Those Who Stand at the Edge (2)
The elves — the Keshik — had encircled Vesta.
"......"
Blades leveled at him from every side. Vesta surveyed his situation with practiced calm.
The encirclement was not yet complete. One last chance to overcome adversity still remained to him.
An unfinished net always has a gap in it. If he chose to break through at that weak point, escape seemed entirely possible. But Vesta did no such thing — instead, he planted himself at the very center of the closing ring.
Let's give them a proper show, then.
The elven warriors tightened the circle. In moments, they would cross into the range where blade met blade.
And beyond that boundary lay Vesta's domain.
It's begun.
In a single instant, Vesta twisted his body.
"He's moving!"
The seasoned warriors reacted immediately — but Vesta's blade work was faster and more precise than anything they had imagined.
He took in the cascade of consecutive strikes raining down, filtered out the attacks that couldn't possibly reach him, and answered with a counter.
"Gah!"
An elven warrior clutched her wrist and dropped her weapon.
"That's insane!"
Fighting many opponents at once — Vesta had been through that particular lesson countless times in the Arena.
When you face superior numbers, never let them complete the encirclement.
The first and last rule. There was no second one.
Because once it closes, there's no turning back.
And yet Vesta had already accepted it. The encirclement had formed, and he was an ant caught in the antlion's pit.
Now it begins.
How would he crawl back out of this hell alive?
And if he could manage that — he would come out of it stronger than ever.
"We won't be going easy on you, Lord Baatar!"
The elven warriors shouted with bloodthirsty grins.
"Please."
He knocked aside a thrusting sword.
This was the martial art Vesta had inherited — the gladiatorial craft learned in the blood and sand of the Arena, tempered and deepened by Muran's teaching. Now the first blade to span Empire and Steppe alike clashed head-on against the Keshik.
"He's gotten stronger."
Ahor couldn't hide her astonishment.
A human boy, holding the encirclement of the Keshik — elites hand-picked from among elites — entirely on his own. It was a sight she could see with her own eyes and still not believe.
Was that not the stuff of legend, plain and simple?
She could feel it: Vesta was straining against some threshold in his mastery, pressing at its boundary.
"...Was such a thing even possible for a human?"
The innate martial gifts of the centaurs. The deathlessness of the elves. Was this a height a mere man could have climbed without the help of any of them?
"Was it a gap that could be bridged at all?"
Ahor was one of the rare human warriors in the tribe — a woman who had carved away her own flesh and bone to grow strong. And precisely because of that, she found herself unable to truly grasp the depth of Vesta's strength.
The woman who could never become an elf. Ahor reached out her hand toward Vesta.
Toward the boy who was crossing a chasm she herself had never been able to cross.
"If a human means to stand beside her, then this is what it takes... this much, and more."
Vesta did not look back at Ahor. The two of them stood too far apart for that.
"Ahor."
"...Via."
"Watching the Baatar?"
So she doesn't call him "Lord Baatar" anymore, Ahor noted.
"I am. He grows stronger by the day."
"That's good news."
Via hummed a little tune as she took her place beside Ahor, her tremendous height casting the smaller woman in shadow.
"Master has guided him well."
Via's master meant Muran — the Sword Saint of the Empire. Ahor raised a doubt.
"The Sword Saint spent less than a month teaching him the blade. And yet he's reached this level of accomplishment."
"Because it was already complete. Master only deepened what was there."
It was a difference too fine to put into words — but in the end, that fine a difference was exactly what divided ranks of mastery.
"He'll leave his name on the Steppe."
"He's already the warrior who defeated Gwangmyeong."
"...True."
A human boy who had felled the hero of the South. In a Steppe where the strength of humankind counted for so little, could another figure like him ever rise again?
"What about you, Via?"
If not against Gwangmyeong — what about against gold? That was the question Ahor was really asking.
Via the Golden. She was regarded as a symbol of invincibility in the Wasteland.
She had never crossed blades directly with a full commander of the Keshik. But the whole tribe tacitly acknowledged one thing: in a straight contest of weapon against weapon, the 'Golden' would come out on top, without question.
And that was a claim confined to the Wasteland alone.
Even if every centaur on the Steppe were gathered in one place, Via would rank among the five strongest of them.
"This isn't a sparring question, is it?"
"No, it isn't."
"You're joking, right? The armor I wear into battle alone weighs more than the Baatar does."
An armored centaur was a fortress on the field. There was no need to even bring Via into it. Just because her elder brother had lost his duel to Vesta didn't mean he would lose a battle of slaughter — a war would be another matter entirely. Her brother would don his armor, take up his lance, and put his bow to use.
"Armored or bare-handed, there's no way I lose."
