The Shame of Shatren (3)
"Which little bastard dares lay a hand on a knight of Modrich County...!"
The copper coin he himself had thrown. And the same coin that had flown back and struck him square on the head before dropping to the dirt. The moment he heard it called pocket change, the knight flew into a rage.
But no sooner had he risen to his feet than a sword was already pressed against his throat.
He had to figure out who this man was first — that much was clear. The trouble was, with the sun blazing at the stranger's back, his features were swallowed in shadow.
"Who the hell are you? A knight of some other house?"
"A knight of another house, you say... Well. I suppose that's true enough."
Of course it was. No one carrying a sword could possibly belong in Rusmayer.
"Ha. Then be on your way. What business do you have pulling this kind of high-handed stunt, hm?"
"Weren't you the one committing it first?"
"What did you just say?"
"I distinctly saw you toss a coin at the people of Rusmayer Territory like they were some kind of joke."
What kind of lunatic was this? Tuspel, knight of Modrich County, scowled fiercely.
"Listen here. That's none of your concern. This concerns our territory — what business is it of yours to stick your nose in?"
"That's right! We're in a position where we have to stop those bastards from crossing this road as they please!"
"We are knights of Modrich County! Is it a crime to hold back those Rusmayer mongrels, who could do anything at any moment?"
His comrades standing beside him rallied to his defense at once. Tuspel, riding the momentum, fired back with all the bravado he could muster.
"Besides — if you point a sword at us like this, it becomes a dispute between houses. Is a mere knight really planning to drag his own lord into a mess?! Even now, if you apologize — show a little honor, at the very least — we'll let it slide."
"... "
Apologize. Or at the very least bow your head. If he refuses, I'll threaten to report this to his house unilaterally.
Getting his pride dented by a thrown coin — a repayment, as it were, for what he'd done to the Rusmayer folk — was not nearly enough to satisfy him. He'd kicked the man out of nowhere and drawn a sword on him. And then what? Pocket change?
Of course that galled. A scratch like that on a man's pride could not simply be let go. He intended to demand an apology — or failing that, threaten the man with an official complaint to his house.
Not that he actually intended to pass anything along, of course. Internally, he was cursing the man to hell; he'd never dream of actually reporting this to the Count.
"Finished running your mouth?"
"...What?"
Thud!
"Khh...?!"
"H-hey! Are you out of your mind?!"
"What part of what we said did you not understand?!"
At those words, the man drove his boot down onto Tuspel's body, pinning him to the ground. Without easing his weight in the slightest, he pressed the blade once more to Tuspel's throat.
"Three of them. Give me three legitimate reasons why I shouldn't punish you where you stand."
Three fingers spread open.
"First — charging a toll is perfectly reasonable for those crossing into another territory. Yet in a moment of genuine urgency, you did nothing but stand there snickering and let them suffer."
The first finger folded down.
"Second — you attacked the people of my territory without provocation. That alone gives me ample grounds to punish you."
The second finger folded down.
"And last — as of today, Rusmayer Territory holds a certificate of recognition from the Imperial Family and falls under my direct administration. Which means I am fully within my rights to punish the likes of you."
Down came the third and final finger.
Having laid out all three reasons, the man spoke with utter indifference, the blade still resting against Tuspel's neck, showing no sign whatsoever of being drawn away.
"You think you're some kind of lord? Heh. Spouting nonsense...! Fine. If you want this blown up into something bigger, by all means — I'll make certain your house hears every last word of it!"
Humiliated again and again, Tuspel finally lost his composure. He wrenched his sword free, hauled himself up, and swung the blade in a diagonal arc.
But Tuspel's sword sliced through empty air, flying far off to plant itself in the distant ground.
"You...! You think you'll walk away from this unscathed?! A mere knight stirring up open conflict between houses, drawing steel, and daring to pass judgment?!"
"That is an outright crime! Do you want to be stripped of your knighthood?!"
"It is not a crime. I told you just now — I have the right to punish you."
"What... did you say?"
It was utter nonsense. To hold a blade at the throat of a knight sworn to another house and claim the right to punish him — that could only mean he intended to swing the sword. How could that possibly not be a crime?
And yet this man was so impossibly composed. He acted as though none of it were wrong at all.
Then a doubt stirred, unbidden.
Could it be... it's actually true?
This man we've never seen before — he's the one standing behind Rusmayer?
He's actually in a position to punish us for touching the territory's people?
The three knights' doubts were shattered almost immediately.
Because the single sheet of paper he produced proved everything.
