Chapter 70 - Something Coming Up from Downriver

The victory banquet, which had begun with a welcome for their new guests and proceeded to the bestowal of rewards, finally turned into a merry drinking party. Promised rewards befitting their achievements, the warriors relaxed and grew loud, intoxicated by the fine food, drink, and festive atmosphere.

"To Princess Sherin!"

"To Her Highness!"

At one knight's cry, everyone raised their cups, clinked them together, and drank deep. Seated at the head of the hall, Sherin smiled easily at the toast in her honor, waved her own cup in the air, and drank.

"Ah, dear."

Watching this, the bishop of the Pales diocese sighed in disapproval. Whether of the Old Faith or the New, priests of the Goddess had always detested seeing people drink themselves drunk.

As the drink flowed, the banquet hall grew ever more rowdy. Unlike the capital's banquets, where everyone dressed splendidly and put on airs of refinement, these provincial knights bonded through rough-and-tumble camaraderie. To Shan, this was a far more comfortable and enjoyable way of doing things.

"Exactly. This is the true knightly tradition of the Arman Empire. Look at that painting over there. Even Emperor Baren is sharing a drink with his men without standing on ceremony."

When Shan voiced his opinion, Roden agreed and pointed to a large painting hanging on one side of the hall.

It depicted a man with a brilliant halo blazing behind him, holding his cup out toward his followers. Emperor Baren was always portrayed that way, making him easy to recognize—even for someone as ignorant as Shan.

As spirits rose and more drink went down, a few people began to overstep. The chief offender was Yurk, Baron Rugen, whose old loutish streak began to resurface as he and another knight seized each other by the collar. All because the other man had stepped on his foot while passing by.

Shan rose, walked over to the pair, and laid a hand on each man's shoulder.

"Enough. That's quite enough."

Yurk turned and met Shan's eyes, then meekly released his grip and went back to his seat. Everyone looked astonished, reminded anew that Shan was the one who had tamed that lout.

While Shan was enjoying the festivities, he felt something gently tickling the back of his neck. A spider had slipped onto him unnoticed and was writing on his skin with its forelegs.

[Come to the garden]

He turned to look and found Sherin gone, though only moments earlier she had been at the head table talking to Orum and the count. Shan immediately set down his cup and rose.

"Where are you going, Sir Shan?"

"Just to the privy."

Having made his excuse, Shan left the hall and walked down a corridor brightly lit with magical lamps. Three brisk turns brought him to the darkened garden.

It was early summer, with the heat beginning to creep in, and the inner garden of Pales Castle was red with roses. Though their peak season was still a little way off, the buds had swollen richly, ready to bloom at any moment.

Sherin stood in the middle of the garden gazing up at the sky. Sensing Shan's approach, she turned.

"You're here?"

"Yes. You called."

Somehow, it reminded him of their conversation in the royal gardens. This time, though, there was no princess or knight watching from a distance, and the garden itself was much smaller and humbler.

As he drew closer, he caught the strong smell of alcohol on her. Her normally pale face was flushed with drink, and her eyes were hazy and slightly unfocused.

"You're drunk. And you told me not to drink too much."

"I didn't want to, either. But I couldn't refuse cups offered by retainers who had distinguished themselves."

That was fair enough. Shan nodded, then raised another concern.

"And it's nighttime. You should at least have a guard with you. It's dangerous."

"I can see everything around me anyway. Besides, with the strongest knight right beside me, who would dare threaten me?"

Sherin answered languidly, then burst into laughter, apparently amused by her own words.

After a moment, she fanned her face with one hand, looking embarrassed.

"I really am a little drunk. Yes, I wanted to talk with you alone. Because..."

She edged closer as she spoke, then suddenly slapped his back as hard as she could. Shan saw the blow coming clearly, but instead of dodging, he braced his back. Yet however great the difference in their physical abilities, that sort of blow hurt anyone just the same. The hot sting drew an involuntary groan from him.

"Urgh."

"First, I called you here to scold you. Climbing down a sheer cliff over a hundred meters high—do you have three lives or something? I nearly fainted when I heard about it!"

"It wasn't particularly dangerous."

