III
The First Allied Legion, Main Command
As Neinhardt moved up to the front lines, Senior General Paul von Baltza took his place in the rear guard. He and Field Marshal Cornelius vim Gruening, who held command over the whole First Allied Legion, were watching the progress of the battle when a runner arrived with the news: the Winged Crusaders had begun to retreat.
“I wonder why now...”
Since the imperial army had gone on the offensive, the Royal Army had suffered its share of losses, including that of Osmund. He could understand making the decision to cut and run when placed at a disadvantage, but this did nothing to hinder them in carrying out their initial objective. Paul was left scratching his head.
“I’ve said it before, but this alliance was only ever one of convenience, built on naught more than sand. I cannot say what prompted it, but they have decided there is no longer anything to be gained for their side. Thus, they withdraw.” Cornelius was unflappable, his tone matter-of-fact. Paul suspected that for the Holy Land of Mekia, the mutual destruction of Fernest and the empire was the most desirable outcome. However, given his position and having entered into an alliance with them, he had avoided saying so openly.
He stroked his cheek, then said, “Is it possible they acquired some information we don’t know about? Say, for example—” Paul forcibly swallowed back the words that rose to his lips. If the Winged Crusaders had heard before them that the Eighth Legion had fallen, they might well give up and leave.
“Well, it is said that Mekia’s intelligence gathering surpasses that of the empire. It’s very possible they know something we do not. But it will not do to dwell on it. We damned ourselves when we unfairly laid too heavy a burden on a child’s shoulders. Now all we can do is have faith in her to the end, and wait for word.”
“I suppose so...” Paul realized with a sense of self-derision that Cornelius was saying what he himself had once told Otto. “But that doesn’t change that it’s a violation of military orders. Should we go after them and demand an explanation?”
“Better not. Sowing further conflict will do us no good.”
“Well, if you say so, Lord Marshal.” With this, Paul put the Winged Crusaders out of his mind and turned his gaze on the stage in the distance. “The imperial army has worked it out, haven’t they? That our siege of Kier Fortress was only a feint, I mean.”
First had come the series of small-scale night raids, then the construction of the stage right on Kier Fortress’s doorstep. As soon as he heard about the pantomime performance the imperials had put on, Paul had been fully convinced.
“They went with a choice we did not predict.”
“Just so.”
The imperial army had opted neither for hunkering down in Kier Fortress, nor calling for reinforcements, but rather a third option—totally absurd though it was, they had decided to turn the battle into a game. Such a game would account for their otherwise seemingly pointless actions. A game had no point. The only requirement was that the players had fun.
“So this is Rosenmarie von Berlietta...” he said. “Seems she’s even more of an unruly character than I’d heard.”
“I noticed it back when we clashed with the Crimson Knights on the northern front. But really, in the face of this sort of foolery, all you can do is laugh.”
“Still, it does explain one thing,” Cornelius mused.
“And that is?”
“Originally, it was Gladden von Hildesheimer who held Kier Fortress. When I faced him on the central front, he held on to safe and sure tactics well past the point of sense.”
Paul understood what Cornelius was getting at. Rosenmarie and Gladden, from what he had heard of the man, took entirely opposite approaches to waging war. The fighting following her shift to the offensive had been anything but safe and sure—one didn’t see anything of Gladden’s hand in it, at any rate.
“True, that is odd. Do you think something happened to him?”
“Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Either way, if reinforcements are not coming from the Azure Knights, that works in our favor. Now we just have to ensure we don’t rise to any more of this naughty child’s taunts.”
“Major General Neinhardt and Lieutenant General Hermann are bad enough, but I could hardly believe it when even Lambert couldn’t keep his troops in line.”
“Even if it was only a play, it still made a mockery of her. We should not be too quick to blame the soldiers. Indeed, we might well have seen a blow to morale if they had been forced to stay back.”
“And yet it looks like the units who charged in are getting their heads handed to them...?”
“Those are three first-rate commanders,” Cornelius said. “They will find a way to pull through.”
“I hope so...” Paul muttered.
Suddenly, sensing some unidentifiable disturbance, he looked up at the sky.
“You felt it too, Paul?” Cornelius asked.
“I did.” All that met his eyes was the gray expanse of the sky. At any other time, he would not have given it a second glance. But Cornelius leaped straight into action.
“Have our main force spread out in two flanks. Assemble the best archers in each unit and place them at the center. Add to that lookouts to be deployed in all directions over a wide area. I want them on their guard and on high alert for enemy movements.”
It was obvious that Cornelius’s orders were not born out of concern about the imperial army. Paul understood. Cornelius felt the same formless unease that was lodged within his own chest.
From above the battlefield, where death was part of the normal state of things, the death-eater birds had vanished. No two ways about it—something abnormal was afoot.
The First Allied Legion, Travis’s Unit
Cornelius, upon learning that the lookouts to the east had ceased to make their regular reports, moved to identify the cause. The elite unit to whom he assigned this task was under the command of Lieutenant General Travis Meyer. Travis was the head of the House of Meyer, one of the families who made up the Six Flowers, Fernest’s most preeminent warrior houses.
Why our unit...? Travis’s aide, Colonel Diane, was in a cloud of confusion. That the lookouts had stopped making contact was far too flimsy a reason to justify mobilizing Travis’s elite unit of six thousand swordsmen. This had left her harboring misgivings over the judgment of a hero—the so-called Invincible General—though she had even more misgivings about the sense of tension that hung in the air around Travis. It was unlike anything she had seen before. Even in the battle on the Central Front, where the fate of Fernest had hung in the balance, he had never been like this.
