Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego
Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego
A knight approached the gatekeepers who were silently watching Eldmia's back as he retreated on horseback. Unlike the other guards leaning against the wall, tense and gripping their weapons, the gatekeeper remained calm and asked him a question.
"Should I shoot him down?"
A crossbow, already loaded just in case as they'd watched Eldmia approach, was slung over his back. The knight shook his head, stopping him from reaching for it so he could fire the moment the order was given.
"No. The Count told us to mind the justification. We'll take no unnecessary action."
They'd just been told the royal observer would arrive in less than a day. The Count had judged that doing anything pointless while it was unclear whether Eldmia had timed his move to exploit that was a bad idea, and the knight respected the Count's judgment.
"Still... it's astonishing. I sense only the faintest trace of aura, yet he defeated the Ear Hunter."
The Ear Hunter was a man who, even if his fundamentals were lacking, made up for it with experience gained crossing the line between life and death time and again. He was never an easy opponent, yet Eldmia didn't seem to have a single wound.
Or he was just pretending not to.
"...Prepare yourselves. The Count believes it's highly likely the bastard will make his move the moment the observer arrives."
"Understood."
Soon the sun would begin to set.
Naturally, if he meant to break through the territory alone, he would attempt a night raid. Considering the observer's estimated arrival time, it might even be an exceedingly meticulous plan. The suspicion that the Empire was claiming to be uninvolved while covertly backing him from the shadows was almost enough to take root.
"Stand at the ready as if you're facing an army. Keep watch like you're hunting for a stray dog. Rotate the watch with maximum personnel."
The knight, who'd issued the order based on impeccably rational judgment, didn't stop at words—he climbed the wall himself and began watching Eldmia with keen attention. Having come out to the outer fortress with the intent to block him immediately if the attack started and the situation looked grim, he had no intention of neglecting his duty.
As far as maintaining the unit's discipline went, it wasn't a bad move. With a knight who had reached the level of aura expert taking the lead and standing guard himself, no one had the nerve to slack off.
Not long after, the observer arrived with impeccable timing, escorted by royal troops, and after a brief conversation with Eldmia, who was preparing to bivouac outside, the observer toured the entire territory and entered the inner fortress to speak with the Count. Even then, the knight never once took his eyes off Eldmia, worried about a sudden move.
As time passed, the royal troops emerged from the inner fortress and set up an encampment at a spot with a view of both Eldmia and the territory. The arrangement was that they would confirm the duel from outside, and the observer would confirm it from within the inner fortress.
It didn't matter, since the bastard would never reach the inner fortress anyway. The knight diligently held his post long after the sun fell and the night deepened.
An army couldn't move unseen, but a single enemy was a different story. A skilled fighter who'd defeated an aura expert like the Ear Hunter without a scratch—if he slipped in under cover of darkness, chaos would surely multiply and unnecessary casualties would follow. So the knight had obtained the lord's permission and brought troops up from the rear to reinforce the watch.
Needless to say, the soldiers following those orders maintained the highest state of alert as well. They didn't know who Eldmia was, but if an aura-wielding knight was this on edge, the man was clearly no ordinary figure.
Amid that tension, the first uneasy current began to ripple through the soldiers of Mekelin territory sometime around dawn the next day.
'He's... not launching a night raid?'
Was his objective simply to bottle up the territory's movements like this? Or was there a hidden meaning—an attempt to goad the territory's forces into sortieing against a single man and humiliate them?
The knight's eyes, faintly bloodshot from light fatigue, caught the infuriating sight of Eldmia leisurely waking up, preparing and eating his morning meal as his mind churned. The captured Ozweol and the elves looked far more uneasy than Eldmia himself, the very man who'd demanded the duel. Watching him cook and eat with such gusto was enough to make you question whether this really was the bastard who'd picked a fight in the city.
Whether it was unfortunate or fortunate, that uncomfortable feeling didn't last long. Finishing his meal and limbering up lightly, Eldmia approached the territory as if he were merely out for a stroll.
Voices called out from all over, stopping soldiers who'd already begun to panic and ready bows and crossbows. The squad leaders hurried into motion, understanding that if word spread they'd started a fight against a single man first, they wouldn't even be a laughingstock—and the knight let out a brief sigh of relief.
Very brief.
"Ah, ah, ah! Ahem. Excuse me. My throat was a bit tight, it being morning."
Eldmia's movements were oddly crisp as he took his stance and cleared his throat. Dumbfounded stares rained down on him, but he paid them no mind, drew a deep breath, and bellowed:
"I, Eldmia Ega, son of Radan Ega and Evisher Ruina, having raised my voice to correct the misconduct of the city's gatekeepers and having received an assassination threat for that reason alone; and having thereby had my own honor and faith insulted by Count Pastalia van Mekelin, do hereby challenge him to a duel! With the observer, authorized by Kaldar XVI, the rightful ruler of Kaldar, and before the eyes of the gods! I declare in this place that I shall engage in a fair and honorable contest and reclaim my tarnished honor!"
"...What the hell is he doing right now?"
"...A declaration of war?"
Bewildered reactions spread among those watching, but the knight couldn't even muster the presence of mind to quell the confusion. It had taken him a long time just to grasp what the man was even doing.
Whether his doubts grew or not, Eldmia's declaration continued.
