The Hot War
"...Oh, for real? She's just a kid. You've got to be kidding me."
The uninvited guest who had suddenly appeared at the lodging was rude from the very first greeting. Extremely so.
To open with something like "What's with this brat?" to a person you have only just met — what kind of upbringing produces such an extraordinary form of address?
"How dare you be so disrespectful—"
"I'm fine, so stay quiet."
Rebecca, standing right beside me, was about to let out a lion's roar over the insult to the Saintess, but I quickly raised a hand and stopped her.
It was not an incomprehensible reaction, after all.
Who would not be thrown off balance upon being told that a child who had only just turned twelve was the Saintess? Not merely young — a little brat. And at present I was not simply a Saintess; I was the de facto ringleader of a rebellion.
Those around me had seen me up close and could simply accept it. To a stranger, however, the credentials were bizarre in the extreme.
...This little girl was the royal Finance Minister?
Truth be told, I had flinched just as hard at the sight of her appearance alone, so I decided to forgive the former Finance Minister's rudeness-that-was-not-quite-rudeness with generous forbearance. There was nothing to gain by turning aggressive here.
"You served as Finance Minister at the royal court?"
Forgiving someone and trusting them, however, were entirely different matters. I carefully verified her career.
It was not that I was a creature trapped in outdated prejudices. I was a reincarnator from the twenty-first century who fretted over the rights of street animals, never mind people — what kind of complaint was that supposed to be?
This was reasonable doubt grounded in common sense, not baseless slander born of prejudice.
The office of royal Finance Minister corresponded, in modern terms, to a Minister of Finance — in Korea, the Minister of Economy and Finance. Of course the system and the scale of the economy differed greatly from the twenty-first century, so the duties and prestige differed considerably as well; yet it was still a post that clearly demanded substantial experience and practical ability. Or, at the very least, formidable connections.
But the girl standing before me did not look as though she belonged in a Finance Minister's chair no matter how one examined her. First she was a woman; second she was not merely young but a child; and third she did not appear to come from any particularly great house.
Had she been a noble, she would never have abandoned her entire family to come this far. For the same reason, royalty was out of the question. Had we raised our rebellion under some other pretext, perhaps — but there was no chance a blood relative of Claude V would seek out people who intended to drag the tyrant Claude V from the throne and elevate Count Montpellier in his place.
Which meant she had risen to Finance Minister with neither background nor backing, and was therefore a talent of extraordinary caliber...
Ridiculous.
No matter how I turned it over, the conclusion remained negative. It was not a question of whether she possessed the ability. It was the structural limit of a medieval dynasty in which every high office was monopolized by the nobility.
If a king personally selected and appointed talent, a dragon rising from a stream was not entirely impossible... but well. I doubted that the man so incompetent he had been driven out even by the royalists possessed any such capacity. It was far more plausible that the king had gone mad with women and simply handed the entire royal treasury over to a mistress.
In short, the chance that she had been appointed Finance Minister through proper channels was nearly nonexistent—
"Yes. My father was Finance Minister as well. I learned the work from him since I was little and inherited the post... but as you can see, I'm unemployed now."
Ah. If she had inherited it from her parents, that made sense.
One might think, what, inheriting an official post like real estate? But in this era that was precisely the standard and the common sense. Medieval France had no civil-service examination system, nor study materials for exam candidates, so of course. Bureaucrats of this period were closer to household retainers than to civil servants. There existed no method on earth for defeating the family secrets handed down from a grandfather's grandfather through successive generations.
"How did you get dismissed?"
"I was fired for nagging about every little thing and failing to bring in enough money. I want to kill the past version of myself who served a king like that."
Yes. When the boss is a bastard, resignation is the only answer.
Incidentally, I had not realized Claude V was quite that much of an idiot. Even without me, something on the order of a Magna Carta might well have appeared.
"Hmm. Do you have any intention of swearing loyalty to the king again?"
At any rate, I now knew with certainty that this young woman was extremely hostile toward the king. The problem was that the king had effectively been driven from the throne and the Duke of Orléans had seized real power.