"I, Karsein Bagrand, as lord of Rusmayer, hold the right to pass judgment upon you. This writ, formally recognized by the Pecelros Imperial Family, is the proof."
The instant those words landed, the faces of all three knights — Tuspel included — drained to a deathly pallor.
K-Karsein Bagrand...?!
So he really was backed by the House of Bagrand all along?!
And with an Imperial certificate... there's no denying it, no arguing our way out...
When the name Karsein first reached their ears, he had changed so much they'd half wondered if he was someone else entirely. But one look at that blue hair and those faded gray eyes made it impossible to see him as a stranger.
That the man before them was Karsein. That the certificate was no forgery. Both were, plainly, the truth.
Which left only one question — where did that leave them?
It was an untenable position, no way around it. They were nothing more than lowly knights who had blocked the road to Rusmayer's people and refused them passage — and worse, they had done it directly in front of the very noble who now governed the territory, kicking one of its people to the ground and heaping insult upon him with thrown coin. On top of everything, they had even sneered among themselves, wondering aloud whether the Bagrand ducal house's adopted son would ever bother to help such people.
Checkmate. Punishment from Karsein was a foregone conclusion.
And yet — the hole they might crawl out of wasn't entirely closed.
The news hasn't reached House Modrich yet!
That single fact let Tuspel breathe a little easier. If word had already gone back to the Count's estate, it would have been a true checkmate. But Karsein had said it plainly: the punishment would fall not on the house, but on the three knights themselves.
Taking punishment from a man who'd supposedly been born a commoner was humiliating, to be sure — but this way, they could end the matter right here, on their own terms.
More than that — a faint escape route was even beginning to glimmer.
The territorial writ the Imperial Family had supposedly verified bore not the name of the Bagrand ducal house, but Karsein's alone. It was his personal prerogative — the man standing before them.
Then wasn't it simple? All they had to do was deceive this one man. If this man — who clearly understood nothing of how the world worked — could be swayed by a silver tongue, they could walk away from all of this scot-free.
Right. He'd have no way of knowing what we actually did out here, would he?
A bead of cold sweat sliding down his neck, Tuspel changed his tune entirely.
"We are well aware, young lord Karsein, that you have become the lord governing Rusmayer. However — the punishment you seem to intend for us is far too severe. It borders on bodily harm."
The two knights, who had at first been puzzling over the situation, quickly grasped Tuspel's intent and began chiming in.
"That's right! We're simply asking that a few things be taken into consideration!"
"Regarding the toll, you see — Rusmayer Territory has always been a place of poverty. Would you say those three people — no, those four — look capable of paying one?"
"They've been sneaking use of this road all along without paying a single coin. It's no empty warning that they might just as easily steal."
One more crumb of comfort. The Rusmayer folk had never once asked them for a toll — but then again, neither had the knights ever paid one on their own crossings.
"The people of Rusmayer, you understand, have long been known to be destitute. Did you truly expect us to believe they could ever pay a toll? That is precisely why we never demanded one of them."
The people of Rusmayer themselves, ground down by poverty, had never so much as imagined paying a toll to pass. That was the justification the knights gave for never raising the matter.
And then—
"There is, however, another matter of some noise attached to them. Because they are so poor, they are in fact the prime suspects in a string of thefts in other villages. Are you aware of that, my lord?"
"Thieves were discovered in a village of Modrich County just recently. So slippery were they that no one could lay a hand on them."
"Those culprits are now strongly suspected to be these very Rusmayer villagers. Plenty of people around here have been saying openly that they ought to be interrogated, and more than a few regard them with deep suspicion."
The poverty of Rusmayer's people fed directly into suspicion from the neighboring territories. Naturally, compared to the innocent villagers nearby, they were the ones being cast as the likeliest criminals. If the knights could steer the conversation along this thread, the whole shape of the argument would shift.
"What kind of absurd—!"
Hearing this, Kiyan couldn't hold himself back and tried to cut into the conversation. Rusmayer was poor because of the demonic beasts that descended from Mount Waglu in waves, and because they were raided on a regular basis. The very people who stood on the suffering end of plunder — how could they possibly turn around and steal from others? He had to explain, if only so that Karsein, who had come all this way to accept their village, would not be misled.
But before Kiyan could step forward—
Someone's sword flashed through the air.
Someone's hair came scattering down.
"Hm. Now you look the part."
Karsein, having sheared off Tuspel's hair with a single stroke, murmured it almost idly. Judged by appearance alone, the man now looked less like a knight and more like a bandit.
"Wh-what is the meaning of this...!"
"What does it look like? You resemble a bandit now, so I made it so."
"Wh-what did you just say?!"
