Chapter 33:
At the Empty Throne
“WHAT ARE THE KNIGHTS DOING?” I REPRIMANDED.
My knights had done as they pleased at the border. By my name as Ina-Catalina Maria Villendorf, Queen of Villendorf, I’d welcomed Anhalt into my kingdom, and yet my knights had acted insolently to my guests.
“They’re here to negotiate peace,” I said. “Do my knights understand that? Or are they acting this way because they understand the situation?”
“They fully understand and still chose this route,” the elderly lady replied. Her wrinkly face hid the terrifying glimmer of her gaze, a clear sign that she was anything but ordinary. My Minister of War spoke with frightening calm. “I do admit that their first challenge to a duel was rash and ill-conceived. According to the report from the communicator—the crystal ball—when the knights of the border initially challenged Faust von Polidoro to a duel, he replied ‘It doesn’t matter when, where, or what situation we’re in. I must not flee from a duel against a Villendorfian knight. Should I do so, Lord Reckenbell will roll in her grave and in Valhalla with anguish, infuriated that she lost to such a man.’ And the knights lost control of themselves when they heard his declaration.”
“Reckenbell, huh…” I muttered.
Every time I heard her name, I was overcome with an indescribable surge of emotion. If I were asked whether I felt joy, anger, grief, or pleasure, would my answer be grief? I wasn’t even sure of that.
“Then it can’t be helped, I suppose?” I asked.
“It cannot,” my minister replied. “The moment he said those words, the archivist felt compelled to share the story with the entirety of Villendorf, and used the magical crystal ball to do just that. The tale spread throughout the kingdom. The archivist knew her role well, but she, too, is a knight of Villendorf.”
“Are you saying that we cannot show weakness?”
As a person who couldn’t even understand my own feelings, I simply couldn’t comprehend the actions of my knights. I turned to my minister and told her my assumptions.
“Quite the opposite, Your Majesty,” she replied. “Upon hearing his words, should we not rise to the challenge, we’d be the insolent ones. If Faust von Polidoro claims to accept Villendorf in its entirety, then we must reward him for his noble mindset. And so, we challenge him to duels. And this is also how we display the respect and feelings we hold for Lord Reckenbell.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“As we mourn her death, this is how we pay tribute to her. To this day, none of us can believe that our hero has died.”
A majority of the knights, soldiers, and citizens hadn’t seen Reckenbell’s corpse. She might have been our hero, but as we’d suffered a crushing defeat in the war, we couldn’t host our usual parade and instead opted for a quiet funeral. They didn’t see the final expression of Reckenbell—her face surrounded by flowers that complemented her narrow eyes, a faint smile on her lips. They didn’t see her corpse clad in armor, battered by the countless cuts that she’d sustained from the Knight of Wrath’s fierce attacks on the battlefield. Many people who’d known her never got to see the final state of her body.
Oh, Reckenbell, I thought. I’m crushed by your defeat. I’ve already accepted your death. I’ll never forget the words of your only daughter, Lady Nina, at your funeral. She said that you’d loved me, Reckenbell. Yet I couldn’t understand love. I was a failure of a person—without Reckenbell, I was a good-for-nothing queen. Without you, a coldhearted woman like me has been reduced to an empty puppet. I would be lucky if some embers remained, but I was now just a vacant creature who performed duties under the name of Catalina, the Coldhearted Queen.
“Then challenging Faust von Polidoro is how people pay tribute to Reckenbell?” I asked.
“Everyone is hoping for some sense of closure,” my minister replied. “We’d all like to believe that Lord Reckenbell was justified in losing to a man as splendid as him. But to reach that conclusion, we must all challenge Faust von Polidoro and lose. Even if two years have passed since her death, our hero, Lord Reckenbell, still remains in everyone’s hearts.”
“Closure…”
Then I must accept that. The knights, soldiers, citizens, and the entirety of Villendorf still couldn’t accept Reckenbell’s defeat. They struggled to move past the loss of their hero. That being the case, I decided to let them do as they pleased until they were satisfied and able to move on.
“Then I shall allow every knight of Villendorf to challenge Faust von Polidoro to a duel,” I said. “I shall also grant clemency for the reckless acts of the knights by the border.”
“Are you sure about this, Your Majesty?” my minister asked.
“This is Villendorf, is it not?”
Logically, I could understand the customs of our nation, though I failed to comprehend the emotional side of these actions. I knew how Villendorf operated, and I decided to give these duels my official approval.
“Where is Faust von Polidoro now?” I asked.
“He was challenged to duels at the border and took down six of our elite knights in succession without so much as a moment of rest,” my minister replied. “He then entered our kingdom guided by our front line commander of the Anhaltish border. Some of the information is a bit outdated, but may I continue my report?”
“Go on. I understand that there’s a limit to the number of crystal ball communications, and not all regional lords possess them. I presume that the Anhaltish delegation is en route to the royal capital.”
The minister nodded. It doesn’t matter, but how old is this granny? When I was five and first met Reckenbell, the minister was by my side, and she already looked over-the-hill. It’s not worth asking right now, but still.
“As he slowly makes his way to the royal capital, he’s dueled people in every small village, town, fief, land owned by the royal family, and territory along the way,” my minister revealed.
“And the results? Not that I need to bother asking, I suppose.”
“He’s won them all. Every magistrate, feudal lord, and renowned knight of our territories challenged him, no matter the size of their land. He fought against every knight who represented her territory and every elite knight proud of her abilities without taking a single break. He remains undefeated.”
I thought so. If he weren’t that strong, he wouldn’t have been able to win against Reckenbell. And she truly was a hero to the core.
“And are those ladies satisfied?” I asked.
“I believe so,” the minister replied. “They can now fully accept the death of Lord Reckenbell. As he makes his way around our kingdom, everyone will eventually have no choice but to come to terms with her passing.”
“I see.”
An inexplicable feeling smoldered in my chest. A little more than two years had passed since the Campaign of Villendorf, and the knights still refused to accept our hero’s death. Only now could they finally move past the stage of denial. That invoked something unusual within my heart.
“How many duels has Faust von Polidoro finished so far?” I asked.
“Sixty-eight, Your Majesty,” my minister replied. “And he’s won them all. As mentioned before, the information is a bit outdated and thus slightly inaccurate. I’m certain that the number of duels is climbing as we speak.”
“Is that so?” I replied.
At this rate, it sounds like he’ll engage in a hundred duels and win them all before he reaches the throne where I sit.
“What is a hero exactly?” I wondered. “Why do people like Reckenbell or Faust exist in this world?”
“The world works in mysterious ways,” my minister replied. “I can only attribute it to magic. God must’ve blessed their very existence. Make no mistake, Your Majesty. The two names that you’ve just mentioned are people who appear maybe once in a millennium if we’re lucky.”
“As a princess-elector nation with over a million citizens, we can still only find someone like them once a millennium, huh…”
Such a priceless person had slipped out of my hands. The loss of Reckenbell was a terrible blow. Our old foes, the plundering nomads who lived in the grassy plains of the north, prioritized information. They refused to fight a losing battle. Hence, when Reckenbell had decimated several of their tribes, they’d lost their aggressiveness and stopped attacking us. But once the nomads of the north learned of Reckenbell’s death, they’d start their attacks again.
“I must come up with a few plans,” I muttered.
The empire we belonged to—or allowed to oversee our kingdom, rather—was the Holy Gusten Empire. Both Anhalt and Villendorf were princess-elector nations that held voting rights for the ruler. The empire had sent us a message, ordering us to stop fighting and work together to defeat the nomadic tribes of the north.