Chapter 34 : Chapter 34
Chapter 34. Winds Stir in Lucerne
Medici? The Southern Frontier?
The Southern Frontier... lay thousands of miles away, with the entire heartland of the kingdom and the vast forests of the Western Frontier in between.
House Medici was famed for trade, seafaring, and unfathomable wealth. Its influence was tangled deep, with its reach spread across the coasts.
Sabda Medici, the duke’s second son... why would a noble youth of such exalted status turn his attention toward Black Territory?
“I have nothing to do with them...” Eli murmured to himself.
He searched through the scattered fragments of the original owner’s memories. Aside from a few fleeting banquet impressions from the noble circles of the royal capital,
there was no direct connection at all with House Medici, and especially not with this young master Sabda.
Could it really be only because of Obsidian Territory’s location?
A cold sensation, like being watched by a venomous snake hidden in the dark, quietly crept up his spine.
How much had they managed to uncover?
Or was it... merely the routine attention one neighbor paid another?
Forget it. Soldiers blocked what came with arms; water was stopped with earth.
Eli’s gaze refocused on the more urgent threat before him—Lucerne City.
He rose and walked over to the small table piled high with parchment rolls and charcoal pencils.
Picking up a quill pen, he dipped it in ink and swiftly began writing across a sheet of sturdy papyrus.
“To the esteemed Marquess Marcus Hohenzollern, Supreme Military Commander of the Western Frontier...”
Eli first set down the speculation he had been pondering for some time:
“I, Eli, humbly venture the following guess: Grumm’s forces are likely not an isolated case.
Though the city-state allied army has retreated, internal strife and uneven division of spoils remain within their ranks.
It is entirely possible that other powers, like the city-state of Falei, have secretly left behind elite troops to occupy strongholds.
If such remnants are scattered throughout the occupied Western Frontier, supporting one another from afar and secretly coordinating, then the harm they may do to the Western Frontier would be immense.
I beseech Your Lordship to examine this matter carefully. It cannot be left unguarded against.”
After writing that passage, Eli paused. In the end, he still included his doubts regarding Medici.
“In addition, regarding Sabda Medici, second son of the Duke of the Southern Frontier:
If Your Lordship possesses any information regarding his territory or the forces under his command, I would be deeply grateful if you might share some of it with me.”
At the end, he once more emphasized his position—that he would serve the Western Frontier to the death and fight to recover its lost lands.
The face of the ever-loyal Eli Black—La Roche—Hohenzollern turned a little red.
“Ahem.”
He signed it, stamped it, and sealed it with wax.
“Aika!” Eli called out.
The captain of the personal guards, Aika, answered the summons and pushed the door open.
Eli handed him the sealed letter. “Send someone to Thorne City and place this letter into Marquess Marcus’s hands personally.
If His Lordship has any written reply or verbal instruction, bring it back at once.”
“At once, my lord!” Aika accepted the letter, then turned and strode out of the Council Hall.
He had only just finished dealing with the matter of the messenger when the heavy wooden doors of the Council Hall were shoved open again, bringing in a gust of dust and road-weariness.
Brandon had returned.
The old soldier was covered in dirt from head to toe. Even his graying beard was speckled with dried mud, and his face carried the exhaustion of a hard journey.
“My lord!” Brandon’s voice came with urgent breaths. “Something’s happened!”
Eli’s heart sank. He gestured for him to sit. “Slowly. Lucerne City?”
“Yes!” Brandon snatched the waterskin Ella hurriedly passed to him and took several hard gulps.
“As you instructed, I’ve been keeping watch outside Lucerne City the whole time. And just over these past few days—”
He drew in a deep breath. “There’s movement, my lord! Not a small one, either! A large force has entered the city! At least four or five hundred men!
They were flying a jumble of different banners, but their equipment looked fairly well-kept. They didn’t seem like a gang of vagrants thrown together at the last minute!
They... they gathered outside Lucerne City from several different directions, then entered in groups!”
Brandon spoke faster and faster.
“Judging from the look of it, they were definitely the main forces Grumm sent out earlier to ‘acquire grain’ and stand watch. They’ve all been recalled!”
Eli’s fist clenched soundlessly.
As expected! That lurking wolf, Grumm, was finally about to bare its fangs.
A large-scale concentration of troops could not possibly be for some petty skirmish.
“Have they moved out yet?” Eli’s voice was tight as a drawn bowstring.
“Not before I left my watch position!”
“The city gates were shut, and there was no sign of any large force moving out.
I’m afraid they’re preparing for a major operation.
And the target... is very likely to be frontier outposts like ours nearby.
Obsidian Territory... will probably be the first to bear the brunt.”
Brandon’s analysis matched Eli’s own thoughts exactly.
If Grumm had held his forces in check before, then either his strength had been too scattered, or he had been wary of the Western Frontier Army.
“It seems this Baron Grumm is even more cautious than we imagined... and even more ruthless.”
Time! What they lacked most was time!
What Brandon had brought back was the situation before he departed. By now, the forces over there might already have completed their assembly and could strike at any moment.
“Brandon!” Eli made his decision on the spot, his eyes burning as he fixed them on the old soldier.
“You’ve worked hard, but you need to make another trip immediately!”
“This time, Coalball will go with you!”
“Yes, my lord!” Brandon wasted no words. He gave Eli and Ella a hurried salute, then turned and left.
Only Eli and Ella remained in the Council Hall.
Ella stepped forward worriedly and gently wrapped her hands around Eli’s tightly clenched fist, feeling the chill in his palm.
