Editing Rakuin no Monshou:Volume6 Chapter2 (section)

=== Part 3 ===

The wind was changing in the west.

It was about half a month since the battle at the outskirts of Cherik. When they learned of how the combined forces of Taúlia and Helio had defeated Garda’s troops, the various countries of Tauran received almost as great a shock as they had when the sorcerer’s invasion began in earnest. 

Taúlia and Helio had reaffirmed their alliance and the two countries had exchanged letters with Cherik confirming their friendly relations from there on. Each of the small countries scattered across the northern Abbas Great Plains – most of which had sprung up from nomadic tribes – also sent messengers to Helio confirming that they would ally themselves with them. Messengers on fleet horses came running even from Altak, the southernmost state of Tauran, which stood at the edge of the desert and the wilderness west of the Numelda Gorge, which bordered Cherik.

Throughout the west, countless armed soldiers could be seen coming and going along the highways that had been trade routes at the time of the former Zer Tauran.

Partly in order to sweep away the rumour that they had been tied to Garda, Cherik, in which many from the various states had gathered, actively reached out to them and unreservedly served the soldiers stationed there with the abundant food that they had in reserve thanks to the blessings of Lake Soma. It was said that three of Cherik’s huge granaries were emptied within that half month.

During that time, the enemy made no move.

Garda remained secluded in Zer Illias and neither were there any conspicuous movements from Kadyne or Eimen, although they would probably be the first targets once the allied western forces took action. Rumours flew that the leaders of Garda’s army were in disarray after suffering their first defeat in the outskirts of Cherik, but no one knew if that was true. 

In that time of course the kings and military commanders of the west sent innumerable spies and scouts to the regions under Garda’s control, but as not a single one of them returned, they didn’t receive even a single report.  

For his part, Orba, now the commander of a mercenary platoon, received his official military uniform once he returned to Taúlia. Bouwen Tedos, the commander of the Fifth Army Corps which Orba was attached to, was currently undergoing medical treatment. Besides which, the mercenary corps, starting with its captain, Duncan, as well as the platoon leaders ranked lower than vice-captain, had all been killed at the battle at the Coldrin Hills. Therefore, the name of ‘Fifth Army Corps’ barely made sense as it was hardly functioning as an army division at that point in time.

So instead, Orba had had to recruit men from the mercenary unit under Toún Bazgan, the general in charge of Taúlia’s defence, as well as to establish his position as a captain of mercenaries and to organise his subordinates. 
They were fifty-three in total. A reasonably high number for a platoon. Amongst them, to say nothing of Shique, Gilliam, Talcott and Stan, there was also Kurun, the apprentice soldier from Lasvius’ unit.  

“The commander kicked me out,” Kurun laughed, his features still retaining a trace of childishness. Needless to say, he wasn’t from Taúlia. That he had crossed the border to be hired as a mercenary there was perhaps proof that the west was changing. “He told me I should come and learn about actual combat under you for a while. Although it hasn’t been long, he really has a high opinion of you, huh.” 

“What a flirt,” Shique said surreptitiously. His face was haughty and he had a somewhat a threatening atmosphere.

“There’s no way I’m calling you ‘captain’,” said Gilliam, an opinion that Talcott agreed with. 

Despite all this, Orba’s subordinates received good wages. Because they had money, they went pub crawling every night. Once when Shique went with them, he noticed something strange. 

“Those two are going drinking together a lot.”

“So what?” The sun was setting over the training ground and Orba handed over his horse to a page attached to the platoon. Having endured Orba’s rough and violent riding style until just now, the horse was looking haggard. 
“Gilliam is quick-tempered as you know. Talcott is excitable. Normally, they don’t get on all that well and they often get rowdy even just drinking alone. Gilliam is quick to raise his fists to other people and Talcott makes fun of others and gets them mad.”

“So you’d think those two would start fighting from the start.”

