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“Knights, to the fore! Hold them!” Maximilian commanded in a clear tone over the shouts of terror. Knights entered the fray then, their brilliantly shining swords cutting through the Orc Warriors. The knights pushed the orcs back, forming a new front line before the shattered infantry.

“You damned bitch!” Bernardo Eli spat out as he severed the head of an Orc Warrior.

“Let’s leave the front line in the hands of the knights and reorganize our rear!” Arwen Kiryagen exclaimed, an Orc Warrior struggling as her blade pierced its chest. She twisted her sword, and the orc retched blood as it died.

“Finish off the fallen orcs!”

The soldiers sprang into action at this command and started stabbing their spears into orcs who lay wounded on the ground. Arwen met Maximilian’s gaze.

The knights had been able to reform the front lines, yet Orc Warriors had still managed to bear through and reach the camp’s center. They had attacked the rearguard in short order, and the soldiers on the front could not adequately aid the knights, having to deal with the foes behind them first.

No matter how skilled the knights were, if an ax split open their head or if a spear pierced their lungs, they died as any human would. It was paramount to secure the rear as soon as possible so that the heavy infantry could properly defend the knights’ backs.

Arwen was slashing away with her sword, focusing on the lower portions of the orcs. If an Orc Warrior had its legs cut off, the infantry could more easily deal with it. She spun about and severed legs wherever she could. Bernardo followed her and did as she did.

Orcs with severed legs were roaring in pain but were soon silenced as soldiers ended them by spear and sword. Bernardo swore as the fish-like smell of blood pierced his nostrils.

“The smell of blood, piss, and dead orcs!” Bernardo taunted. A hatchet flew at his head, and it would have struck him had Arwen not intercepted it with her sword.

“Watch your head, Eli!”

“Thanks!” Bernardo shouted as he launched himself into a roll and severed another Orc Warrior’s leg.

“No need to thank me, just watch your head!”

Bernardo shouted something incomprehensible as he dodged a javelin, the Orc Warrior that had thrown it falling to Arwen’s blade.

“What did you say?” she asked him, wiping blood from her face.

“Nothing,” Bernardo said as he gripped his sword, his face shrewdly set. He continued to hack and slash at the legs of orcs.

“Really, they only make us suffer,” he grumpily complained. “This damned wicked King of the Orcs, and these damned princes!”

A bright blue sword almost swatted his cheek.

“Be careful what you spew from your mouth,” Arwen warned him. He shut his mouth when he met her cold gaze.

“Oh, you look terrible when you are thinking!” Arwen scolded Bernardo, for his face looked like that of a little boy with heartache.

“Fuck this!” Bernardo cursed. At that very moment, the person responsible for Bernardo Eli’s exile, the person who had criticized him for his lack of virtue, was resting in a ruined fortress.

* * *

Someone struck me on my shoulder.

“Well, then?” I asked the woman who dared to strike at a prince. She wore a forest green cloak, and she was one of the Mistletoe elves who had made it possible for me and the knights to retreat from the orcs on the field outside Winter Castle.

“What is your name?” I asked her, and she answered in the elves’ sign language, indicating that she was called Gunn.

“What do you have to report?”

She extended her hand into many complex patterns as she gave me her report. It took all my attention to interpret the hard-to-understand elven sign language, yet I could not be angered at her use of such a form of communication.

No, this elf could not speak because Sigrun had cut out her tongue. Sigrun had left her as a messenger here, to act in the interest of the Elder High Elves. Unfortunately for this poor elf woman, her master was twisted to such a level that my subordinates trembled in fear at the thought of her sadistic personality.

Sigrun, the maniac elf, had cut out the tongues of her servants, fearing that they would learn my poems before she had heard them.

It was the tragic confluence of her obsessions, of her monomaniacal desires, and, in my opinion, her evil. Thanks to this, the swords-elf had become a pitiful being who suffered daily.

‘South, Enemy, Hell Warrior, To Battle?’

Barely having interpreted her sign language, I frowned at the elf. Gunn’s hands moved frantically once more.

‘Behind, Orc.’

I started to understand, my mind grasping at her intended meaning. She raised her hands and waved them a couple of times, expressing ‘War’.

I nodded. Gunn now brought her hands together as if in prayer and bowed her head. I knew this meant ‘Lord’ or ‘King’. She combined the gestures.

