Hiiiiigh!
Clop! Clop!
Thousands of hooves and hundreds of wheels trampled the earth.
The ground wept, and along with a roar that shook the axis of the world, the army advanced steadily toward Šternberk.
The Hussites' second punitive force.
At its head was the one-eyed lion, Jan Žižka.
The wagenburg unit mobilized this time was of a different order from the one Mikuláš had led before.
The outer walls of every wagon were coated thickly with mud, and over the roofs lay several layers of hide soaked through with water.
Where the water barrels should have been, casks of dry sand and vinegar had taken their place instead, and every soldier wore a thick cloak.
They had even organized axe teams to detach wagons from the formation immediately in case of emergency.
Preparation against fire attack so perfect it was near obsessive.
Now those cursed flames would never work on the Hussites a second time.
Žižka's one eye blazed with a thirst for vengeance.
'Mikuláš, I shall take your revenge myself.'
He ground his teeth, recalling the futile end of his old comrade in arms.
At last, when the Hussite host reached the boundary of the Šternberk domain.
"Wait—!!"
A cloud of dust rose at the rear, and a single horse foaming at the mouth came galloping like something possessed.
The messenger driving the horse hard cried out desperately in a badly hoarse voice.
"Halt! Halt the advance!"
Žižka raised one hand. At that, the Hussite army stopped stock-still where it stood.
The roar that had been shaking the ground moments before ceased as though it had all been a lie.
"What man dares tell me to halt my army!"
The messenger, arriving at the head of the army, came off his horse as though tumbling from it. Gasping for breath, he knelt before Žižka.
"General! Urgent word from Prague!"
"Urgent word from Prague? If that is all, it would be no less timely heard on the march. Did you obstruct the advance of the army of God for a reason as trivial as that?"
Žižka's voice rang out like thunder. At the pressure pouring from that one eye, the messenger's shoulders trembled finely with fear.
"F-forgive me! But... Šternberk must not be attacked! It is the leadership's order that you halt your advance this instant!"
"What did you say?"
Deep creases carved into Žižka's brow. The air surrounding them froze in an instant.
"What did you just babble. Did I hear wrong, or has your tongue turned in your mouth?"
The messenger shook his head, nearly in tears.
"Th-that is...! General, I beg you, read this first...!"
The messenger hurriedly drew a crumpled sheet of parchment from his coat and held it out. The wax seal of the city of Prague stamped upon it was unmistakable.
"Hmph."
Žižka snorted and reluctantly took the parchment.
Not for a moment thinking that a mere scrap of paper could halt the advance of the army of God.
Žižka's expression gradually hardened as he began to read down the first line with derision in his eyes.
The rage that had been burning moments before was nowhere to be found, and his one eye opened wide as though he could not believe it.
"What... what in the world is this...!"
Žižka whipped his head around toward the messenger.
"Is what is written here truly the fact?"
"Forgive me, but I do not know the contents of the letter. I know only that the leadership in Prague said all commanders, the general included, must urgently discuss this matter!"
"Hah...."
The commander of steel, who had never once wavered even before Sigismund's crusade.
That man's hand was now trembling violently because of a single letter.
"Damn it!"
Crunch—
The parchment crumpled hideously inside Žižka's fist.
***
To the valiant brothers in faith of Bohemia.
First, I express my deep regret for the bloodshed that occurred beneath the walls of Šternberk in days past.
But I wish to state at the outset that this was not hatred directed at one another, but a sorrowful tragedy arising from a great misunderstanding.
My father died at your hands at Vyšehrad, and my own sword too has seen your blood.
Yet I have taken up this pen not to argue the price of the blood that was shed.
Rather I wish to ask. Why on earth must we Bohemians drive blades into one another's hearts?
The true enemy, who blinded our eyes and set brother against brother, is another altogether.
It is the lying king who abandoned faith and promise, Sigismund.
See it clearly. Sigismund is not the King of Bohemia. He is only the king of Hungary and Germany.
There is no knowing when a foreign crusade raised under the Pope's name will trample our land again.
The moment he becomes King of Bohemia, the brilliant intellect of Prague and the silver mines of Kutná Hora will be exploited not for Bohemia but solely for the Holy Roman Empire.
Sigismund's endless ambition is what divides us.
Brothers. We must unite.
We must become one and fight together.
For the sake of this sacred unity I am prepared to cast aside everything.
Therefore, through this letter, I swear deeply to all my Hussite brothers.
