Formel gave a low cry.
I scratched beneath the spines near Formel's neck as he rubbed his body against me.
"You've done well."
- GRRRRK
Formel had avoided the soldiers swarming in and destroyed the buildings of the outer ward as I had instructed.
In the end, it seemed the chapter master had cut in at the opportune moment, just before he was surrounded by the paladins of the Third and Second Corps blocking the road.
"That such a savage beast should lie flat......."
"I'm not an apostle for nothing."
"Ah, truly you are the Apostle of Heaven's Conquest."
The paladins had doubted the chapter master's faith when he intervened, and then were astounded at the sight of Formel fawning on me when I appeared.
Having heard the explanation of my identity from the chapter master, they were now kneeling before me.
I had once again taken off the leather armor, now reduced to rags, and was wearing the Order's armor that someone had hurriedly brought.
"Robert Günter."
"Robert Günter, chapter master of Pirberg, receives the Apostle's word."
The Order's forces currently remaining in the city were the Second and Third Corps, and that was all.
Since I would be putting them to use for some time, I had a duty to grasp their exact strength.
"Report the forces of the Pirberg chapter in detail."
"One detachment supported by the main Order in the north, comprising the First Corps, the Second Corps, and the Third Corps, is currently incorporated into the Pirberg chapter. The First Corps handles suppressing the turmoil outside the city, the Second Corps the guarding of the Order's interior, and the Third Corps the policing of the city."
According to the chapter master, the First Corps was composed solely of baptized paladins, and it was out beyond the city to beat down every beast it laid eyes on.
For a Talios Order chapter of any considerable size, operating such a detached force to exterminate beasts was standard.
Because the scale was large, the core strength had, if anything, been drawn outward.
Exactly as I had expected.
Furthermore, counted purely by head, the Second Corps was the smallest, while the Third Corps, having absorbed the city's own troops, was the largest of the three.
Beyond that, I was told all manner of miscellaneous matters as well.
"I'll come again as soon as the sun rises tomorrow. Tell no one of my existence."
"Yes, understood. However, quite a few will have seen the Apostle's steed. Sealing all of their mouths is impossible."
"Make it out to be the rampage of a beast that crept in. And announce that the beast has been dealt with."
"It shall be as you command."
Since I could hardly take Formel to the inn, I left him with the Order.
I considered calling Kallen and Drik to the fortress and simply lodging here, but the night had grown deep, so I decided to sleep at the inn where they were.
The inn I headed for, crossing the rubble of the collapsed outer ward.
Kallen was lying on the bed with his back turned, apparently already asleep, and Drik was keeping watch at his side.
"You're late, Brother."
"I thought I came back quite quickly."
Drik laughed quietly.
In the dark I could see Kallen's body rising and falling.
"And you didn't bring the chapter master. I was looking forward to seeing him grovel like a frog."
"Impatient, aren't you. Morning hasn't even come yet."
It was a cramped room.
There was only one bed, so I dropped down to sit beside the bed where Kallen lay.
I unfastened the sword at my waist as well and stood it against the wall.
When had I obtained this sword?
I had gotten a fine blade some decades ago and kept using it, never replacing it even now.
However good an item may be, nothing holds out against the years; it was rusted here and there, its edge notched.
I ran a gauntleted hand over the gouge the Second Corps commander had left in the flat of the blade.
"An old sword."
"It's about time this was replaced too."
What is old and worn must be exchanged for the new.
Can I not follow even that natural principle?
Am I dragging out again a tale on which the period has already been set?
Every time a bond from the past reached into the present, the feeling was strange.
All the more so when the bond was old enough that a whole generation had passed.
"Now that you're back, Brother, I'll go to my own room."
"Do that."
Countless lives are crushed, and countless lives bloom again.
Can the Talios Order I knew and the Talios Order of today be called the same?
Hundreds of soldiers and dozens of knights.
And one young knight commander.
Am I truly worthy of receiving their bows?
I could not know.
With no one to answer that question, only the sound of Drik closing the door filled the room in solitude.
***
It felt as though hours had passed, and as though minutes had.
The moonlight illuminated the inside of the room through the window only briefly, then everything around grew dark and soon brightened again.
Dawn had broken.
I fastened the sword I had left standing against the wall to my waist.
Then, just as I was about to wake Kallen, I heard a knock at the door.
'Drik?'
But the person standing behind the door was one even I had not anticipated.
"I trust you slept well."
"......I don't recall telling anyone to send a man."
A sturdy black-haired young man, the commander of the Second Corps, smiled and bowed at the waist.
"I could hardly let the Apostle come alone. Allow me to greet you again. I am Walter Schneider, commander of the Second Knight Corps of the Pirberg chapter of the Talios Order."
"I'm fairly certain I said not to make me known. A knight commander coming to pay a morning call, do you intend to advertise my identity?"
"There is no need for concern. I have never once gone about with my face on display."
The knight commander, Walter Schneider, was in ordinary everyday clothes.
Seeing him like this, it did seem that no one would take the young man for a knight commander of the Order.
Walter's gaze went past me to Kallen.
"So you had a companion. I shall escort him as well. A meal has been prepared at the chapter house."
At that moment, Drik, who had opened his door at the unfamiliar voice, met Walter's eyes.
"......Brother?"
I was about to stop him as he bristled with wariness.
Then, after thinking it over for a moment, I gave Walter an order instead.
"Get down."
