Chapter 38: Honorary Count Deon Hart (3)
Chapter 38: Honorary Count Deon Hart (3)
Honorary Count Deon Hart left the banquet hall, and before long, the banquet reached its final stage.
Stave Illustar and Cruel Hart, slipping out among the nobles who were exiting one by one, were quietly strolling through an open garden of the Imperial Palace nearby.
With Duke Stave walking ahead and Cruel following behind, they moved like that for quite some time. Then, at some point, Stave, who had been silently advancing to an isolated spot, stopped in his tracks.
He turned to face Cruel Hart.
Gazing into his unfathomable, hard green eyes, Stave likewise wore an inscrutable smile.
"I asked you the reason, didn't I."
"......."
"──It was, 'to protect,' was it."
The only two survivors of a ruined family.
Excluding Deon Hart, who by all appearances seemed to be the culprit, Cruel Hart was practically the sole survivor.
Impudently, the answer had been short.
Just 'to protect.'
[What?]
The subject and object were both missing, a terribly short phrase, but Stave did not press further.
A person who has something to protect becomes more loyal than anyone. He wasn't so foolish as to kick away a loyal dog that had rolled in of its own accord.
He could roughly guess what the missing object was, and even if he couldn't, he'd find out sooner or later—there was no need to pry and risk making him recoil.
And today, the moment he saw Deon Hart's eyes brimming with malice that went beyond hostility to pure killing intent, he confirmed what filled that 'object.'
[Me.]
[To protect me.]
His instinct screamed that it wasn't just that, that there had to be something more, but reason crushed it down.
"From Deon Hart, to protect Cruel Hart... was it to protect yourself?"
"......."
Only silence came back.
As if that alone was enough, Duke Stave chuckled softly. Cruel stared at him vaguely, then pressed his eyes shut gently as if chasing away fatigue.
Faintly, the Duke's gentle voice reached him.
"It's not my place to speak, knowing nothing of another's circumstances, but... you're being foolish."
If his goal was purely survival, there would have been countless other ways.
'Still, from this side's standpoint, it was a welcome choice.'
Stave smiled.
He was a duke and the head of the Noble Faction. He had the power to smooth over most things, and he likewise had ample reason to eliminate Deon Hart, the 'Emperor's dog.'
No, rather. 'Emperor's dog' was merely an additional reason. Even without that reason─
'Deon Hart... is someone who must be killed.'
For he was a cancerous existence on this land.
He touched near his heart and smiled faintly.
"......."
Cruel didn't bother to answer.
Because before he knew it, the scene from that time was rising again over his blackening retina.
The unguarded entrance of the mansion. The corridor drenched in blood. And inside the room, pulling the dagger from their father's heart and turning to look this way─
[Brother.]
......Deon.
My younger brother.
Cruel, who had glanced at the relatively intact corpses of his mother and father compared to the others torn to shreds, lifted his gaze again.
The blood that had stained his hair red trickled down his forehead, collected briefly at the corner of his eye, and then streamed down his cheek.
Unlike what dripped down like tears, Deon was smiling.
Blood dripped from the daggers in both hands.
[......You.]
The moment Cruel, watching that, tried to say something, Deon threw the dagger he was holding.
* * *
As soon as I got out of the Imperial Palace, I refused Lady Rien's offer to keep supporting me to the end and stubbornly returned to the mansion on my own two feet. Then I momentarily forgot all dignity and rubbed my eyes.
A horde of men who had no business being at my house were swarming about, so my eyes had to be playing tricks on me, right?
On top of that, they weren't even in ordinary clothes—they were decked out in pristine white knight uniforms.
Setting aside the fact that those uniforms looked familiar.
'Why is the front yard of my house, which was perfectly fine when I left, blazing on fire?'
Was it a hallucination after all? It had to be. It seemed I'd been under way too much stress lately. Or I'd gotten old.
"......There's no way. Fuck, what is this!!"
The heat I felt on my skin couldn't possibly be a hallucination.
At my shout, the bastards who had been huddled in one corner of the burning yard surrounding something turned to look this way.
