Two Men Go the Distance (8)
In his previous life, one of the breeds of person Lee Han envied was the sort who set off on trips abroad without a second thought.
That leisure—to travel into a country of another people and another tongue—was enviable for no good reason he could name. For a man who struggled just to eat, who could not even dream of finding time for a journey inside his own country, overseas might as well have been another world.
In his early twenties he had envied people like that, and found them sour in the mouth besides. He had not been grown. Proof, surely, that he was still young.
Once a little age had settled on him, though, he learned it—not by going abroad, but through travel at home.
Ah. So a journey isn't simply going out to play. It's study. The kind that widens your sight and your thinking.
Something like that. And so he set a goal. When he was discharged, he would board a plane and go. He wanted experience stacked up behind him. He wanted to stand inside the culture and the weather of a new country. A spirit of adventure, perhaps, or else proof that even he had a scrap of curiosity in him. It was the moment he sat down to write a bucket list for his life.
A moment. And yet—
"If I'd known it would turn out like this, I should've mustered out early and tried crossing Europe. Tch. It's not like I could take the money with me when I died. Why did I pinch every last coin till my knuckles hurt..."
"......"
"Don't you lot think so too?"
"W-we wouldn't know, sir... Wh-what the knight is even saying..."
"Why?"
"H-huh?"
"Why don't you understand?"
"......"
"Why the hell can't you understand a human word, you bandit bastards!"
The blow landed with a meaty crack.
"Aaaagh!"
"P-please, mercy!"
"M-Mother..."
Lee Han beat the bandits down. They were the ones he had caught in the middle of plundering the villagers, and he had already ruined them one by one—an arm here, a shoulder there, a leg—until each was a cripple. From now on these thieves would have to worry about ordinary life long before they worried about thieving again.
"Little shits. I go out of my way to talk nice, and they still can't follow a person's words."
"...And who, exactly, was meant to follow them? You stare off into nothing and then suddenly demand sympathy. Who would agree with you?"
"Not my problem."
"...Lunatic."
"Ha. Look who's calling who a lunatic."
Even so, Lee Han had only made cripples of them. He had not gone so far as to cut their arms and legs clean off. That one, though—
"Well, you've turned them into minced meat."
"......"
"If I'm the madman, what does that make you? A headsman?"
"...That is discriminatory speech against a profession."
"Oh-ho?"
From another man he might have let it pass, but hearing a line like that from this one sat strangely. Keep bickering long enough, he supposed, and even a tongue got sharper.
Just then—
"Sirs, truly, thank you. How am I ever to repay this..."
The chief of the slash-and-burn village came up to offer his thanks. He looked to be in his early forties, young for the post, and he had the air of a retired mercenary. The muscle had slackened a little, but there was probably still a trick or two in him.
"As for thanks—even without us, a man of your level could have handled it alone."
"Possible, perhaps. But the village would have suffered badly, and I would have been badly hurt myself."
The chief had already seen it: more than a hundred bandits swept away in an instant by the knights' work. So he knew. These men were strong. Even in his young days as a mercenary, he had never seen a knight of that caliber. The spirit that poured off them without effort was no less than that of a great general he had once watched on a battlefield. He was grateful for their help, and at the same time he could not help wondering why men like that had come all the way to the deep skirt of a mountain.
"Then handle the rest yourselves. Work them as labor, kill them, I don't care."
"Thank you. But won't you at least sleep here before you go? Leaving like this..."
"We're in a hurry."
"The kindness is appreciated."
The two knights shook their heads, gave the lightest of farewells, and were gone like arrows. Their speed was a match for horses, and they were so fast that a gust kicked up in their wake and nothing more.
"...Heh. I feel as if the fairies have made off with them."
They had clearly sprinted into the mountain, and already their backs were gone. Even a wild beast would have struggled to climb that fast.
And yet.
"Why in the world are they climbing that mountain?"
The chief tilted his head.
The Red Mountain Range. The greatest range parting the South from the Center, called by another name the Range of Despair—a mountain that was nothing but ridges. Watching the knights climb it, the chief felt nothing but doubt. And for good reason. Go any farther and...
"It's nothing but cliffs out there... Don't tell me they mean to cross into the Central Continent?"