“Exactly,” a smile spread across Shique’s entire face. “You could call it something like affinity in liquor. When they’re together, oddly enough they hold each other’s flaws in check. Gilliam laughs off Talcott’s sarcasm like a funny joke and in some ways Talcott is really good at lifting Gilliam up.”

Although he hadn’t been asked to, Shique described the two’s relationship to Orba.

Because the physically very strong Gilliam brushed off Talcott’s nonsense, other people also found it easy to take it as a joke even if Talcott was bad-mouthing them. Also, for Gilliam, each of Talcott’s jokes seemed to hit the mark. That being the case, instead of laying the place to waste, he pulled his surroundings into his enjoyment.

Because of that, Shique had cleverly gotten the mercenaries who were Orba’s new subordinates to take it in turns to go out with the two of them every night.  Although compared to the regular soldiers the mercenaries came from a variety of origins, most of them were still Zerdians. There would have been plenty of them who held no kind feelings towards Mephius, their enemy since the time of Zer Tauran.

“When gossip-mongering Talcott gets drunk, he’ll also start to insult Mephius. And Gilliam sitting with them might also make for a good buffer. If they grumble among themselves that the captain is a masked brat and blow off steam together, it will be easier to bring them together as a group, don’t you think?”

“Is that so?”

Orba didn’t comment on whether it was a “good” or a “bad” idea. When Shique had finished talking, he turned to the page and saying “Another horse,” he had him get a new one ready for him.

Shique looked surprised. Orba had already spent the entire day training with a spear on horseback.

“How long are you going to do that for?”

“I won’t say ‘until I can compare to Moldorf’ but I should at least get more or less used to it.” 

Riding his fresh horse, Orba galloped across the training ground. Shique followed him with his eyes for a while until Orba’s figure was far in the distance, then he suddenly burst into loud laughter. The nearby page was startled and stared at this mercenary whose face looked like a woman’s. He was laughing as though he had desperately been holding it in until now.

“D-Did you see his face while I was talking to him?” He asked while tapping him on the shoulder, although the page couldn’t possibly have seen the face of a man who was wearing a mask. Shique laughed until he was crying. “He was in a much worse mood than usual. Well, there’s no helping it if he wasn’t happy that he hadn’t thought of my idea himself. Since he’s always, always the one to come up with the plans, he was definitely thinking about how to smooth things out with his new subordinates. And here his dear and esteemed wife Shique  had already sorted things out.”


It was less than a week after he had finished organising his unit that Orba, having returned to Taúlia with Ax, now left for Helio before Ax did. 

The military might of the various countries was converging on Helio in much the same way as it was on Cherik. There, the streets were like an exhibition presenting the various types of Zerdians, with the figures of nomads with no settled dwelling being especially conspicuous. Incidentally, most of the nomads pitched their tents outside the city walls where they also hunted freely and performed their training. 

Orba’s unit would see its first service there. Their duty would be to serve as guards along the road from the Coldrin Hills to Helio. It wasn’t only soldiers who were coming and going: lines of pack animals with goods piled high on their backs as well as crowds of people gathered, and many caravans were expected to arrive.

There were no attacks from the enemy.

It was a tedious duty since Helio’s army was also cautiously keeping a close watch, but meanwhile, whenever a caravan travelled through, Orba would talk with them and buy maps of the Tauran regions from them. They covered the entire western region, from maps focussed only on the areas surrounding Kadyne or Eimen to ones hand-drawn by the travellers that showed the byways and secret paths through the mountains and valleys.

“Have you taken up map collecting?” Talcott teased as he happened to peer at what Orba was holding in his hand. “Oh, the guy you bought from earlier really did an outstanding job. That’s the old place name being used there, look, and the landscape features are drawn wrong. I’m pretty sure I could do better job at drawing that.”

Just as he said, Talcott had some artistic talent. Whenever he went to a bar in town, he would come on to women who caught his fancy by drawing their portrait. 

