The Changed Future (2)
"Harad!"
Vice Commander Delic greeted Harad with a beaming grin.
He was fond enough of Harad to joke about dragging Toremote off his pedestal and setting Harad in his place.
To be precise, it was the Sun's warmth he loved — but as far as Harad could tell, that came to the same thing. Harad himself favored the capable, after all. Unconditional affection was hard to find even within family.
"Pissarro."
Pissarro was a knight of utterly ordinary build. His blond hair was his most striking feature — which meant there was no Northern blood in him.
"I've heard a great deal about you. My expectations are high."
"As I've heard about you."
"From whom?"
"Truthfully, I only said that to be polite."
"I like the honesty."
He had heard plenty — in his past life. If Delic was Toremote's right arm, Pissarro was his left.
"He's my cohort-mate. A strange bird, that one."
In other words, Pissarro was the rein that held the emotional Delic in check. A talent who had nearly been siphoned off into the intelligence bureau, only to be assigned to the knight order because his martial prowess was too valuable to waste.
That was the full extent of what Harad knew. In his past life, Pissarro had died young. Together with Toremote.
"Just the two, then?"
Toremote had attached two knights.
"Not enough?"
"Of course not. More than enough."
More was not necessarily better. They meant to strike off the search route entirely — a large party would only hand the magicians or magical beasts an easy grip on them.
The search party had to be kept to the bare minimum, and at the same time be the strongest. That was why Toremote had handpicked his own left and right arms: the knights who would stand directly behind Toremote were the 1st Knight Order drawn up in a single file.
A 4th-tier magician apiece... not bad at all.
Granted, even Delic and Pissarro combined fell short of a single Elane — but that was greed talking.
Travel with Elane, and my share of the credit shrinks.
To rise high, he had to keep Elane at a distance in official matters. Elane was like a star — a star that drank in every light around it. Her renown would strip away even the achievements he built with his own hands.
The five knights who had followed them went to open the castle gate. Just as they took hold of the iron chains linked to the pulleys—
"Magician Kubel, was it? You're even bigger than I'd heard."
Pissarro marveled at Kubel's muscles.
"What tier?"
"3rd tier."
"Magician Harad. And you?"
"A 3rd tier that might as well be a 4th."
"Shall I take you for a 4th, then?"
Harad nodded. Pissarro's face lit up — then set into hard lines just as fast, as though he were waging the battle in his head.
Not the left arm — the head, was it?
Pissarro looked to be the steward who kept the 1st Knight Order's house in order.
A sound like the world itself being scraped rang out. The castle gate, opening. It parted just wide enough for a man to slip through, then stopped. The knights at the pulleys panted and muttered prayers for good fortune.
"Gulen, you're coming too?"
Even with the gate open, Gulen was still with them, and Pissarro eyed him with puzzlement.
"Yes, sir."
"It will be dangerous. This isn't a job you need to be on."
It was consideration for the youngest, whose talent had yet to ripen.
"You'd only get in the way."
Pissarro was blunt. Rational, certainly — but he hadn't the first idea how to sugarcoat.
A true steward, this one.
Harad found that side of him likable. Pissarro seemed to be the man charged with delivering every bitter word spoken in the 1st Knight Order.
"Or take up an axe, at the very least."
"...I'll see to it myself."
But Gulen was only nineteen.
Adolescence had hit that one hard.
That pride would have to be scrubbed away. Today, if possible.
At first, they took the search route.
"Wolves. Tentacles. Anteaters..."
Gulen murmured quietly from the rear.
Route 45, then.
Wolves, tentacles, anteaters — those were the beasts that made search route 45 their home.
Delic and Pissarro took the point; Harad and Kubel held the middle; Gulen brought up the rear.
"You truly need no aura at all."
Pissarro marveled at Harad's warmth. To conserve one's aura inside the Boundary — an effect that defied reason.
"If you were my enemy, I'd want to hack off your limbs and carry you around in a bag. Can't you work it into an artifact?"
"Sadly, I have no such knack."
Pissarro was gratified that Harad stood on his side, and regretted it all the same.
"Does it block only wind and chill?"
"Most things, so long as fire can melt them. It costs mana, mind you."
"How much?"
