Prisoner Rihan, Reporting (1)
Clack. Clack.
Each time a mule's hoof struck the earth, the sound rolled low along the quiet forest road. Soft as those steps were, the cart the animal drew forced its way without resistance over a track littered with gravel and roots. It had already hauled a heavy load some twelve miles without a rest and still showed no sign of tiring, and watching it go, one could see readily enough why the merchants of old had been so fond of mules.
Then the rough-looking men at the head of the column began to shout, and the mules halted with them.
"Halt. We'll rest here!"
"Stop!"
"Water the mules."
"Soldiers, finish your meal, and be quick about it."
And in that instant the forest road, silent as the grave only a moment before, overflowed with human screams. The sound was broken only because the prisoners had been fitted with muzzles meant for beasts.
"Uuugh... j-just kill me...."
"W-water...! P-please, just a little water...."
"Ghhk...."
Perhaps even that thin muttering had grated on someone.
"You bastards!!"
Whack. Whack, whack.
One of the rough men—no, one of the escorts—wore a look of pure offense as he laid into the groaners with a club. The thing was so thick that a poorly aimed blow could have left a man half-paralyzed, and no one would have found it strange. The escort did not care in the slightest. If anything, he did not hesitate to thrash them with all the strength he had.
"Die! Die, you criminal sons of bitches!!"
"Gaaaaah!"
"Aagh! S-save me...!"
The ones being beaten might have looked like pitiful people with no strength left in them. They were not. The young man crying out in pain and the frail old man beside him had both committed atrocious crimes. The youth had worked fraud more than a dozen times and ruined more than ten households. The old man was a rapist—and not of anyone near his own age. He had put his hands on a child far younger than himself.
They were not to be pitied.
A criminal has no human rights. If they have made another weep blood, then make them pour blood from the whole of their body.
It was nothing less than the absolute rule spoken by Pendragon's founding king, the great Knight King. Age, sex, station—none of it mattered. A criminal had to be made to understand that even the breath in his lungs was more than he deserved.
And yet.
"Hey, rookie. I don't care whether those ones live or die, but don't beat the ones over there."
"Why, sir? They're criminals all the same."
"...Brat. Talking back to your superior is already a fine washout's habit. Or in this case, a washout overflowing with passion?"
"I—I'm sorry...."
"Why do the thing you have to be sorry for.... Haah. Forget it. If I satisfy our passionate rookie's curiosity, the men over there are the ones bound for the Tunnels."
"Th-the Tunnels. You mean that...."
At the word, the rookie's face filled with pity. Unlike the trash for whom even breathing was a waste, most of those sent to the Tunnels were people dragged off under terms that were at least a little unjust, and he knew it.
"Don't pity them. Some of those are soldiers, or knights, who killed our men in the war. ...There'll be farmers who rose against rotten nobles, too, I suppose."
"......"
"...Do this work long enough and you meet every kind of person there is. So don't work with your feelings hanging out. You'll burn out fast."
"......Yes, sir."
A rookie was still a rookie. Even from the outside, it was plain that he had not yet learned to govern what he felt, and the man who seemed to be his superior smiled bitterly, as if he had expected nothing else. He recalled that he himself had been like that once, when he was new. Then, for a moment, he turned his eyes on the prisoners bound for the Tunnels—not because he shared the rookie's jumble of feelings.
...Hm. They said there'd be a knight in this escort, and a young master from a noble house. These the ones?
He had heard there would be a considerable figure among them. That was why he looked.
And there they were.
Whoa. Those two have bodies that could kill a man just by standing there. Living weapons, the pair of them. Are all knights like that?
Most of the prisoners wore nothing but trousers, their chests stripped bare. It was a precaution, in case any of them had thought to hide a blade. His gaze went there of its own accord, and then—
"......!!"
His breath caught hard in his throat.
In-insane.... H-how is that a human body?!
There was a man who made even those two vicious torsos look frail by comparison. Something feral in him surpassed the savage physiques of the two knights he had noticed first. Muscle—if that could even be called muscle. If a body existed that had been woven tight out of iron chain, it would look like this, and the sight of that muscle alone left him certain he could never win.
...No. If every man here rushed him at once, they still would not be able to handle him.
So monsters like that really exist....
Merely looking was enough to leave a man awed, and dizzy.
Good thing he came along quietly.
