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It was Dasa. She had drawn Red Chili and fired. Unlike the knights, she was used to using her gun, and her pistol was intended for sniper work. It was inherently more precise than the Durandalls. Her bullet found the woman’s sword and tore it out of her hand.

“Hrgh?!” The woman used her left hand to cover her right, a shocked expression on her face. Maybe her wrist had been injured by the force of the impact. “What in the blazes was that?!”

It seemed she had finally comprehended just how dangerous a gun could be. But that, too, lasted just a moment. With astonishing speed, the woman slid her left hand into her overcoat. She must have had yet another weapon in there. On the battlefield, swords can break or be twisted; it was only common sense to bring along a backup weapon.

But Yukinari already had Durandall’s blade at her neck. “Enough.”

“...Grr...” For the first time, the woman looked upset. She turned hostile eyes on him. “You aren’t a missionary knight! So why are you trying to stop me?”

“A missionary knight? Huh, now I get it.”

She must have attacked Arlen and the others on the assumption that they were part of the Missionary Order of the True Church of Harris. And in their minds, perhaps they were—but he’d save that for another time.

“Anyway,” Yukinari went on, “I want to talk to you. Put down your weapon.”

“You want... what?” The woman looked at him, her amber eyes suspicious. No normal enemy would ask to talk after such an intense battle.

“You’ve got to be just about spent, right?”

A good look showed the woman to be panting, as if she were breathing with her shoulders. Considering that she had held off three missionary knights for quite some time, it actually suggested she had far more endurance than one might assume at first glance. But she could hardly go on forever.

And the blood on her overcoat. A close look revealed that it wasn’t a splatter, but must have been her own. Her clothes underneath the coat were also spotted with blood in several places.

This made it all the more amazing that she had held her own against Arlen and his friends.

For that matter, where had this woman even come from? If she was from some other town, that would mean she had traveled alone through areas rife with xenobeasts and demigods, to say nothing of dangerous wild animals. It suggested an audacity unusual for a woman.

“Just who are you?” Yukinari asked, just a hint of frustration in his voice.

She stared at him a moment longer, still panting. “I... am...”

But she must have reached her limit, because before she could tell him her name, she lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground.

●

In the dark, a frenzied contest of steel on steel was taking place. Sparks flew in every direction, but the light they generated was far too meager to push back the all-consuming darkness. The place was in utter confusion; it was impossible to say who was where.

“Yaaaaaaah!”

A cry sounded through the forest. Was it ally or enemy?

They had agreed they would escape at midnight. Everyone wore black so as not to be seen. A guard, gold gleaming in his hand, quietly opened the back gate for them—that was how they got out. No matter how closely you were being watched, an escape could always be found if those watching you were corrupt enough.

But this guard turned out to be even more corrupt than the party had counted on. No sooner had he taken the money from them than he made a covert report to the captain of the town watch. Presumably he said nothing about the bribe he had received, playing the part of a loyal official.

They were less upset about his betrayal, however, than the fact that they had been forced to turn to someone so faithless in the first place. If they had had power enough, this whole ridiculous ploy could have been avoided.

The group got out of town, and for a while they had no problems. They kept to side roads, getting some distance from the village. When they judged they were probably safe, they went back to the main road—and right into an ambush.

The True Church of Harris. The iron fist of the Civilizing Expedition—the Missionary Order. A more fearsome enemy than any erdgod or xenobeast, perhaps the worst thing they could have run into.

“Hold fast! There aren’t many of them!”

As she tried to inspire her comrades, she drew her own weapon, a halberd, and advanced.

It should have been impossible for the knights to guess exactly where she and her escort would come back to the main road. That meant the Order couldn’t commit all its forces to any one potential ambush, but must have spread itself over several possible locations. The most worrisome thing was that the fight might drag on, allowing these knights’ friends to reinforce them.

“These sweet little knights aren’t used to a down-and-dirty fight! The conditions favor us! Stay strong and aim true! Cut them to shreds!”

