The Essence of Three Hundred Years (4)
The Helmeted Knight taught Najin the sword with a diligence that matched—perhaps even surpassed—his promise. It was a far cry from the halfhearted reluctance he had shown when the offer was first made.
"Your swordsmanship is specialized for fighting humans. That isn't a flaw. It's something you can turn into a strength. On the Continent, that alone would have been enough. You rarely had to face immortals, monsters, or beasts over there."
He pointed at Najin's blade as he spoke.
"But the Outer Land is different. Most things here possess a measure of immortality. Creatures that refuse to die from a severed neck or a pierced chest swarm this place. So what do you do?"
"Cut harder?"
"Well, put simply, yes. Harder—meaning I'll show you the proper way to cut."
How to face those who would not die.
"Sever the spine. Even if they regenerate, a broken spine leaves them helpless. Monster or human, it's the same. Disable them that way, then carve them apart. That's the most effective method."
The Helmeted Knight taught Najin how to neutralize their healing. He did not stop at explanation; he took Najin into the hunting grounds of the Outer Land's magical beasts and demonstrated in person.
"Try it."
"Like this?"
"No. Strike deeper than that. Not like felling a tree—like digging out the roots entirely."
"Ah. Like this?"
"That's closer, yes. But you grasp it after a word or two? It took me more than a month to understand this."
"I've always been a quick study."
"Tch..."
Show. Imitate. Correct.
For a time the Helmeted Knight drilled Najin in the fundamentals of the sword. Once those foundations were solid, he began to speak of true swordsmanship.
"The style I use seems to have become the prototype for Imperial swordsmanship. Show me the Imperial form as you know it."
Najin demonstrated. The Helmeted Knight watched in silence for a long while before he spoke.
"They stripped out the difficult parts and rebuilt it around what was easy to learn. Whoever did that had remarkable skill. Do you know who created it?"
"It isn't written clearly, but... for the past hundred years or so, there has been someone responsible for training the Empire's knights."
"Who?"
"Sir Gerd."
"That bastard?"
There was a note of mild surprise in his voice. The Helmeted Knight gave a short, humorless laugh.
"Right. I did teach him the sword once. Never thought he'd still be using it after all this time."
"You were Sir Gerd's master?"
"Master is too strong a word. The fool was swinging some mismatched, half-baked style that didn't even fit his hands. I told him that if he was going to use trash like that he might as well use this instead, and taught him for a little while. That was all."
Anyway. That was neither here nor there.
Muttering to himself, the Helmeted Knight raised his blade.
"You've learned the fundamentals well enough. Starting today I'll teach you Imperial swordsmanship—every secret technique that bastard Gerd never put into the official form."
"I'm looking forward to it."
"It won't come easy. This is the distillation of three hundred years of my life, whether it looks like it or not."
The sword he had poured his entire existence into completing. He swung it now so that he might pass that art to Najin. Najin stood still and watched the blade cut the air. And as he watched, a thought surfaced.
I've seen that swordsmanship somewhere before.
But the memory would not reach as far as where, or even who. For someone whose recollection was usually sharp, that was strange. It felt as if something deliberately interfered, refusing to let the two connect.
"What's with that ring? You get married or something?"
After the day's training, during a rest, the Helmeted Knight pointed at the ring Najin held in his hand. Ordinarily Najin kept it on a chain inside his clothes, but before sleep he would take it out and cradle it for a few minutes.
Because when he held it, he could feel its warmth.
"No. It was a gift."
"A ring as a gift? Do you have a fiancée?"
"I did receive a confession."
"...Tch."
The Helmeted Knight's voice soured at once.
"The brat's gone and gotten full of himself."
—My thoughts exactly!
For once Merlin agreed with the Helmeted Knight, nodding vigorously, while Najin merely shrugged.
"Nineteen is adult age, isn't it?"
"I'm three hundred."
"Have you never been in a relationship?"
"Listen. You seem to be looking down on me, but in my day one glance from me and the finest young ladies at a ball would go weak at the knees. Dance with me once and you were the star of the evening—guaranteed."
"Wow. Really."
"You don't look convinced."
