Chapter One: Under the Lion Banner
I
Leticia Castle in the Royal Capital of Fis
Little birds fluttered down onto the terrace, tapping their beaks together as if to acknowledge one another. The trees were bursting with life, and long-tailed striped squirrels coiled their tails around their branches, dangling acrobatically to stuff their cheeks full of cloudy peaches.
The sun was at its zenith. The breeze carried the aroma of new leaves into the great meeting room, where the commanding generals of each of the legions stood around a long table in the center of the room.
“I know how busy you all are, so I appreciate your gathering,” said Field Marshal Cornelius vim Gruening, who had convened the meeting. He was the highest-ranking officer, joined by General Lambert von Garcia, deputy commander of the First Legion, Lieutenant General Blood Enfield of the Second Legion, Lieutenant General Sara son Rivier of the Sixth Legion, General Paul von Baltza of the Seventh Legion, and Brigadier General Neinhardt Blanche, who was present as an observer.
After exchanging salutes, they took their seats. As he looked along the length of the table, Blood broke the ice.
“Lot of empty seats compared to when this war began,” he said.
Senior General Latz Smythe of the Third Legion. Senior General Lindt Barthes of the Fourth Legion. Senior General Belmar vim Haines of the Fifth Legion. Those three generals who had all been present at the outset of the war had long since passed on to the next world. Latz and Lindt had been Blood’s friends at the military academy, Neinhardt had heard. He himself had lost his close friend General Florenz at the Battle of Alschmitz, which made Blood’s words cut all the deeper.
“Indeed,” said Paul. “Oh, those young men, passed on while old men like me linger. We could say that this is war and leave it there... But it is a cruel world we live in.” He heaved a deep sigh as a dark mood settled over the meeting room.
It was Blood who broke the silence. “You’re still young, Lord Paul. I can’t believe you’re over sixty.”
Paul sighed. “You’re still terrible at flattery. That much hasn’t changed at all since you were at the academy.” He shot a cold glance at Blood, who shrank back like a scolded child. Now, they were both generals in command of their own armies, but Neinhardt had heard that once, they had been teacher and student at the Royal Military Academy. The many anecdotes about the pair of them had become the stuff of legends, and Neinhardt had heard such tales often during his own time at the academy.
Lambert burst out laughing. “Paul leaves even Blood the Flash eating crow.” Blood winced, saying he hated that stupid nickname, which only made Lambert laugh even more heartily.
“Anyway, Lord Marshal. For what reason have you called us here today?” Sara asked, dragging the conversation away from them. “I scarcely think you mean to sit around exchanging old stories when the war is still going on?”
Cornelius gave her a courteous nod. “I have called you here on short notice for one reason. To get straight to the point, I want to establish an Eighth Legion. I thought I would present the idea to you all first.”
Establish an Eighth Legion. Not only Neinhardt, but all the others present looked conflicted. After the annihilation of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Legions, the creation of a new legion made perfect sense. But it didn’t sit well with them after being summoned here when none of them knew what the morrow might bring. Cornelius was the marshal of the Royal Army, and Alfonse had ceded him supreme command, all of which meant he could send an army marching if he so wished. Yes, he was the commander of an army, but he didn’t have to come to them in advance with every little thing.
Paul spoke for all of them when he asked, “Is that something you have to run by us?”
“You could say that,” Cornelius replied. “You in particular, Paul, as it affects you directly.”
All eyes in the room went to Paul. So named, he looked into the distance, stroking his chin. Then his eyes went wide as he arrived at some conclusion.
“You can’t mean to put Major Olivia in command of the Eighth Legion?!”
“I should have known you’d be quick on the uptake,” Cornelius said with a small smile. Lambert, who’d just taken a mouthful of tea, spat it out.
He didn’t even bother to wipe off the spilled tea as he exclaimed, through a fit of fierce coughing, “Wh-Whoa, whoa now, hold on. Major Olivia, in command of the Eighth Legion? You can’t be serious.” His shock combined with his naturally booming voice made his words reverberate through the room. Sara, who sat beside him, winced as she shuffled her chair to one side, as well she might.
“Would it be somehow inconvenient for Major Olivia to be given command of the Eighth Legion?” Cornelius, meanwhile, added a small mound of sugar to his black tea, taking care not to raise any sound as he stirred it through. Blood wore an expression of interest as he watched the two men, one all dynamism and the other all stillness, like opposite sides of a coin.
“It’s not about the convenience of it. Yes, the girl’s feats leave the rest of us looking a little shabby. I don’t deny that. But there’s a difference between commanding a unit and commanding a whole army. You of all people should know that, Lord Marshal. And besides, she’s only ten and...ten and...”
“She’s sixteen,” Paul said tonelessly.
“Exactly. Just what Paul said, the girl is only sixteen! You can go back through the history of the kingdom, there’s never been a sixteen-year-old commander before. I am dead against this,” Lambert finished. Looking down, he realized at last that his uniform was wet. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and started roughly wiping himself down.
