Sabotage
Even in an age that sings of peace, war never changes.
Some fight to claim what they do not have. Others fight to keep what they do.
Person against person.
Faction against faction.
Nation against nation.
The victor takes everything. The defeated lose far more.
So it was for a peaceful little village that once farmed wheat. Before they could taste the golden riches of autumn, they were cast out as refugees wandering the wasteland.
In the middle of a plain where a chill wind already bit deep, they huddled together, sharing what little body heat they had left, barely enduring the oncoming winter.
When they saw the three men they had sent as envoys returning, they rose in welcome—but the joy did not last. There was no light of hope on those faces.
“Looks like this village won’t take us either.”
“They say they don’t have food to spare?”
“What else is new? They’re struggling to get through the winter themselves.”
Winter makes hearts stingy. At the end of autumn’s abundance lies a cruel season of endurance, and to survive that cruelty people turn exclusive. For those who had already become refugees, only death waited in the wings.
“Damn bastards. Same humans, same followers of Alte, and they can’t spare even a scrap…”
“May the light of judgment fall on those—”
“That’s enough.”
As the voices of resentment against the village grew louder, a man stepped forward. He wore half-plate armor and was the only one among them who still carried proper weapons.
“They’re just trying to stay alive. What do you expect? They haven’t got food either. The Empire’s a mess these days—corrupt officials running wild everywhere.”
“But we’ve got weapons too… If we just asked for a little—”
“Don’t even think about it. Be grateful we walked out of there on two feet and leave it at that.”
“Leave? Leave for where?”
They looked out across the vast plain. Winter earth was barren and broken. The only land left to them was death.
“What about heading south? At least it’s warmer there.”
Just as the far north held the Land of Ice and the Frost Giants, the far south held the Land of Fire and the Lava Giants. There, the idea of a freezing winter did not exist.
The village head shook his head.
“Bad idea. The south is hot by day, but the nights are colder still. Plenty of people have died underestimating the temperature swing. And…”
“And?”
“The people in that village said the bandits down south are waiting for exactly this. Refugees who can’t take the winter cold and try to cross south. The bandits will be ready to strip them of everything or sell them as slaves.”
“Then what are we supposed to do? Sit here and suck our thumbs until we die?”
The refugees’ frustration with the man was plain. The village head felt it just as keenly. In conditions this brutal, his duty was to become the lantern that found the best path forward.
After roughly three minutes of silence, he spoke.
“We go east. To the far east.”
Everyone stared at him in shock.
“The far east—you mean the Land of Evil?”
“They say even people can’t live there. You’re telling us to go there?”
The man looked at them and explained.
“The village we just visited told me. The Empire is looking for laborers in the far east. Apparently the regent there is building a town. The daily wage is decent, and there’s enough lodging. There’ll be food, too. If we contribute, they’ll take us in as residents for certain.”
“But to go to a land where monsters come pouring out…”
They exchanged uneasy glances, reluctance plain on every face. The man let out a sigh. Only moments ago they had clung to foolish options with hope; now, faced with a choice that actually had a chance, they turned indecisive.
He asked them flatly.
“So you’d rather stay here and die?”
“…”
“Wandering from village to village won’t change anything. Unless we turn to banditry, a few coins won’t buy us enough food—and I refuse to become a beast wearing a human face. I won’t allow any of you to become one either.”
“…”
“If we go to the far east, there will at least be work. Enough pay to buy food for one more day, and a roof to sleep under. For people living day to day the way we are, doesn’t that sound like a feast?”
Resentment toward the far east still lingered, yet no one could offer a better complaint. As the man had said, there was no real alternative.
Abandon the gods and become a band of refugee brigands—or head into barren land for the sake of new hope. Whether they died this way or that, they had to choose the place that still held a little more hope.
Isabella entered Ferda’s office and delivered her report.
“Reporting. Thirty refugees have arrived from a village called White Bridge.”
White Bridge. A village in the central-western continent, located in the Yurei Duchy.
“The third group from the Yurei Duchy this time. Available labor?”
“Six households in total. Fifteen able-bodied workers, one elderly, fourteen children.”
“Any specialists among them?”
“White Bridge originally sat near a quarry. Some of them are stonecutters with knowledge of construction.”
“Stonecutters will be useful. Understood. How many more can we take in?”
“From what I’ve checked…” Isabella flipped through her documents. “We can accommodate another three hundred.”
“That’s a lot of buildings.”
“A great many. Ordinarily, with this many refugees already gathered, half of them would be living in tents by now.”
Ferda rose from his seat and walked out onto the balcony. The moment he threw the doors open, cold air rushed in as if it had been waiting. The dry, freezing wind licked the remaining moisture from his face. He felt it clearly, skin-deep.
The season of death was drawing closer.
Refugees overflowing, too.
The time when refugees multiplied and died in the greatest numbers. For the sparsely populated far east, that also meant opportunity.