Impossible!
"Haha, of course not. What kind of madman would think of crossing the Red Mountain Range into the Central Continent? Ahaha!"
Even he found the notion absurd. The Red Mountain Range was a place that people bent on suicide went out of their way to avoid. Crossing it to reach the Central Continent—he had thought it himself, and still...
"A foolish thought."
"So if we just get across this one range, we can reach the Central Continent easy, right?"
"The terrain is vicious, the cliffs are many, and there are poisons, monsters, and a natural Mystery laid out like a labyrinth. Even so, if you mean to arrive within four days, this road is the shortcut."
"...Mmm. The first part does nag at me a bit. But if it's a shortcut, well."
Lots of cliffs, and poisons and monsters besides? Mm. That could happen. A labyrinth formed by nature's Mystery? Well, that was basically Vulcan.
In other words—
So it is a shortcut.
Lee Han accepted this at once.
The dawn of the day before. When he handed the mage over to Isis and said he would leave at once, this was what she had said to him. He could still see the disbelief on her face.
"Must you truly go?"
"The Empire? Do you even know how far the Central Continent lies?"
"Strictly speaking, I'm headed for the Magic Tower."
"It is one and the same. However faithfully a person walks, the distance takes a full month at the least."
"Then what if I don't walk, and run?"
"...Since when did you learn to bark with that mouth?"
"...You certainly don't mince words."
She looked thoroughly displeased. Well, who would take it well, hearing that he meant to cross into the Empire? Even so, he had no choice.
"There's a spell-slinger there, so it can't be helped. I have to go kill him. No—beat the hell out of him."
"...And is killing him so different from beating him down?"
"Anyway, I'm off. You handle the sultan, Sister. I'll trust you with it."
"And to whom do you imagine you are speaking?"
"Anyway. I'm going."
"Haa..."
She could not quite bring herself to tell him to come back safely. For a moment she drew a hand down her face, and then—
"...Return swiftly."
"I know. I only got eight days of leave anyway, so I have to be back quick. Whatever."
"Needlessly diligent boy..."
Cheered on by that encouragement—of a sort—Lee Han slipped out of the Royal Capital, and there he found the guide who had been waiting for him.
"...What are you doing here?"
"An order from Her Highness."
"Hss. Feels like a bad assignment—"
"...Ingrate of a ruffian!"
Whether Galahad truly meant to help, or whether they had learned that the Magic Tower was after the Magic Sword, he could not say. Either way, Galahad had attached a spearman to him. The two of them got along about as well as a dog and a monkey, but the man's skill, at least, Lee Han acknowledged. A knight was a knight.
"If you cannot keep up, I will leave you behind. See that you follow."
"...Some unfriendly guide you are."
There was a little snarling, and then they ran. Lee Han had stripped off every cumbersome piece of armor and kept only a sword and an axe. The spearman ran with nothing but a single spear in his grip. They spoke not a word and ran at full speed. True to what he himself had said, the spearman did not ease the pace by a hair, as if he fully meant to abandon anyone who fell behind. Through the fields, through the mountain woods, and even when they climbed the cliffs.
As if to prove he had earned the right to be insolent, the man ran the cliff face the way other men ran flat ground, and Lee Han ran the cliffs in much the same fashion.
How did one run as if the laws of physics had been set aside?
"You just run before you fall."
"Plant your weight on your toes, and it is possible."
"...What?"
"What?"
Their answers did not agree. What mattered was that a cliff could be run, if you had the knack.
And so they ran at full strength for half a day, crossing mountain and cliff, until at some moment they entered the Red Mountain Range.
To reach the Central Continent, where the Empire lay, a traveler ordinarily had to wind the long way around and cross a vast river by boat besides. Set against that, the Red Mountain Range was the only straight course to the Central Continent. But no one thought of crossing it. Still less after three hundred years ago, when an imperial host of one hundred thousand tried to pass the range and died to the last man.
In short, the two of them had walked of their own will into a range that had killed a hundred thousand, and they were making a road that existed on no map.
But.
It's a shortcut, so who cares!
They were fast. That was enough.
They ran, and they ran again.
"......"
"......"
