Editing Rakuin no Monshou:Volume9 Chapter4 (section)

=== Part 2 ===

"What the hell are they doing?" Talcott, a mercenary born near the coast, asked, thoroughly pissed off.

All around him were Stan, with whom he had worked for a long time, Kurun, an apprentice dragoon from Helio, and all the other members of Orba's unit.

Speaking of Orba's unit, they had, of course, accomplished considerable achievements in the war against Garda. And they had been given a very warm reception in Taúlia. Yet a crowd of soldiers had suddenly marched in on them, imprisoning nearly all of them together in a large room.

Having said ‘all of them’, they were actually short three people: the all-important captain of the unit, Shique, and Gilliam. In other words, only the Mephians had vanished.

“They can’t possibly have really been executed?”

The reason for Talcott’s misgivings was that just before they were imprisoned – which had been shortly after the invading Mephian army was driven back – Orba had been confined alone. Rumour had it that, at that time, Bouwen Tedos, who had been left in charge of Taúlia’s army, might have flown into a rage against Mephius for disregarding the peace agreement by attacking, and, as an example to others, had Orba executed.

Just as Talcott was about to start feeling genuinely anxious about their own fate, they received a change of environment. Having been locked up in a single room, they were now transferred to a large hall. It had a great many rooms and, as Orba’s unit had never been large, each member was provided with his own bed. They were also given freedom within the building. Although Taúlian soldiers stood guard outside, it was somewhat different from the treatment given to criminals.

At the same time, the Mephian mercenary Gilliam was brought to the hall and was locked up in it along with Talcott and the others.

“Jumbo, what the hell’s going on?”

“Who knows,” the contours of Gilliam’s eyes were black and blue, as though someone had hit him, but he laughed cheerfully. “If you’re clever, you’re a patriotic hero, if you’re unlucky, it’s the scaffold.”

After two days had passed, Gilliam began to talk about the truth of the situation. At first, Talcott completely disregarded the idea of Orba and Shique serving as Imperial Guards to the crown prince of Mephius, and that they had come to the west to accompany the prince, who had himself been forced by circumstances to leave Mephius.

“Why would the crown prince’s men fight against Mephius?”

“That’s just it. The crown prince himself doesn’t want war with the west. That’s why he had them drive back the Mephian army that one time.”

After that, the crown prince had given Orba a letter to take to Mephius. As on the Taúlian side, they had still not been able to ascertain the prince’s identity, until Orba returned, the people of his unit were detained as hostages.

“What a joke! What Imperial Guards? Playing along with your bragging is just going to end up putting us in danger!”

Talcott was starting to become enraged when Stan calmly interrupted.

“No, Brother. When it comes to Mephius’ masked swordsman Orba, even I’ve heard of him. They have the same name and both are swordsmen that wear masks. It makes sense.”

“Again, why can’t you keep your mouth shut when it’s important?” Talcott spoke disgustedly. “We’ve always been together for a long time now, there is nothing that you know that I don’t. Stop playing along with his reckless bragging.”

“Brother, that’s because you’re always in a trance over some woman or another and don’t listen properly to what people are saying.”

“What’s that, you bastard?”

Even if they quarrelled, their situation did not change. They were given food each day and, if they asked the guards, they could even get books and board games, but not knowing what was going to happen to them left them increasingly irritated.

On the third day after they had been moved to the hall, the streets had been noisy since the morning. As they were wondering what was going on, the door to the hall opened and a man wearing a hood appeared. Talcott and those by the door leapt up, convinced an executioner had arrived but –

“I’ve caused you trouble.”

The man pulled back the hood and exposed his face. Well, in this case, rather than a face, it could be better said to be the mask worn over his face.

“Captain!”

Many of the mercenaries rushed towards the entranceway. For a moment, Talcott, mouth wide open, clung blankly to a pillar. Then –

“Y-You. What’s with that nonchalantly showing up? Whose fault do you think this is?” He lunged to grab Orba by the collar.