Shan could confidently say he could have slept while hanging from that cliff. To someone with his extraordinary balance and athletic ability, a cliff was merely a staircase that took a little more effort to climb.

The mounted charge against Duke Morayen's knights had been far more dangerous. His chances of dying on the cliff had been less than one in ten thousand, whereas the charge might have killed him with odds of about one in a hundred.

After hearing his explanation, Sherin let out a deep sigh.

"Yes, I suppose it's absurd to expect someone who fights not to risk his life. But please value yours a little more. You're not just some ordinary knight. You practically embody the military might of Pales."

Losing him would be like losing both her arms, she murmured urgently, and Shan nodded. Though he was being scolded, something tickled inside his chest. It was a strange feeling, but not an unpleasant one.

"And there's one more thing. I also called you here to apologize."

"What for?"

"For glossing things over with the office of Lord Guardian instead of giving you land."

The office was certainly a great reward, as the others' reactions had made clear, but it was far removed from Shan's ambition. His dream was to become a lord and create a land where Altoans could live free of discrimination.

Shan blinked a few times before answering.

"Well, there's no great hurry. Everyone's doing well here anyway... Honestly, you didn't have to give me that office, either. I don't know much about it, but wasn't it a bit of a burden for you?"

To Shan, Sherin was already one of his own, and he needed no particular reward to fight for her—just as he needed none to save someone like Roden, Kalion, or Darkal.

"That won't do. If I don't reward my best knight properly, no one will consider me a fair ruler. And others might try to lure you away, telling you I'm treating you unfairly and that they can offer you more."

A certain face immediately came to mind. Sherin must have been thinking the same thing, for she promptly named him.

"I hear that rat bastard Duke Morayen even promised you Count Valik's title?"

Fierce hostility blazed in her reddish-brown eyes as she spoke. With the corners of her eyes drawn sharply upward, she looked so venomous that she might have hurled a spell at him had he been standing there.

"You heard about that?"

"Yes. You remember, don't you? The day I become queen, you'll become Duke Ranpel. The greatest lord in western Pendia. Compared to some mere countship... Well, honestly, I suppose I can't say it's better. That one is in Libert, after all."

Her initially confident words trailed off. As she said, Libert had more than three times Pendia's territory, and with scarcely any monsters, it was a populous, prosperous country. Count Valik's northern domain bordered the Kingdom of Ajun, making it militarily powerful but relatively poor. Even so, it would be wealthier than almost any domain in Pendia. Perhaps Pales alone could offer some comparison.

"Still, Pendia is a better place for Altoans to live. And it'll get even better. Things may be a little hard now—do you more or less understand what I'm saying?"

Amused by the gaps in her drunken rambling, Shan chuckled despite himself and nodded. Sherin scowled, caught his collar, and hung on to it.

"Remember. You're my knight. I knighted you, and you swore loyalty to me. No one gets to take you away."

Her murmured words were thick with possessiveness. Shan could only laugh at the princess's incorrigible drunken antics.

* * *

The next day, Sherin acted as though nothing whatsoever had happened in the garden. But when Shan teasingly said, "You knighted me, Your Highness, and I swore loyalty to you," she blushed. Evidently, she remembered.

Unfortunately, they had little time to meet and joke like that. Distributing the enormous quantity of resources brought back by the expedition throughout Pales kept them busy. A substantial portion went toward rewarding the participants, of course, but even that would circulate within the domain and return as indirect taxes to replenish the depleted treasury.

Most important of all was the large supply of magic stones, the expedition's original objective. To put them to use, Orum—Sherin's teacher and head of the Magic Society—personally took a hand in dividing the stones and manufacturing magical devices. Efficiency soon improved noticeably.

"Yes, the spell—You there, boy! Were you drinking yesterday? Why are your lines so crooked? You hopeless fools! Move aside. This great sage will demonstrate!"

The mages visibly stiffened whenever the crotchety old man came around barking at them. With such an excellent supervisor on hand, Sherin could finally relinquish one major responsibility and gain some free time.

