Episode 14 – Berserk? (3)
The students were bewildered.
And why wouldn't they be? What was there even to say?
"A fine fighting spirit hangs about you. I do hope for a battle so splendid that even the fairies would be hard-pressed not to marvel."
The princess—the noble crown princess, shining at the very top of the line of succession—was encouraging them. Keeping a cool head would have been the stranger reaction.
…Is this a dream?
"Yet it will not do to be hurt merely because you wish for a splendid fight. Mind your bodies. Every one of you is a talent who will one day profit the realm."
Ah…
The bewilderment did not last. Those who had been looking up at her flushed, one after another, as if by common consent, and bowed their heads. It was instinct.
So someone like her can actually exist.
Beautiful—no. Even the word beautiful felt somehow impious, aimed at her. It was a beauty that transcended the mortal world, as if an angel had descended. A nobility that must never be soiled lived in that face. For back-alley brats, even meeting her eyes was irreverence. The students did not dare lift their heads. They lowered their gazes without hesitation, and they blushed all the same.
And they found a purpose.
Ah! Today we win, no matter what, and lay the glory at her feet!
They swore it in their hearts, and their chests burned. Warrior or mage, the resolve rose in them just the same, and both camps added one more reason they absolutely had to win today. Not only the pride of mage and warrior—they steeled themselves for a struggle to earn the glory of an audience with an angel. With the princess.
The men's eyes blazed.
"For fuck's sake. One jab in the ribs and they're hollering and flat on their asses."
Off to the side, the instructor who had watched the whole scene clicked his tongue.
Since the old days, in a martial world worthy of the name—and all the more in the Royal Capital—what three things must one watch for above all else? Old men, children, and beautiful women. The sorts of things that lure a man into letting his guard down. And of the three, nothing is more ruinously dangerous than a beauty.
Especially—
Get bewitched by a fox with nine tails, and there isn't a damn answer for it.
His gaze slid up to the high seat, the one set apart like a VIP box, where the princess sat in lofty ease and looked down at him. It had been a while since he'd seen her, and she still shed the same skin-prickling omen, thick in the air. A wild animal's instinct, maybe. Get tangled up with her, and he could feel exactly how that ended.
Ugh…
Lee Han let out a pained sound and shuddered. The princess, meeting his eyes, thought the opposite.
Impudent wretch. Had he been at my side, I would have had him severely punished.
Tak. Isis toyed with the fan in her hand, and her brow creased. Honestly. What an insolent friend.
The Colosseum where the War Game was underway was a battlefield in miniature. A vast field, as if two football pitches had been laid end to end. Landscaped forest and rock filled it to the brim. The artificial wilderness called to mind a terrarium. They called it a noble amusement, but the scale of the thing made plain just how seriously those nobles took their play. The psychology of people with too much money was, as ever, beyond him.
One thing, though, was certain. The matches fought inside this enormous terrarium were not charming to nobles alone. They drew the common people as well.
The Colosseum was open not only to the students but to the citizens, and from the stands they raised their voices as loud as they could go, pouring their cheers upward.
Fervent, truly. Well, in a medieval age starved for entertainment, a match like this was precious stimulation. In popularity it would not have lost to American football.
And of all days—
"…Mm."
"A-am I shaking?"
"Yeah. Shaking like hell. …Me too."
The students were dizzy. Several thousand people, easily, had their eyes on them. Interest, expectation, excitement—a heat of every feeling crashed over them until shoulders and necks alike went heavy. That they could bear the weight at all was, ironically, thanks to the harsh and unreasonable world they had endured on Vulcan.
"Wow. That hell actually helps at a time like this."
"Right?"
"Haha…"
Even so, the scale of a first battlefield was far too large. The princess's procession was to blame, no doubt. A scion of the king. The great lady they would one day have to serve with loyalty, if they became knights. And because she was here—the foremost beauty in the kingdom, the woman who had made not only the nobles but the common people themselves look up to her—the crowd roared all the hotter and fixed its attention on them. They meant to pick apart, piece by piece, what value these students could possibly have, that the next sovereign had come out in person to see them. The honor of her procession was real for the students too. It was also true that the tension only climbed because of it.
And in the middle of all that—
"This is no time to be standing around, senior brothers. We have to settle on tactics."
"……"
While every one of the men was shaking, a single upright girl kept a steady heart.
"Hm? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"…Lady Fault, do you truly mean to take part? You could still go up now."
"Please speak comfortably, senior brother. And as I said yesterday, I have no mind to give up."
"Mm…"
Nobles were still difficult for them. However frail a woman looked, they could not help being uncomfortable around one. It was only because this was Levi Fault—because a month of sharing hardship had left them something like comrades—that they could offer an opinion at all. In that same spirit, they still felt a small unease that she had entered the War Game. Before she was a noble, she was a girl far smaller than they were. If she were hurt, they knew the guilt would find them.
But the girl's eyes were steady.
"Senior brothers, I may be weak, but I learned everything there was to learn. So don't worry. I—I did not step onto this ground with some ordinary resolve."
"Mm."
