A Light That Should Not Be Taken (3)
A proposal—and a threat.
Ivan looked upon his old senior.
Once they had stood on the same battlefield. Now the man before him was a knight who had betrayed Atanga and bent the knee to the will of a god. Ivan wanted to roar at him—how dare you speak the name of Atanga when you have cast aside both honor and pride?—but he knew he could not.
He was no longer a knight of Atanga either.
He had lost his honor on that day ten years ago.
"His Eminence wishes this matter resolved as quickly and as quietly as possible. For now the other Constellations and the rival Churches have yet to notice… but there is no guarantee that will last forever."
Whether Berlo sensed Ivan's feelings or not, he pressed on without pause.
"Time is short, Ivan."
He raised three fingers before Ivan's face.
"I will give you three days. Within that time, bring him before me—alive or dead."
"…Sir Berlo."
Ivan, who had remained silent until then, finally spoke.
Even on his knees, even with only one eye, clear fury burned in Ivan's gaze.
"Is the Church not a place that venerates the stars?"
"I do not recall granting you leave to ask questions."
"To respect and protect the will of the great stars is the doctrine of the Church, is it not—"
Ivan never finished the sentence.
Berlo's boot caught him square on the chin.
A dull crack rang out as Ivan's head snapped sideways.
"Hey. Ivan."
Berlo seized a fistful of Ivan's hair.
"I show you consideration out of old affection, and you take me for a fool? A sinner who has blasphemed the will of the stars, lecturing a knight of the Church on what that will means? Get a grip, old friend."
Berlo dragged a hand down his own face as if the whole exchange exhausted him.
"Know your place. If you keep trampling the favor I have offered you like this, we are going to have a problem."
"…I misspoke."
"That's better. Now we are finally seeing eye to eye."
Ivan bowed his head. Berlo kept his own raised, looking down upon him.
"Not a single Constellation has grasped this situation. Even the Lighthouse that Illuminates All Creation—the sovereign deity of the Holy Light Church—cannot comprehend what is happening right now."
Do you understand what that means?
Berlo continued as if posing the question himself.
"It means this is a clear error. If even the Lighthouse has failed to notice, then this is something that should never have occurred. And when something that should never have occurred does occur, making it as though it never happened is the loyalty we offer Him."
Every star was to be held as noble and sacred—that was the virtue of any church that served the stars. Yet even within that virtue, a clear order of precedence existed.
The Constellation. The Lighthouse that Illuminates All Creation.
Berlo ran his fingers over the armor engraved with the constellation of the Holy Light Church's sovereign deity.
"I will not say this twice, Ivan."
Berlo fixed him with a hard stare.
"I swear upon the loyalty I have pledged to the great Lighthouse. The offer I have made you in this place will be honored without fail. This is not a proposal from Berlo the man, but from Berlo the knight of the Holy Light Church."
A knight who had chosen a god over honor and pride.
Such a man had sworn upon his fealty to that god—the heaviest oath Berlo was capable of making. Ivan knew that to refuse it meant having his head struck from his shoulders on the spot.
"…I am grateful for an opportunity beyond my station, and I will do everything in my power."
Ivan lowered his head.
His brow did not quite touch the ground. That was the last of his pride—until Berlo's hand came down on the back of his skull and pressed.
"This is how one expresses gratitude."
Ivan's forehead met the earth.
Berlo's whisper brushed his ear.
"Move at once. Before my patience runs out."
Outside, Ivan pinched a cigarette from its pack.
He lit it and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. The face that exhaled the murky cloud was set hard as stone.
I will help restore you as a knight of Atanga.
I will see that you reclaim the honor you lost.
That was the offer Berlo—once a knight of Atanga—had laid before him.
Ivan knew the truth of it, of course. A knight's honor was not something that could be recovered by such means. Dive into a mud pit of schemes and calculated gains and losses, and the only thing you could haul out was filthy power.
That was not what he wanted. Honor obtained that way was worthless to Ivan.
