Editing Tales of Leo Attiel:Volume3 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 3===


Time and time again, throughout history, the small countries covering the entire region had been compelled to come together and form an alliance centred around Dytiann Cathedral so as to defend themselves against an outside threat.

About half a century earlier, these countries had joined hands in the face of an invasion from the north. Since the war had dragged on for longer than expected, they were inevitably forced into forming a strong connection and a prolonged alliance. To the outside world, this powerful league of countries, tied together as it was by religion, soon seemed to be a single organisation, and it came to be referred to by others as the “Dytiann Alliance”.

Time and time again, throughout history, the small countries covering the entire region had been compelled to come together and form an alliance centred around Dytiann Cathedral so as to defend themselves against an outside threat.

About half a century earlier, these countries had joined hands in the face of an invasion from the north. Since the war had dragged on for longer than expected, they were inevitably forced into forming a strong connection and a prolonged alliance. To the outside world, this powerful league of countries, tied together as it was by religion, soon seemed to be a single organisation, and it came to be referred to by others as the “Dytiann Alliance”.

The Papal States expanded from around the cathedral – which, from that point in time, came to be known as the Holy See – and the Church organisation based in those states seized suzerainty over the other countries.

After more than ten years of war, the alliance achieved victory, or at least a respite, against the north. Soon after, however, the Pope succumbed to illness. This caused repercussions of a different sort from the invasion. Previously, the papal throne had gone no further than providing spiritual and moral guidance, but after the birth of the ‘alliance’, its authority was no longer merely moral, and it had become the very real ruler of a group of vassal states. Consequently, the struggle for succession to the papacy was now of a completely different nature than it had previously been.

Each country competed both openly and covertly through political influence, military might and information gathering. Before long, a succession of quarrels broke out. The Holy See should have brought them to an end, by sheer force if necessary, but those within it where instead accepting bribes from the various countries, and corruption gradually grew widespread. There were even some cases in which they used the conflicts to build up their own personal funds.

Any who disagreed with this were thrown into secret jails without being given a chance to defend themselves, and were burned at the stake without any official trial.

Popular discontent grew greater and greater. Violence against officials from the Holy See broke out in one town after another. When the Papal States’ independent army carried out ‘purges’ in response, the fires of rebellion against the Holy See finally blazed bright throughout the lands.

The various countries who had fought over who should sit on the papal throne were deeply divided into two camps.

On the one hand, there was the ‘Church Faction’, which was currying favour with the Holy See by supporting it, and which was trying to seize power as a religious state, on the same model as the current regime. Opposing it was the ‘Rebel Army’, for whom the enemy was the none other than the present Holy See, and which wanted to establish a new Church power.

Among those who joined the rebellion, be they the great or the humble, there are many who are still praised as heroes even to this day. And the most representative of all were the ‘Yanos Brothers’, Mordin and Wymer.

They were originally from a poor village, but Wymer, the younger brother, had been given to the local church from a very young age, where he had demonstrated outstanding academic ability. He first became a page to the local lord, then from there he rose to become the secretary to an influential aristocrat, and was eventually employed as a steward in charge of managing estates. Since the noble family who employed him was part of the anti-Church faction, Wymer had joined the rebellion from the very start, and had manoeuvred to thwart the Church faction’s plans and to prevent interventions from other powers. He had also made full use of his inborn talents by launching a propaganda campaign to win over the masses.

The manoeuvres that Wymer set up proved effective, and the anti-Church faction obtained tremendous support from the people, while also scoring one victory after another against the Church faction.

At around about that same time, Mordin, who had remained in their native village, caused an uproar. He was still only a mere farmer at the time, but he was built along massive lines, and he had always been absurdly strong.

One day, an official who was in with the Holy See came to visit the village, on the pretext of ‘making an inspection’. In reality, however, he had come to con the gullible villagers with a fake get-rich-quick scheme; claiming that they would need initial capital to start, he lent them money at illegally high interest rates. When the villagers were unable to repay him, he mercilessly seized their lands and fields. Those who resisted were roughed up by marauding soldiers who had been hired with Church money.

Mordin’s father was also among those who were assaulted, and he was beaten until he couldn’t stand anymore.

