Sortie (2)

The older a soldier was, the more he clung to superstition.

Young troopers nodded along to their seniors’ bizarre obsession in front of them and shook their heads behind their backs.

Superstition was useless.

Those veterans steeped in omens prayed for Her Grace the grand duchess to return to Tessen at once.

After they shoveled away the mad spring snows, even the younger soldiers longed as one for the grand duchess.

When the rainy season began, everyone wondered, “Where is Her Grace now?”

“Her Grace is in Tessen.”

The young soldiers tried to snap out of their brief superstitious spell.

“But she’s in Orie, not the main keep.”

Everyone at Western Command wished the grand duchess would come back to Tessen.

Pol glanced up at the ash-white sky and spoke.

“Think Her Grace is still in Orie?”

“No idea.”

Sam gave a crooked grin that said a man of his lowly station would hardly know.

“She needs to hurry ba— Huh! Look there! Aren’t those Tuani nomad cavalry?”

“Everyone to positions.”

“All units to battle-readiness. Nine hostile riders approaching from the front.”

The Tuani nomads were the clan worst at odds with Tessen’s Western Command.

Calling themselves the Children of the Stars, they looked down on Imperials who built houses and stayed in one place.

“Are they insane? They’re still coming straight at us.”

“I see two civilians.”

In addition to the three on sentry duty, the men on standby moved to high alert.

“Nothing behind them.”

“That’s all of them with no main force?”

While puzzled talk passed along the post, the Tuani riders rapidly nearing the checkpoint waved a white flag.

“Huh? What’s that about?”

Pol let out a laugh of disbelief.

The oh-so-proud Tuani nomads raising a white flag to Imperial troops?

Had the color gained some new meaning since yesterday that he hadn’t heard of?

“A white flag…”

Edric muttered, equally nonplussed.

“Surrender…?”

Sam said the word no one else would.

Suspicious looks flickered among the watch.

“Could be a trick?”

“Some kind of ruse.”

“They’re Tuani. It’s possible.”

“Maybe a great criminal of the Tuani is trying to use Tessen as a shield.”

Silence broke; words full of doubt followed.

“Let’s at least hear them out.”

Sam steadied his juniors and stepped outside the checkpoint.

Pol and Edric walked close on his heels.

The Tuani treated their mounts as their own bodies.

They would keep the saddle even when meeting a lofty personage.

Their customs differed from Imperial etiquette.

As Sam approached, the Tuani dismounted all at once.

Pol and Edric traded a silent ventriloquized gripe behind Sam’s head.

‘They don’t look Tuani to me.’

No Tuani would do that.

Sam pretended not to hear the mutters at his nape and tightened his grip on his weapon.

“I am Sam Selti, officer in charge of the Second Checkpoint, Western Command of Tessen. Who are you? If you have a representative, state your name. Come any closer and we will attack.”

At Sam’s warning, the Tuani halted.

Their faces were ashen with fear.

As if being pursued, they kept darting glances over their shoulders.

Sam did not take his eyes off the visitors’ faces.

Pol guarded Sam; Edric watched the direction the Tuani kept looking.

“Forgive our sudden arrival. Hard as this is to believe, devils are upon us.”

The Tuani spokesman blurted out, face gone the color of dirt.

Sam and the other two almost snorted at the phrase “Tuani spokesman.”

The Tuani came to Tessen only when short on food—to raid.

“Devils…?”

Sam focused on the talk; one part snagged at him.

“Yes! It sounds absurd, but you must believe me. They’re devils! You kill them and they don’t die. After a landslide on Mount Kaip, a devils’ castle appeared.”

A devils’ castle.

Devils that wouldn’t die.

Sam, Pol, and Edric were all Tessen-born.

Something about this felt familiar.

The “devils’ castle” they knew had been dazzling white and encircled by an emerald lake, but a devils’ castle by any color was the same.

“You’re saying a devils’ castle appeared on Mount Kaip, and devils came out of it?”

“Yes!”

Sam neatly restated the Tuani’s rambling words and asked.

The spokesman seemed relieved that someone could follow.

Sam took a step back.

Pol and Edric cautiously did the same.

“L-Look… We know it’s shameless to tell you this when we were fighting Tessen as recently as yesterday. But this isn’t only our problem. The monsters have black, rocklike hides and are bigger than bears. Not one or two—dozens. Please believe us!”

Sam took a bigger step back and looked to Pol and Edric.

They read the message in his eyes.

-Boys, this is…

-Yeah.

-It’s those things.

Their talk with glances ended.

“Sorry.”

Sam offered an apology and headed for the post.

“W-What? Hey!”

Sam, Pol, and Edric quickly returned to their positions.

“All units to battle-readiness! Raise alert to wartime status! Seal the border!”

The Tuani stared, dumbfounded, as the three moved like the wind.

“Move everyone waiting at the checkpoint into the shelters!”

