Chapter 240 - Those Who Chase the Dawn (5)

I was swinging my sword in the training grounds as usual when Yorden came looking for me.

"Your Highness! Your Highness!"

The Ranger called out to me repeatedly, his face flushed red.

Ordinarily, I would have recoiled at all the fuss, but not this time. The veteran Ranger, who rarely so much as twitched an eyebrow, looked utterly frantic.

My heart pounded. Something momentous had clearly happened. I lowered my sword and waited for him to speak again.

"Th-they say a rebellion has broken out in the Empire!"

My pounding heart cooled. I raised my sword again and settled into my stance.

"Your Highness! This is no time for that!"

I answered indifferently as I swung my sword.

"If you mean the Fifth Imperial Prince's rebellion, I've known about it for ages."

"No, I mean another rebellion has broken out!"

I froze where I stood. Moving only my eyes, I looked at Yorden. He thumped his chest in frustration as he spoke.

"The lords of the northeastern Empire have rebelled against the Imperial House! The lord of Winter Castle has just rushed to the Marshal's Office because of it!"

I drove my sword straight into the ground and immediately left the palace.

"We will escort you."

At any other time, Karl and the Royal Knights would have invoked the king's orders and blocked my way to the Marshal's Office. Now they went ahead to clear the way.

The knights of House Bielefeld guarding the Marshal's Office tensed at the sight of me. They seemed to be wondering how to stop me if I defied the king's orders and barged inside.

They needn't have worried. I had no intention of entering the office.

"Marquis!"

Standing outside the entrance, I called for the marquis at the top of my lungs, putting mana into my voice for good measure.

Before long, he appeared with Vincent and Malcoy. Malcoy started at the sight of me and stopped short. His face went rigid as stone, as though he thought I had come to drag him away.

I ignored him and addressed the marquis directly.

"Is this the kingdom's sword you spoke of?"

The marquis looked from me to the Ranger, then turned his gaze on Vincent. A faint reproach surfaced in his eyes. Apparently, he disapproved of the lord of Winter Castle defying the king's orders to bring me the news.

Vincent resolutely played innocent, acting as brazenly as though he had never even heard of such an order.

"Let us go inside first."

With a groan, the marquis suggested we move elsewhere. Leaving Karl and my knights behind, I promptly followed him.

"Yes, Your Highness. The kingdom had a hand in the rebellion in the Empire."

"How on earth did you manage it?"

On my last visit to the Empire, I had seen for myself how deeply its nobles held the emperor in awe. They scarcely dared breathe in his presence and were afraid even to meet his eyes.

And those nobles had rebelled? Even with the Empire in the chaos of civil war, it was hard to believe.

"Do you happen to know a man named De Gaulle de Debussy?"

De Gaulle was the imperial Senior Knight who had tried to humiliate me on my last visit to the Empire, only to disgrace himself instead.

"He was taken prisoner at the same time I was. He was so insignificant that Your Highness probably paid him no attention."

It was Malcoy, standing behind the marquis, who explained.

"I see. But what about him?"

"His glib persuasion played a part in the legion commanders' recklessly aggressive assaults on the Silver Lion Citadel. He seemed aware of that himself, and was worried about what would happen after his release."

I would have been a fool not to understand why the marquis had brought up De Gaulle after hearing that. Even so, I was skeptical that nobles who trembled at the mere thought of the emperor would rebel on the word of a mere Senior Knight.

"Quite right. If De Gaulle had been alone, no one would have listened to him. They would have hanged him for harboring seditious ideas instead."

The marquis smiled at my objection.

"In fact, his role was no more than that of a guide, or, generously speaking, a shill. It would be fair to say someone else did all the real work."

"Someone else?"

The marquis answered with a smile.

"Count Montpellier personally persuaded the imperial nobles."

My eyes widened at the unexpected mention of Montpellier, and the marquis elaborated. I burst into hearty laughter.

"No wonder I hadn't seen hide nor hair of him."

I had been wondering why I hadn't heard the man's whining since he helped with the Teuton negotiations. To think he had been doing such lovely work out of my sight.

"Most of the regular army personnel under the Imperial House's influence had either died in the war against our kingdom or left for the central region with the Third Imperial Prince. Apparently, that made the task considerably easier."

"Even so. What exactly did he say to win them over?"

The Imperial House's waning influence would not have erased the emperor's shadow entirely. Getting the nobles to overcome their deeply ingrained fear of him and take up arms was no easy feat. I was curious what Montpellier had said to persuade them.

"It seems he frightened them by saying that if the Third Imperial Prince won the civil war, he would look for scapegoats to shoulder the blame for his defeat and conceal his own disgrace."

I laughed again. I couldn't help laughing aloud; it was so very like Montpellier.

After all, this was the man who had once turned nearly half the kingdom's nobles into traitors. He had even blackmailed a Palace Count whose family had served the royal house for generations into betraying it. If there was such a thing as a genius at intimidation and persuasion, Montpellier was surely it.