And yet he had been unable to refuse Berlo's proposal, because of a desire common to every living human being: the will to live. Unlike Oppen, Ivan still clung to a residual attachment to his own life.
I cannot die yet. I want to live a little longer.
In this underground city where no starlight ever reached.
He did not want to meet his end as a half-ruined knight who had lost both an eye and his honor. If he survived, perhaps another chance would come someday. That was what Ivan told himself.
He had to kill Najin.
Only by killing him could Ivan himself survive.
Beneath that simple, merciless proposition, Ivan chain-smoked. In the murky glow of the mineral lamps, his remaining eye clouded over.
"Hah…"
The knight within him asked the question.
Is there any meaning left in such a squalid life?
Ivan answered it.
Even so, I still want to live.
Every person puts their own life first. Beneath the approach of death, a human being can become selfish and cruel without limit. Ivan was no exception.
No exception—and yet.
Ivan could not bring himself to take the next step. He locked eyes with Oppen emerging from an alley, and even knowing the man had helped Najin, he did not move at once.
Just a little.
Just a little longer.
Ivan pinched out another cigarette, lit it, and breathed out the smoke. He did not take a single step until every cigarette in the pack had burned down to ash.
2.
The Church's hunting dogs—the Shadow Unit.
Those who belonged to it had never become knights, yet they stood close enough to the rank. They could not draw forth sword aura, but in the handling of mana they were a match for any knight. They were less knights than rangers.
Ambush. Infiltration. Pursuit. Assassination.
The Shadow Unit specialized in precisely such dirty work. Bound by a vow of silence so that word of this affair would never leak, they had scattered through the city to track the boy.
It had been a full day since the boy who drew the sword had fled.
He did not know the subterranean city's layout, and a full day of head start was a considerable gap—yet the men of the Shadow Unit did not regard it as an obstacle at all. This was only some back-alley youth who had never received proper training.
The fact that he had drawn the holy sword was unusual, true.
But that was all it was.
If anything, should the boy use the holy sword upon contact, that would be the end of him. The moment that light erupted, every scattered agent of the Shadow Unit would converge on the spot. Therefore: make contact, and force a fight.
Operating under that judgment, the pursuers moved alone.
"…"
One of them, gliding through a narrow alley with his presence erased, narrowed his eyes. He had sensed a living presence deeper in. Following it, he advanced step by careful step.
Clear footprints marked the ground—footprints the size a boy might leave.
He was tracking them when a sharp footfall rang through the alley. Had the quarry noticed the pursuit? He kicked off the ground and sprinted toward the sound.
But when he arrived, all that waited for him was a pair of ownerless shoes, as though someone had flung them down from above. Only then did the pursuer grasp the true nature of the noise that had just echoed.
The shoes were bait.
The true target was his life.
He yanked his blade free and slashed upward. Only his already-honed senses made the reaction possible. Metal screamed against metal—clang!—as the blades met.
Najin, who had dropped from above in an ambush, landed in a sliding crouch upon the ground.
In the darkness pooling through the alley, the boy's sunset-colored eyes glinted with an ominous light. A chill ran through the pursuer; he drew up his mana and sharpened every sense. For a single heartbeat those gleaming eyes in the dark seemed to waver.
Tap!
The sound of a foot striking earth—and the boy's form vanished. A blade flashed out of the darkness, driving straight for the throat. The pursuer barely managed to bat it aside with a ringing clash and forced distance between them.
Not especially fast—but threatening.
This was not the work of someone who had cut down only one or two men.
He lacked the exceptional speed of those who wielded mana properly, yet he was a nuisance all the same; his knack for slipping into the blind spots of vision was more than competent.
…Tch.
Clicking his tongue, the pursuer closed the distance this time. He swept his sword in deliberately wide arcs, driving the boy back, then flicked a concealed weapon from his sleeve and hurled it.
A black throwing blade.
In the dark, only a Shadow Unit agent trained for such sight could have tracked it with the eye. He already pictured it piercing the retreating boy's throat—
Until a sharp snap.
Najin snatched the flying blade out of the air with his bare hand.
