I, Anplus, did what I had to when I saw the serfs prostrate on the ground.
I signaled to the officer-mages and motioned to the knights and soldiers.
The soldiers brought shields as large as their bodies and formed a circle around my half-sister and the officer-mages.
I checked the high ground for any incoming arrows.
There were no human silhouettes to be seen.
It was probably safe for the moment, but I didn’t relax my guard — those poor-looking serfs might suddenly turn into brigands, so I stayed tense.
Someone could be lying in ambush in the nearby bushes or the wheat fields.
When all precautions were in place, I inclined my head toward my half-sister.
She stepped forward and stood before the serfs.
“Why have you barred my passage?”
Her voice was weak, like a patient whose strength had faded.
Even standing right beside her I had to lean in to catch it.
But it was enough to make the serfs tremble.
“We are serfs who till the lands nearby.”
“How long is this going to take?” the maid snapped.
The maid spoke sharply while the lady she served remained silent; why was the maid causing a fuss?
A maid had no right to interfere.
My half-sister showed no reaction, and neither could I do anything but remain still.
The serf bowed his head and cried out desperately.
“Please lower the taxes a little! Two years ago you took seventy percent, last year eighty percent, and this year it’s ninety percent. If you take that much we won’t survive the winter.”
…What?
If they take ninety percent of the harvest, what are those people supposed to eat?
Either the tax collectors had gone mad, or they were colluding with the stewards to siphon grain off.
My half-sister remained silent for a long time.
A heavy silence settled.
“What was it originally?” she asked in a voice on the verge of disappearing.
“Your merciful lord used to take sixty percent.”
My sister hardened her face and lowered her head.
A maid who had come up beside me murmured softly to prod her.
“My lady. You know what you must say, don’t you?”
My half-sister stayed stubbornly silent.
Then she muttered, “Father,” under her breath.
She drew in a deep breath, clenched her fists until the veins stood out on her thin forearms, and Ribelia spat out in a voice that could be described as cruel.
“Paying taxes is your duty.”
Writhe!
The serf screamed.
“How can you complain when you live in the richest and most beautiful country in the world?”
My half-sister’s lips trembled as she went on.
It felt like she was acting out a scene she hated.
“If things continue like this, our whole family will starve to death.”
That was enough to plunge the serf into despair.
“I think a petition saying something similar was submitted last year. But look at you — you’re standing here alive in front of me, aren’t you? Begone. I am a busy person.”
My half-sister bared her eyes.
Only then did I notice how her eyes resembled our father’s.
The maid whispered in a low voice.
“Now you’re showing the dignity befitting an heir. Why didn’t you do this sooner?”
It was an awfully rude thing to say.
Before I could get angry at the maid, I had to watch the prostrate serfs carefully.
One of them was shaking all over.
That was unsettling.
I felt like trouble might start.
At that moment—
“Do you take us for human beings, Your Lady?”
A bearded serf rose to his feet.
His eyes were bloodshot and sharp with anger.
He drew a small sickle from beneath his loose clothes.
Oh my.
A mix of outrage and pity flashed through me.
I leapt forward instinctively and put myself between him and my sister.
“Stop him! Grab him!”
The other serfs were more stunned than I was.
With a man like that out, the chance a noble would lower the tax rate was gone.
They’d only be punished more harshly.
The family’s elite troops did what they had been trained to do.
They kicked him in the chest, knocked him down, took the sickle away, and forced him to his knees.
My half-sister’s face drained of color.
It wouldn’t have been surprising if she had fainted.
The maid leaned close and whispered into her ear.
“My lady. That man has dared display treason. You know what measures must be taken, do you not? Bring all his kin and investigate the instigators.”
At the mention of “relations,” the man squeezed his eyes shut.
I watched my half-sister clench her fist until her nails dug into her palm.
“Take this man to the woods. I do not wish to see blood.”
It was a voice like a dying ember — faint, but there.
“Mistress, you must investigate his kin! Show the authority that befits your bloodline.”
The maid grabbed my half-sister’s forearm.
