IV
Main Camp of the Second Allied Legion
The Second Allied Legion maintained a consistent advantage in its offensive against the forty-thousand-strong imperial force, succeeding on the twenty-second day since hostilities commenced in forcing the enemy to fall back...
“Ser, the enemy has begun to retreat!”
One after another, voices of jubilation broke out from the officers around the camp. Only Blood was silent as he watched the retreating imperial army. His face gave nothing away, but for Lise, as his aide, it was readily apparent that the situation did not sit right with him.
“You aren’t pleased, ser?” she asked, keeping her voice low so as not to interrupt his thoughts.
Blood scratched the back of his head and replied bluntly, “Yeah, I don’t like it.”
Lise did not ask what he didn’t like. She knew staying silent was the quickest way to draw an answer from him.
“Anything from the Eighth Legion?” he said at length.
“Nothing so far.”
“So why is that lot clearing off?”
“If the Eighth Legion had defeated the Azure Knights, word should have reached us immediately. But we haven’t heard anything at present. I assume your misgivings lie in why, despite that, the imperial army is falling back?”
Blood looked away from Lise with a small sigh. “Their objective from the outset has been to cut us off from the Eighth Legion. And to my eyes, they’ve still got strength enough to resist us.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the imperial forces. “And look at them. They’re in shambles. If this was a planned retreat, they wouldn’t be in that sort of disarray.”
“In other words, something has happened within the imperial army that has left them no choice but to retreat?”
Blood’s only reply was to nod.
“What do you think that something is, ser?” Lise asked, but Blood only looked stony and didn’t seem about to answer her. With a wry smile, Lise answered for him. “You don’t know, and that’s what you don’t like.”
“Yeah,” Blood admitted hesitantly.
“But whatever the reason, the fact remains that they are retreating. It seems to me that we shouldn’t hesitate to put all our force into pursuit.”
“Of course we’ll pursue. But I’m going to leave that to the Winged Crusaders. We’ll make for the Turner Plains, where the real battle is being fought, going via the captured Fort Tezcapolis, and gather intelligence along the way.”
“The pursuit is to be carried out by the Winged Crusaders alone?”
“My orders stand as I said them.”
“Very well, ser. I only wonder if that woman will do as she’s told.”
Blood’s impression of Amelia was what you got if you put pride in a suit of armor. Lise found it hard to believe she would agree to the Winged Crusaders mounting the pursuit alone.
Blood took a battered cigarette from his breast pocket. “Then tell her I said it like this: I am pinning all my hopes on the might of the great Winged Crusaders.”
“Is that all, ser?” she asked, just in case. Blood only grunted his assent.
“Very well. I’ll send a runner at once.”
Lise saw the runner off, privately sure that the order would be refused, but the answer that promptly returned overturned her expectations.
“I can’t believe she accepted it just like that...”
One corner of Blood’s mouth twisted. “I’ve said it before—the Winged Crusaders need to make a show of their strength to gain an advantage in the postwar negotiations. I don’t know about their forces over at Kier Fortress, but the Winged Crusaders here haven’t achieved anything worthy of note so far. We’ve dominated the whole battle, after all. This is Thousand-Wing Amelia’s last chance for battlefield glory.”
“So that’s your aim, then...”
“You understand? Then let’s get moving. Send word for all troops to advance.” When Lise was silent, he added, “What’s the matter? Didn’t you hear my order?”
Lise didn’t confirm the order. Instead, she looked Blood straight in the eyes and asked, “General, is something making you anxious?”
To most, Blood would have seemed the very picture of calm, but to Lise, he looked horribly agitated. The Eighth Legion had weighed on his mind for some time now, but even accounting for that, his current manner was out of character.
Blood put his hands on his hips and let out a deep sigh. “Look...”
“If I may be allowed to first defend myself, I did not read your mind, ser. As I have told you before, your thoughts tend to show on your face. Though at risk of boasting, I am just about the only one who notices... I’m sure I’ve told you that too.”
“All right, all right. I’m sorry. Just see the order’s carried out first.”
Lise had no intention of causing trouble for her supreme commander. She obediently went about fulfilling his order. When she was done, she asked him again about the source of his anxiety. Blood abruptly rubbed his right arm.
“This old wound of mine’s been aching something terrible.”
“An...old wound, ser?”
“In my experience, something bad usually happens at times like this.” He added, “Now that I think of it, it played out like this just before I heard they were dead...”
Anyone else might have laughed his comment off. But to Lise, it made perfect sense. She understood intuitively there was a sort of special power that inhabited people who had brushed with death many a time and lived to tell the tale. Blood was the brave and brilliant commander who, even at a dire disadvantage, with the Fifth Legion destroyed and the Sixth Legion routed, had never backed down from the central front. Who was she to contradict such a man?
