studiobondurri The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 2, Chapter 7
The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 2, Chapter 7
The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 2, Chapter 7
Chapter 7
“His favourite colour?” Neia blinked.
“That’s right,” Saye nodded as she leaned forward with quill and paper in hand. “What is the Sorcerer King’s favourite colour?”
“It’s...”
It should be black, right? He has a black robe and summoned black furniture...no, he wore more colourful things, too...
The gears in Neia’s head ground away as she tried to come up with an answer to Saye’s question.
I don’t know.
How could she not know? She had been His Majesty’s Squire for weeks, yet she didn’t know what his favourite colour was. How was that possible?
Across the table, Saye frowned slightly.
“Then...when is the Sorcerer King’s birthday?”
The second question plunged into Neia’s heart like a cruelly-barbed arrow.
“...I don’t know,” she said in a small voice.
“Okay...then what about his wife?”
His wife? Did the Undead–no, surely someone as great as His Majesty the Sorcerer King had a wife. At least one wife. Neia wouldn’t be surprised at all if His Majesty had an entire harem of wives.Neew updates at
But who? Neia thought back to her time in the Sorcerous Kingdom, trying to recall anyone that might qualify as the Sorcerer King’s wife. The only person that might have counted, however, was the dark-winged beauty that he had first appeared with. That was impossible, though. She was the Prime Minister and Kings didn’t marry their Prime Ministers. Since His Majesty was Undead, he probably had an amazing and beautiful Undead wife.
Saye’s expectant gaze slid away from Neia.
“Maybe these questions were harder than I thought they were...”
“Wh-why are you asking stuff like this, anyway?” Neia said, “I thought your questions would be about His Majesty’s mighty feats or words of wisdom.”
“That is more exciting and all, but don’t you think it’s strange? All of the stories about legends and heroes never have the details that I’m asking for. Except when they kidnap the wife or kill her off because the hero needs a reason to go do something. It makes it feel as if the one who originally recounted the tale didn’t know the person at all.”
Neia sagged over her table as another arrow – no, a spear – plunged into her breast. The girl was brutally butchering her with a handful of words. She reached for her dagger and took a slice of cheese as if to beg for a reprieve.
I already forgot what I wanted to share with her.
It was more that the shock created by the questions had knocked what she wanted to share out of her head. Who knew that someone so young could be so dangerous?
“How old are you, Saye?” Neia asked, “I’ve been curious about your age since I first saw you.”
“Eleven.”
Heh...she’s four years younger than me. She seems a lot more mature than that.
“It’s amazing that you’re travelling at that age,” Neia said. “Have you been alone all this time?”
“I had a brother,” Saye looked down at the table, “but a woman came out of the forest and took him away.”
“Oh. Um, I’m sorry.”
A woman came out of the forest? She wasn’t aware of any places where Humans were raided by Human tribes – she didn’t even know that there were Human tribes – so Saye must have been from very far away.
“It’s alright,” Saye told her. “He didn’t even fight back. Boys are awful.”
Neia wasn’t sure how to respond to that. That seemed to be more and more the case these days.
“A-Anyway,” Neia said, “is there something else you’d like to ask? Maybe about the Holy Kingdom or the war...”
“There are a lot of things, but...hmm, how about we start from the beginning? Where did Jaldabaoth come from?”
“We could never figure that out,” Neia replied. “All we know is that the Abelion Hills was conquered by him before he came to the Holy Kingdom. Before that, he raided the capital of Re-Estize. No one that we asked about Jaldabaoth in Re-Estize knew anything about his origins.”
It was a mystery that left a few people wondering if Fiends would suddenly pop up again. The Temples had no answers. Most, however, only saw it as a periodic calamity – one that only happened once in several lifetimes like the legends so often told.
“How about another question?” Neia asked, “That answer probably wasn’t very satisfactory...”
Thankfully, Saye stuck to topics about the war. After two hours, she ran out of paper so they decided to call it a night there. The following morning, they encountered one another again while Neia was organising supplies for her men.
