Episode 38 — A Knight Does Not Forgive the Golden Sun (6)
Absurd as it was, Lee Han had gone so far as to trade fists with that spear-wielding knight, and yet the two of them had never once exchanged names.
Well. From the moment they first laid eyes on each other they had been trying to kill one another. Where, in all of that, would there have been time for introductions?
And so it was only now.
"Rak de Duron. So you were the one who came?"
A knight of Tristan, late to the end of the fighting, addressed the spearman that way, and only then did Lee Han properly learn the name of the man he had fought.
Rak. So that was the spearman's name.
It was the first time he had learned it cleanly, but neither he nor they had any time to trade names and cultivate a friendship. He had no wish to, either.
Thud.
"Sir Lee Han?"
"Where is it you're going...?"
He had already turned on his heel, and the knights of Galahad and Tristan only blinked. The enemy was down to the last man. Where could he possibly be going?
To that question he answered as if they had asked something perfectly obvious.
"Where? To finish the bastard who called in these so-called Assassins."
For a moment the two knights failed to understand him. Then, a beat too late, they went pale—because they had grasped that he meant to corner the sultan.
"Sir Lee Han, that is rather..."
"Calm yourself. We have our suspicions, yes, but no physical proof. Lay a hand on the sultan without grounds and it becomes a diplomatic incident."
Sensible advice. However mad the man seemed over a woman just now, a sultan was still a sultan. He would have been thorough in the doing of it, and had likely left not even a trace that he had hired the Assassins.
"I'm pretty sure it was him, though."
"...We think so as well. But if the sultan's side denies it to the very end, that is the end of it."
"Hmm."
"Attacking him like this would be nothing but satisfying ourselves."
So striking the sultan would amount to nothing more than venting his spleen on the strength of circumstantial suspicion.
However.
"Then I just don't leave a trace, right? Give me an hour or two and I'm confident I can get anything I want out of his mouth. So don't worry."
Lee Han had no intention whatsoever of leaving the man alone.
Suspicion, and no evidence? Don't worry. He was confident he could drag that evidence out of the bastard's own mouth. Hell, it wouldn't be a bad idea to test just how long a wretch like him could endure Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation.
And then—
Step.
"...What?"
"Don't do anything rash."
"......"
Someone was blocking him head-on.
The spearman. The man had planted himself squarely in Lee Han's path, and Lee Han half-lidded his eyes at the one barring the way, voice low with warning.
Yes. To a knight who prized principle and proper cause, what he meant to do would look like nothing but a fool throwing a tantrum.
But.
A man with a criminal's mind always causes an incident. You hit him now.
How terrifying were men with a criminal's mind. All the more when they held power as well—shameless to the bone. They would be certain they would never be punished.
Lee Han could not stand by and watch that happen.
I have no intention of waiting around until he causes the next one!
The usual romance-fantasy method of solving a crime was that miraculous logic which held that one must endure until the evidence turned up, and that a criminal might be forgiven so long as he was handsome and rich. No such romance-fantasy logic existed in Lee Han's dictionary.
If a man had sinned, if he had done wrong, then he ought to receive the punishment he deserved!
"Move, spearman."
"Arrogant scoundrel...!"
The spearman's eyes flew wide with indignation.
"You fool! You became a knight, and this is how you—!"
"I have no interest in debating chivalry with you."
Was he really going to plant himself in the way by invoking chivalry? This was exactly why stiff-necked knights were a problem. The way of the world was that chivalry could not solve every—
"—Keep the order! I go first!"
??
At that declaration out of nowhere, Lee Han blinked both eyes. He thought he must have misheard.
But as if to prove he had not, the spearman shouted again.
"Didn't you hear me! I told you to keep the order! He is the man who dared try to ruin the young lady's first party! An hour or two of pain wouldn't be enough—not if you gave him a lifetime of it!"
"...Not really my place to say, but are you even allowed to do that?"
"If he laid a hand on Galahad, then even the emperor of an empire must die!"
"...This guy's even more unhinged than I thought."
Lee Han's instinct spoke plainly. If anything, this man was worse than he was. Not the mild-mannered sort.
Perhaps...
Tch. Could we actually... get along?
From this mad spearman, Lee Han felt an inexplicable kinship.
Which thoroughly soured his mood.
"—The link with the crows has been severed."
"...Ha. So that's how it is. As I thought, one should never place any expectation on the crows. Useless wretches."
Inside the carriage on its way back, the sultan wore a thin, unpleasant sneer, as if he had known all along that one ought never to have expected anything of that flock of crows.
"Sultan..."
But the guard commander making the report knew. He knew how much heart's blood Salah had poured into this affair, and how vast a fortune—and how vast a loss—he had accepted. Even if Salah was the wealthiest of the sultans, hiring Assassins in bulk was enough to make one's finances stagger for a good long while.
Those bastards are famous for refusing to pay so much as compensation when a job fails...
Put the other way, though, the Assassins were a group whose rate of success was high enough that they could afford such brazenness.
The name Assassin is not called the Nightmare of the West for nothing.
And yet they had failed.
"You mean to say that even in its decline, this is still Pendragon..."
It would mean Pendragon had stopped them. It would also mean they had taken the Assassins without so much as a ripple.
Among the sultanates, how many could take the Assassins without a single ripple?
The first to come to mind were the warriors of Sultan Maham, said to be beyond matching by military strength alone—and even they were said to have suffered considerable losses fighting the Assassins in the past. Of course, once one accounted for the lay of the land and the fact that this was foreign soil, falling a step behind Pendragon was unavoidable.
"...No. All of that is nothing but excuse. In the end the Assassins failed, and they were simply incompetent. Is that not so, Salman?"
"......Yes."
"Then we prepare the second move."