Faster than anyone around them could react, Orba dodged lightly then flung a heavy leather purse onto a shelf in the entrance hall where things like water jugs were kept.

“I don’t think that this is enough to be forgiven, but... It’s prize money from Sir Ax.”

“Prize money?”

Acting out of something like a natural instinct, Talcott snapped out of his rage in an instant and immediately started inspecting the contents.

“It also includes all of your wages up until now. It’s to be divided equally between everyone.”

“What does this mean?” Stan asked in place of Talcott, who was busy counting the money.

Orba looked around at all of the members of the unit who were gathered there.

“The unit is being dissolved,” he told them. After which, he repeated the same explanation that Gilliam had given them. “I was not lying about my loyalties when I wielded my sword for Sir Ax, but actually I’m an Imperial Guard to Crown Prince Gil Mephius. Having also received permission from Sir Ax, I’ll be going back to Mephius with the prince.”

“Gilliam also told us about it, but are you saying that you fought against Mephius even though you’re the crown prince’s subordinate?” Surprise was plastered all over Kurun’s face.

“It’s a question of having made up my mind,” Orba said impassively. “But for most of you, Tauran is your birthplace. You won’t be as determined as I am, and besides, you’ll all be far more concerned about the reconstruction of Tauran than about the civil war in Mephius. So I’m dissolving the unit.”  

“That’s pretty abrupt, isn’t it?”

Where had the energy that Talcott had when he tried to seize him gone? He had rapidly gone back to looking listless and dispirited.

Orba once more looked around at everyone.

“I’m fine with you hating or resenting me. But please don’t think that because I’m the prince’s subordinate, I deceived you to have you fight. There was absolutely no connection between my real identity, the swords you wielded and the blood you shed for the west, or with the heart and soul you all displayed for the sake of defeating Garda. And it is a truth beyond all doubt that you are heroes who saved the west from the hands of evil.”

The entrance hall fell completely silent.

Everyone was moved to the point of being paralysed. When at that moment, “your manner and tone have kind of changed, huh,” Stan expressed his feelings in a low voice.

''Ah!'' – Orba inwardly put up his vigilance. Because he had not worn the ‘mask’ of the crown prince for a long time, his words and manner had come out as exaggerated. Nonetheless, the words he had just spoken to the soldiers were undeniably Orba’s true feelings and he was grateful towards the people who had fought for him under all circumstances.

After that, he summoned the unit’s treasurer and had him start dividing the money between the members. While that was going on, Orba called Gilliam to a spot away from the others.

“You made it back.”

“Yeah, somehow.”

When Shique had left for Apta, Gilliam had been imprisoned for the crime of helping him escape. However, once the meeting between Orba and Ravan Dol ended, he had temporarily been released. After which, Ravan Dol had personally come to see him.

“This is what you need to tell the people of the unit for now.” He had drilled into him the ‘circumstances’ that Gilliam had recounted to the members of the unit. The idea was to prevent too many rumours from springing up in the future.

“Since I was locked up in here, I couldn’t go and see the crown prince’s face as he went along the streets.”

“He was in a carriage, so you wouldn’t have seen it either way. Why the interest?”

“Because it’s the Prince’s face and, more importantly, because it’s the face under that mask.”

“Oh”

“You don’t need to keep putting on an act for me at this point. So now that I know, you going to have me stealthily assassinated?”

“Looks like I’ll have to be careful who to choose for the assassins. I don’t want to lose a whole bunch of soldiers just to take one life.”

Gilliam burst into loud laughter. Then, he placed his brawny arm around Orba’s neck.

“It looks interesting, so I’ll stick with you a little longer. But I’m only promising this for now. If you ever feel like I know too much or I’m in the way, and want to have me killed in secret, you don’t need to choose any hitmen. Come at me yourself. I’ve been thinking that one of these days, we should fight seriously.”

From behind the iron mask, Orba looked at this man that he had known since their time in Tarkas’ gladiator company.

“Got it,” he nodded.
 


