Of the Valiant and the Ridiculous (4)
It goes without saying that becoming a knight is hard.
Though Alonso Quijano—our ingenious gentleman Don Quixote—had borrowed his family name and pinned a knighthood on himself with ease… if you asked whether that made him a real knight, most people would shake their heads.
That was a problem that came before any talk of his character or his deeds.
Not every strong man becomes a knight, yet a certain baseline of martial power is indispensable to one. And Don Quixote was weak.
Weak enough that he would have struggled even against the riffraff of the back alleys, let alone against another knight. Of course he was. From the age of nine he had shut himself in his room and not set foot outside for more than a decade.
From nine to nineteen.
Among warriors that span is called the golden age—the years when body and mana both explode toward their limits. Don Quixote had spent the whole of it locked away, reading fairy tales.
He missed his window.
It’s far too late.
He’ll never amount to much as a knight.
When a man past twenty suddenly announced he meant to become a knight, no one expected him to become a great one.
“Who says you have to be a child to dream?”
Don Quixote laughed.
“Just watch, Sancho.”
Laughing, he took his squire and set out on adventure.
“Watch how far I can climb.”
A day, a week, a month, several months, a year…
Four years passed.
In a mere four years after first taking up a lance, Don Quixote reached the rank of Expert. He had finally acquired the minimum force that would let anyone looking at him call him a knight.
Another decade and more after that.
At the age of thirty-four Don Quixote stepped into the realm of the Seeker. Only fourteen years had gone by since the day he left his room with a lance in hand.
“Come, Sancho! Today we shall again drive off the giants that threaten Quijano’s lands and sing for our lady!”
Don Quixote was a genius. Not of technique, not of combat sense, not of martial art—his brilliance shone in the Mindscape. His Mindscape was as firm and overflowing with self as any Transcendent’s.
To believe in oneself is the shortest road to transcendence.
Don Quixote possessed a conviction more absolute than anything else. He believed in himself. He believed in his dream, and he was certain that one day his delusions would become reality.
“I am Quixote.”
Don Quixote raised his lance.
“The ingenious gentleman of Quijano—Don Quixote!”
He ran looking only forward. Before long no one dared laugh at his charges. His lance now shattered windmills with ease; it truly broke the legs of giants and pierced demons through.
“What’s that? A black mage has stolen your daughter? An unforgivable crime. But never fear—Don Quixote of Quijano never leaves evil unpunished!”
The ridiculous knight who had once charged flocks of sheep was now charging black mages.
“Come, demon. I, Don Quixote, shall face you.”
He won against demons.
“Do not weep, good people. Your daughter has returned safe and sound. Is that not cause for joy? Smile rather than shed tears of gratitude. A smiling face is far better, is it not?”
On every road he never lost his laugh.
“Uwahahahaha!”
There came a time when Don Quixote no longer needed to push up the corners of his mouth with his thumb. The laughter rose of its own accord. The man who had once forced smiles to endure pain could now laugh because he was truly happy.
“Let us win more glory for our lady today, Sancho.”
“Who exactly is this lady of yours, master?”
“Who else? Dulcinea. Ah—Dulcinea, the most beautiful woman in the world, is my lady!”
“Does she actually exist?”
“This fellow knows nothing of the true savor of travel.”
And always at his side was Sancho. Even after more than a decade Don Quixote still looked awkward in armor and remained clumsy in a hundred little ways.
Sancho attended him through it all.
In place of the young master who knew nothing of the world, Sancho punished the merchants who tried to swindle Don Quixote, sometimes negotiated with them, and sometimes used them.
“If it weren’t for me, master, what would you have done?”
“I am always grateful to you, Sancho.”
“If you’re grateful, keep the promise you made.”
“Of course! A knight never breaks his word.”
On the very first day of their journey Don Quixote had promised Sancho: if you leave with me and help me fulfill my dream, I shall surely reward you.
“When I win a fief through my deeds, you shall be its lord without fail, Sancho.”
In truth it had long since become an empty promise.
By now either of them could have claimed a fief whenever he wished; they had earned that much renown. Yet Sancho stayed on the road with Don Quixote.
