Chapter 187
The Embers Become Fire Again (3)
The king raised his hand and declared for the meeting to adjourn.
After paying their courtesies to the king and me, the commanders promptly left the conference hall. The palace knight commander also left after a glance from the king.
“It seems that not all Sword Masters are iron men,” the king quietly remarked when only the two of us were left.
“Even if your body has the power to split the sky and overturn the earth, it remains the body of a human being. Do humans not suffer and toil throughout their lives?”
What the king said was unexpected, and he was referencing the fact that I had been moaning in a high fever overnight.
“One thing you must know is that many are watching. Your frivolous acts will lower the morale of the army, and your minor deviances can sway many. You should never again bring worry to others through such reckless behavior as yesterday.”
In the past, I would have jumped up and said that my actions were no care of his. But I didn’t rebel against the king’s words, nor did I respond with anger. I just quietly listened because I knew what anxiety was contained in the king’s lengthy speech. The king continued.
“Do not be proud. Do not be overconfident. Be careful in everything you do and be an example to others. Let the soldiers consider you to be an unbreakable wall. Let them compare your existence with that of a thousand guns.”
The king’s voice echoed through the conference hall, and when he stopped speaking, he looked at me.
“I couldn’t manage it. But you can,” he said as a moment of self-recrimination passed through his wrinkled eyes.
“Sire,” said I, “the soldiers of the citadel already consider your Majesty like a wall, like a legion-“
“Stop saying such things. Wasn’t it you who have accused me, to my face, of being incompetent and narrow-minded?”
I had wanted to comfort the king, but he brought up our old exchange with a grin. I had truly thought him to be so at that time. I had thought that he was a man lying to himself, who stuck to his throne as if it was a comfy seat. I only learned the truth later as I started to understand the king’s situation, but that didn’t mean what I said to him had been forgotten.
“Then…” I tried to say, but I closed my mouth as I looked at the table. Words were not enough.
“Raise your head. I’m not trying to blame you,” said the king, and it was clear that he had not referred to the past to rebuke me. He rather blamed himself, saying that the fault lay with him and his foolishness.
“I did not see the nobles’ respect for the royal family rolling into the ditch – because of my darkened eyes. My shuttered ears did not hear the people suffer under the tyranny of the nobles. I did not hear the voices of resentment raised against the monarch.”
That was why only a few loyalists now sympathized with the royal family and cried out for the kingdom’s independence. Most of the nobles have begun to resent the Leonbergers for provoking the Empire into a proclamation of war.
“From the peoples’ perspective, there is no difference between royal and imperial nobles. What is the distinction?”
It was exactly as the king had said. This land had been overflowing with people willing to die fighting for the kingdom four-hundred years ago. They had wished for death rather than being forced to merge under the flag of the Empire. But not now; now the people had grown tired of the exploitation and tyranny of the nobles, and they cared not at all about who the ruler of this land was.
I hated to admit it, but the kingdom’s independence was no longer the will of the entire kingdom. Deep in thought, the king spoke again.
“If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have realized the whole truth. I would have believed that, as long as the Leonberg family stood firm, everything else would fall into place.”
The king’s tone of voice now changed.
“She wasn’t daunted by the struggle. She just chose what was right.”
The king’s voice had subsided to a near-whisper of self-pity and self-chastisement; it now rose up high, as if reaping the words.
“I did not hesitate to decide about something which I believed to be more important than life or death. If she wanted to live, she could’ve. She didn’t choose to.”
The sudden change of voice raised my head as I looked at the king. His face had been dull when I had first entered the hall; his eyes were now shining like never before.
“How could one of Balahard blood, the family said to be the best defenders in the kingdom, not know that she couldn’t protect all the outer walls with the troops garrisoned in the capital? She must have known that if she fell back and locked herself in the palace, she could have survived, held out for a month instead of four or five days.”
As I stared at the king, he quickly spoke on.
“But she didn’t. She didn’t wait for the Templars in the palace. She met her enemy on the outer walls. She did so, knowing she could not win. What do you think is the reason?”
