Chapter 37 : Chapter 37
On the outer wall of Rasseu, Sevha and Teresse stood, watching Eshu speak with the refugees gathered below.
“I intend to declare a conscription order soon.”
“A conscription order?”
Sevha had decided to issue a conscription order to fight the Tusk Tribe, but he had not yet declared it.
Conscription was a lord’s right, but Sevha was only the acting heir. To unilaterally force it upon commoners who had known only suffering at the hands of the Tusk Tribe and the Count would surely incite a rebellion.
So Sevha had sent Eshu ahead to lay the groundwork and persuade the people before the order was officially given.
“Magus. Do you think the refugees will accept conscription as readily as the people of Rasseu?”
The residents of Rasseu had agreed with little protest. As people of the Marquisate’s capital, they held a certain reverence for the ruling house.
Besides, Sevha’s arrival had already driven out the band of thugs the Count had stationed in the city.
The problem, then, was the refugees outside the walls. Those who had fled the Tusk Tribe.
“That is a question that needs no answer, Hunter,” Teresse replied coldly.
A shout rose from the crowd below.
“Conscription? You expect us to fight in this state?”
One refugee’s cry was quickly echoed by others.
“Looks like I’m not so popular.”
“To the starving, a pretty face is worth less than a small dog.”
When Sevha first appeared, the refugees, like the people of Rasseu, had felt a glimmer of hope.
But that hope was dwarfed by the misery of being ignored and left to starve outside the walls.
“Hungry? Going by Anse standards, they look well-fed.”
“I’ve said it before, your people are a strange lot. You seem less like hunters and more like ascetics in constant penance.”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
Teresse gazed down at the refugees.
“Honestly, conscripting them is a problem in itself. If you mean to make use of these emaciated people, who have clearly lost the will to live… what use could they possibly be, other than as meat shields?”
“A truly noble idea, befitting someone from the Empire.”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
Sevha clicked his tongue. “Whatever the case, they won’t be meat shields.”
Sevha had spent his life on the line between life and death; he knew that a meat shield was nothing but a burden that dragged down the one standing behind it.
“Still…”
Like Teresse, Sevha studied the faces of the refugees. Emaciated, lifeless. He summed them up in a single sentence.
“If I train them the Anse way, nine out of ten will die.”
Teresse advised, “Then lower your standards. You don’t need meat shields, nor do you need Hunters of Anse right now, do you?”
“What I need now…” Sevha realized what it was he needed. “I need hunting tools.”
The only hunting tools Sevha currently possessed were his knights. They were like a well-honed spear.
But he had only one.
A single spear that can’t be wasted. It has to be used to strike the final blow. And to create that moment for the final blow…
Sevha organized his thoughts and spoke aloud.
“I have to make the conscripts into a net. An unbreakable net. And even if it does, it will still have to entangle the prey’s legs.”
Teresse considered his metaphor, then nodded. “A good thought. Can you train them to be one?”
“No.” Sevha sighed. “The Anse Tribe believes a hawk that doesn’t fly with its own wings is useless. I can’t help that.”
The Anse method of training was purely individual. To them, a group battle was a hundred hawks fighting in concert, each moving according to its own thoughts, its own wingbeats.
Thus, Sevha did not know how to teach collective movement.
As Sevha struggled to find a solution, Teresse suggested, “Then… may I train them?”
Sevha hesitated, his expression one of sheer disbelief.
It was an understandable reaction. Teresse was so frail she would collapse from exhaustion after a short walk. Moreover, she came from the Empire, which abhorred the notion of women setting foot on a battlefield.
Sevha simply couldn’t believe she had the ability to train soldiers.
But Teresse met his doubt with a confident smile.
“Leave it to me. I will shape them into the tool you desire in an instant.”
“On what grounds?”
“Because I’m—!”
“Don’t say it’s possible just because you’re a magus.”
Teresse paused, then gave a bitter smile.
“In the lexicon of the Empire… perhaps of the entire continent, there is no word to describe my abilities other than ‘magic.’”
Sevha looked at her, silently asking what she meant.
Teresse met his gaze directly.
Was it a plea for trust? Or a threat that if he did not trust her, she would not trust him?
Sevha did not know, but he knew she had no intention of backing down.
“I’ll consider it.”
“How merciful of you, Young Master.”
“Don’t call me that. It’s unsettling.”
Just then, the noise from the crowd below grew louder.
“There’s no use talking to the commander! Where is the young master?”
As the refugees called for him, Teresse gestured elegantly toward the base of the wall.
“It seems it’s your cue, Young Master.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
As Sevha moved to leave, Teresse said nonchalantly, “Sevha. What a starving man needs is not the promise of land to farm for this autumn’s harvest.”
“Then what does he need?”
“A little food to fill his belly now.”
As if to say her advice was finished, Teresse gave Sevha a light push on the back.
A moment later, as soon as Sevha stepped outside the gate, the refugees swarmed him, shouting for him to halt the conscription.
Eshu and the knights immediately moved to block their path.
The refugees stopped short, falling silent at the knights’ implicit threat. But the moment they did, a trace of hatred bloomed on their faces.
If I handle this wrong, they’ll explode.
Until now, Sevha had only ever led the Hunters of Anse, for whom loyalty and obedience were virtues; in short, he had no experience leading commoners.
Yet even he could see the resentment the refugees held for the nobility, for the ruling class of Blanc.
Edgar… what would he have done?
Sevha imagined his brother here in his place.
It was only natural. To Sevha, Edgar was his only guidepost. Even if he were to find his own path one day, for now, he had to walk his brother’s.
He pictured Edgar’s stern face. It was impossible to forget. Not because it was stern, nor because he was his brother.
