Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego
Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego
When the horn suddenly sounded from the inner fortress, the knight who had identified himself as Pantana and the soldiers behind him turned their gazes toward the inner fortress, startled expressions on their faces.
Normally I would have taken the opportunity to cut off their heads, but their expressions were so utterly devastated that I unconsciously stopped moving. A stranger watching might have thought the Count had died suddenly of old age.
"Why?!"
I couldn't guess the intent behind Pantana's expression, which contained the anguish of a man who had lost his country and then his parents too, but I understood what it meant when the bastard's sword, which had been holding its center, lowered.
Retreat or halt the attack. It couldn't stop the ones still charging from far off, but those in front of me had definitely laid down their weapons.
"All forces halt attack! His Lordship is coming out personally!"
The voice and its contents naturally drew attention. I turned my head toward the inner fortress and a young man who looked every bit the noble, along with an old knight, entered my field of vision.
The nobleman had nothing particularly eye-catching about him, but the old knight was different. His massive frame, which wouldn't have looked out of place even next to Radnelbandes, clad in heavy armor, created an overwhelming pressure. Judging by his wrinkled face and white hair, he seemed to have quite a few years on him, but looking only at his body and posture, he appeared more robust than the nobleman beside him.
Were all the old-timers who'd lived by the sword in this world like that? Every single one of them was mountain-sized—I almost wondered if there was some secret to it.
I was studying the face of the young man who seemed to be the lord, thinking that if things had continued, I would have crossed swords with that old man at the end, when the drawbridge slowly began to descend.
Huh? The lord's still up there and they're opening the drawbridge?
I watched, prepared to tell them to shove it if they told me to come in, when a middle-aged noble appeared on the other side of the drawbridge, accompanied by a few soldiers and the royal observer I'd briefly encountered earlier.
The moment I saw him, I knew. The young whelp up there wasn't the lord—that man was.
It wasn't just the circumstances. The atmosphere he exuded was different. Separate from the emotions he displayed outwardly, his eyes alone moved quickly, habitually, scanning and assessing what kind of person his opponent was.
It was like the passive skill of old fox nobles like Duke Lesrom, but this man differed in that he felt no compunction whatsoever about directing that kind of gaze at others. It was the bearing of someone who had spent most of his life lording over others, regardless of his actual abilities.
A man not born to stand above others who lived throwing around that kind of gaze would have been killed in short order.
"C-Count! We can still fight!"
Despite having been fighting me furiously just moments before, Pantana turned his body toward Count Mekelin like a man absolutely certain he would never be stabbed in the back. But until the very moment the drawbridge fully descended, Count Mekelin said nothing. He simply walked across the lowered and secured bridge.
I realized a little belatedly that this was to avoid committing the 'undignified act' of raising his voice without a spokesperson present, and I felt like I understood what this man was thinking.
"Further fighting will only spill the blood of the innocent. I will face him myself."
"You mustn't!"
The confrontation between Pantana, shouting even as he removed his helmet, and Count Mekelin was a truly dramatic scene of insubordination, but setting aside their circumstances, the thousand and one Eldmias in my head had gathered for the first time in a long while to hold a grand conference.
The bastard's objective. Minimizing damage. Dumping the liability. Profit and loss. All kinds of fragmentary words flashed through my mind. At the same time, the outline of why the strongest-looking old man remained above, and who the noble beside him was, began to emerge.
And I grew utterly disgusted with this sociopath who possessed such insane judgment that he could make a cold-blooded decision even when things had reached this point.
I'd seen my fair share of people in this life who shouted 'For the house!' but this was the first time I'd seen a bastard who wasn't even a Pulling genuinely stick his neck out for his house. On top of that, he was trying to maintain his composure and dignity in the midst of it, so the bastard was a real noble worth calling one.
The archetypal noble of this world, that is—the kind who doesn't distinguish between illegal and legal in pursuing the interests of his house and territory, waging battles of intrigue without end.
"I will not entertain objections. Everyone stand down."
Count Mekelin's voice flowed with conviction, his hardened face with resolve, and the soldiers faltered. As Pantana, who had removed his helmet during their exchange, clenched his teeth so hard his angular face grew even more angular, the outer fortress guards who had been running over in a breathless rush began swarming around us.
The Count saw them and, without a second thought, simply repeated the same order. If they had been a rabble, they might have thought they had him surrounded, changed their minds, and gotten themselves killed right there. He had clearly already anticipated the outcome. Even if they caught and killed me, the damage his house would have to shoulder afterward would be immense.
Impressive in many ways, but.
