Those Who Stand at the End (1)
"Thought it would take longer, but here we are at the end."
The hulking man, Theo, clicked his tongue.
"The Khan's envoy came with orders, so we've got no choice but to oblige."
Lycaon replied. He was right—pushing back against a woman like that would have ended poorly for them.
"No regrets?"
"I expected it."
Lycaon was composed. Not a trace of disappointment showed on his face.
He had cast off the groveling clown's mask. This emotionless expression was probably far closer to his true face.
Watching Lycaon carry on as if nothing had happened, Theo raised the question.
"Then why start it in the first place? Far from making money, we seem to have lost our shirts."
Theo's question was reasonable. They had succeeded in drawing huge crowds in a short time, but had hardly turned a profit for their trouble.
"We spent a fortune rounding up an audience, didn't we?"
The tickets had been practically free, and they'd even handed out free booze to the spectators. There was no way money would be left over.
"Just when I thought business was finally getting started."
Lycaon's answer was firm.
"Because making money was never the point."
"It wasn't the point?"
"Theo, think back. The arena we fought in didn't charge admission either."
"Oh. That's right."
The capital's Colosseum was a massive facility that could seat eighty thousand. Running and maintaining something on that scale inevitably devoured enormous sums.
"If they'd sold tickets at their proper price, it would have been a fortune."
And yet the Empire had provided the arena's admission free to its citizens.
"...The Emperor succeeded in turning the citizens' eyes, and we awakened the hatred of the legions."
Hatred was power. And because it was power with a clear purpose, it was all the stronger. Hadn't the Emperor built the arena for precisely that reason—to deflect the citizens' hatred away from himself?
So that the people would hate some other thing in his place.
"It worked."
That was a value money could not buy. At least, that was how Lycaon saw it.
"If you say so. You've always been a strange thinker."
"That I have. I've thought a great deal. Living as simply as you do must be convenient, but..."
No one else could live that way.
Theo was a man who found thinking a chore. Even in the arena. Even in that place where every fight had to be engineered for the sake of survival, Theo did not deliberate.
He fought, and he simply won.
He had won so many times that he was one of the few who could have walked out with his freedom.
"No interest in leaving. Forget freedom—just bring me my next opponent."
Now they called him the most dangerous man in the Empire.
"What I'm curious about is that woman, more than anything."
Curious. Surely not in a romantic sense. Something in Theo's head was broken somewhere. It took something else entirely to excite him.
"The woman who came as the Khan's proxy?"
"Yeah. A fighter. I could tell at a glance."
"She was every bit the warrior the rumors promised."
Lycaon recalled the situation at the time.
"I come as proxy for the lord who rules the Wasteland."
"Put an end to this farce."
Lycaon had not asked for her identity. He already possessed the information. The woman was Tamugai Ushun, an officer of the Keshik.
A warrior-woman known as a Master of her craft.
Lycaon had no intention of locking horns with the Wasteland King's envoy. He had planned to give her whatever she wanted.
The problem was the man beside her—a storm no one could predict. Theo.
"Not bad. This woman."
Theo seemed to have sensed something in Tamugai Ushun. It was not interest between man and woman.
Fighting spirit. The ferocity of a beast. Those, he had felt.
Theo made no effort to hide his killing intent. He practically trembled with the urge to fight her then and there. He stared at Ushun so unblinkingly it bordered on offensive.
"Hah. Look at this bastard."
Tamugai Ushun was a renowned strongwoman across the entire steppe, and she caught Theo's hostility at once. She did not look away from his stare—she answered it with a warning.
"Keep posturing in front of me and you'll die, boy."
"Try me."
Fortunately, no fight broke out. Tamugai Ushun had an envoy's decorum to uphold.
Theo? He'd been a mongrel from birth, so he had no face to save.
"What a waste. Fighters like her are rare. Truly, truly rare..."
Theo's pupils had gone slightly slack, as if his mind had drifted somewhere far away.
In a sense, no one embodied the gladiator more than he did.
No man alive loved fighting that much.
Lycaon soothed Theo, who looked ready to start something on the spot.
