Viscount Hadion's Declaration of War
Viscount Hadion's declaration of war.
Father's response to it was, by my reckoning, rather extreme.
Is he really allowed to just kill a messenger like that?
It's not a good look, no. But swallowing an insult like that would have been just as ridiculous. The lord's authority would have hit rock bottom, and the name of Falaon would have been dragged through the mud.
In other words, they'd crossed a line.
But didn't that put any messengers we sent in danger?
I fretted over the thought, but Father must have shared the concern — he sent knights along with them. Touching a knight, apparently, was the kind of thing you couldn't take back.
According to the knights who'd gone as messengers, Viscount Hadion had been furious.
"His face went beet-red and he was huffing like a bellows — quite the spectacle!"
"He tried to keep up appearances in front of us, which only made him look more ridiculous."
They'd nearly died holding in their laughter right in front of him.
And even after that day, messengers continued to go back and forth between Falaon and Hadion — procedures for settling the exact date and the rules of the territory war.
A few days passed like that.
Then Father summoned me.
"The exact date and rules of the territory war have been decided."
The date: two weeks from now.
"The format will be a limited war."
"A limited war?"
What was that?
I glanced at my Ancestor, who merely shrugged.
We didn't have anything like that in my day. Just an unspoken understanding of 'let's not cross such-and-such a line,' more or less.
So it was a rule that had come about sometime after the Ancestor's era.
It was Sir Valt who answered my unspoken question.
"If both sides clash at full strength, the casualties on either end become catastrophic, so the powers are restricted. Generally, Bloodline Knights and domain mages are excluded from the field."
Fair enough. In a world where every superhuman was treated like a strategic weapon, limits like these made sense.
But hang on.
"Doesn't a limited war put us at a disadvantage? Father, didn't you distinguish yourself in some fairly large wars?"
"It's not entirely to our advantage either. They have mages on their side. Even if we won, the damage would be unmanageable."
"Hmm."
I supposed so.
At any rate, we'd made our own preparations. The standing troops had intensified their drills, and the knights had been hard at work training the conscripts they'd gathered.
But at the daily war councils, the knights' forecasts were grim.
"Hadion has a larger population, so a numerical disadvantage seems unavoidable."
"Perhaps we should raise more conscripts."
"The village under my management still has capacity to spare."
Even the manor knights who administered the villages were pleading with Father to expand the ranks.
Father shook his head firmly.
"Farming season is nearly upon us. If too many men die, even a victory leaves us with no future. This number is sufficient. And we have Sir Valt — and my son Khtun."
"Mm, if it's Sir Valt, then… yes."
"Come to think of it, I watched young master Khtun train earlier — his skill is truly outstanding. He'll easily be worth ten soldiers."
"Ah! So I wasn't the only one who thought so! Young master Khtun is truly…"
An unexpected round of praise broke out, and Father couldn't hide the pleased smile tugging at his mouth.
Understandable, really.
Ever heard of a genius stolen by the necromantic arts?
No such thing.
Oh, there is. He's right here.
Anyway, our forces stacked up as follows:
Knights: 12 (including Sir Valt)
Standing troops: 132
Conscripts: 300
Add the knights and the total came to 444, give or take.
People tossed around talk of million-strong armies and ten-million-strong armies so casually that it sounded small — but it was nothing of the sort. Think about it. Four hundred men was roughly the size of an entire grade level at my old school, and that many grown men would be fighting with spears and swords.
Of course, a certain someone was thoroughly unimpressed.
Is this truly the full might of House Falaon? At this rate, even the title of nobility is an embarrassment.
Even this, I hear, was rebuilt in Father's generation.
Truly… I am at a loss for words.
That bad?
At least propose hiring mercenaries.
We're out of money, he says.
Ugh…
Money was one problem, but more than that, time was short. The southern reaches of the Heorn Kingdom, where Falaon sat, were surprisingly peaceful — which made mercenaries hard to come by.
Still, Father seemed to share the sense that our numbers were lacking. Before his vassals he spoke with confidence, but whenever I caught him alone, lost in thought, the worry he couldn't quite hide was plain to see.
I was unsettled myself.
So this is a real war.
Of course it's real. What else would it be?
…
One day, as the territory war drew steadily closer, I had no choice but to admit it.
I was trembling with fear.
A territory war.
A war fought between domains.
War, at its core, is the act of people killing people. The justifications are many and tangled, hard to weigh with any clean moral scale — but few would deny that war itself is a terrible thing.
And now I was going to fight in one.
Sword and shield in hand.
The moment that fact truly hit me, my stomach turned.
What is it? Why the sudden change?
Just a moment.
I set down my shield and took a few breaths. My head was a mess. How to put it — my state of mind, and the feelings that came with it, flipped three or four times a second, leaving my thoughts in chaos.
I don't know how long I stayed like that, breathing with my hands on my knees. Then my Ancestor's feet entered my downward field of view.
Are you all right?
Well…
If your body is unwell, you must say so. Pushing through recklessly can leave you worse off than not training at all.
I hesitated a moment, then answered.
My body's fine.
Your body's fine… To my ears, that sounds like everything else is not.
As expected of my Ancestor. Sharp as ever.
