“Commence firing.”
At Cesare's command, a shower of arrows began to fall from the grass toward the heavy cavalry at the bottom of the hill.
Thud thud thud thud!
With only about 300 units, it wasn't as spectacular as what you'd see in a large-scale battle, but it was the most spectacular feat that a local private could pull off.
And soon after that, Cesare realized that his worries were unfounded.
Ting! Tidding!
It was ominous from the start.
Tiddy ding! Tiddy ding!
The silver armor of the Gallic cavalry easily deflected the rain of arrows that poured down like a downpour. The knights' screams, as expected, did not resonate.
He couldn't even hear the neighing of an excited horse. Those are real elite soldiers.
Cesare instinctively knew that he was doomed. It was before the Gallico Knights had even turned their horses toward the hill.
“All troops, retreat!”
A tenor voice gave an urgent order. The soldiers, who had not grasped the situation, were confused. Cesare paid no attention and turned his horse around.
It was the last shred of pride that gave the order to retreat before running away alone.
“Retreat inside the walls!”
He shouted one more time out of conscience. It was a nice retreat, an escape.
It was also the moment when the self-fulfilling prophecy of the soldiers who had stubbornly refused to use crossbows before the start of the operation to think about an escape route after defeat became reality.
“Ugh!”
“Hey, hey! Get out of the way!”
“Let’s go together!”
The Pisano Estate's private soldiers began to run away in a panic. Their commander's sleek black horse was already galloping over the mountainside.
“Hey, hey, hey!”
“Fuck! That guy is called a commander!”
“The nobles from the center are like that!”
They tried swearing at each other, but nothing changed. From now on, survival depends entirely on one's own abilities.
The unit structure was broken, the commanders were meaningless, and the lords and the state could not protect them. As always.
Three hundred young men from the countryside threw down their bows and began to run, risking their lives.
Duchess Rubina, who received her son's letter and understood the situation, was appealing to the King in tears.
“Your Majesty, this was a ridiculous plan from the start. To stop the elite knights of the Gallico army with the private soldiers of a single territory!”
“Ugh...”
She indeed changed her words as if turning over the palm of her hand, but in the end, it was the King himself who put his seal on it.
Leo III, who couldn't even point out that "you were the one who suggested sending Cesare to the border" because of his last shred of pride, just sighed deeply.
“What happened to what I told you? Shouldn’t you have gotten a reply by now?”
“Just wait patiently, my lord, it hasn’t even been a few days!”
Leo III, unable to bear it any longer, raised his voice.
"Your Majesty!"
Rubina looked at Leo III with a tearful face.
It seemed as if he could hear the cries that followed, 'How could you do this to me!'
Ever since her ordeal in the dungeons, she has been lashing out whenever she feels Leo III has crossed a line.
She got lung disease from breathing in so much mold. It's a good thing she didn't accuse him of getting syphilis.
Even now, as she took a deep breath, ready to cough, Leo III frowned and turned his head away.
“Your Majesty, Count Marquez requests an audience.”
The voice of the servant that rang out at that time was like nectar falling from the sky.
“Oh, listen!”
Leo III was only too happy to grant the audience.
Count Marquez, who walked in with such confidence, looked so beautiful. However, Leo III soon regretted his choice.
“Your Majesty, your reply to your order has arrived.”
“Oh! Everything?”
“They all arrived this morning.”
“Yes, let me hear the conditions.”
This is exactly what Rubina asked for.
“Please hire a condottiero!”
Condottiero. Captain of the mercenaries.
A foreign legion that leads its own armed forces and is loyal to its employer, no, to its employer's gold.
They are a group of people who are ridiculed as hunting dogs from hell because they will do anything for money.
Loyalty was so high that even the devil would stick his tongue out at the cost of not having it even if he tried to eat and die, but it was cheap compared to maintaining a standing army.
“The conditions are!”
When Count Marquez remained silent, the King became angry.