"When he was my enemy, grinding him up and drinking him wouldn't have satisfied me. But he's rather reassuring to have under me."

The marquis nodded.

"In fact, this entire plan began with Count Montpellier's proposal."

"The man used to fret endlessly about when someone would stick a knife in him for all his crimes. Now he's really accomplished something."

"Indeed, he made it a condition that all his past misdeeds be overlooked if this succeeded."

Even the demand he had come up with was thoroughly typical of Montpellier.

"And His Majesty accepted?"

"He said he would take it into consideration, depending on the scale of the rebellion."

The king's response was a masterpiece in its own right. Weighing the man's past crimes against the number of rebels he recruited—it sounded more like merchants haggling than a discussion of the continent's future.

Montpellier's unchanging ways and the king's complete transformation both delighted me.

"In any case, this should allow Dotrin's army to concentrate solely on the enemy before them."

Composing his expression, the marquis explained how this would change the situation.

The northeastern lords' rebellion effectively meant the Empire had lost its influence over the east. There was no longer any need to fear those lords entering the war and disrupting Dotrin's supply lines.

"Freed from the threat of an attack on its flank, Dotrin's army will ravage the imperial strongholds all the more fiercely."

The marquis pointed to a spot on the map.

"Once Dotrin's army has secured the entire eastern region, it will halt its advance."

His finger rested somewhere along the boundary between the Empire's eastern and central regions.

"And that is when our kingdom will enter the war."

I smiled with pleasure. I had no doubt that the moment he spoke of would be the day I had been longing for.

"But are you allowed to tell me all this?"

"You already know. What else can I do? And even if I don't tell you, Count Ballorhard will."

Vincent, who had stood silently by until now, cleared his throat.

"And there will be more good news soon."

The marquis ignored Vincent as though he hadn't noticed and continued speaking to me.

"The kingdom has prepared more than one blade."

I scowled.

"I've told you before: if you aren't going to explain right away, don't bring it up at all. It's maddening to listen to."

The marquis chuckled at my complaint.

"Having told you so much already, what reason would I have to hide anything else?"

Then the mirth vanished from his face, and he told me about the kingdom's other blade.

"Before long, every mage in the Imperial Army will leave the front lines at once."

That, too, was something I had never anticipated.

"Much as I dislike admitting it, the Empire shone brilliantly under Bourgogne's reign. But the brighter the light, the deeper the shadows. Such is the way of the world."

His eyes gleamed as he spoke. Ambitious men whose aspirations had been crushed under that overwhelming authority, opportunists who had cowered in fear of the emperor, unable to sate their greed—they would keep rising up.

"The vast Empire will splinter into pieces. The greed and hunger suppressed for so long will erupt all at once, and the great lords will not hesitate to stab one another in the back for a slightly larger piece of meat."

He added that an age of rival warlords had arrived.

I laughed. The world the marquis said was coming was all too familiar to me.

The time just after the great war had ended, when humanity gained dominion over the continent and men rose throughout the land, waging endless wars to claim that dominion for themselves. To me, it sounded as though the world was returning to that age.

The only difference was that the bloodline of Bourgogne, the victor of those wars who had become emperor and ruled half the world, was now the largest, most succulent piece of meat on the banquet table.

"I'll be heading back."

I rose at once.

I intended to hone my blade over and over until that day arrived. To carve the finest cut from the largest piece of meat, I would need a blade sharper than anyone else's.

The wind blew unusually hard as I left the Marshal's Office and returned to my palace. High above, the kingdom's emblem and the Daybreak Banner fluttered with particular vigor.

It felt as though a wind held stagnant before a towering wall had finally begun to flow.

It should have been the same road, both going to the Marshal's Office and coming back. Yet it felt entirely different. The change was too distinct to attribute merely to what the marquis had told me.

The changed world felt strange, yet oddly familiar. I soon understood where those conflicting emotions came from.

If I had not been a sword back then—a sword whose entire world was sight and sound—this must have been how I would have felt.

"It really is a Great War."

With the monster called the Great War finally beginning to take shape, all I could do was grow strong enough not to be devoured by it.

I quickened my pace. I couldn't bear to go another moment without swinging my sword.

* * *

At that moment, Adrian Leonberk was not the only one to sense the change in the world.

Beneath trees laden with everlasting snow, a people attuned to the whispers of fate stopped what they were doing and looked to the sky.

Atop a towering, unvisited mountain of rock, beings whose eyes saw farther than any other's stamped their feet heavily.

In the deep darkness of a forest unchanged since the dawn of creation, beasts with keen noses howled ominously.

All the things that had hidden in the darkness after their defeat in the Great War, the countless other races that had waited for their long night to end and dawn to come, began to clamor.

"Ah! At last, it has begun!"

The man seated upon the highest throne rejoiced.

"Ah... So it has come at last."

The white night crouching in the deepest dungeon sighed.