And seeing their faces brighten endlessly, completely failing to grasp the situation, I nearly grabbed the back of my neck.
"Captain!"
Yeah, you damn bastards.
"Captaaaaain! Gurk!"
"It's not 'Captain,' it's 'Lord Count'!"
"Lord Count!"
"Looord Cooount!!"
Ha.
A headache rose, and I pressed my temple, scanning their faces with eyes full of exhaustion.
Why were Mad Dog pups at my house? Since when had my mansion become a dog kennel?
The Lofty Knight Order. No, the Murderer Knight Order.
All its members were brazenly occupying my yard as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The gatekeepers watched them while sweating bullets.
'What the hell were they doing instead of stopping them...?'
At this rate, what was the point of having gatekeepers?
This absurd situation almost seemed like a dream, but to call it that, the events of today were far too real, and the heat of the fire and Lady Rien's presence standing a step behind me were too vivid.
On top of that, she was even shouting at those rampaging men.
"All ranks, fall in!"
"!"
Oh, look at them forming lines in an instant.
Lady Rien had them completely under her thumb, to the point that the dishonorable label of "parachute" seemed pitiful.
With her neatly bound hair flying, she shouted sharply.
Ah, not just shouted. I distinctly said her hair flew.
[Thwack!]
"What do you think you're doing?!"
"Gurk, C-Commander...."
"It's not 'Commander,' it's 'Lady Commander'! And when you see your lord, you should be saluting—what kind of deranged mind cries out as if looking for a runaway wife?! And why is the Count's yard on fire?!"
Thwack, smack.
Under her merciless hands, the unit members panicked and belatedly offered their greetings to me.
I called out to Lady Rien in a voice mixed with a sigh.
"Lady Rien."
"Yes, my lord."
"Keep hitting them."
"Understood."
"Pardon? N-No, hold on! Lord Count! Just let us explain!! Gurk!"
What 'explain.'
If it were up to me, I'd go hit them myself. But I held back because my wrist would probably give out first.
Anyway, what was going on?
I stared blankly at the guys who, under Lady Rien's merciless treatment, were starting to roll on the ground one by one.
Not that it was particularly satisfying. I was just curious about what exactly they'd been surrounding.
I couldn't approach because of the heat, but as I strained my eyes, something that had remained hidden while they huddled together revealed itself between them.
Meaning, clothes with a white bird drawn on a blue background....
'Revolutionary Army?'
What, why was the Revolutionary Army in my front yard? Had those Mad Dogs subdued them?
Come to think of it, those guys had been trying to explain something earlier, right?
"Lady Rien, hold on."
"Yes."
I stopped her, intending to hear the whole story.
Lady Rien, knight that she was, halted her actions immediately, but because these damn bastards kept putting on a pathetic sniveling act, I had to let her hit them a few more times before I could finally hear the full account.
"This guy threw a bomb into my front yard?"
"Yes! We happened to see it and caught him right away!"
"Well... I get that much. But...."
Their defiant gazes poured at me as though they had nothing to hide.
I met each of those eyes one by one and voiced my doubts without reservation.
"Why were you all here at just that moment?"
"Uh...."
"Why did the Revolutionary Army attack my mansion while I was gone? My mansion doesn't have anything that would draw them."
"Well...."
Their confident gazes from moments before had disappeared, and every single one of them turned their heads away feigning innocence.
The unlucky one who met my eyes head-on was sweating cold droplets and rolling his eyes all over the place.
"I can hear the gears in your head turning."
"!"
Thanks to that, I could roughly deduce the cause.
It might be unfortunate for these guys, but I wasn't that slow.
"You were already staying here before the Revolutionary Army arrived, weren't you?"
"......!"
"H-How did you...!"
As expected.
It wasn't that they came because of the Revolutionary Army; the Revolutionary Army came because of them.
The Revolutionary Army wanted to inflict losses on the Emperor, and to do that, a method that dealt damage to me would probably be the most effective.
To harm me, it would've been best to target my knight order, my greatest military asset, and since the location happened to be my mansion, they'd have had no reason to hesitate.
I fixed a cold stare on the culprits of this incident.