The one who had been ordered was Walter, but the one who instantly froze was Drik.
"Will lying down like this do?"
"A little more like a frog. Yes."
I corrected Walter's posture and looked at Drik.
Meeting my gaze, he let out a laugh of disbelief.
"......Hah. Are you telling me to believe this chick is the Order's chapter master?"
"Of course not. This man isn't the chapter master."
"Then what is this—"
"He says he's the commander of the Second Knight Corps."
Walter, still prostrate, raised his head.
"A pleasure, companion of the Apostle. I am Walter Schneider, commander of the Second Knight Corps of the Pirberg chapter."
Watching Walter greet him placidly while lying flat without a single word of objection, I grew uncomfortable myself.
With those Talios Order bastards, one could never speak a careless word, not even back then.
Despite Walter's introduction, Drik did not withdraw his suspicion for some time.
In the end the matter was settled only once Walter produced his knight commander's seal.
Kallen was woken by Drik intermittently muttering things like 'The end times...... the end times.......', and went through the same sequence as Drik—fainting dead away at the sight of the seal held out by Walter, prostrate like a frog—but in the end, everyone had just barely come to accept it.
So it was that after a small disturbance, all four of us headed for the Order's stronghold.
"How did you find out where I was?"
"There is no information in this city that the Talios Order does not know."
To begin with, the very soldiers who recorded who came and went belonged to the Order.
I considered the meaning of Walter's words and nodded.
"That figures. Do you collect the trade tax as well?"
"Not only that. We collect the market tax, the labor tax, and the shipping tax too."
It meant they squeezed a wide variety of people: wandering merchants, and then market merchants, farmers, hauliers.
The sheer volume of tax that could be extracted from all of Pirberg, a city rivaling those of the Empire's central region, was difficult to imagine.
"You must be rotting with money."
"Not so, in fact. There has never once been a time when our war chest was ample."
To the war-mad Talios Order, the war chest was an index showing that the more you spent, the higher your faith.
"We make an effort not to leave a comfortable surplus."
"A moment ago you said your faith was thin, and now you speak like a fanatic."
"However much a child may doubt his father, a father is still a father, is he not?"
While Walter and I exchanged talk of this and that, we steadily drew nearer to the fortress that was the chapter's stronghold.
Though a portion had been brought down by Formel, the outer ward still boasted its imposing form.
Facing the thick rampart, Kallen said:
"......This is the Order's chapter?"
"That is correct."
"What about the people who lived here? Even granting the lord was driven out to Brüs, since this was originally Slonhar March."
"The lord of Darvar did covet this place. Even so, they were driven out to another city of Darvar. The servants and soldiers were absorbed by the Order as they were."
Just as Walter said, the outer ward was more crowded than ever.
Whether because yesterday had been so dark, or because people had gone into the buildings to hide from Formel, there had not seemed to be many people then.
But now the crowd walking about outside the buildings alone looked to easily exceed several hundred.
"In the outer ward there are the Third Corps' quarters, the training grounds, the storehouses, and so on. Formally they are used by the entire detachment, but in practice they are the Third Corps' space."
"The First Corps would have little occasion to be here, and the Second Corps eats and sleeps in the inner keep, then? Won't the Third Corps have something to say about that?"
"The Third Corps is mostly made up of Pirberg's soldiers. The paladins who command them number about ten, and the knight commander is a former mercenary as well. We can hardly have outsiders sleeping in the same quarters as the Second Corps, which upholds the Order."
Walter answered Drik's question.
The Third Corps' commander was, as it happened, someone who had been working as a mercenary, was moved by the Order, and became a paladin.
Walter surely had not said it knowing that, but there was no helping the odd expression that came over Drik's face.
"They don't look unhappy."
The soldiers in the training grounds wore worn expressions, but there was no shadow hanging over them either.
For the lord you served to die overnight and your allegiance to be swapped was not so rare a thing in the medieval world.
This was an age of war in which killing and being killed were taken for granted.
"They are all accustomed to it. It also helps that our Order treats them very well."
For a soldier of the Talios Order, it would be stranger not to die fighting.
To that degree, the welfare and benefits were on the generous side.
Rather than live long and thin, die short and thick.
It was as though such a thought had risen onto every one of their faces.
"Is that not young Schneider?"
A voice came suddenly and I turned my head.
It was the commander of the Third Corps, one of the faces I had seen last night.
"Oh dear, I greet the Apostle."
Instead of prostrating herself on the spot, she bowed at the waist.
That was owing to the first order I had given as Apostle: 'Do not prostrate yourselves before the Apostle.'
"The commander of the Third Corps?"
"Yes, I am called Camilla Rosette."
The Third Corps' knight commander.
She was the very model of a seasoned warrior.
The scars scattered across her face seemed to speak for the sort of life she had lived.
"Ah, I have something to discuss with Schneider......."
"Is that so."
"Yes, that's right."
I gave Walter a look with my eyes.
Having bowed his head to me, he pointed toward the inner keep.
"Then I shall excuse myself. The chapter master is waiting in the inner keep."
"Yes. I shall go on in."
Walter set off after Camilla.
Kallen, Drik, and I headed for the inner keep as Walter had said.
"The inner keep isn't so different either."
Setting aside the central tower, it was fair to call it simply a narrower outer ward.
Here too there were quarters all the same, there were people training, and in the end it was a place where people lived.
Drik met my eyes briefly, then strode off inward with long steps.
Kallen and I followed after him.