Chapter 36
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It had been a month since the elite Yeageri military unit had been founded. The purpose of this unit, as Esdeath herself put it, was to "track down and eliminate the enemy". It was essentially the same SVP-302 that Anna had founded, performing the same tasks, but consisting only of Teigu owners.
Imperpol's interactions with the Huntsmen were simple: Intelligence would find information on bandit and rebel camps within the Capital, and then pass it on to the Esdeath squad, after which they would go hunting. But in a fortnight only two camps had been found, and they were small, so most of the time the squad was busy guarding the aristocrats and patrolling the city districts.
Imperpol, in turn, had long ago realised that the revolutionaries had given up on the very idea of establishing secret bases near the Capital (as they were quickly found) and had changed tactics. For the most part, the organisation now had to track down revolutionary spies, and arrests of suspicious citizens were almost a daily occurrence. Fortunately, Imperpol had the Spectator's owner, and even if suspects continued to remain silent or deny it, their thoughts gave away their guilt.
All in all, there was plenty of work for everyone, especially Leon. The young man took up a job that had already been postponed many times - driver training. Leon had to train about ten people, including Anna and Seriu (whom the boy also decided to teach to drive). In order to speed up the training process, Leon asked Anna to find preferably those who were familiar with the rules of wagon driving and easy to learn, which she actually did. As a result, the young man had to deal with driver training, paperwork and training of specialists, but Leon managed to give time to everything.
But the hardest thing the guy had to deal with was his adjutant and her attitude towards criminals. For Seriu, anyone who committed a crime, commits a great sin, which can be atoned for only by blood. And no matter how grave the offence (whether it be stealing an apple or murder), the girl has a single scaffold for them all. The only option that came to Leon's mind was to completely control Seriu's actions while on patrol. It was no secret to the young man that Serue continued to patrol the city, so he only began to follow her around and watch her work. Once she caught some girl stealing apples from the counter, and ran after her, and when she caught up with her, she was about to do her "justice", but Leon stopped her in time, hitting her on the head and knocking her out of her thoughts. Leon let the girl herself go - she was thin, her clothes were basically rags wrapped around her body, and there was nothing to take from her. Leon made Seria learn the Imperial law code by heart after the incident, and then tell him the degree of punishment for this or that offence. She, of course, tried to prove that her point of view was more true, but she was a senior lieutenant and Leon was a major-general, which meant that the young man knew better what punishment should follow for a crime. The observation of Seria went on for a decent amount of time: the girl tried to do her "justice" again several times, and each time she was stopped by the young man with a blow on the head, and the story of learning the laws was repeated. And once, when during the next patrol the girl again tried to do "justice", and Leon as usual was going to stop her, something strange happened - she stopped, as if she felt that she was hit on the head, and then put handcuffs on the offender and gave him to the guards. Perhaps not completely, but she's slowly getting better, though she hasn't stopped talking about justice yet. For the time being, Leon stopped watching Seriu's actions and continued his work.
Anna, as promised, fulfilled the request of her deputy, and now Leon went to the cemetery every day off to pray for his sister's soul. The rest of the day was spent at home, sitting on the couch and reading books, but most often Esdeath came to visit him, always finding a new place where the two of them could go at the weekend. Leon couldn't refuse, mostly because there was no good reason not to go, so he agreed most of the time.
But over the course of the month, the question that had been on everyone's mind was what was the Night Raid doing? For the entire month they had shown absolutely no activity. Imperpol agents, disguised as civilians and carrying images of Leone (whose leaflets had not been posted around the city), all said that wherever they had looked for her, they had not seen her. Some were beginning to speculate that the group had left the Capital after the losses they had suffered. Anna wanted to send Ghost to confirm or deny this assumption, but he had not yet returned from scouting the territories that were marked on the map of Nakaido.
Anna honestly decided to leave the Night Raid to Esdeath, as they are the main reason why she was summoned to the Capital, while the girl herself decided to take care of more important business. The revolution is not only spreading to the Capital and its environs, but also to other cities and regions. Just recently, a garrison west of the Capital was attacked, killing several hundred soldiers and the fortress commander. With tensions rising on the border between the Empire and the Western Kingdom, Imperpol needed to deal with the incident. It was decided to send Leon there along with the Nine-Tailed Foxes task force, along with Miyu as the owner of the teigu as support.
A convoy of three armoured cars and one truck (which Yagi had finished working on) was on its way. It would take about two thousand kilometres to get from the Capital to the garrison, so they had to stop for lunch.
- Turn right at the next corner. - Leon said, looking at the map.
- Got it. - replied Seriu, who was driving at the moment.
It was only two hundred kilometres to the fortress, and the whole journey took three days because of the problems caused by fallen trees, bandits, monsters and so on. On the other hand, it was possible to appreciate the work of the task force, who were able to demonstrate the results of several months of training.
"Here comes the fortress." - The attacked garrison was not a particularly large fortress, with walls 8 metres high and watchtowers 15 metres high.
Just as the column began to approach the gates, the soldiers on the walls stirred. Stretching along the wall, they prepared their bows, aiming at the unfamiliar cars.
