Margrave Visvalt (2)
Unlike the other lords attending this council, House Greenhilt was not a vassal family of Margrave Visvalt.
Their territory had been ruled by their bloodline for centuries. An ancestor had distinguished himself in war, and the king had rewarded him with a title and the surrounding lands — and so the present Greenhilt domain had been born.
It was not a fief carved out and granted by the margrave to one of his retainers. It belonged to the baronial house alone.
That was why the baron stood on different ground from the other lords summoned to the council. In his own right, he commanded an independent power.
Even so, the gulf between a margrave and a baron did not simply vanish. The margrave had been entrusted with vast authority to hold back the monsters pressing up from the south. Cross him, and a house might disappear overnight. There was no matching him by force of arms.
Watching how events were unfolding, the baron had a fair idea of what Margrave Visvalt wanted.
He meant to break him in.
At this rate, I may not even make it back in time to see Jerry off.
It was while the baron fretted over bidding his second son farewell that the margrave suddenly called for him.
A private audience — something he had requested time and again, only to be refused — had at last been granted.
With the feeling of walking into a tiger’s den, the baron swallowed his nerves and presented himself before Margrave Visvalt.
"It has been a long time."
"It has been a long time, my lord."
"Our lands sit side by side, and yet we so rarely see each other’s faces. Wouldn’t you say?"
"A lord’s duties are much the same wherever one sits, I imagine."
The margrave’s remark amounted to a summons — come when I call. The baron answered with a polite excuse: as you well know, I have been busy.
Margrave Visvalt, well past fifty, smoothed his curled gray beard and regarded the baron with cool appraisal. The baron disliked the look in those eyes. Standing before an old man who dared play at being a king set his teeth on edge.
Then, without warning, the margrave held out a single sheet of paper.
"This came from your territory by carrier pigeon. It would seem something unfortunate has occurred."
The baron snatched the paper and read it carefully, line by line. From the first sentence his hands began to tremble; by the end, rage and dread had all but driven the sense from him.
"You have my condolences."
"……"
"Do you mean to return?"
The baron could not open his mouth. He wanted nothing more than to ride home at once and tear limb from limb the wretches who had attacked his manor. He would find his missing son by any means necessary.
"Your circumstances are regrettable, but there is a reason I insisted you attend this council. I cannot speak of it in detail before the meeting itself, yet a great southern campaign is soon to begin. Should you be absent from that table, the other lords will not be quiet about it."
The margrave watched the baron’s face as he spoke, never once letting his own feelings show.
"I am sorry to say it, but the affair in your household is already finished. By the time you could reach home, the culprits would be long gone. And if the people you employ are not fools, they will already have set out to find your son. This campaign, by contrast, concerns the future of the kingdom. Are you content to be absent from it? I will, of course, respect your opinion."
It was a threat in all but name. Fail to attend this council, and you will suffer for it — and he had sprung the trap at the very moment the baron received the sudden, terrible news.
Then he drove the point home.
"I am told your wife is receiving treatment and recovering. I wish her a swift recovery. But do you know, among my own children, some who joined the suppression forces returned maimed, and one poor child even lost his life. I, too, hope you find the boy who has vanished — but that is the will of the gods. Nothing will change simply because you rush home. As you yourself said, such is the place of a lord. There are times when this seat demands the coldness of a viper."
The margrave had already known that the baron, after reading the letter, would want to leave at once. All this talk was not truly meant to stop him from going. It was meant to make him kneel before he went — to beg for forbearance. In short, to submit. Or else face open disadvantage hereafter. The declaration could not have been clearer.
"What will you do?"
"I will return."
"Is that all?"
The baron hesitated. In his mind he was already home at the manor. But his pride stood rooted to the floor and would not move. Leave like this, and the council itself became the problem. A campaign of this scale would mean the mustering of troops and the heavy requisition of supplies from every territory. Suffer for it, and the whole domain might stagger. And most of the lords at that table were of one mind with the margrave standing before him.
"How would this strike you?"
Sensing the baron’s inner struggle, the margrave extended his own hand first. A cunning old serpent if ever there was one — a man who knew perfectly well that what he needed was not merely the breaking of a baron’s pride, but the far greater prize that would follow.
"Once this council is over, I will send a man to your territory to explain everything. And during the proceedings themselves, I will soothe the other lords so that you suffer no disadvantage."
The baron understood the margrave’s intent. Nothing so generous would come free. The essential thing was to grasp exactly what was being demanded of him.
For a time, neither man spoke. Then, once again, it was the margrave who broke the silence.
"If you fail to find the child you have lost this time, you will have only two sons left, will you not?"
"……"
"From generation to generation, in our kingdom and even in the empire that fell a thousand years ago, one duty has always clung to the nobility. To face the ever-surging hordes of monsters, we require people capable of standing against them."
On this point, the baron could not begin to guess what the margrave was driving at.
"Surely you do not mean that a new hero has appeared on the continent?"
"I am not speaking of heroes. Those are strokes of luck. I mean beings of great magical power, such as we nobles are. As you know, that power is a matter of bloodline. In other words, only if we nobles leave many descendants will peace return to the continent."
Only then did the baron understand what the margrave was demanding.
"Among the lords of my acquaintance, you alone have but a single wife."
Baron Cliv Greenhilt, despite every urging from those around him, had never taken a second wife. He loved Ana, the woman he had known since their days together at the kingdom’s Knight Academy, too deeply for that. Their marriage was a happy one; even now, with their firstborn, Eric, nearly of age for his coming-of-age ceremony, their affection had not cooled. His nature in this regard was common knowledge, and with four children already, even the well-meaning suggestions had long since died away.
"I know full well that you have firmly refused this course. But after what has happened, you will have to change your thinking. There is no law that says misfortune will spare your other children. A man like myself, with more than ten, has no need of such worries. And as for succession — if you, as their father, keep a firm hand on the center, it need not become a serious problem."
To raise the matter of succession here was as good as declaring the head of the house incompetent.
"Even among a hundred goblins, one of uncommon strength is born, and that one becomes the chief. Having many children is not so bad a thing."
There was no answer he could give. Every path of retreat had been closed. Agree, and he was promising to take a second wife. Refuse, and he was insulting a margrave with more than ten children of his own. All he could do was keep his mouth shut.
"I will not keep a man who is so eager to return any longer. As I said, when I send someone to convey the substance of this council, I will send one of my daughters with him. Speak with her, and around the time of the coming-of-age ceremony upon your return, we shall set a date."
House Greenhilt held a broad territory, yet its rank was only that of a barony. And into such a house, as a second wife, the margrave proposed to send his own daughter. That fact alone would set the nobility buzzing; refuse it, and he would be branded the greatest fool alive and mocked without mercy. Which of the margrave’s daughters it was made no difference. Unless she were adopted, she would carry the same bloodline gift of mana as the margrave himself.
But…
If he accepted, the margrave’s true aim was plain. A child born of a second wife — a child in whom the blood of Greenhilt and Visvalt was mixed — would almost certainly inherit a finer gift of magical power.
He means to use that as a lever to overturn the succession of House Greenhilt.
In the end, the baron gave no firm answer — yet neither could he refuse — and returned to his territory in that uneasy state. And whether he willed it or not, within a month the margrave’s daughter would almost certainly visit the baronial manor.
First the disgraceful incident that had struck in his absence, and now the matter of a second wife. All the way home, the baron’s thoughts grew heavier still.