Chapter 498 — Public Trial
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 5
In Frostgate, the square before the cathedral district was packed with people.
Two days had passed since that unprecedented battle, yet the whole city still seemed wrapped in a strange, feverish atmosphere. For the citizens of Frostgate, this was the first time they had ever fought with their own hands for the right to live another day; for the common folk and volunteer fighters who had come from all across the Southern Region, it was the first time they had gathered together regardless of birth or station, unbound by any lord's whip and blade, and acted in pursuit of a great goal—and today was the day when all their efforts bore fruit.
The people crowded the square, every face alight with ardour and eagerness, and all eyes were fixed on the far end of it, where a platform had been raised, and atop that platform were bound the priests who had once stood so high and lorded it so cruelly over them.
The judges had become the judged—setting aside all questions of justice and morality, the spectacle itself was enough to thrill a great many people.
This was a trial, but unlike the countless heresy trials Frostgate had witnessed before. Its procedure and form might seem novel and hard to grasp to the locals—for the one passing sentence was not a high-ranking priest, but a three-member tribunal made up of a White Knight, a Cecil judge, and an arbitration advisor; and beyond that tribunal, many more sat beside the platform as jurors.
Some of these were clad in priestly robes, and people recognized them as priests from the small churches of Frostgate—men who had once stood in the square of the heresy trials and been punished alongside the common folk, and who had even served as allies during the assault on the great cathedral; thus, though they were priests, they drew no small number of friendly looks. Others were ordinary citizens dressed in clean and decent clothes, the most respected figures of Frostgate, whose faces many in the crowd knew well. The last group were clerks from Cecil.
These people were called the "jury"—witnesses and overseers of the trial, and representatives of every class touched by these events.
The Luan citizens had never seen such a curious and complicated form of trial, yet it undeniably radiated an air of fairness and reliability—the judge could not decide alone; every statute was read aloud in open court; and people from every walk of life stood as witnesses, watching over the whole process. To Luan citizens who had known nothing their whole lives but "heresy trials," this new set of "rules" from Cecil was almost staggering.
As for the priests bound on the platform, awaiting judgment, their feelings were rather less pleasant.
These priests, who had survived to this day, stared down at the square in something close to terror—at those lowly folk who in former days could only grovel in the dirt—and they felt that the people's gazes carried a heat almost physical, as though it would burn them alive upon that platform.
They had not been stoned to death by the furious mob two days ago, nor cut down on the spot by the White Knights and the volunteer mercenaries, and now at last they understood: they had lived not through luck, but because they had "another use."
The Cecil men had kept them alive until today only so that they could die today.
"Silence—the public trial now begins."
The "judge" beside the platform spoke. He was a middle-aged civil official from the Cecil region, once a scholar of some repute in the Kant area, but now he was to judge the spokesmen of the Daylight Church in the Southern Region in the name of Duke Gaoyang and the people of the South, and that fact kept his face drawn tight as he strove to hide all his nervousness and agitation beneath a solemn and reverent countenance.