Family or acquaintances held hostage, most likely. Or some other story behind it. Otherwise a man of that size would never have let himself be led so meekly.
...Whatever it is, it's a relief. Hoo.... Hm? But didn't they say four of them were knight-class?
His post made him responsible for the escort, and he had been told that four of the forty-eight bound for the Tunnels were knights. And yet, aside from three of them—
There isn't really anyone.
Of course, one was not supposed to judge the breed called knights by the body alone. But his eye had already been raised as high as it could go, and from where he stood he saw no one who looked much like a knight. He only scratched the back of his head.
Did I hear it wrong?
...The escort did not know. There were four knights after all, and among them the silver-haired one—no. The young master who had dyed his hair a filthy gray, and who looked for all the world like a stray dog, was a knight as well.
And that knight, Aren de Pendragon, wore a vacant, soul-departed look.
......Why am I here?
He still could not accept reality. His eyes, full of resentment, turned on the man—the monster who had dragged him into this hell four days ago.
Lawless brute...!
"You'd better keep those eyes pretty."
"......"
"I might just pluck them out."
"...My eyes are looking only ahead. I fail to see why you must say something so frightening."
"......"
"...I shall keep my mouth shut as well."
Aren's petty rebellion came to an easy end. Power far away was nowhere near as frightening as a fist close at hand.
"You rampaged rather splendidly."
Sand pattered down. No—what came down in a dry rattle had once been brick, and there was a great deal of it.
"...This time, I am reflecting."
"You had better. After damaging royal property to this extent."
The disaster had been made by two men colliding. Would anyone believe that it had taken less than five minutes to smash some twenty cells to nothing?
And yet.
"What a sight you are."
The fight, it seemed, had not been even. It had been entirely one-sided. Lee Han's condition was a wreck—blood-bruises here and there, contusions everywhere. Anyone who saw him would have misunderstood and thought he had tumbled down a slope. Lee Han only grumbled that he would have been less hurt if he truly had.
"I look like this because I took a lot of hits. That old man was on a tear today. Like he'd been waiting to get his hands on me."
He called it a clash. In truth, Baltar had beaten him. No—beaten was still too pretty a word.
"You know what? These bars, these bricks—after he had me down, he grabbed my legs and swung me around at random until the place came apart. Shaking a man like a doll.... I thought I was dead."
"......"
Was the stranger thing not that his carcass had failed to die even after all of that? Isis put the thought in her face. Unfortunately, Lee Han did not see it.
"Hoo. So. You came to make me pay for this? I don't have any money. Bill that old man instead. He's the one who knocked it all down."
Lee Han was still lingering in the ruined prison. There was not even an iron bar left that might have held him, but the bed the soldiers had provided was plush—cozy, even—so he remained at his ease. He knew that stepping outside would bring him nothing but nuisances, and so he was little different from a man who had locked himself in on purpose. If she meant to demand money from someone who found even a cell cozy, she had come to the wrong address. That was what he wanted to say.
"...If I billed Sir Baltar, every knight in this country would make an enemy of me. I have no wish to invent so novel a method of suicide."
"......Was that old man on that level?"
"Heh. The only person who treats Sir Baltar as lightly as the man next door is my sworn younger brother. Do you think they call him a great hero for nothing?"
"It's because all I've ever seen is him loafing around."
"In his youth he raised an immortal feat. So long as he lives in this kingdom, every knight will look up to him. They grew up hearing what he accomplished the way other children hear fairy tales."
Isis's quiet voice had no rise and no fall. There was not even the shape of feeling in it. The tone was so reverent that the kingdom's own heir seemed to honor the man called Baltar.
And yet.
You and that old man didn't get along, did you. Pretty sure.
Lee Han knew. This was her mocking him. Under that level voice lay an irritation edged with displeasure.
...Same as ever.
He had never heard the details, but rumor drifting through the knight order had it that some twenty-five years ago she had asked Sir Baltar to support her. Back in the days when she was not yet crown princess, nor even settled as a princess of the blood—back when people still called her simply the princess.
But what sort of man was he? Even when she was twenty, he was already a man who had piled up an immortal legend, a loyal knight famous for having resolved to follow none but the late king. The ending, then, had been obvious.
...So he had said.
And Lee Han could have wagered his hair that it was true. That old man would have spoken it without a single syllable out of place.