I wanted to smack the backs of their heads right then and demand to know why they'd come, but...
"...First, let's clean up the mess."
And put out that fire.
Even though I'd deliberately kept my distance, my eyes stung a little.
Absentmindedly, I raised a hand to rub my eyes, but I felt something foreign in my hand that should have been empty. And simultaneously, a desperate shout rang out.
"Lord Count!!"
"......?"
Lady Rien only screamed like that when something serious was happening.
Guided by instinct, I stopped dead in my tracks.
It was right then that I realized something that hadn't been there a moment ago was now in my hand.
"......What the hell, this?"
The familiar shape was terribly ominous. Where had I seen this before?
...Right, I remembered.
I threw it away almost immediately, desperately, as if my sole goal was to rid my hand of this horrific object.
What I thought I had thrown upward flew behind me, fell to the ground, rolled away with a clatter, and stopped after bumping into someone's foot.
[Boom!]
"C— I mean, Lord Count!!"
"Are you all right?!"
Lady Rien and the unit members rushed over in a swarm to check on me.
Regardless, I stared blankly at the place where the explosion had occurred.
'I almost died.'
For a bomb to fly right into my hand... I survived because I caught it by chance, but honestly, I wasn't happy about it.
Perhaps interpreting the meaning of my gaze, Lady Rien walked over and prodded the charred corpse with her scabbard, saying,
"There's no need to feel guilty. This fellow is Revolutionary Army."
And the way she looked at me... her eyes alone seemed to be shouting, 'You're so warm-hearted!'
That's not it.
"I never imagined he had a colleague. It seems that while one threw the bomb to cause chaos, the other planned to grab the captured comrade and escape... but as you can see, the result."
I followed the direction of Lady Rien's gaze with my eyes.
And at the end of it, I could see the old butler unceremoniously tackling and subduing a Revolutionary Army soldier who was attempting to flee with his comrade on his back.
......Wait, Rememver?!
'Is it okay for an old man to do that?!'
"At any rate, I was impressed."
"......Pardon?"
"I was certain that a disaster had befallen you, my lord. But to think you caught the bomb..."
"Ah... that was...."
"Truly, you are amazing."
That was a coincidence.
Her sparkling eyes were utterly burdensome.
Unable to meet her gaze head-on, I ended up leaving as if fleeing, tossing out only a few orders to vaguely sort out the situation.
"I shall escort you."
"......."
Though, of course, she even made that difficult for me.
It seemed I'd have to look for stomach medicine as soon as I went up to my room.
Damn it.
* * *
"Damn, even if I died, I should've killed the Emperor's dog before dying..."
A voice full of regret flowed from the mouth of the completely subdued Revolutionary Army soldier.
There were a few major obstacles on the path to toppling the Emperor. Narrowing it down to the most prominent ones, there would be about three.
Nemeseus, the former commander-in-chief during the Eight-Year War and now the Emperor's own guard dog.
Chancellor Ardal, who stabilized public support for the Emperor through excellent policies and financial management both during and after the war.
And Honorary Count Deon Hart, the former vanguard commander during the Eight-Year War and now the Emperor's dog who unquestioningly accepted any order from him.
The most troublesome among them was Deon Hart.
The other two operated mainly in the open, so their actions were restricted and somewhat predictable and easy to monitor, but Deon Hart's stage was the shadows.
In other words, it was difficult to predict where he'd jump and hard to keep an eye on him.
The very fact that they couldn't even figure out where he'd gone or what he'd done this time proved that.
'There's no way he simply went out to subjugate monsters....'
It would be troublesome if they kept losing track of his movements like this.
That was why the Revolutionary Army was frantic to eliminate Deon Hart, that dangerous variable, first.
The Murderer Knight Order members, who had hesitated briefly at the voice carrying not a single ounce of regret despite the disappointment, surveyed their surroundings.
The Count and the Knight Commander had entered the mansion, and the butler was leading people to put out the fire in the yard.
In other words, there was no one around to overhear this conversation, and no one to stop their actions.
"Who's calling him the Emperor's dog?"
Immediately, the wild dogs bared their teeth.