A Knight Does Not Forget a Grudge (2)
It hardly needed saying, but Pendragon was at war.
The heretics' terror had struck so often that no one could have said how many times, and every blow had been vicious enough to leave the kingdom badly wounded. Of late the Grand Temple itself had fallen, and even House Offen had been half destroyed. The danger was no longer an abstraction. It laid a chill across the napes of those who held power.
The absurdity was this: almost no one knew, in any real detail, who these lethally dangerous heretics actually were. Their structure, their numbers, the officers who mattered, the chief who led them—all of it was one long question mark.
What little was known was that the cult's original form had been the Blood Cross Army, once ground under the Martial God's heel. What had risen in its place, though, was nothing like the ghost the kingdom had already swept away, neither in scale nor in makeup, and the old intelligence was useless. Only later did anyone learn that apostates inside the Grand Temple had kept a line open to the Blood Cross Army—and those apostates, as if to prove they had been nothing but hunting dogs, were discarded the moment they ceased to be useful and burned to ash. With that, the means of extracting information all but vanished.
And yet.
"The Blood Cross Army, as I'm sure you've already guessed, is a cell organization. Half the members don't even know who stands above them. There are ordinary merchants and nobles out there helping the Blood Cross without ever realizing they do."
They say that even if the sky falls, a hole opens somewhere to climb through. The heretic officers the organization had cast aside coughed up everything they knew, and willingly. Precious information.
"So if you're thinking of rounding up the cells and squeezing something out of them, I'd wake up if I were you. Catch them and you'll get nothing."
"Do not trouble yourself. We have already wasted men and coin confirming as much."
"Y-you've already tried…."
"If you are curious what became of those cells, I am willing to tell you."
"…I'll pass. My sleep is savage enough as it is. I don't need it getting worse."
"Wise."
"Thanks for the compliment."
The woman once called the Seventh Apostle gave a light shrug. Dina's face, however, had gone stiff. Simply looking at the person across from her was enough to put a chill through her chest.
And sure enough—
"And yet a thing that calls itself an organization cannot survive on cells alone. There must be those who serve as its head. Who are they?"
"…I was going to tell you anyway."
Overwhelmed by that quiet gaze, Dina found herself shrinking all over again. She reached for the chessboard on the table and moved the pieces. Three knights.
Clack.
"The Brass Knight Order. They handle the organization's armed strength. The ones who led the research into Demon Persons. I heard the Half-Fiends are their masterpiece. There's a chief they call the Captain, and under him an elite core known as the brass knights. I don't know exactly where they are. And don't scold me for not knowing. We don't get along, and any branch could betray the others at any time, so everyone's location is kept secret."
Clack.
"Torn Wing. The organization's brain. They pass down the real orders, and they cook up the schemes. Shamans, and black mages contracted to the demons of Hell, make up their core. The Ghost King summoning from the other day, and the summoning of hell-beasts—that was their work. A lot of them carry unusual power. They're wrapped in even thicker secrecy than the Brass Knight Order. Apparently they have some magic, or Mystery, that lets them share one another's thoughts by special means. That's why they say these ones are buried inside the cells everywhere, quietly spinning their plots."
Clack.
"The Black Apostles. Intelligence, infiltration of enemy states, assassination—that sort of work. They were once known as an assassin order called the Black Moon, but in truth it was a rearing house meant to grow warriors for the Blood Cross Army through endless body modification and illegal procedures. A different road from the Brass Knight Order's, aimed at building military strength. Well, their identity was exposed before they could even run the place properly, and every warrior they'd raised scattered. Even so, the members centered on the apostles are moving hard these days."
Dina finished the long speech and blew out a breath. She had betrayed them, yes, but spilling it all left her feeling strangely clean inside.
"…As you can see, it's an organization falling apart like loose flour. Only each branch's leader knows who the Blood Cross Army's current head is, and the secrets never end. The branches hate each other. They could turn on one another and destroy themselves at any time. The only reason the structure holds at all is that the chiefs have considerable force, and considerable control."
