The Piper Knight
The Piper Knight
I had sent an inquiry to the royal household through Ragnis regarding wyvern ownership, and what came back with a lightning-fast reply in less than two days was a proposal: to participate in a new wyvern unit in a role akin to an advisor.
At first I wondered if the king and old Lesrom had both gone nicely senile together, but when I actually read the draft of the plan they proposed, I got chills.
Good God, an airborne unit? And inspired by stories of me jumping from wyverns and fighting?
The drafter was listed as old Lesrom, and the idea was so outlandish that I almost seriously suspected the old man might have been a modern person who reincarnated long ago.
Since this time I was the one asking, I had been planning to accept any reasonable offer, but they weren't offering raw recruits; they were providing wyverns that had already completed basic training—though I couldn't tell when they'd started—and a number of quite skilled knights. On top of that, they said they would help me rapidly master the Dragon Riding Art, so there was no reason to refuse.
Of course, the knights might feel uncomfortable that a stone that rolled in from outside was suddenly in a position akin to their advisor, and there could be friction, but I figured I'd just handle it somehow.
"It is an honor to meet the hero who protected the capital!"
But for some reason, these people radiated open favor to an overwhelming degree.
On the first day, I suspected they might be acting, and on the second, I even wondered if it was a ploy by old Lesrom to make me grow attached to them and help the kingdom's army. But whatever the backstory, their goodwill was genuine.
Later, after thinking about it quietly and talking with them, I realized it was actually a normal reaction.
The very condition of being a wyvern knight was loyalty to the royal family and the kingdom, so from the standpoint of being 'knights who could skillfully ride wyverns,' they already satisfied that prerequisite.
Since they'd even been filtered in the name of the royal household and the Noble Council, it made sense that they held illusions and goodwill toward me, who, on the surface, had done only beneficial things for the kingdom.
Even if that interpretation was far from my intentions, thanks to it, the process of getting close to them went smoothly.
"Sir Ega, we've finished destroying all supplies."
"How many surrendered?"
"Thirty-four. There were three tents set aside for the wounded, so we divided them up and shoved them in."
"Neat. Let's head back."
And so time passed, and the days of flying into the Demon King's Army's rear to club them in the back of the head continued until this day, nearly four days spent achieving their founding purpose.
Five squads of twenty each—a force that, if they were proper wyvern knights, would make enemies piss themselves just hearing about them—had been trained to the point where they could find and handle their own tasks. Nevertheless, the biggest reason I was going on operations rotating through squads in the bizarre position of advisor was very simple.
Because there was no one in the kingdom better at jumping from wyverns than me. No joke, that really was why I became an advisor.
If you thought about it, my memories and knowledge from my past life played a part after a really long time.
No matter how much knights trained with aura, they didn't go out of their way to pull stunts like jumping from heights above the second floor, so they had absolutely no sense of how high was dangerous or safe.
I, thanks to my past life knowledge from a world overflowing with skyscrapers, could roughly estimate that even with my strengthened body I'd die from this height, but this height should be okay. But these people, unless they had some latent suicidal impulses, had no reason to ever imagine such things, so even making a guess wasn't easy.
And so, when I first saw them attempt what they called an assault, I had to struggle to hold back laughter. The sight of those gentlemen, sturdy thanks to aura, coming down to a height that was barely a second floor and slowly jumping off was a funnier sight than I'd expected.
It wasn't so funny that my knees ached from having to demonstrate several times to make them understand that if you just handle aura well, it was safe up to eleven meters—the height where people feel the most fear.
"Uh, Sir Ega. This might be a stale question, but..."
I was preparing to mount the wyvern, realizing just how much had happened in less than a week, when one of the knights approached me cautiously. He wore a helmet, but thanks to the red half-cloak draped over him, I easily recognized who it was.
"What is it, Squad Leader Shantri?"
"I understand about wounded soldiers, but... even if they're surrendered Demonfolk, wouldn't it be better to cut off an arm or something rather than let them live without a scratch? They'll eventually merge with other forces and swing their swords at us again."