"Little enough that the beasts I kill cover it."
"So it's effectively limitless. Wait. Don't tell me it isn't costing you mana right now?"
When Harad nodded, Pissarro marveled for a good long while. His gaze, thrown back over his shoulder, clung.
Greed. With Harad alone, a man could roam the Boundary at his leisure.
"What did I tell you? I said we ought to replace the Commander, didn't I?"
"Delic, this is the sort of thing worth fussing over."
Delic's awe and Pissarro's awe were two different animals. Pissarro was taking stock.
"Wolf beasts coming. Four of them."
"How did you sense that?"
"Common beasts can't hide their mana — and no one is more sensitive to mana than a magician."
"Remarkable."
The wolf beasts charged head-on. Each was the size of the garrison's latrine block, and fangs as long as a man's leg crashed down over Delic and Pissarro.
Two streaks of vivid blue aura met the fangs head-on and sheared the wolf beasts' gaping jaws clean in two, crosswise.
Through the corpses, one more slipped its body in sideways. It wedged itself between Delic and Pissarro and spread its maw wide at Harad.
Deliberate.
It was not an unwelcome feeling — quite the opposite. He was glad to have knights who could turn their heads like this.
Sparks burst into the empty air. They devoured the glossy sheen clinging to the wolf beast's pelt and swelled.
It took only an instant — the wolf beast swallowed whole by a great bloom of flame, and then, before long, nothing left of it but bone.
"These won't serve as any test."
They were still at the mouth of the route. The wolf beasts were weaklings, shoved all the way to the Boundary's edge.
"And there's no need to test anything. I'd wager I'm the more impressive of the two of us."
Pissarro looked down at the fleshless wolf and nodded slowly. The flames had burned hot enough to leave bone — yet not one bone had melted. Only flesh and innards, rendered away with exactness.
A flaunting of finesse. As if to say: magic of this caliber is nothing — I can steer it however I please.
"I apologize. I judged there was a need to verify. Delic and I are knights the 1st Knight Order cannot do without."
In the season when Toremote himself could not enter the Boundary, Delic and Pissarro were as good as the order's heart.
"I understand. You took the vanguard, after all."
Those two had stood at the very front — which meant they had staked their lives on Harad. For Pissarro, verifying Harad's strength had been a necessity.
"Thank you for understanding."
"Frankly, I'm all but glad of it."
It was sincere. Harad was moved.
A cautious knight.
In the North, calling a man cautious could be an insult. Yet Pissarro enjoyed the knights' respect — because he was cautious and strong in equal measure. In the North, that breed was exceedingly rare.
Toremote above all — but Pissarro, too, was a man who had to be kept breathing.
"I believe you and I will speak the same language."
"I had been thinking much the same."
Pissarro flashed a grin. Delic thrust out his lower lip a fraction and marched on ahead.
The route went smoothly. All Harad had to do was open his mouth: name a beast's number or position, and Delic and Pissarro saw to the rest.
"And Magician Kubel?"
"He's minding his mana. My fire and his smoke get along famously."
"Understood."
At that, Pissarro tightened his spacing a touch — taking Kubel's zone under his wing as well.
Harad was moved a second time. To think he could speak to a knight in half-words and be perfectly understood.
Once they had passed through the anteater grounds — where the beasts looked fit to dine on men in place of ants — Delic and Pissarro halted.
The ground beneath their feet was a shambles. Deep prints and sword scars lay strewn everywhere — and here and there, gouges carved by something that was no sword.
"Here."
This was where the 1st Knight Order had crossed blades with three magicians. Delic's gaze and Pissarro's swung to the same place — not the route ahead, but the deep-blue ground to the left.
The magicians had come from that ground.
"What manner of magicians were they? I'm asking after the shape of their magic."
"Two of them spat up something black. Like ink."
Pissarro had been one of the knights on the scene that day.
"Different inks, mind. One turned himself into a beast with his; the other handled his like a weapon."
Because the vagueness each Origin carried was different. It was the same reason Shura's Eye and Compaso's Eye made for different magic.
"The last one... right. He turned into me. Left and right flipped — like staring into a mirror. He was the 4th tier. I killed him."
Pissarro had a storyteller's gift.
