Moonlit Escape (2)
The knights of House Arvenia pressed deeper into the forest, thrashing through undergrowth as they continued the pursuit. The sun had already climbed high into the sky, yet they had found no proper trail.
Perhaps that was only natural.
They had no information to aid the chase at all.
They had never so much as glimpsed the intruder’s face—not even a silhouette or outline. As if a ghost had come and gone, the villa held not a single clue by which to deduce the trespasser. All they could guess was that the invader was a skilled ranger, or someone of comparable talent.
That guess brought little comfort.
A ranger capable of concealing his presence from knights would be fiendishly hard to catch once he committed to flight. The only consolation was that their quarry was dragging along a hostage with an injured ankle.
He can’t have gotten far.
Palaison, a knight of the ducal house, pushed deeper into the woods. This was the forest one had to cross to reach Cambria, the City of Opportunity. To detour around it would take far too long.
The target would almost certainly try to flee toward Cambria, so the odds were high he would pass through—or try to force his way through—this choke point. That was why Palaison and several other knights were combing the forest as thoroughly as if hunting rats.
The Knight Commander has already cut across the forest with the First Pursuit Squad and pushed ahead. If he outruns the quarry and seals the path…
His own role was to find tracks and block the retreat.
Palaison did not forget that duty.
Even with the sun at its zenith, the dense canopy left the forest dim. He walked through the gloom.
He flinched.
Palaison stopped mid-stride. Eyes narrowing, he scanned the surroundings. No presence registered, yet his keenly honed instincts screamed a warning.
Something was near. Not a judgment founded on rational evidence—an animal cry of pure instinct.
Yet when he looked around, nothing showed itself. Only foliage swaying in the breeze, the rustle of fallen leaves, the cry of a bird. Had his instincts simply been wrong? They were wrong often enough. Just as that thought crossed his mind—
A shadow fell across his head.
His eyes flew wide and he snapped his gaze upward, hand flying to the sword at his hip. But in the instant he tried to draw, he saw it.
…A hem?
What fluttered overhead was a robe.
A discarded robe, flapping above him. The moment it stole his attention—
Thud!
The sound of something kicking off the ground rang in Palaison’s ears.
“…!”
He whipped his head toward the noise. By then it was already far too late. Stolen vision, delayed reaction—it created a fatal opening.
Just as Palaison tried to draw, Najin was already right in front of him.
Najin thrust both hands forward. His left hand went for Palaison’s face; his right for the sword half-drawn from its scabbard. Both hands achieved their purpose almost at once.
Thud! And then—clang!
Najin’s left hand clamped over Palaison’s eyes and seized his face. His right smashed the emerging blade back into its sheath. Ambush. Blinded vision. A sword that would not draw. Even so, Palaison reacted.
He was a well-trained knight, after all.
Palaison hauled up his mana and tried to throw off the attacker gripping his face. It was the best decision available to him—yet from the moment he allowed the ambush and lost his sight, the situation had already drifted far from any “best.”
Crunch.
Impact slammed into his leg. He heard plate buckle. A grip like it meant to crush his skull closed around his head. Pain, noise, the sensation of his body tilting—
Then—whump!
A dull blow to the back of his skull.
Palaison’s body spasmed briefly, but the punishment did not stop. Still blinded, something hammered his temple again and again. Shock after shock rattled his skull.
Crack. Crunch. Crunch…
The hand he thrust forward was knocked aside; the leg he tried to thrash with was pinned to the earth as if stomped. Reaction speed was different. Physical ability was different. In the pitch-black of his vision the attacker struck his temple over and over.
“Ghh…!”
No matter how well trained a knight he was, concentrated blows to the temple were more than flesh could endure. The moment he tried to groan, whatever had been battering his temple smashed his jaw. His mouth snapped shut and the scream cut off.
A brief blackout.
But even that did not last long.
“……!”
Sparks burst across the darkness; pain rode his spine and shook his brain until Palaison came to. He wanted to scream, yet something was stuffed in his mouth and no sound emerged. Something still covered his eyes, so he could make no sense of the situation.
Then the presence vanished. With hands that barely obeyed him, Palaison tore away whatever had covered his face and spat out the cloth gagging him.
“What the hell…?”
And he saw.
His greaves were utterly ruined, his ankle twisted at a grotesque angle. He could not move. The raw, throbbing pain made him groan.
“Is anyone—anyone there?!”
He shouted.
