SIEGE

Day 8

1

The unexpected internal crisis was wrapped up without casualties, but the seeds of unrest had been sown. The day brightened up and the crew carried on with their duties the best they could, the same as all the days before, yet it would’ve been a dense mistake to claim nothing had changed about their situation. Many of the soldiers were unsure of what had actually happened or why, and ignorance brought with it confusion, confusion fear, and fear was the one thing nobody needed any more of.

What was going on and what was going to happen next? To decide how to deal with these concerns and various others, her majesty’s confidants assembled once again for their customary morning council upstairs.

Since Foulton’s departure, the number of people in the room had now further decreased. Izumi’s chair was vacant. In addition to the summoned champion, Millanueve was also absent, and while neither had taken active part in the discussions so far, the already roomy hall felt that much more barren for their absence.

No improvement was in the forecast either.

“Mind explaining what that was all about?” the indignant Marshal questioned the First Court Wizard across the table, too agitated to even sit. Her wrath hadn’t cooled much over the past hour. “If you meant to put yourself in charge, I would appreciate it if you told me so before you walk all over my command!”

“You are allowing your emotions to get the better of you,” Carmelia notified, the usual aloof air about her undisturbed. Though her mannerisms had little calming effect in this case.

“I wonder why that is!” Miragrave growled and leaned forward over the table. “You’ve just made a fool of me in front of our whole force! This is the kind of bullshit we don’t need, and I frankly expected better of you! You show people one of them is above the rules, and they will respect those rules no more! Did not your two hundred years among humanity teach you even that? Or is there perhaps some enlightened reasoning involved in shooting our own knee? Do explain it in a way our underdeveloped human brains can understand too—if you can!”

Carmelia’s answer wasn’t very complicated.

“The fact is that we need her. And we need her alive.”

“Don’t you mean to say, you need her? She’s only one fighter! A skilled fighter, perhaps, but regrettably also an idiot! Did it never occur to you that what you did may have been exactly what the enemy wanted you to do?”

“Naturally. But she is the one the prophecy speaks of. The one who will bring about the Age of Chaos. I have no doubt of this. Thus, there was no choice.”

“Well, I don’t buy your prophecies!” the Marshal exclaimed. “Even assuming that were remotely true, why would we ever want such a thing to happen? Does ‘Age of Chaos’ seem to you a terribly pleasant place to be?”

“It is our only alternative to extinction. An uncertain future is still preferable to none.”

“I can tell you now, your antics aren’t helping our future one bit! Nor those of your precious pet!”

“—Stop it!” Yuliana couldn’t bear to listen to the exchange any further, but stood and slammed her palms on the table. The thick marble surface didn’t give much of a sound at the force of her small hands, and her demand was not too assertive either. Unable to look at either of the two in the eye, she hung her head, her face hidden, and quietly pleaded,

“Please, just stop. That is enough. What is done is done.”

Miragrave looked at the Sovereign with pity, then dropped down on her seat with a drawn-out sigh.

“Izumi is out of the force,” she declared. “I would not give that person a pig stall to guard after her performance this week! And if she is indeed so crucial to the future of the world, then she is better off safely confined until further notice. Or do you have a problem with that too?”

The Marshal scowled at the cirelo mage, who continued to sit with eyes closed, the very image of stoicism.

“Do as you wish.”

2

Izumi set her backpack down by the couch on the side of the library aisle. The couch looked quite comfortable to sleep on. She took off her sword too and set it against the hefty bookshelf nearby.

Under house arrest and constant surveillance—was the verdict. Unnecessary contact was to be avoided. She couldn’t leave the library’s main hall without a permission or an armed escort, but otherwise the punishment could only be called exceedingly gentle. No chains or shackles. No magic seals. She was even allowed to keep her weapon. Restricting the champion’s combat ability still posed a greater risk for the company, in case of a sudden enemy attack, than any additional traitorous behavior.

Moreover, no one prohibited Millanueve from staying with her. There was no reason to complain. In fact, things had gone way better than expected. She didn’t exactly deserve sympathy. But it had not been only the officers’ secret mercy or neglect that earned her these perks.

“Sorry about this, So-chan,” Izumi said and turned to the young Court Wizard with an earnestly repenting look.

