Editing Tales of Leo Attiel:Volume1 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 2===


“Leo, you need to run away quickly.”

It was only a little past noon when Florrie Anglatt said that to Leo, her expression anxious. 

Leo had been in a parlour, reading. The swaying curtains were embroidered with reproductions of famous paintings depicting the spirits in human form. 

''Run away?''

At first, he thought it was a joke, but Florrie’s usually rosy cheeks were pale and the blood also seemed to have drained from her lips.

“If you don’t run away quickly, Leo, you’ll be killed.”

The tears that were pooling in her eyes seemed about to slide down her ashen cheeks. 

At present, Claude Anglatt was not at the residence. 

– It had all started when relations with Conscon Temple had deteriorated. Leo would not easily forget how a group that included the high noble, Hayden Swift, had gone to the temple but had failed in bringing about a reconciliation. When a punitive force was raised with Hayden at the helm, Leo had felt considerable surprise.

They had only sat together for a single meal, so Leo himself didn’t know why he felt that ''it’s not like him.''

“It won’t drag on too long,” Claude had said, looking uninterested. It was obvious that he was opposed to attacking the temple by force. However, as an upstart general, he could not say anything against the plan that Hayden, a distant relative to the royal family, was pushing forward. Claude seemed to be hoping that at least this would be over soon, given that the temple was recruiting soldiers but was unlikely to have an organised plan of resistance.

Yet the fighting went on for longer than expected. And Claude could not remain uninvolved. 

A few days earlier, a messenger had arrived at the Anglatt mansion. He carried directives from Hayden, “Send soldiers to the highway to help escort the provisions of goods. Claude is to command them in person.”

Hayden Swift had established his headquarters at a location just south of Claude’s territory. The distance between the two was not very large, but the way was obstructed by steep mountains and deep valleys. Passing through them required having the right equipment and skill, as well as courage verging on recklessness. Horses could not be used to transport either goods or people, so, naturally, the route was inefficient unless one had an air carrier capable of high-altitude flying. Because of that, Hayden’s army was relying on the route from the west for its supplies. That was the highway that they were to protect.

“Even though I’ve been tasked with guarding the border, I’ve got to send soldiers to the highway?”

Claude was unable to hide his indignation, but Hayden had received the king’s consent for his military operations. So Claude had grudgingly ridden from his fortress to go and carry out his task.

Another few days had passed when a disturbing rumour reached Leo, who was at the Anglatt mansion. It was being whispered that the main reason why this battle was dragging on was because: ''The Principality of Atall is sending reinforcements to the temple.''

The Principality of Atall was a neighbouring country with which Allion had crossed spears seven years ago. Not knowing its place, Atall had joined up with Shazarn to pick a fight, but once it had been made to realise the overwhelming difference in power with Allion, it had all at once lost heart and had accepted a reconciliation. Afterwards, they had handed over Lord Leo Attiel as a hostage.

Yet in spite of this, it was sending reinforcements to a force which was hostile to Allion. In other words, this was a betrayal.

“Oi, it looks like your country has abandoned you,” Jack, Claude’s second son, harshly pointed out to Leo at the breakfast table. 

These past two or three years, his spite towards Leo had died down considerably, but he was apparently unhappy that his father had only taken Walter along with him to accomplish his duties, and although Jack’s expression had been starting to mellow, irritation was now creeping into it. At the same time, his attitude towards Leo was reverting back to what it had been when they were children.

“Once things are settled at the temple, Atall will be next. Since you’ve no more use as a hostage, the first thing that’ll happen is probably that you’ll he hanged as an warning to them.”

“Stop it, Jack,” again just as in their childhood, Florrie, who was sitting with them, defended Leo while tears were pooling in her doe-like eyes.

“Humph,” snorted Jack, biting into the bread he had soaked in his soup. “If you don’t like being called a traitor, you should take up a spear too. If you want to survive, you’ve no choice but to kill other Atallese and demonstrate your loyalty to Allion.”

He was able to make fun of Leo like that because the rumour had not yet grown beyond the point of being a mere rumour.

“Damned Atall, even though we showed them compassion seven years ago.”

“They’re pretty full of themselves for such a small country. We should’ve just conquered them back then.”

“We’re in charge of the hostage, right? Take this brat and throw him in a cell. If Atall doesn’t cease its aid to the temple, we’ll hang him. They will, of course, have been prepared for that.”

