He Knows a Good Thing When He Sees One... (3)
He lowered his voice, speaking almost in a whisper.
Curious as to what the man could possibly be about to say, Roy listened with genuine interest.
"The Isco lot looked ready to start a war at any moment, yet for some reason they've gone quiet and are dragging their feet. Our people figure they've got something brewing and are keeping a close watch."
"Is that so?"
"With so many nobles of tremendous magical power mixed in among the troops, the moment battle is joined you'd see hundreds — thousands — dead. So they mean to secure a clear advantage before they open hostilities. The world's been a mess lately, monsters running wild everywhere, so even if they do go to war they'd rather keep the damage to a minimum. All the better for us. Once these weapons reach the front, victory is as good as ours. Those idiots from Isco — they don't even realize they're buying us time. Heh heh."
"Wanting to start a war while the world's this unsettled does seem strange."
"I think so too. Completely out of their minds. Word is some of their territories have already been reduced to rubble by monster raids. Those people have always been thieves by nature — they mean to use this war to steal what we still have that's intact. They ought to worry about protecting what they already own."
"In that situation a surprise attack and a short, decisive war would make more sense, yet they're stalling. It's odd. There's still months left until the harvest."
"I don't know what those thieves are thinking either. If they were in their right minds, they wouldn't have picked a fight in the first place."
Roy nodded quietly.
Though there had been no major battles with the Isco Kingdom for decades, centuries of enmity still left plenty of people who regarded them as a thorn in the side.
At present the Steel Kingdom shared borders with two nations.
To the west lay the Isco Kingdom, with which they now stood on the brink of war.
To the north, the Eastern Alliance held the frontier.
The Eastern Alliance was a confederation of city-states and minor kingdoms gathered along the continent's eastern edge, joined together to defend themselves against foreign powers. They had chosen that path because no single force in their region — nothing like the Steelheart family — had ever risen to dominate the rest with overwhelming martial might. In Steel Kingdom terms, it was as if there were no king at all, only a scattering of count- and marquis-level houses, each ruling a small patch of land and calling itself sovereign.
The Steel Kingdom's eastern flank, meanwhile, was barred by a vast mountain range soaring thousands of meters high. Beyond those peaks, legend said, stretched a boundless sea — though people who claimed to have seen it themselves could be counted on one hand.
And to the south stood Margrave Biswald, holding a border beyond which the land rolled on without end, crawling with monsters.
That was the Steel Kingdom's present geography.
The Eastern Alliance to the north would never pick a fight first. The gap in national power was simply too great.
That left only the Isco Kingdom — and even along that frontier, mountains high and low tangled together so thoroughly that the actual gates of invasion worth worrying about were neither wide nor numerous.
From Isco's point of view, the ranges make striking at our rear nearly impossible, so it comes down to a pure contest of strength. And in that case, the side with plenty of enchanted weapons is bound to win.
Over the past four years Roy had enchanted roughly two thousand weapons. The great majority had passed into the hands of mercenaries and people of the neighboring territories. Even if most of those had somehow flowed into the Isco Kingdom, a year of use would have brought them to the edge of their performance. At present the enchanted weapons still in Isco hands could be counted on one's fingers.
To lose under these conditions? The commander would have to be worse than incompetent — a raving lunatic. Or bought by the enemy.
Roy did not take especially seriously the fact that his weapons would be used to kill men rather than monsters. With or without them, people would still fight and die by magic and ordinary steel. If that was how it was going to be, he might as well make a fortune in the middle of it — and hope the side closer to him, the side that served his interests, came out on top.
"Well then, I'll be back another time."
"Yes. And regardless of the regular deliveries, if those materials I asked you for separately turn up in the markets, send them along at once."
"Of course."
A short while later, Roy watched the Amin Company's carriages recede into the distance and considered his position.
He had secured the military as a stable client, and he had opened relations with a trustworthy merchant group in the Amin Company. The business of visiting the royal palace had resolved a great many things he needed to start operating in the capital. Now all that remained was to rake in the money.
All right. The assistants have settled into their places. Time to start researching that, then?
Roy's research goal for this next phase was already decided.
The six magic circles he had seen beneath the palace. If he could make proper use of them, it might become possible to produce Dragon's Breath from other mana veins as well.
If that works, I won't have to go around bowing and scraping to other lords.
Of course it was still only a hypothesis, and there was no chance he could simply decipher an ancient magic circle and its incantation after seeing them once and hearing them once. But between that and the Elven Liquor, he now had another clue. Whatever the result, he judged it thoroughly worth the research.
Giyan had recently suffered a deeply unpleasant experience.
"What? Claymore elected Padec as branch leader instead of me?"
