s amazing. How did you know?”
“I am the direct descendant of the strongest Salman of Balasa Ordo! This is a piece of cake!”
The boy, smiling with pride, whispered in Ariadne's ear as if telling her a secret.
“When making important decisions, follow the halo. Didn’t the halo-like it when you refused?”
She never specifically asked him about the halo... But thinking about it, it was definitely like that.
When she defeated Camellia's father, Baron Castiglione, and prevented the Lord of Gaeta from surrendering to the Kingdom of Gallico, the glow of her fingertips gave her enthusiastic support.
It danced so hard all afternoon that her eyes hurt.
After sharply rejecting Cesare, the Duke of Pisano's offer, and returning to his room, nothing happened.
It was so quiet that she'd believe it was a depressed teenage girl who had locked herself in her room.
“Accept the meaning of the halo.”
“Is it right to follow?”
It was a sweet story to hear. It seemed like there were absolute guidelines.
It's a relief to know that there are instructions she can follow without having to think about it.
“They don’t always say the right thing... but this time they’re right. They’ll be right for a while.”
Ariadne was quite embarrassed.
"What?"
“Sometimes it lies. It's not a good girl. But my sister hasn’t reached the turning point yet. You probably haven’t reached it yet.”
Are the halos lying?
“Is there a human-like doctor in the light swarm?”
Ariadne asked urgently. Only after asking her question did she realize that the boy might not answer her question.
It was strange to think of the example of Giadana the Gypsy woman. It was just as urgent.
But the reason the boy couldn't answer wasn't because he didn't want to talk.
“This little bastard!”
A wrinkled hand flew out from the crowd and hit the boy hard on the back of the head.
"Ouch!"
The boy screamed and covered his head, but instead of getting angry, he looked back in horror.
“Ha, Grandma...!”
“What are you doing here, you little punk!”
It was an old woman who shouted in a language that Ariadne could not understand. The old woman in the red skirt scolded her grandchild in the same way.
“Didn’t I tell you not to get involved in this kind of thing?”
“That, that...”
The boy protested with a tearful face.
“The turning point of the ‘Prophet’ is right in front of us. And it’s a bit strange. This is really interesting and there’s a lot to learn, and I want to leave a record of it...”
Ding!
It was the sound of an old woman feeding chestnuts to her grandson.
"Ouch!"
The boy looked up at his grandmother with an expression on his face as if he was about to cry.
But the old woman looked at her grandson, her only blood relative, without any guilt, and without any pain.
“That kind of life is over now! It has nothing to do with us!”
“But we are sorcerers!”
“Forget it!”
The old woman who shouted like that was ironically carrying the staff of the seal that indicated her status as a Salman priestess of Balasa Ordo, and still wearing the jade earrings that were so heavy they dangled from her earlobes as proof of her noble status.
“This old woman has thrown everything away to save you from that fate! Don’t make my decision in vain!”
“I, I...”
Ariadne, who saw the boy being scolded terribly, spoke to the old woman cautiously.
“My name is Ariadne de Mare. I am a member of Cardinal de Mare’s household. If you could invite me to your house and treat me to a cup of tea...”
The old woman looked Ariadne up and down with cold eyes. There was a red teardrop only under her left eye.
The old man in the red skirt raised her hand and stroked Ariadne's forehead without saying a word.
The pretty girl with the face towel looked startled, but she paid no attention.
Swip swip.
The old woman swept her forehead with her fingertips as if sweeping away the dust, then clicked her tongue as she read the scent of magic on her fingerprints.
“It must be the work of the Amhara bastards.”
Ariadne, who did not understand, asked back.
"Yes?"
But the old woman didn't answer.
"Huh!"
Instead, she raised her staff high and slammed it against the floor.
Ariadne thought that the sound the staff made when striking the ground was particularly loud.
She looked down at the floor for a moment and then looked back at where the old woman and the boy had been, only to find that they had completely disappeared into the crowd.
“Oh, no!”
The secret of the return is getting further away. It's a clue that she somehow found, but she can't just let it go like this.
She looked for Giuseppe urgently.
“Giuseppe, Giuseppe!”
“Did you call, Miss?”
“Find the grandparent!”
"Yes?"