“...No one accepted.”
"What?"
Leo III looked at Count Marquez with a bewildered expression.
“Variatti, Garozzo, Pontarini. Anyone?”
Count Marquez nodded slowly to Leo III, who had named three condottiero as his star-studded consorts.
“The last to refuse was the Ironclad Variant. The reasons for their refusal were the same for all three.”
“Are we short on money?”
The Etruscan kingdom set a maximum price for its mercenary captains and ordered them to bid within this amount.
The amount called for by Palazzo Carlo was not very generous. Leo III regretted not spending a little more.
But Count Marquez shook his head.
“It’s not about money.”
“Then! What on earth do those money-crazy people care about besides gold?”
Several negative scenarios flashed through Leo III's mind.
Do you not want to be hostile to the Gallico Kingdom, whose national power is growing by the day? Do you think the Etruscans are that bad?
Or, did I, who adored Rubina and made Cesare my nephew, seem so unimposing? So much so that even the hounds chasing gold would not want to associate with me?
“The reason was that we could not send troops to a place where an epidemic was spreading.”
“...Ah.”
The foundation of a mercenary captain's livelihood is his well-trained troops.
Each and every one of them looked like a well-oiled war machine with a jaw that had been worn down by battlefields for over a decade.
In other words, it means that it is difficult to replace someone after they die.
There was already much criticism that the condottieros took the lukewarm safe route even when they could have won a complete victory, for fear of damaging their own forces.
“If the Black Death were to spread, the condottiero would be helpless. All three flatly refused.”
“...”
It was the last of the nations without a standing army.
The mercenaries who were thought to be available for hire at any time are refusing requests no matter how much gold was paid.
Leo III remained silent and glanced beside him. There was Duchess Rubina.
“Your Majesty! Our Cesare!”
Rubina had a fit, not knowing that what she had done might have put her son in danger.
No, maybe she knew but didn't want to know.
Leo III could not bear to appear in public before his lady. He became very angry and ordered the Count of Marquez to do so.
“Useless ones! Give the flue to all the other condottiero, except for Variatti, Garrozzo, and Pontarini! Tell them I’ll give them as much gold as they want! Hurry up!”
The rest were either on bad terms with the Etruscan kingdom, too friendly with the Gallico kingdom, or had mercenary forces that were too small to be considered suitable for dealing with heavy cavalry.
But the King had to show Duchess Rubina something first.
Count Marquez, who realized this, also bowed his head without saying a word.
“...Yes, Your Majesty.”
But one doubt lingered in his mind.
'If you turn the chimney, your concubine's heart may be set free. But even if you turn the chimney like this, reinforcements will not come.'
He raised his head slightly and stole a glance at the King.
'Let's say it's a love game. What on earth are you going to do about the border...?'
After his first battle was a miserable defeat, Cesare returned to his castle and wrote a letter to Duchess Rubina.
He reported the terrible defeat and said that he could not do it, and asked His Majesty the King to somehow get him out of there, either by sending reinforcements or by sending a replacement.
Public opinion in the castle was in an uproar. Even though it was a small raiding force, 300 men were a considerable portion of the forces that the Pisano estate could now field.
The commander abandoned his troops on the battlefield and returned alone.
Of course, many of them returned because they were local residents. About a hundred people returned to the castle alive.
It was a considerable number for a man fleeing on foot against cavalry.
But coming back alive was worse.
“Well, the Duke of Pisano!”
The rumor that the handsome black steed of Cesare, Duke of Pisano, was the first to show his rear and flee the battlefield spread quickly through the castle through the mouths of the returning soldiers.
Cesare's very stay in the Pisano estate was a humiliation.
He couldn't tell if it was true or not, but everyone from the Duke's chamberlain to the serf passing by on the street seemed to be casting cold, accusing glances at him.
Cesare was very sensitive to other people's gaze.
What other people thought of him had a direct impact on his mood and happiness from day to day.