“You’d better be thankful too!” Margitte replied with a hmph! and averted her face. “They were talking about locking you up in the dungeon, and they sure would have, if I hadn’t volunteered to take custody of you.”

As trivial as the young mage made it sound, she had argued at great length for the pros over the cons at the morning assembly, assured she had everything under control and would take full responsibility if there were any further incidents. But there was no need to tell Izumi that. She would’ve gotten the wrong impression.

“And here I thought you hated me,” the woman still said with a faint smile, as though she had guessed the truth. “Personally, I’m not all that big on the tsundere archetype, but thanks anyway. I owe you a big one.”

“What the heck does that even mean?” Margitte snapped. “Don’t make up more weird names for me, or it’ll be off to the dungeons with you for real! Is that how you treat your benefactor?”

“I’d like to thank you as well, Margitte,” Millanueve bashfully said and bowed her head low. “I truly appreciate it!”

“I don’t recall having done anything for you!” the magician turned even snappier, flushed out of embarrassment. “And for the last time, it’s ‘Master Beuhler’.”

“A friend of a friend is twice a friend—as my grandmother used to say,” the girl replied. “You’ve been a big help to Izumi and...um, for helping my dear, dear friend, you shall ever be triple the friend to me!”

Millanueve spoke so with a shy smile, as a lively color dyed her cheeks.

“Ahehe…” Izumi looked away, awkwardly scratching her neck, and blushed.

“Stop it!” Margitte yelled at the two. “This is sickening!”

The mage turned away for a moment, ruffling her hair in frustration and embarrassment, before she gathered her spirit again and turned back to the champion with her usual haughty air.

“It’s not like I did this only as a pure favor, out of the sheer kindness of my heart. I had questions I wanted to ask of you, and having you close at hand makes it easier for me to confirm various things than looking for you in the cellars. As far as I am concerned, you are little more than a piece of documentary with legs, so gratitude is not needed.”

“Questions?” Izumi repeated. “Like what?”

Margitte took out the shadowmeter from her cloak pocket and held it in front of the woman. The bronze rings kept on sluggishly turning, visibly drawn towards the champion at each rotation.

“As I thought, the daemon presence in you has intensified…” she remarked. “The closer you are to them, the clearer the signal...How is it even possible for you still remain a living human?”

“I don’t know,” Izumi said with a mild sigh.

“I have to understand. What happened out there? What is your connection to these monsters? Why did they let you come back unharmed after they went out of their way to lure you out? Don’t tell me you really are an ally of theirs or something? Are you able to communicate with them?”

Izumi’s expression darkened. She took a seat on the couch and leaned on her knees.

“I wouldn’t call that a conversation. And they didn’t let me go.”

Margitte frowned with unease. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“This castle, the city,” the woman answered. “No, probably the whole continent—The scale and distance don’t matter. They don’t think in terms of ‘our place’ and ‘your place’, like we do. I got a pretty good feel of it up close. They don’t even recognize the castle. The walls and gates don’t exist for them. They think they can reach us whenever they want to. But they’re not here just to kill us. They want our horror and pain. So why butcher the goose that lays gold eggs?”

“Are you serious?” the mage asked, still looking doubtful. “What do they do with our feelings then? Do they feed on them? Get energy from our negativity, somehow?”

“Probably not...”

Izumi gazed down at her knees for a bit. Then she looked up and said,

“In my world, there were once people called Aztecs. The Aztecs trained all of their men to be warriors and waged many wars, against whoever happened to be close enough. They sacrificed the people they captured to their gods, making mountains of corpses in big festivals that could go on for weeks. They believed that the more the victim feared and suffered as they died, the more the gods were pleased by the gift.”

“Sacrifice?” Margitte furrowed her brow at the explanation. “You’re saying murder is some manner of a religious ritual for them? That those things have a god?”

“They do,” Izumi said.

“But there are no gods. Not anymore. They all left when the Age of the Covenant began.”

“Not in the world.”

“Hm?”

Izumi pointed her finger at the roof, at the sky.

“...Rubbish,” Margitte snorted and turned away.

As a person, she wanted to dismiss the theory as mere baseless speculation, delusions, nonsense. But as a magician, she felt compelled to consider all perspectives. Thinking about it quietly for a moment, she then reluctantly turned back.

