The Search (1)
The territory and the garrison before the Great Wall lay a good distance apart. The supply units made the journey by wagon and horse; the knights preferred to run. Serzila's knights could outrun an ordinary horse, after all.
Elain chose to walk. Not at any ordinary pace, of course—even ambling along, she moved faster than an ordinary person at a hard, hurried march.
Much faster than when she's Ellen.
Elain and Ellen were the same person, yet small differences like this separated them. She does try to hide it, in her own way. As Ellen, she made a point of keeping her strength leashed. Not that anything she did could possibly give her away—but it showed she was mindful of it all the same.
Harad had no trouble drawing level with her side. He wasn't straining himself; his face stayed calm.
"You've changed, you know."
Elain's eyes narrowed. Her stride had lengthened. Her faintly stooped back had straightened. When they'd first met, her weight had tipped slightly to the right; now her balance sat perfectly true.
Her muscles had grown—that was why. New muscle had taken hold of a body that had once hung off balance. In so short a time? By any common measure, it was impossible.
"Your body has changed. How did you manage it?"
At her question, Harad answered with a hollow laugh. Tempered it ages ago, more like. Elain had only just noticed today. Which meant that all this while, Ellen's attention had never been on Harad himself—only on the experiences to be had through him.
So she truly had no interest in me. Which was a good thing. It meant she was only now beginning to take one.
"All thanks to eating a few magicians."
"Ah, I heard from the intelligence bureau. They say you've been out again lately."
Elain added another detail to the cover story.
"So the more mana one holds, the larger the muscles grow?"
"Crops grow when they bask in the sun. Think of it as much the same thing."
"Well explained."
Harad's eyes went round.
"Not understanding is an answer in itself. Magic is a vague thing, after all."
Elain said this with a smile. They were the very words Harad had once given Ellen.
"I hear you and the 1st Knight Order get along well."
They got along rather well, in fact. Otherwise there would have been no reason for him to be heading to the garrison in their company. The 1st Knight Order, curious about his magic, had taken to including him on Hunting Days.
"A good sign. If you mean to become one of Serzila's assets, closeness with the knight orders is essential."
Elain had acknowledged Harad's goal of becoming a retainer of Serzila. That was a change from a single night—which meant the dream's influence ran deeper than he'd expected.
"And what do you make of the 2nd Knight Order?"
"We've had little contact."
This year was the 2nd Knight Order's rest cycle. They resided in the Inner Castle or the territory, not at the garrison. Even so, Harad had yet to cross paths with a single one of them.
"And the 2nd Knight Commander? Does he dislike you?"
The night Ios was dealt with, Cassion, Commander of the 2nd Knight Order, had crept in while Harad slept and left a severed head at his bedside—ostensibly to share the credit. It was reason enough to be resented. But Elain's question didn't seem to spring from that alone. In his past life, the 2nd Knight Commander had shoved Harad into the tunnel by force. Elain had seen that scene in a dream, and was weighing it even now.
"I bear him no ill will. It's simply... ambiguous."
He meant it. The tunnel belonged to a future that no longer existed. Besides, his past-life self had long since finished avenging it.
"Don't hold it against him too much. The 2nd Knight Commander is a rigid sort. I'm sure there's no malice in it."
"And does Your Grace like the 2nd Knight Commander?"
"There is no knight I dislike. Sir Cassion is a core strength of the realm—and a loyal retainer without equal."
"I see."
Loyal, was it.
Hunting Day was the name for the days Elain joined the Boundary searches. It was an arrangement Serzila had made for Elain, who craved real combat—but contrary to the spirit of that wish, the knight orders had come to call the day Hunting Day. Because the moment Elain took the field, it became a hunt.
Not a battle. It wasn't simply that Elain was so overwhelming. The real problem lay less with Elain than with the orders' search routes.
"Today's route—Snow, Snow, Grass, Ice, was it?"
"That's right. Route 42. Bear, Ghost, Tree, Little Giant."
Serzila maintained seventy search routes through the 1st Boundary. The two retainer houses and five knight orders each took charge of ten, and no one ever strayed beyond those paths. Imperial decree forbade provoking the Outlands. And so for twenty years, Serzila had walked the same routes until they wore grooves in the snow. The original purpose was long gone; only the shell remained.
Vast, isn't it. Seventy routes, and even all of them together had never charted half of the 1st Boundary.
"Route 42 is this mission's path."
Just as Harad was marveling anew at the Boundary's sheer scale, Gulen beside him explained the knights' exchange.
