Chapter 42

France had been devastated at the Battle of Agincourt. Richemont had been taken prisoner there as well, but was released in exchange for swearing allegiance to Henry V.

Afterward, he found himself deeply inspired by Henry V’s rule. He watched as ruthless reprisals and systematic massacres brought France to heel. Richemont came to understand that violence was the quickest path to power and social recognition.

Taking Henry V, who had risen to become a ruler, as his model, he never hesitated to kill for political ends. His methods were brutal, but they produced clear results in a short period of time.

I never thought they’d appoint an incompetent fool like Jean de Dunois as commander in my place…

It was because of the Dauphin’s personal grudge against him. Undeterred by his leader’s rejection, Richemont continued to rebel until the bitter end. Unfortunately, even that had failed, leaving him backed into a corner.

Joining them at Orléans is my last chance at salvation. …Who should I kill?

Violence had been his downfall, yet Richemont still regarded it as a useful tool. Henry V’s example, combined with several successes of his own, had convinced him of its effectiveness.

He believed that the relationship between a loyal subject and a leader who rewarded that loyalty was nothing more than a fantasy. If you wanted something, you had to seize it yourself.

“My lords, we’re going to the command room.”

Richemont set off with a contingent of burly cavalrymen. As usual, his intention was to flaunt his authority through force. He never went anywhere alone. He had no intention of suffering the humiliation of being brought to his knees by a commoner again.

It was time for the meeting. Inside were experienced knights like Jean Poton and La Hire, along with a handful of young nobles who were still wet behind the ears. Richemont was about to behave as he always did when he stopped short.

“You’re here.”

“…Saint. No, commoner. You’ve been running around keeping yourself busy. What brings you here?”

Maxime Blanche. A commoner who looked as though he had only just reached adulthood, yet was strangely composed and utterly unwilling to bend in the face of violence.

For a man who wielded intimidation and violence as his weapons, someone like Maxime was a thorn in his side.

“When you’re absorbed in your work, sometimes you forget to clean up after yourself.

That’s not good. Keeping your surroundings in order prevents disruptions to your workflow and reduces the risk of accidents.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m saying it’s time to clean you up.”

“…Do you have a death wish?”

Richemont’s eyes darted around the room. Aside from the commoner, the people present were the same as usual. The Saintess was nowhere to be seen.

I can handle this.

The cavalrymen he had brought with him were all skilled fighters. One of them had lost a duel against that savage Pierre, but that had merely been a stroke of bad luck.

If anything, this was an opportunity. He could kill them and reclaim the command that had been taken from him—

Boooom!!

Smoke erupted through the cramped room. The entire building shook from the impact.

“Wh-What was that?”

“…They’re dead.”

Two of the cavalrymen standing by the doorway had been killed instantly. Part of the wall had collapsed. Richemont’s mind went blank. He couldn’t even give the order to attack.

“You seemed to prefer this way of communicating, so I prepared accordingly.”

That damned commoner was as calm as ever. Smoke filled the cramped room, leaving many of those inside coughing.

“Commander-in-Chief, do you really think you can do this to me and get away with it?”

Richemont glared at the Duke of Alençon. The duke merely shrugged as though he couldn’t care less. Unlike his father, who had died at Agincourt, Richemont had walked free from that same battlefield after swearing allegiance to the enemy. The Duke of Alençon despised him for it. In truth, merely looking at Richemont made him uncomfortable.

“His Majesty gave the order. Even that cavalry you were so proud of has become expendable now that our victory has brought us plenty of new recruits.”

“…Is all this really necessary? If you don’t need me anymore, why not simply throw me out?”

“If we cast you out, you’ll obviously side with Burgundy. Troublesome as it may be, eliminating a potential enemy is the safer option.”

It was a mixture of truth and lies. Maxime had no intention of eliminating Richemont. Everything he was doing was merely part of the process of driving the man into a corner to achieve his goal.

Richemont, who had no way of knowing the truth, flew into a rage.