‘Orba’, who had entered Taúlia, as ‘Crown Prince Gil’, had not played the part of ‘Imperial Guard’ for a long time.

As soon as he left the hall, he had to go around giving his greetings to a number of people as Gil Mephius; then, by which time it was nearly dusk, he had to go and see people as Orba. Bouwen Tedos was one of those that he had to greet a second time.

Basically, in the morning, he had thanked him as Crown Prince Gil for looking after Orba, and in the afternoon, he went as Orba the mercenary to apologise for having kept silent about the prince.

“The Old Master knew about it, right? Then it’s fine,” Bouwen had some inner conflict but, having also talked with the prince first-hand, his manner was outwardly calm and mild.

“Thank you for your care, General.”

“What are you talking about? Thanks to you, even I, who couldn’t join the punitive force, was able to be hailed as a hero to some extent. I’m grateful. But…”

“But?”

“I hope that next time we meet, it’ll be as friends.”

“Of course.”

It could not be said that Orba did not feel warmth welling up within him. The two of them shook hands firmly and parted ways.
 


After that, Orba went to call on Ravan Dol in his room within Taúlia’s castle. Although, for all that it was his room, it was so filled with old books that there was literally nowhere to stand. There were quite a few of those books that piqued Orba’s interest. Noticing how Orba’s eyes immediately went back to them as soon as he had finished his hurried greetings, Ravan laughed.

“Later, I’ll be happy to let you have as many as you want.”

After having regained the ‘mask’ of Gil Mephius, Orba had received no few favours from the old strategist. He started by giving his thanks for those.

Ravan’s attentiveness had been at its height when it came to crossing the River Yunos to return to Apta. First, he had provided boats on the pretext of returning Mephian war prisoners. Orba, his face hidden under a hooded cloak, had ridden on board along with the prisoners, but there had also been a man there with the exact same clothing as him.

Acting on Ravan’s arrangements, he was, so to speak, another ‘body-double’ for Gil Mephius.

It was to be feared that if Prince Gil had appeared in Apta right after Orba, the swordsman in the iron mask, had headed that way, the soldiers who had acted as Orba’s guards or the war prisoners who had travelled with him might become suspicious and start to wonder if those two people might not be one and the same.

Therefore, a person with the face covered by a hood had been slipped in among the war prisoners, and as the soldiers had been ordered to treat that person only with courtesy, when they wondered about it later, everyone would have been made to think that the man must have been Gil Mephius.

Said person was one of Ravan Dol’s men who had received his orders directly from him. Once Orba had used the name Gil Mephius after crossing the Yunos, the man had secretly removed his cloak and, feigning innocence, had returned to the other shore along with the Taúlian soldiers.

“He’s a man I’ve watched grown up from a baby. He is part of the group that I raised and that I spent as much time training as the dragons in order for them to become my eyes, hands, and feet.” Ravan explained. “His intuition isn’t bad so he may have somewhat guessed the situation, but he is a man who always keeps my orders in mind. He won’t reveal anything.”

“I see.”

“Although,” Ravan’s gleaming eyes were not at all like those of an elderly person, “just as with the books, if you want it, I will be happy to present Your Highness with his life. Ever since sailing back from Apta, he has, after all, been preparing himself to die at the Prince’s hands.”

“No need,” said Orba. “There are already two people in Taúlia who know my situation: Princess Esmena Bazgan and you yourself. There is no one with more influence than them in Taúlia. With these two people around, no matter what kind of rumours may spread within Taúlia, it is precisely because they know the circumstances that they will be able to put out the fire. And if, in the unlikely event that these two people decide to use that knowledge to harm Mephius, then…”

“Then?”

“To extinguish the fires, one will simply have to extinguish Taúlia itself. But that scenario is of course purely hypothetical.”

“Oh, indeed.”

Ravan nodded with the air of one having a pleasant chat over tea.

Having been able to express his gratitude to the Old Master, Orba was going to leave for the moment but –

“Actually, Your Highness, I would like to ask that you do not needlessly reveal what I am about to tell you.” Ravan’s somewhat guarded tone cut that thought down.