“So when they let you off…”

“Do I need to spell it?” Izumi replied. “The service isn’t over yet.”

Margitte said nothing.

“You can’t mean…!” Millanueve spoke aloud, having followed the exchange from the side. “They believe that having you back with us will end up causing more horror and pain overall than only killing you would?”

“Something like that,” Izumi said.

“But that’s clearly wrong! We’re so much stronger with you here. You’re one of the few among us, who can stand up to those things. They only have things to lose by letting you go. Of course, I’m thankful that they did, but how could they make such an obvious mistake?”

The woman looked back at Millanueve with a bit of a pained smile on her lips.

“I think you’re the only one here who feels that way, Nue.”

“I can’t be!” the girl denied. “I’m sure her majesty thinks the same. And Waramoti! And, and…”

“That was a short list.”

Margitte was barely listening anymore, thinking about the theory, and she shuddered to think it could be true.

Even now, the unrest spreads. But if you already knew that was their plan, that it was a bad idea, then why did you come back?

The mage turned her gaze at Millanueve.

“Hm?” The girl tilted her head under Margitte’s wordless stare, and then wiped her cheek with her sleeve. “Is there something on my face?”

Margitte made no answer, but turned and left to return to her work station by the entrance.

Is that what it means to be ‘human’?

3

The hallway was quiet. The coast seemed clear.

The rule was to not move alone under any circumstances, but Waramoti often found himself unwittingly breaking it. The unfortunate state of things was that he had very few other companions to take him to places when not with Izumi, remaining a sworn non-combatant himself. It might have been safest to keep with the summoned champion, but his duty as a witness compelled him to see as much as he could, and write down not only one warrior’s perspective, but the accounts of all those involved in the harrowing predicament. After all, it was entirely possible that his notebook would be the only record to remain of their last days in this world—or perhaps the last record of human life itself. Furthermore, over the past week, the bard had spied several soldiers breaking the rule too. Officers would reprimand and punish the strays when caught, but they weren’t always caught, and neither were those caught always punished. At least he tried to be discreet about it.

Was it such an ironclad rule anyway, when several of the mages carried a shadowmeter of their own and could confirm anyone’s humanity right away?

If there were any monsters blended among the ranks, then there were going to be corpses too, and yet, no unexplained fatalities had occurred within the castle in all week. Was it then any wonder that discipline was beginning to grow a little lax? Rather than a strict rule, it was perhaps better treated as a mere recommendation?

However, on his way out of the lavatory and back towards the library, Waramoti’s fabled luck finally ran out.

He sensed no one and casually turned around the corner, and then found himself in the hallway face-to-face with none other than the Grand Marshal of Tratovia herself.

Mirgrave only had her personal adjutant, Lieutenant Deitriche, for escort, which was why their passage had been uncannily quiet. By force of habit, the former special forces commander kept her footsteps always silent, difficult even for a veteran warrior to detect on the royal carpet. What a blunder! He froze in his tracks like a rabbit that had run into the hunter’s club. The two stopped as well, resulting in a highly awkward, high-tension stare-off.

“...Please don’t cut off my head,” Waramoti pleaded his case and raised his hands as a universal sign of surrender.

Miragrave stared unflinching at the youth, like looking at a mole dressed in a tutu.

“Play the Girl with a Crown of Poppies,” she then requested.

“Why, you could’ve picked something harder!” Waramoti replied with a sigh of relief and took his lute. It was a test he would pass with flying colors. He had heard the song already long before even seriously considering the career in arts. It was popular among soldiers, after all.

“Backwards,” she added.

“Uh…”

He made a brief effort to recall the notes. Not that he knew notes, being entirely self-taught. But before he could get very far with the effort, Miragrave interrupted him already.

“No daemon could look as stupid!” she remarked and proceeded past the man.

The company was not the friendliest possible—in fact, even daemons might have been better—but wishing to avoid a similar encounter and having no other pressing commitments at the moment, the bard ended up following after the two. The detour might make for a good addition to his narrative.

“It is quite rare to see the good Marshal outside the command post,” he commented. “Has perhaps some dire crisis called you away? I hope it’s nothing too serious.”

