Imperial First Horn (1)
The moments that set the course of a life arrive without warning. There is no omen, no context. Such a moment comes to everyone, and the old man who had climbed to the summit of the empire was no exception.
You're using a sword that doesn't even fit you.
Don't, kid.
Keep thrashing around like that and you'll lose your head in a heartbeat.
At the sudden recollection, Gerd's hands stilled on the blade he had been polishing. In silence, he looked down at the sword resting across his knees.
A single sword, engraved with the emblem of the First Horn.
It was the blade his master had given him in boyhood. What kind of scrap is that? his master had said, tossing him a spare from the knight order's stores. At the time it had been nothing more than a sturdy longsword with a reasonably keen edge.
It was nothing of the sort now.
Every blacksmith of note in the empire had poured their craft into reinforcing it, and among them had been more than a few master smiths of the Sword Church. The ordinary longsword had been remade into a peerless treasure, unmatched anywhere in the empire.
And yet its essence remained that of a longsword.
It remained the sword his master had thrown to him.
Gerd studied his face reflected in the blade. The boy who had once held this sword for the first time, bright with joy, was nowhere to be found. That boy had grown into a youth, then a man in his prime, and now into an old man.
What stared back from the steel was a man aged to the bone.
…A great deal of time had passed.
No one could dismiss the old man any longer. He had risen to the empire's peak, and even the emperor himself deferred to his authority. There was nowhere higher left to climb.
The Imperial First Horn.
The boy become an old man had reached the same station as his master. Looking at the well-polished sword, he thought he could finally understand something of what his master had felt, what purpose had moved him, when he entrusted the empire to a pupil. The old man smiled, bitter and thin.
Erosion might have worn his feelings down to the nub.
But before a sword, he was still that boy.
The boy gazed into the steel and remembered. The moment that had fixed the direction of his life. The day he first closed his hand around this blade. A day two hundred years gone.
It was an age of chaos.
Wars large and small raged across the Continent. The empire reeled from within and without — demons and fallen stars spilling endlessly from the Outer Land, allied nations pressing their attacks, rebellions flaring inside the borders.
A true age of turmoil.
The snowball had begun rolling under the previous emperor and the one before him, gathering mass until it could no longer be stopped, and the result was this ungovernable chaos. And chaos, as ever, gave birth to heroes.
Troubled times make heroes.
The hero's name was Alderan Basaglia.
With the knights who followed him, he crossed the entire Continent. Wearing a gold-horned helm, he took the van, banners streaming, riding faster than any other. He quelled the Continent's unrest and brought the wars to an end.
Decades of chaos ended at his hand, and on ground soaked in blood he laid the foundation for new growth.
Into that age, Gerd was born.
The world was still in upheaval. The chaos was ebbing swiftly, but swathes of the Continent remained engulfed in the aftermath of war. The village of Gerd's birth was one such place.
"…"
In a village reduced to ash, Gerd stared at his father's corpse. He had not been a good father. More often a fist than a hand on his son's head; more often a shout than a word of love.
Even so.
He had fulfilled a parent's duty.
In his final moment he had swung a sword to buy his son time to hide, and died for it. From the body of his fallen father, Gerd took the blade.
How was he supposed to live now?
He did not know. The path ahead was blank. But he knew what he had to do simply to survive the day. Still a child, Gerd took up a sword and went to war as a mercenary. He was barely twelve.
The boy soldier lived long enough to turn sixteen.
He had a modest talent for it, most likely. The children without any were corpses before a month had passed. Even those corpses were frequently put to use by necromancers, so he often met faces from his childhood again on the battlefield.
He swung a sword, and swung it again.
Living that way, something like technique took shape. He began to understand how a blade ought to move, and how to handle the thing called mana. By then, Gerd had become a mercenary of some repute.
He was only eighteen.
And then, standing on a battlefield as he had on so many ordinary days, Gerd met a wall. On a field overrun by a demon contractor, he was forced to understand that every skill he had built meant nothing.
His sword broke. The armor he had scraped and saved to buy tore like paper. The moment that bastard's sword-light so much as brushed him, his body would end up the same way.
