The Calm Before the Storm (1)
The First Prince and Bruno had returned.
"Hahaha! Lord Sternfelt! How've you been?"
"Nothing of note on my end, Your Highness. I trust your royal person is in good health?"
"In the finest health there is! Otherwise all that training of mine would've been for nothing! Hahaha!"
He tacked that last bit on himself—except that wasn't even what I'd been asking.
Why on earth was the supreme commander going on raids in person?
Did he have the faintest idea how deathly the Third Prince had looked the entire time he was gone?
The remark—half sarcasm, half genuine concern—sailed straight past the First Prince without leaving so much as a dent.
Ah, forget it. I give up. The Third Prince can deal with him.
"Bruno. Trip go all right?"
"Huh? Oh—yes. We had a fine trip, sir."
And what was wrong with this one? He looked like about twenty percent of his soul had packed up and left.
Whatever the cause, he had not come back in anything resembling a sound state of mind.
Battlefield PTSD? Was there even anything out there that would have done that to him?
He'd already seen the worst of war at my side and come through it just fine.
"Well then, I'll be off! Good work, Baron!"
"Take care, Your Highness."
The First Prince departed without the slightest regard for my confusion, and the answer to that confusion arrived almost at once.
"Commander."
"Hm?"
"From now on, when you send people to the princes, could you send someone else? Or if not that—at least when it's the First Prince…"
Ah. Not battlefield PTSD. Royal PTSD.
That bad, huh?
"Bruno."
"Yes?"
"Do your best out there."
The First Prince had really taken a shine to him. He could figure it out himself. Not my problem.
I gave Bruno's ongoing pleas the lightest of dismissals.
Coming to me over and over wasn't going to change a thing, and I'd told him as much.
The First Prince had simply become obsessed with mobile artillery, and the only unit that could deliver it was the Dragoon Unit. And so long as Bruno was the man commanding that Dragoon Unit, the outcome was not going to change.
He shouldn't have pulled that little stunt just because the stress was getting to him. He'd gone and taken a Saddle-type Altar Cannon along on the excuse that he wanted to ride, and if you traced the whole mess back to its source, he'd twisted his own fate with his own two hands.
Worn down at last, Bruno left the tent wearing the most pathetic look I had ever seen on him.
A full week of this already. Next time he came around with the same speech, I was going to have to lay down a Silent Field.
Hmm. Was I starting to accumulate a little stress of my own, listening to the same complaint on loop?
My body felt stiff and dull, so I stepped outside.
The tent flap snapped in the wind.
I've been living out of a field tent for quite a while now, haven't I?
The Royal Capital was right nearby, so daily life hadn't been all that inconvenient. Even so, a kind of fatigue you don't notice in ordinary times had a way of stacking up in the background. A proper refresh, when I had the chance, was probably the right call.
If not now, there won't be time. Early spring is almost here.
The princes' rescue, the investiture, the training, the reconnaissance operations—one major incident after another that I'd been tangled up in, directly or otherwise, had come and gone, and now the real outbreak of civil war was right on our doorstep.
Once that started, I wouldn't be able to rest even if I wanted to.
This quiet, almost peaceful stretch—this calm before the storm—felt like the last chance to recharge, and I was just about to head out and take it.
"Ah, Commander? Heading out on work?"
Hans.
"Not work. I just wanted a break, so I thought I'd go into the capital. Want to come along?"
His face did something peculiar—half astonishment, half delight. What was that look for?
"The Commander going to the capital not for work. I have to admit, my first thought was how strange that sounds."
"What, you don't want to come?"
"Not at all. Let's go."
He started to leave it there, then added something as if a thought had just occurred to him.
"While we're at it, what would you say to bringing the whole original group? We've all been so busy lately that there are people we haven't even properly seen."
Fair point. I hadn't laid eyes on Rebenstiel, Helmut, or Elena in ages. Part of that was how busy I'd been, and even when I had work for them, I usually just passed it through Hans.
"That's true enough. You've all had it rough playing middleman, too. It's on me today—round everyone up."
"Yes, sir! Give me about thirty minutes! I'll gather them all!"
He took off at a dead run. The unit had grown large enough by now that keeping that thirty-minute promise was going to mean a lot of sprinting.
Well. He must have been that happy about it.
There had been a smile all over his face as he ran.
"Cheers!"
Wooden mugs brimming with beer clunked together over the table. Fresh from a newly tapped keg, the foam spilled over with every knock.
We drank. It wasn't the ice-cold beer I kept picturing, of course. Where would you find that in the Middle Ages?
Then again, this wasn't just the Middle Ages—it was a medieval fantasy. Artifacts that amounted to refrigerators did exist. The problem was that they were ruinously expensive; nobody but the nobility so much as glanced at them.
