Editing Tales of Leo Attiel:Volume4 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 3===


Although Oswell Taholin was a vassal-lord with a castle and lands in Atall, he had often dreamed of receiving an appointment in Allion, yet he had failed every time.

And this time as well.

He had been going to use Darren, who held a personal desire for revenge against Leo and Savan, to carry out the wishes of one of Allion's generals, Hawking, to both erase Leo and destroy the church that was being built in Savan’s territory, but... there is no need at this point to go into details about how that ended.

Darren was defeated. Oswell had sent Lance Mazpotter's unit to him, but they had disappeared after the events. As far as Oswell knew, they hadn't even sent a messenger. Perhaps Lance had been defeated in battle. They were, after all, a bunch of hardened thugs, so if that had happened, they would have scattered in all directions, forgetting any sense of duty towards their employer.

''Darren and Lance were both useless.''

He and Darren had both shared the same secret, but Oswell was far more cautious than Darren had been. Even though he sent secret letters to Darren, he always had them go with a messenger, who made sure that they were burned after Darren had finished reading them. There shouldn't be a single scrap of evidence still remaining in Olt Rose Castle that could prove the relation between Darren and Oswell.

Although that was something of a relief, it didn't do anything to lighten the bitterness of having his plan thwarted. For a while, Oswell was as sulky as a child.

Unlike Darren, he wasn't in the habit of going hunting or horseback riding every day; unlike Leo, he didn't read much; and nor was he a man who particularly treasured the time he spent with his family, like Bernard did. At court, he was, on the whole, an eloquent orator and a man who made his surroundings laugh with his ready wit, but he didn't really like to be in the limelight.

He didn't particularly enjoy drinking, either. He had no particular feelings about food, and he wasn't thinking of a taking a mistress this late in life. On a superficial level, he had plenty of friends, but no close companions that he could spend hours at a time with, so other than work, he didn't really have anything that he could do with his time.

He mostly stayed in his room, sitting in a chair with his own thoughts. He had no serious problems in his day-to-day life. His wife was a silent and submissive woman, and his two daughters had married into the houses of long-serving retainers. Oswell had also handed over the management of his lands to his adult son. Seen from the outside, Oswell's life was as easy and as satisfying as could be.

But he thought.

Since he very few problems, his thoughts quickly flew beyond every day matters and scattered in various directions.

Oswell Taholin was a man who had originally strengthened his ties with the princely house, yet he had suddenly started intriguing with Allion and, from then onwards, he had plotted several times to betray Atall's ruling family. Perhaps the time simply spent thinking, alone in his own room, had influenced that.

In the past, Hayden had inwardly accused him of being 'easily swayed', and that criticism wasn't unfounded. During the time he spent plunged in his own thoughts, and although he himself didn't realise it, Oswell's pride had gradually inflated. He began to think how melancholy it was that he should be in a single room of a tiny castle in a small country like Atall, he who pondered more than any great scholar, and whose thoughts galloped over every topic under the sun.

''I'm running out of time.''

He was no longer young. He had to hurry to a place where he could properly display his keen intelligence, and receive praise and honours in recognition of it. What was Atall? Who cared about the princely house?

His self-importance and conceit, which had swollen while he himself was unaware of it, was now so bulging and was inflated that he could no longer contain it. It was when Oswell was in that state that he received a proposal from Allion, and it was as shocking to him as an arrow to the head, and alluring enough to make him weep.

And yet...

''Damn you, Leo! Not just once but twice, and now three times...''

Dark emotions coiled about him and crept into Oswell's heart.

As far as he had been concerned, Lord Leo's existence was insignificant. Previously, in response to Hayden's request, Oswell had counselled the sovereign-prince to send reinforcements to Conscon Temple. At the time, Leo had still been a hostage in Allion. What would happen if Atall took action within Allion's territory, and if, as per Hayden's plan, they were found out?

''If the prince is killed'', he had thought, ''well, that's too bad.''

That was it. That was all there was to Leo's existence: no more than a fleeting life destined to vanish after having been toyed with fate, someone who was unable to take control of their own fate, simply because they had been born into a noble house. And yet, Leo had fled from Allion without permission; he had killed Hayden, the one who was supposed to open up the path for Oswell to become an Allian aristocrat; and now, he had defeated Darren, who had been the most perfect tool imaginable for Oswell to use.

Now, he had no choice but to acknowledge it: Leo Attiel was a fearsome enemy who stood in Oswell's way.

Being unable to deny his existence meant that Oswell's dream of becoming an Allian noble would remain unreachable, that the time he had spent plunged in thought by himself had been in vain, and that his life would end in a tiny country like Atall.

''Leo has to die.''

His existence was not only a barrier for Oswell; Hawking Ingram of Allion also regarded him as dangerous. Which meant that Leo's head would be the perfect present to deliver to Allion one day.

No matter how he looked at it, it seemed that his course of action had already been decided. In his room, which was conspicuous for the Allian-made furnishings within it, Oswell continued to spend gloomy nights.

So, what should he do?

