♪ Und da dan o sorn, da dan o versa sorn, ♪
♪ Turn nein das nine form, ♪
♪ Da form thus dry men dell, ♪
♪ Dell in vers vit das. ♪
♪ Und olso wer were kishe, ♪
♪ Kishe o morna, da denset wan, ♪
♪ Hun olso dell to dan o sorn. ♪
♪ Und then volk tour da sorn, ♪
♪ Volk tour da sorn, ♪
♪ Volk tour da sorn, ♪
♪ Volk tour da sorn, ♪
♪ Volk tur da sorn, till morna apra then. ♪
On his way to the Libra Cardinal's tent, he heard again a popular song he had heard many times before.
It was sung in an ancient dialect of Aramish, and the pronunciation was so different that Yashin Huo could hardly make out the words. Still, he knew what the song he had heard before meant.
The song was about the Nymph of the Lake of Love and a Morning Knight. Legend has it that one of the Morning Knights found a legendary lake of unknown origin, where he fell in love with a nymph who emerged from the water and took human form.
But the nymph could only take on human form at night and disappear into the water during the day.
The Morning Knight, on the other hand, belonged to the morning, hence their love was called impossible love and many stories and songs were written about this legendary relationship.
The song that Yashin Huo is hearing now was the most popular of all the songs written. Many people could sing it by heart, even if they didn't know what the words meant.
He repeated the last line of the song in his own language. “And they walked along the lake, till the morning parted them.”
No one knew if such a Morning Knight really existed, but if he did, Yashin Huo knew that he was not one of the last two Morning Knights.
Because only two Morning Knights had appeared in the last hundred years and the song was more than a hundred years old.
In case he asked for anything, he walked towards the cardinal's safe tent with his two squires in the rear and himself in the front. As he was on high rank, the soldiers he passed immediately took up positions and saluted him as he walked.
There were twenty thousand soldiers here and they were all experts. These were real men, unlike the children of Virgo Cathedral he had heard of putting guns in their hands.
When they came to their aid and marched through the enemy army, Cecilus Vermilia would pledge his loyalty to the Libra Cathedral. They could not let the upstart Virgo Cathedral win the Vermilia Family.
Of course Yashin Huo was not interested in any of this. Fighting was one of the two things he loved to do and the reason he was here, the reason he left his life of luxury and became a soldier, was to kill people. It felt good to kill someone.
When he entered the center of their camp, the area where only the cardinal's tent stood, the soldiers he saw no longer greeted him because they were the cardinal's personal guards.
He entered the Cardinal of Libra's huge blue tent, which resembled a palace. The interior of the tent was lit by candles emitting blue light, which reminded Yashin Huo of a brothel he used to visit.
Cardinal Keichi Tempo of Libra sat at the round table facing the entrance to the tent. Sitting to his right and resting her large breasts on his arm was Akalda von Binmarth, one of the few living relatives of the Pontifex Andromeda.
The other five at the table were the commanders of the Cathedral of Libra.
“Whoreson Tempo...” he thought to himself. He wasn't jealous of Akalda, it just bothered him that an ordinary man like Keichi Tempo had an ideal Mora beauty like Akalda next to him, because Keichi was far below the standards of beauty in Mora, and he only reach her with his statue.
He had thought a lot about Keichi Tempo, tried to find out where he came from, but he didn't know a nation with squinting eyes. It couldn't be from anywhere on the map Yashin Huo knew.
“Did he come from the Unknown Lands?”
Since he was a knight of the former Cardinal of Libra, it was only fitting that he should also be a knight of the current cardinal. So Keichi sat to Tempo's left.
“I thought he was Brahat from Brahatul Empire because he was dark, but his eyes are very different from the almond eyes of the Brahats I know.”
Some people said that to the west and south the sea stretched on forever, others that at some point the world would end. The same people spoke of endless winter in the north and endless desert lands in the east.
