Chapter 13: Morning Star (3)
Sir Dian August overcame the agony of the loathsome truth serum with a will like steel.
Isabelle chose to remember it that way.
Because what mattered was not that Sir August had screamed and hurled foul abuse at her, nor that he had seized the forearm of the man called Ivan and tried to divulge the knight order’s accounting ledger records.
Of course, Isabelle, finding that spectacle hard to watch, had immediately smacked Sir August across the face.
Only after receiving a full lecture from Ivan on how dangerous it is to strike the head of a person who has been coughing up blood did Sir August become capable of human speech again.
“Mama?”
“Hm.”
Ivan examined the well-knit wound site and delivered a clear diagnosis.
“Regression from the shock. Isabelle. This is because you hit him. Reflect on it.”
“I don’t think Sir August would agree? Can that go back to normal?”
“Don’t worry. It’s a common symptom; he’ll come to his senses in time.”
Ivan checked outside for a moment, then said:
“But he screamed so much he’ll have drawn attention. It’s about time those lying in ambush up the mountain came down, so we need to prepare.”
“What about Sir August?”
“He’ll have to be carried.”
Ivan looked at Isabelle blankly. Isabelle was looking at Ivan as well.
A silence passed, and only then did Isabelle, understanding the meaning of Ivan’s glance, ask with a flustered face:
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll fight.”
“I can fight too!”
Ivan looked down at Isabelle and shook his head. Her aptitude was certainly outstanding enough that one couldn’t find its like among her peers, but her spirit was not.
Over an incident of merely this scale her complexion had gone pale, and the fine tremor in the hand gripping her sword wouldn’t stop.
“I’m sure you can.”
“Your words and your actions are opposites, sir……?”
“Precisely observed.”
Ivan snorted and turned his back. Isabelle, left standing alone in the compartment, soon let out a deep sigh and hoisted Dian onto her back.
Heavy.
It wasn’t that she’d grown too frail to bear an adult man’s weight. The weights she used when training were heavier than Dian.
But the weight of this injured, weakened man bore down on her shoulders.
When she adjusted her grip and walked out for no particular reason, Ivan, standing with the moon at his back, suddenly glanced back at her.
“Your aptitude isn’t bad.”
“That’s incredibly insulting. Do you happen to know me, mister? Since when are we on such terms that you drop the formalities?”
“So the temperament comes from the mother.”
“Wow, you really are making me draw my sword. So is your rudeness maternally or paternally inherited?!”
“Who’s to say. I can’t recall either of their faces anymore.”
“Oh……! Is……! That so……? Uhhh…….”
His eyes and skin looked strangely young, but she looked at the shaggy beard covering the whole of Ivan’s lower jaw and squeezed her eyes shut.
It has been a mere 4 years since the war ended.
And that war had gone on for nearly 20 years.
Naturally, for someone of that age, it wouldn’t be strange to have lost one’s parents during the war……
She felt somehow wronged. I mean, so what if you have no parents? Bringing up parents at all is deeply rude! Or is it not, in Krasilov? Is that just a greeting there? (This sort of inquiry after one’s parents counts as an affectionate greeting in Droan, but not in Krasilov.)
After grumbling for a while, she finally caught Ivan’s meaning and started in shock.
“You know my father?”
“Who’s to say.”
Ivan smiled faintly at the expressions of this kid whose emotions changed so rapidly, and thought:
Well, is there anyone who could truly be said to “know” Maximilien?
He shrugged and said:
“Gather the survivors. Build a fire, tear out the train seats and cover them as blankets. This land’s winter nights will be harsher than you think.”
“If we build a fire, what about the assault?”
“That’s not something for you to worry about.”
“You’re going out alone? Without even knowing who the enemy is?”
“That, too, is not for you to worry about.”
It was his first time meeting Maximilien’s daughter, but Ivan was feeling something rather unexpected.
Her looks and talent are the image of her father’s, but her temperament isn’t in the least.
The “sweetheart back home” Maximilien had boasted about every night was supposedly an affectionate and considerate person. It seems she takes after her mother.
Love is dangerous this way. It makes one unable to face a person’s flaws and weaknesses squarely. Ivan snorted and left.
***
Among the tactical doctrines Ivan learned, there is this saying.
Assume the worst, act on the best.
It was so self-evident that back then Ivan had scoffed at it.
Meaning that was so until he chewed the sentence over again through actual combat.
The true meaning of that sentence was this.
Assume the worst. That is, the enemy will always attempt an attack in the manner most difficult to counter.
Act on the best. This means—
—if your enemy is the worst possible opponent for you, then you must duly become the same for that enemy.
Therefore, imitate the opponent’s tactics. Because the worst attack you can conceive of will be the finest offensive you can inflict on your opponent.
In that case, what Ivan had to do now was crystal clear.
First, assume the most horrific situation.
Being ambushed while fleeing after surviving would be the worst. And it would get worse still once it turned into a delaying action.
Intermittent raids coming in through the dark night compound fatigue. Ivan aside, for the wounded and a young girl it’s a fatal form of attack.
So if one assumes the worst: the opponent will act on the certain expectation that Ivan and his party will attempt flight.
Because by common sense, when a train is derailed by someone’s assault, one ought to leave the scene and request support.
Now consider the countermeasure.