Ferda looked down from the office balcony. Where bare, thorny thickets should have stood, open plain and buildings now stretched out. Where tangled forest alone should have filled the view, dwellings stood instead. He could even see the thirty newly arrived refugees clustered around a brazier.
With Ferda’s approval given, officials were already distributing relief supplies. Tears of gratitude ran down faces gaunt with hunger; smiles of joy bloomed. Just like that, three hundred people had become a population, and a village had formed.
It’s becoming the name of the town.
Hestia—the woman who keeps the hearth-fire. The name that had crushed every other candidate Isabella presented and taken first place by an overwhelming margin. Already twenty buildings had gone up. Structures once meant as common spaces were turning into shops and inns, and a commercial district was beginning to take shape.
Several favorable winds had made it possible.
Support from the south was the biggest factor.
When he first heard that Halim would offer aid, he had not expected much. Aid usually meant setting a single spoon on the table so a bard could scratch one more line onto a résumé. But when the Halim delegation arrived, he saw just how serious they were.
Hundreds of laborers, building materials lined up in a long procession, even elephants. It was on a completely different scale from the support the Pascal Guild had once provided.
Isabella said she was almost afraid of what they might demand in return.
For Isabella, who handled everything with perfect composure, to say something like that—he could measure the scale of their commitment.
In any case, materials hauled up from the south had been stacked into buildings in the southern style with astonishing speed. In barely two weeks a residence for the envoys and a trading post had appeared, and more than ten new buildings had risen.
And beyond that, of course…
A massive bundle of logs floated gently through the air. Looking closer, one could see the silhouette of a powerfully built man at its center. The man in armor that did not belong on a construction site. Whatever else he was, he was the greatest contributor of all.
Just who are you?
He would appear out of nowhere, shoulder ten logs at once, and haul them away at a run—nothing ordinary about that form. Ferda would have liked to hear from someone who had looked under that helmet, but no one ever had. The moment the workday ended, the man vanished. Sometimes he failed to appear at all; sometimes he would simply sprint off midway through a job. Yet he always finished more work than the pay justified.
The duty of the strong… is it?
Service for the weak. People praised him for possessing outstanding chivalry even in the simplest labor.
Most likely he’s angling for a title.
Believing someone acted from pure motives was a fool’s thought. Ferda was already preparing for the day the man would demand compensation equal to the value of his service.
“Anything else of note?”
“If you mean anything unusual… nothing critical at the moment, but there is one matter.”
“What is it?”
“There seems to be trouble with the food and monster-supply lines. Deliveries are running about four days behind schedule.”
Four days. The roads were poor and transport limited, so delays were inevitable. To Ferda, however, even that was a serious problem.
He had arranged for Stefan to supply everything on a priority basis. “Priority” meant every shipment would arrive on the agreed date. Running four days late—not one—meant something had gone wrong with the contract.
Stefan.
As a merchant the man had a sharp mind. His calculations were solid and the strategies he proposed were not bad.
But that is all.
Stefan was passive and inclined to compromise. In the work Ferda needed done, that temperament was a major obstacle.
Should I cut him loose?
Ferda had nothing to regret. Whatever Stefan had invested could simply be returned as treasure. Halim was already pouring active support into their growth; partnering with them instead was a perfectly viable option. In all likelihood Halim was hoping for exactly that.
Discarding him would be easy enough.
What to do? Ferda was still turning the question over when a knock sounded.
“My lord Ferda.”
Ruri called to him.
“Lord Stefan Pascal requests an audience.”
Speak of the tiger and he appears, the old saying went.
“Show him in.”
The door opened and a man entered. It was difficult to believe this was the same man Ferda knew.
Stefan Pascal. As the second son of a major enterprise, his face at their first meeting had carried the soft flesh and quiet opulence of wealth. That flesh was gone now. He looked as haggard as a refugee who had not eaten a proper meal in days.
Something had happened to him. Ferda felt it at once.
“It has been some time since the exhibition, Lord Regent.”
Ferda kept his expression neutral.
“We were just speaking of you, as it happens.”
“Because the supply shipments are late. Yes. I offer my apologies for that. And…”
He forced the next words out with difficulty.
“I believe… it would be best if we ended our partnership with the Pascal Trading Company here.”
A request to terminate the contract. Ferda pressed a hand to his own face. No matter how he turned it over, it made no sense. He himself had been considering termination, yet this was not a conversation Stefan should have opened first. Ferda would simply acquire a new partner. Stefan would lose everything.
Where had this irrational decision come from? That was why Ferda did not simply say, “Very well.”
“Why?”
He asked, and Stefan answered.
“I no longer believe this is something I can handle.”
Ferda pressed further.
“And what, exactly, is the domain you can handle?”
“The work I am capable of… and the things I already possess.”
“What I require of you has not changed. Everything remains the same.”
“…”
“What has changed is your heart, I take it.”
Stefan could not reply. Ferda leaned forward.
“If I find your reasons convincing, I will dissolve the contract whenever you wish. So tell me. What happened?”