I was sorry, but I did not place much trust in pen-pushers. When the pen-pusher in question was someone I had met for the first time that very day, and an important figure the enemy camp would try to recruit by any means necessary, I trusted her even less.
So I took the risk and confirmed her intentions.
"Well. I think meaningless service once is enough."
The answer was so clear it drew a hollow laugh from me. She had openly declared her intention to join our side while dismissing the current royalists as having no chance of victory. With a conversion this fiery, I had no choice but to believe her.
There would be nothing to assign her until the war ended anyway; I would keep her close and steadily build trust.
"Could you look this way and give me your name and age?"
"Matilda Granger. I'm eighteen. Just call me Matilda."
Good. I liked her a great deal.
A useful public slave walking in of her own free will — living virtuously really did bring blessings. Even if I called her a public slave, properly employing her would require various verifications and adjustments, but having someone to put to work was something in itself.
Our order was in a state of extreme manpower shortage. I had been fretting that, once we established the Holy Kingdom, I might have to entrust the finances to Elder Pates; there was no reason whatsoever to refuse a talent who was not some random nobody but a former Finance Minister.
What should I teach her first? Cameralism? Double-entry bookkeeping? I only know the basic concepts of modern public administration myself, and it isn't something one learns overnight, so that would be difficult. Or skip all of that and stuff the concept of the modern nation-state into her head from the start?
Ah. Just thinking about it made my mouth water.
How long had it been since I last tasted this kind of happiness? That damned Count, the war — nothing had gone my way and I had been on the verge of losing my mind. Yet the talent I needed most had come seeking me of her own accord, and the residue that had piled up inside me felt as though it were melting clean away.
Now I could dump a washed-up embezzler like Elder Pates into some sinecure and build a dynamic, ideal nation led by young blood (all of them minors)—
"...Saintess, why are you suddenly drooling?"
"Ah."
Look at me. This was not the important matter at hand.
I hurriedly wiped the drool from the corner of my mouth with my sleeve and shook out, all at once, the miscellaneous thoughts that had filled my head. In peacetime those thoughts might have been productive concerns in their own right; unfortunately, this was wartime, with tens of thousands of lives hanging in the balance.
And I was the de facto commander of the rebel army who had even pushed Count Montpellier aside to seize the baton of command. My duty, then, was clear.
I had promised them victory.
Even if I had been swept into this rebellion somehow and had no choice but to join;
even if it was a role I had unintentionally assumed after countless blunders and desperate struggles;
so long as they had trusted me and entrusted their lives to me, I was obliged to do everything in my power to repay that trust. If I could not even take responsibility for those I myself had drawn in, I would have no face left with which to meet my senior after death.
"Alright. Let's get to the main point."
So let us speak of war.
Let us consider how to kill both this country's legitimate king and the regent eyeing the throne in a single stroke, and elevate a greedy murderer as this country's king.
I decided to set aside, for the moment, the guilt over those who would be sacrificed. It was fine. Results justified the process. Once I properly achieved the things I had first aimed for, even the blood-reeking scenes of slaughter would become nothing more than bitter old memories.
"I intend to force a short, decisive battle upon the royalists. Whether to minimize the sacrifices the war will produce, or to secure numerical superiority while the enemy cannot yet mobilize all their forces — ultimately that is the best option."
The existing policy would remain unchanged. Present the pitiful Duke of Orléans with the possibility of southern France's secession, induce a reckless offensive, smash the royalists' main force head-on, and dismantle the faction itself.
There were many shortcomings, but in the end this was the best strategy I could conceive — and also the simplest and most stable one.
Yet now that a special guest who happened to be a former Finance Minister had joined our camp, adding a new component to that strategy was well worth attempting.
"But securing numerical superiority alone is not enough to guarantee victory. We desperately need information on every front — the royal army's training and armament levels, the interests among the lords and the capabilities of the knights they command, their piety, the command structure of the Royal Knights, and so on."
It was a gamble well worth taking.