Orba smiled involuntarily. “Then we’ll be on equal footing when it comes to not letting out secrets. What on earth is it?”

“To tell you the truth, just the other day, my liege-lord Ax Bazgan was assaulted and very nearly lost his life.”

Ravan spoke with his usual detachment but even Orba found himself at a complete loss for words.

“One might suppose that my lord’s opponent was a particularly brawny assassin but, from what I heard from the soldiers who were acting as his bodyguards, it was a woman. Furthermore, the fact is that he was almost stabbed as they were sleeping together.”

Ravan explained with the air of one forced to endure their humiliation.

Orba, for his part, could not hide his surprise. If Ax were to die now, it would be a hard blow, not only for Orba himself, but also for the entire western world. Since Ax could now be considered the leader of the western alliance, while on the one hand he had all the fame and popularity that he could wish for, it could also mean that the threats to his life had increased.

However –

“This was not an assassin who was simply sent to rob us of control over the west,” although there was no else around, Ravan lowered his voice.

According to his story, the one who had saved Ax from the assassin’s blade had been neither his guards nor he himself with his trusty sword, but another unidentified person. After this person had driven away the woman who used mysterious spells, he had conveyed to Ax words to the effect that –

''Garda is still alive''.

“Garda?”

Orba repeated mechanically. Garda – the very sorcerer who had once dragged the whole of the west into a tempest of atrocities. The one whose life Orba himself was supposed to have taken with the sword he wielded.

Ax’s unidentified saviour had further added that he himself “came from the Barbaroi village”.

Garda and Barbaroi. Orba frowned, unable to grasp the meaning of those words suddenly appearing.

“Actually,” Ravan Dol picked up a book in his collection from a set of tomes that looked particularly ancient, “after Garda was defeated, we investigated the ruined temple in Zer Illias that served as the sorcerer’s base and found books similar to this one. It seems that they were memorandums left behind by a subordinate of Garda’s – by ‘Garda’, I am not referring in this case to the sorcerer that the western alliance fought against, but to the man who served as the head magician and High Priest to the Dragon Gods more than two hundred years ago, in the era of Zer Tauran.”

“Oh?”

The story was becoming increasingly perplexing.

“Naturally, the Bazgan House, descended from the king of Zer Tauran, also possesses books from that period but, most of them do not go beyond conforming with the doctrines of the royal family and of the priests. The real facts about the dark side of history, or in other words, the parts which are inconvenient for the royal family, have not been set down in writing. This book however is held to be particularly precious as the author, despite being one of Garda’s direct subordinates, appears to have incurred his displeasure at some point and was thus kept away from politics and religious functions. Probably so as to avoid it being burned if it was later found by people from the royal family or by Garda, the entire text is written in code.”

“Meaning that it records something close to what the people of the time really thought?”

“Exactly. Moreover, it is the true opinion of a man who was close to Garda, who has remained an enigma from that day to this.”

Naturally, Ravan had been seized by an intense curiosity. Fortunately, Ax had ordered him to convalesce a while so as to heal from the wounds he had suffered during the war and so he was able to spend most of his waking hours studying the book.

“I’ve still only managed to decipher part of it, but for a westerner like me, even that one part has been astounding. As an example, it contains a description related to the ‘Dragon God’s Claws’. Your Highness, you are aware of what these claws are?”

“The sovereign’s seal of the Ancient Magical Dynasty… was it? If I’m not mistaken, Sir Ax holds one of the pair.”

“That is correct.”

As for ‘being aware’ Orba had himself been in possession of that claw for a while. However, he had not directly laid eyes on it. It was stored within the war fan that Ax always kept about his person.

