Two Birds, One Reckless Stone
"What a piece of work he is. Any carelessness and we'll drown in it."
It was the first thing Kendrick said once they had gotten a good distance from the meeting room. On the veteran knight's face sat pure, unfiltered admiration.
"You're marveling at him? Now?"
"Why not? The boy's always been impossible to read, but it's been a while since I saw him act his age. Didn't look half bad."
"Getting outmaneuvered by a brat's insolence and letting him talk us into a decision this momentous—that's hardly ordinary behavior either, if you ask me."
"You didn't put up much of a fight yourself, mind."
"......"
Diana did not deny that either. Kendrick glanced sidelong at her silence and let out a short chuckle.
"In the end, it all comes down to saving people. There's no refusing that, no matter how it's dressed up. That matters more than any grand cause."
Had they failed to grasp what the boy was really after, it might have been another matter. But once understood, there was no righteous path that led anywhere but agreement.
The Crown Prince would surely feel the same. Even if the High Priest found it distasteful, conscripting a civilian who still had a chance at redemption into the ranks of rebels was something no one would relish, whatever anyone said.
"He doesn't hesitate to catch two hares with one hand, does he."
Whether it was actually feasible remained to be seen, but the brat seemed eager to charge headlong into another reckless gamble all the same.
No one in this country could afford to ignore the High Priest's authority. Even the Emperor himself had to tread carefully around High Priest Theodore.
If things went wrong, the fallout would be nothing to shrug off.
"Is it youthful recklessness, I wonder...... or genuine courage?"
"Or is he simply a rotten piece of work? The moment something displeases him, he wants to flip the whole table."
"Hahaha. Could be, could be."
Kendrick barked a laugh at Diana's words. For all her grumbling, she showed no real displeasure either.
That boy had been weaving his way through the palace for some time now, long enough that they could make a fair guess at what that damned apprentice knight wanted. The customs and conventions so solidly built for an era of peace—by now, he clearly considered them useless.
Kendrick lowered his voice a touch.
"......Honestly speaking, I'm uneasy about a situation where High Priest Theodore insists on leading the charge himself."
"I agree. He is a priest, not a politician."
Diana nodded gravely. Unlike Priestess Lumiel, flexible and far-sighted in every direction, High Priest Theodore was a man who wished to live in a world of absolute, unblemished Light. Stubborn, and at the same time unyielding to the point of extremity—a priest of the old mold, through and through.
A faith that admitted not one inch of compromise earned universal respect, and it made him more than worthy of the High Priest's seat. But it was precisely for that reason that he and crises like this one fit together so poorly.
In a peaceful age, absolute good holds sway. On a battlefield, however, seeing everything in black and white is one of the deadliest sins a commander can commit.
To High Priest Theodore, God Luce was absolute good, and anything that did not follow Him was evil without exception. He would no doubt insist that anyone who had so much as wavered toward the Cult of Cernion be burned, every last one.
Situations that could be negotiated, deferred, bought time for—he might drive them straight to the edge of a cliff before anyone could stop him.
By that measure, Arendt's judgment had been exactly right. As someone who prayed to God Luce himself, Kendrick found the content of it a little uncomfortable to stomach, but......
"To think he can simply sweep aside whatever displeases him. I'm starting to envy being young."
"I find it rather exhausting myself."
"So do I, for what it's worth."
After that brief exchange, the two commanders turned up the corners of their mouths at the same time. Once they admitted they'd been talked around by the brat, a faint embarrassment crept in after it. Kendrick rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly and gave a wry grin.
"Seems the long peace rusted me more than I thought. The age is coming when we'll need not an old shield, but a sword to cut the enemy down."
The chaos that cursed apprentice knight dragged in his wake had always brought change. Laios—youngest of the commanders, and the one who bore that brat head-on—had already felt the shift and was slowly learning to embrace it.
"Laios will make a fine sword."
"And if Commander Laios is the sword, then Commander Kendrick must be the sturdiest shield of them all."
When Kendrick looked at her in surprise, Diana flashed him a bright smile.
"I'll prepare for departure at once."
"We meet in two hours."
For now, there was a mountain of things that simply had to be done.
Even as he made his preparations, Arendt's thoughts kept drifting elsewhere.
A riot.
He had given Neumann and the Crown Prince's party a suitably elaborate explanation, but in truth, this affair, too, had drawn its hint from the pages of The Blue Knight of the Sacred Sword.
At the height of the civil war, Laios visits a village to rest and resupply. Even amid the devastation of war, the villagers welcome Laios—already a hero of growing renown—and his knights with open arms, offering not only food but warm beds for the night. But the meal they serve is poisoned. And when the knights notice it, the villagers turn on them in an instant, weapons in hand.
Untrained civilians, every one of them—the whole disturbance was settled in moments. But the shock had left a mark on Laios that was anything but small. The revelation that repeated civil war had turned even the people's hearts against him struck a deep psychological wound.
The episode had been brief, but with matters unfolding this way, the suspicion came naturally. I poked at it just in case—and there it was.
As expected, the people's hearts hadn't merely turned. By that point, the Cernion Cult's touch had already reached them.
Those bastards.
He'd lashed out on pure frustration, but picking a fight with the Luce Church wasn't exactly the wisest course. Still, letting the temple seize the initiative now was unthinkable.
The old man wanted to stay out of the war as much as possible, in the novel.
The High Priest's stance stemmed from his conviction that those who served the gods must not meddle in worldly affairs. Priestess Lumiel had pushed back against that and struck out on her own.
