V
A taint is upon the earth where the death-eater bird shows not its face.
It was a saying for barren lands forsaken even by the birds that fed upon the dead. Though most despised the death-eater birds as omens of death, in a remote village on the outskirts of the Asvelt Empire, things were somewhat different. To them, life and death were two sides of the same coin, and they therefore revered the death-eater birds as a symbol of rebirth.
This village had a unique custom. When a villager came to the end of their life, the whole village put on a magnificent festival. At the end of the celebrations, they laid the body upon a towering altar in the village square as an offering to the death-eater birds. The belief was that those whom the death-eater birds fed upon were blessed and would be reborn into this world. In a society where the normal custom was to bury one’s dead, these beliefs were without question unorthodox, but then, there were many customs beyond the comprehension of ordinary folk.
The Imperial Army, Rosenmarie’s Camp
“Something’s strange...” Rosenmarie was having a fantastic time when the faint sense of something wrong came to her. At that moment, her Crimson and Helios Knights were hard at work making mincemeat of the Royal Army soldiers who had charged them.
I can’t see a death-eater bird anywhere. That must be what feels off... As she thought it, an old memory came back to her. She clicked her tongue.
“Lady Rosenmarie, is something the matter?”
“I mislike all of this,” she muttered, not looking at Zacharias.
“I’m sorry? My lady, our forces are dominating the enemy...” he said, misunderstanding her. Rosenmarie ignored him and stared up at the sky.
I don’t go in for foolish superstitions and the like, but the battlefield is a cradle of death. For the death-eater birds to disappear here, something is definitely abnormal.
While Zacharias eyed her curiously, she looked out over the battlefield but found nothing suspicious. Then, she finally met Zacharias’s gaze.
“Do you feel anything?” she demanded.
He hesitated. “I beg your pardon, my lady, but what do you mean?”
Rosenmarie looked at the sky and jerked her chin upward. Confused, Zacharias looked up, then over at the battlefield. “Well, as I said, our forces do appear to have an overwhelming advantage.”
“Anyone with eyes could see that. I’m asking if you feel anything else.”
“Something else? I don’t...” Zacharias stammered, his confusion only deepening. He looked back at the battlefield, then shut his mouth.
Rosenmarie sighed loudly. “Why are you even here? I didn’t call you.”
“I am here for your protection, Lady Rosenmarie...”
“You’re not needed. I can look after myself.”
“But I can’t just—”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.” Rosenmarie waved a hand as though swatting away a fly, driving Zacharias away from her. Arrows sporadically came flying at her, and she sent them hurtling back from whence they came, but her thoughts became more and more preoccupied by the death-eater birds.
I feel sick...
Two hours after the end of the play, Oscar received a curious report.
“A great number of rats?” He thought it was some sort of metaphor, but quickly learned otherwise. According to the officer, they couldn’t see the ground for the great flood of rats running westward. And not only rats—there were gray squirrels, gray rabbits, and all manner of other rodents in there too.
Could a natural disaster be coming?
Animals were said to have abilities to sense things, which humans had long since lost. There were ancient texts that told of a great earthquake that had struck Duvedirica and altered the shape of the land itself. Two days before the quake, these texts said, beasts everywhere had run wild. There were also accounts of a seven-colored light flashing across the sky half a day before the disaster. The sky Oscar could see, however, was the color of lead. He saw not even a glint of seven-colored light.
“It’s upsetting some of the soldiers.”
“If you want me to help them...” Oscar had been sure that if he interrupted Rosenmarie’s fun to tell her small animals were displaying strange behavior, the only response he expected to get was, So what? Perhaps if the times were different, but right now they were in the middle of a battle.
It’s definitely an unusual sign, though... he thought. I’ll just look into it. He had just made up his mind to dispatch a few units to investigate when word arrived that a messenger had come at great speed from the imperial capital. Fears that the Azure Knights had been defeated immediately filled his mind.
