Editing Rakuin no Monshou:Volume11 Chapter6 (section)

=== Part 2 ===

There was no movement, however.

It would soon be a month since Kaseria Jamil had dropped anchor at Zonga’s port.

Lord Eric had left Safia with a force of three thousand and had once more trod on Dairan’s soil, but when they still failed to make any move, what he felt was not so much impatience as suspicion.

It was the same for the eastern overland force. Perhaps they had received fresh orders from their prince, since far from hurrying their steps, they were remaining lodged in a village within the buffer zone between Ryalide and Ende.

It was a strange situation. As far as the enemy was concerned, taking so much time only meant that their opponents would be able to make their preparations while they themselves whittled away their money and provisions.

''Or maybe…''

Eric considered the possibility that because of Garbera’s sudden participation, the enemy might have gotten cold feet and temporarily halted their military operation, and were now hesitating over whether to advance or to retreat.

''It’d be great if they could retreat at this point''.

He pondered whether he should send a messenger to Kaseria in Zonga. Something along the lines of: this whole thing was a plot of Jeremie’s alone and since it never had anything to do with Allion, let us for now return our swords to their sheathes.

That evening, Eric stopped by the Plutos mansion to consult with Kayness, who was like a second father to him. Kayness endorsed his plan, however –

“We cannot let down our guard. Kaseria is known to wage war with the ferocity of a raging fire, but in fact, he also excels at cunning. It’s probably because his adjutant, Lance Mazpotter, takes part in planning his operations.”

“Lance Mazpotter. I think I’ve heard that name…”

“The One-eyed Dragon of Atall. A great general who repelled three thousand of Allion’s troops with only a hundred of his own men.”

Kayness’ back was always ramrod straight and his words were few and plain, but each one of them had the weight of a blow that struck true. From back when Eric was a child, in his eyes, Kayness had always exemplified what it was to be a warrior – or rather, a man.

Belmor Plutos was also beside him. Being Kayness’ second son and close to Eric in age, the two were childhood friends who had worked hard together in their studies of academics and the military arts. He now stayed at Eric’s side in the position of a military officer under his direct command.

“However, from what I remember,” Belmor spoke up, “not so long ago, when we were working towards making a move on Garbera, there were overtures that came from Allion. And the sender was…”

“Yeah. Kaseria Jamil,” the lord of Ende nodded. When he had been fanning popular sentiment inside the country prior to invading Garbera, the one who had sent him a letter announcing we will lend you our help had been none other than Kaseria, the prince of Allion.

If he was not mistaken, it was around the same time that Allion had brought its eastern expedition to a close. Yet regardless of that, it – or rather, Kaseria Jamil – had already been on the hunt for the next scene of bloodshed. From that time onwards, Kaseria had probably been looking for an opportunity to move his armies from the east to the west, and towards the centre of the continent.

Although Eric did not go back on his decision to send a messenger, he abandoned the sweet hope that things could end with that.

''And if it did…'' He did not think that Kaseria would pull back his troops so easily. It was possible that he might be staying so long in Zonga because he had asked his country for reinforcements and was currently waiting for them.

The more he learned about the man called Kaseria Jamil, the more certain he became.

''He’s like a beast who has acquired a taste for flesh. A beast whose mother’s milk wasn’t enough so it tore into the flesh brought back from the hunt and learned the joy of drinking the prey’s blood''.

Although Eric was by no means someone who disliked war, he could not repress a shudder.

That evening, very little alcohol flowed.

Eric did not return to the camp and instead stayed to sleep at the Plutos mansion, but late that night –

“What is it?” He shouted, leaping to his feet with the alertness that came from being battle-ready during a war, then tensing up. He got changed immediately and went out.

Led by Belmor, who was similarly armed and ready, he entered a building that was slightly apart from the Plutos residence.

In a low-ceilinged room, eight or so men were tied up and on their knees. Ten garrison guards surrounded them.

All of the men were covered in soil. Their faces, arms and legs bore traces of blows, and on some of them, blood was pouring from where their skin had split open.

