Chapter 57
However, my mother acknowledged me, supported me, and loved me—though I only realized that after she had died.
“You should have stayed alive after raising me.”
Those were my father’s first words to me at my mother’s funeral.
Not long after, he handed me armor and a weapon.
“The south is suffering frequent incursions from Luto. Go and completely wipe them out before you return. This will be your first duty as lord. Understood?”
By my father’s command, I had no choice but to step onto the battlefield—at the age of thirteen, an age where simply not being a burden was the best I could manage.
The armor was far too big, and the helmet spun loosely around my head.
The weapon wasn’t something I could grip with one hand, so I clutched it with both—and still my legs shook so badly I could barely stand.
“Do not worry, my lord. We will protect you!”
The commander, Lombell, who had served our lords for generations, stood protectively at my side.
But that did little good—because I was simply too weak.
And so, in a place overflowing with death and suffering, I could only sit on the finest horse in the safest position, watching my soldiers die and be wounded before my eyes.
“It seems we’ll have to retreat. You should go first.”
There was nothing but a low hill—not even terrain fit for hiding—so the knights surrounding me began to move quickly.
“Die—!”
From the flank, an enemy cavalryman charged and hurled his long spear straight at me.
With no ambush in sight, I froze on the spot, unable to evade the weapon rushing toward me.
Thud—
I heard the sound of armor being pierced and flesh bursting.
“Lombell—!!”
I screamed, but the knights grabbed me and urged me on instead of turning back.
“We must go now. The longer we stay, the greater the danger!”
“But Lombell—!!”
“The commander is dead! Do not let his death be in vain, my lord!”
The vice commander shouted hoarsely.
And so, tightly surrounded by the knights, I managed to escape the battlefield unharmed.
But as battles continued to break out, the young commander—unable to join or leave the fighting—became nothing more than a useless burden.
“Useless wretch!”
Those were my father’s first words the moment I returned to the keep.
“The general died because of you. For the sake of saving you—someone like you—the commander died!”
Arthur Clayde openly humiliated me before the household staff.
And he was right—Lombell Gatens had been a member of a family that had loyally served Tegeness for generations.
His death was a waste.
“You claimed you had learned and trained to be a proper lord—what exactly did you do?”
Despite his scorn, my father continued to push me to the front lines in countless wars thereafter.
“Your mother, though a woman, defended the entire southwestern border. You should be better than that. You’ve been trained as a lord since birth.”
“How long must the West sacrifice its people to protect you? The enemy commander mocked you for being a child, didn’t he? And you just stood there and endured it? You should have at least fired an arrow!”
“Your mother must be weeping in her grave. Or have you spent your life doing nothing but being spoiled? How can you be so incompetent?!”
Thinking back, perhaps all of this was my father venting his frustration at being forced to remain in the West in place of his young lord.
“Do I really have to go?”
After witnessing so much death, I began to feel I needed time to grow stronger.
When I asked my father this, he was summoned out of a party, drunk and in a foul mood.
“You’re the lord, aren’t you? Not me—you!”
At that moment, his roar from behind the desk no longer frightened me. I calmly slipped the ring from my finger.
“Then you do it, Father.”
The moment I set it on the desk, the ring naturally stretched to the size of an adult man’s.
“You’re the earl and head of the family, aren’t you? The title of lord should rightfully be yours.”
But Arthur Clayde, seeing the ring expand on its own, recoiled with a hiss as if looking at some monster.
When he finally managed to compose himself, he questioned me.
“Do you mock your mother’s will?”
“…”
“While carrying you in her belly, she personally went to the witch and gained her permission. Do you think that’s a lie? That you can deny it just because you’ve never seen the witch? Is that truly how a Clayde behaves?”
“I am not yet of use on the battlefield, Father.”
“And when you went to the battlefield, were there not children younger than you? Did they not die? Did they not fight? As lord, do you not have even that much responsibility?!”
Most battlefields were along the border, but even there villages existed—children lived there.
They would stand on the battlefield wielding farm tools like weapons before they were even ten years old, then run back into their mothers’ arms when Tegeness reinforcements arrived.
Knowing that, my father’s reproach cut into me all the deeper.
“So what, you’re still young, so you’d rather be sheltered in this comfortable keep? You’ll send your people to war but bear no responsibility?”
He would dig and dig, searching for even the smallest trace of guilt or shame in me, stabbing until the blood ran from within—
as if he wanted his own child to drown in it.
“For the sake of the warriors who gave their lives for you, you must do your utmost as lord. How can you think of running away? That such a cowardly, pitiful rat was born a Clayde! You might as well give your ring to that bastard brat—he’d wield a sword better than you ever could.”
Weak. Incompetent. Cowardly. Imperfect. Worthless.
I heard those insults every day, until I was nearly at my breaking point.
One such day—
“I met Cara Ringbon.”
Hannibal said this to Anne, his blackened eyes brimming with deep regret and remorse.
From Idith Tara, Cara was the daughter of Baron Ringbon, part of the entourage of none other than Earl Clayde’s invited guest.
“She told me I was amazing. That being a lord at such a young age was remarkable, that going to the battlefield was admirable. That she was proud of me, the rightful heir to House Clayde. She said… no matter the sacrifices or losses, the lord—that I—was precious. She told me I was doing well. Just words. Just those words, and I…”
Hannibal clenched his fists, teeth grinding.
For a child who had been raised coldly as an heir and existed only as a lord, such praise wasn’t merely words—it was a lifeline.
“Falling in love is not a sin. Humans are born craving love, attention, and recognition. Children need it all the more.”
Anne herself had lived a hard life since the age of seven, but what had kept her going was the memory of being loved as a child.
Faint though it was, the feeling and warmth were vivid—the embrace of her father, her mother’s hand stroking her cheek, their voices calling her name with affection, singing to her with love.
Those hazy memories became the deep, firm roots that supported her.
But Hannibal Clayde—he had likely never once, not even for a moment, been given such a chance.
“But a lord of Clayde should never have sold the witch’s name for such love.”
Covering his face with both hands, Hannibal muttered:
“Proposing in the Witch’s Forest with Assad’s ring in my hand—what madness.”
And then, as always, his words returned to self-condemnation.
Seeing that, Anne realized that the iron fortress of the Clayde lord’s heart was as fragile as glass—ready to shatter at any moment.
“But you didn’t know, my lord. You didn’t know Cara Ringbon’s true nature. You were deceived by people Earl Clayde himself brought. You’re entirely a victim. All the blame—excuse me for saying—belongs to the earl alone!”
So engrossed in his story, Anne found herself growing indignant on his behalf.
“How determined must she have been to even consider setting the Witch’s Forest on fire?”
“She smuggled tinder in all the way from the Kingdom of Luto. She used it to set the entire forest ablaze in an instant, left me standing there stunned, and rode off alone. She even flung the Assad ring I had offered her… I should have interrogated her properly. I should never have let my father handle the aftermath. I should have tortured her myself, cut her down—”
“My lord.”
You were young then.
It wasn’t something he could have done at that age.
No matter how much he blamed himself now, he couldn’t change a mistake made in his youth.
Everyone lives with such things—so why was this man still trapped in that moment, drowning in its pain?
Even without her speaking, Hannibal seemed to read Anne’s thoughts.
“There are mistakes that cannot be made, no matter how young you are. Mistakes that never fade with time, like a brand burned into you. Even if everyone else forgets, even if no one knows, I know. I must remember.”
A past branded into him—Grey Benton.
It was as if Hannibal were speaking of him, and Anne’s pupils trembled.
No matter how much time passed, even if no one else remembered, could Anne ever forget him—or his pain?
Of course not.