Speaking of Helio, there was an eatery there which Orba, Talcott and the others all visited together on the day they first crossed over the border from Taúlia. It was a small place managed by just two people, a young woman named Kay and her younger brother Niels. It was there that Orba and the others had gotten into trouble with some of Greygun’s men, mercenaries from the Red Hawks. 

It should have ended as just an ordinary brawl, but of all things Helio had fallen under the rule of Greygun and his Red Hawks. Because of that, Shique had been openly worried about what might have happened to the eatery. Soldiers acting as though the town were theirs might have attacked the shop and kidnapped Kay.

And so they had stopped by there for the first time in a long while, but the door was locked and when they peered through the window, the inside looked deserted. Just as they were all starting to feel uneasy, a voice called out to them from behind.

“Ah, it’s you!”

The woman wearing a red headscarf was none other than Kay. She was holding a bag of food in her hand. 

Answering their questions, she explained that as soon as they had heard that Greygun had rebelled and seized the throne, the siblings, naturally fearing for their own safety, had gone to take shelter at the house of one of their regular customers who ran a general store. That store handled everything from ordinary groceries to swords and armour which had been repaired after being abandoned on the battlefield, and it was comparatively prosperous. Kay said that with his help, they were planning to reopen the eatery soon. Incidentally, the “he” in question was standing next to Kay and holding bags like her.

“Oh-ho, that’s good,” Talcott crinkled his nose as it was obvious even to an outsider that Kay and the man didn’t have just an ordinary relationship. 

At any rate, that evening they toasted the eatery’s planned reopening. They toasted Helio’s recapture and toasted Orba’s inauguration as platoon leader. The drinks flowed merrily the entire time, but Talcott didn’t get drunk as he usually did and by the end, he was crying into Gilliam’s broad chest. 

“I’m amazed,” whispered Shique. “Maybe he was actually serious about Kay.”

Holding his wine cup, Stan shook his head. 

“Brother is always serious.”

Talcott and Stan had known each other for a long time. He was probably used to such scenes.

And so, the night turned into the next day. 

An unexpected visitor showed up at the Helian garrison where Orba and the others were stationed. Or rather than a visitor, it was an applicant wanting to join the mercenary platoon. Of course, his coming to see Orba was illogical. Orba worked with mercenaries from Taúlia, not soldiers from Helio. However, he wasn’t able to flatly turn him away as it was Kay’s younger brother, Niels. 

Gilliam, who was at the garrison, started out by shouting at him.  

“You’re not fit to be a soldier with that leg. Go back and hide behind your sister.”

About three months earlier, Niels had enlisted as a volunteer and had taken part in the battle at Eimen against Garda’s army. There, he had been injured in his leg and he was still dragging it from the knee down when he walked. 

But Niels stubbornly ignored him. He was carrying a bundle under his arm in which he had probably gathered up his belongings and a brand-new sword hung from his waist. 

“My sister has someone good for her now. This isn’t going to cause trouble for anyone anymore. I don’t want a life where I’m just going to grow old helping my sister in this town!” Orba, who had just left the place, headed back. As soon as he saw that mask, Niels started vigorously appealing to him, almost kneeling at his feet.

“What are you going to do Orba…… Captain?”

At Shique’s question, Orba drummed his fingers against the sword at his waist.

“Follow me,” he said to Niels and brought him to the garden. It was little more than a courtyard surrounded by a high wall.

“Will you hire me?” Niels followed behind him, looking somewhat agitated. He was about the same age as Orba, perhaps a year older. Orba drew his sword as soon as they reached the garden.

“Come at me. I’ll test you out.” 

His eyes gleamed quietly behind the mask and the sunlight reflected on his sword was piercing. Niels gulped.

At about the same moment, his sister Kay rushed into the garrison. She was no less agitated than her brother,

“Please stop him! He won’t make it back a second time if he goes to fight! Why can’t he understand that he’ll just end up like father?” 

“Now, now. Calm down,” Gilliam shrugged his broad shoulders. “Your little brother will be right back. Look.”