“Scouts from Allion,” Belmor had explained along the way. “They were wearing Endean armour, so they might have been planning to slip in as spies. They tried to flee when the guards on patrol spotted them and challenged them to halt, but we soon caught them by sending out airships.”

The men were not in the least bit agitated upon seeing Prince Eric. Among them, there were some who must have resisted ferociously and who had been roughed up to such an extent that their faces had been knocked into a different shape, but they did not utter so much as a groan.

“Pretending to be sitting still while moving plenty below the surface,” Eric muttered. “Have them spit out everything they know about Allion’s side.”

“Nothing,” one of the scouts spoke up. Blood was dripping from his mouth which had lost several teeth. “We know nothing. Ordinary soldiers like is at the bottom of the heap could not possibly know anything about Allion’s secrets. You should kill us quickly, O youthful Grand Duke of Ende.”

“Your lives no longer belong to you,” Belmor threatened them expressionlessly. “It is no longer up to you what happens to even a single one of your fingers, or even a single drop of your blood.”

When he sang at banquets and suchlike, Belmor’s voice was cute in a way that did not match his bearded face, but when he spoke in a low voice like this, his face expressionless and shrouded in shadows, even Eric could not repress a shudder.

Even so, he felt no compassion for the scouts. This was war after all. You had to be prepared for what would happen if you were captured by the enemy.

“I’ll leave the rest to you.” Eric left the place. In remaining silent, he had given permission to use torture.

Early the next day, Eric was eating his breakfast at the Plutos mansion as though nothing had happened.

That morning, Thil and Reen, the daughters of Kayness’ eldest son, Darowkin, were also present. There was no talk about war.

“Lord Prince, how long will you be staying in Dairan for?” Reen, the younger of the sisters, asked. Eric used to spend most of the year there, so she felt lonely now that he was often away from home, she explained.

“You can’t say that he’s ‘away from home’, Reen,” her older sister Thil said reproachfully. “From now on, the Lord Prince will always be in Safia. It’ll be much rarer for him to be in Dairan like now.”

“That’s no fun.”

“You sound like you have no manners.”

“You know, Thil, I’ve said it before. You always pretend to be a grown-up in front of the adults.”

Reen looked so triumphant that Thil, teary-eyed once more, started to protest. It was then that Belmor arrived. Unsurprisingly, he had changed out of the clothes that he had been wearing late last night. He reached for his meal with hands from which the blood had recently been wiped.

Arranged on his low, personal table<ref>Eric and the Plutos family are eating at the kind of [https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%86%B3 low, single-person tray-like tables] that you might see in some traditional Japanese inns.</ref> before him were vegetables, a small portion of rice, and fish from the western lake. Ende’s nobles mostly used chopsticks to eat, and Belmor praised Reen for how good she had become at holding hers.

Fearsome warrior though he was, he was also a good uncle to Thil and Reen, and the conversation flitted from one light-hearted topic to another. Belmor clearly found his nieces utterly adorable, beaming with joy when the two young sisters called him “Uncle” and looking less-than-reluctant when they pestered him to “sing another song for us”.

After breakfast, Eric and Belmor returned to camp.

They had managed to get some results. As Belmor spoke of that, the expression he wore seemed to belong to a completely different person from the one who had been at the Plutos mansion.

They had taken each of the eight to a separate location to continue their “questioning” but, at first, all of them had kept their mouths shut. As the “questioning” branched into various different forms, however, they had finally revealed something.

“Prince Kaseria will not take action for another seven days. He’s waiting for reinforcements from home.”

All eight of them.

Finding that suspicious, Belmor did not loosen his grip. It seemed to him that they might have been instructed to give false information if they were caught. One of them died but, just as dawn was approaching, two of them tremblingly started to talk.

