The next day Hans left the inn to attend the victory celebration. The boy went out into the streets as well, saying he would do his own sightseeing.
"Go carefully. Keep that hat pulled down."
"Mind yourself instead. You're the one anybody can see is a bumpkin."
"Ah, that's true enough. Hahaha."
There was nothing for it but to concede that one gracefully.
To anyone's eye the boy was the young master of a noble house, or at the lowest reading the son of a wealthy one. So long as nobody forced off the felt hat and checked the brand on his forehead, at least. And there would be no one in the capital who would do such a thing to a boy dripping with good breeding. A handsome face and a confident, upright bearing were the boy's trademark.
'I had a face that got some notice in my own neighborhood too, once.'
It saddened him that he had become, without noticing, a middle-aged man who dwelt on old memories. The army had changed everything.
—Shake, shake.
A royal guardsman received Hans courteously when he arrived at the palace. A royal guard is, after all, a promising man from a lower noble or a wealthy family. But even such credentials could not be stiff before the title 'the hero who ended the war.'
To Hans, who had achieved a soldier's dream and a soldier's ultimate goal, they showed respect and proper courtesy.
"I shall show you to the reception room."
At the place the guardsman led him to, attendants crowded in and took Hans's measurements. A short while later they brought out a set of formal dress that looked the part.
Hans found the tight yet weightless feel of court dress, which he had never worn before, uncomfortable, and kept twisting his body and shifting his stance. But his well-tempered muscle and natural frame carried it unexpectedly well.
"It suits you."
At the warm praise of the attendant waiting on him, Hans briefly agonized over whether he ought to leave a tip.
Encouraged by the compliment, he resolved something.
'If I am to be a bumpkin anyway, let me be a bumpkin who stands up straight.'
The royal banquet had a merry atmosphere, and it was lavish. Fine liquor, meat and fruit that Hans had never tasted in his life were replenished without end. People raised their cups in praise of the gods and of the heroes who had brought them peace and plenty.
"My lady. Would you do me the honor of a dance?"
"Gladly."
In the center of the hall, where the music flowed, men and women paired off and danced. When the music changed the people changed too, and the dancing and drinking and forging of acquaintance went on without a pause.
"Hahaha. Your wit and humor are truly something."
"Ho ho ho. I quite agree."
"Not at all. You put me to shame."
Time passed and still the people did not tire, laughing and talking and drinking their wine. Now and then a couple whose eyes had met would find a blind spot away from the chandelier and disappear.
At the party the king had called, the king was absent. The ceremony was dispensed with, and for the ladies and gentlemen the banquet remained to give them pleasure.
"His Majesty is not coming after all."
"I understand the war has eaten a great deal of the royal house's wealth, and the profit looks set to go to the great nobles......."
"Just so. Hoo......."
Valeroa, which had come into possession of the great plain south of the Calimon River, was known to be deep in a covert struggle between the border margraves and the great nobles, each trying to seize another inch of ground. Word that Marquis Offenhauts had already swallowed more than half the territory did not seem to have reached the ordinary nobles yet.
The crown had sent up enormous supplies and conscripts over the past five years, but the annexed territory was too far for the royal authority to reach. The crown lands and the fiefs lying between were all the domains of the noble faction, which made it awkward for the king to extend a hand.
In the end it amounted to draining the royal treasury and enlarging the nobles' fiefs.
"Count Dyson's people must be busy as well."
"They say Count Grace's carriage went into the Dyson house again last night."
The noble lowered his voice as he said it.
"Between the margraves and the great nobles of the capital, one begins to wonder what is in His Majesty's mind."
"Probably......."
"The side that prevents a clash, wouldn't you say?"
"Going by His Majesty's nature, yes. Is Count Grace's frequent coming and going not for that very reason? The great nobles' anger has to be soothed."
—Nod, nod.
The young nobles' reading of the situation was comparatively accurate. Having completed an elite education early, they were men capable of reasonable judgment, provided the information they had was correct. The money spent on an academy had its effect.
'They all earn their money's worth, I see.'
Hans began to consider entering an academy seriously.
He lifted his wine and only wetted his lips. The nobles at the party treated him with evident goodwill. Even if it was no more than simple curiosity and everyday manners, the impression the nobles made on a commoner-born man was not a bad one. They welcomed his return and congratulated his elevation. It was not quiet, but neither was it as loud as a marketplace.
"It is an honor to see a hero."
"That is too grand a title for me. The honor is mine."
"Modest, too. Hahaha......."
"Whoops."
The bosom of the lady he collided with lightly as he turned was soft.
"Oh, no — forgive me my rudeness."
"Oh my. Ho ho ho......."
At Hans's forthright apology the lady sent him an inviting look. It had plainly been a deliberate accident. When Hans concentrated, he felt a clumsy killing intent some way behind his back.
"If you will excuse me."
Leaving the lady with her disappointed expression behind him, Hans got his breath back.
'No good ever comes of being challenged to a duel by a noble.'
Win and you make an enemy of the man's house; lose and you die. With no faction of his own, winning changed nothing about the fact that he would die in the end.
Being held up as a war hero and all the rest of it lasts a moment; one decent piece of theater in the capital and it would be forgotten.
"Hans Gale Zimmer."
"Well met. Gerald has spoken of you. Nimitz von Bieri."
"It is an honor to meet you."
'The icon-of-defeat knight's father. Old fart is written all over his face.'
Hans flinched inwardly, but in the spirit of 'well, what have I done wrong,' he stood straight and made conversation with Marquis von Bieri.
Talking Gerald up a little as he went, he gathered that Gerald had won the succession struggle and that the marquis seemed to think Hans had contributed to his son's growth.