“Call them here at once,” he instructed, fighting back his impatience. The matter of the animals’ abnormal behavior was banished from his mind. A woman in ebony black armor presented herself to him, followed by a group all dressed in black overcoats, their faces hidden behind silver masks.
Based on that armor, she must be from that personal army of Chancellor Darmés’s that I’ve heard rumors of... The woman did not strike him at all as a soldier. From their unsettling appearances to the air of gloom that hung over her and her entourage, they were more like the folk who made their living by unlawful means.
The woman saluted Oscar. “I am Major Martina Ray, of the direct forces.”
“Major General Oscar Remnand,” Oscar said. He wasted no time demanding an answer. “The Azure Knights haven’t been defeated, have they?”
“Defeated?” Martina said tonelessly. “No, the Azure Knights turned traitor.”
There was a long pause, then— “What?!”
This was far too outlandish for him to process, and his brain struggled to catch up. As such, Oscar could do nothing but stare at the woman like a fool. In the meantime, Martina went on talking. By the time she finished, Oscar was in a state of blank astonishment.
“You are telling me that Emperor Ramza abdicated the throne, after which Chancellor Darmés succeeded him as our new emperor. Lord Felix was dissatisfied with this, and so led the Azure Knights in a rebellion. Do I have that right?”
“That is all correct,” Martina confirmed. She spoke as though none of it had anything to do with her. Oscar grew more and more unsettled by the way she appeared not to feel anything at all. “One thing,” she cautioned. “The Azure Knights are rebels. I would take care before giving titles to their ringleader.”
“I-Indeed...”
“I shall now relay His Imperial Majesty’s decree.”
Oscar knelt, ready to accept the emperor’s words, and Martina nodded.
“In the name of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Darmés Guski of the Asvelt Empire, you are commanded to exterminate the renegade Azure Knights.”
“The emperor’s wish is our command...” Oscar hesitated. “But we are fighting the Royal Army,” he went on, his voice naturally growing stronger. “What does His Imperial Majesty have to say about that?” Ordering them to go after the Azure Knights under the circumstances could only be described as ludicrous.
“The Royal Army will soon learn that their operation was a failure. Once this happens, it is His Imperial Majesty’s belief that they will withdraw.”
As Oscar listened, he wondered if things would really work out so tidily. It seemed equally possible that after failing to take the imperial capital, they would set their sights on retaking Kier Fortress instead. However, he could hardly contradict the word of the emperor, so he could only express this indirectly.
“It would be ideal if the Royal Army were to quietly withdraw, yes...”
“There is no cause for concern. The possibilities that you fear have naturally been taken into account. The emperor has sent a mighty host as reinforcements.”
“A mighty host?”
“Yes, it will not be long...” Martina paused. “I believe they have arrived,” she said, looking to the east, just as a pale-faced soldier in the armor of the Helios Knights burst into the room.
“Major General Oscar! Ghouls...! There are ghouls...!!!”
The woman’s artificial expression and the word “ghoul” seemed to fit seamlessly together. Before he knew it, Oscar’s legs carried him over to where the soldier was pointing.
“What the...?!” They had not been exaggerating. A disordered horde of grotesque creatures was lumbering toward the Royal Army’s flank, letting out moans that chilled the blood.
“How ill-mannered your soldiers are. Calling the soldiers sent by His Imperial Majesty himself ‘ghouls’...” Oscar realized Martina was standing at his side. Contrary to her words, her face was utterly vacant. It only made her all the more unsettling.
“Are...are those people?”
“They used to be. Now, they pledge their undying loyalty to our glorious emperor. Rest assured that unlike a certain order of knights, these will not betray us.” The discordance between her unchanging expression and the excitement in her voice was what finally pushed Oscar into feeling afraid of Martina. “Now, I must attend to my duties. Excuse me.”
Martina left, and the figures in their silver masks who had stood there like ghosts through it all without uttering a word followed her out. Oscar stared after them as though possessed.
“You’ve got more important things to do than stand around gaping, Oscar Remnand,” he told himself. His gaze fixed upon the stage that reared up behind him.