Meanwhile, Shan could not simply idle away his days, either. Before he was Princess Sherin's guardian knight or commander of the Altoan mercenaries, he was now Lord Guardian of Rainel-Pales. As supreme commander, holding all military authority in the land, he was obliged not only to lead the army in wartime but also to train soldiers and manage stocks of arms in peacetime.

Naturally, as always, all of this was left to Roden.

"Here, you can do some work too... Where are you going? Stop right there!"

Whenever Roden approached with an armful of documents and those words, Shan bolted.

Instead, he happily attended to every duty that required physical effort, such as helping train the knights and squires under his command.

"Now, hold the lance like this."

"Yes...!"

"Tuck your chin when you charge. If splinters get through the opening, they'll tear your throat out."

Not long before, Ravana had formally received knighthood from Sherin and sworn fealty, becoming her second knight. Shan focused her training on riding and using a lance. Her specialty might be the axe, but horsemanship and mounted lance work were essential skills for a knight.

Shan's two squires, Biko and Tavera, made ideal practice partners for her. Though still far from physically mature, they had the benefit of several months' head start in training.

After a long, bruising session on the training ground, teacher and pupils exchanged roles.

"This is something I learned fighting on the Gat Plains..."

Ravana and her followers taught Shan and the other Pales knights the doctrines and practical lessons of war, drawn from their wealth of combat experience. Pendia had certainly seen wars between humans, but most of what its knights had learned was little more than dead knowledge that even their teachers had never properly put into practice. By contrast, the accounts of those who had fought on large battlefields contained all manner of tacit knowledge and were immensely useful.

Those who had experienced how helplessly Pales's army, unaccustomed to fighting humans, had been driven back by Duke Morayen's forces listened to the lectures with utmost attention.

As they sweated through the hot summer day by day, Pales took another leap forward. First came a dramatic improvement in the city's cleanliness with the completion of its water supply and sewer systems.

Mass production of devices that pumped water upward brought fresh water from the supply system to locations throughout the domain, while used water flowed downstream through the sewers. The various impurities produced by work in the newly built magical-device factory were discharged through them as well. Combined with a strict ban on dumping filth wherever one pleased, this utterly transformed the city's smell.

Many people might be indifferent to dirt, but no one liked it, and everyone welcomed the change.

"And once people are cleaner, illness will decrease noticeably, too. As I've told you before, poor hygiene is the source of all sorts of disease."

Sherin spoke proudly as she described her recent accomplishments in her office. In truth, Shan still could not properly understand the concept of the "germs" she and the other mages spoke of. They said that peering into the microscopic world through advanced magnification magic could reveal the world's secrets, but only mages could see such things.

What was certain, however, was that illness had noticeably declined as the water supply and sewer systems were put in proper order. Simply making it easy to cook and bathe with fresh water eased the workload of the priests, who had been kept busy treating the sick.

Food storage facilities were also being widely introduced throughout the domain, greatly increasing its storage capacity. People no longer had to struggle to consume an animal on the day it was slaughtered. Meat and fish kept in large cold-storage chambers would not spoil in a mere few days.

Most important of all, though, production had finally begun in earnest on combat magical devices to equip the soldiers.

"More importantly, here. This is the first finished batch. Could you give me your opinion as Lord Guardian?"

Sherin set the first mass-produced magical devices on her desk.

"It took a lot of effort to find the most efficient balance between performance and the cost of the magic stones. The experience we gained making the other devices helped."

There were five types in this first production batch: spears, shields, helmets, mail shirts, and leather shoes. Their enchantments were nothing particularly unusual. The spears were sharper; the shields and armor were sturdier and better at absorbing impacts; and the leather shoes were toughened to resist tearing. Each simply served its original function well.

Shan tested their quality in various ways, thrusting a spear into a nearby tree and propping up a shield to strike it himself. After cutting the armor in two with Guardian of the East—carefully avoiding the magic stone embedded in the center, since it would have to be reused—he nodded.

"These are much better than I expected. How many pieces did you say you divided the stone into?"

"Each uses one hundredth of a werewolf's magic stone. Altogether, that's one twentieth per set."

"I'd thought each piece would take at least a fifteenth..."