To him now, the Pisano estate was hell.
“...This won’t do. I can’t stay here any longer.”
But his mother's reply to Cesare's letter asking her to somehow speak well of His Majesty the King and allow him to return to the capital was resolute.
“Don’t come back. If you die, die in Pisano’s territory.”
Cesare kept the fact that he was going to his fiefdom and that he would be in charge of border defense there as secret as possible.
They didn't even let anyone around them know and they secretly obtained supplies and rations.
But Duchess Rubina was tight-lipped.
Unable to resist bragging about her son, she kept quiet in the San Carlo society where she had become a new key figure.
“His Majesty the King sent the Duke of Pisano up to the territory to guard the borders?”
“I guess you have a plan to use the Duke of Pisano in a big way. My congratulations, Duchess.”
After Cesare was granted the surname of de Carlo and was promoted to Duke, those who wanted to please this mother and son never called them 'Duke Cesare' or 'Duchess Rubina'.
A prestigious title has been created that can be boasted about.
Rubina took this as a sign that she was truly accepted into society and that she was finally free from any pressure from Queen Marguerite.
“Hahaha. Who knows His Majesty the King’s mind? But who knows? Maybe one day he will appoint Cesare as Commander-in-Chief?”
“There is no one else who can do it except the Duke of Pisano.”
“Amazing!”
Cesare must never return to the capital without some achievement.
Instead, what Rubina sent to Pisano's fiefdom were private soldiers sent by the feudal lords of each region.
Unable to hire condottieros, Leo III issued a requisition to all lords throughout the country.
"Border defense. The lords of each region must fulfill their oath of allegiance."
However, the oath of allegiance is only fulfilled when there is loyalty.
Excuses poured in from all over the country. Old age... The Black Death was rampant in the territory... Food...
In the end, only 1,500 soldiers from the northern and central regions, where the plague had spread less, arrived in the capital.
Leo III did as he was told, but what could not be done was not done. The King dispatched all 1,500 men to the Pisano fiefdom.
Although he was an illegitimate child sent to the border without much thought, Cesare now became Leo III's only hope.
Ugh!
The only sound was the rustling of Cesare's teeth in the Duke of Pisano's bedroom, which was filled with antique furniture that was far from fashionable for Cesare's taste and had tapestries hanging from the high ceiling.
There was no way out. He wanted to die. Then someone knocked on the door.
Knock knock.
"Who is this!"
Cesare shouted in an irritated voice.
“Your Excellency, a guest has arrived.”
"Guest?"
“She is a woman from the capital.”
Cesare's frown deepened.
He had long since given up his debaucherous life.
It's not like he's suddenly turned into a monk, but at least he hasn't done anything recently that would make a woman stalk him by his standards.
“What kind of woman is that...”
The young lady of the Viscountess Vanedetto? She's a woman he met briefly almost a year ago. They had almost no physical contact.
For someone to chase him all the way to a border town and ask to meet him is crazy.
Mrs. Ragusa? Oh, she could have done that. But if she was going to do something crazy, she should have done it a long time ago. Why now, after almost half a year?
“I said I won’t meet her.”
Well, it didn't matter either way. If he doesn't see it, it's a jackpot.
He turned over and lay down under the blanket. He hadn't even had a drink, but his head was still hurting.
If I had my way, I'd drink white wine right now, no. Today, I feel like drinking soju.
Yes, he could have emptied the entire bottle of Grappa, but a sense of responsibility stopped Cesare.
“Over there... Your Excellency the Duke.”
“Oh, why!”
“She said she would wait until you met her.”
The guest had asked him to say, "You'll regret it if you don't come out," but the servant, who didn't dare to say it, said it in gentle words.
Cesare shuddered. How shameless is that stalker?!
“Oh! Who the hell is that crazy bitch!”
“Her name is Ariadne de Mare, daughter of Cardinal de Mare.”
“!”
Cesare threw off the covers from his huge bed and got up.