“Let’s go, master.”
Somewhere along the way he had come to enjoy these ridiculous adventures. The promise was only an excuse.
“Master.”
“Yes, Sancho?”
From time to time Sancho would ask.
“That dream you spoke of—have you fulfilled it?”
Have you fulfilled your dream? At the question Don Quixote laughed, and always gave the same answer.
“Not yet.”
“Still?”
“Is the world not still dull? There is too little laughter in it—far too little. It must become a little more joyful. For that alone, must we not keep running harder?”
Don Quixote takes up his lance again today.
Today he laughs again.
For those somewhere in the world who cannot laugh, Don Quixote made himself the jester. Ridiculous and ungainly, yet impossible to hate, he burst into that hearty laughter and continued his adventures.
Adventures that seemed as though they would never end.
But everything has an end.
“Please.”
Don Quixote’s adventures met a sudden close one day.
“Uncle, please!”
The fief burned to nothing. It was the work of a witch.
Those who had cheered his adventures, the mercenaries who had laughed and shouted at his tales, the farmers who had held out a cup saying “A drop of apple juice before you ride, master!”—every one of them was reduced to a handful of ash.
Someone seized Don Quixote by the collar amid the burned ruins and dragged the man who had resolved to live as a figure from fairy tales back into reality.
“Please face reality! How long do you mean to drown in those old children’s stories that even little ones mock? The fief has burned. If we, the knights of this land, do not take revenge, who will avenge them?”
Anton Quijano.
“Wake up from that damned La Mancha, those damned fairy tales, those damned, those damned delusional fantasies of yours! Look at reality, Uncle. Everyone is dead. Everyone!”
Ash.
“Hah. Do as you like. If you want to wander looking for a land that doesn’t even exist, I won’t stop you. But I cannot. I will have my revenge. Someone has to settle their grudge.”
The stench of burning, hatred, and a twisted face.
“······.”
Don Quixote—no.
Alonso Quijano’s expression hardened to stone.
He pushed the corner of his mouth up with his thumb.
The smile that resulted was awkward.
The years Najin spent as Don Quixote’s squire flashed past before his eyes—like a brief summary of plot and prior knowledge offered before the real play begins.
In an instant more than forty years raced by.
Then the rushing time recovered its proper speed. It was the moment Quijano’s fief had turned to ash. As though the play itself were only now beginning.
So this is the incident Anton spoke of.
Najin already knew the story; Anton Quijano had told it. The day a witch burned the entire Quijano fief to the ground. At that same hour the man called Sancho was waiting for Don Quixote outside the lands.
They had promised the next adventure.
But a day passed, then two, and Don Quixote never appeared at the meeting place. So Sancho made for Quijano’s lands, and there he met Don Quixote trudging out of the ashes.
“······.”
His face was set hard as stone. The Don Quixote who had always worn a smile was nowhere to be found. Only Alonso Quijano walked, heavy and exhausted.
That was the prologue of the story.
Through the prologue Najin had moved as one with Sancho. He followed the fixed plot; every line he spoke and every gesture he made was quietly rewritten to fit it.
But.
Najin clenched his hand and opened it again.
He let out a long breath and moved his body.
Not now.
His body moved naturally. Time had returned to its proper pace. He could not break free of the plot entirely, yet a certain freedom seemed permitted.
Najin checked himself over.
Through the past that had rushed past he had come to understand the man called Sancho—his way of thinking, his habits, his history, his background. Yet what Najin fixed on now was Sancho’s martial strength.
They called Don Quixote a genius, but…
In Najin’s eyes Sancho was no less a genius. Sancho had never aged a day. He had always walked beside Don Quixote in the shape of a boy squire.
Forty years and more of travel with Don Quixote.
That meant it was not only Don Quixote who had grown. Najin slowly closed his eyes and opened them again.
“Master.”
He opened the eyes he had shut.
“Master Don Quixote.”
Najin did not call him Alonso. He called the man who had become Alonso Quijano by the name Don Quixote. Alonso slowly raised his head.
“······.”
His expression was still rigid as stone.
Najin was silent a moment.