"Hmph. Pay no mind to the bars, nor to the business of the Silver Lions. The great Sir Baltar will see to it himself, no doubt."
"......"
"Do not think me small-hearted. Whether twenty years pass or fifty, the humiliation of that day is not something I can ever forget."
"...I have no idea what you're suddenly talking about. More to the point, do you mean it? I really don't have to take responsibility?"
Lee Han had no intention whatsoever of stepping into someone else's fight. His own business mattered more. For a moment Isis looked at him as if he were detestable, and he went on being shameless. She smoothed the brow she had furrowed in annoyance.
"...If they knew shame, could they hold you responsible? It is humiliation enough that a knight order fell to a single man. Then, unable to bear it themselves, they even called for reinforcements, and for a mean-spirited cause they moved soldiers as well. In justification and in strength, they have already suffered a total defeat. If, even so, they cannot wake to their own fault and their own loss, then.... They would not be worth leaving alive."
"......You sure say savage things."
"Because I mean them."
"......"
"What use is a knight order that has neither honor nor strength?"
"...Correction. You're just a terrifying person, Sister. The whole of you."
Lee Han shook his head.
And then.
"Do you remember that there was something We wished to commission of you? No. Something I wished to commission."
"...I remember."
"Then I should like to begin now."
"Hmm..."
"Will you?"
"......"
Lee Han smiled bitterly. Her mouth called it a commission. In truth, she was making a request.
Whoa. That's a heavy one.
When had it been? There was a time the white-haired butler had given him tea, and he had drunk it. The butler had said—
"Her Highness most often refers to herself as We. But she does not do so merely to set herself above others. To borrow Sir Lee Han's own words, it is a kind of mental maintenance."
"Who? Sister?"
"Her Highness is more frail of heart than one would think. But when she has someone on her side, she grows at ease. Perhaps that is why, before Sir Lee Han, she so often says I. That, truly.... I find it good to see."
"...I find it suddenly uncomfortable."
He had thought his ears were broken. Why would a woman arrogant to the bone need any method of keeping her mind in order? She was the sort who looked as if she had come into the world declaring herself without equal.
And yet it had been the explanation of the butler—no, of the Superhuman wearing a butler's mask—and Lee Han had been forced to store the talk in the memory of his brain. Strange, how the words of a frightening person stuck.
So he knew. Words she spoke even while lowering herself were not a command. They were a request.
Butler, sir, this trust and respect is a burden on me.
Heheh. That is only to say that Sir Lee Han holds a precious meaning for Her Highness.
The butler's voice played itself back of its own accord, and Lee Han smiled bitterly at it.
...And so.
"...So long as you settle my kid's business properly, I was already of a mind to do a commission or anything else. Don't worry."
"Heh. How thoroughly devoted you are to your disciple."
"More to the point, do I have to do this commission alone?"
"Hmm. If there are capable people you can trust, it would of course go more smoothly. Is there anyone you wish to take?"
"Two. Capable, and trustworthy."
"I can roughly guess who."
"Anyway, you know too much.... Oh, right. There's one more bastard I ought to bring."
"...?"
Isis looked puzzled, as if to ask whether he had yet another acquaintance she did not know. He did not.
Rather the opposite.
"There's just someone I want to educate a little. In the head."
"......Ho. Now that—"
A bad tie, if it was a tie at all. A station Lee Han could not handle lightly.
"I cannot pretend the sound of it does not please me."
Once permission had come from one of the highest powers of the royal house, there was no one he could fail to take with him.
And the present.
"Haaah... haaah...."
"Walk a little faster. Even the mule manages better than that."
"I—I am not a mule, I tell you...!"
"You tell me?"
"......I said I am not!"
"...A consistent little bastard, I'll give him that."
Rude to the end, and yet the effort to be slightly less rude was honestly funny. An arrogance that was entertaining just to watch—was that the way to put it?
But.
From here on, there won't be anything to laugh at, will there?
The destination those mule-steps were drawing them toward had come into view, and little by little Lee Han put his smile away.
...The Blood Cross Army, they said?
Enough to drive a man mad. Honestly.
Did the original author read a martial-arts novel and then sit down to write a romance fantasy?
He was a devoted reader of martial arts fiction, and faced with an organization whose very name would not let him drop the suspicion that it was a cut-rate blood cult, he could feel nothing but dumbfounded disbelief.