Gilliam pointed to the garden door just as Orba came through it. Niels was following hot on his heels. But he looked as though he was about to stumble as not only his leg but also his arms didn’t seem to be moving properly. 
“P-Please wait. That was, just one-sided,” he was gasping for breath.

“I told you, didn’t I? You get five tries to hit me. And if with that you can’t even graze me, then give up.”

“I wasn’t able to prepare. And you know, with this leg…”

“Who’s going to go easy on you on the battlefield because of your leg? Your enemies will aim for it and your allies will leave you behind as a dead weight. Either way, you’ll just end up as a corpse.”

“I-I’m… I’ll…”

His arms still hanging loosely from where they had gone numb when Orba repelled his sword, he fell to his knees. Orba walked away without turning to look as Niels’ tears dripped to the floor. 

“Idiot. You idiot. You really are, you,” Kay’s voice was choked with tears as she hugged her little brother’s shoulders from behind.


While these various events were taking place, Ax Bazgan, the de facto leader of the western alliance, wrapped up his affairs in Taúlia. From organising the troops and ensuring the soldiers’ provisions to deciding what to do about defence and finance while he was away, there had been a mountain of things for him to do. And while he was thinking about them all, there was the risk that Garda would have pushed forward his western invasion before Ax had even taken a single step out of Taúlia.

Because Taúlia was situated at the eastern tip of Tauran, it didn’t have the same incessant coming and going of people as Cherik or Helio did. Because of that, there was no need for the same constant vigilance, but at the same time, its coffers did not grow full like those of the two other countries. There was barely any trade with Mephius to the east and even that was confined to a merchant called Zaj Haman.

“We can’t use up all our swords and bullets in this war.” Ax spoke lightly but his words were not a joke. If they defeated Garda but failed to quickly secure the northern trade routes, Taúlia or perhaps even the west itself would be weakened and would risk starving. 

Also among the many concerns that Ax had settled was a visit to Bouwen Tedos’ sick room. Bouwen lay in bed in his room within the Fifth Army Corps’ barracks. He was embarrassed that his lord had come to visit in person and ashamed that he himself had brazenly survived despite losing the troops he had been given. Ax said only,

“Shame gets you nowhere. Work harder than ever for the sake of those who were lost.” Bouwen wept at his words.
Afterwards, Ax had Bouwen moved to a large room within the castle and entrusted him to care of the doctors who tended exclusively to the royal family.

For his part, the strategist Ravan Dol had managed to regain consciousness and was likewise bedridden within his apartments in Taúlia while he recovered his health. He was suffering from broken ribs and was in pain from his waist and back, so right now, there was no way he could join the front.

Ravan had refused to let Ax visit him.

“If you have the time to come and look at this old man’s face, then use to it to do what you should be doing as lord of Taúlia.” 

His words were admirable but Ax understood what the strategist was really feeling. In a word, humiliation. Although the relationship between the two of them was that of superior and subordinate, it was also like that of teacher and student, like that of father and son, and occasionally like that of stubborn mutual adversaries. 

In the end, Ravan had gone so far as to declare that “If my lord comes to see me, I will kill myself by slitting my own throat.” On the other hand, he had written a letter with measures for fighting Garda and had had it sent to his lord. 

That busy period passed and Ax was once more on horseback, about to leave for Helio. Toún and Raswan, the father and son in charge of Taúlia’s defence, were there to see him off.

“Toún, I leave things to you while I’m gone.”

“Brother, I look forward to hearing about your travels. Be sure to tell us about how the sorcerer begged for his life.”

Toún said easily but as they bowed to Ax, who sat atop his horse, no word was heard from his son Raswan. But he suddenly fixed his eyes on the war fan that hung at Ax’s waist. Perhaps noticing his gaze, Ax casually made as if to hide it with his mantle.

At that time, was there anyone to notice that Raswan’s lips curved into a sinister smile?

Garda’s invasion had begun about half a year earlier. 

The western alliance’s counter-attack was about to start.



<noinclude>