But Yashin Huo dismissed these as the sophistry of the commoners and, like most nobles, believed that the world was round. According to him, if they traveled down from El Island in the south, they would come out in the north of the map, and if they traveled past the barbarian islands in the west, they would come from Brahatul in the east.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
So between north and south, east and west, there should be different lands, different peoples. Many intellectuals like Yashin Huo believed this and called these regions the Unknown Lands.
Somewhere in the Unknown Lands, Keichi Tempo's nation must be live.
“If he came here, it is possible for us to go there. Who knows what riches are buried in that lands...”
Maybe exploring unknown places would be another thing that gave him pleasure after making love and killing.
“We will act right now,” Keichi Tempo said. He spoke with a strange accent. “Once we have defeated the troops surrounding the hill, we will waste no time and go north of Vermia to destroy the army that is coming for us.”
When he first met him, his speech was perfectly normal, but after a while he suddenly acquired an accent. He had difficulty ending words with consonants, adding a faintly audible 'u' sound after words ending with consonants.
“His Eminence is telling us there is another enemy army?” Akalda asked. She rubbed his chest against the cardinal's arm in front of all the commanders here. “What a saintly man you are.”
No one made a sound as Akalda placed a kiss on Kecihi's cheek. Keichi's face didn't change either. Normally such a beautiful girl sitting next to someone like him should have made Keichi stutter with embarrassment, but Keichi didn't care.
“How do you know the enemy is coming from the north of Vermia?” Ymerr Heiss asked, he was the commander of the first army. He was an old knight with a wrinkled face and his dark green hair and long beard mingled together.
“As a one of his representatives on earth, Our God grants me this knowledge,” Keichi replied.
“Or do you not trust the word of the Supreme Cardinal of Libra?” Akalda asked.
As Ymerr lowered his head and averted his eyes Yashin wondered, how many beds had this woman warmed here?
“Of course we trust the Apostle of God.” The speaker was Neveral Huo Long, commander of the fourth army. At least Yashin knew that Akalda could not seduce him. “But for our soldiers to fight at night and then go to war again without rest is nothing but cruelty to our own men.”
Neveral was five years older than Yashin, and unlike Yashin, he had dedicated his life to one woman. Like most Longs, he had blond hair and reddish brown eyes, was tall and well built.
His wife wasn't much to look at either, but Neveral hadn't looked at anyone else for years. Neveral had four children and Yashin was jealous of his regular life.
“Lord Neveral is right,” Beneth von Shaem said, commander of the second army. “It is normal to push soldiers in wartime, but I don't think it is necessary.”
Beneth stroked his black beard and all the commanders nodded in agreement.
“I don't see much difference between us going against the enemy and the enemy going against us. In fact, it will be better if the enemy goes against us.”
“Yes,” Commander of the fifth army Hatem Huo Long agreed. “We can rest on the hill, it's an advantageous spot. Besides, our vanguard says the Vermilians have a fort there. The enemy will come at us, and if they attack when we are tired, we will be defeated. If they try to encircle us, we will attack the tired enemy on foot and crush them.”
Shuo Huo Long, the commander of the third army, had the last word. “If they retreat to the city, we can lay siege, destroy the city walls and conquer the city. During the siege, we can also make Duke Cecilus grateful for our help. We have already contacted him many times before.”
The commanders exchanged a few more words among themselves, praising each other, and finally they turned to Keichi Tempo and waited for his words.
“I will not deny that your plans make sense,” Keichi said. There was no expression on his face, no emotion in his voice. “But this is not how we will do it.”
Yashin hadn't said anything since he sat down and still had no intention of doing so. He didn't have the slightest sympathy for Keichi, but he knew that if they followed this boy, they succeeded.
He didn't know how he did it, but it clearly had something to do with the Blessing that God had given him. The Blessings that Azer offered to his disciples were capable of extraordinary miracles beyond human comprehension.
“Yu Zao Long is coming with an army of twenty thousand men. Duke Cecilus died from an arrow in the throat, the new head of the Vermilia Family is now Duchess Cornelia, and she will support the Virgo Cathedral.”
“Such pinpoint predictions...” Ymerr Heiss was clenching his fist.