"Are you saying we're bandits?!"
To the three knights' protests, Karsein answered flatly.
"Strange, isn't it — getting cut down and still scrambling to deny it? After all, you're the ones who've been raiding Rusmayer Territory all this while."
"What... did you say?"
"Those knights... raided our village?"
"That's right. You couldn't have known — but those men are the very ones behind the raids on your village."
The three boys' eyes went wide.
The men who periodically threw their lives into chaos had always vanished with remarkable speed whenever word of a raid arrived. Try as they might, the villagers could never catch them. Powerless as they were, the people of Rusmayer had no choice but to call on those three knights of House Modrich — the fastest of the neighboring estates to summon.
And now to be told those very men were the culprits — their minds reeled.
The knights, for their part, erupted in outrage.
"D-don't spout such nonsense! That's pure sophistry!"
"You saw for yourself how treacherous Rusmayer is, my lord! It takes time just to reach the scene of a raid!"
But no matter how they protested, the suspicion had already taken root and blossomed.
"Always late. Always failing to arrive in time. And strangely — never once out of step with the moment the bandits appeared, hmm?"
"H-how could you possibly know that..."
"I looked through roughly two years of dispatch reports, and the same entries kept recurring. Bandits appear, messengers run for the three knights, and the knights arrive long after the fact. Failing that, there are even records of the posts being abandoned entirely."
Karsein said it plainly: think it through, and the bandits and these knights had never once laid eyes on each other at the same place.
And Kiyan and the two boys knew — it had been exactly so.
"Don't tell me... those men... they really did...!"
And onto the embers of their fury, Karsein drove the final wedge.
"Crucially, Rusmayer receives no protection from the surrounding houses. So even when those men came disguised as bandits, you had no one to turn to but those very knights. Which means there was never any reason for you to notice the wound along your flank — the one you got when you left yourself open and this man drove a broken stake into you."
Whoosh!
Karsein's blade flashed twice.
With surgical precision, he sliced away only the fabric of their clothing — and there, at Tuspel's waist, remained the old wound from the broken stake Kiyan had driven into a bandit long ago.
"Now then. What will your excuse be this time, Mr. Bandit?"
At Karsein's sneer, the two knights behind him drew their swords without a moment's hesitation.
Shing!
"You brought this on yourself."
"Regard it as the price of pushing your luck with your miserable hide still intact!"
Two blades came hurtling down. Blood sprayed in an instant.
Before long, they were men who could be neither knights nor even bandits ever again.
Even facing all three at once — a disadvantageous fight by any measure — Karsein had shown not the slightest inclination to give ground. For a heartbeat, the boys had feared for him.
But that fear lasted only a moment. The three knights — no, three bandits — could bring no force to bear against him at all before collapsing where they stood.
Karsein flicked the blood from his blade and looked over at them.
"They'll live. But I took both their arms, so they'll never hold a weapon again. The punishment is yours to carry out."
"Y-yes, sir..."
Dumbstruck, the three boys could only stare at their lord as he sheathed his sword.
"Cough, cough!"
Meanwhile, a rough coughing fit broke from the lips of the girl being carried. It wasn't just the coughing — a thin line of red was now spilling from the corner of her mouth.
"D-Diena!"
"Kiyan. Let's go. We have to move, now!"
"R-right!"
The crimes of those bandits would be dragged into the light for all the world to see — but their own task was still unfinished. Somehow, they had to get Diena to a physician in another village.
"Thank you! But I'm afraid we have no time — we can't properly thank you as we should!"
"We're truly sorry, my lord! Please...!"
"Follow me."
At that very moment, Karsein cut off Melik mid-sentence.
"You'll never make it in time on foot. The physician may not even be at his post. So ride — take the carriage."
"Th-the carriage?!"
"Young lord, we haven't the money for—!"
"I said I would have you ride in the carriage of House Bagrand."
It was a statement that beggared belief. He wasn't offering to lend them money for a hired coach — he was putting them in the Bagrand ducal carriage itself.
For a common villager, no servant or retainer of any kind, to ride in a noble's carriage was unthinkable. And yet—
"What are you standing around for? Get in."
"... "
As though it were the most natural thing in the world, he was ushering the villagers of his territory into the very carriage he rode in. At Karsein's continued urging, the boys swallowed their protests and climbed aboard.
Once they were inside, Karsein said nothing more. He handed over a single handkerchief — as if to say, wipe her mouth — and then simply turned his gaze to the empty sky stretching far beyond the window.
A man like that... is going to look after our village? Our entire territory?
Kiyan knew it in his bones.
Rusmayer would never be tormented again.