“Whatcha doing?” Saye asked.
“Making sure my men have supplies for our next shift,” Neia answered.
“Didn’t you say you just started? You look like you’re used to it.”
“It’s the duty of a Squire to manage things for their Paladins,” Neia said. “And, during the war, I ended up in command of a regiment of archers. By the end of the war, I think I got pretty good at doing this kind of thing. I was never an excellent warrior like my father or mother, so I’m glad that I have at least some skills that I can be confident in.”
“Hmm...so you’re something like a Captain or Commander?”
“C-Commander?” Neia’s eyes went wide, “I would never presume to be someone so important! I’d be like a Sergeant, at best.”
“...but you commanded an archer regiment.”
Neia laughed nervously as she waved away the notion.
“We were just desperately short of people. Plus, I think most of the reason why I was put in command of that regiment was to appease His Majesty the Sorcerer King.”
“Huh?”
“You know how it goes,” Neia sighed. “Everyone is associated with someone. People are in the positions that they’re in because of who they know more often than because of their personal capabilities. Connections matter, and you risk angering groups of people because their associates aren’t given important jobs.”
“Is that how it works here?” Saye frowned.
“Pretty much. Back before the war, you had people that bribed their way into choice assignments away from danger or scions who were made officers during their time in the army. My father had a lot of stories about those guys.”
“And I was there for many of them,” a voice came from behind.
They turned to find Mister Lousa waving a hand with a smile on his face.
“M-Mister Lousa,” Neia said. “I’m sorry, I–”
“I only came because I heard something interesting,” Mister Lousa told her. “If anything, you should be commended for ensuring your supplies are sorted out on a day off. And I see that you’re keeping our esteemed visitor company.”
“Ah...I guess we got to know one another a little bit since yesterday,” Neia said. “She asked what I was doing and it just went from there.”
“So I heard,” Mister Lousa said. “Back when I served in Pavel’s platoon, he wasn’t so renowned but his attitude toward those Nobles was unchanged. Sometimes we would play pranks on them.”
They parted ways with the rancher, heading to the rodeo grounds where most of her men were practising. Along the way, Neia’s thoughts wandered as she watched the people go about their daily tasks.
Stronger and better...
The Bard’s statement struck a chord within Neia. She was from somewhere outside of the Holy Kingdom, so maybe she didn’t see things the way that Neia’s people did.
“Do you think they can become stronger by doing that?” Neia asked.
“Doing what?”
“By sticking together as a community of ranchers,” Neia said.
“It depends on what you mean by ‘stronger’,” Saye said. “What Mister Lousa has here does have a certain sort of strength – the same kind of strength that craft guilds have. They represent the goods and labour that they have control over, and that control is power when it comes to negotiating with other parties. It’s not easy to bully them like one might be able to bully an individual.”
Was that the ‘strength’ that the Sorcerer King’s wisdom promoted? She didn’t think so. It wasn’t as if the Guilds could do anything to stand against Jaldabaoth.
“What about other kinds of strength? Like the strength to fight against physical threats like raiders?”
“No.”
“No?” Neia frowned at the Bard’s immediate response.
“Just doing what they’re doing won’t make them stronger,” Saye said. “I mean, it won’t make them stronger than they are right now. They can do the same thing for their entire lives and it won’t change anything.”
They stopped at the edge of the rodeo grounds, watching the ranchers practise their skills. To Neia, at least, it seemed like their practice would help them become better.
“Why do you say that?” Neia asked.
“Because it’s the truth?” Saye answered with a frown, “There are over twenty million Humans from the Holy Kingdom to the Empire, and nearly all of them are like this. They do what they do for their entire lives, but a Farmer reaching the end of his life isn’t much stronger than a Farmer helping out their family as a kid.”
“That’s true, but...”
But that would mean most people are born weak and will die weak.That there’s no way to become stronger.