As to whether everyone present could respect that rational judgment—well, that was another matter.
"...No. I cannot follow that order."
Unfortunately, unlike him, the noble, most of them were people with little or no education.
Take Pantana over there, glaring with wide eyes in defiance—he was a knight, and he was flat-out ignoring the Count's words. Count Mekelin's hardened face developed a slight crack, as if he hadn't expected this reaction.
"Are you saying you would abandon your duty as a vassal now, Sir Pantana?"
"On the contrary, I am saying I will fulfill my duty, my lord. This duel was directed at the 'territory' of Mekelin. Does that not speak of all the people of the Mekelin territory, not merely Your Lordship and the Count's house?"
It was a valid point. Of course, Count Mekelin had acted alone in committing the deed, so there was no reason to fight displaying that kind of loyalty—it just wasn't necessary. Count Mekelin seemed to have had similar thoughts, as he looked at Pantana with a considerably bewildered expression.
I wasn't nearly as bewildered. That fellow's reaction was largely due to his pride being scratched by me, rather than loyalty to the Count. In fact, I was relaxed enough to forcibly yank the axe embedded in Pantana's thick tower shield and sling it over my shoulder again, preparing for what was to come.
I didn't sheathe the sword. I'd need it to deal with Pantana.
"Rather than live out my life as a man who couldn't even properly fulfill his duty, swayed by a single foe, I will die here upholding my will."
Unfortunately for Count Mekelin, it wasn't just Pantana—the majority of the soldiers here felt the same way.
Barring exceptional cases, people of this era were usually born in one territory and ended their lives there. That didn't mean they lived the wretched modern life of commuting between home, office, and home, and while they might not live like kings or enjoy lives of abundance, they shared their joys and sorrows with the neighbors within their territory.
A sense of belonging inevitably developed. The sense of duty arising from it was the same.
"I have no doubt these men share my conviction."
And one man had come in, wrecking everything, crawling all the way to the inner fortress. When they first faced him, he'd instantly taken down even a knight, so they were afraid—but now, with over a hundred gathered, looking back with slightly heated heads, a different thought crept in.
'Fuck. This is pissing me off. That bastard's human too—with this many of us, we can take him, right?'
It was also a problem that, although unintended, almost no one had died on my way here—at least not by my hand. The skilled ones realized I was deliberately not killing them, but to the unskilled, there was no distinguishing between 'didn't kill' and 'couldn't kill.'
Well, I'd been staying put trusting the lord's declaration of single combat, but now they could call it cowardly to sucker-punch me like this.
They were ignoring it because the label of 'useless bastards who couldn't even protect their lord from a single enemy' was more fucking unbearable than the label of 'coward.' And the observer, finding some merit in Pantana's words, was keeping his mouth shut, leaning toward dismissing this as a near-happenstance caused by Count Mekelin and myself failing to interpret the duel declaration properly.
Unlike his initially stern demeanor, Count Mekelin was now deeply flustered, but the observer maintained his silence, and the hostile glares of the soldiers, Pantana among them, poured onto me.
The conclusion Count Mekelin had reached likely came at the end of rational thought, but not everyone in the world could view events and weigh profit and loss from the same perspective. It was an entirely plausible reaction, so there was nothing surprising about it.
So why was I staying still? Because my objective had been consistent from the start.
Screwing over Count Mekelin, who had targeted me.
Whether that was a properly-sized 'screw you' ending with just Count Mekelin's head, or a massive 'screw you' that made the territory's future bleak as he feared—I didn't care either way, so I was simply watching the spectacle unfold. If my life had been in danger I would have racked my brain to carve out an escape route, but...
These people did not pose a threat.
"Too bad, Count Mekelin."
What could you do? Things in this world don't always go the way you plan.
Just as Mekelin had first tried to secure his prestige and pride by killing me, this was no different for them.
Knowing that, those were the only words I had for Count Mekelin. With Pantana, having finished his declaration, charging at me with a composure remarkable for someone who'd committed the ultimate insubordination—burning with fighting spirit—the soldiers surrounding me also raised their spears and swords and rushed in.
I decided not to throw the needles. The fear of one's body being hacked apart by an axe seemed like it would produce a more reliable effect on them than the fear of being killed by a bullet.
"If you've raised your weapons, be prepared for death."
I reminded them one last time of what I had clearly warned from the beginning, but they didn't stop moving.
Leaving behind the immense regret that the opportunity to end this simply, with minimal death, had vanished, I signaled the start of the battle by cutting through Pantana's neck, sword and all, with my Magic Power-wrapped blade.