Should he imitate Darren, and start by trying to gain allies at court? No, they were only fair-weather friends who changed with the wind. When Darren had been talking big, a great many people had taken a leaf out his book and harshly criticised Leo, but now, they all kept their mouths shut. In fact, now that Darren's various misdeeds had been exposed, there were plenty who praised Leo, saying that: “The prince splendidly dealt with that disloyal cur who had forgotten his own place.”

Getting them on his side now would require correspondingly huge amounts of effort, yet despite all of that hard work, he had no way of being sure that they would help him out if anything occurred.

''Doing the same as Darren would obviously just lead to failure.''

Darren had been fixated on showing off his power as an Atallese vassal-lord right until the end. In that case, the first thing to do would be to gather allies at court and send in soldiers as soon as he saw the right opportunity. However, since Oswell intended to abandon Atall itself, he really didn't feel like using such a long and tedious method.

─ Now then, on to Hawking Ingram, whose name was mentioned just now.

Oswell had maintained his ties with that crafty general even after Darren's death but, Hawking being Hawking, he was also in secret correspondence with someone from the Holy Dytiann Alliance, to the east of Atall. And that person was Bishop Baal.

Leo would have found it extremely strange if he had known about it. Hawking of Allion and Baal of Dytiann were the very two people who had once furiously traded verbal jabs in front of his own eyes. The two of them had been incapable of holding back from attacking and reproaching one another... so why?

Their verbal sparring had, of course, been genuine. It was not a play put on to deceive Leo. But on top of having representatives attend the conference, Allion and Dytiann had also exchanged letters and communicated through messengers. Since both sides had essentially been looking for 'the right moment to quit', they didn't only exchange vociferous claims: at times, they also hinted at concessions and, occasionally, appealed to the other's fellow feelings.

Though they carried neither swords nor guns, these two people were undoubtedly on the frontlines of a war between nations. They understood the other's point of view better than anyone. As the letters piled up between them, and although it was different from feeling of belonging to the same country, a strange sense of camaraderie was born between them.

This was by no means unique to Hawking and Baal, but was something that had been true since times immemorial. Moreover, as could be seen from his relation with Oswell, Hawking's diplomatic strategies were sometimes a little “obstinate”. Even when it seemed that a situation needed decisive measures, he would take the time – or even too much time – to obtain allies abroad.

And this time as well, it was probably Hawking who had approached Baal.

Bishop Baal of Dytiann was a man who, for some time now, had loathed Leo every bit as much as Darren had.

Naturally, he didn't vent his emotions when meeting messengers fom a foreign country, but Hawking was a man who had spent many years at the heart of intrigues and plots. Baal had recently been getting almost excessively close to Dytiann's “king”, Mordin, and, although he avoided doing so publicly and always acted behind the scenes, he was also busy criticising Mordin's younger brother, the Head Archbishop Wymer, and whipping up anti-Atall sentiment among those who agreed with him, working them into a fervour about how they needed to attack Atall. When Hawking somehow found out about it, he realised that Baal hated Leo with single-minded determination.

Hawking Ingram had realised far faster than either Darren or Oswell that: ''Lord Leo might one day become a danger''. And because of that, he was currently deploring Darren's failure even more bitterly than Oswell was. And just then ─

''Oh, interesting...''

Hawking spread the letters that he had received from both Oswell and Baal side-by-side on his desk.



Within Dytiann's territory, two men had been invited to a large bishop's hall on the banks of the river.

Neville and Godwin. Both had received family names from the Church but, currently, both had also been stripped of that right. “Invited” was perhaps not the right word, either, since both of them had their hands tied behind their back, and were being led by soldiers armed with guns.

Neville was in his twenties, and Godwin in his thirties. Both were young and had sturdy physiques. Their clothes were crude, and their hair and beards had grown long, but when he saw them, the first thing Baal said to them was not a greeting but: “I hardly recognised you”
[[Image: Leo_Attiel_Den_v04_179.png|thumb]]
He wasn't being sarcastic. The last time he had seen them, they had been a far worse state than this. They had been covered in dirt and in the stench of faeces and urine, and their tattered clothes had been reduced to virtually useless scraps of cloth. That was normal enough, given that the first time Baal had met them, it had been in a prison.

Both of them were military men who had once fought for the Holy See. Within Dytiann's domains, anyone with any skill, regardless of their origins, has been gathered up and conscripted as soldiers into the 'Cruciform Army, the armed force under the direct control of the Holy See. Most of the time, they defended the papal domains and, whenever they received an order to do so, they headed off to suppress insurrections in whatever part of the territories these occurred in.

Nowadays, there was no organisation within Dytiann's territory called the 'Holy See'. Both of them were part of what was now referred to as 'the Old Church faction'; in other words, they were among those who had lost their power and their holy titles when the 'Current Church faction' – Mordin and Wymer included – had rebelled.

When Mordin's troops had been drawing near to the papal domains, a great many bishops and priests had gathered up all the riches they could carry, and quickly fled the territory.

The Cruciform Army was not the only one in charge of defending the papal domains, and each territory sent a complement of regular soldiers, but far from joining them to turn their spears against 'the enemies of God,' most of those soldiers had either escaped or betrayed them by joining Mordin. The Cruciform Army, which was largely made up of men recruited from the masses, was the only one who stood firm to the end against Mordin's troops.

