Chapter 524: A Night of Bloodshed
The hall erupted.
Tables overturned. Bowls and dishes went down in a cascade of crashing and splintering, spilled soup threading through the crevices between stone slabs until it was everywhere underfoot.
It was the first time either of Calvin’s sons had witnessed killing at close range. The older, Cole, held out his sword and planted himself in front of his father in a posture too rigid to be anything but fear wearing discipline’s mask. The younger, Lance — seventeen years old — had gotten behind his chair.
Calvin sighed, privately, in the way a man sighs over a problem he has long since stopped expecting to resolve. If Edith had not existed to measure them against, perhaps they would not appear quite so diminished. But she did exist, and they did appear so, and they had likely resigned themselves to that arithmetic years ago.
He looked toward the center of the hall, where his eldest daughter had already fixed her eyes on Ed Howes — the only genuine threat in the room.
She opened with a bottle of ale flung at his face, forcing him to turn away, and in the same motion leaped onto the long table and came at him from above with her sword. Her footwork was a cat’s: quick, recalculating, never planted long enough to be read. Ed met her cleanly — he was skilled, and strong in the way that men who train for war are strong, and he turned her first half-dozen strikes without visible effort, steel ringing against steel in a rapid, overlapping sequence.
They moved around the tables while around them men were dying. Ed’s knights fell one by one as the Duke’s outnumbered retinue was ground down, but Howes himself showed no sign of retreat. If anything, being isolated made him more aggressive.
Calvin started to worry.
The bloodstains on Edith’s armor were evidence: she had already fought once tonight, out in the yard with the guards, before coming through that door. She was not fresh. And she was a woman fighting a man who had kept pace with her through a dozen exchanges — and there was always the matter of raw strength. A contest of attrition favored Ed Howes, and he seemed to know it.
There was no fear in her face.
Her eyes stayed on him with complete steadiness — bright, watchful, reading him the way a reader reads a text, looking for the meaning beneath the words. Sweat flew from the ends of her hair with each strike. Her energy was visibly declining. She kept attacking anyway, relentlessly, refusing to let him set his feet.
Ed had noticed. With a shout he shifted his style, switching to a technique that would cost both of them — a trade designed to end the fight quickly by accepting mutual damage. Edith declined the exchange. She began deflecting rather than pressing, and the disparity in strength started to tell. Her sword sang against his and the shock ran up her arms; she lost her footing and went off the edge of the table.
Calvin’s heart lurched. The nearest guard was ten feet away. There was no time.
Rather than scrambling to rise, Edith used the broken half of her sword to slice through one of the table’s legs.
The whole calculation shifted in the space of a breath.
Ed was already moving, seeing her on the ground, seeing opportunity. He jumped onto the table with both arms raised — the killing posture, the full-commit downswing — and did not notice what she had just done to the leg beneath him.
The table gave way at the worst possible moment. Under normal circumstances, any trained fighter could have leaped clear. But Ed’s weight was fully committed to his arms, his body hunched forward into the blow, his feet locked for the impact. He went headfirst onto the stone floor with a sound like dropped timber.
There was no coming back from that.
Edith climbed onto his back and drew the dagger from her waist. She drove it into his neck and turned it once. The body shuddered beneath her.
Luck? Calvin turned the question over while the last resistance stuttered out around the hall. No. She set that trap from the moment she hit the ground. Ed had spent the entire fight building a conviction that he was winning. The growing desperation of her strikes, the visible drain on her energy, the final loss of balance — it had all fed his confidence until he was certain strength would decide it. By the time he leaped onto the table, he was no longer thinking clearly. He was finishing the fight. And she had made the table ready for him.
Under ordinary circumstances she would not have survived that blow. That was what made the trap work: it was not a trick. It was a real risk. And she had taken it anyway.
The fighting ended. The room settled into quiet broken only by the creak of the fireplace. The smell of blood mixed with spilled wine. The lower nobles sat with their heads down, very carefully not looking at anyone.
Calvin returned to his seat and surveyed the room.
“Earl Lista and Earl Howes conspired against King Wimbledon and have been dealt with accordingly.” He let that settle before continuing. “Now each of you has a choice: serve these corpses, or serve the new king.”