Drag out time as though at leisure, and leave the opponent’s objective in plain sight. So as to look powerless.
This forces the unknown enemy to recall the personnel they’d scattered for pursuit. Because they’d now have to shift tactics from pursuit to encirclement.
This world is not a strategy simulation game. Regrettably, it’s an academy story.
Soldiers don’t immediately “output” action just because you “input” an order.
Which is to say, the time delay that occurs at the point of recalling the pursuit teams. From that moment, one begins with an advantage at the tactical stratum.
And an encirclement mounted from an offensive posture generally comes with psychological ease. They’d regard them as rats in a jar, edible whenever they liked. Which means the opponent will pick their attack timing all the more carefully.
At the point of recalling the pursuit teams, intending to drive in an unavoidable blow at optimal timing, so the target cannot possibly escape.
That is the next best. The “worst attack” the opponent is likely to conceive.
So imitate it. So that the enemy’s best may become the worst for them. Prepare an ambush, carefully hone the offensive, and spread an encirclement.
“Hoo…….”
In deep forest where the night’s shade lay thick, gripping a gun gone cold.
Ivan drew breath quietly and exhaled half of it briefly.
Crouching beneath a tree, holding his breath, slowly raising his hand.
Carefully, so that shoulder and fingertip drew a straight line. Suppressing as far as possible the hand tremor from his biorhythm.
Click.
Slowly, so that the sight line wouldn’t waver from the index finger hooked inside the trigger guard, pulling with the momentum of 3 breaths.
And then.
Bang—!
Pistol Sniping Art. A shooting technique devised so that Annihilation Corps agents, who must conceal their arms in enemy urban districts, could mount long-range offensives even with a pistol.
Beneath the moonlight, a silhouette half the size of a fingernail crumpled.
No need to hurry the reload. The first round struck home. Soon an ominous air stirred through the forest. The enemy had realized it from that report as well.
That an ambush had begun.
And they would soon realize this too.
That an Annihilation Corps ambush had begun.
Given a dark night and a deep forest, familiar terrain and a fitting weapon well broken in—
—an Annihilation Corps ambush lets one individual encircle a group.
***
Bang—!!
When the report of a discharge sounded from far off in the forest, Isabelle forced her trembling hands out of sight and braced for the enemy’s offensive.
It was plainly a sound announcing the start of a fight. Enough that birds startled from sleep fled with a flutter.
Those gathered around her were shivering before the campfire and looking at her.
“We’re all going to die now, aren’t we……?”
“I’m scared…… I’m scared…… Mama…… Mamaaa…….”
The sniffling of survivors, each bearing injuries of at least fracture severity, surrounded her.
Amid bewilderment, pressure, and guilt, Isabelle bowed her head with difficulty. These people were victims dragged in because of her. That the survivors from that huge train numbered barely more than a dozen weighed heavily on her shoulders.
Just then, a low voice came from behind her.
“The reason we call the Hero a Hero is that he is not the strongest, but the most valorous.”
“Sir August? Are you awake?”
August, borne on her back, went on in a somehow vacant voice.
“Therefore, we must not become Heroes. We must not even try. Because we must remain aware of our own frailty.”
“Sir August……?”
“We must stand in the position of the weak and look upon those like us with the eyes of the weak. The reason we take up the sword is not that we are valorous, nor that we are strong, nor that we are superior to others.”
There was still no sense of lucidity in August’s voice.
Yet strangely, it was clear and precise. As if trying to carve each letter into her heart.
“The reason we take up the sword is that it is right. Because it is just. For the great cause we ought duly to protect. Therefore, our taking up the sword is no different from giving alms to the poor on an ordinary day, or now and then helping up one who has fallen injured. Because it is a matter of course. Because it is right.”
“Sir August…….”
“So, take up the sword. Do not seek to become a Hero. Knight of Tiless. You stand in this place not through valor, but through humility.”
Now she could grasp what Dian was saying.
This was a very old and highly traditional form of the knighting ceremony.
Not knighthood as a “title” bestowed by a sovereign upon a vassal.
It was the final teaching handed down by a knight order as a body of pilgrims to their squires.
Dian August was a man of a traditional knight order, and even now, having lost his lucidity, he was reciting the words that remained most deeply impressed upon his heart.
“Take up the sword for the great cause. For the doing of good is always a small and self-evident thing. Take up the sword not for your strength, but for your goodwill. Now, your name is knight.”
Dian did not open his mouth again after those words. He only let out weakened breaths.
Isabelle knows Dian’s career. This man is a seasoned mid-ranking knight who has served since the days of the war with the Demon King’s Army.
Now she could understand why a sentence such a knight had probably heard only once, some ten-odd years ago, remained this clear without any distortion or misreading. Because she felt she too would never forget this moment for the rest of her life.
She rose to her feet and at last lifted her head to survey her surroundings.
Many people were looking at her. Afflicted by cold and fear, pain and hunger.
People driven to this because of her.
The guilt still bore down on her shoulders, but even so, now—
“I shall do so.”
Slowly setting Dian down, Isabelle stood upright before them.
The sword gripped in her hand felt heavier than before, but the hand that had been trembling only moments ago had now settled calmly and closed around the sword’s grip.
In her eyes, the Morning Star was blazing.
Sign up to join the discussion...
Already have an account? Log in
No comments yet. Be the first to discuss this chapter.