Everyone here knew that his predictions were more than predictions. He was a truly saintly person and everything he said was coming true.
Since they were all used to it, they were not going to question how he knew and the certainty of the future. Instead, Yashin Huo asked the question that mattered most to them.
“If Cornelia is going to support the Virgo Cathedral, why are we helping them?”
“Lord Yashin is right,” Shuo Huo said. The others made approving noises.
When Duke Leoral was baptized in Virgo Cathedral, his son and daughter were not baptized with him. Cornelia had never set foot inside a religious building except for ceremonies, but Cecilus belonged to the Cathedral of Libra and hoped to have the support of their cathedral, seeing his sister as a threat to his dukedom.
“We are bringing an army of twenty thousand to Cornelia's aid, we will take back her city. In that case, why would she support the Cathedral of Virgo? They have nothing.”
“Lord Neveral is right too,” Akalda said. Neveral grimaced as if disgusted to agree with her. “What Cornelia is doing is only ungrateful, we must withdraw our army.”
“As Lady Akalda said, it would be ungrateful for her. If she will not remain grateful to us and do our bidding, I would not mind leaving her to die.”
Yashin Huo looked into Lord Beneth's black eyes. His big teeth were yellow as he spoke and there was a deep sword wound on his cheek.
“They are stupid,” he thought. “I just wanted to see their reaction. They let a piece of our land fall into enemy hands because it supports another cathedral.”
The death of humans didn't concern Yashin Huo either, he couldn't really care less about the death of an ingrate, but Cornelia was different. She was a folk heroine and her death would bring the Zodyanists one step closer to defeat.
In Yashin Huo's eyes, Beneth von Shaem's inability to calculate this was proof that he was a fool who had no mind for anything but melee fighting.
“The idea is too cruel,” Neveral Huo said. “It's just a decision made in anger. The fall of Vermia will put us in a difficult position, that's clear.”
“Then Vermia will fall and we will attack the weakened enemy, take the city and become heroes,” Hatem Huo said.
Neveral Huo, their only sane commander, was unable to convince the other four commanders why they should help right now, even though he explained it to them like explaining to a fool.
“This is what happens when you give rank to everyone who as Huo and Von in his name,” Yashin thought.
Duke Cecilus's death was very sudden. He knew him a little and he didn't think he would fight, he must have been hiding in a safe hole with his head down. He wondered how he had managed to take an arrow in the neck.
“But I still don't have the answer to my question.” When Yashin spoke, the other commanders fell silent and everyone at the table turned to Yashin. “Why would Cornelia support the Cathedral of Virgo, which has nothing?”
Keichi pressed his tongue to his cheek, sniffled as his cheek swelled, and put his hand to his forehead as if tired of the whole argument.
“Because,” he said. Everyone was waiting for his answer, but he waited a little longer before he spoke. Maybe he was having a revelation right now. “Because the Cathedral of Virgo has something we don't have.”
“What is it?” Akalda asked.
Keichi laughed before answering. “A handsome butler.”
Akalda, Yashin and the five commanders just stared at Keichi without reacting. Ymerr Heiss was the first to laugh, everyone was laughing except Neveral Huo. Even Yashin and Keichi himself were laughing.
“His Eminence is very good at joking,” said Lord Beneth.
“He really is,” Akalda said.
Yashin was laughing not at the humor of the joke, but at the fact that Keichi was joking for the first time.
“So...” The icy voice of Neveral Huo, who never laughs, cut through the laughter like a knife. “Is this a joke or real?”
“This is the truth.”
“Please don't joke anymore!” Akalda continued laughing and tapped Keichi on the shoulder. When he saw Keichi stop laughing and put on a face like a wall again, she swallowed and became quiet.
“There was only one time when it was possible to convince Cornelia, but that's too far away now. And even if we retreat now, the Yu Zao will catch up and destroy our army before we return.”
Keichi emphasized the last two words.
He stood up and as he stood up everyone at the table got up and bowed their heads.
“We are attacking right now,” Keichi said.