Mordin flew into a rage. He hid himself in the surroundings of the church which served as the marauders’ base and, when some unlucky soldiers in groups of one or two happened to be loitering around, he caught them, dragged them into a clump of bushes, and beat them to death, before taking their swords, armour and other equipment from them.

When the soldiers, unsure of what was happening, cautiously showed themselves, Mordin and a few of his friends, wearing the equipment that he had stolen, ambushed them and slaughtered all thirty of them, as well as every one of the officials who had been staying at the church. This provoked the Holy See’s fury, and they put together a full-scale subjugation corps.

With no means left with which to fight, Mordin had already resigned himself when his younger brother Wymer heard of his native village’s plight, and dispatched a troop from the rebel army.

After an impressive battle and with the help of his powerful allies, Mordin magnificently routed the subjugation corps. Shortly thereafter, he too joined the rebel army.

Just as the younger brother excelled in negotiations and scholarship, the older brother had a military genius that was now allowed to flourish.

He achieved countless exploits on the battlefield. According to rumour, while he himself was talented, he could not shake his air of rugged simplicity, which reeked of country bumpkin, and which seemed completely at odds with his aura of a hard-bitten fighter. This exerted a strange fascination on people, and prominent warriors gathered around him one after another, with the result that Mordin accomplished those feats in battle.

About ten years after the previous pope had died, and five years after the rebellion flared up, those who belonging to the Holy See, as well as those supporting them, were expulsed from the cathedral. They now became the ‘Old Church faction’, while the rebel army turned into the ‘Current Church faction’.

That was when Mordin and Wymer were given the family name ‘Yanos’.

The Yanos brothers included, the volunteers enlisted in the rebel army entered Dytiann Cathedral, in what had once been the Papal States. The civil war, however, had yet to be entirely suppressed. Another five years passed, during which Mordin became the supreme commander of the armed forces, yet even after taking the cathedral, he continued to lead his troops to hunt for the remnants of the Old Church faction.

Wymer, the younger brother, whose skills were highly valued, had carried out the role he had been given as diplomat, tasked with hindering any southwards progression from the northern countries during this time of internal strife. He was at the forefront of things when the Church was being completely reorganised and was eventually able to seize the position of its leader, appearing all the while as though he had been pushed into it by the army volunteers.

As it would have seemed arrogant to call himself “pope” at that point in time, he went no further than “head archbishop”.

Mordin, the older brother, as supreme commander of the army, and Wymer as head archbishop – it could be said that the Yanos brothers were, for all intents and purposes, the rulers of the Dytiann Alliance.
Such was Dytiann.

After the events at Conscon Temple, the upper echelons looked for every possible way of avoiding a confrontation with Allion. If you put all of its territories together, Dytiann’s power was considerable but even so, the civil war had only just subsided. Everyone in the higher levels of government recognised that it was still too early to take on such a truly powerful country as Allion.

After more than three months of exchanging letters and messengers, Allion’s side finally showed signs of caving. It looked as though things had quietened down among Allion’s hot-blooded, swaggering young warriors who had clamouring that “Dytiann must be destroyed”.

Both sides would send envoys to talk with each other. The purpose was, of course, to build a road towards mutual reconciliation.

The meeting was to be held in Atall.

Now that a place and time had been announced, the eyes of its people were on Allion, so they would be doing things seriously. Dytiann would also need to send weighty representatives. But if they made a mistake in their negotiations, if they inadvertently made too many concessions, they might be branded as ‘incompetent’. However, having said that, it they were too firm, they might cause the worst possible outcome: a war between two influential countries.

''Who on earth should we send to this?'' Within the Church, opinions were in chaos.



From the residential area, with its rows of private houses, you had to cross a long bridge to enter Dytiann’s cathedral.

In the past, the way to the cathedral had been made deliberately tortuous, and you had to cross over three separate bridges to enter. Moreover, tolls had been collected on each one of them. Not even the clergy was exempt.

The Yanos brothers had all of those bridges destroyed and replaced with this one long one. It was decorated at regular intervals with carvings of angels and saints. There had been plans to create images of the heroes who had risen to fame during the rebellion – although the present Church referred to it not as a ‘rebellion’, but as a ‘crusade’ – but these had been halted at Wymer’s urging.

