Bloody Battle
"Damn it. Why the hell am I stuck shoveling dirt mixed in with these lowborn scum?"
"Haha. Is this not also an act of devotion to the One who dwells in the heavens? Work diligently, and surely He will be well pleased."
"Come on — no matter how you spin it, what kind of place puts a knight to hard labor…!"
"Move it, move it! Anyone I catch standing idle gets overtime!"
"Anyone who makes the Saintess step in herself like last time dies by my hand — you hear me?!"
It had been two days since the converts who had fled northern France in search of religious freedom were dumped into the engineer corps. Clermont-Ferrand Castle, which had until then enjoyed a strangely peaceful lull for a position on the front lines, was finally shedding its role as a grand country villa and returning to its proper duty as a fortress.
The royalist suppression army, having marched the long road back along well-maintained highways, had at last arrived before the walls.
The force flying the already hollow banner of the royal house numbered roughly thirty thousand. It was a count made with the naked eye from a distance, so the true figure would differ somewhat — but it was unlikely to fall far outside the margin of error. How many military parades had I attended in my previous life? If I couldn't even tally a number properly just because the skin tones and the era were different, I would have no face left to show my former self.
"So they refuse to repent to the very end. Their greed is truly grotesque."
As I leaned against the battlements, studying the suppression army's armament and general atmosphere, Rebecca — who had been looking down on them with cold eyes — scowled deeply and spat the venomous remark. No doubt she found it galling that they still refused to lay down their arms even after a Saintess chosen by the goddess herself had come in person and demonstrated her power.
It was not a hard sentiment to understand. Forty years had already passed since the Flame of Benevolence, disillusioned by the corruption of the clergy, had withdrawn her power from the mortal world. The mere fact that I stood here at all was nothing short of a miracle — and yet the so-called nobles of the kingdom, blinded by worldly affairs, were trying to kick aside the goddess's mercy. Of course her insides would be burning. Perhaps this was the last chance, which only made it worse.
But I had no particular desire to condemn them. I had never expected anything of them to begin with.
Forty years had passed since Vesta reclaimed her power from the earth. A young man who had served the goddess with all his heart in the days when the Order still stood would have aged, died, and left a grandson old enough to come of age and start a family of his own. There would be a few who kept their faith for a lifetime even after their object of worship vanished, and who passed that faith on to their children — but most would already have grown cold, or found some new pillar to lean on. Frankly, that was the normal response.
This was not a world like Earth, where religious authority arose from history and tradition. This was a fantasy realm in which transcendent beings beyond human comprehension intervened on the ground with clear purposes, and their priestly servants worked miracles as casually as breathing. How much faith could possibly remain for a goddess who had stripped her own servants of power and then gone into hiding?
An organization that has lost its function is eventually replaced. The nostalgia for the old Order still hung thick over society at large, so nothing had yet surfaced openly — but beneath the water, new faiths meant to take Vesta's place would already have been growing. That was half the reason the royalist nobles had not been greatly shaken by the appearance of a Saintess.
Of course the other half was the plain, predictable greed of crushing the rebels and preserving their own domains and the serfs they could exploit. But this was still an age in which that was the best anyone knew how to do. What else could one expect?
To a citizen of a twenty-first-century democratic republic, where popular sovereignty was taken for granted, feudalism — with every rotten custom stuck to it like barnacles — was practically the root of all evil. Unfortunately, the only system that could currently claim to be better was absolute monarchy. After all… this was still an age in which farming made up the bulk of economic activity.
A nation's political system tends to be dictated, to an extreme degree, by the structure and scale of its economy. Even on the Earth I had lived on, terms like "resource curse" and "banana republic" had been common currency. Mencius himself — that first-rate instructor on dynastic revolution who taught that if a king botched the job you simply swapped him out for someone else — had said, Without constant means, there can be no constant mind. A people without a steady livelihood cannot keep a steady heart. In other words, the jobless and the poor are far more likely to become subversives.