"Snow, Snow, Grass, Ice—that's the sequence of environments and terrain along the route. Bear, Ghost, Tree, Little Giant—those are the nicknames for the magic beasts that dwell in each one."
The knight orders knew their routes down to the last stone, because those paths hadn't changed in twenty years.
"You call it grass, but..."
"The chill and the wind usually stay as they are, environment or no."
There were exceptions, like the Sacred Ground of Fire, but none of the seventy routes led to one.
"...You know the Boundary too?"
"Truth be told, I've sneaked in a time or two."
Gulen's eyes went round.
"Been to the 2nd Boundary as well."
"Oh, come off it."
Clicking his tongue, Gulen chided himself for having been startled at all. There was no claim on earth more preposterous than having set foot in the 2nd Boundary.
"If you're going to lie, at least make it a convincing one."
"Really... hm. I'll bear that in mind next time."
Harad let it drop. Elain's gaze had grown pointed. The tunnel was still a closely guarded secret—and the fact that he and Ellen had crossed the Boundary by way of it, more so still.
"Hey, Harad."
Vice Commander Delic called out, holding something toward him—a map. A map of the 1st Boundary with the 1st Knight Order's search routes drawn across it.
"You're sure I should be seeing this? I thought it was classified."
"Aren't you coming with us?"
Delic tilted his head, genuinely baffled as to why it would be a problem, and Harad found that absurd. One shared mission, and they were already like this. So it was: Serzila's knights were simple creatures. If this was how they were already, what would they be like once the bond truly set?
I'll admit, I'm curious. In his past life, Gulen had been the only one he'd shared that kind of bond with. This time, perhaps not.
"Say, Harad—aren't you cold?"
"Serzila runs rather warm, for me."
Harad, having pretended to study the map with great interest, handed it back.
"Memorized the whole thing already?"
"I've always had a quick memory."
He had every one of Serzila's search routes committed to memory. Those routes would not change until the day the North fell. I'll have to change that. That, too, was a regressor's duty. The Elain he remembered would surely have wanted it.
Knowing her, she might even prefer killing the Emperor outright. Not the sort of thing one could simply ask for—and the opportunity was hardly likely to present itself.
"Jambello. Tursten. Parman. Gulen."
Delic called the roll in order of seniority. Rather than answer, each knight struck his fist against the Serzila crest over his left breast. Thud! A sound like a heartbeat rolled along the Great Wall. Delic struck his own heart as well—he, too, was one of this search's number. Thud! The last beat rang loudest of all. It was Elain's, the Grand Duke's heir.
The gesture meant, I give you my heart. To Harad's eye, it was posturing. But the posturing carried real weight all the same—the higher the rank, the more it did. When someone at the very top performed it, morale climbed with surprising ease. The Elain of the old timeline had been a master of the gesture. Harad had always been hopeless at such things.
Five knights. And Elain and Harad. Six of the seven turned to look at him. Taking the hint, Harad struck his chest. With no aura behind it, his beat was a pale thing beside the others', but they seemed satisfied regardless. Meeting those eyes stirred something unfamiliar in him.
The five knights who had escorted the party hauled on the chains linked to the pulleys, muscle and aura swelling to their very limits. The gate groaned open, scraping through the snow—fitting, for a gate built absurdly large to seal out the Boundary, it moved slowly.
"Return safely."
The five knights, having opened it just wide enough for one person to pass, wheezed the words out. As Elain answered with a serene smile, Delic took point. Their steps were slow, but the air was taut. Even Delic, the most seasoned of the seven, felt it. That was simply what the Boundary was—a place one might grow used to over the years, but never at ease in.
At last, Delic set his foot beyond the gate. The step was heavy, deliberate—and entirely without fear. If anything, it carried excitement. To press deeper into the Boundary was to serve Serzila: loyalty given form, and the promise of a battle no one could foresee. Every last knight of Serzila was a dyed-in-the-wool loyalist and a battle junkie.
Harad came last. He watched Elain and the knights pass through, then crossed over himself. The instant the search party cleared it, the five waiting knights slammed the gate shut.
What rushed in was a sense of severance. A handful of steps, and the world had changed. A monstrous cold and honed winds fell upon them at once. Without aura, they would have frozen solid the moment they crossed—and that ice statue would have been shredded where it stood.
Snow lay in every direction. To the eye, an ordinary northern vista—but that snow was steeped in the Boundary's chill. To anyone without aura, it was poison, plain and simple. Delic, deliberately, trod it without aura. The snow wormed into his boots of magic-beast hide, and his feet began to throb.
Shhk!