No one offered a second opinion.
Later, in the study, Calvin blotted a smear of blood from his daughter’s forehead with his handkerchief.
“So it’s settled?” he said. “Do you believe His Majesty Roland Wimbledon will accept what we’ve done?”
“Yesterday you were calling him the rebel king,” Edith remarked.
“That was yesterday.” He glared at her without heat. “Since we cannot beat him, we’d better surrender first. If we don’t win his trust, we’ll have the nobles’ hatred on top of everything else.”
In truth, what they had done tonight went well beyond any accepted protocol among the nobility. Executing two great lords without trial, without process, without even the pretense of one — it was the kind of thing that would have been unthinkable before two years of civil war had stripped away the conventions. Timothy’s bad example had done some of the work. The speed of Roland’s victory had done the rest. The rules that had held since before Calvin’s grandfather’s time felt suddenly negotiable.
“I don’t know if he’ll accept us.”
The handkerchief dropped. Calvin caught it. “You — what?”
“I don’t know,” Edith repeated, without special urgency. “All we can do is offer our sincerity. What happens next is Prince Roland’s decision. You understand that, Father.” She met his eyes. “There’s a real chance he sends his own people to govern the Northern Region and reduces your rank. But if we do nothing, the Kant family has no chance at all. At least this way, we have a position to negotiate from.”
Calvin sat back down slowly, the look on his face the look of a man digesting bad medicine.
He did not want to lose the Dukedom.
Edith watched him with something almost gentle in her expression. “Don’t despair yet. There is still much to do. Tomorrow we begin seizing the mansions and fiefs of the two Earls.” She paused. “And remember — sincerity is what gets us into the room. What happens inside the room depends on something else entirely.”
“Such as what?”
“Ability.” The smile she gave him was charming, and also slightly dangerous. “I’ll bring these two heads to King’s City myself, Father. Let me be your messenger to His Majesty.”
Chapter 524: A Night of Bloodshed
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
Chaos and confusion erupted in the hall. Wooden tables were flipped, while bowls and dishes fell all over the floor, creating a symphony of clanking and cracking noises. Spilled soup flowed along the crevices in the stone slabs until it was everywhere.
It was the first time for the Duke’s two sons to witness such a life-and-death fight from such a close distance. The older son, Cole, held out his sword and stood in a rigid posture to defend his father. It was completely unlike his carefree attitude during training sessions. Meanwhile, the younger son, 17year-old Lance, cowered behind his chair.
Calvin sighed in silence. If he did not have Edith, his sons would probably not look so useless by comparison. The gulf of ability between her and them could not be bigger. Perhaps, they were already resigned to this fact and had long lost the courage and motivation to catch up with her.
The Duke looked towards the center of the banquet hall. His wunderkind eldest daughter already had her eyes fixed on Ed Howes, the strongest challenger around.
First, she took a bottle of ale and flung it at her opponent, forcing him to turn away. Next, she leaped up onto one of the long wooden tables and dived straight at him with her sword. Her quick and agile movements were like those of a cat. Ed adeptly parried her blows, and the clashing of swords caused sparks to fly.
She struck out half a dozen times within a split second, and her sword came together with Ed’s to form a continuous clinking sound which seemed to signal the impending arrival of death. In this critical situation, Ed displayed frightening technique and strength to negate every one of her strikes. It was
hard to pick a winner. While they fought around the long tables, many of the Howes Family’s knights had already succumbed in battle. Yet, Ed did not flinch or cower but instead became increasingly aggressive.
Calvin began to worry.
As evident from the blood stains on her armor, Edith had earlier been involved in another tough fight. Even if she was not wounded, her physical strength had been expended considerably. Furthermore, as a female, she was naturally disadvantaged in terms of strength. It would be unfavorable to her if the tussle drags on.
However, there was not a trace of fear on Edith’s face.
Her eyes were fully focused on her opponent—her bright pupils were like twinkling stars that could illuminate the world. Beads of sweat flung out of her hair ends with every strike she made. Although her energy was visibly diminishing, she continued to thrust relentlessly at her opponent, forcibly keeping him in a defensive stance.
