“Where did you acquire such detailed knowledge, Your Majesty?”
“Hmm? Knowledge? Ohhh, you mean my guess from before? Right. Tactics like that, the friend I mentioned before taught me, and I tested them in battle—well, I learned in all sorts of ways, I suppose. But I never thought I’d be applying those lessons here.”
“Was the friend you had very strong as well?”
“Hmm. Well, his strength wasn’t in fistfights or magic battles but elsewhere. In that sense, I’m still probably not as strong as him.”
He laughed an amused “hoh-hoh” with that smile particular to fond memories.
She felt almost as if she were with another human.
Maybe the King of Darkness used to be human…
Neia was never fooled by stories of turning undead through the power of magic. She knew they couldn’t be true. She had been taught that undead weren’t born voluntarily. But…
The world is such a big place…
During her journey with the delegation, she had learned how small her world had been.
What was across the sea, over the mountains, or deep in the forest? Was there someone wise who would chuckle at her hesitation and tell her the answer?
“What are you thinking about?”
“Oh, uh, sorry.”
“No, I wasn’t scolding you. I was just a little worried because it seemed like you were spacing out while riding your horse… We’re headed into combat. I know you must be anxious.”
“Th-thank you, Your Majesty.”
Just then, Remedios, having thrust the flag shaft into the ground, drew her Holy Sword.
“Everyone, our first battle to free this land from Jaldabaoth begins now! For justice!”
In reply to her shout came a roar of “For justice!” Then they all charged as one.
“There they go. If you’re planning on participating in the attack, shouldn’t you be closer to the front, Miss Baraja?”
“No, I have my duties as Your Majesty’s squire. Leaving you here to go off to battle would be…” Unthinkable—I could never. She shook her head.
“O-oh, I see.. Th-then to change the subject…you haven’t lent that weapon to anyone, have you?”
“No, not even once! Your Majesty lent this to me. I would never allow anyone else to touch it.”
“Ah… I see. Uh, hmm. I appreciate that.”
She had the feeling the pitch of his voice had dropped, but she wasn’t sure why.
Did I disrespect His Majesty somehow…? I don’t know. Should I apologize?
As she was wavering, he changed the topic.
“Well, we’re here, after all. I looked around and made sure there are no subhumans concealing themselves with magic. Why don’t we go up close enough that we can keep an eye on the battlefield? I’m sure we can let the priests handle things here… What do you think?”
“As you wish.”
It would have been rude to tell someone as powerful as the King of Darkness that it was dangerous to go closer.
Just as she and the king approached the camp, where the alarm bell was clanging harshly, the fighting began.
Angels assaulted the watchtower above the gate, and the bufolk met them with their spears. Arrows were loosed from a turret. They were aimed not at the angels but at Remedios, charging at the head of the knight group. Since there was no chance of hitting their own, and she wasn’t carrying a shield, it made sense to try to hit her.
But she had skills unlike any other.
She sliced down any arrows that flew her way, all the while maintaining her speed.
Several of the angels attacking the watchtower descended on the turret in a counterattack. Three bufolk corpses fell out of it in moments.
At that point, the paladins had reached the gate and were starting their assault with the battering ram.
The wooden gate swayed once and emitted faint splintering sounds. “Again!” cried a knight.
The gate swayed again, more this time.
Another hit.
One of the gate’s logs went crooked. Neia could hear the cheers of the paladins even at a distance. There wasn’t enough room to get in yet, but a few more blows, and the gate would be completely destroyed.
A few of the angels went inside. Neia couldn’t see them, of course, but they must have been stopping the bufolk who had come to protect the gate.
“Get back!”
The sudden shout drew everyone’s attention.
It had come from the watchtower over the gate. How he had gotten up there was unclear, since the angels were supposed to be occupying it, but there was a single bufolk.
The problem was what he held in his hand.
“Get back!!” he repeated.
In the bufolk’s right hand was a girl—only six or seven years old—and he was holding a knife up to her throat.
“If you don’t get back, I’ll kill this human!”
The girl wore a soiled dress, and her face seemed dirty as well. Though she was still alive, her body dangled lifelessly side to side—as if to inform them of how the humans were being treated in the camps.
“You coward!” one of the paladins screamed.
“Get back—now! Look!”
A commotion ran through the knights. What happened? From their distance, and at night, Neia couldn’t make out every detail. But the King of Darkness was different.
“…It seems the child is bleeding from her neck.”
“No!”
“He can’t have killed her; her value as a hostage would—”
“All units, fall back!”
The paladins followed Remedios’s order and withdrew.
The priests in the rear had a hard time grasping the situation, but they gathered that something unexpected was happening, so they pulled the angels back as well. At the same time, they ran up to where Neia and the King of Darkness were. They must have wanted to see what was going on.
“More! Move farther back!”
The paladins responded to the bufolk’s shout by beginning to creep back even more.
Neia could see the bufolk guard changing in the watchtower. Those who had been injured in the fight with the angels were replaced by fresh personnel.
