The Promise (3)
On the road back to Lichtenauer, they had been granted a brief rest.
The knights watched one particular spot with a mixture of anticipation and unease. There, wooden swords in hand, a handsome young man and a beautiful young woman stood facing each other — the family head, Sien, and her escort attendant, Adel.
"Here I come, Adel."
"I am ready."
"Hah!"
A few of the watching knights let out involuntary gasps of admiration. She had left the family years ago — surely she couldn't have received any proper, systematic training. And yet Sien's movements were far faster and sharper than anyone had expected.
Crack!
But Sien's attack, once again, never landed. Her sword was already tumbling across the ground, and Adel held his blade to her throat.
Everyone knew there was a gap in skill between the two of them. Geon, whom Adel had defeated, was one of Fiore's finest — and that Adel had beaten him without much difficulty meant he stood even higher. Sien, by contrast, had only recently begun to wield a sword in earnest. It would have been stranger if there weren't a difference.
And yet they sparred, most likely so that every detail could be seen and understood — so she would know what to improve, and how to strive for it.
But Adel never let Sien's sword through even once. He simply knocked aside every attack the moment it came.
"Nngh..."
"Isn't that a bit much?"
"What can you do? The family head told him to give it his all."
It wasn't that they were angry at him for treating their lord so roughly. It was that a spar like this ought to leave her with something to take away. If they were going to do this at all, he should vary things — help her grow. But the same pattern kept repeating, and that was what worried them. Would Sien actually gain anything from this? That was the part the knights were concerned about.
"Haaa..."
Perhaps that was why. When a long sigh slipped from Sien's lips, the knights tensed without even realizing it. It had nothing to do with them, and yet — when their family head looked like that, of course they would worry.
"How was that?"
"..."
"That one actually got through. Properly, this time."
Adel seemed to consider for a moment.
"...This much. You have improved."
With his thumb and forefinger, he indicated a gap barely wide enough for a single pebble.
The knights watching the scene were stunned. That wasn't praise — it was practically mockery. Calling that improvement? How was that supposed to count? They glanced around nervously, half-expecting Sien to flush red and lose her temper.
"That's wonderful."
But Sien didn't look offended in the slightest. If anything, she was smiling — as if she were genuinely delighted.
"If I've come that far in less than ten days, that's something remarkable, isn't it?"
A nod.
The knights might have seen it differently, but Adel was agreeing with her in complete sincerity. In his eyes, Sien was by no means lacking in talent. She was said to have little experience, and yet her sword path was remarkably stable. With a little refinement, she would easily be worth several knights — and no one would ever dismiss her as weak again.
"I'll just have to keep working at it!"
Watching Sien clench her fist, burning with resolve, Adel thought the light coming off her seemed a little deeper than before.
"Adel."
The rest was over, and they were on the road back to the estate once more. Sien called to her escort through the carriage window.
"You called, Lady Sien."
"How's the escort work treating you?"
"It is good."
"And the attendant work?"
"That, too, is good."
To the man he was now, everything was good. Every single thing was new, and strange, and wonderful. He thought he understood, at last, why the Emperor had kept pushing him out into the world — shoving him forward again and again.
"Nothing's been uncomfortable, then?"
"Not in the slightest."
"Truly?"
"Yes. Truly."
Meeting new people was good as well. Not those who spent their days waiting for the next fight, defying death at every turn — but people living entirely different lives. Being among them offered a quiet kind of pleasure, different from what he had known with his old comrades.
"If anything does become uncomfortable, you tell me right away. Understood?"
"Understood, Lady Sien."
He was answering her when a smile found its way onto his face, unbidden. It was nothing at all — something utterly ordinary — and yet listening to her, watching her, he felt a faint tickle somewhere in his chest.
He had no idea what that tickle was. But of one thing he was certain: whatever it was, it was not entirely unpleasant.
"..."
Watching him, Sien found herself growing more curious still. What kind of life had this man lived? How wretched must it have been, to leave him with eyes that empty — so empty he could barely manage even a smile that small?
She wanted to know more. She wanted to draw closer. She wanted to gather up someone who had fought a harder fight than anyone, and hold him. She wanted, just once, to see him smile with his whole face.
The strange feeling stirring in her heart — Sien simply decided it was sympathy for Adel, and left it at that.
"...Was there something further you wished to say?"
"Hm? Ah—!"
Only then did she realize she had been staring straight at him. Her first instinct was to say that was all — but a sudden, unaccountable reluctance stopped her. She wanted to talk a little longer. So she hastily changed course.
"Adel. How does someone become as strong as you?"
"Becoming strong. It is simpler than one might think."