He sighed.
"I did fall hard once. Had a real romance."
The Helmeted Knight prodded the campfire as he spoke.
"Do you know the name Serena Pendragon?"
"Serena Pendragon... the leader of the rebellion, wasn't she? The one who tried to topple the Empire by turning its pillars against it."
"That's right. That insolent imperial princess was my first love. We were together, too. Quite intensely."
"She was a traitor?"
"If only she had been. Then I wouldn't be sitting here like this."
He let out a long breath.
"I put the Empire on one side of the scale and her on the other. The result was clear. I was the Empire's hero. I had to be. So what choice was there? One side had to be abandoned."
The Helmeted Knight spoke without emotion.
"I killed Serena with my own hands. That was my first and last romance."
"You had a fiery love life."
"Didn't I? Want to know the real surprise? That damned princess whispered that she loved me into my ear right before she died. Truly a rotten personality. I'd convinced myself she had only used me, that the whole thing was a lie... but apparently it wasn't."
He chuckled low in his throat.
"Well. Trying romance at least once isn't a bad idea. Hope things work out with the young lady who gave you that ring."
"We aren't dating."
"What? You got a ring and a confession and you're still not together? Hey, you little bastard. Don't you know what happens when you play games with a lady's heart?"
"It isn't like that. I've just postponed my answer..."
"Ha—this little shit!"
Faced with the Helmeted Knight's lecture on romance, Najin wore the expression of a man who had heard more than enough.
"I simply haven't decided yet. I don't even understand what it means to like someone. Accepting a confession under those circumstances would be disrespectful to the other person, wouldn't it?"
"Aren't you nineteen?"
"I am."
"At that age you usually know these things already, don't you?"
"I grew up in a rather unusual place for a long time. I'm clumsy with human relationships."
"Where did you grow up?"
"Have you heard of the subterranean city of Atman?"
The subterranean city of Atman.
The moment the words left Najin's mouth, the Helmeted Knight tilted his head.
"That place is still standing?"
"Pardon?"
"Strange. It shouldn't still exist."
"It was perfectly intact. I left it only two years ago."
"The place where the Hafen River runs, yes?"
"That's right. The same place where the main cathedral of the Holy Light Church stands."
"That city was already the subject of a lot of talk in our day. If you're going to kill them, just kill them—why go to all that trouble? People said they must be hiding something. So we dug, and what do you know? They really were hiding something."
Hiding something?
Najin's eyes narrowed. The Helmeted Knight prodded the fire again.
"What was it?"
"A corpse."
"What?"
"They had buried the corpse of a star there. Whose, I don't know. With eight stars it was clearly a constellation, but we couldn't identify which one. Still, it looked like they intended to do something with it, so the city was scheduled for disposal..."
He tapped his helmet with two fingers.
"As I recall, that was roughly two hundred years ago. I naturally assumed the city had been erased. Why it's still there is a mystery to me."
"If there was a star's corpse... where was it? The landfill? The underground districts?"
"I don't know that either. It wasn't an operation I took part in."
It was the first Najin had heard of it.
Even after leaving the subterranean city he had researched the place in considerable detail, yet this had never come up. Once I return to the Continent, I'll have to look into it. Najin made a quiet note of it.
"Living in that subterranean city... must have been a hard life. No sky there, right?"
"Blocked by a ceiling, yes."
"Born and raised in a place like that, your longing for the stars makes perfect sense."
The Helmeted Knight smiled bitterly.
"Ironic, isn't it? Born where no stars can be seen, and so you yearn for them more than anyone."
"People always desire what they cannot have, don't they? I wanted the stars so badly precisely because I thought I could never reach them no matter what I did."
"Desire what one cannot have..."
The words seemed to strike him. The Helmeted Knight murmured them for a while, then laughed—a short, unrestrained breath of a laugh.
"Yes. That's true enough."
What one cannot have. Or what one can no longer have. Turning the phrase over, he rested a hand on the sword at his hip.
While learning the sword from the Helmeted Knight, Najin traveled the Outer Land from place to place. The knight guided him to see, experience, and learn as much as possible, and Najin moved exactly as intended.