“—the hell is that?” Rosenmarie was keeping up a steady stream of arrows when, emerging out of nowhere from the east, she sighted the grotesque horde as it fell upon the Royal Army. She stared as chaos swept up both armies in the blink of an eye, soon followed by the sound of frantic footsteps coming up the ladder.
“Hey, what’s—”
“They’re imperial soldiers!”
Rosenmarie blinked, then looked closely at Oscar, whose shoulders rose and fell with his heaving breaths.
“Those things are with the imperial army? Is this some sort of joke?”
Oscar looked down at the battlefield, coughed loudly, then said, “I am assuredly not joking, my lady. Not one of them has raised a hand against our allies.” He went on to explain that they were reinforcements dispatched from the imperial capital.
“‘Reinforcements’? I didn’t ask for reinforcements, and if the imperial army has been keeping ghouls like those as pets, it’s news to me.”
Even accepting that they were of the imperial army for argument’s sake, it would have been entirely unnatural for her, one of the empire’s Three Generals, to not have heard about such a military concern. All her doubts, however, were swept aside by what Oscar said next.
“They were sent to us by His Imperial Majesty, the newly ascended Emperor Darmés.”
“Say wha...?!”
“I will explain, my lady.”
The story that began to spill out of Oscar’s mouth only served to disorient Rosenmarie further. Finally, when they reached the part about the Azure Knights’ defection, she held up a hand to cut him off.
“Hold up a moment. I’m processing.”
As Oscar nodded, she started off by breaking down what he had said.
To begin with, we have the change of emperor... she thought. The first thing that comes to mind is illness, but I never heard so much as a whisper that His Imperial Majesty was ill. Even if they were keeping it quiet, it’s unnatural that not even a hint of it reached my ears. The former emperor did come down with an unidentified illness and passed away young, though, when he was only in his forties. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that he passed the risk on to his son...
The problem was that Ramza had no heir. The Asvelt Empire was, without exception, a hereditary monarchy, but as far as Rosenmarie knew, Ramza had always talked about how the imperial throne ought to go to a person who truly had the makings of an emperor. Needless to say, this view of his was the height of heretical thinking and utterly unacceptable to his subjects. Most of them were naturally eager for him to take an empress into the imperial family and produce a son who would inherit the throne. But Ramza had always said it would only breed conflict and stubbornly refused to listen. The Asvelt Empire had enjoyed the rule of generations of good emperors, but that was not to say that, in the empire’s long history, conflict had never broken out over the succession.
Tempus Fugit 888. The attempted assassination of the third prince had spawned a conflict now commonly remembered as the Labyrinth of Night Mist that had, in less than a month, grown into a civil war that tore the empire asunder. After several years, the third prince had defeated the first prince’s forces, taking the throne as Emperor Ramza X. As the Record of the Asvelt Empire had it, there had been unspeakable bloodshed, and neither nobles nor commoners had been spared. If a foreign nation had chosen that period to mount an invasion, the Asvelt Empire would have faced its darkest hour since its founding. But it seemed no such attack had come. In that grim age, the winds of war tore through the whole of the continent. In Rosenmarie’s analysis, they had all been too preoccupied to go to the trouble of invading a region with no resources to speak of.
The empire’s produced its fair share of good emperors, but it’s easy to insert meaning into what’s passed. Anyone who thinks we’ll have good emperors forever and ever is either a massive fool or the world’s biggest optimist.
One only had to look at the current state of Fernest to know the fate of a country ruled by a dullard. And Rosenmarie, on a personal level, was not as much a patriot as Felix or the late Gladden. Still, it was precisely because she had seen up close how Ramza, driven by fear for the future of the empire, had devoted himself to the affairs of the realm that she had sworn him her wholehearted loyalty. It had been a move quite unlike herself, really.
Then there’s the next thing—Felix and the Azure Knights’ defection. That makes even less sense than a new emperor...