I swear that I too shall take up the chalice with you, and that I shall make the Four Articles of Prague you proclaim (freedom of preaching, communion in both kinds, confiscation of Church property, and just punishment) the law by which I govern.
I promise on my honor to abandon the corrupt order of Roman Catholicism and to follow the true teaching of the Lord.
But brothers, one thing is regrettable: that you, gathered under a great cause, still have no center of gravity.
As a flock without a shepherd makes fine prey for the wolf, so an army without a banner is bound to scatter.
To reclaim the glory of Bohemia, do we not need a noble and rightful banner that all can look up to?
Only a united Bohemia can stand against Sigismund's ambition.
Earnestly hoping that beside your chalice banner, the eight-pointed star of Šternberk and the lion of Bohemia may fly together.
The rightful successor of the house of Šternberk,
the last grandson through the female line of Bohemia's great emperor, Charles IV,
son of Eliška, princess of Luxembourg,
Ulrich von Šternberk.
***
"My lord... is the grandson of His Majesty Charles IV?!?!"
János's shriek made the candle flames in the study waver perilously.
I shrugged and answered.
"So it turns out. You did not know?"
"How on earth would I know that! It is not as though I go around with my lord's family tree memorized by heart!"
János's protest was entirely reasonable. In an era when paper was precious, few people remembered every distant bloodline of an emperor or a king.
Charles IV in particular had married six times officially, and the children born of those marriages numbered fifteen. Counting the children those children bore, the number was hard even to reckon.
It was not due to any scheme or conspiracy. In medieval Europe this was simply the norm. Children died so easily that having that many was only natural, and how much more so for an emperor.
Konrad, the chief attendant, spoke up heavily.
"It is only natural that young János would not know. He is a foreigner and would not be familiar with Bohemian affairs."
"Even so, I do not understand. If he is the grandson of Charles IV through the female line, is that not the direct bloodline of the Holy Roman Emperor? And yet the Hussite bastards tried to kill my lord without a second thought. Something does not add up."
Konrad answered in a calm voice, as if recalling the distant past.
"That is... because the existence of the lady, Princess Eliška, was an open secret in the imperial house of the time. Few knew of it apart from the royal chamberlains or the clerks who managed the genealogies. And those men are all imperial-faction figures stuck fast at His Majesty Sigismund's side."
Konrad turned his gaze toward me.
There were deeply complicated emotions in his eyes. Sorrow, remorse, and something like a little guilt.
"The reason it is not well known that my lord is Charles IV's grandson through the female line... is difficult for this old man's mouth to speak of in detail. I will say only that the lady was a person all but forgotten in the politics of the center."
At Konrad's odd look I simply kept my silence.
To speak honestly, the original owner of this body, 'Ulrich', had attached no meaning whatsoever to the fact that he was Charles IV's grandson through the female line. He had never so much as dreamed of becoming a king.
Besides, the mother in his memories was only a woman who lay ill in bed with a sorrowful face, an image very far from that of a princess.
In that moment János snapped his head up as if he had realized something.
"Ah! Then the reason His Majesty Sigismund effectively left my lord to die was...!"
"He must have known I was a strong candidate for the succession who could threaten him. Of course it is also true that he genuinely had no capacity to look after us, but he will have thought it a fine opportunity to clear away a thorn in his side while he was at it."
From Sigismund's position it made sense enough. There is no fool who would spend money and troops to rescue a political rival.
"But my lord, why reveal it now of all times? If you had made this known before the battle, you might have ended it without fighting the Hussites at all."
János's voice sank a little. It was a practical question, but sorrow for those who had been sacrificed was steeped in it.
"No. The me of that time was, from the Hussite viewpoint, a weakling facing defeat. Putting forward my bloodline in that situation would have meant, to them, that a puppet king they could handle as they pleased had rolled into their laps."
At the time my memories were incomplete, having only just fallen into the medieval world, and that was a large part of it, but even if my memories had been whole, nothing would have changed.
I expect it would have looked like nothing but begging: 'I am this useful, so please do not kill me.'
"But now it is different. I killed their commander and burned the wagenburg they called invincible. They fear me. Now I have taken far higher ground in the negotiation."
An offer of peace extended by the losing side becomes begging, but peace extended by the winning side becomes the magnanimity of a victor.
Just then Sir Kuno, who had been quiet all this while, opened his mouth. His voice was heavy and hard as stone.
"My lord, I cannot understand this at all."
"Oh?"
"Are the Hussites not the enemies who murdered my lord's father? Is joining hands with one's enemy truly a thing befitting the honor of a noble?"