It meant all those people who believed that being strong was something for geniuses and renowned bloodlines were right. That the Temples’ teachings about freedom of choice were wrong. Well, one could still choose, but the choice was basically between something they were good at and something they had no talent in.
Just like me...
She had inherited her father’s strengths, yet she had insisted on becoming a Paladin. At the end of all her years of squiring, she was still far better with the bow than she was with a sword with only a fraction of the effort.
Neia shook her head free of depressing thoughts.
No, the Sorcerer King’s wisdom can’t be wrong.
“Then, is there any way for normal people to become stronger?” Neia asked.
“Sure,” Saye answered.
“Really? But–”
“I said that what they’re doing right now won’t make them any stronger,” Saye told her. “It doesn’t mean that they can’t get stronger.”
“Oh. Would you happen to know of a way how?”
“You could import Aurochs,” Saye said. “They’re a lot harder to herd. You’d have to get good fast, though – Aurochs are Magical Beasts and just one of them can flatten a village. I think some of them breathe fire...?”
That sounded like a catastrophe, but it also meant that there were people strong enough to herd fire-breathing Magical Beasts that could flatten villages.
“Um, what about something less extreme?” Neia asked, “We can’t afford a bunch of burning, flattened villages right now.”
“Just challenge yourselves, I guess,” Saye answered. “Do ranching things that you’d normally consider ‘hard’.”
“That sounds reckless,” Neia said. “People would normally tell you not to push yourself.”
“Yeah, and people are normally weak,” Saye looked up at her. “You’re a lot stronger than these ranchers. Did you get that strong by doing normal things and taking it easy?”
“No, but I had to fight in a war and go through all sorts of craziness. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through the same experience.”
There were other problems with using herself as an example. Foremost among them was the fact that her parents were both very strong. People would just assume she was strong because her parents were strong, and that it was easy to preach strength when one was strong themselves.
Saye seems to know a lot, so you’d figure she’d know that, too. Wait a minute...
Neia resisted the urge to rub her eyes as she looked at the Bard.
“Saye...”
“Hm?”
“You’re strong!”
“Not really...”
“Yes, really! The only people stronger than you in this camp are Mister Lousa and me!”
“Yeah, and that’s not really strong.”
“But it’s stronger than most people in the Holy Kingdom,” Neia said. “And all those people served in the army. What did you do to get that strong? Did you fight in a war, too?”
Neia imagined Saye on a savage battlefront. She’d have to be younger than she was, too. A nine-year-old slaying Demihumans five times her size with her lute.
“I travelled and learned stuff and trained,” Saye said. “Why do you think Travellers are always stronger than usual?”
“What’s a Traveller?”
“Um...you know, like warriors that go on journeys to improve themselves? Or artisans that visit other countries to learn from famous grandmasters. Or Bards like me that collect stories from around the world. You don’t have to be a Traveller to get strong, though. Travellers just happen to broaden their horizons and grow with their experiences. People can do that without going anywhere at all so long as they have the means to.”
“I see...”
She watched as her men practised lassoing posts and riding in makeshift corralling formations. Some rode up to targets and planted their arrows and bolts into them while others raced their mounts through obstacle courses.
If this is normal, then what is ‘challenging’? Will it really make them stronger?
All she needed was to have a few of them show a little bit of improvement. She knew from her time as a Squire that most men would grow competitive between themselves so long as their goal wasn’t deemed impossible to achieve.
The problem was the stakes. During the war, they were clear. After the war, priorities shifted and so did what mattered to her people.
No, since this is kind of like a game, then I could just challenge the men through it. The ‘means’ are already within my grasp.
She didn’t have to provide for anyone, so she could probably come up with some sort of prize with her allotted portion as a ‘captain’. Once they displayed measurable gains, she could show Mister Lousa, who was already worried about security. He would be more than happy to invest in his people’s strength.
Just speaking of the Sorcerer King’s wisdom and greatness wasn’t enough. Not in their current situation. In fact, carrying on as she had was surely a disservice to His Majesty. She had to produce results that were relevant to people no matter the situation they found themselves in.