There was a reason the squad leader was so cautiously voicing his opinion to me, who was nothing more than an advisor.
One of my conditions for joining was: 'Do not touch the wounded and those who surrender.' From a modern person's perspective, it might be a very natural thing to say thanks to the Geneva Convention, but here it was very different.
Because in a world where even ordinary members of the Human Race could recover in an instant with Holy Arts and potions, Demonfolk wounded soldiers were not actually a big drain on enemy combat power as one might think.
Of course, they couldn't be patched up and sent out like factory products, but there were plenty of ways to recover quickly enough. You might think that since it's not free, the cost can't be ignored, but recovering a soldier was far cheaper than recruiting a new one worth a hundred.
If just one centurion-level soldier was mixed in among the wounded I spared, it would be a huge loss for the Human Race side.
Thus, in this long war, both sides mostly gave merciless judgments unless they were taking prisoners or in very special cases. The ones who had been sending seemingly endless respectful gazes, even they, when they heard I joined under such conditions, mixed their looks with the kind you'd give a young master who can't grasp reality and is drunk on ideals. There's nothing more to say.
Just understanding the decision to spare wounded soldiers like that was already close to a huge concession. The Demon King's soldiers I let go today might kill kingdom soldiers tomorrow, so they probably found it very distasteful.
I understood their feelings well enough, but this was non-negotiable territory. I didn't like attacking those who'd lost the will to fight either, but it was also tied to my convictions.
"You reap what you sow, they say. If we kill, they'll kill too. But the ones dying then might not be us but weak, unrelated kingdom citizens. If we cut off limbs, next time our allies' limbs will be cut off, won't they?"
While I fucked up everyone who touched me, the thing I worried about most wasn't that I'd meet an insurmountable wall and break, but that the arrows of rage wouldn't be aimed at me but at the people around me.
As a former modern person, how could I not know the clichéd chain of revenge? So I moved with the mindset that if you touch me, I might give you a chance depending on the case, but if you touch my people, I'll wipe out your entire line. If anyone had any sense, they'd calculate that touching me was the cheaper option.
But the military was different. Even if I resolved to accept my karma without avoiding it, there were more than enough people wearing the name of soldier who would take arrows in my place.
In such a situation, if I committed retaliatory acts outside the framework of battle, the Demon King's Army that couldn't target me would inevitably retaliate in the same or worse ways against others weaker than me.
And I had no way to resolve problems carried out on a military scale.
So I had no choice but to choose options that excluded such cases as much as possible. That said, I couldn't not kill enemies on the battlefield, so I only spared wounded soldiers without fighting spirit and those who surrendered.
I thought that the claim 'war is originally like that' applied only to what happened on the battlefield. At least, those were my standards. Some might say it's nothing but self-satisfaction, but as always, I didn't give a damn.
Better self-satisfaction than not even being able to get that.
"There's no guarantee that they'll do the same just because we send them back safely, is there?"
"You're right. But just because the enemy might, we can't act like beasts. I just want to stand tall before the gods."
They probably had rage toward the Demon King's Army and the Demonfolk, but my targets were limited, so differences of opinion arose. I hadn't expected them to understand all this from the start, so I decided to wrap up the conversation.
"I don't expect understanding. Differences in thought are only natural. But this is strictly a contract with the royal household, so I ask that you follow it for now."
It was practically a dismissal, which might have caused dissatisfaction, but continuing the conversation would just draw parallel lines, so I'd figured this was better. Yet for some reason, the squad leader lifted his visor to show his face, and still sending a gaze full of goodwill, he nodded vigorously.
"You're right. My apologies!"
...For some reason, his reaction had a 'This is chivalry!' vibe that I didn't like, but I couldn't grab him to interrogate what misunderstanding he had, so I let it go.
Aside from resolving such trivial misunderstandings, there was a lot to do today. We had to hit two more supply routes before sundown, so as soon as maintenance was done, we took straight to the sky.