Those Who Stand at the Edge (6)
"You must be hungry. I brought some food."
Perhaps she found the sight of Ahak's haggard face too painful to bear, Rhea held the food out toward him.
"I'm fine."
"You need to eat if you're going to hold on."
Even against Ahak's pointed rudeness, Rhea did not back down.
"Come on, now. Eat."
Since she was acting out of genuine goodwill, it felt churlish to snap at her.
Another human who lives only to be taken advantage of.
It wasn't as though she was looking after him out of any affection. If she were the sort to distinguish between like and dislike, she would more likely have despised him.
Ahak knew perfectly well that his own temperament was foul. He had never made any effort to change it, and he had remained a curmudgeon difficult to approach.
A woman drawing near to such a curmudgeon stirred not gratitude in him, but something closer to pity.
Her nature itself was too soft for her own good. Nothing like Ahak, an opportunist and a hypocrite both.
I am a prisoner in body only—my mind is free. But this woman is bound up in petty human affections. She'll be dragged around by them her whole life.
So it was that Ahak, locked in a cell, looked at Rhea, free beyond the bars, and felt sorry for her.
The poor creature.
Perhaps it was because she followed a heathen faith. He was hardly well-versed in their doctrine, but he had heard that they placed great store by the spirit of universal love.
Universal love—the command to love all things equally.
It was a belief Ahak could never accept.
Rubbish. Is this not a world of kings and slaves? Equality cannot stand.
And that was not all. The very concept of race was a rejection of equality. Elves did not age. Until the moment death claimed them, they remained girls and boys.
Could a human ever stand equal to them?
If all things are not equal, then love cannot be equal either.
When a human bore love for an elf, it was nothing but veneration or awe. A love that had abandoned equality from the very start.
Just as I think of them.
The religion Rhea believed in seemed, in Ahak's eyes, a denial of the world itself. It lacked the evidence and the logic to persuade a scholar such as him.
There was exactly one thing Ahak would grant it.
"Here, eat. You have to eat to live."
That a creature actually existed who strove to practice universal love.
"Ha..."
Ahak reluctantly accepted the food. If he kept up his stubborn refusal, it would drag on forever.
In that he, iron-willed as he was, had been made to yield, Rhea could be said to have accomplished something remarkable.
"Then I shall, with thanks."
He was displeased, but he ate what he was given without fuss. The food itself had committed no crime, after all.
Hm. Thank goodness it isn't raw meat gnawed on by those orc brutes.
It tasted fairly decent, too.
For all his prickliness, Ahak devoured the meal in the blink of an eye.
"Hehe."
And there was Rhea, watching him with the look of one who had won. Feeling awkward, Ahak cleared his throat.
At the sound, the werewolf stirred, then snapped its mouth shut in fright.
Damn it. Can't even clear my throat in peace.
The only advantage of this cramped cell had been the absence of dog hair drifting about—and with Rhea dragging that werewolf in, even that was gone.
Ahak sank into deep despair.
"Don't be so frightened. He's a good boy. Isn't that right, Spotty?"
Awooo.
Ahak snorted. Oh, I'm sure he is.
A werewolf was, in the end, a subspecies of the wolf—a cunning creature. No doubt that was why it groveled so sweetly while waiting for a chance to stab its trusting master in the back.
"I'll grant he's not especially wicked. But he won't stay good forever. He'll live as his instincts dictate."
For now there was nothing to go hungry for, so it fawned on humans. Starve it, and a very different face would emerge.
Let it catch the scent of blood and its aggression would surface on the spot. It would think nothing of sinking its teeth into a person.
Call it a werewolf all you liked—it was still a wolf. It could never become human.
Rhea stroked the back of the werewolf's neck as she answered.
"Goodness can be taught."
A firm answer, steeped in conviction.
That's all it is—belief. Who exactly does she intend to teach?
He could not stand anyone attempting to instruct him. He was a man twisted to a genuinely pathological degree.
Does she want a debate with me, then?
Could he unstring her faith with a few well-chosen words? Her convictions were hard as a boulder, true, but they were riddled with gaps here and there. It was not entirely impossible.
"It cannot be done."
"I don't understand how you can think that. Think of children. They commit sins out of ignorance, and adults teach those children goodness. Forgiveness, love, virtue—things like that."