On the one hand, she had merely said the first thing that came into her head, hoping to encourage her allies. On the other hand, she was right. The Order wasn’t prepared for a night battle; their movements would be imprecise.

The woman and those with her, however, always did the dirtiest work, and they were used to engaging in the dark. Although they were usually the ones setting the ambushes, not the ones being ambushed.

She was just starting to think they might survive this. But then, moonlight poured down through a break in the clouds, and in the cold, pale illumination, the knights gave a cheer. They were looking back at something.

“The saint has come! The saint fights for us!”

Just below the shouting, a sharp noise could be heard, piercing the night. It drifted across the battlefield ceaselessly, weaving a melody.

And then, as one, the knights began to chant.

“Holy, holy, holy!”

“O our august forebear! O saint who guarded the revered teachings!”

“Be incarnate now in sinews of steel, and come forth thyself to battle!”

Saint, they called it, but in the moonlight it seemed a giant, looming up as if to make the darkness darker still.

The group was in trouble. The reinforcements had arrived, and in the worst possible form.

“Men, fall back!” someone called from behind the giant—the statue of the guardian saint. “Whoever remains in front of our saint, be they friend or foe, will be destroyed!”

That was the instant the battle turned. The knights retreated like a receding tide. In their place, the massive metal figure came forward. A single glance was more than enough to tell that no ordinary human weapon would have any effect against it. It was like a man-made, metal god.

It approached them, its footsteps booming. It moved strangely; each individual movement was quick, but they didn’t flow together. Each step was sickeningly fast, but there was a brief pause before the giant stepped again. Most likely, this was because the Missionary Order had to instruct it to make each movement. The result was that it was very difficult to predict what the statue would do.

And so, when its fist came down with a whumph of splitting air, her subordinates were unable to react immediately. The thing had been lumbering along just a second before, and now her friends were trapped in a ball of metal that moved so quickly it nearly left an afterimage.

“Hrgh—!”

“Gyah!”

Two of her men were sent flying with noises that were not quite screams, not quite cries. They disappeared into the grass by the side of the road. Chances were, they were dead. She could see the unnatural angles of their limbs and necks even as they tumbled through the air. They looked like they’d been struck with a battering ram. It might have been less disturbing if they’d had no limbs at all.

“Run!” someone shouted. “They’ve got the advantage!”

This brought her back to reality. The missionaries had fallen back. If anything, that opened up a chance for them to escape. The statue might be huge, and it might be powerful, but there was only one of it. If they ran as hard as they could, there was a good chance they could get away.

She and her subordinates began to flee their hunters. But then—

“Holy, holy, holy!”

This time the chanting was coming from ahead of them.

“Wha...?” She froze. Another guardian saint, coming from the other direction, was clearly silhouetted by the moonlight. In fact, there was a second statue next to it. And then...

“Fire?!”

With a roar, flames spewed from the saint’s waist. The raging inferno illuminated the feet of the Missionary Order’s ultimate weapon, making it look more awful and more terrifying than ever. The steel giant must have had oil inside it, enabling it to shoot fire. It might be able to spew boiling oil as well.

To get anywhere near any of the statues was clearly fatal, and yet at this rate, they would soon be surrounded on three sides. She presumed the reinforcements would be helping to block their escape.

“Hrg...!”

This was not good. They would all be destroyed. The only option now was to try to dodge the statues’ attacks, get behind one of them to the missionaries who were no doubt waiting there, and die fighting. The question was how long her overcoat could withstand the flames.

“No.” Someone gripped her shoulder. She looked back to find a white-haired man with only one eye shaking his head. He was the one she trusted most. He may have been past his physical prime, but he had the experience and wisdom of a lifetime of battle.

“You must run,” he said. “You must escape.”

He didn’t mean along with everyone else. He meant alone. He was telling her to abandon the rest of them.

“If you think I would ever—”

She had done a great deal of dirty work. She had learned to take every advantage in battle. But that didn’t mean—

“No, you must. I will not allow you to perish here, Princess!”