- Apparently, they weren't expecting us. - Leon said, opening the door of the armoured car. - Four behind me. - He ordered the men, and they immediately got out of the car after him.
Leon, accompanied by four operatives, started walking towards the wall, watching as the archers aimed at him.
- Who are you people! - Shouted someone from the wall.
- Major General Leon Koenich of the Secret Imperial Police! Arrived to investigate the situation of the attack on the military garrison!
- Aren't you a little young for a general? Ha-ha... - he wanted to laugh, but abruptly interrupted. Leon had good hearing, and he could hear the senior lieutenant being told about him, and though he couldn't see his face, he could guess how he began to pale with fear.
- Let them through! - he ordered.
Once inside the fortress, Leon was able to assess the situation - the local soldiers were clearly poorly trained and had most likely been transferred here only recently. At the moment the garrison was commanded by Senior Lieutenant Tsuko, who invited Leon to the office of the fortress commander, where he began to tell him what had happened.
As it turned out, it was a night sabotage. The guards on the northern wall were killed, but one of them managed to raise the alarm, thus waking up the entire garrison. Then the battle began, the attackers were more experienced fighters than the privates who had recently arrived in the army, and therefore the force was on the side of the enemy. The commander of the fortress took no part at all - he was found dead in his office with an arrow in his eye.
Having heard the whole story, Leon asked to be led to the wall on which the saboteurs had climbed. Tsuko immediately led Leon, along with the other Imperial officers, to the wall where the young man could get a better look at the crime scene.
The saboteurs numbered about two hundred, and all had climbed the wall using ropes. It was a moonless night, and the guards who were standing on the wall at the time did not notice them (perhaps they were asleep). The reason for the attack, according to Tsuko, was a storehouse with supplies, which the attackers set on fire, but the fire was extinguished, although some of the provisions were burned.
It was strange, attacking a fortress to set fire to supplies. Leon looked thoughtfully at the forest, where the soldiers had said the attackers were likely to have come from. Looking into the distance, the young man noticed a strange glint, and squinting his eyes, he noticed the glint among the trees again.
Pulling a pistol from his holster and taking aim, Leon fired into the forest thicket. Everyone present raised their weapons at the sound of the shot and turned their gaze to the General, who was holstering his pistol back into his holster.
- Nero. - Leon addressed the captain.
- Yes, General.
- While I'm gone, you're in charge.
- Yes, sir.
Nodding, Leon jumped down from the wall and rushed into the forest, where he saw a glint. Covering his face with his hand from the branches, the young man ran to the tree, near which lay a dead body. It looked to be a man of twenty-seven, dressed in a camouflage cloak. Nearby lay a spyglass shot through and through. Taking him by the chin, he turned his head so that he could examine his face. As Leon had surmised, the bullet had hit him squarely in the eye and had gone straight through.
- What were you watching? - Leon asked, turning his head in the direction of the fortress.
The young man rummaged through the man's pockets, looking for something that might help him answer his own question.
- What do we have here? - Leon pulled a notebook out of his pocket.
Opening the diary, the boy's eyes began to run carefully over the text. The man wrote down there his observations of the fortress, the schedule of the sentries and his thoughts. As the boy continued to leaf through the diary, which the man had apparently kept for a month, he realised that the attack on the fortress had been planned, and the diary only added details to the picture.
- It's all clear now..." Leon said, a slight smirk on his face.
***
Tsuko sat in his office, wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. He hadn't expected that such important people would be sent here and that they would arrive so quickly. Rather, he had thought that, as in the case of most other fortresses, they would send some recently promoted captain, who had been promoted in some well-known way.
His musings were interrupted by a knock on the door. Tsuko dropped his handkerchief in fright and was about to say "come in" when the door was kicked open and the operatives of the task force ran in and threw him to the floor, wringing his hands.
- What the fuck! - shouted Tsuko.
- Don't move! - threatening him with the muzzle of an automatic rifle, they told him.
Raising his head, the man watched as Leon walked inside his office with his hands behind his back, with Seriu standing behind him, holding Koro, and Nero aiming a brand new AO-24 at Tsuko.
- Hello again, Senior Lieutenant Tsuko.
- Mr General, what's going on here?!
- You tell me. - Leon said, sitting down on one knee and showing Tsuko a diary that read in black and white, "If Mr Tsuko's plan works, the fortress will be under our control."
Tsuko's eyes began to tingle and drops of sweat began to trickle down his forehead - he had been exposed faster than he feared!
- I hope you don't need to be told what is done to those who support the revolutionaries.
- I-I'll tell you everything..." he said in a trembling voice.
- Everything-anything... ah, just to be sure. - Seriu placed Koro next to Leon and, putting his hand in his mouth, the young man took out the "tools" he had borrowed from Dr Leo (he didn't mind too much). - You know, thanks to my job and position, I often became in contact with such a famous person as General Esdeath, who often told me about the methods of torture that she practices. - Leon interrupted the story, looking at the senior lieutenant, who realised what the general was getting at. - No need to be afraid, I'm not a sadist... I don't enjoy torture, but sometimes... the job requires taking some pretty drastic measures. So... it's in your best interest to tell us... EVERYTHING.