“Well,” said Cornelius, looking around the assembled faces, “that is Lambert’s view. What say the rest of you? Do not hold back. I want your honest opinions.”
At once, Sara said, “For my own part, I support Lord Cornelius’s proposal. Yes, she is young, but I know she will do a far superior job leading an army than a decorative general like me. If you want proof, she was breathtaking in action when she came to the Sixth Legion’s rescue.”
No one could stop themselves from wincing at Sara’s self-directed sarcasm. The fact was that she was only there for decoration, but if nothing else, no one in this room was about to criticize the fourth princess who served as the representative of the royal family on the front line. Nevertheless, Neinhardt had heard the whole story of what happened at Fort Peshitta. No one other than Olivia could have pulled off the trick of not only sneaking into the enemy camp alone, but then taking the enemy commander hostage and forcing them to withdraw. There’d been no sarcasm in the rest of Sara’s words; they revealed her genuine belief.
“Hmm. So Lieutenant General Sara agrees... What say you, Lieutenant General Blood?”
“I’m with the princess,” Blood said. “I don’t have to tell you about her prowess as an individual warrior, but Liv—Major Olivia, I mean—is a dab hand as a strategist too.” He looked at them with a self-deprecating smile.
“Gosh, Blood the Flash agrees with me. What an honor.”
“Hey now, Princess...” Blood said, scratching his head in annoyance. Sara watched him, smiling. Lambert in turn watched the two of them. Then, unable to stay patient any longer, he let out a massive sigh.
“I understand that you feel a debt of gratitude to Major Olivia after Fort Peshitta, Your Highness,” he said, “but you can’t go equating that with what we’re talking about here. The same goes for you, Blood.”
“I do feel a debt of gratitude, that’s true. But I’m not equating anything. This is the conclusion I have reached after considering as best I can Major Olivia’s past military achievements.”
“I’ll have you know I’m not that senile yet.”
Sara shot Blood another smile while he looked fed up. Lambert and Blood continued to argue. They butted up against one another, their opinions divided clean down the middle.
“She’s massively inexperienced.”
“Whatever she lacks in experience she can more than make up for with talent.”
At last, Blood rubbed his head again and said, “I’m the commander of a legion too. I saw her in action on the central front, and all I’m saying is that, based on that, she’s more than up to the task. Look, we might be on a winning streak at the moment, but we are walking on thin ice. We can’t afford to ask how old she is, or whether there’s precedent. But that’s just the opinion of one stupid, lowly officer.”
Lambert gritted his teeth and folded his arms. He looked like he’d swallowed something unpleasant.
Thin ice... Well, Lieutenant General Blood is absolutely right. The moment a crack appears, we’ll all plummet to the bottom of a cold lake, and there’ll be nothing we can do about it. And we won’t float back to the surface.
The Second and Seventh Legions might have won, but they’d sustained many losses. The battle with the Helios Knights had diminished the strength of the First Legion as well. They couldn’t afford optimism here. The Royal Army was battered and bruised, and it wasn’t hard to see that the fighting would only grow fiercer. Lambert fell silent, showing that to some degree, he accepted Blood’s point.
Neinhardt also agreed with Blood and Sara. At the very least, he didn’t think age or precedent were valid reasons to reject the idea. The feats Olivia had achieved while in command of a single unit were simply too monumental. At this rate, she was going to throw the whole army totally out of balance.
Yet Lambert still couldn’t accept it. He immediately changed tack.
“Then what, my lord, do you propose to do about her rank? No one’s going to stand for a major in command of a whole legion. This isn’t just a question of precedent or what have you.”
Lambert was right. It was a rule that the commander of a legion had to be at least a brigadier general. Putting a major in command would inevitably make her the subject of outside derision.
They all waited, wondering what Cornelius would say next. The marshal took a long sip of his tea, savoring the aroma before he spoke.
“I appreciate that, of course. I plan to hold a conferral ceremony in the next few days. There, I will promote Olivia Valedstorm to major general.”
Blood whistled admiringly. Sara showed her approval with a gratified smile.
Staring up at the ceiling, Lambert let out a long sigh.
“Major general, just like that...” he said. “Well, in that case there’ll be no issue putting her in command of a legion. But as well you know, Lord Marshal, Neinhardt here is a brigadier general.” Lambert threw Neinhardt a glance. It was obvious how he was trying to manipulate the conversation, and Neinhardt winced internally. I’d honestly prefer you didn’t make an example of me here, he thought.
With a few exceptions, the army was a world dictated by merit. If you had success in battle, you were promoted. It wasn’t uncommon, these days, for a soldier to end up serving under another who had once been their subordinate. Neinhardt recognized that there had never been anything like a five-rank accelerated promotion, but he didn’t hold anything against Olivia.
“Lord Lambert, they say that King Julius zu Fernest, the founding father of this kingdom, prized valor in battle above all else,” Neinhardt said. “I’m sure if he were here now, he wouldn’t hesitate to agree with the marshal. Needless to say, I agree with him too.”
