Chapter 101: Social Death
Fortunately, Sebas changed the subject quickly.
"How did you... manage to make them so..."
He had caught himself on the verge of slipping back into formal address, and now found himself struggling for the right word to describe what he had seen in the domain people's faces. The old butler's pale grey eyes came to rest on the children still waving at Lucian from the field's edge.
"...this full of life?"
Lucian followed Sebas's gaze. The children playing there filled his eyes for a moment.
"It's straightforward. Five-tenths in taxes and they can survive. Three-tenths and they can live well. One-tenth and they can..." He paused. "...live like people."
It was a complicated question. Lucian could have given a more elegant answer — could have spoken about the theory of human rights, social contracts, the philosophical principles he'd woven into Fables and Proverbs. But he kept it simple. He was worried about driving Sebas's opinion of him too high and having the friendship curdle.
Sebas gave a nod and thought privately: Lucian really is modest. He understood clearly that what Lucian described so plainly — actually doing it, actually being willing to do it — was something almost no noble in this Kingdom could claim.
*
Lucian brought Sebas on a brief tour of the domain.
He went to check on the women recently resettled from the brothel. They had been placed in a newly developed residential quarter at the domain's edge — new houses, simple but clean.
A few women were sitting in doorways taking in the morning sun. When Lucian approached, one of the older ones stood and bowed.
Lucian stopped and exchanged a few words with her.
Sebas could sense it — the numbness that had been all through her in the dungeon had faded considerably.
Lucian didn't linger. Once he had confirmed they were being treated no differently from any other resident, he turned and moved on.
*
Last stop: the domain's paddock.
Hooves struck packed earth in dull resonance. The wooden fence rails around the paddock were worn smooth by years of hands. Several Aindra family banners snapped in the wind.
The cavalry was ready to move.
Two hundred riders assembled, four rows deep, horses standing side by side. The riders wore electroplated mithril armor, straight swords at the hip, small round shields and short spears at the saddle. The armor caught the sun and threw back a muted silver-grey gleam — the maintenance on this equipment was meticulous.
When Lucian came to stand before the formation, two hundred cavalrymen raised their right fists simultaneously and struck the breastplates over their left chests.
THUD.
One unified, deep sound, like a single enormous heart beating.
Yamete, Lucian cried internally. Silently. Uselessly.
It didn't help. In front of Lucian and Sebas, two hundred cavalrymen called out those words from another world, in perfect unison.
"Shinzou wo Sasageyo!"
Two hundred voices braiding into a single current, rolling across the open paddock. The horses startled at the sound, but the riders held their reins without moving.
Lucian stood at the platform, feeling Sebas's gaze on his back, and endured a quiet, thorough social death.
Normally it didn't feel quite this severe. But with Sebas standing there watching, the shame was like sunlight concentrated through glass, burning at the back of his neck.
"The Aindra domain forces have real spirit."
Sebas's voice came from behind him. A perfectly ordinary observation.
And yet Lucian couldn't shake the feeling that the old butler was suppressing a laugh.
He turned for a quick look. Sebas's expression was completely unreadable — not a fraction of a smile anywhere on it, not a single pixel lifted at the corner of his mouth. Which, somehow, only made Lucian more suspicious.
"..."
He forced the awkwardness away by main effort and worked to make his voice sound normal.
Sebas, for his part, didn't fully understand what he was experiencing.
He stood behind Lucian and looked at those young cavalrymen, heads raised, spines straight, and thought only that the ritual was distinctive — but that it genuinely expressed this unit's cohesion and loyalty to their lord.
If Ainz had been standing there, he would probably have felt a deep and sympathetic understanding for Lucian's situation, given that Pandora's Actor inflicts no fewer social deaths on him than this scene right here. But Sebas didn't have that particular experience to draw on.
Lucian drew a long breath and pressed everything down.
He raised his gaze and let it move across the formation.
It stopped on one face for a moment.
Touch Me stood in the ranks. The orichalcum short sword at his hip polished to a bright gleam. His spine perfectly straight. The reverence and anticipation radiating off him could barely be contained.
As though he felt Lucian's eyes on him, Touch Me straightened further still.
Lucian looked at those deep blue eyes and found he couldn't quite hold the gaze. He turned his head slightly and hid whatever was showing.
He cleared his throat. His voice carried to every corner of the paddock.
"You all know the destination. The Dragon Kingdom — our ally, a nation being devoured by the beastmen. Their people are being used as food. Their land is being trampled by war."
He paused. His gaze moved from the first row to the last.
"In past Eastern Expeditions, some of you have bled. Some have been wounded. Some comrades fell there and never came home."
Silence in the ranks. A few veterans bowed their heads. Hands tightened on reins.
"But you also saved many people. Old men, children, mothers, fathers. Those people survived under your protection and rebuilt their homes."
His voice stayed level. No soaring rhetoric. No raised cry.
But precisely because of that plain tone, every word settled heavily into every person present.
"This year, we go again. Not for some great cause. Only because there are people there waiting for us. That is all."
Lucian raised his right fist to his chest.
"Move out."
Two hundred cavalrymen brought their fists to their hearts again. No call this time. Only the unified sound of impact, one deep roll of thunder.
The army moved out. Hooves on stone paving, a continuous clean sound through the domain's streets, past the residents lining the road to see them off.
Lucian rode at the front, his gold hair moving slightly in the wind.
Sebas rode beside him, watching in silence as the mouth of the valley ahead drew closer.
The old butler's expression was steady. But in those pale grey eyes, the distant, vast horizon was reflected.
He thought of something Touch Me-sama had taught him.
"Helping the weak needs no reason."
***
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