He was right. Survival was, for her, the highest imperative. Everything she had done, she had done for this. She had not been ashamed even to flee.

She remembered that day six years before. She had run, abandoning her castle, her country, and her father. And she had kept running, because that was what he had told her to do. But when would she be able to stop? When she was dead? Would she have to throw away all her companions, ignoring the deaths of everyone closest to her, until she was running, surviving, but alone?

She would sooner—

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

She sat up with a scream like a wild beast. Then, and only then, did she realize it had all been a dream.

“Where am I...?”

She looked around, taking in the strange room. It was small, with only a few furnishings, but it was clean and well cared for.

Suddenly, she noticed the girl standing by the wall. She looked to be in her early teens, by all appearances a perfectly ordinary village girl. She was seated on the floor, looking surprised. A small wooden bucket was nearby, and water, which had presumably been in the bucket, was on the floor.

It took the woman a moment to put the pieces together. The girl must have been startled by her scream.

“And who are you...?”

She thought perhaps this girl was there to guard her, but she looked so weak, and she carried no weapon. Perhaps she’d simply come to check on the woman.

“I—I’ll call Lord Yukinari.” She didn’t answer the question, but only scuttled out of the room.

The woman considered for moment. It didn’t make sense. She must have fainted from exhaustion and blood loss after her battle with the missionary knights. Why had they not tied her up? Why was she not under armed guard? This was an awfully incautious way to treat a complete stranger.

“And that young man...” The boy who had confronted her at the end, with white hair and red eyes. He’d said he wanted to talk. It seemed, now, that he hadn’t simply been trying to distract her, but had really meant it. She was being treated not as a captive, but as a guest.

“Yuki... Yukinari. So that’s his name.” She frowned. It sounded very strange to her.

●

“Ex-Excuse me!” The door of the reception room burst open, and Berta came in.

“Berta? Please remember to knock.” Fiona was talking with Yukinari and the others, a frown on her face.

“What? Oh, I... I’m sorry. But the woman... She’s awake...”

“Then I guess we should go say hello.” Yukinari stood with a grin. Fiona sighed, then followed him.

The rather distraught Berta led them to the room where the woman had been sleeping. In addition to Yukinari and Fiona, Dasa, Ulrike, and Arlen were all there.

“You didn’t even know to knock?” Arlen was saying with his usual arrogance. “I guess that’s a country girl for you.”

“S-Sorry...”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk about us that way,” Fiona grumbled. “It’s not like Berta didn’t know. She was just in a hurry and forgot. And for your information, she and I are practically the same age. The next time you talk like that, you’re gonna get it!”

“Wha? You insolent— Hiding behind the favor of your ‘erdgod’!”

“I don’t want to hear it, especially not from you!”

Dasa was a common sight at Yukinari’s side, as was Ulrike, since she seemed to have taken a shine to Yukinari and was quite interested in the world around her. Only Arlen seemed out of place. Partly he was with them because he had been participating in the discussion when Berta showed up, but Arlen was surely curious about this young woman, as well. He and two of his companions together couldn’t stop her; in fact, she had nearly overwhelmed them, something he might have been less than happy about. Arlen had some martial training, but the woman had clearly held the upper hand.

Perhaps he hoped to dampen his frustration by seeing her captive. Although that being said, she had simply been given a guest room to sleep in; they hadn’t put her in jail or even bound her with chains.

She seemed to have just fainted from exhaustion... And I didn’t want to have to commit a bunch of people to keeping an eye on her.

Yukinari looked at Dasa, to his left, and then at Ulrike, to his right. Both girls gave him quizzical looks.

“Yuki...?”

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said with a smile. He could have asked them to wait in the reception room, but he doubted either one would have listened.

Fiona knocked on the door, which hung open. “You’re awake?”

The woman sat on the bed, looking slightly distracted. Yukinari, however, felt something was off. She appeared to be only sitting, but a palpable attentiveness wafted from her. As he took a closer look at the woman, Yukinari realized what seemed wrong.

