WBWB | Chapter 8

This wasn’t the case in the territory ruled by Baldr.

He scanned the woman with a cold gaze and told the escort, 

“I’ll take care of the exile now. You may return.”

‘She won’t last long, then. I thought they’d finally sent someone useful from Franc.’

If he hadn’t needed a tutor, he might have left Jeanne at the inn. But if this woman died, he had no other options. Although she didn’t look promising, driven by the desire to provide his adopted daughter with a proper education, Baldr brought her to the mansion and nursed her back to health, like rekindling a dying ember.

A few days later, the exile awoke. She was still frail and sickly, as if a gust of wind could blow her away. And she had mistaken fog for smoke and ran out as soon as she woke up, behaving unreliably. However, he was pleased to find her surprisingly knowledgeable during their dinner conversation.

‘Yes, finally!’

She had given the most satisfactory answers among all the tutors he had interviewed so far. Just as he was starting to be impressed, she suddenly vomited right in the middle of his request for her to educate his child.

‘Will she be alright?’

Baldr felt uneasy.

‘What if she dies when I return?’

She looked so frail that she might not live long. What if she died after he hired her as a tutor? Wouldn’t that be another wound for his niece, who had already lost her parents?

But there was no suitable alternative in this situation. In the end, Baldr appointed the woman named Jeanne as his niece’s tutor and left the mansion the next day. He had to eradicate the pirates who raided the northernmost coastal region of Skadi every summer.

Of course, tracing back several centuries, he and the pirates shared the same ancestry. That’s why the nobles, while outwardly respectful, looked down on him, a high-ranking noble. But hadn’t generations changed countless times since then? 

Even the nobles in the capital, who boasted of their ancient lineage, would have been ignorant farmers if you traced their ancestry back far enough. Besides, he was now a shield protecting the kingdom from pirate attacks.

The reason the pirates rampaged every summer was that they planted crops in their own lands, which began to thaw between winter and spring, and then set sail to plunder during the summer when the sea ice melted. In the autumn, they returned home with their loot, harvested their crops, and spent the winter repairing their damaged ships and sharpening their weapons, preparing for the next year’s raids.

Sometimes, the pirates raided in small groups with two or three ships. Other times, they would form large pirate fleets of several thousand people and invade. When a large pirate fleet landed on the coast, nothing remained. They not only plundered food but also set fire to villages, killed everyone, and fled. By the time the soldiers arrived after receiving the news, it was too late, and all that remained were devastated villages.

To deal with cruel people, one had to be even crueler. Since becoming Duke, Baldr had responded by building fortresses throughout the winter they returned, creating fortified cities along the coast. The pirates, as before, landed on the coast, but when they faced the insurmountable walls they couldn’t climb, they were caught off guard and became targets for arrows.

Baldr then had stakes driven into the coastline and impaled the corpses of the pirates who had become targets for arrows, leaving them for the seabirds to devour. If the pirates were to land on the coast, they would see the bodies, perhaps of their comrades or neighboring villagers, and understand that they, too, could meet the same fate. 

Then, Baldr took the offensive, attacking the pirates’ base. His goal wasn’t plunder or spoils of war, but death. 

It was easy to attack the villages where only women, the elderly, and children remained, waiting for their husbands to return from their raids across the sea. He set fire to their villages, just as they had done, wiping out their descendants. Thanks to this, large-scale pirate invasions drastically decreased. They feared returning with their loot only to find their families dead.

With these tactics, Baldr protected the lives of his people, but in his home country of Lances, he earned the infamy of being a warmonger obsessed with blood. Of course, he didn’t care. His cruel reputation was useful for instilling fear in his enemies, both externally and internally.

That summer, too, Baldr spent his time eliminating the remaining pirates. He and his soldiers roamed the coastline, killing enemies like diligent farmers weeding their fields. And before autumn came, he returned to the mansion.

Covered in blood and fatigue, Baldr returned to the mansion on horseback. He saw two women sitting on the lawn in the garden, wearing flower crowns and chatting. One was his adopted daughter, and the other was an unfamiliar woman. The woman with the flower crown had her brown hair braided thick and draped over one shoulder, flowers woven into the braid.

‘Who is that?’

Seeing him frown, the woman looked startled, like a rabbit encountering a hunting dog. Looking at the woman’s large eyes, which appeared green or brown depending on the angle, he thought,

‘Was there such a woman in the mansion?’

Before long, Baldr realized the unfamiliar woman was the tutor he had hired before leaving. Her face, which had been unrecognizable at first, had looked much better that he hadn’t noticed. He didn’t stop his horse as he headed toward the mansion, merely shaking his head in disbelief

‘She’s repeating the mistakes of the previous tutors.’

Instead of teaching, she was busy flattering his daughter. He had hired a tutor, not a nanny. Baldr de Skadi decided to dismiss the tutor as soon as he returned to the mansion.

Upon arriving, he took a bath and attended to the most urgent matters of state that had piled up. By the time he had a moment to breathe, the sun had set. That’s when he remembered the woman with the flower crown. He summoned his adopted daughter.

“What did you do while I was eradicating the pirates?”

Baldr asked, sitting in his office chair, his gaze cold.

“You didn’t spend the whole summer making flower crowns like a village girl, did you?”

It wasn’t a question asked out of curiosity. He intended to scold the child who didn’t yet understand the significance of her own status. However, the answer he received, though hesitant and filled with fear, was unexpected.

“I… I learned to read and write from Teacher. And… I also learned history.”

“History? You can read and write now?”

If it were that easy, would the previous tutors have called his adopted daughter a fool?

He thought Ana was lying. To expose her lie, he pointed at a servant and ordered writing tools, a desk, and a chair to be brought.

“Then write down what I say from now on.”

And Baldr de Skadi soon realized that Ana was telling the truth.

Ana wrote down the sentences he dictated, albeit clumsily. She occasionally misspelled difficult words. Furthermore, Ana answered almost all of his questions about major historical events. Although there were some details that she was confused about, the events that had happened in this country’s past, why they happened, and the consequences they brought afterward were all in her mind as if they were part of a story.

‘How?’

The previous tutors who had taught Ana had claimed that the child had a condition that prevented her from reading. Baldr thought that might be the case as well. But now, in such a short time, she became capable of doing what she couldn’t so before?

‘What did that woman do?’

“You may leave.”

After dismissing his adopted daughter, Baldr summoned the tutor. Soon, the tutor came in, looking like a cow being dragged to the slaughterhouse.

‘Was her name Jeanne? What was her last name? Toulouse? Toulouze?’

This time, her hair wasn’t in a thick braid, but neatly tied up. Baldr momentarily forgot the situation and thought that the flower-adorned braid falling to one side he had seen earlier suited her better. Her almond-shaped eyes were filled with anxiety, and her hands were clasped together.

“Your Grace, how… have you been?”

Her posture was almost pitiful. Perhaps it was due to her hunched back, but he couldn’t help but glance at the simple, plain dress clinging to her slender body. Her complexion was better than before, but the tutor’s arms and body were still like thin branches.

“Is the food here not to her liking? Or is she protesting, claiming she prefers the food from the capital?’