"Those who would stand against me in defense of Count Pastalia van Mekelin's honor! Raise your swords! And accept death as the price of your conviction! However, those who have no such intention! Lay down your weapons! This is to prevent needless and innocent casualties in the course of this just duel!"
The words a soldier had muttered with a hollow laugh turned out to be the truth. It was a declaration of war. While still gaping in disbelief, Eldmia stuck his hand in his mouth and whistled as loudly as he'd shouted.
-Fweeeet! Fweeeeeet!
What the hell was that now...?
As the oddly familiar tune replayed in his head, the knight panicked when he saw Eldmia drop into a running stance and shouted urgently.
"T-the trumpet! That was his substitute for the war trumpet! Battle stations! Battle stations!"
Normally, he would've scoffed at a single man's lunacy, but wasn't it said that even madness looked like substance when backed by excessive confidence?
The knight's urgent order layered over this hard-to-believe situation, and the soldiers, stiffening with tension, moved quickly without a single one taking it lightly. The problem was that Eldmia's sprint, with that massive axe strapped to his back, was faster than the soldiers' movements.
Arrows sliced through empty air and thudded into the ground. The knight, realizing that the barely-perceptible aura earlier felt like a lie in the face of these movements, gritted his teeth and shouted.
"Goddammit! Forget the bows! Crossbowmen! Fire! Pikemen, guard the gate!"
A sturdy iron gate? In the West, there was already a legend—no, not quite a legend—named Yekaterina the Siege Ram. Everyone guarding the outer wall remembered the event that had taught the whole West what happened when an individual's martial strength was backed by weaponry, so no one harbored the vain hope that Eldmia was just charging in on a whim because he couldn't breach the main gate.
His speed as he charged toward the gate had already far surpassed the normal range. Even a vague dread hung in the air—that the bastard might just ram the gate with his own body and tear it down. A few even harbored the hope that he'd be hit by a crossbow bolt and collapse as he ran, but regrettably, that wish went ungranted.
In the end, just before Eldmia reached the gate without a scratch, every soldier except the crossbowmen ran like their feet were on fire down the stairs, praying desperately that the iron gate would hold. It was the result of firm conviction: that anyone running with that kind of arrogant confidence definitely had something up his sleeve.
But Eldmia craftily betrayed that conviction. The crossbowmen who'd been poised to shoot him while he clung to the gate shrieked in horror.
"Wha—?! Th-that bastard's running up the wall!!"
"Sir Knight!! Sir Knight!!"
The desperate shouts made him doubt his own ears, but the knight was able to turn around only because it was in his nature not to rest until he'd seen something with his own eyes. Running up the wall? What the hell kind of nonsense was that? Was there some kind of magic that crumbled stone walls at a touch?
"That bastard's running up here, aaagh!"
With more than one or two yelling, it didn't look like they were seeing things differently, so why couldn't he grasp the situation? Frustrated, the knight cloaked himself in aura and accelerated, and only after sticking his head out over the wall did he understand their cries.
"What in the..."
Eldmia really was scaling the wall with one hand braced against it.
As if he were running across flat ground, without the slightest deceleration, like he was climbing stairs.
'Stairs?'
The knight's aura-enhanced eyes caught something that Eldmia was stepping on. The moment two nail-like objects, impossibly thin compared to his large frame, embedded themselves in the wall, Eldmia used them as steps and ran. Gritting his teeth at the unidentified tools—pulled out and driven in as fast as he was running—the knight snatched a pike from the soldier next to him.
"Inform the inner fortress! The enemy is at least an aura expert! A magic-tool user!"
With a ringing shout, the knight hurled the pike with all his strength at Eldmia, who had already scaled more than half the wall.
He didn't know what kind of sorcery was at work, but the footholds could barely support a single foot. The unstable posture, with his upper body practically plastered to the wall, made it obvious there was no way to increase the support beyond that.
In that case, even just knocking him off to buy time would do. Toward the spear thrown with that sentiment, an object that looked a bit thicker than the nails Eldmia was stepping on shot out from somewhere and suddenly flew in.
It was too big to be called a nail. It was large, thick, and intricate. It was, without exaggeration, a great needle.
"Now what the hell is that?!"
The moment the tip of the unidentified great needle and the spearpoint met, the spearhead shattered and the shaft exploded, scattering splinters. The knight realized the great needle—which had shot upward so fast that the flying debris felt slow—was now flying straight at the center of his forehead. He twisted his whole body and hurled himself back behind the wall.
-Swooosh!
The twisted great needle, missing him by a paper-thin margin, carried the same force as the pike the knight had swung. Relieved at having dodged the strike, the knight was about to throw another spear at Eldmia when he heard something punch through the wall and embed itself near his ear.
Having seen it himself, he understood exactly what that meant, and his face contorted.
"Goddammit."
With a rapidly and steadily growing sound, Eldmia vaulted over the wall, bracing against it with his hand.
He moved as lightly as if stepping over a low fence. While the soldiers, their senses utterly overwhelmed, failed to react properly, Eldmia looked straight at the knight and grinned.
"Nice reflexes."
-Fweeeet!
A short whistle rang from his lips as he swung the double-handed axe off his back like a toy and adjusted his grip. At that, the twisted great needle—which they'd thought had flown endlessly into the sky—and the nine needles he'd clearly used to scale the wall flew in behind him. Even just floating in the air with their tips aimed at him, it felt like facing ten levelled spears. The knight drew his sword.
Those who survived would later say this:
That was how the nightmare of Mekelin began.