The First Allied Legion, Main Command
As Neinhardt moved up to the front lines, Senior General Paul von Baltza took his place in the rear guard. He and Field Marshal Cornelius vim Gruening, who held command over the whole First Allied Legion, were watching the progress of the battle when a runner arrived with the news: the Winged Crusaders had begun to retreat.
“I wonder why now...”
Since the imperial army had gone on the offensive, the Royal Army had suffered its share of losses, including that of Osmund. He could understand making the decision to cut and run when placed at a disadvantage, but this did nothing to hinder them in carrying out their initial objective. Paul was left scratching his head.
“I’ve said it before, but this alliance was only ever one of convenience, built on naught more than sand. I cannot say what prompted it, but they have decided there is no longer anything to be gained for their side. Thus, they withdraw.” Cornelius was unflappable, his tone matter-of-fact. Paul suspected that for the Holy Land of Mekia, the mutual destruction of Fernest and the empire was the most desirable outcome. However, given his position and having entered into an alliance with them, he had avoided saying so openly.
He stroked his cheek, then said, “Is it possible they acquired some information we don’t know about? Say, for example—” Paul forcibly swallowed back the words that rose to his lips. If the Winged Crusaders had heard before them that the Eighth Legion had fallen, they might well give up and leave.
“Well, it is said that Mekia’s intelligence gathering surpasses that of the empire. It’s very possible they know something we do not. But it will not do to dwell on it. We damned ourselves when we unfairly laid too heavy a burden on a child’s shoulders. Now all we can do is have faith in her to the end, and wait for word.”
“I suppose so...” Paul realized with a sense of self-derision that Cornelius was saying what he himself had once told Otto. “But that doesn’t change that it’s a violation of military orders. Should we go after them and demand an explanation?”
“Better not. Sowing further conflict will do us no good.”
“Well, if you say so, Lord Marshal.” With this, Paul put the Winged Crusaders out of his mind and turned his gaze on the stage in the distance. “The imperial army has worked it out, haven’t they? That our siege of Kier Fortress was only a feint, I mean.”
First had come the series of small-scale night raids, then the construction of the stage right on Kier Fortress’s doorstep. As soon as he heard about the pantomime performance the imperials had put on, Paul had been fully convinced.
“They went with a choice we did not predict.”
“Just so.”
The imperial army had opted neither for hunkering down in Kier Fortress, nor calling for reinforcements, but rather a third option—totally absurd though it was, they had decided to turn the battle into a game. Such a game would account for their otherwise seemingly pointless actions. A game had no point. The only requirement was that the players had fun.
“So this is Rosenmarie von Berlietta...” he said. “Seems she’s even more of an unruly character than I’d heard.”
“I noticed it back when we clashed with the Crimson Knights on the northern front. But really, in the face of this sort of foolery, all you can do is laugh.”
“Still, it does explain one thing,” Cornelius mused.
“And that is?”
“Originally, it was Gladden von Hildesheimer who held Kier Fortress. When I faced him on the central front, he held on to safe and sure tactics well past the point of sense.”
Paul understood what Cornelius was getting at. Rosenmarie and Gladden, from what he had heard of the man, took entirely opposite approaches to waging war. The fighting following her shift to the offensive had been anything but safe and sure—one didn’t see anything of Gladden’s hand in it, at any rate.
“True, that is odd. Do you think something happened to him?”
“Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Either way, if reinforcements are not coming from the Azure Knights, that works in our favor. Now we just have to ensure we don’t rise to any more of this naughty child’s taunts.”
“Major General Neinhardt and Lieutenant General Hermann are bad enough, but I could hardly believe it when even Lambert couldn’t keep his troops in line.”
“Even if it was only a play, it still made a mockery of her. We should not be too quick to blame the soldiers. Indeed, we might well have seen a blow to morale if they had been forced to stay back.”
“And yet it looks like the units who charged in are getting their heads handed to them...?”
“Those are three first-rate commanders,” Cornelius said. “They will find a way to pull through.”
“I hope so...” Paul muttered.
Suddenly, sensing some unidentifiable disturbance, he looked up at the sky.
“You felt it too, Paul?” Cornelius asked.
“I did.” All that met his eyes was the gray expanse of the sky. At any other time, he would not have given it a second glance. But Cornelius leaped straight into action.
“Have our main force spread out in two flanks. Assemble the best archers in each unit and place them at the center. Add to that lookouts to be deployed in all directions over a wide area. I want them on their guard and on high alert for enemy movements.”
It was obvious that Cornelius’s orders were not born out of concern about the imperial army. Paul understood. Cornelius felt the same formless unease that was lodged within his own chest.
From above the battlefield, where death was part of the normal state of things, the death-eater birds had vanished. No two ways about it—something abnormal was afoot.
The First Allied Legion, Travis’s Unit
Cornelius, upon learning that the lookouts to the east had ceased to make their regular reports, moved to identify the cause. The elite unit to whom he assigned this task was under the command of Lieutenant General Travis Meyer. Travis was the head of the House of Meyer, one of the families who made up the Six Flowers, Fernest’s most preeminent warrior houses.
Why our unit...? Travis’s aide, Colonel Diane, was in a cloud of confusion. That the lookouts had stopped making contact was far too flimsy a reason to justify mobilizing Travis’s elite unit of six thousand swordsmen. This had left her harboring misgivings over the judgment of a hero—the so-called Invincible General—though she had even more misgivings about the sense of tension that hung in the air around Travis. It was unlike anything she had seen before. Even in the battle on the Central Front, where the fate of Fernest had hung in the balance, he had never been like this.