It was as she said. Who in the world would believe an organization like that could exist? That it endured at all was a miracle.
"…Then why were you part of that ramshackle thing? From what I hear, you were neither fed poison nor threatened, and you hardly seem a fanatic."
"……."
For the first time, Dina had no answer. She held her silence for a long while, and the woman across from her waited as if she had all the time in the world, drinking her tea at leisure. Only when the cup settled back onto the table did someone else speak.
"…There would be five main reasons. The pay is good. If you have a family, they hand you enough wealth to live on for the rest of your life. The support is thorough. If you want to grow stronger, they teach you how, even when the method isn't human. And last—betray them, and there is no retaliation. That is why we belonged to them. No other reason."
The speaker was the former Eleventh Apostle, the shaman Yan. Unlike Dina, lost in the tangle of her own past, it was a clear-eyed answer from a man who could look at the thing from outside himself.
And the one who heard it—
"Absurd. It sounds less like a heretic cult than an ordinary workplace."
"It is a workplace. They take responsibility for your family even if you die, so there are plenty who give them their loyalty."
"…And there are many who stay loyal even while such inhuman things are done?"
"Mm. If I may answer with a question—haven't the Grand Temple, Pendragon, the Empire, and the Magic Tower committed plenty of inhuman acts themselves?"
"…A foolish question."
Yes. A foolish question. Their experiments were inhuman, that much was certain, but regrettably this was not a matter for a ruler like herself to lecture upon. The Grand Temple alone had gone about killing blameless commoners under the banners of witch hunts and heretic hunts, and the Empire and the Magic Tower had toyed with the Empire's people for hundreds of years.
"Ah. Of course, these employee benefits apply only to permanent staff. Criminals in the Tunnels, or the Grand Temple's apostates, are horses you simply throw away. Worth less than this pawn."
"……."
"Did you know? It wasn't these three branches that led the Half-Fiend project, or the project to seize Mysteries. It was the Grand Temple and the Magic Tower. Their interests aligned, so they cooperated—kidnapping slaves and orphans for the experiments. Well. We shared the data, so in the end we were the same kind of filth."
"…So the country was crawling with the get of beasts. No—with monsters that walk. Ha… ha…."
It was the first time she had laughed, and it was an empty laugh, spilled out because she could not believe what she was hearing. The longer she listened to Yan, the more it felt as if she might lose her mind. Isis shook her head.
"Well. Those beasts are gone now. There is no need to dwell on them."
The Grand Temple had fallen. The Tunnels had fallen. As for the Magic Tower—
Did they say the mage race itself is being wiped out, root and seed?
As if settling centuries of evil karma, the Magic Tower's mages were dying day after day. Beyond that, mages in the Empire were being driven from their homes for no reason but that they were mages, and in the worst cases sold as slaves. For decades, at the least, that race might not be able to set a foot inside the Empire.
In the end, the Empire is collapsing too….
From the moment two knights brought the Magic Tower down, the warlords and border-kings scattered across imperial territory had finally risen, and the Empire was breaking apart piece by piece. A ridiculous thing. The Empire that had once, together with Britannia, threatened Pendragon more than any other power was vanishing this emptily. One potential enemy, gone. Reunifying what remained would take decades at the least.
No. They said it took a little more than a hundred years for the old Empire to be raised. It may take longer still.
For Pendragon, it was good news. While the Empire—the Central Continent—floundered in chaos, the kingdom could absorb the commoners fleeing it. Population would grow, and the chronic shortage of hands might solve itself. With no enemy realm left, development would pile upon development, and in that way—
—it could collapse all at once.
As if someone had thrown cold water over her, she judged the situation with a cold eye.
"Frightening. That every place your organization's malice has spread is falling, one after another…."
"We didn't bring them down. Wasn't it your knights who did?"
"Even those were places your hand had touched. Pendragon will hardly be spared."
"…I won't deny it."
Yan nodded, honestly, and inwardly he was impressed.
So this is the next sovereign who will lead Pendragon.
The woman called Isis never grew excited. She listened to them with a cold composure from beginning to end, analyzed from an objective vantage, and judged. Nor did she look at the situation with blind optimism.
