EP. 31 — Knights Call Themselves the Defeated (2)
"I'll go after him."
Jord asked permission without once taking his eyes off the receding shadow, and Lee Han answered with a question of his own.
"Can you catch him?"
"At this distance, easily."
"Confidence looks good on you. Hmm... Forget it. Let him go."
"B-but—!"
Jord didn't know the particulars, yet it wasn't hard to guess that the hulking man was the one who had wounded Lee Han so badly and thrown the mission into chaos. Letting a man like that simply walk away felt entirely wrong, and he made his displeasure plain.
"Drop it. He's not someone you can handle."
"Senior?"
Jake caught his junior by the shoulder and held him back. It wasn't that he was brushing Jord aside. It was simply—
"...Exhausted or not, catching the Black Lion of the North would be too much."
Jord's eyes flew wide. The Black Lion of the North. Giant-slayer, and famous besides as the strongest champion in the North...!
"The vice-captain of the Black Iron Lions..."
"Nine times out of ten, that's him. He's bigger than he used to be, so I didn't place him at a glance, but it's him. Growth plates still not closed, just like the rumors?"
"...Is he really a pure human?"
"They say he's pure-blooded, at least."
"I... don't think he is."
He had never imagined he would see the vice-captain of the Black Iron Lions—a man he knew only from rumor—out in a backwater like this. The shock wiped even his complaint away, and Jord could only stare, blank.
While the young junior failed to hide his astonishment and tracked that retreating back, Jake turned his eyes to his friend, sprawled on the ground and collapsed from exhaustion.
"...You all right?"
"Do I look all right?"
"No."
"Then why ask."
"To mess with you."
"...Bastard."
It might have been the first time. The first time he had seen the man called Lee Han this worn down, this fallen. And as Jake figured it, the reason the bastard had ended up like this was probably—
"No chance some rabble of fanatics did this to you. And there's no world where a monster leaves you looking like that. Wiping both of them out would be more your style."
"...You know me too damn well."
"Yeah. Didn't mean to, but I do. And I know this, too. Scour the kingdom—no, the whole continent—and you still wouldn't find fifty people who could leave you like that. If one of those fifty is Lionel's Black Lion, then sure, he could wreck you into this mess. That's why I'm asking. Did you, by any chance..."
"We fought. It just happened."
"...Of course."
He'd brought it on himself. Lee Han stated the fact outright, without a shred of shame, before Jake had even finished—as if he had never meant to hide it. Still.
"What do you think a mission even is? You delinquent knight."
"...Mm. Sorry."
At his friend's sincere scolding he let out an embarrassed grunt and offered an honest apology. Even he had to admit it had been a thoughtless thing to do. Unexpectedly, Lee Han's conscience was still alive.
Jake scolded him, and still he didn't ask why they had fought. He didn't need to.
They'd have fought over nothing much.
This one, and the Northern Great Warrior as well—both of them had temperaments that ran past ordinary. A trivial excuse would have been pretext enough for a match. So Jake kept his face empty of any great feeling. That didn't mean he lacked interest.
Who won?
As far as he knew, setting Aura Users aside, these were the strongest men in the kingdom. They had collided. They had fought a duel. Hear news like that and feel no curiosity about the result, and you could hardly call yourself a knight. Even so, Jake held his tongue and could not bring himself to ask. For good reason.
Ask now, and I'll get hit, won't I?
One look at that deeply displeased face was enough to tell him a question was not the wise choice. For the moment, he pressed his curiosity down.
The day will come when I hear it.
He hoped that someday he would have the chance to satisfy it.
Wind tore past her. She ran as if she meant to spend every last scrap of her strength. Sweat streamed down her body, yet she held her speed, swallowing dozens of meters in a single second, and across the snowfield she looked like a snow leopard at unbound play.
She carried Maximus on her back, a man so huge he weighed as much as a bull. If she could not lift even that with ease, how could she claim a place among the Black Iron Lions, guardians of the North and its strongest company of warriors? To a warrior of the North, sex was no excuse. Skill was all that mattered.
"Fortunately, no one seems to be following."
Ririna Hartmoon was a tall woman, her skin as striking as the snowfield's unbroken white. She glanced warily behind her and eased when she found no pursuit. If the Silver Lion knights had come after her, it would have been a headache.
Even setting aside the knight who went down, the other two were no ordinary men.
Even by the North's measure, they were not opponents to take lightly. Inwardly, Ririna was impressed.
I heard the White Cats were nothing but fools. So a few of them are actually worth something.