He had held the post of deputy branch leader of the Sword Mercenary Group's central Steel Kingdom outpost for nearly ten years. The previous branch leader had been so famous as an outstanding mercenary that Giyan had never quite managed to seize a chance at promotion. Then the man finally reached retirement age and stepped down. Giyan had thought his turn had at last arrived.
And now — Padec?
Who the hell was that?
"W-well, sir, the man who introduced Geren's weapons to the mercenary group — the one everyone's talking about — is said to be that same fellow. He was the branch leader over in Greenhilt territory..."
"I've heard of him. Until not long ago he was the one they were talking about dissolving for lack of men, wasn't he? I figured he was filthy lucky. And now he has the gall to eye my seat?"
"What can we do when the homeland itself made the choice? You'll have to endure it, Lord Giyan..."
"Hahk — ptui. Damn it all. Nothing ever goes right in this life of mine."
Giyan could not simply sit still. If only for the sake of his pride, he would have to find an opening and take some kind of action. The previous branch leader had at least been strong. This newcomer Padec's mana capacity fell far short of Giyan's own, and that was something he simply could not abide. He refused to spend the rest of his life as second-in-command, cleaning up after other men.
A coup?
If he had the mercenaries' support, it would not be entirely impossible. The problem was the time it would take to get the homeland's approval. For that, he needed the absolute backing of the mercenaries under the branch.
"I need a pretext of some kind... The mercenaries in our branch talk as if they'll support me right now, but the moment it comes to a real choice, most of them will say they have to follow the homeland's orders. Isn't that right?"
"Most of them, yes. Bottom-rung mana and they still go on about respecting the Mercenary King. They swing their lower halves around freely enough in the brothels, then turn around and prattle on about the Mercenary King this, Mercenary King that. It's downright ridiculous."
Having been second-in-command for so long, Giyan did have a few subordinates who followed him like an older brother — fellow mercenaries who had served with him in the same branch.
"We'll watch for now. See how this Padec handles himself. If we can catch him skimming the money meant for us into his own pocket, we might have something to work with."
"Understood."
Giyan was confident. His mana capacity alone far surpassed the other man's. And this Padec fellow had not brought a single one of his own people from that rural backwater branch. The fight, Giyan reckoned, was only a matter of time.
But the more he learned of the man, the more formidable Padec proved to be. Combat ability aside, as a commander his mind was razor-sharp. He processed work at remarkable speed, and every gift that arrived from every direction he distributed among the mercenaries without keeping a single piece for himself, winning their goodwill.
"Damn it all!"
At this rate Giyan's entire plan would go up in smoke.
Then one day, someone came calling at the mercenary branch.
Upon investigation the visitor went by the name of Marek — a servant under Baron Greenhilt. Why would the servant of some backwater lord come all the way to the capital? Giyan found the whole business deeply suspicious and immediately set his men to digging into the man's background.
"Apparently he came here accompanying the lord's third son, who's entering the Knight Academy."
"Is that so? Tch. I thought there might be something special about him. Still, keep a close eye on whether he's taking anything under the table. Greenhilt territory's been doing well lately, from what I hear — there ought to be plenty of scraps falling off the table."
"Yes, Big Brother."
He thought that was the end of it.
Not long after, however, another visitor arrived. This time it was the lord's third son himself — the one who had supposedly entered the Knight Academy — paying a personal call on the branch.
Giyan had a feeling something important was about to pass between them. He decided to eavesdrop.
That fool won't even know this exists.
Pry up one of the wooden wall panels in the adjoining room, and the conversation in the branch leader's office carried as clearly as if you were standing right beside them. Over ten years as deputy branch leader, Giyan had used the method many times to overhear matters of importance.
Holding his breath, he listened in on Roy and Padec.
"......!?"
What? That boy is Geren's disciple? And he's received every last one of the techniques?
Giyan's eyes nearly started from his head. As deputy branch leader, he already knew the contents of the letter that had arrived from the Isco Kingdom branch.
Secure Geren and bring him in — ten thousand gold coins.
Of course the bounty assumed Geren's cooperation in crafting enchanted weapons.
Why hunt for Geren when no one even knows where he is? Just seize that boy right now and be done with it.
Giyan's heart hammered violently in his chest.
Padec, however, was thinking differently.
Ally with him? With a child like that?
Even if they joined hands, the enchanted weapons would still have to be purchased for money. But if they captured the boy and shipped him off to the Isco Kingdom? They would collect the gold — and if they played their words right, the enchanted weapons would come free as well.
Greed flooded every corner of Giyan's mind.
I'd better send a letter to the Isco Kingdom branch at once.