Chapter 1 – The Signal Fire of War
1
Late August, Kingdom Calendar Year 1241.
The glare had turned merciless and the heat owned everything under it. On that midsummer day the Dyrst region opened its great inspection: military exercises by the Provisional Elite Corps, and a viewing of the workings where the Divine Demon Orb is mined.
The lodging quarter in Dyrst was overflowing with dignitaries who had come in from abroad to see it.
“So the inspection’s finally here.”
“And a full program today, by the look of it!”
“The workings where the orbs come out in quantity, and the exercises of the Corps Her Highness has just founded, both in a single day. Ah, I can hardly stand the waiting!”
“It’s certain to be a worthwhile visit!”
“Ha ha ha ha!”
The visitors from other nations laughed and talked over breakfast at their inns, thoroughly enjoying themselves.
Their laughter carried out into the street, where Flegel was waiting with his fingers pressed to his temple.
“Not a care between them…”
“They don’t know anything. You can hardly blame them.”
“No. I suppose not.”
He was looking away toward the northeast of the Dyrst region, the stretch that runs nearest the border between Kingdom and Empire.
“A pleasant day out turns into a scene from hell in the space of a minute. When that happens, I wonder how that lot in there will take it.”
They would be walking the Dyrst countryside on their tour, and the Kingdom’s army would come down on the site without warning. The Provisional Elite Corps, conveniently in the middle of exercises, would meet them. And after that, two armies in each other’s teeth and no mercy anywhere in it.
“It’ll knock the wind out of them.”
“That it will.”
Flegel closed his hand around the hilt of the sword at his hip. The hand was shaking, very slightly.
“…I’m not good at fighting.”
“You mean the escort detail for the delegations.”
“Yes. If it comes to trading blows with the Kingdom’s soldiers, I don’t see myself winning.”
Fifty or so of the Corps, Flegel among them, were assigned to guard the delegations, and the route had been planned to keep the visitors well clear of anything that might turn into a war.
I put a hand against his back and pitched my voice a little brighter.
“Set your mind at rest. There’s exactly one condition under which the delegations come under attack, and that’s the Provisional Elite Corps being wiped out.”
“…Hah. Where in that am I supposed to find rest?”
“It means the Corps isn’t going to lose.”
“—!”
What he was afraid of was not going to happen. The Empire I knew had lost to the Kingdom’s army. But what would meet them this time was the Provisional Elite Corps, built up from nothing by Princess Valtrune, a fighting force that had not existed in the Empire up to now. She had drilled and expanded it for months against exactly this day, and I had no intention whatsoever of losing.
“There are many people in the Corps worth relying on. Trust them, and guard the delegations. That’s enough, isn’t it?”
“…You’re right, Aldia. Thank you.”
Perhaps that lifted the weight off him a little. I left him there with the sound of his forced steadiness at my back.
“…Listen to me. ‘The Corps isn’t going to lose.’”
Repeating my own line back to myself pulled a thin, self-mocking smile out of me. The man who had said something so lofty was carrying his own considerable dread into this fight.
I understood every move the enemy would make. Or I should. And still the hard knocking under my ribs would not let up.
2
“Thank you all most sincerely for traveling so far to join us. We have prepared with the hope that today proves genuinely worth your while. I look forward to your company.”
Princess Valtrune bowed deeply to the assembled delegations, her clear white hair swaying with it.
The Dyrst region. The inspection had begun.
“I’d like to start with the industry this land is built on. This way, please.”
An imperial princess personally guiding foreign guests through her own territory was a first, for the Empire and for every nation attending. On top of which, a lot of what she meant to show them had never been opened to outsiders before, and expectations for the day were running very high.
“And next, over here.”
The delegations followed her up the mountain road, talking cheerfully as they went. I kept to the rear of the party and carried myself as one more member of the security detail.
While the visitors were busy with Dyrst, a man in black came close and spoke against my ear. I went straight to Princess Valtrune, and when the delegations had drifted far enough off, I told her.
“Rune-sama. Word from intelligence, the Kingdom’s army is closing on the border.”
“I see. Thank you. How long until they meet the Corps?”
“They should come into view on the plain within two hours.”
She dropped her eyes at that and thought.
“…At the pace we’re walking, the exercises will be…”
“About an hour from now.”
“Then I think we’ll go just a touch more slowly.”
