12
Having shaken their Divine General pursuers, Julius and the others emerged safely from the forest. Although Reinhard had eventually forced his way to victory, it remained true that the generals had taken no small amount of time from them. As such, they fully expected to emerge from the woods to find an impenetrable net of soldiers surrounding them, but—
“However my men may feel, the other three will have told them that they are not dealing with opponents mere foot soldiers can handle. Knowing that, none of those in command would order the wasteful use of soldiers. Though one must admit, it makes for a rather boring escape.”
Such was Vincent’s understanding of the disposition of his nation’s troops. It was a statement from a man who trusted the tactics of his subordinates over the obvious deployment of the entire army to retrieve him. Julius, too, understood this intellectually, but from an emotional perspective, it must have been very trying for the soldiers. To be able to quell such emotions and bend the soldiers to a desired effect—perhaps that was another advantage of the empire’s ways.
In any event…
“Looks like we’ve finally got a chance to breathe.” Reinhard slumped his shoulders ever so slightly, though his attention to what was happening on the other side of the closed door remained vigilant. The group found themselves in a small guardhouse somewhere beyond the woods. It sat at the edge of the mountains to the north of the empire. Happily, whoever normally occupied this modest domicile was absent, so there had been no need to explain who they were or what they were doing. Though, it had to be said that the place made a poor substitute for an imperial castle. Reinhard was right; it was only a stopover, a place to catch their breath.
“I would never intentionally take such opponents lightly,” the Sword Saint added. “Even so, those people pursuing us are truly a powerful lot… Guess there’s no rest for the weary.”
“‘Truly powerful’…? If even you think that, Reinhard, that gives me a meowy, meowy bad feeling about this.” Ferris frowned at Reinhard’s verdict as the young man leaned back against the door and thought of his earlier fights. Julius, though, was more than half in agreement with Ferris’s somewhat sarcastic remark. One would never know that Reinhard had just been through a series of intense battles by looking at him. As he dusted himself off, the Sword Saint only seemed like perhaps he had been sprayed with some dust carried by the wind.
“I’m not used to hearing such things from you, either, Reinhard.”
“You too, Julius? It wasn’t as easy as it looked. If I’d made one wrong move, I don’t know what would have happened. Those three… Especially that last one… The thought of them makes my blood run cold.”
There was no false note in his remark, even though he had subdued such a tremendous enemy with a single kick. He was offering heartfelt admiration for his opponents’ strength and skill. Reinhard was one who could sincerely praise the strength of others without hesitation, without showing any pride in his own abilities. That was what made him—
“And what do you plan to do next?” The interruption came from Vincent, who had sat himself in one of the guardhouse’s poorly hewn chairs. It was just a crude, wooden thing, yet from the way Vincent occupied the seat, it suddenly appeared to be a storied piece, a legend. The atmosphere felt less like a little shack and more akin to a throne room now—such was what it meant to truly be the ruler of Volakia.
Vincent calmly crossed his long legs and looked at the three dumbstruck knights. “You have procured my person and even evaded several of the Nine Divine Generals. Do you intend to continue sowing chaos and confusion in the empire, using my life as a shield? Or perhaps you wish to destroy my nation.”
“If we were clever enough, we might be able to manage it, but then we would wind up on the chopping block, and I’d like to avoid that. If there must be a tragic turn, let it be in the middle of the story, not at the end.”
“Hmph. A most erudite way of putting it.”
In the final chapter of The Guillotine of Magrizza, the protagonist and his coconspirator, his father, the king, were killed on the eponymous guillotine. Julius, however, didn’t intend to follow the old precedent quite so literally.
“We’d better be in our best shape, then,” Ferris said. “Julius, let me look at your injuries; I’ll treat them. You too, Reinhard. Don’t worry, I’ll be done in a jiffy.” He took Julius, who was feeling newly inspired, by the sleeve and sat him in a chair. As instructed, Julius rolled up his shirt to reveal the painful-looking wound on his side, which had been inflicted by Groovy. He also had a seemingly endless collection of cuts from battling Cecils. “Geez… Can’t believe you can look so calm with wounds like these…”
“One of the first things you learn as a knight is how to put on a strong facade. At no time must a warrior appear bereft of his confidence and poise. So long as he stands before that which he must protect, his will must remain unbroken.”
“Yeah, yeah, very noble and everything… There, that does it for your external wounds.” Ferris tended to every one of Julius’s injuries, and no sooner did he feel the warmth of the blue glow than all signs of them vanished from his body. He twisted to check the most serious of them, the injury to his side. There wasn’t so much as an ache left.
“That is some skill. Now I can fight to defend you again,” Julius exclaimed, complimenting the swiftness and skill of the healing.
