Chapter 59: A Tea Party with the New Neighbor
The night wind carried the wasteland’s unique scent of grass and earth as it howled through the arrow slits of the castle.
Inside the main hall, the fire in the hearth was burning fiercely, stretching Caesar’s shadow long across the cold stone walls like a silent demon god.
Roland and Barrett stood with lowered hands, not daring to make the slightest sound.
“My lord.”
A soldier in charge of keeping watch hurried into the hall, dropped to one knee, and spoke in an urgent voice.
“Outside the city… there’s movement in the Temple Knight Order’s main camp! A cavalry unit of about thirty men is heading this way, and they’re carrying… carrying black banners!”
Black banners? Not the Church’s white standard with the golden cross?
Roland and Barrett’s expressions changed at once.
Caesar, however, remained reclining in the great stone chair at the head of the hall. He did not even lift his eyelids, merely tapping the armrest lightly with his fingers.
“What emblem is on the banner?”
he asked calmly.
“A… a black bird, like a crow or a vulture, clutching a set of scales in its talons!”
“Deathbird…”
Caesar’s tapping finger paused, and a faintly mocking smile touched the corner of his lips.
“That’s the Cardinal Inquisitor’s personal honor guard. It seems the real player can’t sit still any longer.”
Only then did he open his eyes, those deep violet pupils bottomless in the firelight.
“Roland.”
“Your subordinate is here!”
“Have the men put away their bows and crossbows. Open the city gates.”
“But deploy the First and Second Heavy Infantry Companies in formation on both sides of the main road inside the gate. Let them have a look at our spirit.”
Caesar’s voice was calm and clear.
“We are allies, not prisoners. Since guests are coming, we ought to show them proper hospitality.”
“Yes, my lord!”
Roland accepted the order at once and strode away. He understood. This was a display of force, and an entirely open one at that.
“Barrett.”
“Boss, give the order!”
“Go to the cellar and bring out my best cask of rye beer.”
“And have the kitchen prepare roast meat. I want a freshly slaughtered wasteland horn sheep, served on the largest iron platter we have.”
Barrett froze.
“Boss, isn’t that… treating them a little too well? Those god-botherers…”
“Idiot.”
Caesar glanced at him.
“We’re impoverished wasteland pioneers, not silk-clad imperial nobles.”
“Our finest hospitality is beer and roast meat. That’s called an image, understand? It’s not rude, but it also tells them there’s no fat here for them to skim.”
Barrett’s single eye lit up at once. Understanding dawned on him, and he let out a sly chuckle.
“Got it! I’ll take care of it right away! I’ll make sure they eat until their mouths are dripping with grease and their hearts are bleeding!”
A quarter of an hour later, the massive gates of the City of Miracles slowly opened inward with a long, heavy groan.
Outside the gates, more than thirty knights sat motionless upon their horses, silent as a forest.
They wore full-body armor black as night, with the silver emblem of the Deathbird and scales upon their chests.
Their faces were hidden behind flawless white masks, revealing only pairs of emotionless eyes.
Their warhorses were similarly clad in black barding, even their breathing seeming somehow suppressed.
An aura of death and judgment rushed straight at the senses.
At their head rode a man astride a pure white warhorse.
He wore no armor, only a dark crimson priest’s robe, elegantly tailored, standing in sharp contrast to all the black around him.
He wore no helmet. In the torchlight, his pale and handsome features looked like a flawless sculpture devoid of life.
It was none other than Cardinal Inquisitor Augustus.
He gazed into the city gates, toward the ranks of heavy infantry arrayed on both sides of the road.
Those soldiers were poorly equipped, and many of their suits of armor still bore chips and bloodstains. Yet they stood ramrod straight, their long spears and tower shields forming a steel forest.
Their eyes were like those of wolves that had gone hungry for three days—filled with primal savagery and a fearlessness that laughed at death.
A nearly imperceptible change flickered through Augustus’s ice-blue eyes.
This was not a mob.
Caesar stood at the end of the main road, atop the steps of the castle’s main hall, with Roland beside him like an iron tower.
He did not kneel. He did not bow.
He merely watched Augustus and his entourage pass through the “honor guard” formed by his own soldiers.
“Welcome to my city, Lord Inquisitor.”
Caesar’s voice rang out clearly through the silent night.
“The wasteland is cold and barren, so I have little worthy of serving you. Only some fresh roast meat and our own brewed beer. I hope you won’t mind.”
He made a gesture of invitation, neither servile nor overbearing, as though receiving an old friend who had come from afar.
Augustus swung down from his horse with a grace more suited to a court ball than a battlefield.
He handed the reins to one of the Silent Guards behind him and walked slowly up the steps.
At last, the two men stood face to face.
One was the newly risen King of the Wasteland, an Earth Knight who radiated the heaviness and savage vitality of a man fused with the land itself.
The other was the Church’s hand of judgment, an archmage cloaked in the majesty of Holy Light and an authority that tolerated no defiance.
For an instant, the air itself seemed to freeze.
“Lord Caesar von Valerius.”
A faintly polite smile curved Augustus’s lips, yet his ice-blue eyes cut at the young man before him like scalpels.
“Your city has rather more vitality than I expected.”
“You flatter us, my lord.”
Caesar smiled in return.
“After all, if one wishes to survive in a heap of corpses, one must show at least a little vitality.”
A single sentence, and the hidden blade within it was plain.
Augustus’s smile deepened slightly.
Interesting.
He entered the main hall, his gaze sweeping over the blazing hearth, the massive stone seat at the head of the chamber, and the enormous roasted leg of lamb piled high upon the platter, still sizzling with grease.
Everything about the place was rough, primitive, and brimming with life.
Without the slightest hesitation, he took the guest’s seat. The four Silent Guards stood behind him like statues.
Caesar also sat down in the seat of honor.