“Liscia, if this is hard on you…” I began.
“I’m going to attend,” she said.
She wouldn’t even let me say she didn’t have to.
Liscia put on a smile clouded with sadness. “I know. Duke Carmine has already made his choice. He can’t turn back now.”
“Liscia…” I said.
“I want to watch to the end, because I know that. I want to see how that man lives his life.” Liscia looked straight into my eyes.
Really… I had no words for her. So, to do the least I could do, I hugged her tightly around the shoulders. She was trembling a little.
I tilted Liscia’s head onto my shoulder.
Even though I was the king, I couldn’t do anything more for her, and I was angry at myself for that.
— The same day, in Red Dragon City.
“Damn it… What the hell is going on?!”
In Red Dragon City, located in the north of the Elfrieden Kingdom, the commander of the air force, Castor Vargas, was at his desk, holding his head in his hands.
Red Dragon City was the central city of the Vargas Duchy, and also where Castor’s castle was located.
It was built at a slight elevation on a portion of the mountain that had been cleared. This might have seemed a poor location for a central city, given the inconvenience of transporting goods to it, but for the Vargas Duchy, the ones who held the kingdom’s air force, it gave them the convenience of having access to transport wyverns in addition to combat ones.
Each could carry as much as a cable car loaded with supplies, and there were bus-like vehicles carried by four wyverns that went to each city, so the remoteness of the site didn’t matter that much.
Also, because the castle of the General of the Air Force was located in Red Dragon City, the city’s defenses were hardened.
While the location already made it like a mountain castle, it was also surrounded by high walls. While the mountain slopes kept away battering rams (vehicles with a massive stake meant for breaking through gates) or scaling ladders (these came on vehicles built like fire trucks, which provided a foothold for getting over the castle walls), the high walls would defend against any attacks by infantry or cavalry.
The only means of attack that might have been effective was an assault from the air with wyverns, but this was the Vargas family’s specialty, so it was fair to call it an impregnable fortress.
Furthermore, Castor, the current ruler of the city, was an excellent commander. Even though Castor was not so good at the intricacies of politics, he displayed an unmatched strength on the battlefield. In the last hundred years of war for the Elfrieden Kingdom, he had always stood at the head of the wyvern unit, mowing down foreign enemies as their vanguard commander.
He had made a lot of errors due to not thinking things through well enough, but his broadminded nature, his hot-blooded personality, and his incredible strength had lent him a charisma that charmed his subordinates. If we were to compare him to Zhang Fei in Chinese history, or Masanori Fukushima in Japanese history, that might make it easier to understand.
Because he was that kind of person, he left management of the city entirely to his wife, Accela, who was Admiral Excel’s daughter, as well as to Tolman, the man who was his second in command in the air force and also the steward of his house.
No good could come from a poor manager butting into administrative decisions, so this was probably for the best. Castor knew that running around the battlefield suited him far better than managing a city.
Now Castor, the man who was ill-suited to thinking, was wracking his brains over what to do for once.
“Tolman! Has Duke Carmine still not said anything?!” he exclaimed.
“…Not as of yet,” the man in gentlemanly attire standing across from him answered, continuing to stand upright as he did so. This was the man entrusted with administrative control of Red Dragon City, the steward of the House of Vargas, Tolman.
Castor banged his hands down on the desk. “The king’s ultimatum comes tomorrow! What is he contriving by not sending us any word before that?!”
Tolman said nothing.
The people were all talking about a confrontation between the new king and the three dukes, but that didn’t mean the three dukes were all in agreement. Army General Georg Carmine had made his opposition to the king clear, but Navy Admiral Excel Walter took a more negative view of fighting the king. Finally, for Castor… He was showing a position of opposition to the king, but was wavering on that stance internally.
General Georg was his comrade in arms, and he respected him as a warrior. Because Georg was the one raising the flag of rebellion, Castor had assumed he had thought it through, and he had even pushed back against his mother-in-law Excel to side with Georg in opposing the king. In other words, while it was true that Castor had been suspicious when there had been the sudden change of kings, he had left the decision of whether or not he would oppose the new king to someone else.
Castor’s own emotional immaturity had been one of the causes for this.
Dragonewts like Castor were a race that was longer lived than either humans or beastmen. The speed of emotional development tended to be inversely proportional to how long a race lived. Because of that, though Castor had lived for over a hundred years, his mental age was around thirty, and he treated the fifty-year-old Georg as an elder.
However, though he had sent a number of letters to Georg asking him what their next course of action should be, he had received no response.
“There’s got to be something wrong here!” Castor exclaimed. “If he was going to make peace with the king now, he never would have acted against him to begin with. On the other hand, if he intends to fight the king, he should be desperate for our air force to help him. So why isn’t he telling us anything? Does he mean to fight the king with just the army?”
Tolman pondered. “The one thing I can think of is… Could he have been ‘driven mad by ambition,’ like Duchess Walter suggested? Master, even if you distrust the new king Souma, you wouldn’t want to harm the former king Albert, his wife Elisha, and even Princess Liscia, would you?”
Harm the royal family.
When Tolman spoke those words, Castor cried out in a loud voice, “Of course not! Duke Carmine himself said, ‘Once King Souma is removed, I will have King Albert take the throne once more, and we will support him’!”
“And what if that were a lie?” Tolman asked. “Could it be that, in truth, he wishes to take the throne for himself? If that is the case, you and Duchess Walter will surely be his next enemies. In preparation for when that happens, could he not be trying to settle things with just his own forces, so as to keep the two of you from gaining influence after the war ends? So that he can abolish both your houses after the war?”
“That’s absurd!” Castor burst out. “There’s no way Duke Carmine would ever think of doing that!”
Castor denied it, but as would be expected from one entrusted as the steward of his house, Tolman had the ability to calmly analyze things. This was the conclusion Tolman had come to, setting aside appeals to emotion and looking purely at the interests of those involved.
However, because Castor knew Georg well, he couldn’t accept that argument.
“There isn’t a warrior who cares more for this country than Duke Carmine!” Castor protested. “He could never harm the royal family…”
“However, was it not because of her doubts about Duke Carmine that Duchess Walter parted ways with him?” Tolman asked. “Even going so far as to take the mistress and Young Master Carl back home with her?”