“Don’t get carried away. I said your external injuries. You keep pushing yourself beyond your own limits using those greater spirits, and it’s tearing up your insides—that’s way more serious.”
“I can’t hide anything from you,” Julius said with a smile.
“You shouldn’t hide things from your healer.” Ferris frowned again. He poked Julius gently in the forehead, where he could interfere with Julius’s gate—the nexus of all the mana flowing through his body. The purple-haired knight’s pact with the greater spirits allowed him to exceed the capacities of his physical body; this was one of his ace techniques. It was this tactic that had allowed him to cope with Cecils’s speed, but the price Julius paid was collected through internal damage to his body, in places that couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. Thankfully, Ferris detected even these elusive injuries and was able to treat them.
“You’ve got to be in top shape, or you won’t make a good meat shield for me. Believe me, I’ll put you to good use… What’s with the look, Your Majesty?”
“Mm, I was simply wondering why a beast-person who can’t even use a sword would be granted the livery of a knight. I was also somewhat surprised to discover you are more than a mere decoration. It seems all three of you have your skills. Therein lies the hope of victory.”
“Your Majesty,” Julius said, turning toward Vincent. He had his doubts, but he thought it was time for a serious talk. “I think we can expect not to be interrupted now. I would be pleased to know what Your Majesty is thinking. You’ve acted cool toward the Divine Generals, who are ostensibly out to rescue you, while cooperating with us in our flight… I, for one, believe you are fully aware by now of what is actually happening.”
“Insofar as it is within my knowledge, yes. Some of my predecessors have been vain enough to believe they could bend the entire world to their will, but I am not quite so prideful as that. Nor am I deluded into believing the entire world is somehow under my control. There are things I do know, and things I can know, and that is all.”
“You have an awfully roundabout way of talking, Your Majesty,” Ferris said, tilting his head. “What is it you’re saying?”
“I believe the emperor’s telling us that the way he understands the situation, it is better for him cooperate with us. Sound about right, sire?” Reinhard asked, summarizing.
Vincent nodded placidly and crossed his arms, provoking a squeak of protest from the ancient chair. “Are you people of Lugunica familiar with the traditional commandment of Volakia?”
“The Imperial Way…,” Julius said. “The teaching that citizens should be strong. I will resist the urge to give any personal comment on that ideal, but it certainly seems to be a crucial aspect of the empire’s current successes.”
“So it is. And the accompanying admonishments apply to everyone in Volakia, the emperor included. All position and all honor are gained through power, and through power can they be taken away.”
Julius and the others arched a collective eyebrow to hear Vincent describe the imperial system. Why was he explaining the empire’s way of life to them now? Soon enough, however, they worked it out.
“You think someone’s trying to start a rebellion in hopes of gaining the throne?”
“A fine guess, beast-boy. In other circumstances, one might suspect a foreign assassin. However, things are different in the empire. For those of us who live here, it is far more common to find our lives sought by those closest at hand.”
Ferris was incredulous. “B-but even if you were assassinated, and the throne wound up empty, there’s no guarantee the plotter would be the one to fill it. Would anyone accept a ruler who came to power like that?”
“You’re wrong about that, Ferris,” Julius replied. “You’re thinking like you’re still in Lugunica… What you’ve described is exactly how things work here.” Ferris frowned at this, but neither Reinhard nor—most importantly of all—Vincent Volakia contradicted him.
“Precisely. It would be tolerated, even embraced. Each must prove their worth through strength. That applies to the throne as much as it does to everything else.”
“In fact, if you think about the Rite of Imperial Selection, the throne seems to be the paragon.”
In Volakia, the seat of power went to the survivor of a rite characterized by bloodshed, with the sons and daughters of the last emperor murdering one another until the sole survivor took the seat of sovereignty. This made the emperor a symbol of strength.
“Unreal…” Ferris practically whispered the word and then fell silent.
“…In any case, we understand that whoever is seeking Your Majesty’s life is probably someone within the empire. But then what explains Master Balleroy’s death? What did he have to do with assassinating you?”
“One could conceive any number of possibilities. Perhaps Balleroy became aware of the conspirators’ plans, or perhaps their hope was to eliminate one of my pawns. Although, he was the lowest of the Nine Divine Generals. If it were meant as a blow to my strength, his death has not proven very effective in that regard. Such an objective would mean these conspirators are not aiming very high.”
“They did worse than that—after what happened to Master Balleroy, the Crystal Palace was in an uproar. It only served to raise Your Majesty’s suspicions and make it harder to get at their target.”
For that matter, was there even an advantage to doing all this while the emissaries from Lugunica were present? Having visitors from another nation around would only mean the castle would be on even higher alert than usual. Knowing that, why would anyone have…?