“This is bad.”
“Yes, it is.”
Neia slowly reached for the bow she had borrowed. The bufolk was using the girl as a shield. For that reason, there weren’t many places she could aim, so killing him in one shot would be quite a challenge.
Still, if she didn’t do it, who would?
I wish I had trained more with my bow, she thought as she pulled an arrow from her quiver.
Just then, the King of Darkness put a hand out to obstruct her line of fire.
“That’s not what I meant. They’d better cut it out. This is already pointless.”
Before she could ask what he did mean, he was walking toward the group of paladins.
They were all unsure how to save the girl.
Priests had a spell that could bind someone’s movement, so many were in favor of using that, but magic required a certain range to be effective. Could they approach that close? If the enemy disapproved, would the girl be killed? Everyone had different opinions, and they didn’t seem to be reaching any kind of conclusion.
That was when the King of Darkness and Neia showed up.
“How long are you going to spend debating? This is a bad scene.”
When the King of Darkness spoke, all eyes gathered on him.
“We know, but—”
“Commander. Please calm down… The enemy is over there.”
Gustav checked Remedios, who had raised her voice in frustration.
“No, Lady Custodio, you don’t know. Once he learns a hostage is effective, he’ll show you he wasn’t only bluff—”
As if those words were the signal, the bufolk slit the girl’s throat. Even from a distance, the spurt of bright-red blood was visible. When he let go of her body, it crumpled to the ground.
Silence.<
br />
As if everyone’s brains were refusing to accept what had just happened.
Remedios returned to her senses first, and her shout roused Neia.
“How could you do that to a hostage?! We did as you asked!”
“Hmph!” Next the bufolk held up a boy. “That’s why I brought another one! Now stay back!”
“You cowardly bastard!”
“Heh. You’re such a fool. You didn’t think I’d have another one waiting?!”
Remedios’s clenched fists shook violently. Then she spat an order. “Everyone, pull back!”
“Order the ones who circled around on horses to gather up, too! Now!”
Neia could hear Remedios’s teeth grind. The noise was so loud it was a wonder they didn’t crumble and fall out of her mouth.
“Gustav, order them to come back…”
“B-but!”
“If we don’t, that boy will die! Hurry!”
“That’s a bad move. Now that he knows hostages get results, giving him any more time will only reduce our morale and end in more losses.”
Remedios, red in the face, glared at the King of Darkness the way she would an enemy.
“If we keep this up, there will have been no point to the sneak attack. And I can hear them carrying something to the gate. If they create a barricade, it’ll take longer to break through—”
“Shut up!” Remedios roared, and the King of Darkness closed his mouth. “Does anyone have a good idea?! A way to do this where nobody dies?!”
No one said anything.
There couldn’t possibly be such a convenient way out of this. Maybe things would be different if they had someone with stealth skills, but they didn’t.
And Remedios surely knew that. If it didn’t occur to her, with her animal instincts in combat, then it didn’t exist.
So why can’t she accept that?
Why is she so hung up on no one dying?
The King of Darkness’s words crossed Neia’s mind—Is this a necessary sacrifice? Without a huge power gap and a lot of luck, there was no way no one would die.
“Commander Custodio.” Neia’s voice sounded unnaturally loud. “Can’t we finish this now with fewer sacrifices?”
Remedios’s fierce eyes turned on Neia.
The strong warrior’s passionate gaze nearly had Neia trembling, but she knew she wasn’t wrong.
“There’s no justice in that!” Remedios yelled.
Justice? What even…?
All the paladins in the area had clammed up; they apparently didn’t intend to comment. She suddenly felt surrounded by hostile forces, but when she began to back up, a hand wrapped around her shoulder.
When she looked, it was—as she thought—the King of Darkness.
“I support Miss Baraja.”
He agreed with her in a low voice. But to Neia, it was like having billions of allies.
“Shut up!” Remedios yelled again. That was no way to talk to a king who had come from far away to aid them. There was forgivable behavior, and then there was unforgivable behavior.
Fury welled up inside Neia.
“What we need here is to break through the situation, not get irritated with one another… Well, since we have no other choice, I’ll change things,” the King of Darkness murmured. Then he strode away from the group—toward the gate. It was so sudden that before anyone could stop him, the bufolk shouted a warning.
“You in the mask! I told you to stay back!”
“Nonsense! How much value do you really think a single human life has?!” he shouted back in a voice just as loud.
“Wh-what?!”
“Our objective is to kill all the bufolk here! We don’t care what happens to the humans! Widen Magic: Fireball!” With that shout, he thrust out an arm and sent the ball of fire that appeared in his hand flying toward the bufolk atop the gate and the boy.
The watchtower was engulfed in a massive explosion of flames centered on the two figures.
Everyone there crumpled from that single attack. The bufolk and the boy he had grabbed fell in a headfirst tangle toward the ground.
“Max Magic: Shock Wave.”