It was simple arithmetic. The existence of a genius cat born at odds of one in a million didn't mean it could defeat a lion wrapped in armor.
"That's what I ought to say, anyway."
But then again.
Via was smiling. At least, that was how it looked to Ahor.
"That man has something in him — a power unlike anyone else's."
"You mean the spirit blade?"
"That's part of it, and you can't leave it out. They say it breathes tremendous fire. Spirit arts that even elves would struggle to match — facing something like that would be a real headache, wouldn't it?"
"I suppose it would."
Flame potent enough to burn a giant beetle to ash, after all.
"But there's a power in that man more astonishing than any of that. I don't know what to call it — but it's the kind of power that overturns the impossible."
A power like a miracle.
Which is why even I can't promise anything.
Ahor nodded at Via's words.
So even the finest warrior-woman of the Wasteland couldn't vouch for the outcome.
Then that boy was, in name and in truth, the...
"The strongest human on the Steppe."
"Not a shred of doubt about it."
Vesta, returned from training, blinked in bewilderment.
"You've received an invitation from the orcs?"
Ushun scratched her head vigorously as she grumbled.
"That's right. Ugh, I don't want to go."
"An invitation from the Orc King, then? What was his name again...?"
"Karak?"
For the very person who'd been invited, she seemed remarkably ill-informed.
"Kahar! It was Kahar."
The king's name was Karakh, not Kahar.
"It's not important — let it go. In any case, you were invited by that orc, correct?"
"Yes."
Apparently the invitation had originally been addressed to Ashtien. From the orcs' perspective, since their own king had sent it, they seemed to have decided the proper courtesy was for the queen of equal standing to attend in person.
'Does a king count as an equal just by being called a king?'
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
She hadn't even formally ascended a throne, after all. There was no reason for Ashtien to move herself.
"That's rather presumptuous of them."
Truthfully, on any ordinary occasion she would have simply ignored it outright.
"But given how volatile the situation is, Her Ladyship judged a mediator was needed — so she didn't dismiss it out of hand."
After all, the conflict between centaurs and orcs had reached its boiling point.
Ashtien had resolved to send an envoy instead, and Ushun had been chosen for the role.
"By protocol, it really should be Via or Ahor who goes..."
Via was a centaur, which made her poorly suited to serve as envoy under present circumstances.
'As for Ahor...'
"The Captain is, well, a bit small, isn't she."
A king's envoy was supposed to carry an air of gravitas. That was simply how such things worked.
'It's not that Ahor lacks presence.'
The reputation of the Little Falcon was fearsome enough in its own right. But orcs were simple creatures who believed what they saw with their own two eyes first and foremost.
Frankly, there wasn't a chance in the world they would be intimidated by the sight of Ahor.
[That little falcon was such a tiny human wench?]
'At that point it wouldn't matter whether it was mediation or anything else — it'd be a catastrophe.'
That was the sum of the considerations that had gone into it, and so Ushun had been chosen.
'A sound choice.'
She had the intimidating presence and the reputation, and she also held an office more than equal to the task of representing a king.
To be a commander of the Keshik was, by definition, to be a person of consequence in one of the great clans. She could hold her head high anywhere she went.
'Strictly speaking, Ushun is a noble lady too.'
A daughter of a distinguished house — and above all, still unmarried.
'...That was a terrible thought. Banish it.'
Vesta courteously saw Ushun off.
"Safe travels."
"Why do you think I came to find you?"
"Please don't say what I think you're going to say."
"Come with me!"
She had already secured Ashtien's permission, apparently — the moment Vesta agreed, they would be sent off together.
"No, hold on — why would I..."
He scowled and made to refuse, but on reflection, the offer didn't seem like a bad one.
'A chance to meet this Kahar, is it?'
Karakh, not Kahar. The name hardly mattered to Vesta either way.
What mattered more than a name was this: was the man truly a king who held the orcs' support? Vesta wanted to confirm that fact with his own eyes, at least once.
Because if Karakh took the throne and entered the Wasteland, he might well become a thorn in Ashtien's side.
"All right. I'll come with you."
"Ha! Now that's a real man for you. A true man, cut from a different cloth than these limp-wristed creatures of the Steppe!"
The flattery was so transparent that Vesta couldn't help but snort. She really was a woman without a wrinkle of guile in her.
"We're friends. Of course I'll go with you."
If one had a friend like Ushun at one's side, one could walk openly into a gathering of hundreds, thousands of orcs — just the two of them, face to face.
"Khh. Fine. Thank you, friend."
Ushun extended her hand, and Vesta clasped it.
"If it comes to it — we tear the whole thing down."
"My back is yours."
"Good. It's yours."