For a moment, the urge to spill everything rose up in me — that I was afraid of the war, that I wanted to run away right then and there. Whether I was thirty-three-year-old Kim Kangmin or fifteen-year-old Khtun, the fear of war was the same.
But how was I supposed to confess such cowardly thoughts to my valiant Ancestor? Not just to him — I couldn't tell Father either.
Because a Falaon had to be brave.
So I forced the words that had climbed all the way to my throat back down, swallowing them hard — and my Ancestor sat down on the ground and looked at me.
Sit.
"Yes."
The training yard happened to be empty, so I answered out loud. My Ancestor studied me for a long moment, then spoke.
Your voice is shaking.
"…"
Your eyes are shaking too. Trembling eyes are proof of a trembling heart. Are you afraid?
"Of what?"
The war.
"…"
I didn't answer. I just offered an awkward smile. But the way his expression grew serious told me that alone had been answer enough.
A thin silence settled over us. The only sound was Golgol swinging a sword at the far end of the yard.
It wasn't long before my Ancestor spoke again.
Fear is not a shameful emotion.
"Pardon?"
I said there is no need to be ashamed of fear.
What was this? The encouragement was so unexpected that I was briefly speechless. But my Ancestor paid that no mind, speaking on in a calm, solid voice.
Everyone is afraid at times. And sometimes there are moments when that fear cannot be overcome. I was the same. When I stepped forward to face the Radiant Dragon, my heart pounded. And that was hardly the only time.
The first time he'd taken up a sword and gone out into the world, only to face bandits. When he'd been locked into a duel he couldn't walk away from against a renowned knight. And countless other moments when fear had suddenly surged up in him. And once, though he'd been quite young, he had — just as he said — drowned in fear and been defeated.
But I did not break. Or rather — I learned how to rise again even after breaking.
What was that method?
I waited in silence, and my Ancestor continued.
Acknowledge the fear. Don't deny it. Then figure out what it is that frightens you. Are you afraid of defeat? No — very few people fear defeat itself. Most fear the situations that will follow from defeat. The human heart is complex enough that even its owner cannot fully know it.
So identify it, he was saying. Identify what I was truly afraid of.
But no matter how hard I thought, what I feared was the war itself. Or more precisely — the possibility of harming someone, and the possibility of being hurt myself.
I told him this calmly, and my Ancestor listened without a word. When I finished, he spoke.
You're a coward.
"Mm."
An undeniable fact.
And yet — why? The corners of my Ancestor's mouth curved up into a gentle arc.
Facing something that doesn't frighten you is not courage. Being full of fear means, put another way, that you have the potential to become braver than anyone.
He said this looking up at the sky. At the same time, a wind from somewhere ruffled my hair.
Why was it? I hadn't been given any real solution, and the fear hadn't vanished — and yet my heart felt lighter.
My Ancestor spoke again.
If it becomes too hard, create a valiant version of yourself inside your heart. In every moment of fear, let that valiant you protect you.
A valiant version of myself…
I turned the words over slowly, then rose to my feet and picked up my shield.
"A warrior of Valhalla knows no fear."
…? What is that?
"There's a thing. Golgol—!"
Golgol?!
I called Golgol back and resumed training.
"Valhallaaaaa—!"
A roaring battle cry to blow the fear away!
Descendant, I did not tell you to lose your mind. Hello? Why aren't you answering. Descendant?
Ancestor, I am merely following your advice.
…At any rate, time passed, and the long-awaited day of the territory war arrived.
"All forces, halt!"
At Father's command — magnificent on horseback at the head of the column — the soldiers stopped. Well, aside from the standing troops, most of them looked more like a ragtag mob than anything you'd call "soldiers," but still.
"Has Viscount Hadion not arrived yet?"
"No, my lord. It would seem not."
"Hmm."
Father left it at that and stared ahead. Meanwhile, I checked on Golgol, who was draped in a robe.
Are you truly all right?
Yes, I told you I'm fine. I'm not afraid at all anymore.
I was asking about your sanity.
Hmm. Still fretting, was he?
Fortunately, my mind was perfectly sound. And as I'd just said, I wasn't afraid either. A warrior of Valhalla knows no such thing as fear.
We waited a while longer.
"There — they're coming."
"Mm."
In the distance, a column of figures emerged through the fog. The one in the splendid armor was probably Viscount Hadion.
The moment Father saw the forces trailing behind him, the corner of his eye gave a fine tremor.
Mine did too.
Well. That's not good.
Hadion had brought twenty knights. But the real problem was the number of soldiers following them.
Roughly… six hundred? Seven hundred?
Either way, clearly more than us.
"Baron Falaon—!"
Viscount Hadion called out to Father, and Father answered.
"Speak—!"
"Has your mind not changed!"
"Go ask your father!"
"Why drag my father into this all of a sudden?! In any case, it seems your mind is unchanged! Fine! Then further talk is pointless!"
Hadion said this and promptly fell back.
What came next was immediate.
Bwoo, bwoooo—!
He'd even brought a horn trumpet for the occasion?
The moment the horn sounded from their side, a simultaneous rush of air-splitting whistles filled the sky.
Fwit, fwit-fwit-fwit—!
Arrows… yes. Arrows.
They dared to open with a coward's volley of arrows?
Rage boiled up from deep in my chest.