Dawn broke.
Beyond the wall, the Hussite camp had transformed into something entirely different overnight.
Soldiers wrapped head to toe in bandages, burned yet with bloodshot eyes flashing, stood drawn up in ranks under steel discipline.
The song flowing quietly from their mouths overlapped into hundreds of voices, crossed the wall, and rang out as an ominous chorus.
"Ktož jsú boží bojovníci a zákona jeho..."
(Who are the warriors of God and of His law...)
It was the Hussite war hymn, 'Ye Who Are Warriors of God'.
The humiliation of defeat seemed to have turned their faith into a still more fanatical rage.
Šternberk, by contrast, having won a miraculous victory, looked instead like a fortress that could be taken for a stronghold of routed men.
The wall was broken and blackened in places, and the buildings in the courtyard had been hideously torn down to make improvised defensive palisades and stones for throwing.
Above all, the appearance of the soldiers holding the wall was wretched. Instead of gleaming armor, most of the places were filled by peasants dressed in dust-covered rags.
Open, contemptuous laughter burst out from the Hussite camp.
"Bwahaha! Look at the state of them! Are these the things that dare stand against the army of God! A rabble holding rocks! A bone thrown to a dog would be more of a threat than that lot!"
At their commander's words, laughter broke out among the Hussite soldiers. There was no trace of yesterday's terror in that laughter.
They had reason enough to laugh.
All that was in our hands were rusted scythes, clumsily whittled wooden spears, and even bare hands gripping stones. Cheeks were sunken with hunger, and eyes were hollow from working through the night.
Only the look dwelling in those eyes was anything but ordinary.
Fear had not vanished, but within it burned a grim light that held the resolve to fight to the death.
"All forces, advance!"
Along with the enemy commander's command, the roar that shook the ground rang out again.
Rumble... THUD!
The enormous siege tower the Hussites had built overnight revealed its full form. It was plainly thrown together in a single night, but in the one function of getting over a wall it looked entirely sound.
What is more, they had thoroughly prepared against fire: the tower's outer walls were wrapped in layer upon layer of thick water-soaked rawhide, and soldiers holding sandbags were stationed all over it.
To either side of it, soldiers with shields formed a dense square to escort the siege tower, pouring covering fire at the top of the wall without pause.
'This will not be easy....'
I confirmed the enemy's approach and shouted loudly.
"Loose!"
The fire catapults spat out burning jars once again. The jars flew in a precise arc and struck the siege tower's outer wall.
CRASH! FWOOSH!
The same hellfire as yesterday rose up, but the result was different. The flames only writhed on top of the wet hides, and even those went out fruitlessly as soon as the soldiers quickly scattered sand.
Beside me, Sir Kuno vented his fury.
"Damn it! Those bastards came properly prepared!"
The enemy commander's shout rang across the battlefield as if he were certain of victory.
"Ha ha ha! Greenhorn! Your sorcery ends here!"
I gave the catapult crews new orders at once.
"Change target! Behind the siege tower! Over the heads of the infantry!"
The firebombs' target changed. The burning jars now flew past the siege tower and rained down over the heads of the infantry units following behind it and the wagenburg.
BOOM!
"Aaaargh!"
"Fire! It is that cursed fire again!"
In the rear, horrific screams and confusion rose once more. Several soldiers rolled about engulfed in flames, and one wagenburg wagon burned, giving off black smoke.
But the enemy commander did not so much as twitch an eyebrow. Instead he browbeat them to use the losses at the rear as bait and not to slow the siege tower's advance.
'He is ruthless. So no matter how many of his own soldiers are sacrificed, he intends to get over that wall today without fail?'
The enemy commander's gaze was fixed solely on the enormous siege tower advancing toward the wall. And at last, with a heavy mechanical grinding, the siege tower crossed the moat and came to a stop right in front of the wall.
CREEEAK—!
As the enormous drawbridge began to lower from the top of the tower toward the wall, the Hussite soldiers' shouts burst out loud enough to tear the sky.
On the opposite side, our soldiers gripped their weapons with every nerve taut, watching the drawbridge that was about to come down and readying themselves for battle.
'Now.'
At that very moment, I, who had been hiding behind the wall all this while, stepped forward.
In my hand was a single ceramic bottle, and its wick was already blazing.
The enemy commander spotted me and shouted, pointing.
"That is him! Kill that greenhorn!"
With the shouts and arrows raining down behind me, I hurled the vessel with all my strength. My target was the part of the siege tower's supports that looked weakest.
A sneer hung at the corner of the enemy commander's mouth.
"Idiot. Is your last struggle nothing but throwing one firebomb!"
But before his sneer had even finished, a sight he had not imagined unfolded.
"Grenade in the hole!"
As I shouted with all my might and hid myself behind the wall, the soldiers and peasants around me who saw it likewise dropped low by reflex and covered their ears.
The vessel I had thrown did not spew flame with the bursting sound characteristic of a firebomb.
Instead, the instant it struck the ground.
FLASH!
An enormous flare and smoke burst out together with a roar that felt like it would tear the eardrums.
KA-BOOOOM!
The shock wave spread in every direction and the wall shook faintly.
The trump card I had kept hidden until the very last.
It was the moment the black powder bomb finally revealed its full might.
BOOM! KA-BOOM!!
The siege tower's lower supports were smashed apart, and unable to bear its own weight, it collapsed.
A ringing loud enough to tear my ears buzzed inside them.
An instant of silence.
The battlefield that had been full of the noise of war grew still as though it were all a lie.
Everyone stared blankly at the pillar of white smoke rising below the wall, as if they could not believe the sight before their eyes.
