Nothing to Report
The sound of Valter’s voice sliced the tavern’s noise clean in half.
“……Found him.”
The mercenaries who had been playing cards set their hands down. In the Grey Fangs’ headquarters, no one in this back alley failed to understand what an outsider meant by saying he had “found” one of their own. Chairs scraped across the floor in several places at once. Hugo’s hand crept quietly toward the hilt of his dagger.
“Hey, guests. If you’ve got business with our kid, you go through the commander—”
“Hugo.”
Kael set down his whetstone and rose to his feet.
“They’re acquaintances. We’ll talk outside.”
“Acquaintances? Come on, just look at them, they’re clearly—”
“Debt collectors or something.”
“Since when do debt collectors travel in squads of five!”
From the table deeper inside, Vargas spoke while still holding his drink. He wasn’t gripping his battleaxe, but his voice alone was enough to drop the tavern’s volume by a full degree.
“Newbie. You know the company rules. We don’t ask about your past. But anyone who lays a hand on one of our members gets their past dug up and buried with them.”
“I understand. That won’t be necessary.”
“Looking at their faces, it feels pretty damn necessary.”
“Even if it is, the one getting buried won’t be me.”
Vargas stared at Kael for a moment, then grinned and emptied his cup. It was permission to go. Instead, he flicked his fingers, and roughly ten mercenaries quietly shifted to the windows and the door. They wouldn’t follow, but they would listen to whatever happened in the alley.
Kael slid his sword back into its sheath and walked toward the entrance. As he passed Valter, he murmured in a low voice.
“Behind the warehouse at the end of the pier. Bring all five. You wouldn’t want to pay for a destroyed tavern either, would you?”
The end of the pier was shrouded in sea fog. Six sets of footsteps pooled in the empty lot behind the warehouse.
“It’s been a while, Vice Commander.”
“……Two months. You bastard.”
Valter pulled back his hood. In those two months, deep shadows had carved themselves beneath his eyes. The wrinkles spoke plainly of what it meant for a knight to hide his identity beyond the border and search for a single man.
“It’s an order. To bring you back.”
“Whose order? The steward’s again?”
“It is Her Highness the Grand Duke’s Daughter’s direct command.”
“I see. Then please convey this to Her Highness. A man who has already resigned does not receive orders from the Grand Duchy.”
“About that.”
Valter pulled a single sheet of paper from his coat. It was a familiar document. The three-line resignation Kael had presented with both hands on the dais of the banquet hall three months ago.
“Your resignation was never approved.”
“……”
“There’s no approval seal on it. The young lady never stamped it. She’s been clutching it for two months straight. Legally speaking, you’re still a Wallenstein man. An escort knight who deserted without permission.”
Kael gazed at the paper through the fog. He had told Rolf that it would take effect seven days after notification. Clause 11 of the contract. By legal reasoning, the matter was already over. Yet the document bore no seal. It wasn’t that it hadn’t been processed—it looked as though it could not be processed. He couldn’t understand it. So, as he always did, he placed the situation into the one slot that made sense.
“……She intends to keep the right to discipline me.”
“What?”
“If my resignation is approved, I become a free citizen. The authority to punish me disappears. By delaying approval, she can treat me as a deserting escort knight and punish me under Grand Duchy law. A clever legal maneuver. The steward’s idea, I assume.”
The five knights simultaneously wore strange expressions. One of the youngest opened his mouth halfway. Valter pressed a hand to his forehead.
“……Hey. Kael. Do you seriously believe that?”
“Is there another answer?”
“There is. There is, but……”
Valter swallowed the words. It wasn’t something he should say himself. The same words he had chosen on the canyon road, he chose again now. Instead, he shifted his stance. His shoulders dropped, his center of gravity lowered. It was a posture Kael had seen ten thousand times in the training grounds.
“I’m sorry. I can’t return empty-handed.”
“Vice Commander.”
“We know. We can’t beat you. We saw what happened to Raimund on the canyon road. Still, an order is an order—and above all, if I go back empty-handed, the young lady will try to come herself. Beyond the border. That, I have to prevent.”
The five knights drew their swords. Five streaks of blade light rose within the fog. Kael did not draw his own.
“Who will compensate you if the blades are damaged? They are Grand Duchy-issued equipment.”
“That mouth of yours is still the same!”
The first knight charged. It was an excellent sword. The textbook style of the northern knight order. A diagonal slash from shoulder to waist—page nine of the manual. A sword from the manual could never defeat the person who wrote the manual. And the one who had made Kael memorize that manual was a Sword Master.
Kael stepped half a pace forward and tapped the man’s wrist. The sword left its owner’s hand and floated above the fog. While his left hand caught it, his right hand was already unbuckling the second knight’s belt along with the scabbard.
“Huh? Uh?”
The third knight was kind enough to come with a thrust. Thrusts were the easiest attacks from which to disarm someone. Kael deflected it, then flicked the pommel. The fingers loosened. The fourth knight gripped his sword with both hands and held firm. He had learned something, at least. Kael left the sword alone and moved the man instead. He hooked a foot behind the knight’s ankle, and the man fell onto the sand still clutching his blade tightly.
“I won’t take the sword. You held it well.”
“……Th-thank you?”
It took five breaths to finish the four of them. The youngest, lying on the sand, stared blankly up at Kael. The face was familiar. He was one of the apprentices Kael had once corrected in the corner of the training ground.
“S-Sir Kael. Do you remember me? You said my sword tip was shaking……”
“You fixed it. The grip you just used was good.”
“……Thank you!”
“Why are you thanking the guy who came to capture you!”
At Valter’s roar, the youngest snapped into a rigid posture on the sand. Only Valter remained. A faint aura clung to the vice commander’s blade. One of the few swords in the northern knight order that could wield aura. Valter held that sword straight ahead and did not move.
