Portents of Civil War (5)
Ivan was a knight. He knew full well he no longer deserved the name, yet he still thought of himself as one.
A knight was one who kept honor and pride.
Ivan had lost his honor, but he had never let go of his pride. He had lost his right eye, but one eye remained. And so Ivan was still half a knight, and with that single remaining eye he could still see the light.
Because he was not blind. And because he was a knight.
…Damn brat.
Ivan had seen the radiance Najin produced, and he understood its worth. It was a vast possibility. A brilliant light that should never have been buried in a subterranean city like this—and a flame that, if anyone from the surface ever noticed it, they would surely stamp out and extinguish.
The radiance Najin carried.
The possibility he had revealed.
In this city where heretics fell, treated no better than the cursed things of Kamran, that light was something that should never have been allowed to surface.
And so Ivan agonized.
What lingered at his ear was the conversation he had shared with Oppen over drinks the night before. Kill him, or keep him alive and raise him. Honestly speaking, killing him was the right call.
The latter was a gamble. If things went wrong, it wouldn't just be Najin's neck on the line—his own would be severed just as surely. By Ivan's standards, that was a clear act of crossing the line.
A throb.
His missing right eye ached.
People ought to live within what they are given. Fail to know your place, cross the line, and all you meet is misery. Ivan knew that truth better than anyone.
"Gouge out his eye."
"Confiscate the Masterpiece and cast him down."
"You are no longer a knight of Atanga, Ivan."
"Nothing but a filthy heretic who dared reach for the stars."
He had reached for what he could not touch and lost everything. He had been thrown into the underground, where neither light nor stars could be seen.
I have to kill him.
A person must live according to their station.
So the right thing was to kill Najin—an obvious threat—or at the very least ensure he could never lift a sword again.
As the ruler of the subterranean city, that was what he said.
But the knight in him offered a different answer.
In his days as a knight, Ivan had once dreamed of the summit; once hoped to hang his own star in that night sky. The knight who had looked up at the lofty heavens and run in pursuit of the stars spoke now. Before your eyes lies the dream you let slip away.
Will you trample that dream under your filthy feet? the knight asked. To that question, Ivan could give no answer.
"……"
Ivan fell silent.
At the end of that silence, he let out a long breath.
"I'm going to lose my mind. I really am."
……Ivan was a knight.
Still, he wanted to be one.
Ivan made his decision.
"I'm going to lose my mind. I really am."
Ivan let out a hollow laugh.
Najin felt the choking pressure lift from his throat. In an instant the atmosphere loosened. The man before him was chuckling in sheer disbelief.
"Why the hell would you have something like that—why the hell would you show me something like that…"
He dragged a palm down over his face.
With a long sigh, Ivan looked at Najin. Hesitation lived in his remaining eye. How much time passed like that? At last, as if he had reached a resolve, Ivan spoke.
"Najin."
"…Y-yes?"
Out of breath, Najin could barely answer properly.
Knowing he had nearly died, the look he turned on Ivan was laced with fear. At the same time, there was the question of the light that had settled on his own blade.
Curiosity and fear mixed in those eyes.
Meeting that gaze, Ivan said,
"Today I'm infiltrating Oppen and Horce's territory. I'll be gone for two days at the shortest, three or four at the longest…"
Ivan unbuckled the swords at his waist.
The two blades he always carried. One was a knight's sword brought down from the surface; the other was a masterpiece forged by Hogel, the old blacksmith of the subterranean city.
Of the two, Ivan held out Hogel's masterpiece to Najin. Bewildered, Najin took it.
"While I'm gone, you hold my seat. Anyone who gets clever while I'm away—cut them down with that. The fact that I left this sword with you is proof that you're my proxy."
Handing over the blade, Ivan said as much.
"And."
The corner of his mouth lifted.
"When I get back, I'll teach you how to handle aura."
The thing he had put off and put off again.
At Ivan's words that he would finally teach it, Najin blinked. Ivan shrugged.
"You've got a look that says you don't believe a word of it."
"Didn't I almost die just now? Honestly, I'm scared you'll use teaching me as an excuse to kill me."
"Brat, do I look like that much of a butcher to you?"
Najin nodded.
Ivan gave a bitter smile. Well, he couldn't exactly deny it.
"You won't believe me, but I wasn't going to kill you. If you hadn't reacted in time, I was thinking of carving one more scar into that shoulder of yours, though."
"You're a complete piece of garbage."
"There's a greater purpose to it, you damn brat."
Faced with Najin's still-suspicious stare, Ivan exhaled at length.
"Well, of course you don't trust me. So I'll put something on the line you can believe in."
"What?"
"What else. The heaviest thing I've got to wager."
The one sword still at his waist.
The Atanga crest had been erased, yet it was still the blade that stood for Ivan the knight—half of him, in a way. The moment his hand settled on the hilt, his whole bearing changed.
"I swear it on the pride of Ivan, knight of Atanga."
Not as One-eyed Ivan, ruler of the subterranean city.
As Ivan, knight of Atanga, he spoke.
"This is a deal, Najin."
A proposal and a bargain offered in recognition that the other party stood as his equal.
"From this moment on, I'm investing in you. Not just drawing out aura—I'll teach you everything I have."
That radiance you showed a moment ago.
I'll stake everything I am on that light.
"So you will rise higher than me. Without fail."
Don't stop at Sword Expert.
Climb to the realm beyond.
Reach the place I never could.
"Rise, and take back for me the things I left behind in that damned surface world. Become strong enough to bargain with them. That's what I mean."
"…What did you leave on the surface?"
"Honor."
The thing a knight must carry alongside pride.