A blade of wind skimmed Delic's cheek, thin and long. Blood fanned across it like a drawn curtain. Honing the senses with pain, spilling blood to loosen the tension—it was both habit and vow for the knight called Delic.
Soon enough, he remembered anew that today was no ordinary search. Jambello, Tursten, and Parman were veterans, at home in the Boundary, who had seen their share of Hunting Days. The youngest, Gulen, had little search experience to his name—this was his first Hunting Day. And today wasn't even an ordinary one. The Grand Duke's heir had brought Harad along on top of it all. Which meant Delic, leader of today's search, had to mind Harad as well...
"You truly don't need aura at all. May I come a little closer?"
Just then, her voice drifted over. Elain was standing at Harad's side—well outside the search formation. By rights, Delic should have barked them back into line. In the Boundary, experience outranked rank, and efficiency outranked experience.
"..."
But no words came. Gulen was at Harad's side too. Even the seasoned Jambello, Tursten, and Parman.
"You as well, Sir Delic. It's warm."
Elain beckoned. As if spellbound, Delic drew near—and felt a warmth that had no business existing in the Boundary. That warmth held the chill and the wind at bay. Anyone could see it was Harad's doing.
Knights die when they linger in the Boundary. Beasts and magicians had nothing to do with it—when the aura ran dry, death followed, without fail. That was why the orders capped their search times. In the Boundary there was no rest, let alone sleep, because aura drained even then. How many knights had died that way? The routes were fixed, and years of searching had made them safer—but the Boundary was still the Boundary. A chosen few, the Grand Duke's heir among them, were exceptions; most knights feel death at their backs with every search.
And Harad had swept that shadow of death aside.
"What did I tell you? The Boundary's quite brisk."
Harad said it right into Gulen's stunned face. Vice Commander Delic had to physically reseat his dropped jaw. Near Harad, the Boundary's signature chill and wind simply ceased to exist. Without raising a flicker of aura, his body neither froze nor bled. This was, without question, the Boundary—yet the air around Harad was not.
"We can... rest?"
"You could even sleep. Though the watch would still need standing."
Sleep? Here? Delic's jaw dropped a second time.
"Ah—Delic. That one's a magic beast."
Harad nodded at Delic's left foot, an inch from the ground. Delic sprang back and drove his sword into the snowbank. The snow shrieked. A magic beast after all—one disguised as a drift of snow.
"How did you spot it?"
"A magician more attuned to mana than a knight? That's only natural."
Push up a search route, and a beast's ambush was inevitable.
"Over there. Five of them."
Harad had marked every one.
"Why do the chill and the wind blanket the whole place like that?"
"Because this is the far edge of the North. The North itself, as an environment, has been warped through mana—and grown stronger for it."
Where Harad pointed, magic beasts waited; nothing Harad said concealed a secret.
"Then how does grass grow in a place like this?"
"Earth. Grass. Life. Mana of origins like that, gone corrupt. The mana at its root had simply been stronger than the corrupted cold."
Delic's ears kept pricking. He couldn't even work up anger at Gulen for firing off questions so calmly in the Boundary. Truthfully, he felt much the same. This was the Boundary, and yet he felt at ease. Time passed, the miles accumulated, and his aura never waned. He didn't even need to keep his nerves strung for a beast's ambush.
"Ten. Trees. One of them is rooted unusually deep—keep an eye on that one."
Delic and the knights had only to draw their swords when he said so.
"Seven. Wendigos. So the 'Little Giants' you all spoke of—those were these?"
The magic beasts were weaker than any of them had ever seen. Not because the beasts had weakened—because they had grown stronger, their aura brimming full. Save for the fighting itself, there was nothing to spend it on. In the Boundary, such a thing was unthinkable.
"What's that flag?"
"...The turnaround point."
It meant the route ended here. Already? Delic's eyes wavered on the flag. The other knights wore the same look.
Route 42's time limit was four days. An ordinary search party used every hour of them; if four days passed, the order wrote the party off as dead. The turnaround point had to be reached within two. Today, they had arrived in a handful of hours—and not one of those hours had felt rushed. If anything, they had been comfortable.
It was as if they'd signed on for one of those hunting excursions all the rage in the imperial capital. Delic was a tourist sampling a nobleman's hunt, and Harad was the guide—a guide who found the game and showed the way. It was a thing that could never be. Searching the Boundary was one of the Serzila knight orders' duties, and Harad had come to experience that duty for himself. But once everything was laid bare, their positions had flipped entirely.
"...Harad."
Delic spoke, pressing down the emotion surging up from his chest.
"Join the 1st Knight Order."
"Hm?"
"Join us. Please."
Delic looked half ready to drop to his knees.