“According to the history books, these claws were left behind by the very mightiest of the Dragon Gods that once ruled the world, a being that must certainly have been very much like a deity. It is said that these items are imbued of a wondrous power and that those who possess them can even dominate the world, but for a long time, they were protected by a nomadic tribe that roamed the high plateaus of Tauran. And then, one day, Yasch Bazgan, who had at the time been dispatched from Mephius with orders to survey the west, chanced to encounter these nomads. The history books say that the elder of the tribe proclaimed Yasch ‘the vessel of the king who will dominate the world’ and conferred upon him the Dragon God’s Claws – thus leading to the founding of Zer Tauran.”

However, according to the memorandum that Ravan had analysed, it seemed that somehow or another, the head magician Garda had long been in possession of the Dragon God’s Claws.

“Did Garda originally hail from that tribe of nomads or did he steal them from them – and besides, the tale that the ‘Dragon God’s Claws’ were owned by a Zerdian tribe was never more than a legend in the first place. In any case, Garda personally handed one of them to Yasch and recognised him as king, while he himself excavated the ruins that had stood throughout the Tauran lands since the time of the Ancient Magic Dynasty and wracked his brains over studying them. And Garda’s magical powers increased proportionally to that, until finally, he was so powerful that not even King Yasch himself could interfere with him, says the memorandum.”

“…”

“And then, Barbaroi.”

Ravan directed a glance at Orba.

“The author states that Garda held an uncommon degree of interest in Barbaroi. The legendary territory said to be by the shores of Lake Kurán. Whether he had any basis for his belief in it, I don’t know, but what is certain is that at some point, Garda had some form of ‘contact’ with Barbaroi.”

“When you say ‘contact’…?”

“Garda himself personally visited it and there is what appears to be a description of his return. Since the author did not accompany him, the details are unclear however. Did he attempt to hold a dialogue with the Ryuujin tribe that lived in Barbaroi, did he lead a raid against them, or did it even perhaps go as far as war… Anyway, the memorandum goes on to say that from that time, Garda acquired a woman.

“A woman?”

“Yes. The author of the memorandum speculates that Garda might have taken this woman away from the Barbaroi village. Here is a description of her: ‘in appearance, she is much like a Zerdian, but her pale hair is unlike that of any of the people on this planet. Furthermore, her entire body is tattooed with unintelligible designs and she does not vocalise human words.’ Garda seems to have spent most of his time locked up in the sorcery research facility built beneath the temple, so that even the author, who at the time still had Garda’s trust and could even be called something like his right-hand man, could only seldom meet with him. The author talks about how Garda might have made this mysterious woman into an object of research into sorcery. And then...”

Ravan, who had spoken in a single breath, paused to inhale .

“And then, the woman seems to have been called a ‘Dragon maiden’ by the researchers who were close to Garda.”

“A Dragon maiden.”

“Indeed. They are beings who are also mentioned in the legends about Barbaroi. In exchange for not having human voices, they need only emit a single sound to control dragons as they please.”

Orba remembered having heard something similar. If he remembered correctly, it was just after he became a mercenary of Taúlia that his fellow mercenary Stan had told him the same tale.

And there was one more thing.

Halfway through listening to Ravan’s story, he could not help but call to mind a certain acquaintance of his. There were many similarities.

He did not seem to be surprised and shaken to the core. Rather, Orba was serenity itself. That was because the girl who had spontaneously appeared in his mind always wore the same unchanging smile.

''Well, I’ll hear about it when she feels like it'' – was all he thought about it.

Ravan Dol had said that he had previously seen ‘her’ on the battlefield. So there was no doubt that he was trying to connect this story with her, but even so, Ravan did not talk about it any further.

“Garda still being alive is honestly hard to believe. If a sorcerer could continue to live after having his head cut off, he would have to be a being that distorts the very laws of life itself. But if Sir Ax’s life really is being targeted, we can’t afford any lies or careless remarks. It’s not for me to say this, but make sure there’s a strict watch around his person.”

“I understand. Just to be on the safe side, we are currently investigating the temple ruins in Zer Illias and probing into the area around Lake Kurán where the Barbaroi village is believed to be.”

As expected, there were no oversights from that strategist.

There were certainly many points he was still curious about, but for now, Orba decided to put this conversation aside. His own war was waiting very close at hand.