Her feet...

Her feet were planted firmly on the floor. But her heels didn’t simply rest on the ground; they actively pressed down. Hence, the woman appeared not to have her full weight on the bed. In other words, she was ready to stand up at any time—ready to leap at an enemy at any moment. She was trying to look unguarded, but if there was an opportunity, she would take it.

She reminds me of a feral cat, Yukinari thought.

Just at that moment, Arlen stepped forward. “You should be grateful we spared your worthless life. We didn’t even cut off any limbs—”

“Oh, you can ignore this moron.”

“What—?!” Arlen’s face paled at Fiona’s remark.

Yukinari spared a wry grin for the scene and said, “Don’t worry. We aren’t going to hurt you.”

The woman said nothing, but narrowed her eyes and glared at Yukinari. She was obviously sizing him up. She knew it was Yukinari’s intervention that had led to her capture. She knew it had something to do with his and Dasa’s weapons, but because she didn’t know what a gun was, she couldn’t possibly imagine the details.

At length, she looked at Arlen and spat, “He’s a missionary knight, isn’t he?”

“Hrm? Yes, I am part of the glorious—”

“Look,” Fiona said, pulling Arlen away by the ear. “Just shut up, okay? The more you talk, the more problems we have.”

Yukinari glanced in Arlen’s direction as he was dragged away shouting, “Hey, that hurts, stop it!” Then he turned back to the woman and said, “You’re right. He’s a knight of the Missionary Order of the True Church of Harris.” He gave her a pointed look. “So what?”

“The Church is after me. If I’ve been captured by friends of the missionaries, then you can hardly expect me to ‘not worry.’”

“Ahh. This is starting to make sense now.”

According to Arlen, the woman had attacked him and the others out of the blue the moment she appeared. Now Yukinari understood why. If she was running from the Church, she might have mistaken Arlen and the knights for her pursuers. Yukinari could hardly fail to understand; he knew what it meant to be on the run from the Church of Harris.

“I don’t have any way of proving it to you right now, but that guy isn’t quite your average missionary knight. I don’t know what the situation is between you and the Church, but if you don’t attack him, he won’t do you any harm. Not on my watch, anyway.”

“Damn you, Yukinari Amano, how dare you just—”

“Oh, shut up already!”

“Ow! Ow! My hair! Let go of my hair!” Fiona had a good, strong grip on Arlen’s golden locks.

The woman watched them for a moment, then let out a small breath. The tension throughout her body relaxed a little. Perhaps she didn’t fully trust them, but maybe this meant she was ready to talk.

“You said you were being chased,” Yukinari said. “Why?”

“I’m a mercenary,” she said. “I’ll do just about anything, and I’m not picky about my employers. Even if one were, say, a merchant conducting unlicensed trade.”

“I see.”

So this woman had been a bodyguard for someone who was conducting trade without the capital’s authorization—meaning they weren’t paying taxes.

In general, a tax was demanded to use the main roads. An additional levy might be imposed depending on the goods being transported. The administrators of each region might want payment as well. The result was that legally traded goods might be sold at many times their original price.

There was another organization that wanted “taxes,” too: the Harris Church. The church had no legal power to tax anyone, so the money merchants paid it was considered a voluntary donation—but it was not, in reality, voluntary at all.

As a result of all this, some merchants began engaging in covert trade, without the knowledge of the capital. Of course, this meant leaving the comparatively safe main roads in favor of mountain passes, and that meant the possibility of attacks by xenobeasts or demigods. Bandits weren’t unheard of, either. To protect against such threats and to keep their goods safe, these illicit merchants hired mercenaries.

“The job was to see some cargo to Aldreil, but...”

“Someone from the Harris Church found you?”

“Sort of. I didn’t know, and neither did my employer,” the woman spat.

“Didn’t know what?”

“That a unit of missionaries was garrisoned in Aldreil.”

Yukinari glanced over his shoulder at Fiona and Arlen.

“Aldreil is closer to the capital than Friedland, near a fork in the road,” Fiona said.