At Cesare's command, a shower of arrows began to fall from the grass toward the heavy cavalry at the bottom of the hill.
Thud thud thud thud!
With only about 300 units, it wasn't as spectacular as what you'd see in a large-scale battle, but it was the most spectacular feat that a local private could pull off.
And soon after that, Cesare realized that his worries were unfounded.
Ting! Tidding!
It was ominous from the start.
Tiddy ding! Tiddy ding!
The silver armor of the Gallic cavalry easily deflected the rain of arrows that poured down like a downpour. The knights' screams, as expected, did not resonate.
He couldn't even hear the neighing of an excited horse. Those are real elite soldiers.
Cesare instinctively knew that he was doomed. It was before the Gallico Knights had even turned their horses toward the hill.
“All troops, retreat!”
A tenor voice gave an urgent order. The soldiers, who had not grasped the situation, were confused. Cesare paid no attention and turned his horse around.
It was the last shred of pride that gave the order to retreat before running away alone.
“Retreat inside the walls!”
He shouted one more time out of conscience. It was a nice retreat, an escape.
It was also the moment when the self-fulfilling prophecy of the soldiers who had stubbornly refused to use crossbows before the start of the operation to think about an escape route after defeat became reality.
“Ugh!”
“Hey, hey! Get out of the way!”
“Let’s go together!”
The Pisano Estate's private soldiers began to run away in a panic. Their commander's sleek black horse was already galloping over the mountainside.
“Hey, hey, hey!”
“Fuck! That guy is called a commander!”
“The nobles from the center are like that!”
They tried swearing at each other, but nothing changed. From now on, survival depends entirely on one's own abilities.
The unit structure was broken, the commanders were meaningless, and the lords and the state could not protect them. As always.
Three hundred young men from the countryside threw down their bows and began to run, risking their lives.
***
Duchess Rubina, who received her son's letter and understood the situation, was appealing to the King in tears.
“Your Majesty, this was a ridiculous plan from the start. To stop the elite knights of the Gallico army with the private soldiers of a single territory!”
“Ugh...”
She indeed changed her words as if turning over the palm of her hand, but in the end, it was the King himself who put his seal on it.
Leo III, who couldn't even point out that "you were the one who suggested sending Cesare to the border" because of his last shred of pride, just sighed deeply.
“What happened to what I told you? Shouldn’t you have gotten a reply by now?”
“Just wait patiently, my lord, it hasn’t even been a few days!”
Leo III, unable to bear it any longer, raised his voice.
"Your Majesty!"
Rubina looked at Leo III with a tearful face.
It seemed as if he could hear the cries that followed, 'How could you do this to me!'
Ever since her ordeal in the dungeons, she has been lashing out whenever she feels Leo III has crossed a line.
She got lung disease from breathing in so much mold. It's a good thing she didn't accuse him of getting syphilis.
Even now, as she took a deep breath, ready to cough, Leo III frowned and turned his head away.
“Your Majesty, Count Marquez requests an audience.”
The voice of the servant that rang out at that time was like nectar falling from the sky.
“Oh, listen!”
Leo III was only too happy to grant the audience.
Count Marquez, who walked in with such confidence, looked so beautiful. However, Leo III soon regretted his choice.
“Your Majesty, your reply to your order has arrived.”
“Oh! Everything?”
“They all arrived this morning.”
“Yes, let me hear the conditions.”
This is exactly what Rubina asked for.
“Please hire a condottiero!”
Condottiero. Captain of the mercenaries.
A foreign legion that leads its own armed forces and is loyal to its employer, no, to its employer's gold.
They are a group of people who are ridiculed as hunting dogs from hell because they will do anything for money.
Loyalty was so high that even the devil would stick his tongue out at the cost of not having it even if he tried to eat and die, but it was cheap compared to maintaining a standing army.
“The conditions are!”
When Count Marquez remained silent, the King became angry.
“...No one accepted.”