The words forced their way past Stefan’s lips. He laid out everything—the conversation at the dinner with his father, the friction with his brothers over Halim, and all that he had lost because of it. Only then could Ferda see the private circumstances he had never known.
“Merchit lost his temper with you, and you declared you would monopolize the rights to Halim?”
“…Yes.”
“So every mercenary who had been providing your escort pulled out, and everything began to fall apart?”
Anyone who understood the systems of the Empire would know such a thing was entirely possible. Where commerce flourished most, mercenaries also operated as companies. The Pascal Mercenary Company founded by Merchit Pascal was, without question, the top firm in the industry. Its own roster exceeded ten thousand, and counting the smaller companies that subcontracted under it the number climbed past thirty thousand. To have crossed Merchit Pascal meant the price was steep. The sword and shield Stefan had held had vanished in an instant.
“You filled the gap, yet it still wasn’t reliable, and incidents kept erupting.”
“Yes…”
When security is lax, systems collapse. Goods that should have been supplied to Ferda on a priority basis had been stolen. It was like a gallery with no glass in the windows.
“And so… the wagons headed for the Grand Duchy… were attacked as well.”
At last the reason for the delayed deliveries came clear.
“I learned of it two days ago. The wagons were hit and everything… Sandi, Coven…”
Stefan could not finish the sentence. He covered his face with both hands. That incident had been the decisive blow that broke his resolve.
“I can’t do this anymore. I was never the kind of man who could handle something like this. Wanting the Pascal Guild, wanting to monopolize Magic Engineering… none of it was ever mine to take.”
“…”
“So I will give it up. Lord Regent. Thank you for giving a worthless man like me the chance—”
“That monopoly.”
Ferda cut him off before he could finish.
“Was it necessary for us?”
“Th-the monopoly, my lord?”
“Yes. Was it something required to protect the interests we needed to keep?”
In the state he was in, Stefan thought hard. Had it been necessary…? If he had simply shared the pie instead of insisting on monopoly, it would still have been enough.
“Think carefully about the reason you had at the time, and then answer me.”
Stefan did as he was told, searching the memory of that day. Then he answered.
“…Yes. It was.”
“Then you fought to protect what was ours.”
“…”
“You fought for the first time, and at the end of it you collapsed in despair.”
“Yes.”
“Are you ashamed of having failed?”
Stefan bowed his head low.
“It is a disgrace.”
“And so you meant to escape this situation by dissolving the contract?”
“I was not trying to escape.”
“It is escape. You are compromising instead of facing the pain.”
“That incident also gave me a chance to look at myself.”
Stefan laughed hollowly. There was no focus in his eyes.
“No real ability, yet full of useless greed, and not even the courage to seize anything. The kind of third-rate fool who only comes to his senses after losing everything.”
Self-loathing and self-hatred. Ferda could see how many burdens pressed down on those bent shoulders. He himself had known that experience once.
“And that is why you could not reach out to me?”
“…Yes.”
Fear that only his incompetence would grow larger. Fear of exposing his shame and being despised for it. The fear had swollen and swollen until it forced him to his knees.
“Stefan.”
“Yes, Lord Regent.”
“I asked only one thing of you. Do you remember what it was?”
He did. The words had been spoken so clearly that even now they were burned into his mind.
“You said… to become the master of the Pascal Guild.”
“That was the contract we made. And what did you do for that contract? You supplied goods.”
“Yes.”
“You filled every shortage across the entire Grand Duchy and opened the roads. None of that was easy—yet you endured.”
“…”
“For the sake of becoming master of the Pascal Guild.”
Stefan did not answer. Afraid that if he spoke he would spill the emotion surging up his throat, he kept his mouth shut as if he were an idiot. Ferda continued.
“I will say it again. We made a contract.”
“…”
“You supply us with goods, and I make you master of the Pascal Guild.”
Those had been the words that once pressed down on Stefan. Yet in this moment, strangely, he felt no pressure from them.
“It means that if you fight to become master of the guild, I will gladly stand on your side.”
Instead he felt the weight that had crushed his shoulders begin to fall away.
“So I will ask you one last time.”
In a calm voice, Ferda put the final question.
“Do you truly wish to give up everything?”
Life began to stir again in Stefan’s corpse-like eyes. Everything he had come ready to abandon and set down started to come back into view. Stefan was a merchant. Who in the world loses everything and is happy about it? He had no desire to taste the happiness of non-possession. Failure was a stepping stone; leaping from it into success was what he wanted.
“Kh-hhk…”
Stefan wept. With the grief that rose up his throat he dragged out the true wish that had lived inside him since childhood.
“I want… to become the master of the Pascal Guild.”
He pressed his face to the marble floor and sobbed, no longer able to form any other words. Ferda looked down at him and spoke quietly.
“Administrator Isabella.”
Isabella, who had watched the entire scene, pushed her glasses up.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Summon every noble of the Eastern Grand Duchy to the Eastern Front Alliance. I will take the chair.”
“Understood. What reason shall I list for the summons?”
Ferda spoke without raising his voice.
“Sabotage directed against the entire Grand Duchy.”