Felix’s absolute loyalty to Ramza was plain as day, but that by itself was not a reason to stir up rebellion against the empire. If everything Oscar had told her could be believed, then it was a direct line from refusing to acknowledge Darmés as emperor to refusing to acknowledge Ramza’s own word. The Azure Knights would not have followed him as far as to mark themselves as traitors, not to mention that Felix would never have held his position among the empire’s Three Generals in the first place if he were so shortsighted.
There must be a reason for why the Azure Knights chose to go along with Felix’s rebellion. Much as I get the feeling it’d be fastest to get the story from the man himself... Well, in any case, I’m sure I’m right about the emperor.
But when she offered her theory about Ramza’s death being due to illness, Oscar dismissed it right away.
“What? It wasn’t illness, then?”
“It was not, my lady.”
“Then some sudden accident?”
“Not that either. I was told that His Imperial Highness himself announced his intention to abdicate and named Chancellor Darmés as successor to the throne.”
“I’m finding it hard to swallow any of this,” Rosenmarie muttered at length. Everyone knew how deeply Ramza had trusted Darmés. But short of an illness or an unforeseen accident, abdicating while they were still in the middle of war was completely and utterly unnatural. The current conflict had begun when Ramza had declared his intention to unify Duvedirica. Bluntly put, abdicating the throne without seeing through to its conclusion a war that he himself had instigated was intolerably selfish.
“I think as you do, my lady. But with the abdication ceremony over and the coronation having followed it in short order, dismissing the story as a fabrication might prove difficult.”
“And then Felix found it even harder to swallow than I did, so he raised a rebellion against our new emperor Darmés. Is that the way of it?”
“Guessing at Lord Felix’s reasoning is beyond my poor intellect, but it seems the Azure Knights did clash with the emperor’s direct forces in an early engagement on the outskirts of the capital.”
“Direct forces?” It took Rosenmarie a moment. “Oh, the army under that ghastly woman’s command.”
Once, at Darmés’s introduction, she had exchanged a few words with Lieutenant General Flora Ray, who commanded his direct force. Rosenmarie remembered her as being pale as a corpse and sounding when she spoke as though she had left her emotions behind somewhere. It seemed she had originally headed the intelligence division that Darmés had established independently of the shimmers. This was only something Rosenmarie had happened to overhear, so how true it was she didn’t know, but what was certain either way was that she had not gotten a good impression of the woman.
“I was told that the actual battle ended in a series of scattered skirmishes...” Oscar spoke evasively in a way that wasn’t like him. Rosenmarie jerked her chin up, indicating for him to continue.
“Apparently, while these skirmishes played out, Lord Felix stole into Listelein Castle...” He hesitated. “Well, if you’ll forgive my cutting to the point, it appears he kidnapped His Imperial Highness, former emperor Ramza.”
Rosenmarie was amused by how this did not even shock her anymore. For Felix, pulling that off had probably been a walk in the park.
“But why would Lord Felix have taken such risks to run off with His Imperial Highness?” Oscar asked.
“How should I know? He’s the one you want to ask...” Rosenmarie paused. “Hold on, the Azure Knights should’ve been fighting the Eighth Legion. How did that end up?”
Against common rabble, the Azure Knights’ victory would have been assured beyond a shadow of a doubt. But they had faced the army helmed by her sworn enemy, Death God Olivia. Though her forces were the underdog by far, from what Rosenmarie heard, in their very first campaign they had run circles around the Northern Perscillan army when it invaded Fernest. She doubted even the Azure Knights would have found them easy to best.
“The envoy says even she doesn’t know what happened there. This is nothing more than my own opinion, but I can’t see the Azure Knights losing, not so long as they were in shape to fight. My guess is that before the battle reached its conclusion, they declared a truce.”
“A truce...” Rosenmarie considered. “It’s not impossible, I suppose, considering Felix ran off with the former emperor... Now, what does our new emperor want me to do?”
Oscar looked taken aback, then he said reluctantly, “My lady, your orders are to take the Crimson and the Helios Knights and vanquish the traitorous Azure Knights.”