After Laios was chosen as the knight of the Sacred Sword, Theodore showed somewhat more active movement, but even then he never led the charge to hunt down the enemy. He lent his support to Priestess Lumiel while withdrawing to the rear, choosing to watch events unfold from a distance.
But with circumstances having changed, there was no telling how the High Priest might act now. And judging by everything 'Arendt' had experienced of him, directly and indirectly—by the character he had personally pieced together......
Just imagining it gives me a headache.
From what he'd learned so far, anything involving God Luce was guaranteed to make the old man insufferably difficult, far beyond expectation. The fact that none of the High Priest's actions carried a hint of malice was a problem in itself. That old man moved by nothing but his own conviction and faith.
The Sacred Sword, the centerpiece of the novel, hadn't even appeared yet, and openly antagonizing him was a thoroughly undesirable option—so handling it this way had to be the best play.
Commander Laios doesn't seem to think much of it yet, either.
Setting aside the pragmatist Crown Prince, and Laios, who put human lives above all in any situation—even Kendrick and Diana had been swayed by nothing more than a young apprentice knight's audacity. One could easily guess what kind of image the High Priest usually projected.
For the sake of Laios's flawless victory, the High Priest's side would need to be shaken loose at least once, sooner or later.
"And why is your armor hanging crooked?"
Just then, Arthur's voice burrowed into his wandering thoughts. He'd sidled up at some point and was frowning at him.
Arendt snapped back to his senses and swiftly fitted the disinterested scowl of 'Arendt' onto his face.
"Done packing?"
"All set. Honestly, the way you make this same fuss every single time never gets old."
Because they needed to move quietly, the departure party this time was small: Laios, Arthur, Richt, and Arendt would go directly, while everyone else stayed at the palace handling routine duties and standing by.
By the time the two of them had finished their pointless banter, Richt and Laios had finished their own preparations and joined them. Once all four were assembled, Laios ran through the schedule with a brief briefing.
"We move to the target region as fast as possible. A large shipment of weapons has already flowed in recently—we must contain the situation before it boils over into a full riot."
That was the foremost objective of this deployment.
"We've made advance arrangements with the Security Departments of neighboring regions. Should anything go wrong, we join forces with the local guards and link up with Sir Kendrick and Sir Diana, who will be standing by nearby, to suppress it."
"Understood, sir."
This was the first and last chance. Cantares would do his utmost to choke off information, but there were limits to evading the temple's eyes and ears. News of the riots breaking out in other countries would already have reached High Priest Theodore's ears. They had to settle things before he realized the same thing was happening inside the empire.
Following Laios's remarks, Arendt delivered his report.
"The Neumann Merchant Guild's investigators are watching both the city itself and the surrounding area. If we spot any suspicious movement or anyone trying to slip out of the city in a hurry, I'll be contacted immediately."
"Can we trust these investigators?"
"Yessir, they're vouched for by Guildmaster Neumann himself—people he hired personally, so rest easy."
Though he fully intended to shake the hiring fees out of the Crown Prince later. That part he simply left unsaid.
Laios looked over his subordinates and nodded.
"Good. Then let's move out."
"Would it be all right if I asked a few questions?"
At that, Richt, who had been standing quietly, stepped forward.
"Arendt, your face is already known to the enemy. If the city has already fallen into the Cernion Cult's grasp......"
"You mean word of my appearance may have spread already?"
But the words Richt was about to choke out broke off halfway. He let out a short sigh and looked at Arendt.
"If it has, I imagine the rumors run along the lines of 'the infamous villain, that wretched son of a—' at best."
"You sound almost pleased about that?"
Arthur's muttered remark slid past, and Richt asked uneasily, "Do you have a plan? It's a little absurd to even say this, but among the enemy, your face might be better known than the Commander's own."
"Is that worry I hear, for me? This junior of yours is so moved he hardly knows where to put hims—"
"I misspoke."
Arendt regarded the swiftly regretful Richt with feigned indifference, then snorted and crossed his arms.
"Your second question is this, isn't it? How do we win over the people who have already turned their backs on God Luce."
"Yes."
That much, even Laios hadn't heard yet. Three pairs of eyes, heavy with doubt, converged on him—and Arendt turned up the corners of his mouth with a soft laugh.
"Let's see. If we're talking about my appearance...... silver hair and golden eyes, a remarkably, exceedingly handsome young man—that's how the rumors must run."
"......"
"......"
"......"
In an instant, the knights' faces soured as though they'd each bitten into something rotten. As always, the most infuriating part was that not a word of it could be denied.
"The handsome face is beyond saving, but the hair and eyes can be disguised. Of course, that alone won't nearly be enough."
The single most defining trait of 'Arendt von Eckhart' was, after all, that infamous temperament. After a moment's thought, Arendt ran a hand down his face—and when his hand fell away, there was no sharper-tongued, more viper-eyed apprentice knight to be found anywhere.
"......Senior, I look forward to working with you on this deployment as well."
The soft curve of his smile, the gentle set of his mouth, the wide-eyed warmth of his gaze. The cold face without a single crack to exploit, the bearing that dripped with haughty arrogance—all of it had vanished, and in its place stood a single naive apprentice knight, fresh out of the Academy and newly assigned to the Order.
Watching all three of them gape, Arendt set his expression back to normal and shrugged.
"Should do the trick, don't you think?"
This wasn't his real self anyway, so changing the performance concept was as easy as breathing.
"He'll haunt my nightmares......"
"Same here."
Apparently his comrades had gained themselves a fresh trauma—but then, they didn't need to know that.