"You'll get your chance."
Theo's eyes returned to normal.
"What, your little plan finally taking shape?"
"It is. We're about to accomplish something big here. Once we see this business through..."
Lycaon stroked his chin.
"I intend to sit down face-to-face with the Empire's centaur rights activists."
"Thought you'd already laid the groundwork?"
"We've been talking behind the scenes. If the world knew what I've been discussing, it would turn upside down."
"Would it? Well. Don't much care, so long as I get to fight."
Fighting. That was the reward Lycaon had promised. It was what Theo craved, too.
"Right. That alone is enough."
—And we will fight.
Muran lowered her stance and spoke. The blade that had been leveled at Vesta sank to the ground.
"Your focus was always good, but lately it borders on desperate. Something happen?"
Vesta breathed hard, chest heaving.
"Take your time."
—The tension. The impatience.
"The mood between the camps has turned ugly."
"It certainly has. Strange things would hardly surprise me at this point."
The friction between the orcs and the centaurs had grown uglier by the day. They insulted each other openly and picked fights at every turn.
Had Ashtien not been there—that is, had there been no one whose disapproval they feared—they would have come to blows long ago.
—And more than that, Attila and the Empire weigh on my mind.
"Still, that's none of your concern, is it?"
The words were deliberately ambiguous.
Was she saying the conflict between those two species had nothing to do with elves?
Or else—
Was she needling the fact that Vesta was a human, a stranger to the steppe?
"...No, it isn't."
Muran's crescent eyes turned toward Vesta. They seemed to demand an answer.
He didn't care for the look in them, but she was, after all, a master who gave her priceless instruction freely. Vesta answered, however reluctantly.
"Because Ashtien will be the one to mediate that conflict."
"You're her betrothed, aren't you?"
"Before I'm her betrothed, I'm her warrior."
If one were being precise, the order was backwards. But what mattered was that Vesta had the standing to act.
"Because you're a warrior, you'll protect her?"
It could not be for that reason alone. Beyond a warrior's duty, something else had to be driving Vesta forward.
"...That's right."
But he could offer no answer beyond that. Muran burst out laughing. It was an almost cackling laugh.
"Protect her. Haha. What an absurd resolution!"
"...Aren't you laughing a bit much?"
The moment Vesta said it, Muran's laughter cut off cold.
"She has an army. A powerful one. And she is the finest archer in this world—better than anyone alive."
He didn't need to be told.
"If that child declares something cannot be killed, then in truth, nothing under heaven can kill it—no matter the means."
These were the words of the Sword Saint, who had watched every manner of talent pass before the Great Khan's side. They carried a different weight.
"Could you protect such a woman? If she is in danger, it means she faces something tremendous—a storm of a calamity."
Muran's eyes gleamed.
"What could you possibly do?"
"There is something I can do."
Someday.
Someday, overlooking the boundless wilds, Ashtien had offered him a sword.
"With this blade, I will—"
"Not yet. You may not say those words to me yet. You must not."
What did she think I was going to say?
She must have known. She must have remembered that I was a man who would one day leave. So she cut the words off.
But Ashtien—
Now. Just for now, I—
"I have already sworn it."
For the time I am permitted, for the season I am given—I will keep you safe.
"Is that so?"
—Ashtien has a decent eye for men, after all.
"Then allow me to add my weight to that oath."
Muran raised her sword.
"Come, then. Guardian of the Khan."
You dream the most reckless dream on the steppe—so you had best grow strong enough to match it.
I, Aranthor Muran, will hone your blade.
The arrow flew.
Thwack—!
The arrow struck home in the target. Considering how far away the archer stood, it was remarkably fine shooting.
"Hnngh."
The archer was Karakh. The man who called himself King of the Orcs.
"...It doesn't reach."
He muttered it as he lowered his bow.
He had put down four orc warriors in training and struck targets at long range—and still, it did not reach.
The gap would not close.
"I cannot reach that man."
His arrows—and his blade.
Karakh bared his teeth and let out a sound like something seething and boiling over.