Death's Daughter and the Ebony Blade Volume 1 by Maito Ayamine

Author:Maito Ayamine [AYAMINE, Maito]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: J-Novel Club

II

Fort Caspar, Base of Imperial Command Operations in Southern Fernest

Captain Samuel has been killed in action.

It was the middle of the night, but an urgent report borne by a watchman from the Canalia Highway sent the outpost into an uproar. Crowds of nervous soldiers stood on watch under the flickering torchlight of additional beacons lit along the main gate. Body after body was carried into the fortress through a small entryway to the side of the portcullis.

“The report is true, then? Captain Samuel was killed in action?” asked General Osvannes. A man of fifty years, he was Supreme Commander of the Southern Imperial Army and a figure of considerable influence in the Asvelt Empire. As a soldier, he was renowned for his airtight offensive and defensive strategies on the battlefield.

The officer kneeling before Osvannes looked up.

“Yes, m’lord,” he said. “The soldiers stationed at the town of Canalia went there at once. They found the captain’s headless body, along with those of about ten others in a similar state of decapitation. We are in the process of recovering them.”

“Without his head? I suppose they took it as a trophy. I doubt there’s a soldier in the royal army who doesn’t know Captain Samuel’s name.”

“Ser, this was not Fernest’s work,” the officer said tersely. Osvannes frowned.

“If not Fernest, then who? You can’t be suggesting that Samuel was taken down by mere bandits or the like.”

“No, I... Erm...” The officer’s voice faltered. Colonel Paris, another high-ranking officer in the room, smoothed back his hair and regarded the officer with cold, narrow eyes. He inclined his head, signaling for the officer to continue.

“What... What we’ve heard from the surviving soldiers is that they were slaughtered by a monstrous girl wielding a black sword.”

“A monstrous girl?” Paris repeated in spite of himself.

“That’s what they said. And that she told them she was headed to Fernest’s capital to enlist in the royal army.”

Paris let out a snort of laughter at the delusions spilling out of the officer’s mouth. “Idiocy,” he said. He’d heard minstrels’ tales more believable than this. As a former agent of the intelligence division, he wasn’t about to believe such a preposterous story. The account must have been exaggerated somewhere down the line.

“Very well. You can spare us the tall tales,” he said. “Bring me the soldiers, so that I may question them directly.”

The trembling officer shook his head limply.

“I’m sorry ser, but their minds have been affected—they can’t speak any sense any more. And the soldiers who saw the state they’re in are all panicking over the news that a monster has allied itself with Fernest.”

“That bad...” said Osvannes, looking at Paris. “Maybe there’s a grain of truth in these reports after all.”

“My lord, you can’t be serious. This—”

“That’s enough, Paris. We’re wasting time,” said Osvannes, raising a hand to cut the colonel off. Paris still had plenty he wanted to say on the matter, but it was true that if the soldiers had lost their minds, they would provide no further information, in which case this was undeniably a waste of time.

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