“It would certainly be difficult to fathom if my head were their only objective. But what if one added the situation you all now find yourselves in to the calculations? Then their true goal begins to become clear.”
“Our situation…?” Julius fell silent for a moment. Then he pulled his lovely eyebrows into a frown as his thoughts struck upon an outrageous possibility. He met the emperor’s eyes with his own. “Your Majesty, are you suggesting that your enemies want to start a war between Volakia and Lugunica?”
As it appeared to most people, knights from Lugunica had murdered one of the Divine Generals and subsequently absconded with the emperor. As they had been made painfully aware so many times before, one small wrong move could easily bring the two nations to war. If that was indeed the true aim of those seeking Vincent’s life…
“It would be the sort of accomplishment that would make one appear worthy of the throne. A hasty notion, perhaps, but a potentially effective one with Lugunica bereft of the Dragon’s protection. There have been no small number of those advocating an attack on the kingdom the moment its covenant with the Dragon became anything less than certain.”
Julius gritted his teeth at the emperor’s words. If there was war now, it would produce casualties of untold numbers. To even consider setting in motion such a course of events was unforgivable.
“If those responsible make Balleroy’s death look like your doing, and if they manage to eliminate me as well, then war becomes inevitable. It doesn’t appear the Divine Generals are involved yet, but we must imagine these betrayers will assume we would figure out this much. It would appear the three of you are bound to commit your lives to the protection of the imperial personage.”
“What a nasty smile…”
Despite the clear and present threat to his life, Vincent had grinned as if he were in high spirits. Julius didn’t bother to reprimand Ferris for his sour whisper. Indeed, he himself felt like exclaiming that this was akin to some cruel joke. Julius and his friends, who had sworn their swords to the Kingdom of Lugunica, now fighting to defend the emperor of Volakia—who could have imagined such a day would come?
“If all this is true, though, then Master Balleroy was targeted as a catalyst to start this war. Surely, anyone could have served the same purpose?”
“Yes, if they were of the appropriate station. One of the Nine Divine Generals—a man who could stand on his own feet while not holding much influence, either. A perfect target, unfortunately for him.”
“I… I see,” Julius said, looking at the ground, discouraged. He had exchanged only a few words with Balleroy, but the man seemed a true soldier, and it wasn’t hard to imagine how much hard training he must have done to become who he was. Worse, after working his way up through the murderous hierarchy of the empire, even securing a position among the Nine Divine Generals, he was felled by an ambush. It was almost…
“…Unnatural,” muttered the purple-haired knight.
“Julius?”
The man put a hand to his chin and let his thoughts roam. Even as he lamented Balleroy’s death, he mentally put himself back in the huge chamber where the man had met his end. Something felt wrong. In hopes of putting his finger on exactly what it was, he decided to reconfirm the sequence of events.
“Reinhard. After you arrived in that large room, just before Master Balleroy was killed, you said your time was stolen. Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s mysterious to me why I couldn’t save Master Balleroy. I’m pretty confused, because even I don’t really remember what happened…”
“Don’t worry, I’m not blaming you. It just doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t our enemies, whoever they are, go after you instead, Reinhard?”
“…? I’d guess it was because my death alone wouldn’t have been enough? If they wanted to start a war, only the death of Emperor Vincent would suffice…”
“In which case, they could simply kill you and Master Balleroy both and weaken the two sides in a single stroke. If there really is war between our nations, you yourself are going to become more important, not less.”
In extreme terms, Reinhard was as much of a deterrent to war as the Dragon itself. Julius assumed he wasn’t the only one who thought so. Surely, Ferris, at least, agreed with him. Indeed, the Sword Saint alone might’ve been enough to bring any war to a close. In which case…
“There must have been some reason they could only target Master Balleroy.”
“You think war between Lugunica and Volakia wasn’t their only plan? Why would they only kill one of their own…?”
“No. No, that isn’t the way it is. Ah, perhaps I’ve had this backward.”
Ferris was confused by Julius’s speculation, but Vincent grasped the implications immediately. A thin smile crept across the ruler of Volakia’s face, and his black eyes drilled into Julius. The young man frowned, a chill creeping down his spine, but he returned the piercing look.
“Tell me, then. By your reasoning, to what end did these brigands attack Balleroy and not your Sword Saint? What purpose did they have in leading our countries toward war while leaving the Sword Saint alive?”
“Well, I think…” Julius felt his tongue go dry as he began to answer; he swallowed once. Then, feeling Reinhard and Ferris at his back, he gave Vincent his answer—his explanation for why Balleroy, and not Reinhard, had been felled.
“The death of Balleroy Temeglyph, one of the Nine Divine Generals, was part of their plan all along.”
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