Bishop Baal was crossing the bridge, sitting astride a horse. His long hair was a colour that was close to grey, and his nose was aquiline. His figure was gaunt but, being a diocesan priest, he was known as a man of dignified demeanour. In fact, once upon a time, he was a man who exuded so much vigour that the other priests and deacons would hurriedly clear the way for him.

Now, however, after crossing the bridge and leaving his horse at the stable, Baal hunched his shoulders and concealed his face, as though wanting to hide himself from people’s eyes. This was because the plan to send reinforcements to Conscon Temple had been drawn up at his suggestion. The idea had been to use the temple, as well as Atall if at all possible, to gain a foothold that would help them obstruct Allion’s ambitions to the east. Yet when you looked at the actual results, Arthur Causebulk, the commander of the Sergaia Holy Rose Division, had been killed by an Allian general, and the upper echelons were racking their brains to find a way to repair relations with Allion.

It was hardly surprising that Baal’s shoulders stooped.

Once he entered the church’s precincts, he had the impression that he was being laughed at from every corner.

''They say that Bishop Baal over there was acting like some great tactician when he made that suggestion.''

''Lord Mordin, who supported him, must also be feeling terribly disappointed. How dare he actually come here?''

He felt like the monks who lowered their heads to him, the servants who treated him courteously, and even the little pages drawing water from the well were all hurling scorn at him behind his back.

Baal felt utterly wretched. At the same time, he was enraged at those who spent their time mocking and judging others without ever putting themselves in danger. And then, whenever he thought of Arthur’s death, it was as though his grief was tearing him apart, limb from limb.

Shame. Anger. Sorrow. How many times had these emotions tormented Baal since Arthur’s death? And although they whirled confusedly within him, in the end, they always blended into one and formed another, distinct emotion. Hatred. Or, to be more accurate, the urge to kill.

It was the same now.

Perhaps because the seething bloodlust radiating from him was so easy to sense, the sneers and gazes turned towards him all receded at once. The hatred and murderous impulse that Baal was consumed by was not, however, turned against anyone in Dytiann.

Only one man’s face was on his mind as he passed by the side of the cathedral, walked on without stopping at buildings which looked like lodgings for pilgrims, and arrived at an edifice along the wall that seemed to be a private residence. He climbed the stairs, passing by more monks as he did so, and arrived at Mordin’s office.

The door had been left open. There were several guards on either side, and when they saw Baal, their expressions turned sour and their eyes signalled to him to “wait a bit”.

He soon understood why, as a scathing voice could be heard from inside.

It was definitely not that of Mordin Yanos, and belonged instead to his younger brother, Wymer. Since that voice could occasionally be heard addressing someone as “Brother”, it was unmistakably Mordin that Wymer was one-sidedly lecturing.

''Really not a good time…'' An annoyed expression flitted across Baal’s face, but since the two ''de facto'' rulers of Dytiann were in the middle of a discussion, he could not enter. He stayed waiting outside for a while.

Simply from hearing that voice, Baal could clearly picture what the two of them looked like right now. Since he had long served a domain lord – after the success of the rebellion, the troops that lord had lead were given the name of ‘Sergaia Holy Rose Division’ – Baal himself had joined the rebel army, and had met the Yanos brothers almost immediately after doing so.

Even though the brothers could roughly be described as the older being a warrior and the younger an intellectual, in terms of height, the younger was also the taller of the two. From the top of that great height, he was berating his older brother in that ever shrill and piercing voice of his. Said older brother was probably deeply ensconced in his chair, with his arms folded and his eyes shut as he remained silent. Mordin Yanos was known to be a taciturn man. He never spoke any more than was absolutely necessary. And, of course, he never spoke a single word in joke, so it was said that even those serving closest to him had never even seen him smile.

“When we won the Holy War and had to present a new model for the Church faction, it was utterly preposterous that your wife was a pagan. Why won’t she be baptised?” Wymer kept coming back to the same thing.

Mordin gave no reply.

“And anyway, having her celebrate pagan ceremonies is a real problem. You already have two daughters with that woman. Could you please try to look at things from a wider perspective? Brother, as supreme commander of the crusader army, you need a suitable wife. And by that, I mean someone who will be the first to kneel before God’s teachings, who can serve as a role model for the people, and whom it would be suitable to call the mother of the nation. Don’t tell me you don’t already know that.”