According to them, Kaseria had already led the elite of his troops to the south of Zonga. Beyond the river to the southwest of Dairan which currently formed the national border, there was a forest within which there was an old fortress. It had belonged to a now ruined clan that had used it to fight against the many nomadic tribes in the area. Kaseria was currently lying concealed within that fortress and would soon have a detached advance along the coastline. The plan was for that large force to line up in a conspicuous battle formation, so as to give the impression that Kaseria himself was a part of it. When Ende’s army moved to intercept it, Kaseria and his troops at the fortress would strike at their flank…

“When we informed the remaining spies of that, it was obvious at a glance that they were agitated. Looks like it’s reliable.” As he made his report, Belmor could not conceal his excitement.

It was as though a harsh wind was striking against the Prince of Ende’s cheeks.

This is the best possible chance to defeat Kaseria. Eric was of course aware of that. Moreover, and just as he had feared, the scouts had hinted at the possibility of reinforcements. After having dealt with Eric’s intercepting troops, they would continue to advance south with an even larger army.

''Right'' – Eric ordered that preparations to march be made in secret. While these were ongoing, they also sent out scouts of their own to cross the border and investigate the area around the forest. However, they could not afford to wait for these to return; the captured scouts did not, after all, know when Allion’s forces would start marching from Zonga.

So first, they needed to make their own move. It would be fine for them to advance and then later, when they met up with their scouts and received their reports, decide on their next course of action.

“Shall we send a messenger to Prince Zenon?” Belmor asked. Eric pondered for a moment then shook his head.

“We’ll just have to do so ‘after the fact’. For now, I want to avoid information leaks as much as possible.”

Eric’s words sounded plausible, but part of his reason was definitely because he was eager to first establish his own military achievements. Even so, that was not out of some shallow wish to be seen as a hero.

Eric would henceforth be carrying the weight of Ende on his young shoulders and among the retainers, there were many who still doubted his abilities. Thinking about the future, Eric absolutely needed a brilliant military record to his name.

It was after all Eric’s decisiveness which had earned him recognition as a successor from his father, who had then been on his deathbed.

Unfortunately however, Eric had yet to acquire any reliable aides or capable strategists to help him draw up plans.

There was, for argument’s sake, Kayness Plutos, whom he trusted as an outstanding warrior, but the ones he had waged long years of war against were mainly the nomads and their sporadic raids. They were enemies who excelled at tactics involving surprise attacks, but they did not use intricate strategies.

In other words, neither Kayness nor his pupil, Eric, had any experience with information warfare.

Furthermore, at the time, Eric was missing another important piece of information, albeit one of a slightly different nature: a little while earlier, a messenger from Crown Prince Gil Mephius had arrived in Safia offering to send reinforcements. Because of a delay in reacting to it however, the news had yet to reach Eric himself.

The capital was still reeling from the rapid succession of events involving the Grand Duke’s demise and Jeremie’s flight, but it also proved the lack of coordination between Eric – the future ruler – and his retainers. 

Actually, when Eric made his decision to launch himself from Dairan, Gil had finished making arrangements with the chief retainers who were in Safia at the time, and had already arrived in Ende. If he had known of that beforehand, Eric’s actions might have been very different…

Be that as it may, Eric organised his forces in a great hurry. He would lead a thousand; any more than that, and the enemy might suspect something.

First, he would pretend to be going on patrol and leave with a troop of three hundred and so sent word to Kayness Plutos to “Have them open the gate.” This was in case enemy spies were still lurking nearby and to prevent them from realising that they were embarking on military manoeuvres.

They then met up with a force led by Belmor, which had previously left Dairan under the pretext of going to train. A unit of riflemen subsequently left through the gates and caught up with them.

Late that night, they crossed the River Daivim, which formed the border. They had previously sent over several small-sized air carriers, with deliberately long intervals between each, so that horses and weapons were waiting for them on the other side.

At the silent riverside, under the starlit sky, Eric mounted his horse. They were not so far away from their native land, but for some reason, simply for having crossed the border, the cold seemed to pierce his skin.

While fixing his long-handled halberd to his saddle and his sword to his waist, Eric peered intently towards the darkness before them. Once the soldiers were all assembled, he calmly gave the order to advance.