"Simple?"
"Yes. Fight, and survive, and you become strong."
"That's all?"
"It is."
Having said so, Adel let out a low hum. The answer had been both too obvious and far too careless, and he found himself wondering how to fill it out.
"Well. Taking myself as an example — I have fought every day since I was a child. I fought demonic beasts, and I fought the people who saw those battles as an opportunity to try something foolish. I killed, and killed, and killed again. I was never especially gifted, nor was I strong. I came close to dying more times than I can count. At the beginning, I was truly weak. Weak enough that dying would not have been strange at all."
In other words: you, too, Lady Sien, can become strong enough. That was what Adel meant by offering his own case.
But the one who actually heard those words could not hide how uncomfortable they made her.
Did I just make a mistake? Should I not have asked?
Adel had lived a hard life as a child soldier. She could picture all too clearly how, until only recently, he must have been clawing his way through hell. His childhood could not have been a pleasant memory. Had she said something careless and dragged that nightmare back up again? Having heard his story, Sien could not stop worrying about it.
"Adel... I'm sorry."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"For making you remember something you didn't need to."
"Ah? No — no, Lady Sien. I am quite all right."
Had someone pushed him onto that path? No. They had tried to hold him back, and he had chosen it himself. He did not regret that decision in the slightest. If he went back, he would make the same choice again. He would kill more of them, and kill, and kill — and when the right time came, as it had now, he would leave. And if he could, he would want to go to Lichtenauer then, too.
He really was all right. And so Adel denied it more firmly than usual, waving both hands and shaking his head hard.
To Sien, though, it only looked as though he were putting on an exaggerated show for her sake.
You idiot. You should have been more careful. Why would you go prodding at someone else's wounds...
Adel, who could not speak of his past in any real detail — and Sien, who, because of that, was only piling misunderstanding upon misunderstanding.
"My lady. Lichtenauer is in sight."
How long had it been since they entered the north? At the shout from the knights riding ahead, Sien opened the window. Beyond, the castle of Lichtenauer stood in proud, solitary dignity. She had come back, once more, to the place she was meant to be.
"We arrived right on schedule, just as planned. Thank goodness."
At Sien's bright voice, everyone nodded. Every day they ran late was another day of worry for the people of the house. Keeping to the appointed time had mattered more than anything.
"My lady. There — people are coming."
Where the knights pointed, a troop of soldiers was hurrying toward them. They looked to be men under Brender or Rascal — come out to receive their family head, no doubt, having heard of her arrival.
Sien had stepped down from the carriage and was waiting for them when Adel drew carefully to her side.
"Lady Sien."
"...Something is wrong."
"What? Why do you say that all of a sudden?"
"They are on edge. More than they need to be."
On edge? She hadn't sensed anything of the kind. And they were still some distance off — how could he have felt that from here? But Adel was not a man who lied. So Sien set aside the relief of a safe return, held on to a measured tension instead, and received the soldiers as they came.
"My lady."
The one leading them was, as expected, Rascal. After taking in his face, and then the state of the soldiers behind him, Sien understood that Adel had not spoken idly. She could read the tension hanging strangely in the air.
"Guard Captain. Something has happened, hasn't it?"
"...I regret to say that it has."
"There's only one thing that would put that look on your face. Is it the thing I'm thinking of?"
Rascal slowly nodded. The thing Sien meant — the appearance of a Rift.
"The exact location?"
"A place some forty minutes north of the castle."
"And the grade?"
"We have confirmed it shifting from fifth-grade to fourth, at the least."
Even a fifth-grade demonic beast — the weakest there was — could take on three or four soldiers. A fourth-grade was nothing to take lightly. Sien listened closely as they made haste toward the main castle.
"How long since the Rift appeared? Please tell me it hasn't been long."
"It has not. Word of it reached us only just now. The demonic beasts have only just begun to emerge. We were in the midst of assembling a subjugation force when you arrived, my lady."
If a Rift went undiscovered in its early stages — if they only learned of it after the demonic beasts had already poured out in full — there was no telling where the creatures would scatter, or what they would do. The best outcome was to pinpoint the location before a Rift even formed, or the instant it did, and wipe the beasts out completely before they could spill out and disperse.
So the present situation, though a Rift had appeared, was the best they could hope for among the worst possibilities.
"...Guard Captain."
But Rascal's expression was still grim. Sien sensed at once that something else had gone wrong.
"There's another problem, isn't there?"
"...There is a village, quite close by."
"A village? Then — word from there!"
At the urgency in Sien's voice, Rascal bit his lip.
"We sent people at once. We still do not know the situation."