A Knight Speaks No Falsehood (2)
"????"
What?
A dream?
Gardin was closing in on ninety-five. Felicia's shadow had hidden the fact, but he was in truth the oldest knight in the kingdom, and if one set aside the royal house of Pendragon—dragon-blooded, and living long past all common sense—few people anywhere had lasted as many years as he. To live long was, in its way, to have seen a great deal.
Even so.
Th-this… I have never seen anything like this….
For once, all he could do was hang his mouth open like a fool.
Can a man fly through the sky and charge down out of the air…?
That was how little he could believe the scene before him. A human being—no, a creature one hesitated to call human—had come flying in and dropped straight down, laying the surroundings to waste. Had he only read of it on paper, he would have raised his voice and told them to keep their jokes within reason.
Unfortunately….
KWA-GWAGWANG!
He had witnessed that prank of a sight with his own eyes, and so disbelief was no longer available to him. Gardin forced his wits back into order.
"A-an enemy has come down from the sky! S-strike that man!"
He was not even sure the order was the right one, but it was the coldest judgment the moment allowed, and the swordsmen moved as one. Yes. Sky or no sky, an enemy had intruded, and meeting him was only proper—
"—You the ones who threatened my kids?"
Pung!
The swordsman who had been drawing his blade took the blow in the face with a sound like a balloon bursting. His body spun seven times through the empty air and slammed into the ground.
Thud!
Blood poured. He had gone in face-first; it streamed from him in a sheet, and yet he could not even manage a pained groan before he seemed to black out. Not so much as a twitch.
One strike. Violence so savage it went past brutal. The men closing in faltered, cold sweat breaking over them, and a bizarre sight played out in real time: dozens overwhelmed on the spot by the spirit pouring off a single man.
And taking in that sight—
"H-he really got here ahead of us…?"
"Timid. This thing defective? Why's it so slow?"
"The flight artifact is incredibly fast. We covered in an hour a distance that takes five hours even by train."
"Then why are we slower than the instructor?"
"That is… because the instructor is the strange one."
The two boys, late to arrive, climbed down from a flight artifact shaped like a paper airplane, looked over the manor already half in ruins, and scratched the bridges of their noses. The man who had kicked off the empty air a step ahead of them—and flown, if that was the word—had already begun the rescue.
…That technique the instructor uses isn't Air Walk. No. That's just flying.
Remembering him tearing across the sky like a human missile, Derek could only manage a hollow laugh.
Pung!!
The balloon-burst crack of torn air rang out again and again, and every time it did, another swordsman went down with no answer to give. Resistance? A counterattack?
Crack!
What were those?
"Th-the sword?!"
The swordsman who had crept all the way around behind Lee Han and swung wore a smile, but the blow he had been so sure of might as well never have landed. The sword was in pieces. For an instant their minds simply refused the sight, and the swordsmen wondered if they were dreaming. They had raised a rebellion and become Half-Fiends, yes, but as swordsmen they were anything but third-rate, and they had every right to pride themselves on considerable skill. Yet cuts from men like them were not merely stopped. The blades broke. And they had even struck from behind, cowardice and all!
What in the—?!
"You think I left my back open for nothing?"
"!!?"
"Nice try."
Whoosh!
Crunch!
Lee Han's huge palm closed over the man's face and slammed him straight into the floor. From the body driven into the ground came a sound somewhere between bone and breaking glass. It was a noise to freeze the guts of everyone still being hunted, and it was no illusion of theirs that it also sounded like the Reaper's footsteps, dragging cold sweat and dread along behind it.
"You know what? The muscles in your back make a fine weapon."
—??
Every face went blank at the sudden nonsense from a man who might as well have been death itself. He simply went on saying what he had to say.
"Nothing fancy. You reshape the back muscles so they work as defense and attack at the same time. Easy enough, once you've got the knack."
—?????
The swordsmen's expressions asked, plainly, what the hell kind of bullshit that was. He had never expected them to understand him from the start. The smile he gave was a bitter one.
"A trailblazer's life is a hard one."
Thuk!
Lee Han picked up the half-shattered sword from the man he had slammed down. A blade already split—what did he mean to do with that?
The broken blade hummed—and plum blossoms bloomed from the steel.
"This sword can still fight."
"Sword Resonance…."
A natural hum had started in the steel, and the swordsmen's faces went rigid. None of them had ever heard of a Sword Resonance being drawn from a broken sword. The next moment, though, demanded a worse kind of awe. They were forced to watch petals unfurl from a blade, an experience past all common sense, and so the swordsmen—
"There's a certain elegance to seeing plum blossoms in winter, isn't there?"
—could only come apart before the blossoms rushing in to swallow them.
Shff….
"……."