Once he was done delivering his repetitive complaint, Wymer left the room. His archiepiscopal robes were embroidered with gold and silver thread and, having only just finished his solo performance, his skin was faintly glistening with sweat.

Wymer’s eyes met Baal’s for a brief moment. Although he was an archbishop, he was still only in his forties, so his age was not so different from Baal’s. Yet with his great height, it felt as though he was lording it over the kneeling Baal from far above.

Although he had certainly seen him, Wymer completely ignored Baal’s greeting.

“Oh, and one more thing,” apparently, he still hadn’t said enough, since he threw his high-pitched voice back into the room. “Recently, haven’t you been gloating about how the people close to you have taken to calling you ‘king’? No, I know that you’ve never called yourself that, but even so, Brother, you should be actively putting a stop to it. When others call me ‘pope’, I kneel with my forehead to the floor before them, and I would wear my knees to the bone in shame at having others unjustly suspect my intentions. Our Dytiann doesn’t need a ‘king’. You should be more than well enough aware of that.”

After that, without sparing Baal a single glance, he left with the guards who had been waiting outside the room. The matter of Conscon Temple was something that Baal had suggested to Mordin, who had one-sidedly approved the plan, without consulting his younger brother. Right after that incident had ended in failure, Wymer had likewise gone to his brother’s office, and, exactly as he had just done now, had sermonised him at length.

As far as Wymer was concerned, Baal was no more than a man who “does things that are completely uncalled for simply to toady up to my brother”. As such, his stance was that he didn’t need to pay any more attention to Baal than what was absolutely necessary.

Baal felt faintly angry, but he quickly corrected his expression and asked for Mordin’s permission to enter the room.
The only answer he received was a grunt.

Which indicated that permission had been granted.

Baal stepped into the room. Mordin was sitting in exactly the position that he had earlier pictured him as being in.

Mordin Yanos was a man who held countless titles of every rank throughout the lands of Dytiann, starting with Supreme Commander of the Crusader Army, Captain of the Church Cavalry, Bishop of the Church, and continuing up to being the domain lord of several regions. Yet his appearance seemed completely at odds with all those magnificent titles and the many glorious feats he was said to have accomplished during the ‘Holy War’.

Those with malicious tongues claimed that, ''originally, his face was longer, but the Geblin tribe crushed it flat from top to bottom with their inhuman strength''. His heavy eyelids made him look perpetually sleepy, his nose looked as though it had been squashed into the middle of his face after taking a blow from an iron ball, and his lips were thick and long.

On top of that, as I mentioned previously, he had a taciturn personality. Before Mordin rose to fame, those who met him would at first believe he was mute. ''Just what remote countryside does this bumpkin come from? They say that in the northern lands, where the winter is harsh, there are villages of serfs who can barely understand human language – did he run away from there?'' Apparently, quite a few people imagined something along those lines.

When Baal offered him his greetings, Mordin nodded with another grunt. He sent a glance towards the private secretary who stood at his side, and the old man, who was as desiccated as a withered tree, brought over cups of wine.
Baal only drank enough to just moisten his lips. The aroma was quite strong.

After that, Mordin continued to barely speak at all. Through who knew what kind of mutual understanding, every time Baal said something, the secretary would smoothly give a reply after receiving an eye signal from Mordin, whose expression barely changed throughout. This made him look all the more slow and stupid, but those within Dytiann – Baal included – who knew his personality were well aware that his appearance was deceiving.

Yet even Mordin raised his eyebrows slightly at the proposal that Baal put forward.

Even though Wymer had declared that he would be in charge of selecting who would attend the conference with Allion, Baal completely ignored this and announced that “I wish to go myself.”

Moreover, he went even further and said –  

“If at all possible, I would like you to come with me, Your Excellency.”

The private secretary stayed quiet for a while, and instead, it was Mordin himself who answered in his somewhat hoarse voice –

“To Atall?”

“To Atall,” Baal nodded vigorously. “As I have written in several letters, the enemy we now most urgently need to confront is not Allion. The only target we should be focusing on is Atall. They are enemies to God, who schemed against us and used Allion to bring Arthur to his death. Because of that, we need at all cost to avoid any kind of strain in our relationship with Allion. Your Excellency, we are weak and need your help.”



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