It seemed that the situation that Jack was describing, half in joke, might become reality. As previously mentioned, there were many adherents influenced by the Cross Faith within Allion. Consequently, while the country had not risen as one in support of subjugating the temple, the despondent feelings that had emerged in that situation found an outlet in ‘Atall’s betrayal’. Hatred started to swell against Atall, rather than against the temple.

''It’s impossible, right?'' At first, Leo had been dubious about Atall sending reinforcements to the temple.

There was of course the fact that he himself was a hostage, but also, because of the influence of the vassal lords, who governed the southern half of the country, the sovereign-prince could not move large numbers of soldiers any way he wanted. In other words, he would never have been able to send enough soldiers to overturn the difference in strength between Allion and the temple.

Yet every day, the rumours gained more credibility, and Leo started to feel a little anxious as he begun to wonder if he had no worth as a hostage.

''From the start, I was never sent to be a hostage. Back then, I had already been abandoned.''

Leo chased away the feelings of bitterness and the memory of his mother’s voice just before they had time to graze the surface of his consciousness. The skill he had grown most proficient with during these six years was not using the sword or the bow; it was the strange ability he had gained to detach inconvenient emotions from his mind. It was being able to gaze from a distance at those dark emotions which had turned into a ''sludge'', and which had then taken on a form that looked vaguely like Leo Attiel.

Thus, setting his own problem completely aside and thinking about the situation, he felt that there was definitely something unnatural about his father’s actions and about how Hayden had taken the initiative to lead soldiers.

Deliberately thinking things through to the end, he could only conclude that: ''it’s as though everything is conspiring towards my death. Conscon Temple, Hayden, Father – absolutely everything.''

He unintentionally gave a bitter smile.

“I see – I’m going to be killed, aren’t I?” he groaned out loud, causing Florrie Anglatt to become frantic.

“No, no! You won’t be put to death, Leo! I won’t let them!”

Leo came back to himself when he heard a voice sobbing. The feelings, the stagnant ''sludge'', that he had temporarily sent far from him now returned, and with them, it was as though the blood slowly started flowing again through his limbs which had gone numb.

According to the story he heard once Florrie had calmed down, she had heard women gossiping when she had gone down to the small town close to the castle. They said that Hayden had apparently sent envoys to the Anglatt residence, and those envoys consisted of several dozen men, all of whom were armed. Thinking about why they would go to the Anglatt mansion now that Claude, the head of the family, was away, it seemed that they had received orders to bring Leo Attiel to Hayden’s encampment.

Leo opened his eyes wide.
“But what kind of business could he possibly have with me?”

“I don’t know. But those rumours – there are are those wicked, untrue rumours,” what Florrie was saying became hard to follow. “I also talked about this to Jack. I wanted him to promise that he wouldn’t hand you over, Leo, if those envoys came for you.”

Perhaps because she was still so worked up, Florrie’s eyes once again started to fill with tears as she talked.

“But Jack had nothing to say except cowardly excuses! He’s always throwing his weight around, but when it comes down to it, he doesn’t have any backbone!”

“I can understand Jack’s situation. Right now, he’s the acting head of the family, here in this castle. He can’t cause any unnecessary trouble on just his own authority.”

“What unnecessary trouble! Your very life is on the line!”

As for that, well… Leo mumbled something that sounded like he excuses.

Perhaps irritated by that, Florrie suddenly raised her tear-filled eyes and grabbed him by the hand. 

“Let’s run away, right now. I’ll come with you.”

Her slender arms held surprising strength. She had already changed what she was saying from “run away” to “let’s run away together”. Leo remained silent but just then –

“Miss Florrie!”

A plump, middle-aged woman came barging in. She was a servant employed by the Anglatt family, and right now, she had an air of urgency around her. Worried that she might have misunderstood something, Leo was about to shake off the girl’s hands, but:

“I sent Milius from the stables to keep watch on the highway and just got a message from him. The envoys from the army will soon be here!”  

“Leo,” Florrie’s hands gripped his with increasingly unusual strength.

While Leo almost had the impression that he was being burned by the fervent emotions surging in her eyes, he went along with Florrie’s actions and started walking.

''Run… Should I run? But where, and how?'' He asked himself as they left the mansion and continued to the stables that located by the walls.

His heart was being tossed about on a wave of conflicting thoughts, but separate from that, Leo found it surprising that the maid, Milius who had gone to keep watch, and another elderly stable hand who had already saddled Leo’s horse, were all helping him like this.

