13 (16)

“Did you hear that, Brother Atila? They say Louis dug up the Black Plain.”

“The Black Plain…. So he would bear that curse. He is indeed a man worthy of becoming my ally.”

That place was precisely the one all the chieftains, Atila included, avoided. It had long been an execution ground. Two tales were entwined with that land, and if the Huns dug it up, a great disaster would befall them.

But if another people dug up that land, they said an ancient god would give the one in question a trial. Of course, if he passed the trial, he would receive a blessing to match in place of a curse. But leaving aside how difficult the trial would be, humans willing to attempt such an unsettling act were always rare.

In truth, Louis had dug up the execution ground to secure Black Water, but the barbarians, who did not know that fact, judged Louis’s action to be worthy of a hero. In addition to Atila having tacitly acknowledged him, and unexpectedly, apart from the barbarian warriors who had died in the war, all the prisoners had been kept alive without being particularly tortured or executed, so the Huns’ view of Louis was improving with each passing day.

Naturally, even the chieftains, though they did not know why it was called the Black Plain and had avoided that region for generations, viewed positively the actions of a non-Hun who was willing to bear the curse. Having formed the alliance by force in order to remain on guard, Atila was gradually beginning to feel something like fondness toward Louis. In his eyes, the young lion resembled himself in some way.

Had it been another country, they surely would have gnashed their teeth at what Louis had done, but the Huns, being raiders by nature, followed a different course of action from the peoples composing other nations. Atila himself had once led a Hun force that looted the city Louis governed, so even if Louis had taken revenge in kind, so long as it did not go too far, they were not the sort to obsess that more blood must still be shed over it. One nation composed of a people with that sort of temperament was the Empire. The Empire had from the very beginning been founded through betrayal and rape. Now it had developed into an overwhelming state, one capable of controlling the world with vast territory, advanced technology, and mighty military power. These days their conquests had become passive, but behind that lay corrupt politics so complex that one could not see even an inch ahead.

In any case, Atila had only recently found his busy schedule easing somewhat. Two of the Three Lords had surrendered to him, and the other had chosen exile. At last, Atila had cast off the yoke of being a barbarian and risen to the position of king over a region. The Kingdom of Hun. The surrounding states looked on with hostile eyes, but the king was dead and all the lords had surrendered, so it seemed certain that he had tacitly become the master of this region. His people, who had lived in Pantalist, were making a great migration. Those who had previously lived in the Kingdom of Gaimer became slaves in the worst cases, or at the very least part of the ruled class.

This incident, known as the Hun invasion, spread throughout the world, and the neighboring countries barred their gates. The Huns’ infamy was so terrible that the neighboring states had no desire to mingle with them by crossing blades. In the midst of this, Atila drained the milky mare’s milk liquor his brother had poured for him into his mouth, then slapped his knee.

“Invite Pontina Louis. Let it mean that all that has happened between us is forgotten.”

Atila’s power was now soaring to the heavens, so when he said they should do something, the other chieftains could hardly raise any objection now. Besides, the chieftains enjoying mare’s milk liquor in this thick, stuffy tent were all his closest chieftains, so naturally they had no intention of refusing his will. Rather, the other chieftains seemed desperate to see Louis too, and spoke with reddened faces.

“So at last we shall see what the lion looks like…. Yes! At the very least, he will not be frail like those Gaimer humans.”

“They say he is a Sword Expert. Far from frail, even if the two of us rushed him together, we could not defeat him, brother. I support Brother Atila’s opinion.”

The ones pouring the mare’s milk liquor beside them were all women with pale skin and beautiful looks. Astonishingly, until not long ago they had been proud maiden nobles of Gaimer. With their country destroyed and almost everything taken from them, they had to do as they were told to survive. Back when they had still been enjoying noble life before suffering at Atila’s hands, the person they had most eagerly gossiped about was Louis. Even as they watched their surroundings in fear, the hope that they might soon see Louis gave them a little happiness.

The rigid atmosphere in Gedria was gradually disappearing. Louis summoned all the barbarians of Gedria to the square, climbed onto the platform, and announced that he had formed an alliance with Atila. There might have been jeers, but the rumor that Louis had dug up the Black Plain had already spread widely among the existing residents, so since Louis was also a warrior who had taken upon himself the curse they would otherwise have had to bear, applause was slowly beginning to arise. Indeed, Louis had not fought them unfairly, and because he had overwhelmingly won in direct battle, they were viewing him not simply as an enemy but as a legitimate conqueror.

Because barbarians had always fought frequent civil wars among themselves, they had a culture in which they did not view a strong enemy merely as an enemy, but as someone admirable. In any case, the applause that had been breaking out little by little spread loudly. Most of those clapping were women. One of the reasons Louis was being accepted even more easily by them was because, frankly, the women of the Huns were dying to sleep with Louis.

For them, bearing the child of a strong man was the highest of honors. Even setting that aside, Louis was, in their eyes from birth, a civilized man, possessed of noble blood, the lord of a vast territory classified on the same level as Atila, and a man whose name and fame were known by all around them. They wanted to sleep with Louis so badly that it was rare in Gedria to find a young woman who had never wished to be taken by him.