"How did you kill him?"
"He was exactly like me. Only amateurish."
He had gained the same ability without the years behind it. A knight's power was best wielded by a knight.
Ink. And a mirror.
Vague Origins, every one of them.
"Their fighting was amateurish too, wasn't it?"
"Decidedly."
A spark of keen interest lit Pissarro's eyes.
"You could tell they were short on combat experience. How?"
"They were Ivory Tower, I'd have said."
Why the future had changed — Harad had a rough idea.
Above the deep-blue ground, dust-like specks drifted. Each and every one was a magical beast — beasts so paltry their bloodline was vermin.
Hoo. Kubel, pipe lit, breathed out a plume of smoke. It was pale in color — but it spread wide as fog.
The vermin beasts tangled in the smoke dropped out of the air, thudding to the ground.
"It can even detect them."
Harad explained Kubel's magic as though presenting wares.
"There are two."
No sooner had Kubel spoken than two beasts burst from the smoke — creatures with grotesquely long snouts, mosquitoes magnified into monsters.
The two snouts bent at once, each in a different direction. Part of the fog-spread smoke had turned to blade.
It can't cut, though.
It meant the mosquito beasts' tier sat not far below Kubel's own.
Kubel had expected as much. The blades melted back into smoke, gathered into two masses, and hammered down on the mosquitoes' heads in unison.
Both skulls dented, slightly. They didn't die this time either — but the beasts that had been wheeling overhead came down to eye level, perfectly placed for the blade, and Delic and Pissarro beheaded them in easy unison.
"Its detection range seems narrower than yours."
"That's because I'm remarkable — not because Kubel falls short. It will widen in time."
Pissarro nodded slowly.
"Can that smoke take whatever shape he wishes?"
"It can. The power is still weak — but that, too, will grow."
"Then there's no law saying it must serve as a weapon."
"It's all in the using."
The breadth of Kubel's Origin — the reach of its vagueness — was immense.
"Genuinely useful, then. May I call on his cooperation now and again?"
"O-of course."
In a single skirmish, Kubel had won Pissarro's regard.
"We can't let him die."
"Don't worry. If he dies, I die with him. In the Boundary, everyone who travels together is a comrade."
Harad smiled like a peddler closing a sale.
Mana was like muscle: the more you spent, the more you gained. This life's Kubel was barred from heart predation, so he had to drain his mana to the dregs every single day. The 1st Knight Order's searches would stack experience on top of that.
"I hear you have a daughter, Magician Kubel. So do I. Eleven years old."
"Mine is ten."
"They could become good friends."
Pissarro was plainly taken with Kubel. The sheer size of him must have helped — the man was timid, but his muscles more than made up for it.
"Do you have some special method of training?"
"I do, but..."
"Could you share it later?"
When Kubel nodded, Delic and Pissarro beamed.
The deep-blue ground ended without warning. Dark-red moss crunched underfoot, and a scarlet swamp opened out before them.
The terrain was peculiar: past the swamp lay a thin strip of moss-grown land, and past that, another swamp.
Harad plucked a fist-sized stone off the ground and tossed it out over the water. Something shot from the swamp, snatched the stone midair, and sank back into the mire.
"A tongue."
"A tongue, indeed."
Delic and Pissarro spoke as one. True knights, both — their dynamic vision was superb.
"We can't simply ignore it and leap across. Your thoughts?"
"I could remove it. The swamp, and the beast hiding inside it."
Harad could boil the whole swamp away into vapor. The beast within would be cooked alive besides.
"That would drink a great deal of mana, I'd think."
"I could roughly earn it back. It's about 3rd tier, after all."
The beast lurking in the swamp was 3rd tier. The bulk he could feel was considerable, and its reserves of mana seemed deep besides.
"So you'd come out at a loss."
Harad nodded. The number and scale of the swamps were problem enough, but the greater issue was that he was still only 3rd tier. He couldn't reach his desired output without burning no small share of mana.
"Then we shall."
He meant to wade into the swamp himself.
"Delic, you go first."
"Understood."
Delic stripped off his leathers in one motion and plunged into the swamp. Sizzle — something in the mire hissed as it burned. The surface shuddered a few times.