“Who the hell decided a cowardly bastard like you deserved to be called a saint?!”

“The rest of you, put down your weapons if you want to live. There’s only one man we’re here to arrest. The traitor, Arthur de Richemont.”

A knight who had been about to flee through the door froze. He had spotted the soldiers surrounding them outside. There was nowhere to run.

“What are you all doing?! Draw your weapons!”

“Surrender, and you’ll live. I swear in the name of God that you will suffer no consequences. There is no honor in fighting for a traitor.”

“I said draw your weapons!!”

An oath sworn in the name of God carried one’s honor with it. Even if it was only words, it inspired tremendous trust.

“…I’m sorry.”

Clunk.

Clatter.

The first defector emerged.

The psychological burden of betrayal vanished the moment someone else went first. One by one, they discarded their weapons, and the momentum quickly snowballed until every last one of them had surrendered.

“It’s cramped in here. Those of you who have surrendered, please make your way outside in an orderly fashion.”

The cavalrymen filed outside, where the soldiers took them into custody. In the blink of an eye, Richemont was alone.

“Damn it…”

Once it was all over, Richemont accepted the situation with surprising calm.

“Are we executing him on the spot without a trial? If so, I’d like to kill him myself. I’m confident I’d make an excellent executioner!”

Gilles de Rais smiled brightly as he drew a finger across his throat. For the record, he wasn’t acting. Gilles de Rais had never been told about the plan in the first place.

A soldier seized Richemont by both arms. As he was being dragged away, Maxime murmured to him in passing.

“There is one way you might survive, but I doubt a strict man like you would be interested.”

“…Wait, wait! There’s a way I can live? Tell me exactly what it is!”

“Why are you acting as though you don’t already know?”

Maxime tilted his head in apparent confusion.

“Go to the front lines. Dangerous times are precisely when you should prove your loyalty to His Majesty. If you fight with genuine devotion, His Majesty may change his mind about you. When that happens, I’ll gladly vouch for your accomplishments.”

“I’ll do it! I’ll prove myself gladly, so just spare my life!”

He answered immediately in desperation. To survive, he bowed his head.

Just as he had when he submitted to the King of England.

***

Everyone in Orléans knew that Jeanne d’Arc was deeply devout.

She met Father Tommaso at Mass. Neither of them spoke until the service had completely ended.

“It’s remarkably peaceful today. Even the birds seem to be listening to the sermon. Perhaps the world itself needs time to pray every now and then. On days like this, the heart grows peaceful as well.”

Father Tommaso did not casually use words like Saint or Saintess.

“Yes. It feels as though the whole world is catching its breath.”

“I’ve heard that you continue to pray faithfully even on days when you’ve fought in battle. The body is precious too, as the soul is precious, so you must take good care of it. God would not wish to see you collapse from exhaustion.”

“I’m getting enough rest. I have a lot of help, so I’m always ready to fight.”

The priest found the young girl admirable. As a foreigner, he had little interest in something like a French victory. He was simply impressed that despite all the praise showered upon her, she remained a courteous and humble girl.

“I saw Maxime Blanche forging a sword. I also saw that longsword of his in action. It was remarkable.”

“That’s right. Maxime is someone who changes the world.”

Whenever the subject turned to Maxime, Jeanne immediately came alive. The priest did not miss the change.

“You two seem very close. Even when Maxime calls you ‘Jeanne’, there’s a certain warmth to it. What do you make of that?”

A woman revered as the Virgin Saintess was bound to invite suspicion if she grew too close to a man. People merely kept quiet about it because that man happened to be called a Saint.

“…Did it really feel warm to you?”

“Yes.”

The Saintess’s reaction was strange. Did she not realize people were suspicious of them?

“Wasn’t he just as warm toward everyone else?”

Father Tommaso considered the question for a moment, then gave a casual answer to test her reaction.

“He seemed especially affectionate toward you.”

“Hehe… hehe.”

A silly little giggle.