Certain of his death, Gerd looked up —
And a flash.
The man arrived like lightning. There was no other word for it. A streak of light slammed down from the sky onto the earth. Gerd had no way of knowing that the figure had leapt dozens of meters, landed, and driven a sword down in the same motion.
The demon contractor Gerd had felt as an impassable wall died in a single stroke.
"Hah."
A knight stood on ground spattered with demon blood. He wore a gold-horned helm. Even Gerd had heard the rumors of this man.
The empire's hero — Alderan Basaglia.
With a metallic scrape he pulled the helm free and looked at Gerd. The face was more approachable than expected. Not handsome so much as rough-hewn. Scratching at an untidy beard, he clicked his tongue.
"Well, look at this one."
He laughed, half in disbelief.
"You're using a sword that doesn't even fit you."
He came close and sank to one knee in front of Gerd, then rapped his knuckles lightly against the forehead of the boy sprawled flat on the ground.
"Don't, kid. Keep thrashing around like that and you'll lose your head in a heartbeat."
"Is there something wrong with my sword?"
"Wrong? There's nothing about it that isn't. I don't know who taught you, but it's pure garbage. Just charging in and stabbing — you call that swordsmanship?"
"If you stab first, you win."
"Ha. Mouthy little bastard, aren't you."
Alderan poured a potion over Gerd's forehead — the kind of high-grade elixir Gerd might have bought one bottle of after months of battlefield work, if he was lucky.
As Gerd blinked, Alderan jerked his chin.
The meaning was plain: take up the sword and come at him. Gerd did. Broken blade in hand, he threw himself at Alderan.
And then — thud.
The next instant Gerd was face-down in the dirt. The man had not moved particularly fast, nor had he hurled him with some impossible strength. He had simply swung at the same speed as Gerd himself.
"See?"
Alderan stood at a lazy tilt, sword hooked over one shoulder. For the empire's hero, he looked remarkably casual.
"Pathetic, right? Your swordsmanship is trash."
"Unlike you, my lord, I never had anyone to learn from. All I ever saw was mercenaries hacking at each other."
"You know who I am?"
"You're the empire's hero, aren't you?"
"Well. True enough."
He rubbed his chin, thoughtful.
"So if you saw it done properly, you could learn it — that what you're saying?"
"Yes."
"Awfully sure of yourself. Well… my style isn't exactly the kind you teach other people, but it's still better than that mess of yours."
Gerd had no way of knowing it, but Alderan rather liked the insolent little brat in front of him. The ones without manners usually had the talent. They had to — without talent, a lack of manners got you killed nine times out of ten.
Conversely, surviving to that age while being that rude meant the boy had ability enough. And Alderan, whose hobby was thrashing the manners out of talented brats and packing them into his knight order, smiled and lifted his sword.
"Fine. I'll teach you."
Alderan raised the blade.
Before the lesson, though, there were nuisances to clear away. Toward the beasts pouring in from the distance, he swung with almost casual ease.
A soft cutting sound.
In that instant the horizon split on a slant. Dust and earth erupted, and hundreds of beasts were butchered in a single stroke. As Gerd's eyes went wide, Alderan grinned.
"That… sword style."
The question left Gerd before he could think.
"What is it called?"
Alderan answered.
The Triumphant Sword.
Alderan Basaglia never taught his sword to anyone. He did not consider it a style worth teaching, and even if he tried, he did not believe anyone could learn it.
So teaching Gerd had been, perhaps, nothing more than a whim of Alderan's.
A whim to try raising a single disciple.
The master-and-pupil bond began on a whim, but Alderan had no intention of being a half-measure of a teacher. He taught Gerd more than the sword — he taught him how to live.
"Oi. Tch."
Who reaches for their utensils before their master, who is as the sky itself? You're barely a person yet — we'll start by making you into one. Dragging Gerd along, Alderan drilled manners into him.
In other words, he beat the attitude out of him.
Most of that instruction was delivered by way of a scabbard, and so Gerd effectively had two masters: one was the longsword, and the other was the longsword's sheath, which taught etiquette.
"Master."
"Since when am I your master."