From their commander, Maximo, downwards, they all of them flung their lives aside and literally used their own bodies as shields to defend the cathedral. The bloody result was that out of three thousand soldiers, more than seventy percent died in battle. Those who survived, like Neville and Godwin, were thrown into jail – every last one of them. Meanwhile, their families were kept under house arrest, and under surveillance. But perhaps the ones in charge of the monitoring were reluctant to keep an eye on all of the houses, especially in the villages that had provided a lot of men to the Cruciform Army.

“Evil teachings are being concealed within the villages, and the only way to stop them from spreading further is to purge them with fire,” they declared, before setting the villages alight and burning to death every one of the villagers.

When Mordin heard about it later, he was furious, and sentenced those responsible to be burned at the stake. But that didn't change the fact that those who belonged to the 'Old Church faction' suffered miserable fates no matter where they were.

The one which should have awaited Neville and Godwin was to die in prison. Bishop Baal, however, had visited them there about a month earlier.

In all honesty, Baal had not known their names. But he had been employing people to gather information on the survivors of the the 'Old Church faction,' and he had frequently been told that although these two were not famous, they were both highly skilled. And nothing could have suited Baal better than 'unknown but skilled'.

And now, one month later, Baal had the two men removed from prison and brought to his hall, albeit with their arms still restrained.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Baal gestured the two young men towards chairs.

Godwin immediately complied but Neville, the younger of the two, remained standing. The soldiers who had brought them there pushed him by the shoulder, as though to force him to sit, but he didn't budge an inch. While Baal was wondering where on earth he found that kind of strength in that body of his, which had grown emaciated from long imprisonment, he also signalled to the soldiers:

“It's fine,” he had them back down. “You won't yield to a sworn enemy? It seems you still have a soldier's spirit.”

“A sworn enemy?” Neville laughed with such naked contempt behind his grimy beard that the soldiers who had only just calmed down at Baal's orders now once again flushed an angry scarlet.

“I don't know you. If I was going after a sworn enemy, it'd be Mordin, Wymer, Guerric,” he continued to enumerate the heroes who had destroyed the 'Old Church faction'. “Try giving me a blade, even a small one. I'll immediately send every last one of them to Hell, those bastards wallowing in their greed to rule over Dytiann, trampling on His Holiness the Pope's dying wish. I'm not going to bother with a nobody like you, so untie me right now and...”

Unable to control himself anymore, one of the soldiers struck Neville in the back with the butt of his gun. That was followed immediately by blows to his chest and stomach, and hard enough to break bones. The young man fell to his knees and hunched his back, but he did not utter a single cry of pain, and his glaring eyes never turned away from Baal.

His state of mind seemed the same as that of one already dead, who no longer felt pain in this world, but whose hatred and resentment still vividly remained. Deep down, Baal shuddered at being hit with the horrifying emotions of a corpse.

“Enough,” yet even so, he gave his orders to the soldiers in a low and dignified voice. “You say that we are trampling over His Holiness' dying wish. Well, there are a heap of objections I could make to that, but there's no point going over the endless fights of that time of civil war, when blood was washed away with blood. And my reason for calling you here would also be lost.”

“And what business do you have with the likes of us?” Godwin spoke for the first time since arriving there.

He was similarly emaciated, but he was a head taller than Neville and had once been known as 'the colossal monk'.

Baal nodded.

“I have something I earnestly want to ask of both of you.”

Neville snorted scornfully when he hear that, while Godwin's expression turned solemn. Just as Baal had said, the war which had unfolded was one in which both sides had slaughtered the other, 'washing blood away with blood'. And those grudges ran especially deep within the survivors of the Cruciform Army, who had lost so many of their companions.

“You really think we're going to do as you say, you who snatched away the pope's throne? There's nothing to talk about. ...Kill us. That's what you're planning on doing anyway, if we don't listen to you. Go on, stab us through the heart right now. Our souls will rise to the Heavens and there, we will once more serve His Holiness.”

Neville showed all the determination of the martyrs that are spoken of and written of in history, but when Baal continued to try and convince them, he did so by alluding to their families, who were still being kept under house arrest. Not surprisingly, the expressions on the men’s faces changed. Neville ground his teeth fiercely and scowled at Baal again.

“Is that a threat?”

“How you choose to take it depends on you. However, what I mean to say is that if you fulfil my request, I intend to release both your families from under surveillance. And besides...”

Since it looked like Neville was about to say something again, Baal spoke quickly to block him.

“...This is not a request that goes against your loyalty or your convictions. I'm not going to ask you to sell out your companions from the Holy See, or to become my subordinates, or anything like that.”

“Then what ''do'' you want?” asked Godwin.

Baal pressed his fingers together above his desk, and gave them a smile that was unusually friendly for him.

“In this world, there is an agent of the Devil who spits on our most important teachings, who tramples all over the Holy Book, and who, with his sweet words, deceives good people who once shared our beliefs before dragging them down into hell. I want you to destroy him. That man's name is Leo Attiel.”



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