She said nothing. She only tried to pass a little warmth into him through the heat of her own hands.
Eli tightened his grip around her hand in return, but his gaze had already gone through the window, toward the east, toward the direction hidden behind the mountains.
Old Buck, get here quickly...
...
At the same time, in the center of Lucerne City, inside Baron Grumm’s temporary command post.
Nine figures sat around a heavy oak long table.
Their armor was not of a single standard, but every set was well-maintained.
Each face bore the weathering of a hard march and a suppressed savagery, their eyes sharp as blades.
They were the core of Grumm’s strength—eight Silver-tier knights. There had once been ten.
The wavering oil lamps cast their shadows in twisted shapes across the cold stone walls, as if nine vicious beasts were waiting to devour men whole.
“My lord,” the first to speak was a bald knight seated at Grumm’s lower right, his face slashed by a hideous scar.
“You summoned us all back in such a hurry that even the ‘grain raids’ were halted... have those black lions from the Western Frontier made a move?”
The other knights also turned their eyes toward the man seated at the head of the table.
Grumm von Andar.
He looked to be around forty. His build was not especially imposing—if anything, he was somewhat lean—and he wore an old-style dark blue Falai officer’s uniform.
He slowly lifted his eyelids, and his gray-green gaze swept across every face at the table, making several of the knights straighten their backs without thinking.
“A move?” Grumm’s voice was flat and not particularly loud. “The Western Frontier Army hasn’t made a move.”
He paused. “It was the outpost I had placed in the southeast, the one under Vulture... it was ripped out by the roots.
And Night Owl, whom I sent to investigate, has also lost contact. I’m afraid... he’s very likely dead.”
“What?!”
“Vulture’s outpost was wiped out?!”
“And Night Owl too...?”
The moment Grumm’s words fell, all eight Silver-tier knights shot to their feet, their faces filled with disbelief and furious shock!
Vulture’s outpost! That was their most important forward post and raiding transit station in the southeastern direction from Lucerne City.
It had been guarded by Vulture, a Mid-Silver Tier knight, and manned by another fifty or sixty hardened bandits.
Night Owl, moreover, was famed among them for stealth and tracking. And now he too had vanished without a sound?!
“Who did it?! Was it an elite detachment of those black lions?!” the scar-faced bald knight, Otto, known as “Bloodaxe,” roared, eyes nearly splitting with rage.
“Impossible!” Veli, called “Bloodthorn,” who was responsible for monitoring the movements of the Western Frontier Army, immediately retorted.
“There hasn’t been any unusual mobilization at all from the direction of Thorne City! Their main force is still squatting on the line like turtles.
A small detachment couldn’t possibly have taken out Veli’s people without a sound!”
“Then who was it?” another knight with a sinister face, Karl, known as “Shadowhand,” asked darkly.
“Could it have been others left behind around here turning on us for profit?”
Grumm’s icy gaze swept across his agitated subordinates like invisible freezing water, instantly quelling the uproar inside the stone fortress.
“Quiet,” he said flatly.
The knights immediately fell silent and sat back down, though the fury and killing intent in their eyes only grew fiercer.
“Who did it is not important right now.” Grumm’s voice remained as flat as ever.
“What matters is that someone, right under our noses, on our own territory,
killed our people, stole our things, and... provoked us.”
His gray-green pupils slowly shifted and finally settled on Veli.
“Veli, you are responsible for watching the Western Frontier Army, but you also keep an eye on the surrounding area. Recently... have you noticed any unusual ‘neighbors’?”
Veli rose at once and bowed respectfully. “My lord! I was just about to report on that!
Around the time Vulture’s outpost was uprooted, several of our scout teams active near that post encountered armed knights of unknown origin!
Their numbers were not great. Our scouts originally intended to capture one alive, but they resisted desperately, and in the end our men killed them all on the spot!
They bore noble crests on their persons. They seemed to be... nobles...”
“Unknown identity... well-equipped... nobles...”
His gray-green eyes turned slowly.
“Not the Western Frontier Army. Not leftover troops from the other city-states...” He sounded as though he were muttering to himself, yet also arriving at a conclusion.
“In that case... only one possibility remains.”
“They are those Frontier Knights who came to the Western Frontier to pick through scraps, not knowing the height of heaven or the depth of earth.”
“My lord, could there be some mistake? Those fools...” Otto the “Bloodaxe” could not help objecting.
“Fools?” Grumm cut him off. A cold curve, a rare sight indeed, touched the corner of his lips.
“Fools who wiped out Vulture’s entire outpost and made Night Owl disappear... I would quite like to see such fools for myself.”
He gave his subordinates no further chance to question him. His voice sharpened abruptly.
“Pass the order!”
The stone fortress instantly fell silent enough to hear a pin drop. Every knight straightened in his seat.
“First, send out every scout unit!
Using Lucerne City as the center, search every direction within a hundred li! Especially the southeast!
Priority is to search for newly established frontier strongholds of notable size! Find it! Confirm its position! I want the most detailed intelligence possible! Immediately! At once!”
“Second, all soldiers within the city are to cease all outward raids!
Accelerate preparations! Inspect weapons and armor! Be ready to move at any time!”
“Third,” Grumm said, his gray-green pupils narrowing, enunciating each word with terrible clarity,
“find that stronghold...”
“And then kill every last one of them.”
At once, a bloodthirsty red gleam burst into the eyes of all eight Silver-tier knights. Their right fists slammed hard against the armor over their left chests.
“By your command, my lord!”