"S-Sultan, but if we do that, we may well be found out..."
The play with the Assassins had failed, so he would ready the next. At that declaration Salman was horrified.
They might not have left a trace, but Pendragon would already suspect the sultan. Play another trick under these circumstances, and hiding it would be difficult; a dispatch would come from the royal house itself to investigate them in earnest. Even then, of course, they would not dare punish a sultan. Not so long as the sultan was the king of a nation.
But.
If they treat us as unwelcome guests, being driven out will be unavoidable.
And if they were driven out...
Can the sultan make it home alive?
A chill ran through him.
Drip...
Salman poured cold sweat as if he had been caught in a downpour. Again and again he saw the chilling articles that would claim the front pages of newspapers yet to be printed. A horrific future, no two ways about it.
And yet Salah, as if his subordinate's worry meant nothing at all, was brimming with confidence. He had not given up. He would achieve his aim without fail.
"The sail is already spread. How could one stop a ship that has put to sea?"
"Sultan..."
"Drop anchor now, and only sinking awaits. You would not want that, would you?"
"......"
Sultan Salah. He had been merely one among the previous sultan's countless children, and yet, at the end of a ferocious struggle for power, he had climbed in his twenties to that great station called sultan. There had been crises. But he had men who followed him, and luck, and an outstanding ability, and so he stood where he stood. Failure or not, he did not despair, and he was not afraid. He had the confidence that he could achieve it no matter what.
"Succeed, and a reward far more precious than the risk one took comes back."
Investment, after all, was a success however much one had lost, so long as one seized a still greater sum in the end. Win it back and pay it off. Win it back!
Mystery. If he could only lay hands on that radiant power. If only he could do that...
"I can gain more than I lost."
In the sultan's dictionary there was nothing but the advance.
...Ah. Now that I think of it, there was one more thing to gain.
Salah recalled the woman he had met today—a jewel more mysterious than Mystery itself, and beautiful besides. Galahad's adopted daughter, and a mage who possessed the most precious Mystery of all. Yet a beauty more brilliant than any renown he might name had been intoxicating, and Salah wanted that girl in his hands no matter what it took.
Irene. Irene Windler.
Taking the Mystery from that beautiful jewel would have to wait. That jewel, it seemed, was something he himself ought to embrace.
I will have everything, and I will set everything beneath my hand...!
Salah clenched his fist, tight. He was a sultan, the very incarnation of a power that seized whatever it desired. For him there was no such thing as giving—
CRACK!
"—?"
For an instant, Salah's mind went blank. His head could not keep up with what had happened in a single moment, and he called the name of the subordinate collapsing before him.
"...Salman?"
Guard commander Salman. By Pendragon's measure he was Captain Class, and his skill was such that it would not be too much to call him the finest in the sultanate, if only because he was the one who guarded the sultan himself.
And yet that Salman—
Spurt!
"Ghk—! S-Sultan, r-run! R-run...!"
"Salman!!"
The guard's arm had been severed in two, by something that had punched straight through the carriage window.
"...A peb— a pebble?"
And Salah saw it. What had split his proud commander's arm in two was neither a hidden blade nor an arrow, but a simple pebble.
Yet that pebble—
BOOOOM!!
"!!!?"
—hammered the carriage without discrimination, with a force that made a host of protective spells look like nothing. A tenfold-layered ward that not even an ogre could pierce was collapsing like a sandcastle. In real time.
"A-an ambush! Protect the sultan!"
"Protect the sul— ghhk!"
Crack!
The hundred warriors guarding the sultan were thrown into utter panic. Unable to stop even a single flying pebble, more and more of them died where they stood or were left maimed, and Salah could only tremble and press his head to the floor.
"W-what in the world is—"
Thuk!
"...?"
Drip. Drip...
Salah understood it a moment too late. The little pebble had grazed his ear after all—and, just like the guard's severed arm, his ear had been cleanly sliced away.
"Gyaaaaah!"
He thrashed in the pain.
"...This is pretty difficult."
"If it's difficult, say so. I'll do it."
"Wait. A bet is a bet. The loser sits out."
"......"
"And who told you to lose."
The knight who had seized victory in a simple round of rock-paper-scissors before they came laughed with open swagger and kicked another pebble. It amounted to a snipe carried out with a stone across a radius of about two kilometers, and yet the knight's uncanny technique made that absurd shot—no, that stone-throw—possible.
The Tristan knight watching him asked, as if the man had produced yet another wondrous art.
"And what technique is that supposed to be?"
The day before he had walked on empty air, and now he was sniping better than any archer, with pebbles.
To that question:
"It's not a technique or anything. I just played a bit of Fortress back in the day."
"For— Fort...??"
"It's a thing."
From old times the Korean people had been masters of the sniper's art, a clan of ranged carries who delighted in weapons that killed from afar—stone-fighting and archery alike. It was a past life, granted, but the years one had put in among that tribe of carries did not simply vanish.
"I will say it once more, Sir Lee Han. Everything else is fine, but please..."
"I know. I just shouldn't kill him, and I shouldn't leave a trace. So, like this."
Whoosh!
He was only tormenting the man a little.
Well.
"The man himself would probably rather be dead."
"......"
"Oh, and let's leave the Assassins' corpses we brought right here. It'll be more fun that way, don't you think?"
"...Ha."
The two knights were of one mind. If it could be helped, they should never meet this man as an enemy. He was vicious, and thorough about it.
"Hmph. Wise, for a scoundrel."
"Right?"
"Still, it's clumsy. It would be better if you carved another sultan's banner-mark into them, and not just the corpses."
"...Not bad."
And the fact that the vicious one was not alone was, for the sultan, a misfortune beyond compare.
Two knights, dead serious about tormenting one sun-bronzed thug.