"The rank of knight of Atanga, and the honor of having once been a knight who chased the stars."
He held out his hand to Najin.
He added nothing more, but that extended hand was the proposal itself.
"……"
Najin hesitated for a moment.
At the end of that hesitation, he took the hand Ivan offered. With a sharp yank, Ivan pulled him to his feet and grinned.
"From today, you're my squire."
A squire—an apprentice knight.
"Squire to Ivan, knight of Atanga."
Ivan's office.
In Ivan's absence, Najin was holding the office. Perched on the chair Ivan usually occupied, he muttered blankly to himself.
"What the hell."
Tap, tap. Drumming his forefinger on the desk, Najin tilted his head. He couldn't make sense of any of it.
What on earth was that.
What he kept replaying was the scene from a few hours earlier.
Najin turned the spar with Ivan over in his mind. Looking back, the fact that Ivan had even proposed a spar had been a little strange from the start.
He even brought an iron sword, which he never does.
Physical reinforcement with mana on top of the iron blade. And he hadn't stopped there—in the end, aura. When Ivan swung a sword wreathed in aura, Najin had truly sensed death.
And then…
In that instant, his body had moved on its own.
Reflexively, instinctively, his body moved, and radiance gathered on the edge of his blade. No matter how ignorant Najin was of mana and aura, in that fleeting moment he had known what had settled on his sword.
Light. Mana. A fragment of aura.
Proof of a warrior who had reached the realm of Expert.
So had he reached the realm of Expert himself? Somehow that didn't seem right. Najin gripped the sword resting on the desk and squeezed hard.
No aura came. He clicked his tongue and idly worked his mouth, calling back the moment the radiance had settled on the blade.
Something had shoved him from behind; the moment the light formed, a draining weakness had run through his body. He tried to reconstruct that whole instinctive sequence, but… he still had no idea how it had been possible.
"Feels like I dreamed the whole thing."
But the pain remaining in his palm and body—that sharp ache—was proof he hadn't been dreaming.
So I really did draw aura?
Without even learning a mana cultivation method, how? In this subterranean city, the only people who might have an answer were Ivan and Oppen, and both of them had already left for Horce's territory.
"…I'll just ask when he gets back."
Now he could ask.
Before leaving, Ivan had said it clearly. When he returned from Horce's domain, he would teach Najin everything about aura and mana. That was the knowledge Najin had hungered for over the past several years.
Things he had longed for, wanted to learn, that Ivan had never once taught him. Things Ivan had waved off as too early, and when pressed further, had warned him to stop.
"When I get back, I'll teach you. How to handle aura."
Ivan had suddenly volunteered to teach him those very things. From Najin's perspective, the man had seemed ready to kill him one moment and flipped his attitude the next; he couldn't fathom what Ivan was thinking, but…
One thing he did know.
That Ivan was serious.
That he would teach him aura.
Najin could be certain of at least this much: those words had not left Ivan's mouth lightly.
"I swear it on the pride of Ivan, knight of Atanga."
Because Ivan had staked his pride on it.
Anything Ivan spoke of together with the words Atanga and pride was always kept.
Without a single exception.
That was the weight of Atanga, the weight of Ivan's word as a knight, and the weight of the past the one-eyed knight still could not cast off. Of course Najin didn't understand it that far. He simply knew that when Ivan mentioned Atanga, the promise was kept—somehow.
Anyway, what matters is…
That from now on, he could learn.
Learn what?
With a faint smile, Najin murmured,
"Mana. Aura. Proper swordsmanship."
The things he would finally be able to learn.
They were something special, something that could never be obtained in this subterranean city. Things that had always lain beyond the line Ivan had drawn, things he had never dared reach for.
And they were…
Also the things that appeared in the fairy-tale book Najin always carried. In the descriptions of King Arthur and the knights who followed her, "radiant aura" was never left out. Recalling those passages, Najin smiled.
The stars were still out of sight.
But he felt a little closer to them.
"Squire to Ivan, knight of Atanga."
A knight's squire—an apprentice knight.
Not Ivan's hunting dog, but a squire.
Turning over the resonance that word created, Najin ran his hand along the sword on the desk.
It was a rather fine resonance.
"Ivan took the bait."
An underground gallery connected to the mining pits.
In the office at the deepest point of the gallery, Trap-spider Horce opened his mouth. It was not a monologue. There was someone listening to his voice.
"Hand over what you promised."
"You don't have to hound me. You'll get it."
A woman sat perched on the desk in Horce's office. Grinning, she tossed a packet of drugs in front of him. With trembling hands Horce tore the packet open and dumped the contents into his mouth.
Only then did the shaking in his hands stop.
Horce dragged in a deep breath and glared up at the woman looking down on him. A madwoman whose thoughts he could never read. Staring at her, Horce said,
"What are you planning to do from here?"
"What good would knowing do you? You don't need to know. Just do the jobs you're given."
She propped her chin on her hand and smirked.
"Come to think of it, your first leg—Arnold—ran off. Was that your doing?"
"…I had no hand in it."
"Well, doesn't matter. We reeled Ivan in anyway."
"What are you going to do about Arnold?"
"What do you think. He broke the rules, so…"
She stretched out a hand and pointed to a corner of the office. There, locked behind iron bars, Horce's subordinates hung limp.
"He'll end up like them."
The woman flicked her fingers.
A crackling sound rang out. Immediately one of the subordinates' bodies began to swell. Watching, Horce closed his eyes without a word.
Blood and scraps of flesh bursting outward.
Ah… aah… a thin, powerless groan.
Among the noises echoing through the office, Horce clenched his teeth.