The Decisive Battle
The war that had begun so abruptly ended just as abruptly—almost hollowly.
The Duke of Orléans, who had seized the fortress of Clermont-Ferrand with a mad lance charge, met his end drenched head to toe in white phosphorus. With his dying words he handed Asty a formidable justification—even as he dragged his own honor through the mud.
Small wonder that the recipient of the gift felt more bewildered than joyful.
The old knight had ended the war in a manner no one had foreseen, and every scrap of the glory of victory became Asty’s alone.
"I cannot accept this! Ending the war over the defeat of a single man—what kind of nonsense is—"
"Rebecca, take care of that one, please. I’m not in the mood for childish word games right now."
Of course not every knight quietly accepted defeat, but they had no chance of winning anyway.
The reason Asty had been forced to stake her own life even while holding Rebecca as an asymmetric force was that the combat power of the royalist knights gathered around the Duke of Orléans had been that threatening. Now that the duke himself had fallen in battle and the royalists’ morale had been plunged into the gutter, it was physically impossible for the scattered knights to resist the overwhelming violence of the Lantern Bearer.
"Death to the warmonger Kaiser! Alsace pledges its full loyalty to the true guardian of France!"
"Surrender! We surrender! Long live Vesta! Long live the Flame of Benevolence!"
"Damn it all. Then just kill me!"
The border counts who had lost any reason to fight were the first to switch sides; the nobles quick to read the situation followed close behind. And the fools who mindlessly cried for a last stand were thoroughly crushed.
Most got off with a broken arm or leg, but a few refused to acknowledge defeat to the bitter end and lost their lives in the process. That the majority of the dead were lords from regions bordering the south was hardly surprising.
"The war is over. The wicked apostate has received heavenly judgment, and it has been proven before all the world that the tyrant Claude V is unfit to rule France. Therefore, brothers who have not forgotten the mercy of the hearth, I ask that you lay down the weapons in your hands."
Everything after that proceeded with smooth efficiency.
Asty swiftly restored the chain of command, gathered the remnants of the defeated, recalled the reserves she had sent north, and disarmed the suppression force. It was command so precise and effective that even veteran knights who had weathered every hardship could only marvel. Only Rebecca, who alone recognized the source of that skill, let out a low hum.
"We, the knights of Orléans, also surrender. Saintess, we beg you to show us mercy."
"…I swear upon the Flame of Benevolence who dwells in the heavens that I will never harm you."
And so the war ended.
Even the vassals of the Duke of Orléans, who had seemed ready to fight to the last, voluntarily disarmed and surrendered. Count Montpellier’s military revolt concluded in a complete victory for the rebels.
More precisely, it was Asty’s solitary victory.
War changes many things.
It begins with the life and death and values of every individual caught in its path, then reaches their property and social standing, the duties and rights that follow, and sometimes even the very shape of the system itself. The change wrought by violence is more brutal and radical than any other, making possible even what peacetime would never allow.
Yet the advance of civilization had succeeded in taming even that savagery.
The barbarians who once wore animal skins and swung clubs became knights clad in steel armor and wielding spears and swords. As the cost and manpower consumed by war soared, humanity learned the virtue of compromise. They had discovered that fighting until every last grain of wheat was stripped from the granaries left nothing but ashes.
Thus negotiation became the basic accomplishment and common sense of civilized people, and it became natural that the one who earned the greatest military merit claimed the greatest spoils.
After all, even if a silver tongue wrung out enormous concessions, a botched distribution that sparked civil war would render it all worthless. Dividing the spoils according to military merit was therefore an eminently rational method. When someone contributed to victory through outstanding merit, it meant they possessed either exceptional skill or the ability to field large numbers of troops. In other words, military merit was an indirect proof of the force that person or faction commanded, and demanding one’s share by flaunting that merit at the negotiating table was a mild form of armed demonstration dressed up in plausible justification.
A human weapon who had single-handedly cut down hundreds of enemy soldiers was hardly going to be unable to split the skulls of his own allies.
