Chapter 644 — The King's Price
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
When the Cecil armoured gryphons swept across the sky, Count Uriel still had the leisure to admire the scenery of Crow Terrace—this high ground, once dotted with watchtowers and a small fortress, had been one of Saint Sunir's garrison strongholds, but it now lay shattered by war; among the scattered ruins one could see only the banners and equipment left behind by the defenders in their panicked retreat, and the dismembered corpses of crystal-cluster giants, while brand-new banners now fluttered amid these broken ruins, lending the scene a strange, contrasting beauty.
A cool breeze drifted over, carrying with it a faint reek of the battlefield; Count Uriel drew a deep breath and said with a smile, "The past few days were truly hard—but happily, those hard days are finally over."
"We met hardly any resistance—there were only a few gravely wounded, dying monsters in this place," a viscount said from beside him. "I'm afraid this achievement won't quite suffice?"
"It doesn't matter. We can gather up these ready-made remains," Count Uriel said offhandedly. "Our king will be quite busy next, so presumably he won't have time to scrutinize such trifles."
"Our new king, eh..." the viscount beside him said with a light laugh, then glanced up at the sky with curiosity. "Strange—why are those few gryphons circling around here all this time?"
"Those should be the Cecil gryphons," Count Uriel said, looking skyward. "Have they come to greet us?"
The armoured gryphons circled above Crow Terrace a while longer, then suddenly beat their wings and flew off at a slant into the distance.
Count Uriel narrowed his eyes, and after a moment, a sense of unease finally surfaced from the depths of his heart.
He thought of Count Lucre, whom the king had executed.
"This is a trap—"
Count Uriel roared in alarm, but a shrill, piercing whistle had already come from afar...
Crow Terrace was engulfed in an earth-shattering explosion; flashes of light came without cease, and clouds of smoke and dust billowed skyward.
Wilse stood on the walls of Saint Sunir; Pingxi watched it all, and only after a long while did he say softly, "He truly is decisive."
And all the others—those standing on the walls who knew what was on Crow Terrace, the noble scions who supported the king, the defending soldiers, and the rest whom Wilse had kept behind for various reasons—all of them watched that terrifying spectacle in the distance with shock and dread.
The crowd cried out in alarm, and chaos swept the walls; some rushed headlong toward the king's direction, hoping to request further orders, but Wilse raised the longsword in his hand, and his voice, infused with magic, resounded across the walls: "Quiet—inner-court nobles, the garrison guard, follow me out of the city to receive the Duke of Cecil."
"Your Majesty!" an inner-court noble cried out in shock. "Absolutely not! They have just bombarded Crow Terrace—they have just killed..."
"Do they know there is a noble knightly order on Crow Terrace?" Wilse Pingxi asked. "Do they know the orders I gave within Silverhold?"
"Your Majesty, this..."
"This may be a terrible misunderstanding, and all the more reason to clarify it face to face," Wilse said in a tone brooking no doubt. "Whatever is said, the Cecil people saved the royal capital and cleared the monsters from the plains. Their legion is just outside the city—we must go meet them."
The king's final sentence obliquely awakened everyone present; those inner-court nobles mired in shock and dread realized in whose hands the true initiative now lay—and the cleverer among them, from Wilse's anomalous attitude, suddenly caught faint intimations of certain facts, sniffing out a dreadful, bloody truth unfolding there in the sunlight; after a brief daze, they found they had no further choices.
Whatever the truth behind the bombardment on Crow Terrace, they must now obey the king's command and go out of the city to receive the Cecil legion.
...