“Your Grace. The mercenaries are retreating with the Count’s party.”
Ares, who had watched the knights massacre the mercenary corps with cold, emotionless eyes, pointed to the fastest squad.
“Alton. Chase them as if to encircle. We must capture the Count’s party alive. Injuries are of no consequence, so focus on the capture.”
The man with half his right ear missing smirked and placed his right hand over his heart.
“Leave it to me.”
The moment Alton dashed out as though he had been waiting, his squad—loitering on standby—moved. No, they flew.
Their warhorses narrowly leapt over and weaved through the scattered piles of corpses and strewn weapons, yet they galloped across the earth as swift as swallows skimming over water.
As they flew out, Ares too, who had held his ground until now, moved.
“Sirius, Zeon. Support Alton.”
As the squads of Sirius and Zeon, finishing the meaningless battle and forming ranks, charged out at Ares’s command, the castle gate opened. When Ares turned, there was Eliza astride a horse that looked unusually white in the pitch-black darkness.
Ares tugged forcefully on the reins of his mount, snorting and eager to gallop off with them, and gestured toward Crimson.
“Crimson. Escort her.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The warhorse that had been pawing the ground, itching to charge, bolted into the darkness the instant Ares gave leave. As he rode, every knight save Crimson’s squad followed after him. The horses’ breath scattered white, and the sound and impact of their hooves felt like a violent earthquake.
While the fleeing mercenaries cast anxious glances behind them again and again, Alton’s squad—already upon the mercenary band—surrounded them like a shepherd penning his flock.
The black knights moved erratically, sometimes plunging between the mercenaries.
“Uwaaack!!”
Several mercenaries toppled from the knights’ erratic movements, and horses that could not turn away in time collapsed upon them. As such incidents broke out everywhere, the mercenaries’ fear mounted.
And to make matters worse, their retreat was through a damned narrow, long tunnel!
“Drop the traitors and I shall spare your lives!”
Holding his breath among the mercenaries, the Count felt a chill run down his spine at the fiendish cry that reached his own ears.
“Take us to the Count’s castle! I shall reward you handsomely!”
But soon arrows were flying at them, and they even heard a horrifying sound from behind like an earthquake in pursuit; discontent erupted among the mercenaries.
“Throw them away! Throw those things away now!”
“Commander!”
The Countess screamed.
“Do not abandon us, never abandon us! Please, please….”
Tears of fear flowed like a river from her eyes. But alas, her wish was not granted.
The black knights had caught up at an impossible speed, and the retreat was a narrow tunnel. If the mercenaries, their formation already broken, were driven into the tunnel with a single-minded will to survive, irreversible consequences were certain to follow.
In the end, the mercenary commander made his decision. When he raised his right hand, the mercenaries carrying the Count’s party wheeled their horses diagonally toward the outside of the group.
“No, no!!!”
As the Countess thrashed and twisted, a brutish hand seized and forced down the back of her neck.
“Ugh, you’re damned noisy.”
She was not the only one struggling frantically. The nobles cried and begged for their lives, yet the mercenaries’ grip was savage and merciless.
When the mercenaries holding the Count’s party broke away and came out, the knights who had been launching erratic attacks ceased their assault as well.
“No, no, don’t put us down, don’t put us down, please!”
“Just take us and I will give you everything, everything in my territory, please, hu-huk.”
The mercenaries set the clinging nobles down almost as though dropping them. The mercenary commander raised both hands toward Alton.
“You clearly said you would not attack if we left them behind, did you not?”
The mercenary band gradually withdrew while warily gauging the knights’ eyes.
At the border of forest and plain where a fierce wind blew, the Count’s party was surrounded by the very knights they had driven to their deaths over a decade ago. The nobles, having screamed until hoarse, burst into ragged, croaking sobs, and the Countess too buried her face in her palms and wept.
Count Linco blinked blankly, unable to believe any of this. Had he faced the cold wind too long? All his senses felt numb.
What was happening?
Was this reality? Or was it a dream?
Then, on his hazy retina, the figures of the Duke and Duchess approaching him came into focus.
A thin breath broke through the Count’s teeth. Strength fled his legs, and he sank to the ground.
* * *
After confirming that the knights had surrounded the Count’s party at the edge of the forest, Ares turned. He saw Eliza galloping through the blizzard. Ares pulled hard on the reins to slow his pace and ordered the knights following behind him.
“Make a path to where Count Linco is.”
“Yes.”
At Ares’s command, the knights who had been surging forward like a tidal wave halted as one. They then lined up in two long rows stretching back past him, forming a path. Soon, the knights stood in two files from where Ares had stopped all the way to the Count’s party.
Ares, waiting at the spot where he had stopped, urged his horse forward the moment she approached, taking the lead without a word. Eliza too followed silently behind him without protest.
It was a night where the sound of sleet falling on dry grass felt like a torrential downpour.
The knights in black armor paid their respects as they watched the Duke and Duchess pass by, and the two walked side by side down the path the knights had made. Passing down that long path, when they finally faced those trapped within the circular enclosure, a faint sigh escaped Eliza’s lips.
After a brief silence, she dismounted and approached them.
Count Linco, collapsed on the ground, looked up blankly at Eliza who now stood before him. If such a day ever came, he had thought Eliza Richmond would fling a cruel sneer.
But no.
She was silently sobbing.
With a face he had never once seen before.
“Henry.”
When she called him in a cracked voice, Henry Linco realized it had truly been a very long time since he had heard his name spoken this way.
“Why did you do it.”
As tears—ones he himself was unaware of—flowed from Henry Linco’s eyes, Eliza made a sound as though her throat were being crushed.
“With what face am I to meet your father and mother in death?”
“…….”
“‘I killed your son, your son killed my son’—was that what you wished me to tell them?!”
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Instead of lashing out in anger, Eliza struck her own breast. Until Ares dismounted and stayed her hand, she beat her chest and wailed without a sound.
Before her gasping breaths that seemed fit to break entirely, Henry Linco could not dare beg for his life. He could not find any words, merely enduring the falling sleet. Emily Linco and Edward Linco were no different, as were the nobles who had come outside the castle alongside the Count.
Eliza raised her head and looked at the sky. Sleet poured like rain, soaking her face. Streams of water indistinguishable as tears or rain ceaselessly trickled from the corners of her eyes.
“Were I to weigh your crime, it would be just to execute you on the spot, but that alone I shall endure.”
Eliza drew a deep breath and washed away her sobs and wails. When she turned from the heavens to face forward again, her eyes were hard as mahogany that had weathered countless storms. That alone returned her to the visage of the queen who had reigned at the height of her glory, and she snapped at the traitors.
“That this is the courtesy I show your ancestors who devoted themselves to Richmond—do not forget it.”