Blood began the march to Fort Tezcapolis. It was sooner rather than later that the appearance of a messenger from the Eighth Legion informed him that his sense of foreboding had come true.
“The Azure Knights and the Eighth Legion agreed to a truce? What the hell is going on?!” Lieutenant General Adam was usually cool and collected; Blood was taken aback to hear him raise his voice before anyone else could speak.
The messenger pulled a letter from his pocket. “From Lieutenant Colonel Ashton.”
Blood took it, then read through it. Then he read it through several times more, even though the outcome of the battle was written there plainly. The instance where corpses rose from the ground to attack the Eighth Legion and Azure Knights in particular made him seriously question Ashton’s mental state. The letter was signed at the end with the names of Olivia and Felix, the commander of the Azure Knights. He assumed that was to attest to the truth of the letter, but couldn’t help but wonder, Are they seriously expecting me to believe this?
As Blood struggled to get his mind around it, Lise impatiently snatched the letter from his hands. Soon, she showed the same reaction.
Blood turned his gaze on the kneeling messenger. “What’s your name?”
“Edwards, ser! Private first class.”
“Tell me then, Private Edwards. Do you know what’s in this letter?”
“Of course I do, ser. I was there myself,” Edwards replied without hesitating.
“In that case, you’ll have some idea of our confusion. To be frank with you, it doesn’t sound like reality. I order you, Private Edwards, to recount what you saw and heard, leaving nothing out.”
“Yes, ser! What happened was...”
The account Edwards gave was entirely consistent with Ashton’s letter. If anything, it was all the more evocatively visceral coming from someone who had really lived through the hellish experience. Everyone listening screwed up their faces in disgust, Lise and some of the others clutching their hands to their chests in dread.
“I understand,” Blood said. “To confirm: Lieutenant General Olivia is making for the imperial capital along with the enemy commander, and Lieutenant Colonel Ashton is leading the Eighth Legion back to Fis. Fort Tezcapolis and Fort Belganna are to be abandoned. Is that correct?”
“That is all correct, ser!”
Blood stroked his unshaven chin. “I rescind part of my earlier order. Tell Lieutenant Colonel Ashton to make for Fort Astora, not the capital. I’ll head there myself immediately.”
With the Twin Lions at Dawn strategy a failure, there was nothing to be gained by desperately clinging to Fort Tezcapolis and Fort Belganna. If they could hold just Fort Astora, they could check any renewed attempt at invasion. Olivia’s reason for going to the imperial capital with Felix was a mystery, but her orders made sense. If there was a messenger en route to the First Allied Legion, Blood was confident that the two commanders, even if they had the same reaction as him, would make the right decision.
“Understood, ser! Rest assured, I will see your message reaches them!” With that, Edwards left. To Blood, it was as though the future had disappeared beneath a thick veil of fog. But he could not afford to hesitate.
“General...” Lise’s face was the most worried he had ever seen it. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“At least we know why they retreated. Seems like the imperial army’s in a real state too.”
“Yes. It seems probable that, at a minimum, the Azure Knights and the imperial soldiers we were fighting were not informed of the new emperor’s accession,” Lise said, then her eyes wavered for a moment. “Should I tell Thousand-Wing Amelia about this?”
“No need. It’d be pointless.”
“By which, you mean a certain secret intelligence unit will have been working behind the scenes?”
“Yeah, there’s no doubt of that. The Mekian vixen knows very well that information is power. I’ll bet her owls are flying about every which way so that she can keep up with all the battles. I know a half-wit king I’d like to see take a leaf from her book.”
“General!” Lise exclaimed, casting her eyes about them.
The corners of Blood’s mouth quirked up. “I never said anything about King Alfonse, did I?”
Lise started to protest, but her words were cut off as old Lieutenant General Adam called out to them in a voice laden with anxiety. “General, Lieutenant Colonel Lise, this isn’t the time for chitchat. I can’t help but feel like something terrible is going to happen.”
Blood nodded vigorously. “Lieutenant General Adam is right. Forget all our initial plans. We make for Fort Astora. Lieutenant Colonel Lise, get to work finding us the shortest route.”
“Yes, ser!”
The Second Allied Legion changed course, heading east toward Fort Astora. Blood rubbed his old wound, which continued to ache, thinking. Was Darmés, the man who had taken the imperial throne and could manipulate corpses, a mage? Why was Olivia working together with Felix? Right now, he had no way of getting clear answers.
A man with eight stars on his epaulets skillfully guided his horse up a steep mountain path.
Thank goodness General Blood is a reasonable man, Edwards thought. Now there was nothing left but to get the message to Ashton as quickly as possible, so he pushed his horse as hard as it would go. Suddenly, a wave of strong dizziness hit him, and he pulled on the reins.
After a time, Edwards kicked his horse to a gallop again as though nothing had happened. But now his eyes were entirely empty.
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