''No, it’s not me. It’s thanks to Florrie'', he thought darkly. 

If the hostage entrusted into the care of his house were to escape, then Claude, as head of the family, would naturally not let these servants go unpunished. The reason why they were willing to help even though it might mean losing their jobs, or even being charged with a capital crime, was probably because Florrie had begged them in tears. The daughter of the Anglatt family was loved by everyone in that house. 

With help from the elderly stable hand, he climbed onto the horse’s back. As thought it was completely natural, Florrie sat behind him.

“They're here, they're here! Lord Leo, Miss Florrie, hurry!” shouted the maid from a window on the second floor.  She was craning her neck as far as she could, keeping watch on the highway.

Leo whipped the horse and it broke into a run. The back gate was open. The gate-keeper, a pimply-faced youth, raised his hand and watched as the horse passed him by and galloped out of sight.

They raced along a alley lined with trees. Leo had the impression that he could feel the cold shadow of the guillotine drawing up right behind them. Cold though it was, it also felt as though, wherever he drove his horse to – no matter where that was – that shadow would be calmly awaiting, it gleaming blade ready to chop of the head of the criminal’s head.



The sun had set.

After pretending to travel west from the mansion’s rear gate, Leo had left the horse in the forest and, carrying nothing but the saddle bag, had changed course and had taken a mountain path that headed south. Having spent more that six years there, Leo had some familiarity with the lay of the land.

The saddle bag contained a little bread and cheese, a pine torch as well as the flints and the metal fittings that went with it. When night had fallen, he lit the torch and they carried on. Walking through the dark mountains, he thought back to the time when he had clung to Claude’s waist as they rode through the darkness.

Back then, after being mocked as a “boy who is as good as dead”, he had run after Claude, his face flushed red. Although physically he had grown since then, the situation he now found himself in was not so very different from that time.

Leo continued walking in silence. For now, he had no purpose in mind; he could only keep on walking, relying on his senses. Florrie frequently looked back behind them. They continued along the narrow path, pushing their way through leaves and branches, until these suddenly opened before them.

It was a grassy clearing. That too reminded him of the place where he had lain, spread-eagled, six years earlier. A huge tree towered from the top of a gentle slope, and the dark, star-studded night sky spread out behind it. The space had opened so abruptly that, for a second, Leo felt dizzy.

“Leo!” at that moment, Florrie suddenly cried out.

Looking back, he realised that they could see the foot of the hill from this position. Rows of glittering lights stretched out in the distance.

“Are they from the army?”

“Yeah. The lights you can see on the left will be the ones who came to fetch me from the Anglatt mansion. The ones on the right are probably coming from the encampment that Sir Hayden set up. The road in that direction is supposed to be incredibly steep; he must really not want me to get away.”

“You’re still speaking in such a carefree way. Come on, let’s hurry.”

“Going beyond this point is the same as mountain climbing. So let’s rest, instead. You must be tired too, Florrie.”

“No, I…” Florrie wanted to protest, but she was gasping for breath. 

Which was no wonder: it had already been four or five hours since they had abandoned their horse, and since then, they had kept walking. Florrie was drenched in sweat, and the clothes that were clinging to her were covered in dirt, so that she was already unrecognisable as the young lady from the mansion. She had admirably come this far without uttering a single complaint.

While Florrie was fretting, Leo dropped down by the tree and leaned against it. 

“I remember doing something like this when I had just arrived here,” he spoke as nonchalantly as he could while feeling the cold evening breeze against him. “You know, back then, fires were also burning bright at the foot of the mountains, waiting to welcome Lord Claude and me. It was the proof that a great many people had gone out looking for me. And that was because I was none other than Leo Attiel. It’s the same, even now. Even though I’ve started to forget my parents’ faces, even now, I’m still the second son of the House of Attiel. That fact follows me around everywhere, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Florrie stared at Leo, finding it strange how he was able to so nonchalantly string his words together at a time like this. It was as though he wasn’t afraid of anything.

It was natural, though, since Leo had never believed that they would succeed in escaping. First of all, it would create a huge problem for the Anglatt House if they disappeared. Florrie and the servants who had helped her would of course be blamed, but Claude, as head of the house, would also be made to bear responsibility. Since he had originally climbed up from nothing, it was very possible that his lands would be taken from him.

That he had gone along with escaping with Florrie even knowing that was because when she had said ''Let’s escape'',  when she had taken his hand and gazed at him fervently, not even Leo was able to keep away and ignore the single, almost burning feeling that remained in his chest. He had decided to go with her, even if only for a short while.