To discard a war hero who had earned massive merit required at least the pettiness and political skill of one’s ancestors. In a fantasy feudal state, if you got on the wrong side of the sword-swingers, king or no king, heads would roll.
"…"
"Now then, let us discuss what comes next."
Consequently, every aspect of the postwar settlement proceeded under Asty’s leadership.
The pursuit of deserters, the reinstatement of knights who had defected to the rebels, the distribution of various rights and spoils, and the disposition of fiefs left adrift by the deaths of their lords—everything moved according to Asty’s will. The most the nobles could manage was to insert a word or two.
Anyone watching might have mistaken the hastily assembled rebel coalition for the rewards ceremony of a centralized state.
"I will permit the succession of the title to the son of the fallen Count of Dijon, but the tax rights over the disputed regions of Mâcon and Bourg-en-Bresse shall be granted to the Count of Lyon. In return, I would ask the Count of Lyon to assist with the postwar reconstruction of the Clermont-Ferrand area."
"V-very well."
That the agreement could still proceed without friction was because Asty’s handling of affairs was so seasoned and reasonable.
Negotiation proposals that never strayed beyond the bounds of common sense, a gift for packaging even minor points in plausible language, and an uncanny distribution of interests that seemed to know every house’s finances inside out. Asty skillfully led the postwar settlement while securing both justification and practical advantage, and the first agreement concluded at a level everyone could more or less accept.
If they say they can’t accept it even if it kills them…
They’ll just get beaten to death by the Saintess, right?
Of course the greatest reason the agreement finished so smoothly was that Asty had dunked the Duke of Orléans.
The duke’s last words had given Asty an enormous gift: the feat of having slain France’s strongest knight in direct combat. Add to that Rebecca’s martial exploits of thrashing dozens of Senior Knights, and the newborn Vesta Order was no longer merely a powerful presence in name—it was a genuine threat.
Considering that the so-called Saintess was a lunatic who carried white phosphorus around with her, the assessment was hardly exaggerated.
"Um, about the fief of the apostate Maximilien—"
"…In light of the services the previous Duke of Orléans rendered in sustaining the kingdom, his act of apostasy will be left unexamined. The succession of the title will of course proceed normally as well."
Thanks to that, the House of Orléans was able to survive intact.
One might well wonder how a cleric could forgive an apostate, but when the very person who had beaten that apostate to death declared forgiveness, what was anyone supposed to do? The present Order was a force that counted two human weapons capable of overwhelming even Senior Knights among its members. Few lunatics were eager to pick a quarrel with the Saintess over the treatment of an apostate in the face of that terrifying violence reminiscent of the Order’s golden age.
"No, why does Orléans get a free pass? You stripped half our fiefs even though we surrendered quietly!"
There were not none.
The name of the brave old man who dared raise a banner against the Order’s Saintess was Baptiste Martin, Duke of Brittany, who had just lost four-tenths of his territory in the agreement.
"Hmm…"
Yet the duke’s claim that Asty had torn away half his fief contained a serious error.
That land had never belonged to the Duke of Brittany in the first place.
The territory the duke referred to was the County of Ille-et-Vilaine, located southeast of the duchy. The house that ruled it had originally begun as vassals of the Dukes of Brittany, but for decades they had been at odds with the ducal house and were now effectively independent. In this war as well they had joined the rebels and become enemies of the royalist Dukes of Brittany.
Asty had merely officially recognized the independence of a count’s house that had fought on her side.
"Hmmmm."
From Asty’s perspective she had more than enough reason to snap that he should stop spouting nonsense, yet she saw no need to pick a fight with the Duke of Brittany. Instead, she knew perfectly well how to shut the nobles’ mouths.
"Apostasy is of course a grave crime, but as you know, our Order was unavoidably absent for a long time. I have no desire to hold every soul who inevitably wavered accountable."
The complete renunciation of every scrap of land the Order had once owned.
A golden apple that would drive every lord mad dropped with a soft thud.
"I intend to forgive them all. Ah—except for one person."
No one failed to understand her words.
Every knight in the Kingdom of France began advancing with the neck of Claude V, locked alone in his cell, as their target.