Yes. She was right. A month alongside Levi Fault. The girl they had come to know in that time was a strong person. Not in arms—in spirit. Say it plainly: they might be stronger than Levi Fault for now, but the days ahead were another matter. The steadfastness of her spirit was something even young lord Roen had admired.
"We win. So I can prove what I am worth—and so you senior brothers can prove what you are worth."
"…Yeah."
Now and then, men turn exceedingly simple. A single touch from a beauty and they will offer up their lives; at other times, someone else's encouragement is enough to set them burning. And here was a girl who, noble though she was, politely called them senior brother and cheered them on. Well, then.
"—She's got a tail or two on her as well."
Not on the level of that lady. Not nine. More like two. Didn't she know exactly how to set a man's blood boiling? He smiled, satisfied with the growth of a girl he could no longer bring himself to call a chick.
Fortunately, the king himself did not attend. It was a mercy past thanking heaven. He would have given ten years of his life for it. Only a guess, but the odds were high that Isis had had a hand in it. Galahad and Lionel were already on the move. If the king moved as well, the thing would swell past anyone's grip.
If the king moves, the army moves.
Forces on the scale of a division would shift as one, and the great nobles would have to move too. How could they sit still when the king himself took to the field? And if it came to that, this school festival—the War Game—would no longer belong to the students. It would become an arena of power. That would stray wildly from the very reason the Academy existed, bound as it was to hold the neutral ground. So Isis attending lightly, merely as the king's proxy, was the furthest line the Academy could accept.
"Good thing I don't see the duke or the grand duke either."
"I-Instructor. Speaking of them so freely is a bit…"
"I'm not their vassal, am I? And those gentlemen are traveling incognito. They can't just pop out because I said their names. If you're in hiding, act like it. Watch quietly and go home."
"…I do wonder, sometimes, whether you don't have more than one life."
"Jealous?"
"Not in the slightest."
"Heh."
The duke and the grand duke. Neither Lee Han, nor the students, nor the faculty knew where the two of them were now. More precisely, only a tiny few even knew they had come at all. The princess alone had visited with an official announcement. The two lords had shown nothing of themselves. Honestly, at this rate one might as well say they had never come. Had Layla's information been wrong?
No. These people really did come.
But Lee Han knew the information Layla Winter had brought was accurate. Had he not heard it from her, he would have let it pass with a shrug. Knowing, he could see it. No—he could feel it.
Vicious.
From the ordinary stands, between the students and the ordinary gawkers, came a presence that did not belong. They had hidden it, yes. Not well enough to slip past Lee Han's senses. The moment he felt that pressure, instinct told him the rest.
Not one of them is beneath me.
Everyone who had entered the range of his senses carried a power that was enormous. Two of them in particular. They stood far apart, and both grated on his nerves more than the rest. One of them might as well have been announcing, outright, that he was right here. Staring a hole through the back of Lee Han's head, like an awl driven in. Quite the stare.
This bastard?
Ha! He knew who it was. That one. The arrogant bastard he'd traded indiscriminate punches with the day before. The duke's knight. The man was provoking him.
Crack.
He wanted to go find him this instant and settle the win and loss they hadn't finished that day. The students were not the only ones who had grown over the past month. He had taught them, and he had driven his own body through something harsher still. He was confident he would not lose on technique the way he had then. He wanted to test it now.
"…Hah."
He forced the boiling blood down. Right. Today, he had to endure. He was not the lead today. Today was for seeing how far the sprouts he had raised—the bonsai—had grown. So he endured. Even if some arrogant fool flaunted his presence and provoked him.
Next time. We'll see about you then.
It would not end the way it had today. Lee Han put the next meeting off for later and turned his eyes to the disciples he had raised.
……And yet Lee Han ought to have known. Just as he sensed others and watched them—
"Hoh. There's an interesting one here, elder brother."
—someone else could be observing him. A black-haired man had taken an interest.
"What do you mean."
"Just what I said. That one there is the real article. Fight him, and I couldn't say who'd win."
"…You rate him that highly?"
"Yes. And not only him. That one over there—he's no small matter either. The ducal house has raised a monster."
"……"
"Tsk. I thought there was no one worth facing besides those ‘three monsters.’ Seems I'll have to reflect on that."
"…Is that so. I had thought it wholly rotten, and yet this much strength remained."
The black-haired men had not come all the way to this distant Royal Capital to watch a farce that wasn't even funny. Nor had they come on some shallow notion of keeping the royal house in check. The reason they had come this far was something else.
"Roen. Was this the sort of thing you wished to see…"
They had come to the Royal Capital only to look upon an impudent bloodline that had run away from home. A little talent show like this held no great interest for them. Set beside life in the North, the struggle here was nothing but showing off. And yet, in a place like this, there were two men against whom even the North's Champion could not dare guarantee a victory. And the young warriors raised by one of them stood upon the stage.
Which meant—
"…We may be able to see it after all."
"See what?"
"That child. The only one of my blood with any right to be called a lion. What reason my boy had for coming all the way to the center."
"Hoh."
"That, we may be about to see."
"Now that does sound amusing. Heh."
And so, without ever knowing they had drawn a keen and expectant interest, they heard the bell roll out. The bell that announced the start of the War Game, bearer of the hopes of countless people.