And that “short while” would now soon the over. Leo closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he said, “Florrie, won’t you sing for me?”

“Leo, at a time like this,” Florrie stood on tiptoes, turning her gaze in every direction and completely unable to calm down. Crying out in a panic that the line of fire was approaching, she desperately tried to convince Leo to leave at once, but every time, he smiled gently and replied, “If you sing for me, Florrie.”

They repeated that several times over.

After Leo had sat without budging for about ten minutes, Florrie finally gave in. 

''Escaping any further now…'' was impossible – perhaps it was because she had acknowledged that on some level that for a moment, she hung her head, looking heartbroken.

She then raised it back up and, at first slowly and hesitantly, started singing. Leo watched the young songstress. He was smiling but Florrie’s attention was focused on the line of flames that was approaching them from below, until she seemed to sternly order herself to ‘concentrate’.

Florrie’s voice gradually grew in volume and in flexibility. Realising that her mind had begun to focus on her song, Leo once again closed his eyes.

It was a song that he had sometimes listened to at the mansion. It spoke about a young child innocently at play, and there were various interpretations to it. One was that, “if children can play cheerfully and without a care, it proves that the society which is raising them is in good shape.” Another was that, “adults who work tirelessly to earn the food to survive with miss the days when they could run around playing.” Yet another was that, “Life is after all but one long children’s game, so no matter what difficulties or crisis I find myself in, I will live with a clear heart and will never lose my sense of fun.”

As she sung, Florrie would occasionally imitate a child’s breathing. It was so accurate that listening with his eyes closed, he could almost believe that it was a little girl of six or seven who was singing merrily. Florrie’s singing voice overlapped with memories of Claude, of his wife, Ellen, and even of Walter and Jack forgetting to eat as they listened to her sing at dinnertime. The warm fire in the hearth flickered.

Before he had realised it, the back of Leo’s eyelids had grown hot.

Was it Florrie’s song that was piercing his chest so painfully? Was it her voice, her breath, her warmth that he could feel close to him that were enveloping him in such kindness, such gentleness, yet at the same time, in such violent emotions?
I will not cry, Leo ground his teeth hard.

The singing suddenly stopped. The warm fire went out with it. Because he had been on the verge of immersing himself in his emotions, Leo wrenched open his eyes, feeling nothing but anger towards Florrie. As he did so, the young songstress buried her face in her hands and her slender shoulders shook.

“Leo, I’m so sorry for you,’ she said, sobbing convulsively where she stood. “If you wanted me to sing, I would have sung for you anytime you wanted. If it’s your request, anytime. But the very first time you’ve asked me to sing, why is it at a time like this?”

Leo was about to say something, but he stayed quiet instead.

“I wanted you to smile. Because when you first came to us, you always looked sad and brooding. I wanted you to learn to like Allion. Even though you must have been feeling lonely separated from your family, I hoped that you would get along with my beloved father, and mother, and brothers, that you would listen to my songs, and that you would say that you were glad that you came here. But… Leo, it would have been better if you’d never come to Allion. Then this wouldn’t have happened. I’m so very, very sorry for you…”

Finally unable to bear it any longer, Florrie crouched down, hunching her back as she sobbed. Her voice and words were enough to gouge out the heart of a listener, but, just as with the rough voices of the soldiers below them, the night was probably swiftly carrying them away.

“I should never have come,” at Leo’s muttered words, Florrie’s back shook even more violently than before. Leo looked down at bright lights crawling below them. 

“Or rather… I wasn’t originally supposed to come here,” he said. “It wasn’t me but the third prince – in other words, it was my younger brother, Roy Attiel, who was supposed to be given as hostage. Roy was eight at the time. He was young, but he was old enough to take on the role of hostage. Even so, at the very last minute, I was the one who was sent instead of Roy. Why do you think that is?”

Florrie could not answer. 

''Speaking of which, why am I talking about this now?'' As Leo inwardly asked himself that in a calm voice, he continued with his story without waiting for an answer.

“Mother doted on Roy. She said that if he as going to be taken from her, then she would rather go with him to Allion. She was so frantic that it was as though she might kill herself and take Roy with her the second someone tried to separate them. I had never seen her like that before. And then, with an expression that I had never seen her wear before, in a voice that I had never heard her use before, Mother said: ‘You should make Leo go. If it’s for a hostage, can’t it just be Leo?’”