A sense of betrayal and confusion were mixed on Sir Kuno's face.
As a retainer who had given his loyalty to the previous head of the house, his doubt was only natural.
There was only one thing I could say to him now.
"Is the reason my father died really the Hussites, Sir Kuno?"
"Why, of course...!"
Sir Kuno started to cry out by reflex, then swallowed his words.
Because the look in my eyes was piercing him through, colder and sharper than any blade.
"Sigismund called the crusade, and my father marched out to fulfill his duty as a noble. And how did Sigismund repay that loyal retainer? Did he not ignore my plea for rescue as his son and effectively drive me out to die?"
"That will have been part of His Majesty's greater design! It was an unavoidable sacrifice for striking Prague, the heart of the heretics; he never meant to abandon my lord...!"
"No."
Sir Kuno's loyalty was beyond question, but the direction that loyalty faced was the problem.
"It was Sigismund who started this war in the first place. Luring Jan Hus out with a vile lie and burning him, and then, when the enraged people rose, trying to sweep them away by branding them heretics: is that the conduct of a normal king? In his head there is only the crown of Bohemia; the people of this land are nowhere in his sight."
Sir Kuno faltered a moment, then spoke in a voice that lacked conviction even to himself.
"...The duty of a king is to defend the Church! To listen to the voice of God rather than the voice of the people is the way of a sovereign! Even if that way is harsh, as subjects it is our duty to follow!"
Sir Kuno's voice was desperate. He was frantically trying to stop his liege from crossing a line beyond return.
Perhaps in medieval Europe Sir Kuno's thinking was the correct answer.
But I was not a man of the Middle Ages, and my decision was already firm.
"My father's true enemy is not those peasants fighting for their convictions and their survival. It is Sigismund, the man who drove them to their deaths for his own greed in order to seize a crown and silver."
At a rebuttal so resolute and so full of conviction, Sir Kuno's words failed him. For a long while he could not continue.
But he did not withdraw at that. Instead, he brought up the most fundamental and fatal problem.
"Even... even if my lord's words are a hundred times right, the Hussites are heretics! The moment you accept them, my lord will be excommunicated by His Holiness the Pope! Do you truly not know what excommunication means in the Catholic world!"
Sir Kuno's voice held heartfelt worry along with a dread of faith that ran to the marrow.
In this era the Pope was God's proxy, and a declaration of excommunication meant eternal damnation.
Not only that: the vassals of an excommunicated lord were released from their oaths of loyalty. Any Catholic prince would gain a pretext to attack the domain of an excommunicated man.
Because in the Catholic world, one excommunicated by the Church was not a person.
"Not only my lord's soul but Šternberk itself will become the enemy of every Catholic power!"
I laughed lightly.
That laugh was neither contempt nor derision. It was simply a pure question directed at an old, worn-out notion.
"Sir Kuno. If the Pope orders you to go to hell, do you truly go to hell?"
"Why, of course..."
"Heaven and hell are decided not by a mere man but by God. If I stand blameless before God, what does it matter if everyone in the world points at me and calls me a heretic?"
At yet another remark that shattered common sense, the eyes of everyone present widened in shock. János's mouth opened slightly, and Konrad let out a faint groan.
"Aah..."
Sir Kuno went on with his head bowed deeply.
"My liege is walking a road no one has walked... no, a road no one has so much as imagined."
In that moment he looked at me with the eyes of a man seeing not a young lord but the son of his old liege.
"To call it a road of thorns is not enough. My liege means to walk into the fires of hell of his own accord."
"I know it."
Of course I knew. Why on earth would I not know?
But this was the only road by which I could remain myself in medieval Europe.
Sir Kuno nodded with the look of a man whose resolve had hardened.
"...Though I swore before the previous lord's remains that I would protect my liege no matter what befell, this disloyal servant was truly blind and foolish. My liege, I beg you to pass sentence on me."
"There is no need. Repay your offense by serving me and defending this land."
"Ugh...!"
Sir Kuno bowed his head and shed hot tears.
Once the heavy mood had settled somewhat, János read the room and asked carefully.
"So then, my lord. Do you truly intend to become King of Bohemia?"
"How would I know. That depends on how they respond."
"How can you say something so irresponsible! What will you do if they say they will not make you king!"
János leapt up. Watching him, I laughed at my ease.
"That is a possibility too. But one thing is certain."
My eyes glinted with mischief.
"By now Prague will be turned completely upside down, war or no war."
My prediction was exactly right.
At that very hour, Prague had indeed been thrown into an uproar.