Every lesson proved useful. New knowledge born of experience, and techniques born of that knowledge, settled layer by layer into Najin's body.
Then, on one of those days of wandering the Outer Land—
"Well, well. If it isn't the cowardly runaway."
In the middle of a lesson, Najin found himself face to face with a man. The man's appearance was wretched. His untrimmed beard was thick and wild; his clothes were little better than rags.
The only thing about him that was not wretched was the single sword at his hip. Stroking the hilt, he fixed his gaze on the Helmeted Knight.
"A half-broken wretch who can't even lift a sword himself, trying to teach someone else? The stars above must be laughing."
"...Bernstein."
"Do not put my name in that filthy mouth of yours, monster."
The man called Bernstein glared with wide eyes.
"It is not a name cheap enough to be spoken by a walking corpse that drifts this land because it cannot die, or by a monster like you."
Bernstein ground his teeth. Fire burned in his eyes; deep fury cracked through his voice.
"Why are you still alive? A dead man who should have died long ago—why are you still breathing? Were you that starved for life? Even after everything that was done to you, you couldn't let go?"
"......"
"You lost your entire order of knights, were defeated, knelt before a demon, and then—as if that weren't enough—you fled and cling to life. The Empire's name has been dragged through the mud. If it had been me I would have ended myself long ago. What, too afraid to do even that?"
The Helmeted Knight remained silent.
Bernstein's insults went on for some time, and the Helmeted Knight allowed them to continue—as if he believed the man had every right.
"Looking at a monster who abandoned knighthood still strutting around in a helmet as if he were a knight makes me laugh."
"You talk an awful lot."
"What?"
Of course, that was none of Najin's concern.
At Najin's single remark, Bernstein's head snapped around. Meeting those glaring eyes, Najin spoke.
"Are you deaf? I said you talk too much."
Najin did not stay silent.
In place of the silent Helmeted Knight, Najin opened his mouth. The knight started to raise an arm, but Najin ignored him and stepped forward.
"You throw the word 'knight' around so lightly. I take it you know a great deal about knighthood."
"More than that monster, yes. I am a knight myself."
"Then you know the knightly code as well."
Najin slipped his fingers into the gap between wrist and glove. With a sharp flick he pulled the glove free and held it as he spoke.
"Insults are washed away in a duel. Honor and pride are proven by the sword. I seem to have been insulted, so I will have to cleanse it. My ears feel filthy."
"Who do you think you are?"
"This knight's disciple. A squire, more or less."
At Najin's answer the Helmeted Knight drew a sharp breath.
He had taught Najin the sword and countless other things, yet he had never once called himself a master. Najin understood the reaction perfectly.
He thinks he doesn't deserve it. That he has no right to teach anyone anything.
But Najin regarded the Helmeted Knight as his master. He had learned a great deal from him. He had sought instruction and received it. That already made the Helmeted Knight his master. And when a master is insulted, remaining silent is not the duty of a disciple.
Slap!
The glove Najin threw struck the ground with a sharp sound.
"Najin."
"What is this supposed to mean?"
"What other meaning does throwing a glove have? It's a challenge to a duel."
Clang! Having given his name, Najin roughly drew his sword. Expecting an immediate charge, Bernstein reflexively drew his own—but instead of rushing in, Najin simply stood there and laughed at him.
"Don't you know the code? When one side gives a name, the other must answer with his own. Drawing a sword without even stating your name—are you a knight or not?"
Grind. Bernstein clenched his teeth.
"A brat with a clever tongue."
"So? Your name?"
"Bernstein. Bernstein of the Royal Guard, the Imperial Blade."
Najin and Bernstein leveled their swords at each other.
"I'll break that arrogant nose of yours."
"Talk is cheap."
Najin adjusted his grip with a fluid twist and settled into his stance.
"I'll tear that mouth of yours open."
Talk alone accomplished nothing.
Najin had no intention of stopping at words. He meant to move his body and make good on every syllable. And so he swung his sword straight at Bernstein's jaw.
It was a clean strike—clean enough that the watching Helmeted Knight almost let out a sound of admiration.