"Wrong."
"...Wrong how?"
"What they teach the child is not goodness. It is punishment. What children learn is that every time they commit a sin, they will suffer retribution in proportion to it."
"That's a terribly warped point of view."
Rhea wore an expression of weary distaste while Ahak merely shrugged.
"Aren't I living proof of it right now?"
The iron chains binding him rattled.
"...I don't believe you committed any crime."
Rhea murmured the words while avoiding Ahak's gaze.
She didn't know the full circumstances, but she did know that Ahak's charge was insubordination. And who, after all, had given Ahak his orders?
In the end, his crime was refusing an orc's command.
From a human's standpoint, the orcs' orders were riddled with absurdities. To refuse such orders could hardly be called a true crime.
"I know."
The corner of Ahak's mouth curled upward.
"I do not take the orcs' side. Unlike you."
"What is that supposed to—"
"Unlike you, who, loving all things equally, can bring yourself to abandon nothing—I discriminate, you see. Between orc and human, between human and elf."
Rhea's hands trembled.
"Is that what you've thought of me all this time?"
"Somewhat."
So she can make a face like that, too.
It was not her usual countenance of gentle benevolence, but one brimming with suppressed indignation.
Frankly, this suited her better. It felt far more human.
Sublimity does not become a human being.
"...I see."
She must have felt insulted. Yet she neither raged nor nursed hatred.
It was suffocating.
Tsk. I should stop tormenting people who've done nothing to me.
What could she possibly understand? She was merely a strange woman who liked helping others. Unlike him, she had no idea what kind of cunning lurked behind the orcs' smooth, smiling hide.
Could she even imagine what those creatures are planning?
It went far beyond tearing into raw meat and carving ears from corpses to make trinkets of them.
Ahak had been entangled with them by sheer misfortune, and he had uncovered their scheme.
[I cannot take part in that plan. Call it an order if you like—I will not obey.]
And so he had ended up locked away like this.
"...That was nonsense. I expect my mind's gone a little soft from sitting in this cell. You may forget everything I said just now."
Even as he said it, he held no hope that things would smooth over. He had hurled an insult straight into her face, after all.
I only hope they don't use me as feed for the werewolf.
Spotty, was it? The beast was sizable enough that it could probably swallow a sickly scholar down to the bones.
He asked no forgiveness. So long as he could escape becoming wolf-fodder, he didn't care what happened.
"I see. I'll forget it. You're forgiven."
"...I beg your pardon?"
At this wholly unexpected reply, Ahak's face crumpled.
"You merely made a mistake. And you apologized first, after all."
So one apology was enough for her to forgive a man she might well call a traitor to humanity? She was a thoroughly incomprehensible creature. Did she fancy herself some kind of saint?
A saint who totes a werewolf around. What a laugh.
"...Fine. As you say."
Flustered, Ahak gave a noncommittal answer and shut his mouth. Differences in values were one thing, but this was like conversing with a puddle of water. Throw a stone in, and it wouldn't even splash back out—the stone would simply sink.
But Rhea showed no intention of leaving Ahak alone.
"I've been curious for a while now. May I ask you something?"
"No."
"Why do you love elves so much?"
"I told you no, didn't I..."
Owe the meal, pay with the talk, is that it? Ahak let out a small sigh.
"Why do I love elves, hm..."
"I've never met anyone quite like you, Mr. Ahak."
After a moment's consideration, Ahak pointed at her.
"You follow the heathen faith, don't you?"
"That's what they call it in the Empire. Heathenism."
Nothing but a slur the Empire had slapped on at its own convenience. What religion in the world would call itself heathen?
"Why do you follow a heathen faith over the state religion?"
The heathen faith worshipped a single god. In truth, the being they served was less a person than a kind of truth, or a message.
The Empire's state religion was fundamentally polytheistic, believing in the personified gods of its mythology. Befitting a nation founded by warrior-conquerors, the war god's dominion towered above all.
It prized honor and strength over love and equality. Nothing that suited Rhea at all.
"How would you have me answer that?"
"When you first heard the heathen doctrine, did you not feel it was destiny? This is it, you thought. Didn't you?"
"Well, yes, I suppose..."
"So it was for me."
"?"
Her eyes went perfectly round.
"...?"
Ahak shrugged.