Perhaps this was the kingdom's hidden strength. Soon enough, though, her interest left the cats behind. A sidelong glance—maybe because she had a little room to breathe at last. Ririna looked at the vice-captain hanging limp as boiled spinach.
Maximus Lionel. Youngest brother of the Grand Duke of Lionel, though people called him the Northern Great Warrior far more often than they called him the grand duke's little brother. Inborn talent, unyielding effort, and a hunger to improve that never ended—on that foundation of struggle, he was the knight who had brought every warrior of the North to their knees. Ririna herself had once charged him out of sheer love of a fight, and that day she had learned in her bones that a giant could wear a human shape.
Maximus was that strong. She could not imagine him losing to any human but His Grace the Grand Duke, for she had felt in her own body the stamina that knew no end, and the strength that seemed fit to overturn a mountain. And yet, now—
This is the first time I've seen him this exhausted.
Even long ago, when he had fought a frost giant alone, he hadn't taken a single wound. So it was only natural that curiosity gathered in Ririna's eyes—
"Ririna. What is it you want to know?"
She gave no answer.
"If something's gnawing at you, I'll ease it."
"...How did you end up like that? You, the North's champion."
When the opening came, she asked at once, and bluntly—the boldness and the directness of a swordswoman of the North. At the question, Maximus, still slung over her shoulder like a sack of cargo, smiled with his eyes, thoroughly satisfied.
"There was a fine duel. Truly stirring. Hot enough to fill the chest."
Ririna's eyes went round. She had never—no, none of them had ever—seen their vice-captain wear a look so satisfied. Then he went on.
"Ririna, the continent is wide! Haha!"
"...A humble answer. It doesn't sound like you."
"Does it? It may well be."
Maximus did not deny her. She was right: he was an arrogant man far more than a humble one. But this was different.
Ririna went still.
"What is it? Is it so hard to believe I lost?"
"...D-did you really lose?"
There was no word that fit her vice-captain less. No word that fit Maximus less. Defeat. She could not associate him with losing a fight. He had always seemed the sort who would remain the winner of every duel. But Maximus—
"Have you forgotten, Ririna? From the day I was born until now, I have never once spoken a lie."
She had no answer for that.
"It is the same now. And I am neither ashamed of my defeat nor a stranger to it. In the North, I have always been the defeated."
He had always lost to his elder brother's mystery—no, to the Grand Duke's mystery—and he had always lost to the blizzards that blew out of the North. Eternal Snow, the North's other mystery, gave off no cold he could feel, and yet by its grandeur and its crushing presence it had always laid an overwhelming sense of defeat upon him. So defeat was familiar.
"Why is losing to the Black King and to Nature a defeat? Can a human even win against those?"
Ririna Hartmoon was past disbelief. The things he had named—Lionel's Black King, land-god and master of the North, a fragment of the Lion King; and Eternal Snow of the snowfields, frozen for more than ten thousand years, a mystery called the remains of the Snow Fairy. None of them were things a mere human could stand against. Who would think to fight nature—no, a calamity—and then call himself the defeated for having lost?
"A goal ought to be set large. That's the way of it."
"...You're simply not in your right mind."
"Hm. That may be."
Maximus nodded readily and agreed. Everyone had their own measure, after all. And in that sense—
"By my measure, at least, I was defeated this time."
"...Even after you broke that knight's sword?"
"Heh heh. So you saw everything worth seeing."
"I only saw that knight fling the hilt away in a temper."
It was a sight she knew well from the North. Weapon-breaking was Maximus's specialty, and no few warriors had lost a beloved blade to it. But—
"Ririna. Look at my neck."
"What?"
"Now."
Ririna tilted her head, wondering why he would say such a thing so suddenly, then obediently looked at his neck. And then—
"Hhk—!"
The cry tore out of her. Little was enough to startle her, but this was past shock and into trembling. Before she knew it she had stopped running, an earthquake shaking in her pupils.
A thin red line.
He was clamping the wound in his throat shut with force.
"This thing they call internal energy—I'm glad I learned it."
Otherwise a fountain of blood would have killed him long since. Well.
"Live long enough as a knight and your throat gets cut now and then. Not a bad experience! Ahaha!"
"D-don't laugh! I said don't laugh, you idiot of a man! You're bleeding!! Why didn't you say you were hurt!?"
"Ahaha!!"
Maximus only laughed, as if it were nothing at all, while Ririna's face did nothing but pale. She had to treat this lunatic, and she had to do it fast.
"You damned man!!"
Ririna Hartmoon lost her temper at her vice-captain—who was, at the same time, her husband. One slip more, and she would have been a widow.