"What?"
Leo III looked at Count Marquez with a bewildered expression.
“Variatti, Garozzo, Pontarini. Anyone?”
Count Marquez nodded slowly to Leo III, who had named three condottiero as his star-studded consorts.
“The last to refuse was the Ironclad Variant. The reasons for their refusal were the same for all three.”
“Are we short on money?”
The Etruscan kingdom set a maximum price for its mercenary captains and ordered them to bid within this amount.
The amount called for by Palazzo Carlo was not very generous. Leo III regretted not spending a little more.
But Count Marquez shook his head.
“It’s not about money.”
“Then! What on earth do those money-crazy people care about besides gold?”
Several negative scenarios flashed through Leo III's mind.
Do you not want to be hostile to the Gallico Kingdom, whose national power is growing by the day? Do you think the Etruscans are that bad?
Or, did I, who adored Rubina and made Cesare my nephew, seem so unimposing? So much so that even the hounds chasing gold would not want to associate with me?
“The reason was that we could not send troops to a place where an epidemic was spreading.”
“...Ah.”
The foundation of a mercenary captain's livelihood is his well-trained troops.
Each and every one of them looked like a well-oiled war machine with a jaw that had been worn down by battlefields for over a decade.
In other words, it means that it is difficult to replace someone after they die.
There was already much criticism that the condottieros took the lukewarm safe route even when they could have won a complete victory, for fear of damaging their own forces.
“If the Black Death were to spread, the condottiero would be helpless. All three flatly refused.”
“...”
It was the last of the nations without a standing army.
The mercenaries who were thought to be available for hire at any time are refusing requests no matter how much gold was paid.
Leo III remained silent and glanced beside him. There was Duchess Rubina.
“Your Majesty! Our Cesare!”
Rubina had a fit, not knowing that what she had done might have put her son in danger.
No, maybe she knew but didn't want to know.
Leo III could not bear to appear in public before his lady. He became very angry and ordered the Count of Marquez to do so.
“Useless ones! Give the flue to all the other condottiero, except for Variatti, Garrozzo, and Pontarini! Tell them I’ll give them as much gold as they want! Hurry up!”
The rest were either on bad terms with the Etruscan kingdom, too friendly with the Gallico kingdom, or had mercenary forces that were too small to be considered suitable for dealing with heavy cavalry.
But the King had to show Duchess Rubina something first.
Count Marquez, who realized this, also bowed his head without saying a word.
“...Yes, Your Majesty.”
But one doubt lingered in his mind.
'If you turn the chimney, your concubine's heart may be set free. But even if you turn the chimney like this, reinforcements will not come.'
He raised his head slightly and stole a glance at the King.
'Let's say it's a love game. What on earth are you going to do about the border...?'
***
After his first battle was a miserable defeat, Cesare returned to his castle and wrote a letter to Duchess Rubina.
He reported the terrible defeat and said that he could not do it, and asked His Majesty the King to somehow get him out of there, either by sending reinforcements or by sending a replacement.
Public opinion in the castle was in an uproar. Even though it was a small raiding force, 300 men were a considerable portion of the forces that the Pisano estate could now field.
The commander abandoned his troops on the battlefield and returned alone.
Of course, many of them returned because they were local residents. About a hundred people returned to the castle alive.
It was a considerable number for a man fleeing on foot against cavalry.
But coming back alive was worse.
“Well, the Duke of Pisano!”
The rumor that the handsome black steed of Cesare, Duke of Pisano, was the first to show his rear and flee the battlefield spread quickly through the castle through the mouths of the returning soldiers.
Cesare's very stay in the Pisano estate was a humiliation.
He couldn't tell if it was true or not, but everyone from the Duke's chamberlain to the serf passing by on the street seemed to be casting cold, accusing glances at him.
Cesare was very sensitive to other people's gaze.
What other people thought of him had a direct impact on his mood and happiness from day to day.
To him now, the Pisano estate was hell.