I didn’t answer.
“It is because she wanted to show everyone. She wanted them to know that the royal family is dedicated to their protection, not that the royal family seeks the comforts of the palace while hiding behind the people getting trampled in the outer city.”
The king didn’t want me to answer.
“Because she wanted to show that we are a true royal family who regards the people as our lifeblood and will protect them with our lives.”
Little by little, the king’s breathing grew rougher.
“She did not want to leave the capital and the people to the ravages of a war that the royal family began.”
The king took a breath.
“Because she wanted to give something back to them,” the king said and continued to speak quietly. “She devoted her life, hoping that the weakly burning embers on the walls of the capital would come to burn beyond the city’s walls.”
The cold voice of the king was thin, drawn out.
“So that the embers may spread throughout the kingdom and rise like wildfires.”
The king kept talking. He spoke of the brutality of the Empire that raided the capital. He wondered about how the queen fought and what end she faced. He went on to say that no strangers would lurk in the kingdom.
“Someone may point at the death of my companion, my wife, and say I use it as propaganda. Some may also close their ears, saying that the tales of her valor are false.”
Only then did I see the heat that had risen within the king’s eyes.
“But I will ensure that no place will be beyond the reach of the fire she ignited at the cost of her life.”
It was an aspiration, a determination.
“If the embers are weak, I will also become an ember.”
It was grief, anger, and madness.
“That is the mission she has left for me.”
The moment that I identified the source of the heat in his eyes, my heart began to throb.
I had seen countless people with the same eyes as he, and I knew what path they walked, where they were headed. I couldn’t listen to it anymore and said, “Why do you want to add to the fire by burning only Leonberg’s people? If you command me, I will burn imperial fortresses, light them up as beacons of retribution.”
I asked the king, begged him, to reconsider. He grinned at me.
“Are you worried about something going wrong with me?”
I felt a feeling of love that I could not express, could not tell him about. So, I became even more anxious. I asked him again and again to change his mind. In the end, I was finally able to make him say that he would think about it. My efforts proved futile.
One evening, forty-five days later, before the king had finished his contemplations, a bad blizzard that had raged gradually started to subside. A half-elf trudged to the citadel through the thick snow. It was the black-haired Gionne, one of the five surviving swords-elves who had been left in the capital as both the queen’s escort and Montpellier’s surveillance.
Her left arm was completely severed, and her torn and crushed body had turned blue under the bite of the blizzard.
“Gionne?”
“Aah.” Even in that state, the half-elf smiled brightly when I called her name. I ran straight out to her. Gionne started stumbling before I got to her, falling down. I quickly reached out to support her so that she would not roll over into the frigid snow.
Her one half being in my arms, she waved her remaining hand and gestured eagerly. I couldn’t understand her sign language. I just stared at her hand blankly, unable to glean any meaning from her extraordinarily long and pale fingers and their movement.
Gionne realized that her sign language was ineffectual, so she quietly put her hand in mine and pulled my hand until it touched her waist. I looked down and saw the rope tied around her, the rope having scuffed into her bruised blue flesh. I almost loosened the rope when I noticed how taught it was and that it was tied to something. I shifted my eyes along the length of the rope, finally seeing what lay at its end. Something was wrapped in cloth, a cloth that had once been luxurious and clean but had now become soiled by Gionne’s journey.
I looked at the half-elf, seeing her lips move.
It was difficult to understand what she was trying to say as she forced movement into the frozen muscles of her mouth. Gionne patiently spoke again and again until I was able to understand what she was saying.
“Your mother.”
I stiffened, and my neck creaked as I once more looked at the object wrapped in dirtied cloth.
My heart constricted as I forced myself to reach out and unwrap the frozen material. Skin, frozen blue, appeared, and then I saw the entire twisted body. The head had been stitched to the torso, a patchy stitch of poor skill. It was certainly the body of a woman I knew, even if it was damaged near beyond recognition.