“…”

“I’m not saying that she turned to me and hurled at me that ‘since it’s just you, it’s fine, even if you die’. But to the me of back then, it was probably pretty much the same. Anyway, even though I was already ten at the time, I really was a pampered child.”

''Are you trying to say that it’s different, ‘now’?'' A voice whispered again inside his heart. It was the stagnant ''sludge'', which had existed at a place a little separate from Leo’s heart and which, at some point, had peeled itself away, slowly and surreptitiously, to be near Leo.

Leo ignored it and carried on.

“I didn’t want my mother to be tormented any more than she already was – or rather, I hated the thought of being with this mother that I didn’t recognise, so I volunteered to be the hostage. I pretended to be an adult, you know, saying ‘This is a good opportunity to broaden my perspective’.”

''You’re still pretending to be an adult. Are you going to start forcing yourself to believe what you can’t bring yourself to think? Do you want to play the adult in front of Florrie?''

More than six years.

In the end, it was his mother who had stuck firmly in his mind. Even when he wanted to forget her or keep her away from his conscious thoughts, that face of his mother’s, that voice of hers, had always, constantly been by his side. 

When Claude had found him, in a place not so far removed from here, and told him, “Until you’ve amassed power equal to the family name ‘Attiel’, why don’t you mentally lean on it for a while?”, he had felt as though he had woken up. He had worked hard in both his studies and at his military drills. He believed that carrying the name ‘Attiel’ was not his only possible path in life. Or at the very least, by concentrating on grappling with what was right before him, he believed that he would not feel as though he was rotting away.

Yet for all that –

''You can’t become someone else. You're just the same as when your mother abandoned you. Nothing has changed, you’ve simply stopped yourself from thinking about it. Back then, you lost your future; you’ve even lost the will to think about the future.''

He understood it clearly now. When the man called Hayden Swift had visited the Anglatt mansion, Leo had been fascinated by his somewhat pessimistic atmosphere, and had believed that here was definitely someone who was similar to him. They had both lost their enthusiasm for the future.

''No, that man and you, you’re just spoiled children. Didn’t you say it yourself, earlier? The two of you have left both the past and the future to others, and simply bemoan the present. During these six years, you have been nothing but a crying, spoiled child.''

“Yeah.” Florrie could not understand why Leo nodded his head. Still answering the voice inside his heart, he continued, “that’s exactly right. But the time I’ve spent in Allion was not completely meaningless to me.”

Perhaps attracted by how bright his voice was, Florrie lowered her hands behind which she had been hiding her face. Upon doing so, she noticed that Leo was gazing straight at her, and her cheeks along which tears were trickling instantly turned bright red.

“Because you were there,” said Leo. “You were there, as well as Lord Claude and your mother. Even though Walter and Jack were sometimes mean, there were also times when they were older friends to me. And they were good rivals in studies and in martial training.”

Although Florrie looked pure and innocent, in reality, she had time and again shown a talent for skilfully tricking those closest to her. On days when she invited Walter and Jack to “go for a long ride, just the three of us,” she would actually also invite Leo, and kept it a secret from both sides until the day. When the three of them met at the stables, their expressions turned sour, but a cheerful voice would pipe up from behind Leo, saying “Right, let’s go. The weather is beautiful today,” as though it were the most normal thing in the world.

Having been tricked, Walter and Jack would be sulky for a while, but at the end of the day, the three of them – counting Leo – were children. In the exhilaration of riding their horses fast through the wind, they soon forgot to be upset. Later, at the riverside, they would compete at fishing, throwing stones ad climbing trees. Although Florrie cheered them all on equally, in actual fact, she was just a little biased towards Leo.

There were many of those bright days that Leo could look back on with a smile.

“I’m glad I came to Allion. Because I got to meet you… all of you. So you don’t have to cry. You don’t need to feel sorry for me. Please smile, Florrie. And sing. There’s neither Atall nor Allion – wherever it is that you’re smiling and singing, that’s where I’ll be able to smile happily.”

Leo stretched out his hand as he spoke. As Florrie was timidly reaching out to take it, they heard the sound of innumerable footsteps reverberating along the ground. Startled, Florrie remained petrified.

Looking around, there were lights swaying along on the other side of the bushes.

“Oi, someone’s here!”

“Whaat? Lend me a light.”

Several soldiers from Allion made their way through the bushes and came into sight. 

Leo quickly stood up.