“Something on my face?”
“Oh, no,” Diane stammered. “It’s just, I’ve never seen you look so grim...”
“It makes one grim, seeing the looks the lord marshal and Lord Paul had on their faces.”
“Their faces...” Diane faltered, then blurted out what was on her mind. “I know it’s not my place, ser, but surely this could have been handled well enough by a single platoon.”
Travis’s mouth softened into a slight smile. “Just what makes the lord marshal the Invincible General...” It was an unexpected remark. He wasn’t quite talking to himself, nor was it exactly a question.
Though confused, Diane hazarded an answer. “I think it’s because he’s never once lost a battle.”
This was even written in history textbooks; the name of Cornelius, the Invincible General, made the rounds not only of the Kingdom of Fernest, but the entire continent. He was a genuine living legend. But why Travis had brought it up now, Diane couldn’t guess.
Travis gave a small shake of his head. “That’s true, but it’s not the heart of the matter. The lord marshal crafts his strategies by always knowing what his opponent will do before they do it. That is what makes him the Invincible General.”
“I’m sorry, ser,” Diane said hesitantly, “but I don’t really follow what you’re saying. Is that connected somehow to our unit going out by ourselves?”
Travis was silent for a moment, then without a trace of self-consciousness, said, “I don’t know myself.” He then set about stroking his horse’s back. Diane was sure that if she’d had a mirror, she would have seen a face full of frustration staring back at her. As it happened, Travis’s next words confirmed this.
“Don’t make that face. If I understood how Marshal Cornelius thinks, I’d be an invincible general too.”
“That’s quite the leap of logic, ser.”
“Let me tell you something. Any battle is always bedeviled with uncertainties. It might be as you say, and one platoon would be more than enough to deal with this. But the lord marshal commanded our unit to go—and Lord Paul agreed with him. That alone, as I see it, is cause enough to be wary. Now can you accept it?”
“I accepted it from the start, ser,” Diane replied with an air of detachment. She might have had her misgivings, but she had never meant to argue with orders. In the military, one’s only job was to reliably carry out orders from superior officers.
“I see,” Travis said, smiling again.
Before long, Travis’s unit sighted a forest that spread out before them. A blanket of mist was creeping across the land.
“This fog’s growing mighty thick.” By the time they emerged from the forest, they were swathed in a deep shroud that obscured their vision. Travis gave the order to greatly slow the pace of their march—a precaution against being caught off guard by an unexpected engagement. But not ten minutes had passed when he was struck by a sense he could not put a name to.
What in the hell is this feeling? It was something different from the way his skin prickled when he faced a powerful foe. If he were to compare it to something, the horrible sensation felt as though slime had oozed down upon him from head to toe. He realized that his hands, gripping his reins, were slick with sweat.
“General? Are you all right?”
That was the Diane he knew. He made sure to keep an appearance of calm on the surface, but she had picked up straightaway that something was off with him.
“Get the word out to be on your guard, and hurry.”
“Understood.” Diane didn’t ask questions; she immediately executed the order. But they were already out of time. Before the orders could travel to the soldiers up ahead, one voice, then another, called out in terror. Not long after, Travis heard a moan so awful that it made the horses quail.
“Agh!”
“Don’t! Don’t come any closer!”
The bellows and screams broke over Travis like a turbid river, making him forget for a moment that those under his command were all elite soldiers.
“Ghouls...” Diane whispered as though paralyzed by fear. It was the most concise name that could be given to the enemy. Redolent with the foul stench of decay, they attacked as a horde. They appeared human in shape and size, yet human they were surely not. Even as they were rent by swords and gouged by spears, they raised no cries, instead biting, tearing, devouring the soldiers’ flesh. The sight ruthlessly drove home their monstrous nature.
Travis’s unit was undeniably elite, but none of them had expected to be fighting ghouls.
“We should retreat,” said Diane, her voice trembling. Already, half of the unit had lost all semblance of military order. The remaining half would soon be rendered nonfunctional too. With no way to swiftly quell the chaotic spread of the carnage, Diane’s solution was the optimal one.
Travis was just about to open his mouth to declare their retreat, when an impossible sight jumped out at him—a hulking brute of a ghoul brandishing a blue banner emblazoned with a pair of crossed swords. There could be no doubt—it was the banner of the Asvelt Empire.
“Why are ghouls flying the empire’s colors?!” Diane exclaimed, giving words to Travis’s thoughts. This in fact brought him back to earth, allowing him to observe the ghoul’s behavior.
“They’re not that fast! Push the long spears to the front! Keep them at a distance while blocking their attack and fall back!” Travis’s booming voice succeeded, if only marginally, in bringing his troops out of their confusion and back to their senses. But he knew it would not last. “Give me that.” Travis reached over to one of his personal guards, who had formed up tightly around him, and snatched the long spear from his grasp.
“Please, wait!!!” Diane cried.
“I don’t have time to argue with you, Diane,” he replied, then turned to the guards. “It might not be much, but we’ll have to buy the troops time to retreat!”
“Yes, ser!” they answered as one. And so Travis and his personal guard plunged into the maelstrom of madness. The hordes of ghouls closed in with lumbering steps, their voices seeming to pull all who heard them toward hell itself.
Travis spat hard on his hand that gripped the long spear. “Like hell am I taking this from a bunch of rotting ghouls!”
Together with this soul-stirring roar, his spear shot out lightning fast in a wild thrust—passed down through the generations, this piece of spearcraft was an art taught only to the heir to the House of Meyer.
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