In the follow-up attack, the half-destroyed gate was blown away. The barricade the bufolk behind it must have been putting up was also busted through, so it was as if a gaping hole had opened up.
“All right! Paladins, charge! Kill every last bufolk you find inside!”
His voice seemed to shake Remedios out of it.
“What do you think you’re—?!”
“Commander!”
“Nnnngh… Charge!”
At Remedios’s command, the paladins began to move. Or more accurately, they gave up on thinking and simply did as ordered.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Gustav said before racing off.
The other paladins and priests—those who were reasonable—sent the king looks of gratitude. Only Remedios was upset.
The King of Darkness spoke to Neia in a low voice. “Miss Baraja. Did you think I was going to save that boy with a spell you people could never have imagined?”
She did, a little. But she was sure there was a reason he did what he did.
“Oh y-yes, I did.”
“Hmm. I’m sure you did.” He shook his head.
Neia simply listened in silence.
“Sure, it was possible. It would have been easy to save this single boy with all the various spells I’ve acquired. But I couldn’t. Saving the boy in front of the bufolk would have been disastrous.”
For the first time, Neia looked puzzled by something the king said, and he kindly explained.
“If they had learned hostages were useful, they would have employed all the prisoners inside as cover. They would probably have been literally used as shields in combat when they felt threatened. That would have made the paladins hesitate, which could have resulted in many of them getting injured or worse. We don’t have a huge force, so losing even one paladin would be painful. That’s what Lanchester’s laws say…”
The King of Darkness walked toward the gate, and Neia followed.
“If, on the contrary, the bufolk learn there’s no point to hostages, then the prisoners are only in their way. But do you think they have time to leisurely kill prisoners when they’re under attack and the wall is being breached? Killing unresisting people is probably low on their list of priorities.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Then there you go. Rather than waste time killing people, they’ll spend it preparing to stem the assault. So we had to kill him in a way that would demonstrate that hostages had no value.”
He was right.
If they had done things Remedios’s way, it was possible they wouldn’t have been able to save anyone at all.
The King of Darkness gently picked up the corpse of the fallen boy.
“Your Majesty, I—”
“This is my job.”
Holding the boy, he and Neia returned to where Remedios had stuck the flag into the earth.
After he laid the boy on the ground, Neia wet a cloth using the water from her leather drinking pouch and wiped the dirt off the boy’s face.
His cheeks were hollow, and his arms and legs were shockingly thin.
It was clear what a horrible environment he had been in.
“Argh, those bufolk…”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I will anyway. I’m the king of the Nation of Darkness, not of these people. That’s why I can make a levelheaded judgment—like saving a thousand instead of just one. If this boy were from my country, I probably would have prioritized saving him. If you don’t agree with that—”
“No, thank you, Your Majesty. I understand what you were thinking… You’re very just.”
“…Huh? What are you talking about?”
“Sorry. I mean, you were upholding justice.”
What am I saying? She herself wondered.
She thought perhaps he was stunned speechless, but in his deep compassion, he answer
ed her.
“…Um? Er, no, I don’t think I’m terribly just. In the first place, it’s for someone else to judge whether justice is served or not. What I do is very simple. I want to make my name known far and wide…”
Neia flashed back to the statues. If he wants to make his name known, does that mean he wants to be the center of attention after all?
“That said, I’ve decided I don’t have to force it… Ah, sorry, I’m rambling. My only goal is for me and the children to live in happiness; that’s all—and that is everything.”
She doubted that an undead had children. Maybe he didn’t mean his children by blood but children in a wider sense? Or did he think of the people of his nation as his children?
Either way, he’s very kind. A world where children, the most vulnerable, can live in happiness must be a wonderful place. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to take that boy’s life if this is how he thinks…
It seemed as though there was sorrow on the skeleton’s face in profile as he gazed at the gate.
“Sorry for the boring conversation. That’s enough chatting. Miss Baraja, I’m in no position to talk like I know anything, but I hope you’re able to find your own sense of justice.”
“…May I ask you one more thing? Would you have done what you did if it was one of your subordinates who had been taken hostage?”
“…This is just me complaining, but I have enough other problems with my subordinates.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“A long time ago I asked them something out of curiosity: If you were taken hostage and used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with me, what would you do? Every one of them said they would kill themselves so as not to be a bother. So I said, couldn’t you wait for me to send someone to rescue you? I’m happy they’re devoted to me, but I just wish they were a bit more…how can I put it? My subordinates are rather extreme.” He flexed his fingers in frustration as he grumbled wearily.
That’s a pretty luxurious worry to have for someone in charge of a whole country, Neia was thinking when Remedios, armored, blood on her sword, appeared at the gate. She had her helmet off, but her hair was plastered to her head with sweat; she looked completely worn out.
She gave some sort of instruction to Gustav standing by behind her, and then Neia felt their eyes meet for a moment. No, it was more accurate to say that when she looked at the King of Darkness, Neia happened to be standing in her line of sight.
The Paladin of the Sacred Kingdom Part I Page 20