From the moment they began to climb the Red Mountain Range, the talk between them vanished. More precisely, it had no choice but to vanish.
Krr!
Kaaa!!
Kieee!!
The monsters that denned in the Red Mountain Range came pouring out without end. Goblins and gnolls were the basic fare, and they also had to meet plant-type monsters called wood ghosts. Such things grew in plenty in the mountains, but the Red Mountain Range was littered with creatures of leaf and stem.
Crack. Thunk. Whatever came, the two of them cut it, tore it, and smashed it, and went straight on. They did not stop. They slaughtered every monster in the way. And inside the Red Mountain Range, monsters were convenient opponents. You only had to kill them.
What was harder was the other thing.
The ground growled, long and low.
"Another earthquake?"
"A gale is rising. ...The rockfall is about to begin."
A phenomenon called the mountain's wrath, or the mountain's prank, had started. The Red Mountain Range was a range in which a Mystery dwelled, as Vulcan was. Not a sacred kind, as far as Vulcan. One might think of it as slightly young. And to be young—
The ridge shuddered.
—was to be willful, and the same as being impossible to read.
Earthquakes came. Rockfalls came. Gales swept everything away. Rain poured as if it had lost its mind, until the way ahead vanished; that was almost funny. Fog spread thick, until even the path refused to show itself. A sticky, choking mist crawled in and stole their sight at last, and then the hail came down. Stones of ice larger than a grown man's fist poured out of the sky.
And even so, their feet only hammered on.
"We are going the right way, yeah?"
"If you cannot trust me, go alone."
"I'm asking a question. Why so sharp?"
"I am telling you not to break my concentration."
"Touchy, aren't you."
"!!?"
"Eyes front. Front."
They did nothing but run, for all the mountain's interference. Already they had gone two nights without sleep or rest, and still they ran as if they did not know what exhaustion was. When they were hungry they made do with dried jerky and fruit, and they drank even their water on the run. Nothing but straight ahead. Now and then a cliff appeared, or a river. The cliffs they cleared in a single leap. The rivers they crossed by swimming through. No hindrance of nature worked against that charge. An earthquake was something to overcome. A gale was something to endure. A rockfall was merely an obstacle. Fog, and rain like a waterfall, hindered them a little—but even that could not stop them.
Perhaps the two of them had become an irritation.
At some moment the mountain's heat shot upward. A maddening swelter hung in the air, and at last the flames roared up.
"...Seems this mountain doesn't like us."
"To be precise, it dislikes humans."
"Same difference."
A vast wildfire had broken out, as if the mountain meant to burn them to death. A great fire, truly out of nowhere. A sudden blaze with rather poor cause and effect, and to dare to push through it was no different from suicide.
But.
"......"
To the two of them, even this failed to count as an obstacle.
With a wrenching crack, Lee Han tore a tree out of the ground with both hands. It was an enormous trunk, something on the order of five thousand kilograms, but he had the muscle now to rip a tree like that free without strain. Once, the art had been possible only by borrowing a certain old-faced mage. Grown another step, Lee Han could do it alone.
A report like a fortress cannon split the air, and a single tree sailed into the sky as if it were a howitzer, carrying Lee Han's strength.
And then—
"...This actually works?"
"Brainless ruffian. If such a thing was possible, you ought to have done it from the start."
"No, I genuinely didn't think it would. Not me."
Lee Han said it like an excuse. And for good reason.
Wow. So I really can ride a tree I kicked and fly through the sky...
He had only been imitating something he once saw in an old comic, and he had not thought it would work. A little strength, a little knack, and the timing lined up—so it really had been possible. The moment a dream came true. The two of them glided through the sky as if they had boarded an airplane.
Then they hit the cliff with a splintering crash.
"...Mm. That wasn't much time in the air."
"......"
One minute of flight.
Even so.
Longer than the Wright brothers' first flight, isn't it?
Swept away in the river at the foot of the cliff, Lee Han was proud of that single fact.
Two and a half days passed again after that.
"Took a little over half a day longer than planned."
"...So this was possible."
"...You weren't actually sure we could make it either?"
"......"
"Hey!"
Four and a half days in all, and they had done it. They had crossed into the Central Continent.