And in an age when secondary industry had not developed at all, and even primary industry collapsed at the drop of a hat, running anything better than absolute monarchy was effectively impossible. When a single bad harvest could shatter families and tear society apart, how exactly were you supposed to hold elections and achieve a peaceful transfer of power?
It was not worth long deliberation. Reincarnated twenty-first-century soul or not — if you wanted a political revolution here, you first had to stage an agricultural revolution and an industrial revolution. It grated on me terribly that our feudal lords were wringing the marrow from their serfs' spines, but if I simply started cutting throats at random the result would be worse than doing nothing. So I had no choice but to endure.
"Don't be too angry. There will be many who simply haven't accepted reality yet, or who are too afraid to step forward first, and so keep silent."
Therefore those people out there could not simply be called sinners deserving of hatred. Unless someone had spoiled them with future knowledge, you could not hold it against people who did not even know a better way existed — could not demand to know why they had been born nobles. …Well. Even so, a seventy-percent tax rate did rather cross a line. But that was something I would fix myself. This war was the foundation stone for that work.
"Ah — someone's coming."
A single cavalryman rode out from the suppression army's camp under a white flag. True to the spirit of élan vital and the nation that could be cut down in six weeks, they were sending a surrender envoy before the fighting even started… no, not quite. It was the customary procedure of clarifying each side's position before battle was properly joined. You saw the same scene often enough in historical dramas: a loud public exchange of justifications and purposes, while each side quietly sized up the other's army and probed for hidden intentions. We were rebels rather than a regular army, so the talks would not last long — but that did not change the fact that it was a fine chance to look inside the enemy's mind.
And the true leader of the rebel force was not Count Montpellier. It was me. Conveniently, their own commander had come to the front in person. Showing off a little religious authority while the two leaders spoke face to face seemed a reasonable idea.
"Hear me, Thomas, Count of Montpellier, and all who share his crime — traitors who have risen against His Majesty the King!"
I had been honing the idea that had just occurred to me into a sharp little dagger when the envoy, now before the gates, began to thunderously denounce the Count's treason. Roughly: Claude V's rule was perfectly legitimate for such-and-such reasons, and how dare some unqualified country lord, et cetera. It was a dull, unremarkable speech of the most predictable sort — but it was not entirely without value.
The envoy's address contained not a single word that might evoke the Order — no divinity, no divine punishment. Mentions of Goddess Vesta and the Saintess were equally absent. They knew full well that the Order's Saintess was leading the rebellion, and yet they attacked only Count Montpellier, who had long since been reduced to a figurehead, with obsessive focus. As if I did not exist at all.
In effect, they had confessed that they could neither deny I was the Saintess nor openly declare hostility against one.
"Sir Thomas, please convey to the Count that I would like him to arrange a meeting with the Duke of Orléans in person."
How to answer, then, was already decided. I would walk out through the main gate with my head high and look the Duke of Orléans in the face — taking only three people with me: Rebecca, Arturo, and Count Montpellier.
"The Duke of Orléans has accepted the proposal for talks. He says he'll raise a tent on that hill over there, and we are to present ourselves by noon."
"Is that so. He agreed more readily than I expected."
I had briefly considered bringing the young man in front of me along as an extra guard, but two Thomases would only make calling names confusing, so I decided to leave him behind. Why did these damned big-nosed people keep naming their children after their parents? Thomas Montpellier, son of Thomas, Count of Montpellier — what was this, self-replicating amoebas?
"…But Saintess. Is there really any reason to face them now? If the number of people each side can bring is limited, protecting your person shouldn't be a problem — but when a clash is already certain, what meaning is there in talking…?"
And our Rebecca had the situational awareness of a single-celled organism. She had just listed the reasons with her own mouth and then asked what the point was. Whether to call that pure or simply dense was a genuine puzzle.
"There is a point. Precisely because the number of people each side can bring is limited."
The royalists were a warlord coalition of central and northern nobles, horrified by Claude V's breathtaking incompetence, who had gathered around the Duke of Orléans as their focal point. In other words — if we killed only the Duke of Orléans, we won.
A miraculous alchemy that traded meaningless honor for the enemy's head. Whether it worked or not, it was more than worth one attempt.