My half-sister squeezed her eyes shut as though a human-sized slug was clinging to her.
“There is no time for that. We must hurry to the border.”
“My lady is right.”
“The man’s act was obviously impulsive from the looks of it.”
One of the officer-mages added that.
The maid could no longer press my half-sister.
I had the man hauled up and we headed into the deep forest.
***
I swung my blade through the air until the dawn went cold on it.
A tough, fibrous thing came away.
A heavy chunk rolled across the ground.
The man staggered and collapsed to the earth.
His wide eyes held an indescribable question.
“Sit here for a few hours and return to the village after the procession passes. Make sure you apologize to your neighbors.”
The thick rope that had bound his wrists thudded on the leaf-strewn ground.
I sheathed my sword with a deep sigh.
By noble rhetoric, that sentence did not mean “do not kill him here.”
It meant I hoped the man would not die.
“If you have sense, you’ll understand. If you were involved, you and the rest of you could have all been killed.”
The laws of this country were cruel beyond necessity.
There was no need to go as far as killing a noble.
Even an attempt or a plan to harm a noble could be punishable by death.
And that was not the end.
Because she was the heir, it could be tied to treason or rebellion.
Treason was certainly a capital crime far removed from mere injury.
Entire families, even whole villages or towns, could be overturned.
The man bowed on the spot.
“Thank you, truly, thank you! My lord.”
“I know it was an impulsive act. If it had injured her — no, the lady — I wouldn’t have let you go like this.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry. Thank you.”
“There’s something I want to ask.”
“Yes, yes! I’ll answer anything.”
“What do you pay your taxes in?”
“Huh?”
“Do you pay with coins? Or with grain like wheat or barley, herbs, or hides and other village specialties?”
He blinked.
Why was a knight asking that?
The question was plainly puzzling on his face.
I must have been the first to ask something like that.
“We used to pay mostly with hides, but in recent years they’ve taken everything in grain.”
“Hmm.”
“Our village used to pay in its specialty goods, and we only tilled enough land to feed ourselves. But suddenly we were told to pay in wheat and we simply couldn’t bear it.”
“Is it only your village? Or are the neighboring villages in the same situation?”
“It’s the same everywhere. Grain is short everywhere, so we can’t sell hides and buy grain.”
I didn’t know why taxes had suddenly been raised.
The Intezeruto House had always been prosperous.
Despite countless extravagances, the family coffers had never run dry.
A few years ago we had so much grain in the warehouses it was rotting; we hurriedly made military biscuits out of it.
There was still plenty left, and we converted some of it into alcohol and held a spontaneous festival to hand it out for free.
So why would our house suddenly need to stockpile grain?
I couldn’t understand it.
Lately there were more things around me that didn’t make sense.
The family was collecting vast amounts of grain, my father had called me back after three years, and a lowly maid had the nerve to raise her voice near my sister.
I couldn’t imagine my sister conducting negotiations with the imperial family.
It looked as though she might be used for some agreement and have everything drained out of her.
Our lord father could hardly be unaware that the heir was in that state.
My thought stopped briefly.
If she were being used, for whom and for what purpose would she be used?
***
After a while I returned to the procession.
I let my shoulders slump and exhaled as if uneasy.
Some knights threw sympathetic glances my way.
“Sir, did the vile rebel die in agony?”
The maid asked that with an almost casual tone.
Her face was too pretty to match the question.
“Treason is not a word to be thrown about lightly.”
I tossed the remark back.
My half-sister lay as if dead, sleeping.
I put my hand under her nose to check if she was breathing.
There was none of that vigorous life force typical of blue blood, none of the ambition that springs from that vitality.
It was the kind of strength even I — a man who could not use mana — used to have.
While I had been shut away in my room, what kind of life had she led?
I looked at her with pity, and the maid glared at me.
“My lord. From here the road will be rough.”
The carriage entered the forest.
Deep woods were dim even by day, with undergrowth everywhere.
Perfect for an ambush.
“Aaagh!”
As soon as that thought crossed my mind, a scream sounded like a lie.