She gave me a charming little wink, then hurried over to the knot of visitors and folded herself into the conversation.
—I see.
Small talk, evidently, to burn a little time. Timing adjusted without anything looking adjusted. To reach the thing she was actually here for, she made herself more talkative than usual.
3
The inspection of the Dyrst region was an inspection in name only. The real purpose was to put the moment of the Kingdom’s unprovoked invasion in front of the eyes of the entire continent. That was why Princess Valtrune had the timing of the clash between the Kingdom’s army and the Corps worked out in fine detail, and the tour’s route paced against it.
As for the day’s centerpiece, the visit to the workings that yield the Divine Demon Orb, it was scheduled for after the military exercises, at the very end of the day. And once the Kingdom attacked, the inspection would be suspended. So in practice she had no intention of showing anyone from another country where the orbs come out of the ground; she had baited the hook with a genuine state secret and landed delegations from all over the world with it.
“Ha ha ha! The Corps and the workings both. I am truly looking forward to it!”
“Yes. I do hope you enjoy it all the way to the end.”
She matched the cheerful man’s laugh with a demure one of her own, a hand raised to hide her mouth.
—She really is a superb schemer.
Look at that clean, open smile and you would never once suspect that you were being used, and used beautifully.
“Now, then. The finish.”
The inspection was coming up on its midpoint, and the Provisional Elite Corps’ military exercises, or rather, the opening of the war with the Kingdom, were very nearly on top of us.
4
“General Ritziareite. Our agents report the Kingdom’s army has crossed the border into imperial territory. Their vanguard should appear on the plain shortly.”
—So it has begun.
As general of the Provisional Elite Corps, I was about to fight a foreign army for the first time. And if I am honest, I have very little experience as a person who leads an army. Whatever skill I may have as an individual fighter, whether I can hold a body of soldiers together is another question entirely.
“Fuu… So it’s finally here.”
The tension on the ground was thick, and I think mine had transmitted itself to the soldiers, because their movements had gone stiff.
—This won’t do. If I let myself look uncertain, I set my subordinates no example at all.
“All units. To your positions, at speed! Dragon-mount units, get above the field and bring back everything you can see. Ground units, take ground from which the plain can be struck all at once.”
At my order, the Provisional Elite Corps began to move.
Yes. Lady Valtrune had entrusted this army’s fortunes to me, and there was no time to spare for being frightened. The dependable ones would go forward to the line, and I would stand behind them as commander and hold the whole of it up.
“General Ritziareite! This is where we prove what the Corps is, ma’am!”
“Yes. It is.”
“We’re not about to lose to the Kingdom’s lot!”
“Right! Let’s take a real victory here and push the Corps’ name up where it belongs!”
The soldiers’ spirits were high, and they were right. Endure the Kingdom’s assault here, hold imperial ground, and the Corps’ future would be secure.
We began as a small army Lady Valtrune had founded. We had no record and nobody knew what we could do, but after taking the victory in the civil conflict, the results have not stopped coming.
It will be all right. With these people, however overwhelming the enemy in front of us, we will find our way to a win. And if the plan meshes as it should, even our small numbers leave us a real chance.
A plan to annihilate an enemy army with magic tools deployed in quantity. I command the army as a whole, but the position that matters most in this plan belongs to…
“Are you nervous?”
“…I’m all right. I’ll see it through!”
—Petra, who moves the mages across the whole of the Dyrst region and gives the word for each tool to fire.
“I have every expectation of you. You’ll do it well.”
Since the Corps was founded she has been a head above the rest as a mage. Watch how she handles her subordinates, how she reads the give-and-take of a fight, and you would never believe she left the military academy less than a year ago.
“General Ritziareite. Thank you.”
There was a steadiness in those confident eyes well beyond her years.
And besides that…
“Yeeeowch! Mia, you—! Train your dragon mount, would you?! It got my whole wrist!”
“Hmhm. I’m doing it on purpose, to put a bit of fire under a slacking Steano~ Go on, Pochi. Bite him, bite him♪”
“Ow ow ow ow! It’s g-going to leave teeth marks!”
“Steano! Mia! We’re about to fight a battle that matters and you two are clowning! If you botch anything because of this I’ll blast you both with magic!”
—the bearing of a commander who can pull a slack atmosphere tight again.