Rather the opposite.
"They commit inhuman acts without hesitation, and they seem to spare no means—and yet they do not stint on support for their own. They treat their own allies as enemies for the sake of a single goal, and still join their strength. Not wholly mad. Not wholly wicked. Possessed of a measured goodness besides. What a grotesquely alien organization this is…."
"Not a good one, either."
"How could an organization that does not spare vivisection and kidnapping ever be good people?"
"……."
"What I mean is only that you are alien. For the first time, I find myself at a loss for how to face an enemy."
"……."
"To bring us down, they spare neither means nor method. That is why it is difficult to meet you by any ordinary measure. So enemies like this exist as well…."
What Isis was showing was her dismay at a simple fact: her opponent would never move according to common sense. On top of that, Pendragon was worse than merely disunited. The royal house and the great nobles were ignoring one another outright.
"…Grave. Truly grave…."
"……."
"Which is why I mean to make a proposal. The two of you—have you any thought of becoming mine?"
The pair could only stare.
…This, out of nowhere?
She had been grumbling about how grave it all was, and then this. But Isis had made an eminently practical judgment. If the enemy would not play by common sense, then she too had to step at least a little outside it.
And so—
"You said you are at the Academy now? Cast off clothes that do not suit you. The place that will use you best is none other than my side. Become mine, and I shall not stint on support. Name any salary you wish. I will pay you double. Speak as freely as you like."
"Th-that's… w-we're criminals…?"
"This is an age of war. Rather than lock talent like yours away, the proper season is to make use of it. Devote yourselves to Pendragon for exactly ten years. I shall guarantee your freedom afterward."
She too had made a bold decision. Taking them in would hand Isis a political weakness, but it was a weakness well worth bearing.
And yet—
"Um… the truth is, we already heard that offer from Galahad…."
"And from Lionel's side as well…."
Bang!
Her rivals, as expected, moved at an entirely different pace. They were already overflowing with talent—what made them so greedy? For Isis, it was nothing short of unfair.
Then—
"Still. You have No. 8 under you."
Isis's eyes sharpened.
"The one they call Lee Han now."
"…Hah."
The moment she heard his name, a smile rose to her lips of its own accord. A name that eased a mood which had grown unpleasant just from the listening.
"My proud sworn younger brother."
"……."
"What is he doing now? I heard the Academy went on break starting today. Training again?"
"…You don't know?"
Her look asked the question for her.
"…What was it. He said he was going vampire hunting with the Hao Sect Leader?"
For a moment, Isis had no expression at all.
"I think he means to hunt Hansel. The Second Apostle. And from the way he's talking, he's going to tear down every place he finds suspicious… so the kingdom may be noisy for a while."
She was furious.
"If you were going to do something like that, you should have done it with me…!"
…at the sworn younger brother who was enjoying the hunt while leaving her out of it.
The crown princess was disappointed in her knight.
"……?"
Simon, chairman of the Guild Union, was caught in a déjà vu he couldn't place.
I feel like this has happened before.
That time, surely—
"Thanks. The Hao Sect comes through, as expected. Been a while since I heard a spell-peddler cry. Stress just fell right off."
…that axe had been pointed at him, hadn't it?
Well. Fortunately, this time it seemed aimed at other people.
Unable to tell whether the man in front of him was a knight or a butcher, Simon ventured the one small question that had been bothering him.
"Um, I've been curious for a while. Why do you look at the guild and call it the Hao Sect?"
"Ah, it's just a nickname. Don't worry about it."
"…Haha. I see."
"So, Hao Sect Leader. Where's the next spell-peddler?"
"…When you put it like that, I can't help feeling as if I'm the hidden mastermind."
"That's the seat a Hao Sect Leader is meant to sit in."
"……."
He had felt it for a long time now. What on earth did this knight think a guild was?
We're not the bad guys….
The feeling that a great many things had gone crooked because the first meeting had gone crooked belonged to the Hao Sect Leader—no, to Simon, chairman of the Guild Union.