“Nothing worth telling you about, that’s for sure,” Miragrave replied. “Against popular belief, I cannot stand stiff, looking grim around the clock, but need to stretch my legs every once in a while.”

“In case you were looking for the garderobe,” he pointed out, “there was one right there, behind the corner. Fairly sanitary too. Soapstone and flower imagery. By all means, no need to hold it just to keep up appearances. I am older than I look, as the Marshal knows, and not a stranger to the basic needs of humankind, women included.”

His attempt at a playful jest didn’t summon forth a very maidenly reaction.

“Now you are making Marceille blush!” Miragrave remarked with a cynical air. “I assure you, there is a toilet on the fourth floor as well, and I haven’t had to resort to royal flowerpots thus far.”

“That is very...enlightening.”

“And if you mean to be persistent, what ails me right now is the thing you men certainly know nothing about, along with a perpetual migraine. Which you, of all people, are not making much better. But hopefully Master Laukan will.”

“Oh, so it is the sick ward you’re headed to? But you needn’t have bothered to come all this way. Lots of stairs on the way. You could’ve asked Master Carmelia, no? I’m sure such a minor condition is not a problem at all for her grace and her talent at mixing herbs. I myself serve as a living testament to their effectiveness—”

“—I am done asking the cirelo for favors!” Miragrave growled in answer, and he could only regret his poor choice of a subject. Perhaps the sorceress was no small part of the reason why the Marshal wished for a timeout.

Wishing to not make the damage any worse (and worsen his own standing), Waramoti turned to the adjutant instead. “How have you been Lieutenant? The last time we met was aboard the Crucifico, no? Have you been well?”

“Oh? Ah, yes, I’ve no complaints,” the officer answered.

Second Lieutenant Marceille Deitriche was a woman some four years younger than the Marshal, a few inches shorter, her rust-brown hair cut boyishly short. One could’ve easily mistaken them for sisters at a glance. But whereas Miragrave always stood out by the sheer force of her character, her adjutant made every effort to appear as imperceptible as possible without the aid of magecraft. She served as the commander’s right arm with such fidelity and lack of personal input, as though to replace an actual limb. Having carried out this duty diligently ever since the day she had helped the commander escape being burned at the stake, from Bhastifal to Efastopol, and onto this land of the dead, her commitment had surely earned a proper mention in the narrative at long last.

“Say, Lieutenant,” the bard continued, “if both the Marshal and the General happened to develop such an intense migraine that it had them bedridden, wouldn’t that make you the de facto supreme commander of the Imperial army now?”

“Eh?” Deitriche looked startled by the thought, as if it had never occurred to her before. “N-no! Going by rank, there are still Colonel Anrew, and Captain Eumry, or …”

“—Eumry’s gone,” Miragrave corrected. “Anrew is in charge of the main building’s defenses, Ricszar of the rear wall. As the highest-ranking officer stationed at field command, you are, indeed, to take charge of the force in case anything happens to Monty or me.”

“I will give my all to prevent such a scenario,” the Lieutenant declared.

“But it is a possibility,” her superior scolded the woman. “By the Lords, Marci, I keep telling you to have more confidence in yourself! You can’t always stand in the shadow of others, or hesitate when the time comes. That’s the reason you’re still only Second Lieutenant, when you ought to have been a captain a year ago! You have everything you need to manage this circus, so don’t let anyone else walk over you. Listen to me; a good soldier needs to be hungry! And by hunger, I speak of healthy greed, ambition. In a word, sheer bal—hi!?”

Miragrave suddenly froze mid-step with a sharp, uncharacteristically effeminate exclamation, and the other two stopped as well.

They had reached to a sideways T-junction in the maze of castle hallways. At the end of the left-hand branch awaited the sick ward, but instead of continuing that way, the Marshal stared on along the hallway ahead of them. There were heaps of miscellaneous objects piled along the wall till the end of the brief passage. Leftovers of irrelevant furniture that the troops had gathered to barricade unneeded areas. Chairs, small tables, large ceramic urns for flowers, curtain rolls, drawers, cabins, and also equipment the Imperials had brought with them, supply crates for the medical staff, most of them now empty; tent tarps, caskets, et cetera. But it wasn’t any of that mundane clutter which had caught the Marshal’s attention. On the side of the medley of furniture, slightly apart, lay three white bags that looked like rolled-up curtains, or particularly large maggots.