“Petra-senpai~ I’ve lost the map with the magic tool placements on it…”
“I have a spare, so there’s no need to look like that. Be more careful from now on, all right?”
“Ugh… thank you so much…!”
“It’s hardly worth crying over. Here. Handkerchief.”
—the kind of care that covers a subordinate’s blunder and then tends to the feelings underneath it as well.
“Petra-san. Our strength doesn’t come close to the Kingdom’s army. Can we really win…?”
“What are you being so faint-hearted about? Fewer of us, less experience, none of it matters. Set your mind at ease. Let them come in their thousands, their tens of thousands; I’ll blow every one of them off the field with my magic. So all of you just do the best you’re each capable of and there’ll be no problem.”
—and a soldier’s readiness to run at a battlefield, better than anyone’s.
Every quality that makes a commander of people is strong in her, and she can be relied on to stay cool and do the right thing in any situation the day produces.
“You are thoroughly dependable, you know.”
“…Sorry?”
“Fufu. I said I’m glad you joined the Provisional Elite Corps.”
At the compliment she flushed red and turned her face away.
“Oh? Is Petra-chan embarrassed?”
“Q-quiet, you! Anyone with a dragon mount, get into the sky this instant!”
“Yeees. Steano, I’m handing the job of teasing Petra-chan to you while I’m gone!”
“On it! Leave it with me!”
“I’ll remember this, both of you…!”
“Uh-oh. She’s going to shoot me dead with magic. Run awaaay♪”
“Hey, that’s not fair, Mia! I’m the only one down here to take the hit!”
“Heh. Not my prob-lem.”
—Haah. They kept it up right to the end, of course.
If I could only get the two problem children fully under control, I would have nothing left to complain about.
“I’m sorry about our pair of idiots…”
“No. There’s nothing for it but to give the whole army a firm lesson in discipline afterward…”
A second problem had surfaced early, but there was nothing to be done now except concentrate on the Kingdom’s army. I gathered myself and turned my eyes toward the plain, and the great host coming across it.
5
My name is Raquel Nova.
I am a council member of the Roscheld Republic, sent to the Empire to represent my country as part of this inspection.
I came with the council’s purpose in mind, to see the Empire’s military and technical strength with my own eyes, but since the event was hosted by Princess Valtrune, my friend from our academy days, I had privately been looking forward to seeing her again.
‘Raquel. Thank you for coming today.’
‘Not at all. I’m the one who’s glad, it’s been so long, Rune-chan.’
Facing her as one nation’s representative to another was new, and it did make me a little nervous, but she was exactly as she had been at the academy, chatting to me easily along the road.
—I’m so glad I came today after all.
The tour went smoothly and I walked imperial ground in excellent spirits. Today, I thought, will be a memory I keep my whole life.
That comfortable thought lasted exactly as long as it took for something to break it.
“Wh-what is that?!”
It came without any warning at all.
One of the visitors noticed a dust cloud bearing down from far off and pointed out across the Dyrst plain. The ground shook underfoot like a warning of some approaching calamity, and then the source of that unpleasant feeling revealed itself.
“Th-the Kingdom’s army!”
“What?!”
“The Kingdom’s army, here?!”
“You mean the Kingdom is invading the Empire?!”
“That can’t… it can’t be…”
The Kingdom’s host. Even counting only what the eye could pick out, it was comfortably over ten thousand.
The genial mood of the morning was gone in an instant, and every person in the delegations felt fear.
“Al! Explain the situation!”
The visitors were in confusion at the Kingdom’s arrival. Princess Valtrune alone was calm, calling to her subordinate.
“…It appears the Kingdom’s army has invaded. Forty thousand at the very least.”
“Has the Corps been informed?”
“Word has already been passed.”
The guards moved quickly, carrying out their roles without a flicker.
“Everyone! This is a sudden attack by the Kingdom’s army. It is dangerous here, so please evacuate at once. Flegel, take the delegations and their escort to the temporary fortress!”
“Understood. This way, everyone!”
—It was so flawless that I half believed she had foreseen the whole of it.
“Rune-sama. The Corps was mid-exercise and is already at readiness. General Ritziareite has her formation set to close around the Kingdom’s army.”
“Good. Then we ride for the line ourselves, quickly!”
“R-Rune-sama?! You mustn’t. The line is far too dangerous!”
