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How Will Spring Come Without Winter’s Passing? (4)
When I stated that I would only be sparing the one with the lighter offenses, Gung Jungbaek began to expose all Montpellier’s evil deeds. Montpellier merely listened.
However, his patience soon wore thin, and Montpellier decided that he was not about to die without fighting back. So, he began to shed light on the betrayal by the royal courtier.
I enjoyed the absurdity of their ever-greater revelations, gathering information all the while.
“I served my country. You, you are a traitor!” Montpellier spat out.
“Says the one who persecutes the weak, forcing them to comply!” came Jungbaek’s retort.
Soon enough, their war of revelations devolved into a scuffle of petty criticisms.
“Here is the guy who cannot even make eye contact, but he still dares wag his tongue!”
“And you, Montpellier!? You dare act all noble even if you do such rotten things!”
As I watched Montpellier and Jungbaek point and shout at each other, I laughed. Their revelations had not forced me to revise my outlook on things that much. I was just relieved that deceiving and desperate men such as they no longer influenced the affairs of the kingdom.
“Your Highness! This scoundrel is the one who had made Your Highness, in all your innocence, an informant for the empire! Montpellier has made Your Highness suffer so many hardships! He deserves to die a hundred, nay, a thousand deaths!”
As the former royal courtier screamed out his accusations of evil, Montpellier became rigid. I was gradually getting bored by all these nasty revelations, but one word flashed through my mind.
“Again.”
As they heard me speak, I saw that Montpellier had become exhausted and pale, while Jungbaek had an elated face.
“Just say that again,” I implored.
“It is exactly as I have said, Your Highness. The Marquis of Montpellier has driven a wedge between Your Highness and His Majesty, causing chaos in the royal family. He planned to disturb Your Highness’s mind at a fundamental level. On a larger level, he wanted to create questions about the legitimacy of the Leonbergers, and bring about great confusion.”
“So you mean that I was not the informant?”
“That’s correct! Your Highness is innocent! Because of my discovery, your innocent Highness was so persecuted-” Jungbaek shut his mouth, looking at me in amazement as he realized what he had just said.
If one baboon sits in a tree, the thing sitting next to it must be a baboon as well.
I laughed; I could not hear such a truth without laughing. The sound of ceaseless laughter flowed from my throat, and tears came to my eyes.
Where else would one see a better skit in this world than here?
After I had worried about it for countless nights, I had finally decided to live with the original sin of the foolish Adrian. And now, the primary motivation of the three-hundred knights who trained day and night, only knowing hatred toward me, has proved to be a baseless lie.
I felt like a clown.
As I continued to laugh and chuckle for the longest of time, Montpellier trembled, pushed himself to his knees, and fell before me.
“…!” He had said something, but I couldn’t hear it. I was laughing so much that my ears were ringing, and no sound came to them. And then, I suddenly looked back. The knights who had followed me from Winter Castle were looking at me with anxiety. There was Arwen, Adelia, as well as Carls and his fellow knights. There were also Gwain and his comrades.
I studied Gwain’s face, thinking that he especially would appreciate how it feels to be playing a part in this poetic comedy. But he showed no agitation or any emotion. He merely looked at me as if I was far away and indistinct. Not only Gwain but also his comrades looked at me with such consistent faces.
‘Slugh,’ I swallowed, and the laughter that had so vigorously and unceasingly burst from now subsided, as if it was never there.
“Surely…” I muttered, and at that moment, a great many thoughts flowed through my mind.
I listened as the knights talked and realized who was in those bodies. I realized that Gwain and the others had not been able to hear Jungbaek’s words.
“I think he took it too far, dragging the empire’s man here.”
“I definitely opposed it.”
“I don’t understand why he’s looking at us.”
“I’m curious about that too.”
As I listened to their idle conversation, it felt as if my brain had become blank.
After looking at them for a while more, I burst into laughter.
“Once again, he laughs!”
This time, I doubled up at the waist as I laughed like a true madman. And I knew something had changed in me, in my very soul.
“Well, it seems like something is wrong in his mind…”
“I think it would be better if we hang back for now.”
“I agree.”
“Okay, huh. There is nothing for us to do.”
I heard them speak, and I shook my head, now only smiling. I did not need to tell the knights, and it was better if they did not know. It was only due to their hatred of me that Gwain and his comrades were willing to suffer under younger instructors and roll in the mud with the mercenaries. It was only to gain revenge on me that they had accepted the mana hearts and worked so hard to master them.
What good would it do for such motivated knights to learn the truth?
At best, the fact that they had hated and blamed the wrong person would only increase their self-doubt. At worst, they would lose all their motivation once the poison was wrenched from their hearts.
Until they reached greater glory through the development of their mana hearts, they needed a reason for excelling. They might as well learn the truth later rather than sooner. I touched my still-tingling cheeks, then squatted back down and made eye contact with Jungbaek.
“That was a very interesting story.”
Jungbaek thrust his head to the floor, avoiding eye contact.
“Your Highness! Please have mercy!” Jungbaek shouted. I punched into his jaw, and as blood flowed from his mouth, I made sure that he didn’t lower his head again.
“If you have more interesting stories, you better tell them all,” I said as my extreme anger toward the royal courtier simmered in my breast. Jungbaek’s soul was one that easily broke if it became suppressed. He was a man whose heart could not bear to face overwhelming odds, and so he went out of his way to tell of past events.
Among the stories were many that had no use to anyone, such as his affair with a maid in the royal palace and other gossip related to the royal family.
I listened to all of Gung Jungbaek’s tales as I let him speak. And when I had heard all of his stories, I could not help but decry the absurdity of it all.