“Ah…” someone groaned from behind me. As I turned my head, I desperately hoped that the moan had not been the king’s. My expectations were dashed; the king was looking at me like a man without a mind, his face bleached white.
“Huh… Your Majesty.”
I hastily covered the corpse as I shuffled in between it and the king.
‘Tschk~ Tschk~’ the king staggered, stumbled, crying, “Get out of my way.”
His desperate hand pushed me, and I could not resist his helpless gesture, allowing him to push me aside. The king fell to his knees.
“Alas…”
He reached out, gripping the frozen body’s hands. The king brought his mouth to the hands, kissing them, blowing breath upon them. However, the solidly frozen hands did not open, and their former warmth did not return. The king knelt there for a long time, tracing his fingers over the body’s cheek.
“Agh,” a groan escaped from the monarch’s lips. “Waah.”
The king had been cheek to frozen cheek with the stiff remains; he now clutched the body tightly.
“Aahhh,” he wailed like a wounded beast. “Ahhhh.”
The king cried as he hugged the queen’s corpse. I could see no more of it and turned my head away, holding a wounded half-elf in my arms, feeling as her breath slowly faded away.
“Good job, Gionne.”
The poor half-elf, who had run from the capital without rest, smiled brightly at me and promptly died in my arms. Gionne, one of the poor women who had survived Sigrun’s slaughter. Five of them had lived, and I had pledged that they could live without hardship. Now, Gionne had passed away.
I closed my eyes tightly.
The sound of the wind intensified. The king’s screams so clearly penetrated into my ears through the raging storm, however. A long time after that, the dead half-elf’s body was taken away, but I still couldn’t leave. I stood by the king as he held onto the queen’s body in silence.
The sound of his weeping was heard no more, now the king was whimpering, whispering to the queen’s corpse, allowing no one to come near him.
Then, the king stood up, and our eyes met. His eyes were empty as if his soul had escaped him.
My heart slumped in my breast, and I hurried to the king.
“I have to find clean clothes,” he said. “I can’t hold a funeral looking like this.”
Contrary to his earlier sorrow, the king’s voice was quiet yet firm, and the steps he took toward the citadel were unshakable. This appearance remained unchanged in him, even during the funeral on the following day. The king carried out all the procedures consistently and with an indomitable will.
He dug into the frozen ground while a blizzard raged and laid the queen’s coffin to rest inside the deep grave. Gionne, who had brought the queen’s body to the citadel, was also buried.
“The day that the kingdom stands right and proud, she will be reburied in the citadel,” the king said. After the earth had covered the two coffins, the king, dressed in black robes, had quietly walked to the highest point of the wall. He stood there as he looked down upon the soldiers, his eyes sunken.
“Are you sad?” the monarch asked after a while, his voice echoing through the wind and across the citadel.
“I am also sad. But now is not the time for sorrow. Now is the time to be angry.”
The king’s voice was now settling into a fierce cadence.
“Then- Where should that anger go!”
“The Empire!” the soldiers shouted, their response as one.
“What is the price they have to pay!”
“Blood for blood! Death for death!”
As the shouts rang out, the raging blizzard slowly began to subside – and it finally stopped.
In other words, the king had decided to turn the land of the Empire into a sea of blood, to kill all the imperials and mount their heads on stakes. He declared that every castle raised by imperial hands would be burned, and nothing built in the Empire would be left standing.
“Death to the imperials!”
“Curse the land of the wicked!”
The legion commanders and knights had held back their emotions; they now cried out in anger and grief. Even the most prudent commanders exclaimed that vengeance had to be enacted in the name of the queen. I looked at the sky, now so clear, as if there had been no storm.
There was no longer anything preventing the king from advancing.
* * *
King Lionel Leonberger gave an order of total mobilization.
All of the kingdom’s champions headed to the border citadel, and the nobles led their conscripts and troops there as well. The eastern fleet began sailing southward through the frozen sea, and the elite legions of the west marched to the Gifted Lion Citadel. All Leonberg’s knights flocked to the border, including the Templars and their troops, who had recaptured the capital.
It was the moment when the true war began.
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