“What is— what is that?!”
At the soldiers’ cries, my apparently sleeping half-sister opened her eyes.
She peered out the window, startled, and gathered mana.
A bright blare of blue light flashed so harshly it stung the eyes.
She turned her face, scowled, and thought.
I knew this would happen.
There was no way wandering bands wouldn’t form in lands that took ninety percent of the harvest.
Wanderers were another name for bandits.
But they had picked the wrong target.
We had a hundred elite guards and two azure officer-mages.
Although azure — ocean, sky, lapis — was the lowest in the blue-blood hierarchy, they were still legitimate combat mages.
Bandits would flee at the sight of blue light alone.
I focused on calming my sister, whose face had gone white, rather than clearing out the bandits.
“Lady. Calm yourself and stay still. This will be taken care of soon.”
No sooner had I finished than an arrow shattered the window and flew in.
It pierced through the maid’s shoulder and lodged in the carriage wall.
Aaaah!
Then I saw the maid’s complexion.
Her blood ran sea-blue.
She was not of a household maid’s blood.
She had the kind of deep blood that could stand on a battlefield as a noble or be ushered into the main house to serve as a high administrator or magistrate.
“What are you—”
Before she could finish, more bolts flew in.
They ripped through the carriage wall like paper and sent splinters flying.
My half-sister drew more mana and hunched down.
“Those aren’t arrows.”
They were too powerful and the shafts too large to be ordinary arrows.
They looked like bolts from a crossbow.
Depending on the tension, a crossbow could penetrate plate armor.
Since they could kill blue-blooded nobles, their production and distribution were strictly controlled by nobles from manufacture to sale.
For bandits to use crossbows was unthinkable.
“Lady, stop pooling mana and lower your head.”
I forced Ribelia’s head down onto the carriage floor.
“The blue glow is drawing fire!”
In the dim forest, a brilliant mana glow was an excellent target.
We hurriedly pulled the curtains to cover the window.
“Damn!”
The bolt that had pierced the curtain tore it like lingerie.
A rain of crossbow bolts followed.
I drew my sword and dashed out of the carriage.
A bolt came straight at me.
I desperately angled my blade to meet it.
KLANG!
A loud metallic sound rang out and my heavy sword trembled.
Where were the mages?
A curse rose in my throat.
“Against bandits…!”
But the scene before me was chaotic enough to smother that curse.
The bandits were everywhere in the woods.
I estimated there were over four hundred of them.
If the guards had been any less proficient they would have been swept away.
“Where are the blue-bloods?!”
I grabbed a soldier passing by and demanded.
The man, pale with fear, stammered.
“They used crossbows. Her blood — it won’t stop bleeding — they’re treating her now.”
I looked up toward the treeline.
Crossbow bolts, each tipped with a large shaft, flew relentlessly from between the bushes.
“Ahh!”
“From the right too!”
“My— my arm! My arm won’t move!”
Our soldiers were brave and well-armed, but a high-tension crossbow could impale two or three men at once.
They were raining from both sides so there was nowhere to dodge.
The officer-mages were stuck behind the shield wall pulling bolts out.
The blue glow made us easy targets.
Unsurprisingly, crossbow fire focused where the blue mana shone.
A shield made of cowhide with wood and iron plates thudded as bolts penetrated it.
Cold sweat ran down my back.
At this rate we could be annihilated.
I didn’t know where they had gotten the crossbows, but they were well-prepared.
Knights who could fight without emitting blue mana…
I had to do something.
“Take care of the lady.”
“What? Then, Young Master — I mean, Sir Anplus, what are you going to do?”
“I’ll draw their attention.”
I climbed onto the roof of the luggage wagon.
I drew a knight’s sword and slit my left forearm shallowly.
Blue blood, shining like top-grade aquamarine, welled and flowed beautifully.
“Ma— mana!”
“Magic! Avoid him!”
Hundreds of pairs of eyes turned to me.
The bandits’ fierce assault abated for a moment.
Of course I couldn’t cast any spells with that mana.
But they didn’t know that.