‘War, Lord.’

I understood then, for she talked about the being that was ever on my mind. The message was clear: The Warlord who had shattered Winter Castle had reached the defensive lines upon the Rhinethes.

“Everyone, pack up and ready yourselves to march!” I ordered the nearby officers and knights.

The expressions of the rangers and knights, who had been feasting, changed in an instant. Their eyes asked the unspoken question, and I nodded at them. A strong blue light came to the knights’ eyes, and the keen eyes of rangers perked up. They started to tell one another what they would do once the Warlord had fallen.

“If I catch the bastard, I will cut him into thousands of pieces and scatter his meat over the snows of the north.”

“Let’s stuff his head and put it over the gates of Winter Castle.”

“His eyeballs are mine. I shall cut them from him while he still lives,” Quéon Lichtheim added. I was very aware that these knights cared little whether they lived or died after they had been defeated and driven from their home.

They all looked to me to lead them into victory, and I would give my all to grant them that much. These soldiers had lost their Count, a Quad-chain knight, a man who had lived a brilliant life.

The Count had held well against the Warlord’s battle fervor, yet he had still been defeated. I knew that his sacrifice had not been in vain. I had expected to face the Warlord and kill him. It was a fair and noble plan, and it was formed from the mindset that had ruled me ever since I had gained this new life.

But I had been fooled, for I was not a human, I was not a new man, a new sword. My essence was still every bit that of the ancient sword that I had always been.

My purpose was not to fight and conquer; no, my purpose was to slay the enemy.

I would not enter the battle to claim a great victory for the kingdom. I shall face the Warlord and rob him of his life, for this was my function, my fate.

Hides are tanned into leather, and leather is folded and stitched until it becomes armor.

Bones are sharpened and crafted into swords.

I shall take what the earth gives me, using its bountiful loot to achieve my purpose.

Simply put, I was on the hunt, and I now knew exactly where my prey was.

“Revenge for Count Balahard!”

“We fight to restore the north, to reclaim Winter Castle!”

“Death to the orcs!”

The knights were flush with mana and almost mad in their wrathful fighting spirit.

The long wait was done with, now both the hunters and their game were ready.

All that remained was to claim the prey’s head.

“We march!”

The men of the north cheered and roared at my words.

* * *

Maximilian was frowning as he heard the reports.

“The casualties inflicted over the past weeks are enough to destroy an entire legion. Six-hundred-and-twenty-three soldiers have been killed, and more than double that number have been wounded.”

“We need to bring in more troops. It is the only way that we can hold the line.”

Men who had been so confident that they could beat back the orcs were now panicked, shouting out the need for reinforcements.

An almost surreal feeling came to Maximilian, then. He felt sorry for the dead as if a large stone had replaced his heart. At the same time, though, a frantic excitement raced through his mind.

“We need to send messengers to the royal palace to request additional troops from the Central Army. We need to summon the central noble families that had not yet deigned to participate in this war!”

This desperate need for reinforcement was the same plight that Winter Castle had faced, abandoned by all. Fear and despair spread through the ranks of the defenders like wildfire.

The soldiers of Winter Castle had less than half the forces that now held the river. With these numbers, they had been able to fight for several weeks against an army of orcs that were more than double the amount that now beset the opposite banks of the Rhinethes.

“The fatigue of the knights has reached critical levels. They need to rest, to be cycled out by regular infantry.”

The Winter Knights and the Black Lancers had also rested for a day, Maximilian thought, and on that day, the fortress had almost fallen. The knights had fought on after that, the tormenting pain of mana depletion tearing at their stomachs.

“The morale of our soldiers is at an all-time low. No one is keen to hold the front lines.”

The faces of the rangers came to Maximilian’s mind, then. The faces of men who stood in the freezing wind, determined. These were the faces of men who never left the wall, men who sacrificed themselves to hold the castle at any cost.

Wasn’t it reasonable to ask the same of the central soldiers? Should they not sacrifice themselves to save the lives of so many innocents?

It had been only a week now, seven days of hard fighting. Nevertheless, these craven unbelievers acted as if the end was nigh.

“If we had but aided Winter Castle at that time…”

The lord could not finish his sentence, and so great was his guilt that he covered his face in shame. The other nobles stared at him. They were disgusted by the mere mention of Winter Castle, for it reminded them of an irreversible blunder that had caused irreparable carnage. It was a disaster that they had a hand in causing. They held a stigma at its mention, a stigma that was stamped into the foreheads of fools.