Looking closer, the cause of the officer’s surprise came clear. Those bundles were not mere curtains or carpets, but unmistakably human bodies, wrapped up in white cloth, as if embalmed and waiting for a funeral.

Miragrave stared at the corpses eyes round, her face bluish pale, like one seeing ghosts, even though the dead were not a threat to anyone still on life’s side. It wasn’t unheard of to see deceased near a sick ward while besieged in a state of war either. One familiar with such sights shouldn’t have looked at them twice, which was why the other two could only raise eyebrows at Miragrave’s unexpectedly intense reaction.

“Marshal?” the Lieutenant asked her. “Is everything all right?”

Miragrave regained her situational awareness and glanced at the adjutant, but left the question unanswered. Determination returned to her gaze and she turned and took off with quick stride towards the ward. The other two hurried after her, wondering what had gotten into her.

The place wasn’t strictly a medical office, only a sitting room refurbished for the purpose, with beds brought down from above. The three came to the wide doorway before the hall, which two knights guarded. The men struck rigid salutes at the approaching officers, but the Marshal disregarded the hails.

“What are those bodies in the corridor?” she went on to question the men with an irate tone. “I was not told there have been casualties!”

“They’re not our own, ma’am,” a knight answered her, “they are the Langorian corpses recovered from the castle archive.”

“What!?” she gasped. “That was days ago! Why are they still here?”

“The men tasked to bury them deserted the other day, ma’am. And no replacements have yet been assigned to the task.”

The paleness on Miragrave’s visage became quickly replaced with the redness of anger again.

“So you’ll pose there like morons all day while corpses rot around the corner?” she hollered. “If you haven’t been explicitly ordered to do a thing, you’ll do nothing at all!? That is not how any of this works! You two will take care of it! Now!”

“Marshal,” the other guard spoke. “It takes time to build a pyre for three, a time away from our post. Could we at least ask for additional hands to make it quicker?”

“A pyre!” she exclaimed. “We’re not wasting wood on pointless ceremonies at a time like this! Get a cart from the shelter and throw them over the wall! And I’m coming with you to see that it gets done!”

The men were less than happy with this gruesome task, but knew better than to argue. The Marshal being in such a state of mind, there being impromptu trials and additional bodies wasn’t at all unthinkable.

A side door was opened next to the clinic and the men went to retrieve a cart from the storehouse in the backyard. When they came back, Lieutenant Deitriche and Waramoti helped them load the bodies, after which they dragged the cart out and up the long ramp to the east side curtain wall.

Wind blew hard on the wall walk and the mountains in the distance seemed to watch on with condemnation. The innate human revulsion towards the dead aside, even foreigners surely deserved a more respectful sendoff than being cast in a gorge like garbage, nameless and forgotten. But the times were trying. One troop took the legs, the other the shoulders. They paused at the parapet, glanced at the Marshal to see if she wished to say a prayer or anything. She didn’t. She only nodded at the two. “Do it.” And one by one, the bodies were cast over the battlement, to be smashed upon the rocks far over a hundred yards below. No one was there to miss them. Their families and friends were already waiting for them in that place where all men were bound and of which the living couldn’t know. Were they with Divines or devils was up to each one’s faith.

The officers and the bard followed the proceedings from the side with a distant look, silent. Or not quite. Standing a few paces away, Waramoti could hear Miragrave mumble something under her breath, a deep frown on her brow.

“Corpses from the archive…? Whose corpses…?”

Nothing even more unpleasant happened. None of the bodies randomly sprang back to life, or protested against their unethical treatment. Once the last of them had vanished in the blue of the shaded valley, they maintained a moment of silence, the southern gale howling in their ears. Then the funeral was done.

“Return to your post,” Miragrave muttered to the knights and departed.

“Well done.” The Lieutenant gave the troops an apologetic look and then followed after the commander.

Whether the medical bay was their destination, or whether the Marshal had forgotten about her headache, was left out of Waramoti’s record. He had lost his will to keep them company further than this and took another way around to his destination.