Because my brother looked everyone straight in the eye.
Sevha turned to Eshu and ordered, “Stand aside.”
“Young Master, it’s dangerous—”
“If you start seeing your own family as a threat, it is better to leave the house.”
Eshu hesitated, then he and his knights stepped aside.
Sevha approached the refugees and sank to the ground, sitting directly on the dirt.
The refugees were taken aback. Eshu was just as stunned.
“Y-Young Master? You are the rightful heir of Blanc. Your actions are tied directly to the honor of your house. Such undignified behavior is…”
Sevha listened to Eshu’s nagging, then yawned.
“I’m so broke I sold all the chairs in the castle. Did you expect me to find one out here?”
As Sevha joked about House Blanc’s circumstances, a few small laughs broke out among the refugees.
“You all sit, too. Before I punish you for the crime of looking down on the heir of Blanc.”
At his continued jests, the refugees sat, their expressions softening slightly.
A moment of silence passed, and then Sevha went straight to the heart of the matter.
“I will be declaring a conscription order.”
Instantly, the ease vanished from their faces. They all cried out that it was absurd, their expressions filled with discontent.
There are too many to persuade one by one.
Sevha recalled the Anse method for handling a panicked herd.
I need to make an example.
He raised a hand, and Eshu and the knights slammed their spear-butts into the ground as one.
The refugees fell silent.
“Choose a representative,” Sevha said.
The refugees murmured among themselves for a moment before an old man stepped forward.
“I am Gyom, the Village Chief of Shutrissa.”
As the village chief sat on the ground, Sevha repeated himself.
“I will say it again. I am declaring a conscription order.”
The village chief replied in a polite but barbed voice.
“We fled with nothing. We are barely surviving. What difference would it make, dragging us onto a battlefield?”
Sevha watched him steadily.
A deer.
The village chief, the refugees… they were wounded deer. Herbivores, thinking only of escape.
I can’t kill it. I have to capture it alive.
Sevha decided to view this not as a negotiation, but as a hunt.
He said, “I know. In exchange for answering the conscription order, Rasseu will open its stockpiles. You will be fed, and you will be trained.”
Sevha had blocked one path of escape.
The village chief answered at once.
“That is fortunate. Then we must answer the order. Conscription is a lord’s right, after all. However… it is disappointing to hear talk of rights from one who has so far failed in his duty to care for his people.”
Words a commoner should never dare speak to a noble. Eshu and the knights stiffened, their glares sharp.
The deer is thrashing, thinking it’s about to die.
Sevha knew that if he pursued too aggressively, it would simply break.
He decided to calm it.
“You are right. So right that I have no cause to be offended. All law on this continent grants rights only to those who have fulfilled their duties.”
“Then…!”
“But I am not the one who failed in his duty.”
The village chief fell silent.
The deer has stopped running.
Sevha faced the village chief—the deer.
There’s no point in chasing it like this. If I press too hard, it’ll bolt again.
He considered how to capture the deer alive.
Lure it. Make it run where I can close the trap.
Sevha cast his bait.
“Do you not hate the Tusk Tribe?”
“We do. But that is no reason to risk our lives. You may not know this, Young Master, but fleeing from raiders is something we have done countless times.”
The deer did not take the bait.
A herbivore to the core. It bears no grudge for having to flee. Then…
As Sevha’s thoughts deepened, a shadow fell over him.
It was Teresse, watching from the top of the wall.
Seeing her shadow, he recalled her advice.
What a starving man needs is not the promise of land to farm for this autumn’s harvest. It is a little food to fill his belly now.
Sevha then knew what bait he had to use.
“Gyom.”
“Yes.”
“If you oppose the conscription order, I will not declare it.”
“Thank you for your consider—”
“Instead, the Count will become the Marquis.”
The village chief, and all the refugees, froze.
Sevha did not miss the opening.
“Whoever solves the problem of the Tusk Tribe will become the Marquis. If I do not conscript an army, the Count will. If that happens… what do you think will become of you?”
The refugees remembered, in their very bones, how the Count had treated them. A future under him as Marquis would be the same as the past: not a single grain of rice, not the slightest aid.
Drive the deer to the edge of a cliff…
Sevha impressed upon them that they had nowhere to run.
And then…
Cast the bait.
He asked, “Don’t you want to bring the Count to his knees?”
The expressions of the village chief and the refugees turned sharp.
“The Count who treated you as disposable pawns.”
Like a deer with nowhere left to run, left with no choice but to charge.
“The Count who treated you like toys.”
Like a deer whose only path forward is to rush the predator before it.
“The Count… don’t you want to drag him down to the same place you have fallen?”
Instantly, the faces of the village chief and the refugees turned savage.
Eshu watched with admiration.
The refugees—the deer—had fled from the Tusk Tribe, but they had been wounded by the Count who used them. The enemy the deer had to gore to survive was the Count.
Revenge was the only balm for the misery they had suffered.
The young master… he is not a good man.
Sevha was more calculating than he appeared, a man who understood the wickedness in people.
As Eshu revised his assessment, Sevha rose from his seat and stood before the village chief.
“Let us make a promise. The Count…”
He looked down upon the kneeling chief and the refugees, then held out his hand.
“…will fall by the hand you have placed in mine.”
Immediately, the village chief fell to his knees and took Sevha’s hand. Seeing their chief, all the refugees knelt.
Then the village chief spoke, his face twisted into a mask of servility.
“You speak fearsome words. How could lowly people like us harm a noble lord?”
But his servile expression vanished as he gripped Sevha’s hand tightly.
“Harming a noble… that is the work of another noble. Is it not, Young Master?”
Sevha mused as he studied the chief’s fierce expression.
Even a deer is a beast, after all.