“I see. That explains why Emperor Darmés sent us reinforcements by way of this horde of creatures neither fish nor fowl. Hasn’t this gotten interesting?” Rosenmarie put her hand to her chin and let out a low chuckle. Oscar’s expression grew surpassingly grim.
“I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, my lady, that this is an imperial decree. It is not a thing one simply ignores, even if one were one of the Three Generals.”
“An imperial decree...” Rosenmarie murmured. “An imperial decree...” She picked up a fallen arrow, nocked it, then loosed it at a ghoul that was just then about to fall upon a soldier of the Royal Army. The arrow punched out the ghoul’s heart, emerging robed in scarlet, yet the creature sank its teeth into the soldier’s head as though nothing had happened.
“My lady!” Oscar shouted. Rosenmarie shrugged.
“Oops, I missed. You have to hand it to imperial soldiers these days, though—even losing a heart doesn’t faze them.”
“My lady, please,” Oscar said slowly, a tinge of desperation in his eyes. “Please just don’t do anything impetuous. If we defy the emperor, we’re as good as dead.”
“You say that, but Felix rebelled, didn’t he?”
“As I said earlier, it is not for the likes of me to guess at Lord Felix’s feelings.”
“I don’t have a damn clue what goes on in his mind either,” Rosenmarie replied. “But he’s not the sort of person to act without thinking.” First the drama of the imperial succession and the Azure Knights’ treason, now the ghouls Darmés had sent under the name of providing reinforcements? “Something is rotten in the empire at present, make no mistake. If we’re going to work out what lies at the heart of it,” Rosenmarie explained, “we can’t afford to make any unconsidered moves.”
“In other words, you are going to ignore His Imperial Majesty’s imperial decree?” Oscar’s voice shook.
“I didn’t say anything of the sort.”
“That is how it sounded to me, my lady.” Sweat visibly beaded on Oscar’s face, and his breath came in shallow gasps. Rosenmarie took an embroidered handkerchief from her pocket and tossed it at him.
“It’ll set a bad example for the soldiers if they see their esteemed chief of staff making a face like that.”
Oscar looked from the handkerchief in his hand to Rosenmarie, then back again, before mumbling an apology. Rosenmarie waved him off as though in irritation. “Before you get any ideas, you don’t have to give that back. I don’t need a handkerchief drenched in your sweat.” The corners of her lips curled up. Oscar’s did the opposite.
“You treat me cruelly, my lady,” he reproached her.
Rosenmarie cackled, giving his shoulder two friendly pats. “Oh, stop worrying. So long as I’m a soldier in the imperial army, I’m not going to ignore a decree from the emperor. I am still responsible for the lives of you lot, after all.”
“It would deepen the soldiers’ devotion to you still further if they heard that,” Oscar said readily, his expression clearing with undisguised relief.
“So long as our reinforcements are keeping the Royal Army occupied, our work here is done. We’ll leave a unit on lookout and head back to Kier Fortress.”
“Understood!”
Listening to the sound of Oscar’s boots as he descended the ladder, Rosenmarie gazed out across the battlefield. Even as she watched, the ghouls, in thrall to their instincts, threw themselves at the soldiers of the Royal Army fleeing in disarray.
You call those things imperial soldiers? Don’t make me laugh!
The things swarmed the soldiers who fell screaming and crying, tearing open their bellies and clawing at one another to be the first to stuff the exposed entrails down their gullets. Rosenmarie shifted her gaze and was greeted by the sight of another ghoul as it grabbed a soldier by the hair and sank its teeth into their neck, ripping off and chewing up chunks of flesh amid a fountain of blood. Down there, there was nothing resembling battlefield tactics. It was now nothing more than a slaughterhouse. Rosenmarie realized her hands, clenched into fists, were shaking with fury.
You come here and ruin my game... With that, she dashed up atop the stage. The hideous voices that came to her on the wind only added to her rage.
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