“Grandmother and grandson, with red skirts and strangely shaped canes. The grandson is about ten years old! He looks foreign, not Etruscan, but not typical! Long hair braided in three or four braids! The boy has black hair!”
Giuseppe nodded.
“I’ll try to find it as soon as the distribution is over.”
“Distribution is not the problem!”
Ariadne screamed in a new way. Giuseppe was also startled, as it was the first time he had seen her usually calm master panic so much.
“Right now!”
"All right."
Giuseppe quickly returned to the tent and dispatched half of the men controlling the rope into the crowd.
They quickly dispersed, but Ariadne had an ominous feeling that it would probably be difficult to find the old woman and the boy by manpower.
***
The new Duke of Pisano returned to the Pisano fiefdom after failing to procure large quantities of food, but he did not return empty-handed.
He returned to his territory after airlifting about 50 crossbows, a type of cutting-edge weapon, from the capital.
It was a great feat to have acquired a network of craftsmen who had developed connections to create and collect items such as saddles, new types of stirrups, and craft clocks.
But he personally realized how frustrating it was to have the equipment but no know-how.
“They’re like country bumpkins.”
He looked down at the training ground and ground his teeth.
About 300 privates had returned to their unit after being persuaded to give them an excessive amount of gold coins instead of food as their salary was training below.
They gave crossbows to only the smartest ones, but none of them knew how to handle them properly.
“Get in position! Hold on! The second row can shoot right after the first row shoots!”
There was no proper instructor. Eventually, the Duke of Pisano himself, who was frustrated, jumped in among the commoners and gave a demonstration, but the progress was sluggish.
“Because it’s not something I’m familiar with...”
“Just aim and hold on! What’s so hard about it?”
The soldiers were like scarecrows, and the three captains who were supposed to encourage them had no motivation.
One of the captains even went so far as to rebel.
“Why can’t you just use a strong bow? Why bother buying something when you could be using it just fine...”
The idea that the military is a hierarchy is something that only applies to well-disciplined armies.
The Pisano estate's private army was a ragtag bunch, and Cesare was a stone that rolled in.
There was a reason why the captain and soldiers all went on strike.
Crossbows had better penetrative power than bows, making them perfect for dealing with heavy cavalry, but since they were huge and had to be fixed to the ground to fire, using crossbows as weapons meant that the archers themselves had poor mobility.
If they remained as archers, they could disperse in case of emergency and escape using geographical advantages, but if they went out to the battlefield as crossbowmen, they would be annihilated.
There has never been such a difference of opinion between commanders and soldiers.
After a scuffle with his soldiers, Cesare eventually admitted that it was impossible to change units within a week and decided to take his archers to the battlefield.
“...”
The young Duke of Pisano was very uneasy, for he thought that his archers could not penetrate the heavy cavalry.
“Oh my, Your Highness. Don’t worry! If you were a crossbowman, you would only have 50, but if you are a strong bowman, you would have 300!”
The centurion who had been advocating for the strong bow next to Cesare opened his mouth diligently.
“The archers of the Pisano estate are so excellent that their names will be recorded in history!”
Isn't that what you mean by stale?
“Besides, aren’t we going to use the terrain? Look at this, what a great location this mountain is!”
The greatest advantage that Private Pisano had was that he was quick to get around.
They climbed up to the high ground and lay in ambush against the wind.
“If you shoot from above, the arrow will be stronger. And the wind is blowing from behind to front! I tell you it can penetrate armor and everything. Just trust me.”
“...”
If you mixed crossbowmen and bowmen, it would have been 50 crossbows and 250 bows instead of 50 crossbows.
But now that the decision had been made, it was no one else's business but the commander.
Cesare kept his mouth shut and held the reins of his black horse tightly. The poor horse shook its head in agony.
"Excuse me!"
A group of about 20 Gallico heavy cavalrymen came into view. They appeared to be a small force that had broken away to raid for food.
“Coming! Heavy cavalry, 20th cavalry! Advancing at a brisk pace to the 18 o’clock direction!”
The scouts gave a signal to the main body of troops lying in ambush. At that signal, Cesare raised his right hand.
“All troops, prepare to fire!”
300 archers simultaneously aimed at the shadows of the cavalry visible below the mountain.
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