Chapter 47

“...’As iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend,’” Arne read aloud to the great amusement of his audience: Friedrich and Sieglinde, currently having a hearty meal at the Hohenfels refectory.

“I can’t believe he agreed to the spar, Your Highness,” Sieglinde said, gingerly setting aside her silverware.

“You think I can get him to fight me too?” Friedrich added, much less gingerly stabbing at his sautéed venison.

“You can try. I don’t think he’d be categorically opposed to the idea,” Arne shrugged. From their serious duel, he had gotten a much better sense of Leonhardt’s capabilities than from the useless smallsword lesson. One rarely became this competent with something they did not enjoy.

He set aside Leonhardt’s letter to take a bite of his own food, braised rabbit with various root vegetables. The taste reminded him of home; much unlike the artistic creations served at the dining hall.

After a satisfying meal, he waved a servant to the table, asking for a quill and paper. He quickly penned a response, inviting Leonhardt to Hohenfels Hall at his convenience, then sent a runner to the Sonnenfeld dorm.

It appeared that Leonhardt von Wessen was not a man of hesitance. Merely an hour later, he appeared in front of the ornamental drawbridge with two followers, causing a small commotion.

Arne went out to meet him, Friedrich in tow. Out of uniform, of course – no need for excessive formality here.

“Good afternoon, Prince Arnold,” Leonhardt greeted. To Arne’s surprise, there was little hostility in his solid aura, only an undercurrent of discomfort and anticipation. His companions were radiating anxiety, which was to be expected.

“Good afternoon, Lord Leonhardt,” Arne replied. “Please, enter.”

“Thank you. I hope you do not mind me bringing my friends along. When I mentioned a spar with Hohenfels, they expressed great interest.”

“Not at all, Lord Leonhardt. Our training field is more than large enough for all of us, and I’m sure there will be plenty of opponents to go around. Friedrich?”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“See if some of our guardsmen might be up for a spar.”

Friedrich’s face and aura lit up like a bonfire. He saluted and briskly marched off, barely managing to stay dignified.

Leonhardt’s companions introduced themselves during the walk to the training grounds. They were the heirs to countships bordering Gallovia, making their standing equivalent to Friedrich’s. At first, they tried to converse like silklings, but Arne deftly steered the conversation towards military matters, which all sides found more comfortable.

‘They don’t seem too bad,’ he thought to himself, even as he silently judged their colorful duelling clothes.

As usual, word spread quickly. When they arrived, there was already a small crowd of spectators. Arne was glad to be wearing his amulet, and thankfully, the onlookers were mostly preoccupied with the future Margrave of Westmark, turning their auras into annoying background noise rather than an assault on his senses.

The first few fights were mostly for show. First, Arne sparred with Leonhardt, ending in a draw by mutual understanding. Neither of them had actually tried to win, and during the fight, they established an unspoken rule – if either of them performed a fancy maneuver, he would slow down afterwards to let the other one get a small ‘win’ as well.

Once the others began sparring, the crowd slowly dissolved except for the most enthusiastic spectators, who were soon drawn into the impromptu training session themselves. As the attention shifted away from Arne and Leonhardt, they fought again, this time without the pretension.

Arne lost. It was a close fight, but the Wessen heir’s technique was too clean.

= = = = =

“So, what was this all about, Prince Arnold?” Leonhardt reclined in a soft chair in Hohenfels Hall’s private lounge, taking a sip of herbal tea.

“Take a guess,” Arne replied with measured sarcasm.

“Besides the obvious isolation tactics? Optics, I suppose. Your demeanor was rather… excessive over the last few weeks. Public reconciliation with a former enemy will do wonders for your image.” Slight exasperation.

“It will,” Arne agreed easily. “I am honestly surprised that you decided to go along with it.”

Leonhardt scoffed. “Don’t pretend like you did not seed the rumors of the letter. Declining would have been a bad look for me. I certainly cannot afford that right now,” he added bitterly.

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“I take it Ludwig is not happy with you?”

Another burst of exasperation. “Prince Ludwig is, unfortunately, less of an issue than Prince Maximilian, who continues to blame me for the result of the entire incident, which I find… in rather poor taste.”

“I can see that,” Arne chuckled.

“Can you?”

“...Pardon?”

“You are in a vastly different position than I am, Prince Arnold,” Leonhardt said, the bitterness returning much stronger than before. “Bleeding for Sonnenfeld loses some of its honor once it is stained by meaningless politics.”

