Chapter 118: 117

As It Is Known, Like A Frenzy (1)

The posture of the imperial knight, half-prone and with both hands on the ground, looked like that of a man in devout worship. Siorin’s expression was smug as he looked at the knight.

Repressed laughter flowed through the Templars as they pressed their hands to their helmets. Even though they couldn’t understand the words that had been spoken, they seemed to have roughly grasped the nature of the situation.

“Nice to meet you too,” the first prince said to the blank-faced De Gaulle, “polite imperial knight.”

De Gaulle’s face crumpled. He got up and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, the first prince brushed the dirt from the imperial knight’s shoulder with a compassionate look.

‘Duk, duk,” he tapped De Gaulle’s shoulder in a comradely fashion and climbed back into his carriage.

De Gaulle was perplexed and unsure as to how to respond, so all he did was stare at the first prince’s back. The knights of the kingdom looked at him with mockery in their eyes.

De Gaulle, red face and all, returned to the spot where the other imperial knights had halted.

“Go get it,” he ordered, sending one of his subordinates to go and catch the horse which had thrown him and bolted away.

It wasn’t long before the imperial knight caught the horse and led it back to De Gaulle.

De Gaulle drew his sword in a lightning-fast motion and glanced at the carriage.

‘Heeeuheeungheeu!’ came the sad sounds of the dying horse after the sword bit into its jugular, the beast spasming as it sank to the ground. Siorin Kirgayen cleared his thoughts as he took in the grisly spectacle. The man was an advanced knight, which meant he was not low-ranked, but his rank was surely no high enough to blatantly commit the affront of being late to meet an official foreign delegation.

Nevertheless, De Gaulle had shown no sign of regret or concern about his laxity, which could be interpreted as a sign that the person who had sent him had intended the situation. It seemed that someone had wanted to break the momentum of the delegation to some extent, and Siorin saw this as a relatively reliable sign as to how difficult the road into and out of the empire would in the coming year.

Nevertheless, Siorin Kirgayen couldn’t help smiling a little.

The members of the delegation were meant to feel insulted by the rudeness of the imperial knights and so be in low spirits, but instead, they now felt bolstered after De Gaulle’s humiliation.

And all of it was thanks to the first prince.

Siorin didn’t know how the hell the prince did it, but everyone knew that he had done something to De Gaulle’s horse.

And thanks to that, the brash knight who showed no respect for those from another country had become the polite knight who had bowed down and worshiped a foreign prince.

That blank face that had looked up at the prince had been the funniest sight of all.

Siorin once more tried to prevent the smile from creeping into his lips. Prince Adrian was a lot different from what he had heard. About five days before leaving the capital, the Marquis of Bielefeld had caught up to Siorin and pulled him into a corner, expressing his concern at the fiery nature of the first prince. He said that the biggest flaw of the prince was that he walks straight, but his steps are too radical, and he always aims to drive the opposing party into a corner. He predicted that the prince would cause undue trouble.

The marquis had been half-right and half-wrong, Siorin mused.

As the marquis had said, the first prince clearly possessed a fiery soul. Otherwise, there would have been no way that he would have faced such a childish provocation as that from De Gaulle.

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But the first prince did not only possess a fiery spirit; no, he also had an insidious craftiness, a certain clever coolness. The process of transforming the rude knight into one of supreme politeness had occurred as natural as flowing water. If the horse had not thrown the knight, it would not have been possible to cleanly crush the imperial provocation and so raise the morale of the delegation. The mission of the imperial envoy, in the form of De Gaulle, to insult the envoys of Leonberg, has failed, as the knight had tried to bite off more than he could chew.

“We have already spent a day stuck in the wilderness. Order the ranks and hasten to prepare for departure,” Siorin ordered. The imperial knights who had failed to arrive at the appointed time had been rebuked, so the kingdom’s troops rushed more than they would usually.

“Hmmm!” De Gaulle scoffed, and he looked quite discomfited by the blatant mockery the imperial soldiers were throwing his way.

“Your Highness, our mission is done,” said a knight of the Southern Legion who had escorted the delegation to the border, and he continued to speak into the carriage, “I hope Your Highness will return safely after finishing your travels.”