Iron filings drifted from a palm like sand. The "monster" came walking in, brushing his hand clean.
"…Unbelievable."
Gardin looked up at the sky. The sky that had never once, in all his life, stood on his side.
"Heartless. Utterly heartless. Why will the Light not spare me a smile?"
He had striven all his life. He had offered up everything. In the end he had even cast aside the path of being human, so why—
"Why is a wretch like you the one standing in my way!"
The injustice of it tore a rage thick with resentment out of him. A swordsman who had swung a blade past ninety unleashed a dreadful pressure, and a killing wind off the edge was still tearing through the air when the answer came.
"The sky was never on humanity's side. Name me one thing as unfair as the world."
"…And you know the principles of heaven, do you?"
"The principles, no. How hard it is just to live, that I know. You've been around a long time, old man. You ought to know it better than I do."
"……."
"Well. If you've gone senile and forgotten, nothing to be done."
"…Mannerless wretch."
"Strange, isn't it? Why do all you adults say I've got no manners? I conduct myself perfectly well."
"……."
At the monster's shrug, Gardin let the anger go and turned a quiet gaze on him. He suspected even those infuriating words might be some tactic of war.
He is no mere beast. He knows how to use his head.
And a beast that can think is dangerous by that alone. Gardin decided to regard the one standing before him not as a man, but as a man-eater with a mind.
The moment he did—!
"—You'd be better off not moving."
He froze.
"You've already lost. So don't make it ugly. Give up."
"Wh-who lost!"
"You did. You can't even tell what state you're in."
"What are you—"
"Look at your hand."
"……."
He had been about to raise his voice and call it nonsense. Then he looked.
Brrrr!
His hand was shaking, as if palsy had taken it.
"See? You're already scared. So you've already lost."
"!?"
"Old man, it's been a long time since you fought in person, hasn't it? Your skill doesn't look bad, but the last time you took the field was probably quite a while back. So you've rusted some."
"Th-this is…"
"Even the finest blade isn't worth much if all you ever do is leave it hanging. So don't be too disappointed in yourself. You just… yeah. A pen suits you better than a sword."
"……."
It was an insult with nothing left to add. He was a man who had once been called one of the hundred great swordsmen of the kingdom, and now this fellow was telling him a pen fit him better than a blade.
Even so.
"……."
In the end, he could not draw.
"Master!"
Levi ran to Lee Han without a moment's hesitation, and Lee Han let out a short breath of a laugh.
"Good. You're in one piece."
No wound showed. They had raised a rebellion, but it seemed they still had their wits screwed in.
"Right. Even bastards who've thrown their fear away need to know that madam is someone to be afraid of."
"Might the madam you speak of be my grandmother?"
"Obviously."
"…From a grandson's position, that is a rather awkward remark to answer."
"Anyway. You hurt anywhere?"
"I am unharmed. So please bring the destruction to a reasonable stop."
"Bill the Academy. Not me."
"…I shall simply charge Gardin himself. I have no wish to watch the Dean clutch the back of his neck and collapse."
Arno glanced at Gardin, kneeling, crushed. He had always been an old man, and yet he had looked far younger than his years. Now he seemed to have aged a good decade more. Admitting defeat without even fighting had struck him hard.
"As a swordsman, he was a remarkable man."
"He was a swordsman? He reeks so badly of ink I thought he was some politician."
"…That is the sort of remark that kills a man twice, Instructor."
Even now Arno burned to take the man's head, but he was not cold enough to behead someone whose will had already broken.
"I shall have to leave him to Father and Grandmother."
"You're soft yourself."
"…If you mean to get information out of him, Instructor, would it not also be better to leave him alive?"
"Do I look like a man who cares about crap like that?"
"……."
"I only didn't kill him because it's your family's business. Look, there's your proof. Nobody's dead, are they?"
"Y-you were holding back?"
"If I hadn't, this manor of yours would've been gone a long time ago."
"……."
"I went easy. It's my student's house."
"Th-thank you?"
He said it, and still wasn't sure it was the right thing to say. If this was the result of the man measuring his hand rather than meaning it, then if he had been serious—
…The goal I've set myself is a long road, and a hard one.
The back he meant to catch was very far away. Arno's smile came out bitter.
"Sappy."
Lee Han chided the boy lightly for thinking useless thoughts, and still he was glad. The kid's eyes were alive. Unlike that swordsman gone entirely to rust, this one would get back up no matter how hopeless the ground. A boy with a future worth looking forward to.
And so—
"What kind of trash are you, laying hands on my kids when they've got their whole lives ahead of them—"
KWA-GWAGWAGWANG—!
Flame roared from Lee Han's fist.
…straight at the insolent bastard who had invited him.