“We came through there on our way here,” Arlen said, his hair still in Fiona’s grip.

“So it’s sort of a staging ground for missionary units heading to the frontier?” Yukinari asked.

“It’s a pretty big city,” Fiona said. “So officially or not, it’s always been a place where a lot of trade with the remote regions gets done. That’s probably why the Church wanted it as a base for the Civilizing Expedition.”

Yukinari silently added the town to his mental map of the area. He remembered a large town where he and Dasa had stocked up on supplies while fleeing the capital, back before they had come to Friedland. The main street had run straight through the center of town, and he remembered it being full of carts and wagons big and small. That must have been Aldreil.

“The Missionary Order is an organization charged with bringing the light of truth to you ignorant savages on the frontier. The Civilizing Expedition is regularly dispatched to help spread the word.” Arlen sounded oddly pleased with himself.

“Thanks, Arlen,” Fiona said. “Everyone knows that already.”

“Just listen to me! You impossibly impatient person!” Arlen shouted down Fiona’s interruption. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes. The Civilizing Expedition. Sending individual divisions directly from the capital to remote towns and villages involves a huge waste of men and resources.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Yukinari nodded. Even having enough food for a single unit would be a considerable amount of cargo. Add to that all the necessities of daily life. It wouldn’t be very efficient to carry all that all the way to the frontier. Procuring it on location would be a much better solution.

In Yukinari’s previous world, which had seen “civilizing expeditions” of its own in the Middle Ages, it had been typical to obtain resources at the destination. That was how things were back before telecommunications, or even the idea of logistics as such, had been much developed.

“So,” Yukinari said. “Instead you send several units together and set up a base that can supply food and resources.”

From that perspective, a booming trade town made sense. A wide variety of goods would pass through it, and all the travelers meant facilities that could accommodate large numbers of horses and men would already be available. In other words, the garrison there wasn’t simply converting the people. It was anchoring the Civilizing Expedition for the entire frontier.

“Yuki...” Dasa said with the faintest frown.

She had probably made the connection, too. This meant that there was a major base with several units of missionaries in a town not far from Friedland, and their number was likely to increase. Yukinari had been able to defeat Arlen and the other knights and even destroy their ultimate weapon, the statue of the guardian saint. But what if two or even three times as many soldiers appeared? There was no guarantee he would win. The opponents wouldn’t simply be two or three times stronger. Their numbers would increase, meaning they would have more strategies open to them in battle. That would make them four times, or even nine times, more dangerous.

After a moment Yukinari asked, “Do you know the size of the garrison? How many units they have there?”

“Three separate regiments,” the mercenary replied.

“That’s the same as when we came through,” Arlen said, crossing his arms and nodding. “Given the size of the town, they probably can’t add any more.”

The more people there were at the location, naturally, the more resources would be required. Because the knights of the Missionary Order would hardly have dreamed of doing farm work or raising livestock, that meant their numbers would be limited by the ability of the immediate area to produce food. For that matter, if they dominated the town so completely that trade could no longer continue, the commerce that had made Aldreil prosperous in the first place might not be able to go on. Three regiments was probably the most the place could support.

But for Yukinari and his companions, three regiments was more than threatening enough.

“I don’t mind saying,” Arlen added with a snort. “That by the time I got there, all the demigods and xenobeasts in the area had already been destroyed.”

Maybe he meant that as a brag, but for Yukinari it was disturbing information. Any missionary unit would naturally fell the erdgod of the place they had been assigned, but if those in Aldreil had eliminated even the demigods and xenobeasts, that meant the knights there didn’t have to commit much manpower to keeping the town safe. They could travel at their leisure.

All this meant that Aldreil was fully established as a base. If those knights learned what was going on in Friedland...

“This could be bad news,” Yukinari muttered dispiritedly.

Arlen’s unit had reported to the Church’s central authority that they had defeated Friedland’s erdgod, established a garrison there, and were now engaged in converting the populace. It was a lie, of course. But missionaries and erdgods didn’t normally get along, so when the Church received this report, they assumed it was true. If they learned otherwise...