When the knight had first met the first prince, he had politely expressed his courtesy, but now, as he said goodbye, he did so with all sincerity.

“Good work. I’ll come back, and I will see you, fine men, again,” the first prince said as he raised the shutter, praising the knights and soldiers of the Southern legion with such a plain greeting.

The knights of the Southern Legion, lined up to either side of the carriage, drew their swords and shouted, “May there be only fortune in the future of His Highness the First Prince!”

“May fortune walk with him!” the soldiers shouted after the knights, and then all of them exclaimed, “We shall keep our fangs sharp and our eyes open until the day of your return!”

The southern knights and soldiers beat upon their breastplates, upon their beloved base of Eunaja Fortress, and once more prayed for the prince’s future.

“Under the order of De Gaulle de Devich, an affiliate of the forty-first imperial army, and advanced knight of the one-hundred-and-twelfth knights, we hereby take over your duty as escorts to His Highness the First Prince. You are free to depart the border,” an imperial knight said, his attitude toward the southerners quite rude.

The southerners didn’t care and stayed with the delegation till the end. They raised their swords and did not move an inch until the prince and his procession disappeared from sight.

* * *

Siorin Kirgayen made sure to inform everyone that they had to hurry as much as possible, but due to the lateness of De Gaulle and his knights, the delegation had to bed in the wilderness again.

After he had confirmed that Erhim Kiringer and the Templar Knights were skillfully making the preparations for camp, Siorin went to Arwen.

“I am here as a public service, on official duty,” he told his daughter.

“Speak,” came Arwen’s response.

“What kind of person is he?”

“Please clarify the question.”

“It is exactly as I ask. After seeing His Highness’s true face today, I think I will need to know His Highness more closely if I am to serve his best interests in the future,” said Siorin, and Arwen nodded, saying that she understood. Her face became contemplative, and then she started talking.

Siorin had just asked what kind of character the prince had, but Arwen now enthusiastically told the story as she recalled the first prince’s actions.

Her face was a reminiscent one, a face that Siorin had rarely seen on his daughter, which made him so excited that he had to close his eyes several times just to make sure that he saw correctly.

Siorin almost cried out in amazement several times as Arwen continued her story but managed to sternly repress such a show of emotion. He was there to perform his official duty. It was no time to be baring his personal feelings. He marshaled himself as he pressed back the emotions boiling and welling up inside of him.

Siorin continued to listen to his daughter, and at some point, forgot all about his emotions as he became engrossed in the story.

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He learned of the journey of the prince, a young man reviled by everyone, as he started to grow up in the harsh lands of the north. And as he heard how Prince Adrian finally stood tall as the leader of the north, Siorin realized that it was not a tale that could be heard without the shedding of tears. If the person telling the story to Siorin had not been his knowledgeable daughter, who was incapable of lying, he would have dismissed the saga as being filled with empty fabrications.

He was surprised by the descriptions of the prince’s actions as they flowed from his daughter’s mouth. He liked it. It sounded like the heroic stories of old.

“So he is a hero who has faced many troubles?”

“If someone asks me who the hero of the story is, I will tell them that it’s the first prince, without a moment’s hesitation,” Arwen said, expressing sympathy with her father’s words.

Siorin fell into deep thought.

He recalled the tale of the fight between the first prince and the Warlord as his daughter had told it. When the Warlord had marched from his lair with legions of orcs, he had sundered the flag of Balahard, which had flown proudly upon its spire. The first prince had then taken the Warlord’s banner in hand and exclaimed that he had gained a legendary piece of loot before even fighting, and this had encouraged the soldiers and boosted their morale.

The act of circumventing the enemy’s intentions and twisting them back upon him by obscuring the provocation and so bolstering the morale of his allies was exactly what the prince had done when he had humiliated De Gaulle today.

Siorin judged that the first prince was adept at fighting the foe on a psychological level and was experienced in how to reverse the atmosphere in his favor.

An unwitting smile crept onto Siorin’s face.

The lump of luggage he had thought he had to protect and care for turned out not to be luggage at all.

As Siorin realized this, he drastically started revising his plans for the future.

“By the way, your voice sounds different whenever you think and talk about His Highness.”