Mentioning Winter Castle was to remind them of an ugly truth that they had chosen to ignore. The disaster that now faced the central region had its cause not only in the form of the Warlord but also in these arrogant aristocrats’ human errors.

Maximilian did not know what he could do about it, for he knew the true disaster was yet to come.

“For these past two days, and this morning as well, a strange energy has been detected from across the river,” Count Richter Lichstein informed the lords. It was the first time that he had spoken during these councils.

“What type of unusual energy would this be?”

“It is at least on the level of four Mana rings, perhaps even more. It is a powerful presence,” Count Lichstein added, staring at the pale-faced nobles. He held his silence then, staring at Maximilian, asking an unspoken question.

The Second Prince exhaled heavily.

“It must be the Warlord. It seems that the King of the Orcs has finally arrived,” Maximilian said with a heavy voice. “He is the beast that has defeated Bale Balahard.”

Those words brought a chill to the council’s atmosphere.

Warlord. A name that these men had heard before, a disaster that they had not taken seriously. It was now heading towards them.

“Well, I’m sure Count Lichstein can deal with this beastie,” one of the nobles said with a nervous chuckle.

“I never faced Count Balahard, but he was never weaker than me. We were equals,” Richter spat out then, shattering the vain hopes of the nobles. Richter Lichstein knew that if the former Count Balahard could not best the Warlord, then neither could he.

“I must seek support from the king right away,” the overall commander said. The request for reinforcement had already been sent, so the nobles knew what the commander meant by ‘support’. The commander talked about one gifted person in particular who would be needed if Count Lichtheim could not prevail, though the commander did not dare name this person. The nobles said nothing; they all knew what this request portended.

They also suspected that this gifted master might still not arrive in time if they summoned him from the capital. The disaster was right under their noses, yet the hope of preventing it was far from their reach. A monster named silence had engulfed the command tent, for no one dared to speak.

“I have a way,” Maximilian said, piercing that monster’s belly. “If the Warlord comes to our lines, Count Lichstein will deal with him.”

Considering that this monster had slain bale Balahard, what Maximilian said sounded like a death sentence.

“If Your Highness commands it,” the Count’s answer came, his tone mysterious. Maximilian could not tell if the old knight was confident that he would not die, whether his loyalty to the royal family would make him face certain death or whether he welcomed an honorable death regardless. But Maximilian had other plans.

“I am not saying that you should battle the beast to the death, Count Lichstein.”

Maximilian had never intended that Richter do something beyond his abilities.

“You just have to hold it off for some time.”

The Count’s eyes lit up at this.

“It sounds like a bid to buy time. I assume you have another measure for dealing with the beast?”

“There is something, yes,” Maximilian said with a nod.

“May I ask what this plan is?” the commander interjected scornfully.

“There are people in the north who will deal with the Warlord,” came Maximilian’s neutral reply. Upon hearing this, a few of the nobles erupted in cheers, yet their joy ended when another question came to the fore, a question that quickly smothered the atmosphere of excitement.

“If there exists such people, why haven’ they killed this King of the Orcs already?”

Everyone knew that this was a very valid concern. Maximilian was thrown deep into his thoughts upon hearing the question. He recalled a conversation with his brother.

‘It’s too dangerous, Adrian! Haven’t you risked enough already?’

‘From the start, I had to fight for myself, yet I pretended to remain unaltered by my inner turmoils. Such folly only led me to bloody my nose.’

Maximilian asked about the meaning of words that made no sense to him, and his brother answered.

‘I was unable to kill the thing then. Now, I can do it.’

Maximilian could not tell the nobles the truth; it would make things very difficult. He thought for some time before replying.

“It was not possible then. Now, though, a sword has been honed that can decapitate the Warlord.”

He could not tell them all, not these nobles whose blind opinions regarding the First Prince would make any truth turn to falsehood in their hearts. It was better to dissemble now and let the truth sort itself out later.

“Are there any hermit knights capable of facing this monster in the north?” came the question, and Maximilian was relieved, for these nobles had crafted his response for him.

“Indeed, indeed,” said Maximilian, knowing that it was a hermit that hid his true face from the world.

Because if my brother is anything, he is undoubtedly a hermit.