“...This won’t do. I can’t stay here any longer.”
But his mother's reply to Cesare's letter asking her to somehow speak well of His Majesty the King and allow him to return to the capital was resolute.
“Don’t come back. If you die, die in Pisano’s territory.”
Cesare kept the fact that he was going to his fiefdom and that he would be in charge of border defense there as secret as possible.
They didn't even let anyone around them know and they secretly obtained supplies and rations.
But Duchess Rubina was tight-lipped.
Unable to resist bragging about her son, she kept quiet in the San Carlo society where she had become a new key figure.
“His Majesty the King sent the Duke of Pisano up to the territory to guard the borders?”
“I guess you have a plan to use the Duke of Pisano in a big way. My congratulations, Duchess.”
After Cesare was granted the surname of de Carlo and was promoted to Duke, those who wanted to please this mother and son never called them 'Duke Cesare' or 'Duchess Rubina'.
A prestigious title has been created that can be boasted about.
Rubina took this as a sign that she was truly accepted into society and that she was finally free from any pressure from Queen Marguerite.
“Hahaha. Who knows His Majesty the King’s mind? But who knows? Maybe one day he will appoint Cesare as Commander-in-Chief?”
“There is no one else who can do it except the Duke of Pisano.”
“Amazing!”
Cesare must never return to the capital without some achievement.
Instead, what Rubina sent to Pisano's fiefdom were private soldiers sent by the feudal lords of each region.
Unable to hire condottieros, Leo III issued a requisition to all lords throughout the country.
"Border defense. The lords of each region must fulfill their oath of allegiance."
However, the oath of allegiance is only fulfilled when there is loyalty.
Excuses poured in from all over the country. Old age... The Black Death was rampant in the territory... Food...
In the end, only 1,500 soldiers from the northern and central regions, where the plague had spread less, arrived in the capital.
Leo III did as he was told, but what could not be done was not done. The King dispatched all 1,500 men to the Pisano fiefdom.
Although he was an illegitimate child sent to the border without much thought, Cesare now became Leo III's only hope.
***
Ugh!
The only sound was the rustling of Cesare's teeth in the Duke of Pisano's bedroom, which was filled with antique furniture that was far from fashionable for Cesare's taste and had tapestries hanging from the high ceiling.
There was no way out. He wanted to die. Then someone knocked on the door.
Knock knock.
"Who is this!"
Cesare shouted in an irritated voice.
“Your Excellency, a guest has arrived.”
"Guest?"
“She is a woman from the capital.”
Cesare's frown deepened.
He had long since given up his debaucherous life.
It's not like he's suddenly turned into a monk, but at least he hasn't done anything recently that would make a woman stalk him by his standards.
“What kind of woman is that...”
The young lady of the Viscountess Vanedetto? She's a woman he met briefly almost a year ago. They had almost no physical contact.
For someone to chase him all the way to a border town and ask to meet him is crazy.
Mrs. Ragusa? Oh, she could have done that. But if she was going to do something crazy, she should have done it a long time ago. Why now, after almost half a year?
“I said I won’t meet her.”
Well, it didn't matter either way. If he doesn't see it, it's a jackpot.
He turned over and lay down under the blanket. He hadn't even had a drink, but his head was still hurting.
If I had my way, I'd drink white wine right now, no. Today, I feel like drinking soju.
Yes, he could have emptied the entire bottle of Grappa, but a sense of responsibility stopped Cesare.
“Over there... Your Excellency the Duke.”
“Oh, why!”
“She said she would wait until you met her.”
The guest had asked him to say, "You'll regret it if you don't come out," but the servant, who didn't dare to say it, said it in gentle words.
Cesare shuddered. How shameless is that stalker?!
“Oh! Who the hell is that crazy bitch!”
“Her name is Ariadne de Mare, daughter of Cardinal de Mare.”
“!”
Cesare threw off the covers from his huge bed and got up.
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