Alderan never stopped denying the title, but everyone regarded Gerd as Alderan's disciple all the same.
"So, Gerd. Learn anything today?"
The knights of the Golden Horn Knights treated Gerd as their youngest, and every one of them passed on bits of hard-won wisdom about surviving in the world. It was not simple pity for a boy forced to take up a sword so young.
Every last one of them had been forced to take up a sword young.
It was kinship. In Gerd they glimpsed their own pasts, and so they gave him the warmth they themselves had once longed for. They were good teachers, and older brothers, and fathers, and family.
"Gerd. I hope the day comes soon when you can learn the Ramming as well. When it does, I will teach it to you myself."
"Don't, Kruenbel. Who said this brat was joining the Golden Horn Knights? You don't put a soft little greenhorn into the strongest knight order on the Continent."
"Haha. You don't mean a word of that, Commander."
And so time flowed on.
"…"
"Commander."
"I know, Kruenbel."
As the chaos was finally settling, the Dawn War erupted.
Alderan, who had been preparing to leave for the Outer Land, dragged his eroding body to that war. He went to end, with his own hands, the lover who had become the heart of the rebellion.
"Gerd."
"Yes, Master."
"This is the final lesson."
Alderan Basaglia told Gerd to follow, and rode out. At the return of the empire's hero — a man the world believed had already departed for the Outer Land — the rebel army collapsed almost at once.
He struck like lightning.
He raced across the Continent like a storm.
When the banner of the Imperial First Horn, which existed for him alone, streamed in the wind, he shone brighter than anyone. Watching the back of the hero who had driven an age, Gerd yearned after him. Chasing that back, Gerd ran and ran.
"Life," Alderan said,
In the end he killed Serena Pendragon, the ringleader who had raised the rebellion. But his face did not look especially free. With a bitter expression he dropped down to sit heavily beside Gerd.
"…is nothing but weighing the scales. Choosing what to keep, what to throw away — you have to wrestle with it without rest. The world is a bastard that way. It never stops throwing questions at you."
He let out a long breath.
"Gerd."
"Yes, Master."
The usual answer — I'm not your master — did not come. Instead Alderan snorted a laugh and shoved Gerd's head down with a firm hand.
"Your moments of choice will come too. They'll come whether you want them or not. That's how life works."
So, he said,
"Live well, without regrets. I don't know if I taught you properly, but I think I've taught you everything I could."
"…"
"The leader of the traitors is dead. They'll lose their center and scatter. I'd love to sweep the rest of them myself, but I don't have the time."
He had already overstayed any term he could safely remain on the Continent.
Looking down at his own eroding hand, Alderan spoke.
"So."
He stood.
And pointed at Gerd.
"You do it."
"Me, sir?"
"That's right. Your turn."
The last teaching.
Perhaps a request left behind as a master.
"The empire I protected — this time, you protect it."
That day, in that moment, the direction of Gerd's life was decided.
"And when enough time has passed, when you've grown as old as you need to be, come find me in the Outer Land. Not too soon. A hundred years? A hundred and fifty? That ought to do it."
Alderan Basaglia grinned.
"I'll grade you then. If you haven't kept the empire well, you'd better be ready to get beaten half to death that day. Understood?"
Alderan mimed swinging a scabbard.
At the sight, Gerd answered with a smile.
"Yes. I'll keep it to heart."
"Good. Well…"
Alderan Basaglia waved as he left.
"Give it everything you've got. And if you can manage it, it'd be nice if you showed up flying the banner of the Imperial First Horn."
That was the last image of his master that Gerd remembered. Not long after, every record of Alderan was erased from the world.
Gerd opened his eyes from the memory.
In the dream he had been a boy; in the waking world he was an old man. Staring at his aged reflection in the longsword, Gerd slid the blade home into its scabbard with a metallic click.
A hundred and fifty years had passed.
The reckless boy had become an old man.
He had become a Sword Master.
And just as his master had hoped, he had become the Imperial First Horn.
"At last I can hear your answer, Master."
Gerd settled the banner of the First Horn across his shoulder.
It was time to go and receive the grading he had deferred for a hundred and fifty years.