Having spent his entire life in the lightless underground city, Najin was, of course, perfectly at home in the dark. He flung the captured blade back at the pursuer and kicked off the ground in the same motion.
Hide your full strength.
In the one necessary moment, move just once—fast.
That is what creates complacency. That is what creates an opening.
The flow settled into the boy's body.
For an instant, his frame accelerated.
By the time the startled pursuer knocked the throwing blade aside, Najin was already inside his guard. The unexpected burst of speed delayed the man's reaction, and Najin did not miss the gap.
A wet shearing sound.
The pursuer's arm was severed. His eyes flew wide; he tried to swing his sword with the arm that remained—only for Najin's hand to clamp around his wrist.
Once you have the initiative, do not let go.
Following Ivan's teaching, Najin yanked the seized wrist. He dragged the man off-balance and swept his blade across the throat. That was the end of it. Najin hauled the limp corpse in the opposite direction from the path he meant to take.
Something he had learned from the mercenary Oppen:
blood trails make excellent bait.
Putting every lesson he had been given to use, Najin moved on. Quite a number of pursuers were still on his trail, and he instinctively knew that heading straight for his destination would be dangerous.
…If they discover where I am going,
they will pour in after me.
So for a while, he would wander—as though he had no destination at all, as though he were merely diving from one hiding place to the next. To sell that illusion, he needed to find and kill one more pursuer.
Judgment had to be swift.
Movement had to be swifter still.
With the taut focus of a man walking a tightrope, Najin kicked off the alley walls and ran. Not a single mistake could be allowed. That, too, was a teaching Oppen and Ivan had left him.
Found him.
Najin located a pursuer operating nearby.
The distances between the agents of the Shadow Unit were regular—they drew apart and closed in again at fixed intervals. Confirming that pattern, Najin waited until the gap had grown wide enough.
The Shadow Unit's hunters believed they were the ones chasing prey.
In truth, it was the other way around.
The boy was hunting his pursuers.
3.
"…Four of them have fallen?"
A day and a half after the boy's escape, Berlo frowned at the report. Four confirmed dead—with the possibility of more—was enough to startle even him.
They may never have become knights, but the pursuers of the Shadow Unit were never opponents to be taken lightly.
At the very least, they were not the sort of people a boy from this underground city, without proper training, should have been able to handle. Berlo already knew from the gathered intelligence that the boy had been called Ivan's hunting dog and had served as the organization's executioner…
But this was wrong.
It went far beyond mere proficiency at killing people.
Familiarity with the terrain and the advantage of ambush might allow someone to kill one by luck. Killing four, however, was no longer something that could be dismissed as fortune.
Worse, the locations where the Shadow Unit corpses had been found made it clear: the boy had not simply been fleeing and fending off those who chased him. He had gone looking for them and cut them down.
"Looks like I am dealing with a little lunatic."
While being pursued… he was hunting his pursuers?
Berlo let out a short, incredulous laugh. He had expected talent when he heard the boy had drawn Excalibur, but this was no longer the level of mere talent.
There was polish here.
The boy had already stepped outside the category of a greenhorn simply being dragged along by raw gift.
Originally Berlo had intended to wait until the distance closed sufficiently, or until the boy drew Excalibur and the light gave him away. Now it seemed he would have to move himself. He rose from his seat and put a question to his subordinate.
"Where is Ivan?"
"Moving alone, my lord. Ah—and also…"
The man indicated the door.
"There is someone who wishes an audience with Sir Berlo. He introduces himself as a mercenary, and says that for an appropriate price he is willing to assist with the matter."
"…A mercenary?"
"Yes. From the look of him, he was the captain of a mercenary company before he fell down here."
A mercenary. A mercenary, was it.
A blade that moved for coin and power—easier to handle than almost anything else. Berlo jerked his chin.
"Send him in."
Presently the door opened.
Through it came a man steeped in alcohol. A figure with an infinitely light, careless air bowed his head toward Berlo.
"Mercenary Oppen, at your service."
If you have work for me, just say the word.