We had drawn a little way off from the tour site when I overheard something I could not let past.
—The Princess herself, going to the front?
I was not the only one who had heard it.
“Her Highness intends to fight?!”
“Why would she go to such lengths, and such danger…”
“Surely this is what soldiers are for?”
Astonishment, and with it a note of doubt about how a princess ought to behave. But the moment they saw the clear set of Princess Valtrune’s face and heard what she truly felt, the noise died in their throats.
“Be quiet. If I, the imperial princess, do not stand at the front, then who is to answer a threat against this country? This is the Empire I love, my homeland is in danger of invasion, and I will not do it the discourtesy of running. And this inspection is mine. I invited you here, and the one who invites has a duty to protect her guests.”
“But, Your Highness…”
“I will not have the delegations put at any further risk. You understand me, surely.”
“That is… yes. Very well.”
A fierce love of her homeland, and a deep consideration for those of us who had come as her guests.
None of us could keep seeing Princess Valtrune as merely one nation’s princess. She was like some divine savior, her crimson garments streaming.
“We’re going, Al. The Kingdom’s army has had its own way long enough.”
“Ma’am!”
There was so much mercy and so much courage in the sight of her going that anyone might have lost their heart to it.
“Her Highness…”
“She means to fight, for the likes of us?”
“What courage.”
The older men among us must be easily moved, and one or two of them actually wept.
That my own eyes prickled a little is a secret.
It was brought home to me that this was a fine ruler who thought harder about her country’s future than anyone, and that only a few months ago she had been a student walking the academy halls.
“I can’t afford to stand still either…!”
At the academy I had thought we stood in the same place, and I had been quite wrong. She is far ahead of me.
Watching Princess Valtrune, so utterly changed from her student days and understanding the duties of a nation’s princess better than anyone, I wanted to become a person who could shield my own country from a great threat.
6
“…And how was my performance?”
“Flawless. Just as one expects of Rune-sama.”
Princess Valtrune and I were riding hard to link up with the Provisional Elite Corps, and as we took the horses down a forest track we talked over the little piece of theater she had just performed.
“I would be glad if it thinned out the countries that drift to the Kingdom’s side, even a little…”
“A great many of them were moved by the sight of you, Rune-sama.”
“I hope so.”
The delegations had watched her speak with respect in their eyes. A nation’s princess, disregarding her own safety, going out to meet an invader herself. Once the fighting with the Kingdom was over and they carried that impression home, there would certainly be countries looking to draw closer to the Empire than they had been.
“As far as the inspection goes, everything that needed doing is done. Next is the battle with the Kingdom’s army, no. What we two are facing is…”
“The Order.”
The Kingdom’s army was the Corps’ to take. What Princess Valtrune and I had to do was throw back the Order’s army, moving in the Kingdom’s shadow, that had made its way into Dyrst.
“We’ll collect the soldiers waiting at the operations post and, ah!”
“Rune-sama!”
A large black shape came down out of the sky beside her horse. It threw up a wall of dust, convulsed once, and stopped moving.
“This is…”
“A dragon mount…”
What had come down out of the sky was a dragon mount with both wings burned through and nothing about it left unbroken. The soldier who had been riding it had been shot through his whole body with arrows and was already dead, which told me plainly enough how hard the fighting on the field had become.
“Rune-sama, your hand.”
“Yes.”
The impact of the fall had injured her horse, but she herself was not hurt anywhere, and I pulled her up onto mine.
“It seems this area is dangerous too.”
The closer we came to a field with two armies tangled in it, the worse the danger got. Even riders in the air stood to be brought down by magic or by arrows, and there was no part of the Dyrst region that had not become hostile ground.
“Dragon-mount soldiers should be scouting the enemy formation from high above. If one has been shot down, then…”
“They dropped their altitude and tried to force a kill on the Kingdom’s army.”
“It may be that our ground units are in a bad way.”
“Al. The shortest route to the operations post, please.”
“Yes!”
The Provisional Elite Corps numbered five thousand, every unit counted.
Against them, an overwhelming host of more than forty thousand.
It was perfectly plain that holding back the invasion would be hard.
“Without the magic tools, we have no way to win.”
“There must be a commander giving the mages the word to fire… I wonder whether that person has been taken.”