“Ulrike.”

“Yes?” she replied, looking pleased to be part of the conversation.

“If the Harris Church finds out what’s going on in Friedland, Rostruch is going to be next in line. And probably vice versa. The missionaries in Aldreil will have to be looking for a new target soon, and it might be your town. Could you let your people know to watch out?”

“So I shall.” Ulrike nodded with an innocent smile on her face, leaving it unclear whether she really understood what he meant.

They wanted to avoid doing anything that might bring the missionaries down on their heads, but they did need to be ready—be prepared.

Suddenly Berta spoke up, hesitation in her voice. “Um, Lord Yukinari... Maybe for today we should... I mean, our visitor is probably still weak... We shouldn’t keep her for too long.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

They could just keep an eye on the mercenary for a while. For the time being, he didn’t detect anything suspicious in her story. And although she was conscious now, her pallor was still poor and she clearly wasn’t fully recovered. If Yukinari wanted a longer chat with her, it would be best to do it after she had rested and after they had gained her trust a bit more.

“I know you have nothing to go on except my word,” Yukinari said, looking once more at the mercenary. “But again, we aren’t going to hurt you. Circumstances have led us to coexist with the missionaries, but I’m no friend of the Harris Church, myself.”

“Is that so?” the mercenary asked after a moment, squinting at him. “Yukinari—that’s your name, isn’t it? Just who or what are you?”

“I’m the erdgod around here,” Yukinari said with a shrug.

“A god? But—”

“We can talk details once you’re feeling a little better. It takes a while to tell the story. Anyway, what’s your name? I’d hate to just have to call you ‘you’ forever. And you already know my name.”

For a long moment, the woman looked at the ground, furrowing her brow in silent thought. She seemed to decide that there would be no disadvantage in telling them her name at this point, because she nodded and looked back up at Yukinari.

“It’s Veronika.”

That was all she said. It seemed she had no intention of telling them her last name. But it was enough for now. Yukinari nodded at her again, and then he ushered everyone out of the room.

●

The remote regions, far from the capital, were frankly inconvenient.

Human settlements were scattered across the land, connected by the merest of roads. Over the generations, the king and the nobles in the capital had shown little interest in the more far-flung parts of the kingdom, not even seriously attempting territorial expansion. As long as they got their taxes, that was all they cared about. In many cases, local rulers had simply been left in charge.

Often, these frontier areas were still dominated by monsters like demigods and xenobeasts; even on the main roads, safety wasn’t guaranteed. This made it difficult for trade and communications to develop and, combined with the erdgod cults that were a frequent feature of these areas, only deepened isolation from the capital.

The result was that many of these places were cities in name only; in reality, they could practically be ghost towns.

Then again, sometimes conditions were just right, people and resources gathered in one particular town, and a measure of development would take place.

Aldreil, while obviously nothing like the capital, was a thriving city by frontier standards. It had prospered as a center of trade, attracting people and goods from all over the surrounding area.

“Well, well. Not bad.” Angela surveyed the town from a tall platform.

She was still a young woman, not yet twenty, but many things about her made her look older than she was—her strong, close-set eyes, her height, her long, black hair, her poise, and last but not least, her generous chest. It would have been evident to anyone at a glance that she was from the capital’s upper crust. She exuded a certain glamor just standing there.

Many among the nobility entered the Missionary Order of the True Church of Harris essentially to bolster their reputations. It had been generations since the wars of unification had ended, and with no more enemies to fight, the role of the military had become largely ceremonial. Nowadays the only soldiers who got real battle experience were those in the Missionary Order.

Angela Jindel had joined the missionaries for exactly that reason. But unlike most of the women in the Order, who left as soon as they had served long enough to keep up appearances, Angela had chosen to remain a knight. She was a fervent disciple—she was immensely grateful for the teachings of the Harris Church and passionate about spreading them to the sorry peasants who languished in ignorance.