Plop. Before long, Delic burst out onto the far bank, something enormous skewered on his sword — a head like a lizard's.
"You can cross."
At that, Pissarro vaulted the swamp. Harad and Gulen followed, and Kubel came across on stepping-stones of smoke.
"How was it?"
Pissarro asked the muck-caked Delic.
"Deep. It burns, but not enough to wound. No need to wrap yourself in aura."
"My turn, then."
This time Pissarro dove in. He surfaced later than Delic had — with a heart in his hand. He knew Harad replenished his mana with the hearts of beasts.
"Much obliged."
"Only proper."
Just as Harad absorbed the heart Pissarro handed over—
"I'll take the swimming from here on."
Pissarro tossed the clothes over to Delic.
"Why?"
"Delic, you are the stronger of us. Here, it's right that I be the one spent."
It would be filthy work, and it would hurt.
Pissarro was a rational knight. Without a heartbeat's hesitation he flung himself into the next swamp — and came out with another heart.
Harad crossed to the next strip of land and absorbed it. Watching, Delic asked:
"Why does Kubel get none?"
"Predation is ferociously addictive. Eat once and there is no quitting — and if you can't eat, you go mad."
"Then why do you?"
"Because I mean to keep eating. There's the Outlands yet to come."
"Damn."
Delic was impressed by Harad's ambition in spite of himself. From here on, he'd likely be calling Harad a comrade even beyond the Boundary.
"Gulen."
While Pissarro dove into the next swamp, Harad turned his gaze on Gulen. Gulen looked like a man at his own funeral.
"Angry that you've had no part to play?"
"..."
On the march here, Gulen had been given the rear. A meaningless post. Harad and Kubel could sense the beasts, and Delic and Pissarro had advanced ruthlessly enough that nothing left living could dog their trail.
Pissarro's words — that Gulen would only be in the way — had been sincere. He had posted the boy at the rear with orders to do nothing at all.
"Delic and Pissarro are fond of you. You're the youngest, after all."
"..."
"Does that satisfy you?"
Gulen shook his head. He was not a man built to settle for being "the youngest."
Harad remembered the enormous hunger Gulen had carried in his past life. Even his setting aside of the axe had been a splinter of that hunger.
"You never took up the axe. And after I went to the trouble of advising you."
"...What kind of advice is that bullshit about knowing magic that reads the future?"
On the day of the hunt, when they'd crossed paths with the rabbit, Harad had broached it roundabout on the walk back — that Gulen ought to take up the axe.
"No one in this world has ever heard of any such magic, I'll have you know."
"So you did give it some thought."
"..."
"No one knows it better than you yourself, in your bones. The axe is the right one for you."
Gulen held his silence. It was as good as a yes.
Knights were, surprisingly, fussy creatures. They could handle any weapon well enough, but there was always one, they claimed, that felt like their own flesh. Grip that weapon, and a knight changed before your eyes. Some grew by leaps and bounds with it.
To Harad it was an inexplicable phenomenon. He could only guess: that it had something to do with the innate character of a man's aura.
For Toremote, that weapon had been the axe. Whether it ran in the blood, he couldn't say — but it was the same for Gulen.
"Well, I'm sure you had your reasons. I'll choose to believe you weighed it and chose the sword. Unless you're a blockhead."
"..."
"I won't force you. What you take up is your own affair. None of my business."
In truth, it was very much his business. Just as with Harad and Elane, Gulen too had to change, and soon. That fool was timber cut to become the Great Warrior of the future.
"But there is one thing I'd have you understand. I say it because you and I are alike."
"...And what's that?"
"Do you know when a child regrets most in this life?"
Gulen's face twisted. Here it came again — the tiresome father-and-axe sermon.
"When his parents die."
"...Why on earth would that man die?"
Gulen could not begin to imagine Toremote drawing his last breath. That was the kind of man Toremote was. Commander of the 1st Knight Order of Serzilla. One of the handful of Sword Masters alive in the world.
"And that is exactly where the regret sets in."
"...That's absurd."
"I said the same thing once. And that is how I came to be here."
Gulen's throat closed on his words.
"Do you mean to take up the axe only once Sir Toremote is in the ground?"
"..."
"If so, I won't stand in your way."