Even though the years had flashed by, the adventures with Don Quixote remained in Najin’s mind; he knew exactly what sort of man Don Quixote was.
Don Quixote was not simply a delusional madman.
He dressed himself in laughter and dreamed, yet he lived with both feet planted in reality. If he had truly been insane he would have laughed even in this tragedy; Don Quixote was no such madman.
“Sancho.”
Alonso Quijano spoke.
“What should I have done?”
He asked the question.
“Would it have been right to follow Anton? To avenge my friends and family? I do not know. Revenge is like a fierce fire that burns everything. I do not want my story to become a revenge play.”
He groaned.
“Don Quixote’s story must not be that. It must be joyful. It must never become a wretched, sticky, sorrowful revenge play. But the story of Alonso Quijano… the story of Alonso, knight of House Quijano, must be a revenge play.”
Alonso was tormented.
“What am I to do, Sancho?”
The stage no longer told Najin what answer Sancho had given. Yet Najin knew. He knew what Sancho would have said here.
“What do you wish to do, master?”
Sancho only ever asked questions.
As he had on every adventure.
“I…”
Alonso looked at the jar in his hands. The jar that held the ashes he had gathered of those who had burned—a kind of urn. Staring at it, Alonso forced the words out.
“I want to take them with me.”
“Where to?”
“To heaven.”
“Is there a heaven?”
“There will be. Somewhere in the Outer Land.”
Is that so, Najin answered.
“Then.”
Najin lifted the bag packed full of their belongings.
“We must go. To heaven.”
“······.”
“Why do you look at me like that, master? The road is long, is it not?”
“You mean to follow me, Sancho?”
At the question Najin shrugged.
“I still haven’t received my fief from you, have I?”
“That is…”
“Heaven ought to have plenty of land, yes?”
“······It will. Certainly. Enough for everyone to rest.”
“Then cut me a little piece of that land.”
“······.”
After a silence Alonso gave a bitter smile.
“I shall.”
Najin snorted a soft laugh.
“I can’t miss the chance to become a lord in heaven.”
Let’s go, master.
The road to heaven without a map.
—By the way, do you two even know where La Mancha is?
No? Not a clue.
Naturally neither Najin nor Don Quixote knew the way. The two of them were simply heading for the Outer Land. To their guide the situation looked thoroughly hopeless; Merlin let out a sigh.
—A directionally challenged knight and a pack-mule squire. If those two ever actually reach heaven, that would be a comedy in its own right.
Be that as it may, Najin simply walked. While they walked Alonso said nothing. He still had not found his laughter again. Well—the memory of an entire fief burning would be vivid enough.
They walked, and walked again.
Walking like that, they arrived before they knew it at the boundary between the Outer Land and the Continent. There a last rest stop waited for those about to cross into the Outer Land. A tavern that looked like the Last Tavern, the Final Tavern, the Boundary Tavern.
“Let’s rest a little here, master.”
There Najin and Don Quixote took a short rest. While they were easing their weariness with cool water, someone slid in between them.
“A knight and his squire—now there’s an unusual pair. Where are you two bound?”
A middle-aged man. He casually picked food from the dishes laid on their table and struck up conversation.
“The Outer Land is harsh. You’ll need a guide, no question. I don’t know how well the squire friend here knows the roads, but setting out into the Outer Land without a seasoned guide is truly hard work. Monsters—and things more monstrous than monsters, the dead—swarm out there.”
There was an unplaceable force in the man’s words.
Najin and Don Quixote found themselves listening to the easy flow of his voice.
“So here’s my suggestion.”
The man snapped his fingers with a sharp click.
“Why not hire me?”
“Hire?”
“Yes. The fee… a mug of beer should do. I’m thirsty, you see. Throw in a bowl of stew and even better. How about it? The chance to hire a talent like me for a single beer doesn’t come along often.”
To the man spinning his patter, Najin asked who he was.
The man shrugged and answered.
“Rocinante.”
The man who introduced himself as Rocinante twisted the corner of his mouth upward.
“The finest guide in the Outer Land, and an adventurer who has spent ages searching for Mysteries that vanished tens of thousands of years ago.”