So the sides were preservation food—salted meat and sausage—and the beer sat at something close to room temperature, lukewarm. Even so, it was enjoyable enough in its own way.
Heavy-bodied stuff. An ale, maybe?
Not that it mattered.
"I really thought I was going to die. Being next to the First Prince was harder than the fighting."
Bruno. The drink had gone in, and he had already slipped into full self-pity mode.
"Still, you made an impression at a personage's side, did you not? Look on the bright side, Lord Barenfeldt."
Rebenstiel said it mildly, then tipped his mug at a leisurely angle. Watching him, it honestly felt more like he was sipping wine or whiskey. The drink and the atmosphere around him simply didn't match.
Hans and Helmut, for reasons I could not begin to guess, were going at it like this was a drinking contest.
"Another round here!"
"Here as well!"
One of them would drain a mug, and the other would immediately match it. Were they perpetual-motion machines running on booze? And still not so much as a change in complexion between them, which was frankly unholy. The empty mugs stacked beside them already looked like they'd passed ten. Was that even possible?
Elena, by contrast, was taking a sip of beer, then a bite of sausage, then another sip, working her way through the food in tiny turns. Watching her called to mind some small, busy animal—a squirrel, maybe.
Or a hamster? I have this memory of a video of one cracking sunflower seeds. Same energy.
Looks aside, though, if you judged by combat sense alone, Elena was the best of the original five. Even back when she could only cast 2nd Circle magic, she'd already known how to throw in harassment fire at exactly the right moment. There hadn't been any direct fighting since she reached the 3rd Circle, so I couldn't say for certain—but I suspected she was still the one who fought the best.
Anyway. That wasn't the point.
"Everyone, hold up a second and listen."
"What is it, sir?"
Hans. And wow—not a single slurred syllable.
"The real civil war is right on our doorstep. The Magic Corps is going to get extremely busy. We're the biggest asymmetric force the other side doesn't have, and the more we do, the more the whole character of the battlefield is going to change."
I'd considered spelling it out at length, but a long version would have gotten tedious and pretentious, so I just laid it out straight.
"Are you all afraid of what's coming?"
"It would be a lie to say we aren't."
That was Rebenstiel.
"Even so, our numbers have grown considerably, and support is plentiful. I am not greatly concerned."
"Doesn't matter to me. I trust the Commander. You'll handle it the way you always have."
Helmut followed right after him. I wasn't that much of an all-purpose miracle worker, but having their trust was still something to be grateful for.
"I-I'm the same! Like Helmut—I mean, like Lord Bearhardt said."
"I haven't even memorized that yet, and you actually said it. Hahaha!"
Helmut started needling her at once.
"I believe we'll pull through as we always have. Our results so far are proof enough of that."
Hans said it, and then went right back to drinking.
Hans, the words were lovely, but could he maybe stop? My wallet was going to give out before his liver did.
"U-um. Will I still have to stay by the First Prince's side during the civil war?"
"I already told you I can't do anything about that. If it's that bad, train a replacement!"
Bruno. Wasn't it about time he gave up?
"Urgh—hhlk—"
Bruno had finally drunk himself into a complete wreck, too far gone to keep his own body upright. Was being sent to the First Prince's side really that unbearable? I couldn't even guess how much he must have hated it, to get this drunk—drunker than I'd seen him since the day I dragged him into all this.
"I'll take him back. Bruno's tent is right next to mine, as it happens."
"Appreciate it, Hans."
Hans, for his part, had not stopped until he had filled out a round thirty mugs. And even then he moved as if there were not a trace of drink in him. Had he secretly learned some detoxification magic behind my back, or was the man's liver an artifact?
Or maybe there's a dwarf somewhere in the family tree.
Helmut, who'd been matching him, had drunk far less and still ended up respectably soused, so the odds weren't exactly zero.
"Anyway—good work, all of you. Go back and rest through tomorrow."
"Will you be all right, sir?"
"Come on. What's going to happen before we deploy?"
Until we marched, all I really had to handle was the Magic Corps and the Weistenfell territorial troops. The former still had plenty of moving parts, but the bulk of the work was already done; it was mostly personnel management now. The latter was largely in Sir Grautal's hands.
Everyone headed back to their own tents. I returned to mine, started putting my clothes in order, and was just about to sleep when a voice came through the communication artifact.
"Lord Sternfelt? Can you hear me?"
What could he want at this hour?
"Yes, I can hear you. What is it, Your Highness?"
"Can you come to the royal palace at once? Word has come in that the Blue Magic Tower is joining the Second Prince's army."
…Come again?