Ed seemed to take notice of this. With a loud roar, he changed to a technique which would deal great injury to both of them. However, Edith was not keen on exchanging blood with blood, and became the one deflecting attacks. The disparity in strength between them finally told. Edith lost her balance as her sword was sliced into two, causing her to fall off the long table.
The Duke’s heart jumped into his throat. “F*ck, help her now!”
However, even the nearest guard was not able to assist—everything happened too quickly.
Instead of attempting to stand up immediately, Edith astutely used the remainder of her sword to slice off the legs of the long table. At this moment, Ed jumped onto the table with both of his arms raised, intending to finish her off with a powerful blow. He completely did not notice what she had just done.
Calvin stared in disbelief at what followed. The table, missing a leg, caused the knight to lose his balance. If the table toppled normally, he would have been able to leap off easily. But just at that instant, all of his strength was concentrated in his arms, while his feet were fixed on top of the table, and his body was hunched forward in the chopping posture. As such, he fell headfirst onto the floor with a loud thud.
There was no chance of a comeback.
Edith jumped onto her opponent’s back and pulled out a dagger from her waist. She plunged it straight into his neck and twisted it. The knight’s body began to spasm.
“Was it… a matter of luck? Probably not…” the Duke realized that Ed had fallen into his daughter’s trap the moment he jumped onto the table. When Ed took over his opponent’s high position, it made him feel as though he had turned defeat into victory. The advantage that he built up over the course of the fight caused him to think that strength and power alone would decide the outcome, and his confidence grew at the sight of his opponent’s weakening resistance. This was why he placed all of his strength into his final blow. Under normal circumstances, Edith would not have been able to survive it.
But this turned out to be the perfect opportunity to trick him into losing his balance completely.
The resistance of the two families did not last very long in the face of opponents who outnumbered them by three to one. After less than 10 minutes, the hall quietened down again. The fireplace continued to burn calmly, while the only noticeable difference in the hall was the strong smell of blood that mixed together with the smell of spilled alcohol and other drinks.
The Duke returned to his seat and looked around the room. The lower nobles hurriedly lowered their heads and did not dare to look straight at him.
“Earl Lista and Earl Howes conspired against King Wimbledon and have been duly punished. Right now, you all have a choice. Do you all want to serve these two corpses or the new king?”
This time, the responses were uniform and there were no extra remarks.
…
“So, it’s settled?” In the study, Calvin used a handkerchief to wipe off the blood stains on his daughter’s forehead. “Will His Majesty Roland Wimbledon accept us?”
“You were calling him a rebel king only yesterday,” Edith quipped teasingly. “Are you going to pledge homage to him so soon?”
“Wasn’t this what you said?” The Duke glared at his daughter. “Since we can’t beat him, we may as well surrender earlier. If we don’t win his trust, the nobles will hate us too!”
In fact, the execution of the two great noblemen without going through due process violated the bottom line agreed among the noble. If it was not for the fact that the Kingdom of Graycastle had been at war for two years and the lords of various lands had changed rapidly, as well as Timothy being a bad example, Calvin would never have dared to do things as his daughter had suggested.
“I don’t know if we can.”
“Wh-what?” The Duke quivered and nearly dropped his handkerchief. “You don’t know?”
“Indeed. All we can do is to display our sincerity, but ultimately it’ll be Prince Roland who decides the fate of Northern Region. You should know this, Dad,” Edith said almost nonchalantly. “There’s a chance he’ll send his own people to take over Northern Region, and it won’t be surprising if your rank is lowered. But I know that if we don’t try, our Kant family won’t have a chance to survive.”
Calvin stood rooted for a long time before he sat back down, looking extremely displeased. He knew that his daughter was right, but yet he found it hard to accept her reply.
He did not want to lose the position of Duke.
Just then, Edith laughed. “Don’t lose heart, Dad. You still have much work to do tomorrow. We’ll seize the mansions and fiefs of the two Earls. Besides, the outcome of this matter will heavily depend on the level of competence we display to His Majesty.” She paused for a while, before continuing. “Sincerity is our ticket into the negotiation, but ability is what will decide the outcome of the negotiation.”
Calvin frowned in incomprehension. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll bring these two heads to King’s City, Dad.” She laughed in a charming yet wicked way. “Let me be your messenger to His Majesty.”