“……Something felt off ever since the canyon road.”
“What do you mean?”
“We rolled around in the same training ground for ten years. I’ve seen you receive swords thousands of times. You were always exactly half a step above the young lady. Exactly half. Always the same half-step.”
The tip of Valter’s sword trembled. It was not from anger.
“Where in the world does a consistent half-step exist? That isn’t skill, it’s measurement. To measure another person’s sword…… you have to be able to see all the way to the bottom. Just how far have you—”
“Vice Commander.”
For the first time, Kael drew his sword. The old iron blade slowly parted the fog. There was no aura. It was a sword without aura, yet in that instant Valter felt ashamed of the aura on his own blade.
“Come. Isn’t this an order?”
Valter came. With everything he had. The horizontal slash wrapped in aura tore through the fog—and Kael’s iron sword struck a single point in its path. A clear ringing sound echoed. Valter’s hand went numb, his sword stabbed into the sand, and the tip of the iron blade stopped one inch from his chest. It had taken a single exchange.
“……Ha.”
Valter laughed. There was nothing else he could do but laugh.
“Total annihilation. Five of us, and we couldn’t even cross blades once.”
“If we had crossed blades, the swords would have been damaged.”
“There you go again with the compensation talk…… Hey, Kael. Let me ask one last thing. Not as an order, but out of my own curiosity.”
Valter asked without pulling his sword from the sand.
“Aren’t you curious how the young lady is doing?”
For the space of one breath in the fog, Kael did not answer.
“She suffers from insomnia. She skips meals. The study lamp is lit every dawn, and she won’t let anyone clean your room for two months straight. She has turned away the tailor three times, and—”
“Vice Commander.”
“What.”
“That is not a story I have any right to hear.”
Kael sheathed his sword.
“If the successor escort’s performance is inadequate, please advise Her Highness to change the personnel. Twenty-four royal guards should be sufficient for coverage. Skipping meals falls under the head maid’s responsibility, and insomnia under the physician’s. None of it is my concern.”
“……This bastard is serious.”
“Until two months ago it was my concern, so if the handover was insufficient, I apologize for that.”
Valter spat out a curse—long, very long. Then he pulled his sword from the sand and slid it back into its sheath.
“She wanted me to tell you something. To the young lady.”
Kael glanced for a moment toward the fog-covered sea. North. Something to tell her. Even if he dug through ten years’ worth of memories, between them there was nothing left to say that could not be ended with a single seal on a piece of paper.
“There is nothing.”
“……Kael.”
“Please tell her to stamp the approval seal. That is all.”
Kael turned to leave, then added one more thing.
“Vice Commander. There is something you should be careful of on your way back.”
“What?”
“It isn’t only you who are looking for me. There are other groups who have planted people in every inn at the port. They don’t speak with a northern accent, but a capital one. They spend money like it’s from a government office, yet they haven’t reported to the authorities.”
Valter’s expression changed.
“……The Imperial Intelligence Agency.”
“That is my guess as well. If they notice you first, the search across the border will fall into the Empire’s hands. The Grand Duchy will be harmed. Scatter and leave separately.”
“You knew that and still—”
“If I am caught, it is my own problem. If all of you are caught, it becomes the North’s problem.”
Valter opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. The man who had submitted his resignation was worrying about the Grand Duchy. He could not find the words to point out how contradictory that was.
Kael turned away. Before his back could disappear into the fog, Valter shouted.
“Hey! At least tell me where you’re going! I have to make a report!”
“The canyon.”
“The canyon? You mean that canyon…… Hey! People are dying there—”
“That’s why I’m going.”
His back vanished into the fog.
Six days later, at Wallenstein Grand Castle.
The lamp in the study was still lit that dawn. Valter, still wearing his dust-covered traveling clothes, knelt on one knee.
“Reporting. I made contact with Kael in Valk.”
The quill pen above the documents stopped.
“……Is he healthy?”
That was the first question. Not his location, not whether he had been secured.
“Yes. He has joined a mercenary company. The Grey Fangs—the largest in the south. It seems he is eating well.”
“I told you to bring him back.”
“I tried. All five of us…… were subdued without crossing blades even once.”
Elise did not look surprised. That fact hurt Valter more. The stage of surprise had already passed.
“Any injured?”
“None. Not a single sword was damaged. He didn’t even take the youngest’s blade. He praised him for holding it well…… I am ashamed. The report has gone off track.”
“Continue. His destination?”
Valter hesitated for a moment.
“……The canyon. North of Valk. The center of the recent monster abnormalities. The hunters’ guild has given up on searching it, and those who enter never come out—”
“Why there?”
“I do not know. He simply said, ‘That’s why I’m going.’”
Elise rose from her seat and walked to the window. The southern sky at dawn was simply dark. Somewhere in that darkness lay the canyon, the fog that swallowed those who entered, and the man who had walked into it of his own free will.
The right to hold him lay inside the drawer together with the seal. The seal she had been unable to stamp for two months. If she stamped it, he would become a free citizen. A free citizen could die anywhere and it would have nothing to do with the Grand Duchy. If she did not stamp it, he remained a deserting escort knight. If a deserting escort knight entered danger, his lord would have justification to go and retrieve him.
Elise felt nauseated at the realization that she was making exactly that calculation. He said she was trying to keep the right to discipline me— The interpretation Valter had relayed was wrong, but half of it was correct. She truly was clutching that document like a chain. Only the purpose of the chain was different.
“……What did he say? To me.”
Valter bit his lip. A report had to be accurate. It was a knight’s duty. Yet this report became a blade the more accurate it was.
“……He said to stamp the approval seal on his resignation.”
“And?”
“To Your Highness……”
Valter took one breath there.
“He said he has nothing to report.”