‘Ah.’ “I apologize,” Arne said, not having to fake his wince. “I spoke without thinking.”

Leonhardt shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Frankly speaking, while I do not mind conversing with you, I do not particularly care for you either.” Sincerity.

“You know, that might be the most refreshing statement I’ve heard this month.”

“It was rather refreshing to say, too.”

“I’m thinking about hosting another sparring session next week. Would you be interested in an invitation?”

“I would.”

They both took a bite of gugelhupf, silence stretching until it became too awkward to maintain. Leonhardt simply leaving would not do; a too-brief interaction would endanger the entire spectacle.

While Arne was still racking his brain for acceptably neutral topics, Leonhardt spoke up.

“How did you defeat the darughachi of Batuul?”

The question took Arne completely off-guard.

“I’m surprised you know that term,” he managed to say while gathering his thoughts.

“I read,” the Wessen heir shrugged. “I can appreciate Eastern military reports. They are more… concise than those that usually cross my desk.”

“I suppose the report for Batuul has not made it to the archives yet?”

“It has, but it is beyond my clearance.”

“Ah, I can see why. It was…” Arne struggled for words, then settled on a tired sigh.

“They don’t call it the Razing of Batuul for nothing, I see.”

“Quite so.”

There was another bout of silence, until Arne spoke up again.

“We went there expecting an easy victory, you know? Usually, liberating cities from the hordes is a simple affair. Defeat the garrison, done. The Khan leaves the locals to manage themselves and only collects taxes.”

“So I’ve read, yes.”

“Batuul… Well, we should have guessed from the name that it wouldn’t be so simple. It used to be called something else, before they refused to yield.”

“The Khan annihilated them.”

“He did. Then he turned the city into a… well, the translation would be something like ‘administrative fortress’, which we only figured out after we haplessly entered it.”

Leonhardt’s eyes went wide. “You entered it?”

“We did. We lost twenty-three knights in minutes.”

“Christ in heaven.”

“Unfortunately, he was busy that day,” Arne muttered. To his surprise, the casual blasphemy did not get any sort of reaction.

“Well, it turned out that most of the city was fortified. Ambushes in every street, assassins in every house,” he continued. “In the end, we had to burn it down.”

“...Everything?”

“Everything. Everyone.”

Again, silence.

“I don’t like fire,” Leonhardt suddenly said, aura solemn.

“Neither do I.”

“I fought at Dervenne, during the last war.”

“...That’s south of Flanda, right?”

“Correct. They had set up… devices. Some kind of Logrian contraption. They’re small, buried in the earth. If you step on them, they explode. They call them ‘landmines’.”

“That sounds like a nightmare,” Arne shuddered.

“It was. It’s… devoid of honor. You can’t even retreat without losing half your men.”

“Would you say that muskets are devoid of honor, then? Crossbows, maybe?”

“There is still a man behind the weapon,” Leonhardt disagreed. “Those mines are laid and forgotten.”

“But the effect is the same. If you retreat from a line of musketeers, you’re still under fire.”

“It is not the same thing. I am not a philosopher, but I can tell when something is wrong.”

“Again, that is what my grandfather used to say about muskets,” Arne sighed. “There is no denying their effects. They are here to stay.”

“And I consider it my duty to ensure they are not.”

“Where does that ‘duty’ end? When every gun is broken, every steamboat sunk?”

“Yes. We need to purge the Logrian devilry before it ruins us all.”

“I would say that there has been plenty of ruination happening already.”

“You have no idea,” Leonhardt said, suddenly incensed. “If things keep going like this, the wars we fought will look like child’s play.”

The undercurrent of fear in the other warrior’s aura gave Arne pause, and he swallowed his scathing riposte.

“What do you mean?”

Leonhardt took a deep breath and settled down. “I’ve told you before how they move regiments in mere hours. Just imagine how battles will look if you have hundreds of thousands of men on each side, shooting each other with these accursed breechloaders, or whatever hellish weapons the Logrians are cooking up now.”

“That’s unreasonable. The damage to the economy–”

“They do not care. They will have enough machines to cover the losses, and then some.”

“A machine cannot till the fields,” Arne stated. “You need people for that.”

“So you would think,” Leonhardt spat. “When were you last in Gallovia?”

“I never was.”

The young lord nodded. “I see. Last year, Logres sent them machines called ‘traction engine’. If you have two of them, you can plow twenty acres in a single day. A draft horse can do one.”

Arne should have felt alarmed by that. Intimidated, maybe. Instead, a single thought dominated his mind.

‘I want to see Logres.’