“I’m just telling you how he is, so don’t be miserable or get fooled by how I sound. There was never such a relationship between us,” Arwen said, as she dismissed the thought of having an affair as a woman with such a man, as she was serving as his sworn knight.

Siorin, though, could see how much his daughter admired the knightly prince.

He knew it and did not doubt it.

It made him strangely sad. It felt as if something precious had been stolen from him. As he recalled his daughter’s face as she so excitedly spoke of another man, Siorin started crying again. Arwen saw his face and stepped back with disgust.

“Hmm,” Siorin belatedly corrected his expression, and when his face was serious once more, he said, “I just hope that His Highness’s will remain unbroken to the end.”

“I do not know of anyone who can break his will,” Arwen said, and then quickly raised her guard and added, “I’ll bet you’ll be surprised a great many times by his Highness, more times than you can think off.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Even so, Siorin took Arwen’s word with a pinch of salt. He figured that they were just an outpouring of her pride toward the person that she served.

He was wrong.

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His daughter’s words had not been a prideful exaggeration; they were an accurate representation of reality itself. Not long thereafter, Siorin was among those invited to a legion commander’s welcome banquet at an imperial border fortress, where they had arrived the following day.

“Hahaha! I don’t understand how they say the nobles of the kingdom are rude and bombastic with such an unexciting prince! Hah, if you were born here in the empire, you would possess the spirit to lead at least a single legion!”

The first prince remained calm as he heard the legion commander so easily dismissing the successor to the throne of another country; the future king of that country.

By that time, Siorin had gained complete confidence in the first prince’s patience and discernment. He should not have made such a premature judgment.

“The knights of the kingdom and the empire have tested themselves by clashing their swords since ancient times. It is a pity that now we don’t war with each other, so the swords of the imperial knights begin to rust, and their battle-thirst wanes,” the first prince stated.

The legion commander was quite drunk, and therefore would not shut up when it would have been wise to do so.

“If Your Highness permits me, I would like to use this chance so that we can enjoy our fellowship through the sword. So that we can become the whetstones that will sharpen each other, as was the case in the past, as you say. What do you think?”

The calm and pragmatic appearance of the first prince a day before was so deeply etched into Siorin’s mind that he unwittingly stared at the prince, looking forward to his response.

“That’s an excellent idea.”

As a result of Siorin’s trust in the first prince’s wisdom, the legions commander’s crazy proposal had been both proffered and accepted.

“Let’s not hurt each other’s righteousness,” Siorin interjected, hoping that he could prevent the duel from overheating, and he continued as he said, “We should lighten our hearts in such a confrontation and not focus on winning or losing.”

He hoped to use the shining example of the earlier duels between the 112th Imperial Knights and some of the Templars to strengthen his effort. Those duels had all ended along reasonable lines, with no one chasing or claiming victory nor declaring defeat.

“Who is the best knight in the fortress?” the first prince asked, nullifying Siorin’s efforts toward keeping the peace.

“I have a number of great knights, and none of you seem capable enough to break them,” came the gruff response from the commander.

The alcohol-fueled atmosphere in the banqueting hall quickly grew cold, and the time for Siorin to intervene had passed. The situation escalated rapidly, and soon enough, the knights of both empire and kingdom stood facing each other in the middle of the hall.

Siorin did not even spare a glance at the imperial knights; he could only look at the knights of the kingdom: There stood his lovely daughter, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her getting hurt before his eyes.

Siorin began to whisper closely into the prince’s ear.

“Even now, if Your Highness admits that the challenge is a mistake made while everyone is drunk, the situation will not turn problematic.”

However, the first prince seemed to give the whispered warning little heed.

“Don’t worry. This will not interfere with the core of our mission,” came the prince’s casual response. As leader of the delegation, as well as Arwen’s father, Siorin could not overlook the prince’s behavior. He recalled his daughter’s words: “He is a person who does not believe in people very much.”

The prince now stood, his eyes set on a singular purpose as he pulled a small plaque from his pocket and held it out for all to see.

“Who shall prove to have the best knights, the Marquis, or the Legion Commander?”

The plaque that the prince held up turned out to be an official symbol of a marquis of the Burgundy Empire.

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