The priest had been speaking to her seriously, and Jeanne’s voice was so quiet that he thought he had misheard her.

“Huh? Could you say that again?”

“…It was nothing.”

Jeanne covered her mouth. After that, she could no longer focus on the conversation. The priest tried several times to continue talking to her but could not get a proper answer.

Is she wary of me?

Left with the wrong impression, he had no choice but to withdraw and wait for another opportunity.

***

Maxime and Coat summoned every member of the engineering unit. Preparations for upgrading their equipment were already complete.

“Iron becomes much harder when it’s hammered thin and broad, then repeatedly heat-treated and quenched. With iron closer to pure iron, you’d need to make it much thicker to achieve the same level of protection. So I’ll manufacture the components myself.

Open the furnace. Heat the material until it’s red-hot, then pull it out immediately so we can work it.”

The engineers Bing and Henri took the lead in heating the plate material to the proper temperature. The hammering and shaping would be handled by craftsmen with extensive experience working iron.

“We’ve already established the basic dimensions for the horse armor. I’ve left a sample outline beside you, so make sure it fits closely against the body without restricting movement.”

The horse armor needed to be shaped into convex curves to disperse impacts. By hammering and pressing the metal through the forging process, they could also expect work hardening to strengthen its internal structure.

The engineering unit had plenty of manpower. With a perfect division of labor in place, they got to work.

“Coat, put the shaped pieces of horse armor into the furnace and heat them up. We’re going to quench them in water.”

Quenching altered the metal’s internal structure. When done properly, it could make an iron plate several times stronger even at the same thickness.

The faster the cooling, the better. However, quenching in cold water could overcool the metal and cause cracks, so it was important to cool it steadily at an appropriate temperature.

Quenching hot iron caused the water temperature to rise quickly. That made a constant supply of fresh water essential. Fortunately, Orléans sat right beside the Loire, so replacing the water was no trouble at all.

A quenching technique practiced by only a tiny handful of master craftsmen in Europe was being carried out on a massive scale as though it were nothing, and with even greater precision.

“Doing so many at once is killing me. …We’re finishing them up now, right?”

“No. We quench them again.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah. If you only quench them once, they’ll be hard but brittle under impact. Heat them again and quench them. We’ll repeat the process at least until they turn yellowish.”

“Might as well accept that I’m going to die doing this…”

Repeated treatment was essential if the plates were to withstand impacts without breaking.

The hardness was also varied depending on the part. Critical areas such as the breastplate were kept highly hardened, while joints and sections covering the horse’s torso, which needed flexibility, required different temperature control. For those areas, they had to sacrifice some hardness in exchange for greater toughness.

Maxime focused on applying different heat treatments to each section. The lack of any tool for measuring temperature precisely was inconvenient, but with his extensive experience and exceptional instincts, finding the temperature he wanted was not difficult. He had also run experiments beforehand to determine the proper temperatures.

“That’s enough. Let’s work on the surface now.”

The heat treatment of the plates was complete. Next came fluting, the process of working grooves into the metal.

The grooves formed along the curved surface helped deflect attacks while increasing the armor’s overall strength. The process was complicated, however, making it poorly suited to mass production on this scale. They settled for adding only minimal fluting to gain some of the benefits.

“Finally, let’s polish it.”

Plate armor was relatively vulnerable to corrosion, so polishing it to prevent rust was essential.

They ground whetstones and rubbed the surface smooth. Polishing was not merely cosmetic. It inhibited rust and made weapons more likely to glance off on contact.

Maxime checked the hardness of the finished armor.

Ting. Ting. Ting.

The hardness felt good beneath his fingers. As a test, he brought Gilles de Rais over and ordered him to attack it.

Crack…

“I can barely get through it.”

Gilles de Rais muttered in bewilderment.

The Knight Buster, which would normally punch holes straight through armor, had barely managed to make a tiny opening this time.

With this, you could hammer away at it with a lance all day and still never punch through.