No, even if there were none, it was only because they thought there was no possibility and gave up thinking about it, not because it meant anything else. But Louis himself was setting an example for the sake of rapidly stabilizing public order, and in doing so he was unintentionally disappointing the women. In truth, what Louis had done in this war against the barbarians could not really be called particularly outstanding.

Louis’s officers were all men who had experienced war, so they were skilled in troop deployment, and because he had received active cooperation not only from Louis’s army but also from the allied houses of Parse and Orsini, it would not have been wrong to say that one-third of this expedition consisted of their troops.

The detached-force idea had also been Akiteia’s creation, and the one who captured the barbarian Ginik, who had been defending Gedria, was Kaban Ferdinand the Sword Master, whom Louis had persuaded to join him. However, because of the two incidents of the Horn Bow unit’s excellence and Louis and Anok slaughtering the monster swarm by themselves, there was a growing tendency for everyone, even soldiers belonging not to Louis but to the various houses, to believe that such a successful conquest had been possible because Louis was exceptional. Rather, the soldiers and the captured Huns were in a situation where they looked down on Akiteia, who could not wield a sword, and Spessart, who looked somewhat delicate.

Meanwhile, after occupying Gedria, Louis had begun making concentrated investments. To develop Magitech, it was only natural that this city, from which Black Water emerged, had to be grown steadily. The largest cities Louis possessed were his ducal domain and the port city of Kayani, which produced salt.

With the papal visit and the Golden Age buff overlapping, Louis’s finances were now bursting at the seams. In a situation where no clear decision had yet been made about where to spend it, the city Louis chose as the third to undergo rapid growth was the very place no one had expected: Gedria.

Once Louis made his decision, he began using the garrison troops to seriously clear out the surrounding Green Skins and giant-type monsters. He also briefly conveyed his intentions to his uncle, Pontina Derik, who was temporarily managing the ducal territory. Whether Derik saw something extraordinary in Louis even from those short words, he sent back word strongly supporting Louis’s opinion.

Because he had wandered all over the world and possessed more open-minded thinking than anyone else, he thought Louis’s intention to invest heavily in Magitech was good if anything, never bad. Derik immediately contacted House Orsini and requested that Arimeus, a disciple of Euclid, be allowed to send a letter to the Mage Tower.

Arimeus was a man acknowledged even within House Orsini to have an eccentric personality that anyone would recognize as strange, yet after receiving his master’s letter, he shut himself in his room and only muttered like a madman without coming out, but the moment he received Derik’s letter, he immediately contacted his master, Euclid.

In any case, events had progressed like this in the meantime, and Louis now stood amid thunderous applause. Indeed, even if one searched all the distant ancestors of House Pontina, had there ever been anyone worthy of receiving applause from these people? No, even if one searched the Duchy of Eron, there would have been no such figure.

But another reason they liked Louis was that he had decided on full-scale investment in Gedria and had begun pouring in massive amounts of food and construction materials. Carts loaded with wheat and building materials were arriving in Gedria without end.

The wheat had been distributed separately so the barbarians would not starve to death, and Louis was starting by paving roads first in order to move supplies. Once enough materials arrived, he planned to urbanize the area in earnest instead of leaving it as single-story wooden buildings. Louis raised his hand, and everyone who understood what that meant fell silent. Looking over the endless mass of Huns, Louis opened his mouth.

“I have formed an alliance with Atila, your king. He is also the very one who once caused my city to starve to death. I believe I have not treated you more harshly than he treated me. I came here to recover my tarnished honor, and because I believed I had accomplished that purpose, I did not retaliate against you. More importantly, your king abandoned his homeland and moved it to a new region. Since I have formed an alliance with him, if any of you wish to abandon your homeland and follow Atila to Gaimer, I will not stop you. If you wish to follow, then follow. But do not think that place will be better than this one. Gedria will become a place more remarkable than what you see now. I have decided to change this place. It will become a city I can be proud of. And at the same time, that is also an opportunity for you. If you remain here, I will grant you citizenship and accept you as citizens. Those who stay here will receive various benefits besides that, will no longer starve, and will no longer need to sleep in moldy buildings. The choice is yours. Whatever choice you make, I will not stop you.”

In an instant, the Huns packed in a vast crowd stirred loudly. Some wore shocked expressions, as if stunned. Louis was the first lord ever to say he would accept them as citizens. One of the reasons the barbarians had no choice but to keep living in this barren region was because every time they came down hoping to assimilate, the lords drove them away.

Originally, they had longed for life in the Duchy of Eron or in other lands. Moreover, the lord offering this promise was none other than Louis. Not only because of everything Louis had done so far, but because the way Gedria was changing now was almost hard to follow with the eye. More than that, the plentiful meals were simply wonderful.

Even so, if they stayed here, those who remained would in any case become traitors. So confusion, if not chaos, could not help but arise. Yet there was no violent movement. Most of the Huns gathered here were women. Many of them also had young children they needed to care for. They would have to travel a long distance on foot, and for women with children, moving such a distance was itself a great problem.