The siege tower they had believed to be the Hussites' only hope had been smashed to pieces.
That was when it happened.
"Wha... whoaaaaah!!"
One peasant soldier raised his weapon and cried out as though wailing. That was the signal.
From the mouths of everyone on the wall who had been waiting for death, a shout burst out all at once.
Less a cheer of victory than the roar of survival from those who had overcome an overwhelming terror.
"Long live my lord!"
"For Šternberk!"
The Hussite camp, by contrast, had fallen into complete silence. Their hymn had stopped, and their banners hung limp.
The soldiers stared blankly at the place where their siege tower had stood.
There was no longer rage or conviction in their eyes. There was only a primal terror of a phenomenon they could not comprehend.
The soldiers had already lost the will to fight and were edging backward.
"W-we must retreat! Mikuláš!"
The other commander, the first to come to his senses, grabbed the enemy commander's shoulder and shouted.
But he did not hear those words. Or he heard and could not comprehend them. In his empty eyes flickered only the pillar of white smoke and the wreckage of the siege tower.
"N-no... this cannot be...."
His muttering as he stared at the wreckage with bloodshot eyes soon turned into a mad shout with the veins standing out on his neck.
"Attack! All forces, attack! Set the ladders and climb the wall!"
"Mikuláš!!"
"Kill every last one of those devils! The warriors of God do not lose!"
It was an order stripped of reason. But at their commander's order the soldiers reluctantly took up ladders and rushed the wall again.
From that point it was a desperate melee with neither strategy nor tactics.
On the wall the men swung spears and old farm tools, the women poured down boiling filth, and even the children hurled whatever stones came to hand.
I too drew my sword myself and ranged along the wall. I ran to wherever the fighting was fiercest, shoved ladders away, and drove my blade into the throats of enemy soldiers climbing up.
Before I knew it my armor was dyed red enough that friendly blood and enemy blood could not be told apart.
I do not know how long we fought like that. The endlessly pressing Hussite assault thinned out as though it had all been a lie.
Because the voice that had been screaming like a madman below the wall, urging the attack on, was no longer to be heard.
The enemy commander had been struck square on the crown of the head by a single roof tile thrown with all the strength of a nameless old farmer.
THWACK!
Without so much as a grunt, he rolled straight off his horse and did not move again.
The utterly futile death of the commander leading the army of God. That shattered what remained of the Hussites' will to fight.
They flung down their weapons and, screaming, began to flee back the way they had come.
"Hah, haah...."
"Did we win...?"
The fight was over.
But nowhere on the wall did a cheer of victory break out.
Clang—
Beginning with the sound of a weapon slipping limply from a hand and striking the ground, the survivors sank down where they stood, one after another.
"Uhhh..."
"Ahhhh...!"
It was not the joy of victory.
It was a silent sobbing that mixed deep exhaustion, the relief of survival, and grief for those who had gone before them.
Children burst into tears in the arms of blood-covered parents, and wives beat their chests and wailed beside the bodies of husbands who had gone cold.
Over the wall settled a grief of unbearable weight, left behind as the sole price of victory.
"......."
Gripping my blood-stained sword, I silently carved that wretched sight into my eyes.
'So this is real war....'
It was not a story in a film or a drama. They had actually died, and they would never open their eyes again.
We had lost too much for it to be called a victory, and that loss would never come back.
My gaze stopped at one place. There was a woman who had died with an arrow lodged in her throat, and a child clinging to her body and sobbing.
It was a familiar face. It was the woman to whom I had handed water in the church.
I stared blankly at the sight, then slowly climbed to the highest point of the wall. And I opened my mouth toward the sobbing people of my domain.
"Raise your heads."
The sound of weeping gradually subsided. Red, wet eyes turned silently toward their lord.
"We fought. We held. And at last... we survived."
Forcing down the tremor in my fingertips, I pointed with the tip of my sword at the bodies sprawled across the wall.
"But remember! This victory was never given to us for nothing!"
Lying there were not only enemies but also the family of Šternberk, who until moments ago had been breathing and fighting alongside us.
"Look at them! Those brave people who were our fathers, our husbands, our sons! We must not forget for a single moment that we stand upon their sacrifice! We can never let their deaths be in vain!"
Without my meaning it, my voice gradually gathered force. As though pouring out the emotion clotted thick in my chest.
"Remember today's tears, this tearing pain, this rage that sinks into the bone! Taking all of this as our nourishment, we must rise again from the ashes! We will build the fallen wall higher and rebuild the broken houses stronger! And by doing so we will raise up with our own hands a Šternberk that no one will ever again dare covet!"
I raised my bloodied sword high toward the sky.
"This is not the end! This is a new beginning for Šternberk! This very day, upon these ashes, we have been born again!"
The voice I raised with all my strength rang out across the battlefield. Loud enough that everyone could hear it, on the wall and in every corner of the castle.
"History will remember us, and this day! Those who fell today have not died! They will become the history of Šternberk and breathe alongside us forever!"
Last, I looked at the people of my domain.
"So raise your heads. We have won. We survived! Let us rejoice and cheer to our hearts' content! That is the duty of those who survive!"
That was right. We had won. For those who survived, joy suited them better than grief.
They had the right to rejoice, and they had earned it in full.
The moment my words ended, the dam of emotion pent up inside the people burst.
The sobbing had turned, before anyone knew it, into an enormous roar.
"Whoaaaaah!!"
"Long live Šternberk!"
"Long live Lord Ulrich!"
The shouts bursting out filled Šternberk Castle to the brim.