No answer came. Or rather—there was a sound. Crack. Crunch… the noise of something being struck, and a muffled scream.
Then—snap.
A chilling sound rolled through the forest.
Gritting his teeth, Palaison dragged himself across the ground on his palms. The sounds came from every direction.
After crawling a long while he reached the source and found… a knight whose plate armor had been completely crumpled and who was now impaled against a tree. Crawling a little farther revealed another knight foaming at the mouth and sprawled on the earth, and yet another clutching his ankle and screaming.
Including Palaison, four knights had been dispatched to this forest.
All four had shattered ankles.
Palaison’s face went paper-white.
Four knights, unable to mount any real resistance, had been taken apart one by one. Subdued and left with broken ankles. Meaning the attacker could have killed them easily—and chose not to.
“What in the world…?”
Gooseflesh rose.
Fear arrived together with bewilderment. Palaison and the other three could not understand why they had lost, or how they had been subdued.
It was not defeat by absolute disparity of realm.
From start to finish it felt as though they had been toyed with. Something stole their vision, they were ambushed, the first strike was allowed, and the openings created thereby were exploited until they were thoroughly crushed. They could not comprehend the sequence.
Reaction speed that surpassed a Sword Expert.
Eyes that read every motion and foresaw the next move.
The ability to draw up mana in an instant.
And the snap judgment to commit boldly without hesitation.
Possessing all of that, Najin already had no equal within the same realm—especially in a forest full of places to hide. Of course, the knights of the ducal house had no way of knowing that.
Dieta stared at Najin with an expression of pure disbelief.
“So you’re telling me you went and smashed four knights?”
“Yes. They were scouting the approaches to Cambria.”
“Why bother…? We’re not even going that way.”
“That’s exactly why.”
Najin kept vanishing with a casual “I’ll be right back,” only to return and announce that he had just finished wrecking knights somewhere far away.
“They can’t be certain of our destination, can they? They’ll assume the highest probability is that we’re heading back to Cambria.”
“Well… yes?”
“On top of that, they know neither our location nor what I look like. From the pursuers’ side it’s maddening. And I haven’t left any tracks.”
So he decided to sow even more confusion.
That was Najin’s answer.
“If the knights investigating the forest they thought we’d already passed through get taken down, what do you think they’ll conclude? ‘Are they still nearby? Are they this close? Is this direction definitely the one they’re fleeing?’”
Countless thoughts would swirl.
Every one of those guesses would suddenly have a reason. Or they might decide the whole thing was bait… yet nothing would be certain.
“They won’t be able to form a proper judgment. And it thins the pursuit force, so it’s a valid tactic.”
“Wait—just wait a second.”
Dieta cut him off.
“To pull that off… the conditions you’d need are ridiculous.”
She counted on her fingers, muttering.
Leave no trace at all. Never let the knights see his face or build, so as not to surrender that advantage. And on top of everything else, possess the ability to race back here from there at speed.
Each condition was absurd on its own. Yet the man who had supposedly met them all merely tilted his head.
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“Excuse me…?”
“I did exactly that, so don’t worry.”
He stated, as if it were nothing, that he had carried out the ambush while satisfying every single condition. Dieta exhaled in pure incredulity. What was this man?
Of course, to Najin none of it was strange.
He was the same Najin who had fled the infamous Church’s shadow unit for days on end and killed more than ten of them. Alone, he was confident the knights would never catch him.
He only resorted to these measures because Dieta was with him—he had to buy time and rest periodically.
“Anyway.”
Najin glanced at Dieta’s ankle.
He had seated her on a suitable boulder and now carefully unwound the bandage wrapped around her ankle. Each time his fingers brushed her skin, Dieta flinched.
“Does it hurt?”
“A—a little.”
Her face was faintly flushed.
Telling himself to be even gentler, Najin slowly finished unwrapping. The wound, still seeping, came into view.
“Just bear with it a moment.”
He wiped away the discharge with a clean cloth and pressed a potion-soaked gauze over the injury. Dieta shuddered through the process, head bowed, tightly clutching the fabric of his clothes. It was genuinely painful.
Still, it had to be done. If they could not fully treat the injury, they at least had to keep it from worsening.
After rewrapping it with a fresh bandage, Najin stood. Dieta scrubbed her face with her sleeve. Looking at him with slightly reddened eyes, she said,
“It still hurts, though.”
“Of course it does. Getting proper treatment soon would be best, but…”
“Then they’d catch us. It’s fine. I can still hold out.”