Interrogation is a tedious business, especially if you don't like torturing people, they try to assure you that they know nothing or have told you everything they can, and then suddenly they remember the most important information they tried to withhold until the last moment. Such was the case with Senior Lieutenant Tsuko and his associates in the fortress who were supporters of the revolutionaries. He proposed to the revolutionaries a rather entertaining plan to capture the fortress. According to it, Tsuko was to kill the garrison commander during a diversion (which he did by sticking an arrow in his eye to make it look like he was killed with a bow), and the saboteurs were to destroy the food store in order to starve the soldiers. Then a week was to pass, after which the revolutionaries disguised as soldiers of the Empire would arrive at the fortress with wagons filled with food (soldiers), and once inside, would massacre the entire garrison, taking the fortress. However, as is often the case, things didn't quite go according to plan and the warehouse survived, but the revolutionaries didn't give up on the idea.
Now that the revolutionaries' plans to take the fortress were known, Leon and the other officers pondered the situation. It was still unclear why the revolutionaries wanted the fortress, but since they needed it, they couldn't give it up. If what Tsuko had said was true, it meant that a bunch of disguised revolutionaries would soon arrive at the fortress, who were going to march into the fortress like a Trojan horse and massacre the people inside. Only now that the storming of the fortress is known, the revolutionaries are in for an unpleasant surprise.
"Hmm... I wonder if Esdeath will be jealous when she finds out that I'm repelling the revolutionaries' attack on the garrison." - Leon thought, remembering the girl's complaint that she was too bored in the Capital.
- General! - Nero addressed, bursting into the office of the fortress commander, which now temporarily belonged to Leon. - They're coming...
- Are the soldiers in position?
- They are! Just waiting for orders.
- Well... Let's go greet the evening guests.
- With bread and salt? - Nero decided to make a joke.
- Fire. Lead. And swords.
***
Esdeath was in the cemetery and walked between the gravestones, looking for one particular one. The girl had last visited this place when Deidara was buried, and never came back... Thinking about it, she couldn't even remember the last time she had visited the grave of her father and her clan. But now, things seemed somehow different for her....
- There you are. - The girl stood in front of the tombstone and looked at the name embossed on it: 'Sophia Könich'. - I learnt from Anna that Leon had gone west, so I decided to visit you instead. You know, you're really very dear to him... When you're mentioned, his mask cracks for a moment, revealing the grief he feels... I too lost my family, first my mother and then my father, but when I think of them, I don't feel the same grief as Leon....
Esdeath wanted to continue, but realised she was rambling. - But I'm talking to you a little. - Esdeath put a bunch of flowers next to the cooker. - Sleep well, I promise I'll always be there for your brother.
Esdeath left the cemetery and went back to the palace to her chambers. The girl herself didn't really understand why she had decided to strike up a conversation with someone who would no longer answer her. In part, she thought she was a little "off her rocker" and all of this, in her opinion, was Leon's fault. And in general she had nothing to do. Esdeath had become quite bored lately - Imperpol was doing a great job of finding Revolutionary Army spies, and all sorts of rebel and bandit bases within the Capital had been destroyed. And for the most part, the Huntsmen squad has to deal with guarding dignitaries and routine patrols. For Esdeath, all of this was a waste of time, and she was more than happy to be busy training her new squad and hunting dangerous monsters together.
"Maybe we should go hunting again tomorrow?" - thought the girl, taking off the uniform she wore most of the time, going to sleep. - "Though no... it's still my duty to keep order in the city." - With these thoughts she lay down on her bed and fell asleep almost instantly.
***
A cool breeze blew on Esdeath and her eyes slowly began to open. She saw a dark sky with no clouds and looked around and noticed that she was sitting on a bench under a glowing lamp.
- Sleep..." the girl voiced her thoughts, remembering how she had fallen asleep in her chambers. She was also wearing her general's uniform.
All of this seemed strange to Esdeath. Standing up from the bench, she looked around again, looking at the houses that stretched along the street. As she looked round, she saw an elderly man in a black suit and hat. He walked slowly, strolling along the path, and then went into the only house where the light was on. The girl followed him, and when she reached the door, it opened as if it had been blown open by the wind. Esdeath walked inside, assessing the interior and looking for the strange man in black, and as she entered the living room, her gaze was caught by a framed photograph of four people: a man, a woman, a boy and a girl. The boy was about 12-13 years old, with golden hair, blue eyes, and a slight smile on his face.
- Leon..." Esdeath said, recognising the boy as her lover.
- Aunty, who are you...?
Esdeath, not hearing footsteps behind her, but only a sudden question, was startled and turned round. In front of her stood a girl of about twelve years old with the same golden hair and blue eyes as Leon's. Esdeath was a little confused looking at the female (in her opinion) version of Leon, but quickly came to her senses and, kneeling down so that she was on the same level as the child, answered:
- I'm Esdeath... And who are you?
- Sophia! - The girl replied with a smile, but Esdeath's answer only made Esdeath almost stagger.
- Ah... last name? - decided to finally make sure.
- Koenich!