“If so, this is as bad as it gets… we should move with a withdrawal in mind as well.”
Defeat was already gathering over the day as we reached the operations post, where so many wounded were being carried in, nothing about it suggested an army with the advantage. And in front of the largest tent stood Ritziareite and her staff officers, brows drawn down hard.
“Ritziareite!”
“Lady Valtrune! I’ve been waiting for you.”
“How does the battle stand?”
Ritziareite set both hands on the wide table outside the tent, and there was a trace of strain in her face.
“As things stand, the Provisional Elite Corps is not holding the Kingdom’s advance.”
“The difference in strength is too great.”
“Yes. And our dragon-mount soldiers are pressing them from above, but they don’t flinch, they simply keep coming, and because of that the encirclement is collapsing as well.”
So the Kingdom had abandoned any care for the sky and set itself to destroying what was in front of it.
“Riders who lost patience have gone into dives to attack, and they’ve been shot down one after another. Our strength in the air is badly thinned.”
The map of the Dyrst region spread across the table was marked over with crosses, and the scale of the losses could be taken in at a glance.
“And the magic tools?”
“Firing the tools is entirely in Petra’s hands. But… we’ve been unable to reach her since the fighting started.”
“…I see.”
With that one sentence from Ritziareite, the worst case began to take on weight.
“…Petra.”
I did not want to believe the worst. Not Petra. She could not possibly go down so easily.
“Rune-sama. May I go forward to search for Petra?”
I put it to her, and Princess Valtrune shook her head, her face severe.
“No.”
“Why…”
“You are to prepare, with me, for the fight against the Order’s army. I will not have the operation ruined for a private feeling.”
“—!”
Everything she said was correct. I had let a private feeling carry me, and I had been on the point of abandoning my own part.
“Al. I know how you feel. It hurts to know it. But this is what war is.”
That sentence was the whole truth of the place we were standing in.
War takes the people who matter, and takes them lightly. No matter how close you were to someone, however fine they were, dying happens in a moment.
“My apologies… I’m all right now.”
The pain of losing people is a thing I have felt to exhaustion, and starting a life over from the beginning has evidently not shaken it loose.
—Petra. I’m sorry.
Ritziareite’s account, and a field out there like the inside of hell: the chances that Petra was already dead were very high. But I could not be a man who stopped walking at that.
“Ritziareite. If this holds, the Kingdom’s army may push as far as the imperial capital. Pull it back together somehow, and hold until the Imperial army’s relief arrives!”
“Yes. I will carry out the task if it costs me my life.”
“Al, we’re…”
“Yes. Let’s go!”
I answered her strongly.
The soldiers of the Provisional Elite Corps were still out there on the line, still fighting the Kingdom’s great host. If I abandoned my own part here, I would be trampling on the effort of every one of them.
“Your Highness… we’re ready here.”
“Good. Then we leave at once.”
The reserve came to a little over five hundred, the last strength Ritziareite had been able to keep at the post while fighting the Kingdom’s army.
“Ritziareite. The Kingdom’s army… I’m counting on you.”
“Yes. Please take care as well, Lady Valtrune.”
Princess Valtrune went ahead into the forest with the soldiers. I moved to follow, and a hand closed hard around mine from behind.
“Sir Aldia.”
“…Is something the matter?”
“No. I only wondered whether you were all right…”
“I’m sorry to have worried you.”
I made my case for being fine, and her grip only tightened.
“We’ll look for Petra from our side as well.”
“Thank you…”
Ritziareite is good at reading the smallest shifts in how someone feels. Even now she was worrying about a man working hard to keep his own feelings crushed down.
“Please come back safely. There are still a great many things I want to talk to you about, Sir Aldia.”
“Yes. If we win this fight, we’ll talk until we’ve had our fill of it.”
“…That’s a promise.”
Her hand let go. With her eyes on my back I broke into a run toward the forest where Princess Valtrune was waiting.
Thanks to her, I had my head fully turned around. From here I would concentrate on one thing only, annihilating what stood in front of me.
Whatever meaning I have as a personal knight comes down to this: guarding Princess Valtrune with this sword.
There is no end to it if I let myself fear losing companions in a fight.
“…I can’t stay half-finished like this.”
Looking down is for after everything has been lost. For now it’s enough to do the best I can so that what remains to me isn’t broken. That’s all.