I was suddenly given the throne, I was entrusted with all of the power to control national policy, even given an engagement to Liscia to bolster my legitimacy, and then at some point, the corrupt nobles had been smoked out for me. When I looked back, I could see everything had been moving to make things easier for me. If that was the will of someone… there was only one person who could have done it.
“Was this plan done on that person’s orders?” I asked.
“…I will remain silent.”
“Answer me,” I ordered. “What does that person know, and what do you know?”
I waited for Georg to speak, but he had nothing to say to me. It was so silent in the dungeon that I could hear the ringing in my ears. I realized I could wait forever, and it wouldn’t do me any good.
“Why won’t you answer me?” I demanded.
“When the proper time comes, I am sure that person will tell you themselves,” said Georg.
I rose to my feet, pulling a small bottle from my pocket and placing in front of Georg. “Poisoned wine. While I may not appreciate the form it took, I can’t publicly execute a man who tried to martyr himself for his country. Also… I’ll be offering the same to those who want to martyr themselves for you.”
It must have been the work of Georg’s strong personality, but there were more than a few soldiers and officers in the Army who’d said they would do just that. His former second-in-command, Beowulf, as well as a number of high-ranking officers, had demanded they receive the same punishment as Georg. Furthermore, even among the soldiers of the Army and Air Force who had had their crimes forgiven for their distinguished service in the war against Amidonia, there were those who’d had to be restrained after they attempted to commit suicide in front of the castle after demanding their commander’s life be spared. Honestly… I was sick of all these people wanting to die.
Georg took the bottle and said, “Thank you,” his cheeks loosening slightly. That menacing lion face of his now looked like that of a happy old man. Georg opened the bottle, holding it up in my direction. “Sire. I ask that you take care of the princess for me.”
“I can promise you that,” I said. “Liscia is already an irreplaceable member of my family. ‘Protect your family, come what may’… No matter what happens in the future, that is one belief I will never change.”
I knew the pain of loneliness, and I would protect my family, no matter what might come.
No matter how inefficient that might be.
Perhaps sensing my resolve, Georg nodded with satisfaction. “It relieves me to hear that. I will always there, praying for the Elfrieden Kingdom’s glory and for Your Majesty’s happiness and good fortune, from the shadows beneath this nation’s grass and leaves. Now… I am sorry.” With those words, Georg downed the contents of the bottle in a single gulp.
With time his body began to tilt to one side, then the bottle fell from his hand to shatter on the ground.
With the thud that followed, the dungeon was silent once more. Having fallen over to the side… Georg’s face seemed to be smiling in satisfaction.
I stood, turning my back to Georg’s cell, and walked away.
Step, step, step, step. A few echoing steps later, I turned back just once. “…Don’t make me carry all of this burden.”
I faced forward and began to walk once more. I didn’t turn back again.
The next day, Chris Tachyon’s new program ran a story with the title “Former General of the Army Georg Carmine Takes His Own Life in Prison.”
Chapter 7: Promise
Morning, one week (eight days) after we returned to Parnam.
In the castle’s governmental affairs office, all that could be heard was the scratching of my pen and the shuffling of paper as Liscia passed documents to me. I had been getting work done while in Van, but not only had the workload not decreased after returning to Parnam, if anything it had grown.
Now that the system of three dukes had collapsed, I needed to reorganize the army post-haste.
In order to build a relationship of equals with the Empire, I needed to increase military expenditures to counter the threat of the Demon Lord’s Domain. In other words, to strengthen the military. That plan for strengthening the military was the one I had spoken of during the ultimatum to the three dukes, the unification of the armed forces.
When I looked at the history of the other world, an army’s strength or weakness depended heavily on its mobility. In other words, how fast it could get where it needed to go, and whether it could deploy the needed firepower.
The reason we’d won a crushing victory over the Amidonian forces recently had been that we’d been able to reach the battlefield before our opponents. Because we had arrived a day ahead of the enemy, we had been able to fight the exhausted forces of the principality with a well-rested Royal Army. Had we arrived simultaneously, our exhaustion would have been roughly the same, and while the forces of the principality would still have been outnumbered, they would have dug in and fought harder. If that had happened, the fight would have been much more difficult for us.
In order to achieve that mobility we needed, it would be necessary to roll out a transportation network, and, at the same time, eliminate the divisions between our Army, Navy, and Air Force, to create a system that worked under a single command structure to immediately move all of our forces. That system would be a unified armed forces.
The Forbidden Army, Army, Navy, Air Force, and, lastly, the troops that were nominally part of the Forbidden Army, but were the personal troops of the nobility, would all be dismantled and reorganized as one force to be called the Elfrieden Defense Force (EDF).
In organizing that EDF, I had to be cautious of resistance from each branch of the military, but with the recent uprising, the Army and Air Force had lost their influence. The temporary heads of each force, Glaive and Tolman, were both cooperative, so they would pose no problem.
Furthermore, the Navy had sided with us and therefore had not lost their influence, so by appointing their Admiral, Excel, as Supreme Commander of the EDF, we could expect very little resistance. Excel wasn’t keen on being enshrined as the Supreme Commander, but I had made her accept the position under the condition that it was just until Ludwin gained enough experience to handle the role.
That was enough for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, but the real headache was going to be the nobles’ forces.
They were part of the Forbidden Army, but the fact that command over them lay with the various nobles made them hard to deal with.
In this world with wild beasts and monsters (though, before the appearance of the Demon Lord’s Domain, these had only existed in dungeons), thieves, pirates and bandits, there needed to be a certain amount of policing power in every area.
That was why the landed nobility trained personal troops, which they were obligated to use to maintain stability inside their fiefs.
However, in this country, the numbers they had were excessive. It was the effect of the king-before-last’s expansionist policies.
At that time, battlefield achievements had been the shortest route to glory and advancement, so the nobility used to levy commoners from their fiefs to bolster the ranks of their personal forces. Despite the fact that, while conscripting amateurs might raise their manpower, if it led to a fall in productivity, it was pointless. Eventually, when the former king, King Albert, hanged tack from his predecessor’s expansionist policies, the nobility still maintained their enlarged forces.
That was why, now, I was stuck with the task of dismantling their forces down to the bare minimum required for policing. Those who had a primary trade outside of soldiering would be given severance pay and released from service, while those who sought to join the EDF would be able to undergo testing to enlist.