Dividing magic stones certainly seemed more efficient than using them whole. He judged that every item's performance had improved by roughly twenty to thirty percent. Since the underlying equipment was mass-produced, it fell far short of a properly crafted magical device, but even so, it felt almost too fine for an ordinary soldier.

As reforms freed up increasing numbers of able-bodied men, they were recruiting more soldiers. Once their force reached roughly a thousand and all were equipped with these arms, it would surely wield overwhelming power compared with the other factions. A dozen or so experienced warriors with this equipment could probably hunt even a troll without the aid of spirit.

"They may not be worth as much as proper magical devices, but they're still expensive. We'll have to keep a close watch so the soldiers don't secretly sell them off."

"Of course. After all the trouble I went to making them."

A cold smile settled on Sherin's face, as though she would never forgive anyone who dared do such a thing.

"Anyway, you're saying this is good enough? Then we'll keep producing them to these specifications. We should also start preparing the production processes for devices for archers and knights, and ones for siege warfare..."

Where the soldiers' devices prioritized efficiency above all, those for knights would be designed with performance foremost. Pales had relatively few knights, and losing even one would be a devastating blow.

In particular, plans were underway to make Shan a truly extraordinary suit of armor. They would divide the magic stone from the ogre he had slain into five pieces and use the entire stone. Sherin's ambition was to create the mightiest armor imaginable, something so astonishingly powerful it belonged in myth.

"I've been working on the diagrams for ages, and they're still not finished. Physical enhancement, vitality recovery, resistance to heat and cold, grounding, underwater breathing... I want to include them all."

"But realistically, do I really need quite that much?"

At Shan's objection, Sherin sighed over the painful gulf between ideals and reality. In any event, they could not leave the matter indefinitely just because the design was unfinished. Shan was nearing 180 centimeters, and his growth was finally slowing, making this a suitable time to adjust armor to his build.

Hadn't the lack of proper enchantments on his armor put him in danger during the battle against Duke Morayen? To keep that from happening again, they needed to make him a decent suit, even if only as a stopgap.

"If only we could find a truly skilled smith. We secured some rare metals last time, too..."

Sherin murmured that she should try arranging a deal with Count Shedil soon.

"Fortunately, we still have a fair amount of breathing room."

Over the past few months, Sherin had acknowledged her excessive neglect of outside intelligence and begun gathering information more actively, planting spies among bands of traveling merchants. What they learned suggested that less had changed outside Pales than expected.

Conrad was furious at Duke Morayen's betrayal, but practical difficulties prevented him from bringing the duke to justice. Meanwhile, the combined forces of Elvin and the Kingdom of Luman had reached the limits of their offensive, leaving the war in a partial lull. The three powers watched one another, pondering their opponents' next moves and how best to respond for their own benefit.

Even under these circumstances, Pales had not escaped everyone's attention. Their undertaking was too large to keep secret, and word had recently begun spreading far and wide that Pales was manufacturing its own magical devices.

Duke Morayen's persistent overtures, asking her to sell him goods and casually suggesting she hand Shan over as well, were annoying enough. More troublesome still was a summons from the Holy See in Libert. The delegation of priests sent by the pope threatened that she had very likely violated a major tenet and must obey the summons unless she wished to be declared a heretic and face a holy war.

Naturally, Sherin merely scoffed and drove the visiting delegation out. Count Valik had only recently managed to expel Duke Morayen and had yet to secure full control of the country; he was hardly going to come charging over. A delegation of Old Faith priests, now little more than an empty shell, was of no concern. She would have liked to throw them into the river and tell them to swim, but sending them off peacefully by boat was her last act of mercy.

"I truly wish things could always be like this. Growing slowly, without haste, but steadily..."

Sherin broke off and frowned. Shan instinctively realized she was looking outside the office through a spider. Sure enough, a knock soon came at the door, followed by one of Count Pales's knights, looking urgent and struggling to catch his breath.

"What is it?"

"T-trouble, Your Highness! We don't know why, but we've received reports that all manner of monsters are coming upriver from downstream!"

"What?"

For hundreds of years, monsters had scarcely been seen in Pales. At the astonishing report that they had suddenly begun pouring into the land, Shan's and Sherin's eyes widened.