“Anyone already cleared through who wants to shelter, bring them in!”

In an instant, the guards barred the gates.

“…?”

Left before the border wall, the Tuani party looked at one another in dismay.

They had come ready to be mocked by Imperial soldiers.

Things were so urgent they didn’t care about humiliation.

But events unfolded nothing like they expected.

The Tessen soldiers took the Tuani’s news as truth.

They believed it thoroughly.

And they closed the border.

“Have you no pride as warriors!”

“You Tessen devils!”

Realizing what was happening, the Tuani shouted.

“Safe travels!”

Sam stuck only his eyes past the embrasure and yelled.

“W-What! Will you ignore those who beg help right before your eyes!”

“Is there no human feeling in Tessen!”

“Open this gate! Open it! If you cannot send reinforcements, at least let the Tuani clan stay in Tessen!”

Their pleading voices were painful to hear.

“See here, you handle your side’s boulders and we’ll handle ours. Remember how every winter or spring, when our side’s rocks had us worn out, your side kept charging in? Some nerve you’ve got.”

Sam answered in a brisk, cutting tone.

“We are not Tuani! We’re people from the first village by Mount Kaip. Please—at least let us stay in the shelters!”

The lands around Mount Kaip were among Western Command’s targets.

But the mountain folk living nearby were closer to the nomads than to Tessen or the Empire.

When Tessen’s army warned them out of concern, the natives took offense, drawing a hard line: this was neither Tessen nor the Empire.

When the mountain folk came to lodge complaints with Tessen, they began with:

“Tessen, keep your border.”

Without even showing his face, Sam shouted back:

“Tessen keeps its border!”

Then—clack, clack!—they locked the mechanisms double and triple.

This was no time to weigh coldness against kindness.

It was an emergency.

Command sealed the frontier and sent a dispatch to His Grace the Grand Duke at once.

Reichardt woke to the sound of rain.

The moment he opened his eyes, he started.

“…!”

A jolt throbbed through his heart.

Alicia had taken bold possession of his bed and was sleeping.

Rain fell beyond the window.

So he understood.

“…”

On rainy nights, Alicia invaded Reichardt’s bed.

Lately she slipped into his rooms without a trace.

It helped that he had damped down the sense that tracked her presence.

Every morning he woke to her face right there and was startled all over again.

He carefully shifted, removing the arm that was touching her.

Then he bent and kissed her sleeping cheek.

Her brows, sunk in deep sleep, moved faintly.

He kissed her cheek again.

Alicia’s lips eased upward in a soft smile.

“Rei…?”

“Who told you to sleep in here?”

Reichardt put a little more space between them.

“It rained hard in the night.”

Propping the wadded quilt under her face, Alicia spoke.

Her serious expression made the pronouncement sound weighty.

Her raids on Reichardt’s chambers when it rained were, in truth, quite earnest.

She firmly believed rain meant Reichardt might be in dire straits.

She seemed unaware how dangerous it was to slip into someone’s bedchamber without a sign, touch a sleeping face and hands, and cuddle him.

“I haven’t been in pain lately.”

“You never know.”

Alicia briskly caught his hand.

Reichardt, pretending reluctance, let her keep hold of him.

The chamber filled with a head-spinning perfume—sweet and vivid.

Today he meant to explain just how risky this was.

He was about to speak when he heard footsteps on the stair and gently drew Alicia’s hand to his lips.

Lest anyone see, he pulled the quilt up over her head and hid the fact she was in his bed.

Rei?

Alicia opened her mouth to speak,

but a big hand gently covered it first.

Meeting her eyes, Reichardt shook his head.

“Your Grace.”

Henrik’s voice came from beyond the door.

Reichardt sent Alicia a look that said See? and another that said Don’t move.

“Enter.”

Henrik opened the door and spoke from the threshold.

“A dispatch has arrived from Western Command.”

“I’ll come down shortly.”

Burying Alicia in the quilts, Reichardt answered.

“Yes, I’ll have him wait in the hall.”

Henrik slipped out.

Only when the door clicked shut did Reichardt release Alicia’s mouth.

“Use the passage and go back to your room.”

He started from the bed at once.

It seemed there was no time to prepare—something urgent.

Alicia, still inside the quilt, wriggled lazily.

“They all know anyway. I told Daisy I’d be coming here. I’m sure Henrik was told at dawn.”

Alicia murmured to the back of Reichardt’s head as he reached for the knob.

She could almost see his hand pause.

From behind the hangings, she waggled a few fingers at him.

She didn’t forget her goodbye.

Bye-bye.

As he closed the door, Reichardt shaped the words silently:

Use the passage.

At her straight-laced fiancé’s caution, Alicia smiled.

Her smothered chuckles swelled into big, ringing laughter, but no one beyond the door let on.

She rolled once across the soft bedding, kicked her feet in a brief lazy flurry, and then used the passage to return to her own room.