He deliberately invoked the first king of Fernest, making his feelings clear that if the conversation went any further, it was going to cause him no end of trouble.
“The thing is, it hasn’t even been two years since Major Olivia enlisted. Now, if we were talking about Neinhardt, who wants for neither accomplishment nor popularity, I’d be right there behind you.”
Alas, Neinhardt’s efforts were in vain. Lambert explicitly proposed him as a candidate. For his part, Neinhardt honestly wished he’d drop it.
“Lord Lambert, if the man himself has no objections, isn’t that enough?” Sara said, coming to Neinhardt’s defense. “And if it’s accomplishments we’re talking about, I know of no other who has amassed so much success on the battlefield in so short a time.”
Neinhardt gave her a small nod of thanks, and she winked back at him—not very royal behavior, but it was things like this that made so many soldiers love her.
Lambert huffed loudly. “Forgive me, Your Highness, I don’t expect you to understand, but men have pride. Especially a warrior like Neinhardt.”
“Men...have pride?” Sara echoed Lambert’s words back to him, cocking her head in puzzlement.
“That’s right. Men have pride,” Lambert affirmed, throwing his chest out.
Oh, so that’s something I have, Neinhardt thought, admiring that Lambert was going to such pains to look out for his pride as a man, something he hadn’t even realized he possessed. As grateful as he was for his commander’s benevolence, however, he had to head this off before the conversation got any more ridiculous.
Neinhardt cleared his throat a few times, then sat up straight. “My lord Lambert the Bold. I can’t express my gratitude enough that you would speak so highly of me, but between Major Olivia and myself, if we consider which the imperial army will see as a greater threat, the question answers itself. I come up short.”
It was an incontrovertible fact that Death God Olivia, as she was called, struck terror into the hearts of the empire’s soldiers. What the Royal Army needed at the present moment was Olivia, whose overwhelming strength as a warrior had propelled her to the rank of hero—and absolutely not a run-of-the-mill general like Neinhardt.
“Well,” Lambert said grudgingly, “if Neinhardt has no objection, I suppose that’s all right...” He turned away, disappointment writ plain on his face. He apparently wasn’t convinced by his own answer.
Cornelius had listened to them in silence. Now, his mouth a thin line, he folded his arms and turned a searching gaze at Paul.
“You’ve been very quiet, Paul,” he said. “What do you think?”
Everyone looked at Paul again.
“My honest answer is that I am against it,” he replied. This, as far as Neinhardt was concerned, was a perfectly reasonable reaction.
Leaving Lambert’s satisfied nod and I knew you’d understand, Paul, anyone who knew how Paul was around Olivia would see that he wouldn’t let her go easily.
Cornelius ran a hand through his beard and murmured, “Hmm. You’re against it too...”
“I will say, though, it’s not for the same reasons Lambert raised,” Paul amended. Lambert’s eyes immediately took on a harsh glint as he glared at Paul. It was a look that would have easily shut up any ordinary man, but Paul went on unconcerned. “I simply fear that this is going to diminish the strength of the Seventh Legion. These days, the Seventh Legion relies heavily upon Major Olivia and her independent regiment.”
“Very fair,” Cornelius said, nodding twice.
“In addition, if I may be selfish for a moment, I also want to keep her close. I truly care for her like my own grandchild,” he said, and his eyes crinkled in a doting smile.
Blood’s eyes went wide. Even for those who knew Paul well, it had to be quite a shock to see him like this. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who’d been named the God of the Battlefield and was feared in far-off lands.
“Lieutenant General Blood, is something the matter...?” Princess Sara, who had no way to know of the bond between Paul and Blood, watched the sudden change in Blood’s demeanor with doubtful eyes. The unexpected reaction came from Lambert, who shook his head deploringly. Cornelius, on the other hand, gazed intently at Paul. Anyone could see he was taken aback, if not to the same extent as Blood.
Paul and Blood’s bond must run deeper than it first appears, thought Neinhardt.
“Am I having a bad dream?” Blood muttered. “To think I’d see Instructor Paul making a face like that. The shock might summon Latz and Lindt back to life...”
The look Paul gave him was ice cold. “So that’s it then,” he said. “I see all too well how you think of me now. Looks like a good, long talk is in order when we’re done here.”
“A-Anything but that, ser...” Blood said, shrinking away from Paul again like a turtle retreating into its shell. Paul huffed through his nose.
The meeting continued, with Lambert expressing his discontent every step of the way. In the end, as the light of the setting sun turned the room deep red, the decision was officially made: Olivia would serve as the first commander of the Eighth Legion. At the same time, they settled on their strategy.
“Very well,” Cornelius declared. “With this, we strike back against the imperial army.” Everyone rose to their feet and saluted.
They named the operation the Twin Lions at Dawn. It would be the Eighth Legion’s first objective: the invasion of the imperial capital of Olsted.
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