Dieta offered a faint smile. Najin regarded her in silence for a moment, then let out a short breath.
“Calling it revenge feels a bit off, but.”
“Hm?”
“I did go and smash the knights’ ankles.”
Killing knights of the ducal house would make the aftermath a headache, so Najin had settled for shattering their ankles. Injuries of that sort could be healed later.
“I could have broken their knees instead, but while I was at it I figured ankles were more appropriate.”
He glanced again at Dieta’s ankle.
Among the knights he had ambushed, there might well have been one who helped sever the tendons in her ankle. Thinking of that, he felt a small pang of regret—he should have twisted them a little harder.
Blink. Blink.
Dieta stared at him, blinking several times. Then, as if belatedly grasping the meaning, she covered her mouth and laughed softly.
“Thank you. That does make me feel a little better.”
“You don’t look particularly comforted.”
“Well, honestly, them ending up the same way doesn’t really give me anything, so it’s not exactly satisfying. But…”
Dieta looked at Najin with a smile still playing on her lips.
“You did it for me, so I’m a bit happy.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. It feels nice.”
She beamed and stretched her arms toward him.
“Shall we go, then?”
Dieta was gradually getting used to being carried on Najin’s back. At first it had been embarrassing, but now she had learned to appreciate the solid ride of his back.
Thump.
She settled against him, arms looped around his, and called out in a voice still laced with laughter:
“Onward!”
“You seem oddly cheerful.”
“This moonlit escape drama is more fun than I expected. I feel a little bad saying that when I’m the one being looked after, but I can’t help enjoying it.”
“It’s broad daylight right now.”
“Let’s not sweat the small stuff.”
Najin huffed a quiet laugh and played along. Her bright face now was far better to look at than the half-dead expression she had worn back at the villa.
With Dieta on his back, Najin began to run.
Four knights had fallen.
Found with their ankles shattered. Tracks had been discovered—scattered in every direction. No clear heading. Almost as if the traces had been left deliberately.
Reports kept arriving. With every new scrap of news, Griffin, Knight Commander of House Arvenia, furrowed his brow.
“Just what the hell is this bastard doing?”
They could not track a direction.
The man was a master at erasing his trail. Just when they thought the expected route lay this way, footprints would appear in some random place—or he would ambush their knights.
His thinking was impossible to read.
This was not the work of someone attempting the feat for the first or second time.
But the most incomprehensible part of all… was the manner in which the four knights had been subdued. The men claimed they had been picked off one by one in the forest. Not a single one of the four had ever seen their attacker’s face.
Ambushed. Vision blocked. Beaten senseless with something draped over their heads. When they came to, their ankles were ruined…
What kind of absurd testimony was that?
These were not random rabble—they were knights. Knights who had reached the realm of Sword Expert. House Arvenia was not a martial house, so their knights were not of the highest caliber, but they were still a ducal house.
That meant they were at least above average.
And those knights had been taken down this cleanly? Was the man a Sword Seeker? Only someone of that level should be able to suppress them so neatly.
“Kaufman Teosis.”
Is it really you, you bastard?
Griffin clicked his tongue as he considered the most renowned ranger in the adventurers’ city. No—if it were that man, he would simply have sniped their ankles from a distance.
“Haa…”
More and more pursuit units were joining the hunt.
Commit any more forces and word would leak outside and draw suspicion. His head throbbing, Griffin lit a cigarette.
Too much time had already been wasted. They could not afford to be toyed with any longer. While Griffin was turning over possible methods—
Peep!
A messenger bird descended beside him with a cry. Griffin unfolded the letter attached to its leg. It was written in Duke Osman’s own hand.
“…….”
He read in silence. When he finished, he murmured a short, “I see.”
House Ostrum (Count).
House Klepsch (Count).
House Trebache (Marquis).
Focus on the approaches and waystations leading to these three candidates. A map of the routes and intermediate stops has been enclosed.
— Osman Arvenia
Three candidate destinations. The letter contained a map marking the choke points and waystations that would have to be passed to reach them. Osman had seen through the exact same options Dieta had considered, and thus could narrow the list.
Concentrate on the roads leading not to Cambria but to those three places. That was Osman’s order.
Griffin reorganized the pursuit squads and finished preparations to depart. After issuing his commands, he mounted his warhorse and spurred toward the route he judged most probable.
Knight Commander Griffin.
His destination was House Trebache.