'Ah, that toe-curling speech. It's still horrifying to think about.'
The lines he had spat out that day, soaked in feeling, were not really his philosophy at all; he had simply said whatever came out. His intellect, which barely stretched to reading and writing, was shallow indeed.
He scratched his forearm under the pretense of straightening his clothes, and carried on with the marquis.
"Gerald talked a great deal about you."
"Fathers and sons — is that not rather how their stories go?"
Something lit in Marquis von Bieri's eyes. In front of one of the five most powerful men in the kingdom this young man was not cowed in the slightest, but stood upright. Even if that was only the ignorance of a newly minted war noble of common birth, such a conversation was refreshing.
"Just so. Come to that, I remember the conversations I had with my own father while he lived."
"Keeping the thread of the conversation going is the hard part."
"Mm. Hahaha!"
Marquis von Bieri's hearty laughter rang through the hall.
It had been a long time since the marquis laughed out loud. How long since he had held a conversation whose purpose was enjoyment? And the other man was the young fellow who had helped his son grow. Setting his station down for a moment, he talked with Hans in the manner of a neighbor.
He was a strong enough man that he could set himself down that way.
Meanwhile the people watched Marquis von Bieri and the man who had made him laugh, and nodded to themselves. From now on Hans might well be known among the gossips as 'the man who made Marquis von Bieri laugh.'
'This is awkward.'
Clumsy though it was, Hans's earnest bearing was not rebuffed, and his intentions were respected. He managed to greet nearly every noble in attendance that way.
'So this is what noble society is.'
Money, position, and the leisure of having time to spare are the ground such manners grow from, and Hans knew it. He had seen the ugliness of nobles on a brutal battlefield, but he knew that this was not the nature of nobles alone but the nature of human beings. And the leisure and dignity he saw went precisely that far.
A young man just out of boyhood pulled off a glove.
"You are being rude."
"If I was rude, I apologize. I was only speaking of memories from my academy days; there was no other intent."
The other man was outwardly courteous, but a moment before he had used the word 'coward' and insulted the young man's older brother. The brother who ought to have answered the charge had fallen in the war and was not there. The man was base indeed.
"For insulting my fallen brother, I demand a du......."
A middle-aged gentleman hurriedly stopped the young man as he raised the glove.
"Oh, no — Tyler, wait......."
It seemed to be a thing that happened as a matter of course once a party ripened; the people around drew back and a circle of open space formed.
The middle-aged gentleman's face went white at a situation he could not manage.
—Tromp, tromp.
"Good evening, Count Pellone."
Hans made his greeting. In the middle of a quarrel turning into a challenge, every eye that had been drawn to it gathered on him instead.
The bumpkin war hero stood upright, as though the eyes of the crowd were not on his mind at all. The family of the hundred-commander he had once served under was his only concern.
"You are......."
"I served as a ten-commander under Hundred-Commander Tomius."
"Oh......."
"I wish to tell you of your son's last hours, my lord."
The two men broke off their quarrel, and the count straightened his clothes. Then he looked directly at Hans.
"Two years ago, at the two-year-and-eleven-month mark of the war, Sir Tomius's hundred was given the task of drawing out the enemy's vanguard. The tactic was for the hundred to pin the vanguard while our main force broke through the enemy center in a deep formation, inflicted damage, then wheeled back to take the vanguard from behind."
Before long everyone in the hall was listening, and Hans's voice carried low across the quieted banquet.
"Tomius's hundred succeeded in pinning the enemy vanguard, entangling their vanguard regiment and the battle line of the enemy's right flank, stripping them of mobility and inflicting steady losses. Our main force succeeded in breaking the enemy center as well, and the operation needed only pressure on the vanguard's rear to be finished."
"Ohh......."
"Ah......."
A vivid account, until now unknown, from a war hero's own mouth. Hans's low, heavy voice drew each listener's private notion of a battlefield inside their heads.
"But our main force did not wheel back. It struck the enemy command instead and went on pressing its blow, and Tomius's hundred was left exposed for a long time to the attack of five enemy hundreds."
"How awful."
"Ah, that such a thing......."
The people's sighs followed one after another. Hans paused for a moment to catch his breath and went on.
"By the time our forces came back and encircled the enemy vanguard, the survivors of the hundred were fifteen conscripts, myself among them."
"Ah......."
"How could such a thing."
Small sounds of dismay came from here and there.
"Sir Tomius did everything in his power to save even one more soldier, to the very end. With his left arm cut away and an arrow in him, he led us. The brutal fighting went on, and only when the main body had surrounded the enemy and disarmed them did we learn that the commander had fallen."
Hans bowed his head to the count.
"I convey to you the commander's last words."
He raised his head and said.
"I am my father's son and a noble of the kingdom, and I have no regrets."
"Hhhhh — hhk."
"Hhk. Tomi......."
The younger brother broke into sobs. The old gentleman said his son's name once to himself and then set his lips hard, and around the hall ladies caught up in the feeling drew out handkerchiefs and dabbed at their eyes.
"Yesterday I petitioned the Administration Office for a review of Sir Tomius's service record, and as the last survivor of Tomius's hundred I swear to testify to the facts to the end."
Hans's declaration spread through the hearts of the nobles in the hall.
"Thank you, Baron."
The count put out his hand and shook the hand of the young man who had restored his eldest son's honor.
—Tromp, tromp.
—Snap, snap, snap, snap.
As Hans walked out down the corridor, the royal guards brought their heels together with a sound and straightened their bodies. It was the highest courtesy a royal guard may pay to any noble other than the king.