That a weak-souled man such as he had damaged the kingdom to such an extent by selling its secrets as one would sell apples at the market.
He had traced the ‘misappropriated’ supplies and discovered the existence of Gwain and his comrades, and then sold them out. Recently, it was Jungbaek who told the third prince where my true body lay, where the king had hidden it. It was he who had told the third prince that if I ascended the throne, none of the other princes would be safe. Jungbaek said that he didn’t know that the third prince would attack the king’s palace and slaughter so many. Still, this changed little. Jungbaek had instigated Gillian’s rebellion.
“Hahaha.” A burst of vain laughter escaped my lips. This insignificant slip of a man was responsible for the death of so many great knights. He was the reason that a prince of the kingdom was slain as a traitor.
It was all so incredible.
Gung Jungbaek talked on and on for such a long time, and he was honest. At last, he told me things of an extremely personal nature and why he was not truly at fault for his actions.
I drew Twilight and sliced into the man’s shoulder. He spasmed like a lunatic as his eyes rolled in their sockets, staring at his severed arm. I brought my blade to bear again and amputated the remaining arm of the last royal courtier.
Only then did he scream.
“Ooauh! Aah!!? Agh!”
I stood silently, waiting for his screams to subside. He had briefly fainted from the pain, and as he snapped awake, he saw only me.
“Your Highness! Please spare me!”
And as he looked at me, I slowly drew my blade back, making sure that he knew that death was approaching, making sure that he dreaded his end.
“Highness! Please, only my life… stop the bleeding.”
I sliced through his throat like one would slice the throat of an animal. Even if he wanted to stem the flow of blood, he had no arms to do so.
I turned my head away from Jungbaek.
“Well, Your Highness,” the terrified Marquis of Montpellier said as he fell flat on his face.
I brought the bloody Twilight before him.
“Uaagh!” came Montpellier’s bizarre squeal as I wiped the blood from Twilight onto his clothes, onto his face.
“You’re lucky, Montpellier,” I whispered to him as I returned Twilight to its scabbard.
“This time, you were the smaller thief.”
A sour scent wafted over the smell of fresh blood.
“Tchu,” I clucked my tongue as I looked down and saw the spreading dampness in Montpellier’s pants.
“Take care of the corpse. Send the wealth-laden wagon back to the palace.”
“Yes, Your Highness!”
“Also, none of you are ever to mention what has happened here.”
“We will keep silent!”
Pleased by the knights’ answers, I returned to the task at hand. Montpellier was still lying on the spot to which he had sunk.
“Montpellier!”
“Anything! Tell me!”
“You didn’t think it would end like this, did you?”
He merely trembled and then sputtered, “Well, I am grateful for having this chance at life, for being spared! I am grateful to Your Highness!”
I had torn out his throat and given him several other kinds of deaths thousands of times in my mind. But for the time being, I needed him kept alive, at least until the tower was built and until the north stood ready.
“Visit me at noon today.”
If I saw him for a moment more, I would sever his head and be done with it, so I turned away, not even hearing his answer as I mounted my horse. Arwen and Adelia were not part of the cleanup, so they rode to the left and right of me. As we rode, I suddenly sensed a gaze fall on me. I turned and saw that Arwen was upset by something. She had averted her gaze when I looked at her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. She hesitated for a while and then said, “Don’t you regret that they don’t know?”
Arwen knew of the existence of the Death Knights and that they occupied the bodies of Gwain and his comrades from time to time. As I looked at her regretful gaze, I made a slight gesture.
It was a simple one, which involved touching one’s thumb to the ring finger and then separating them again, and it was part of the swords-elves’ sign language.
“Your Highness?”
Arwen did not know sign language, so she wanted to know what the gesture meant.
Instead of answering her, I kicked my horse’s flanks and rode on.
* * *
When I returned to the palace, the day was already bright. I washed the blood off me and changed my clothes with Adelia’s help. Then I went straight to the king.
“Your Highness.”
“Tell him.”
The palace knight nodded and announced my arrival to the king.
“Your Majesty, His Highness the First Prince has arrived.”
“Enter.”
I entered the king’s rooms. He stood with his back to me, his eyes not shifting from where they gazed out of the window. I didn’t say anything.
I had been away all night, and the king would surely know where I went.
Perhaps he didn’t want to face me because he was ashamed that the royal courtier had turned traitor under his rule, or maybe it would be too burdensome for him to look into my face at that moment.
Either way, it was clear the king’s attitude was not a comfortable one.
“How are they doing?” he finally asked me, not about Jungbaek, but rather his old knights.
“They train day and night to regain the strength they held in the past.”
I could certainly not reveal the fact that their souls differed between night and day.
I told the king that I could have some of them meet him right away if he so desired.
He shook his head; his back still turned to me. It seemed that the time had not yet come for him to face the past. I didn’t make the offer again as I didn’t intend to force the issue.
“If you have anything to say, say it,” the king said after a long silence,
His tone was still harsh, but it had softened to such an extent that it was incomparable with his frigid voice of the past, which had felt like the winds that blew in the middle of winter.
This difference proved brief.
“What do you have to say?” the king demanded as he turned to me.
As I looked at his coldly hardened face, which once more seemed to have taken on the spirit of the north wind, it felt as if winter had once more come between us.
“Say your words, and say them now!”
It was the natural order of things that spring came after winter, but I seemed to have a wintry spirit.
It was so nice to hear and see the king once more batter at my walls so coldly.
“What are you doing here? Where are you going to go from here?”
The king was different from me in so many ways.