Those Who Stand at the Edge of Fate (9)
Once out of the Arena, leaving the Empire behind took hardly any time at all. Perhaps because most of his memories had their roots there in the first place.
If there's anything I remember besides the Arena, it would be meeting those centaur rights activists, I suppose?
In an Empire that regarded centaurs as monsters at best and beasts at worst, they were heretics who believed in the centaurs' humanity. And warriors who feared not even the Emperor himself, if it meant protecting that belief.
"Can't you take those monsters and clear out of here for good?"
"Where are these monsters you speak of? I see no monsters before my eyes. All who stand in this place are people, are they not?"
They were the ones the centaurs had entrusted their backs to. Back then, he had merely thought it looked impressive — only now did he understand the weight of that act.
For it meant they were people to whom a centaur could entrust its very life.
He could only marvel, sensing the bond between them — or perhaps something more tender still.
With the Empire at their backs, they crossed the Wasteland.
His master's blurry apparition flickered before his eyes, and together they passed beyond the Wasteland's edge.
The moment the apparition faded, the girl spoke.
"Let's stop here for a while."
There was no going further without a guide anyway, so they decided to look around. The land was a touch too green to call it the Steppe, yet it was unmistakably not the Wasteland — a meeting point between the two, one might say. The sky hung dark and heavy overhead.
But not so dark as to blind them, for an encampment had been pitched not far off.
The soft glow leaking through the tents meant there was no fear of losing their way, and the shape of those tents marked them, beyond any doubt, as elven.
Not my tribe's tents, though.
Whose elves had pitched them here? At first he couldn't guess, but watching the elves bustling in and out, recognition dawned — he'd caught sight of familiar faces.
"Slave traders. These were the tents of slave traders."
"They say the Khan is coming?"
"The Khan? Which Khan?"
"The Arrow Princess, of course."
Through the darkness, a golden radiance that refused to lose its shape was drawing near. A centaur woman. There was no need to ask — it was Via.
"Ashtien..."
With Ashtien riding beside her, they arrived at the elves' camp.
"...This is another memory I cannot forget."
Memory might be a slightly imprecise word for it.
The scene unfolding before him now was, in a sense, closer to Ashtien's memory than his own.
The moment Ashtien dismounted, the caravan master of the slave traders sprang into motion, scuttling over to bow and scrape at her side.
"Forgive the sudden visit."
"Say no such thing, my lady. As this land belongs to the Khan, so does our place of rest belong to the Khan as well."
The caravan master's flattery was fairly skilled. The only problem was that he had chosen the wrong target — Ashtien was not a woman to be swayed by flattery of that caliber.
She was one who prized sincerity above gilded praise, after all.
"Indeed. I thank you for the welcome. I've come on no particular business — only to purchase a few goods."
Ashtien had claimed she came to buy salt for her horse.
"I used up everything I had on the road here."
"We shall provide it, my lady. I'll have my people prepare a generous supply at once. Would you care to wait inside?"
"No need. I'll speak with my vassal here."
She had not wished to make anyone uncomfortable, perhaps.
"But the air is still so chill, my lady. Surely—"
"Would a woman of the Steppe call a mere spring breeze like this cold?"
"Right you are, my Khan, but the hearts of your humble servants would not rest easy. Please, I beg of you."
Ashtien was a ruler of great virtue. She could hardly bring herself to refuse an earnest plea from her subjects.
"Very well. Let us go in together, then."
The caravan master's face broke into a bright smile.
"While you wait, we shall present the wares we have for sale."
"...You mean the slaves?"
A look of displeasure crossed her face, but the caravan master, not seeing it, ushered the Khan inside.
"I'll only be looking, in any case."
Ashtien threw back the tent flap. And there, beyond that flap, Vesta would surely have been standing.
That was how they met, then. That was how Vesta and Ashtien met at last.
"You said it was love at first sight, didn't you?"
Was it really? Well — who could say, having never peered into Ashtien's heart? Only one thing was certain.
He had felt something then, as if a story were just beginning.
His chest had swelled with emotion. And yet, there had been no need to open that tent and confirm the meeting of the two with his own eyes.
Because the memory of that day had remained vivid within me all this time.
The Princess, who had been yawning like some enormous dog, began to move again, and Vesta hurried to follow at her heels.
He passed by Via, who stood gazing at the tents with a solemn expression.
"See you in a while, Via."
Vesta began climbing back through the past once more.
"...?"
Via, who could not so much as imagine what was to come, only tilted her head in puzzlement.
The Princess came to a halt. On closer look, she hadn't stopped for Vesta's sake at all.
"I'm waiting for the wind to shift. We can only travel far by riding it."
"I see."
"Until then, have a look at the scenery, at least."
Taking her word for it, he looked around and found it to be the tail end of evening, night just about to fall.
Nothing obstructed the view. Truly open grassland, stretching endlessly — a boundless plain.
[This is the land I inherited from the moment I was born.]
After walking a little way, he spotted Ashtien standing in the distance — with her betrothed at her side.
"Can you believe it? That I mean to grant you what even the Emperor could never obtain."
What did I answer to those words, back then? Did I ask her how that could possibly be?
Until this moment, he had regarded Ashtien's favor with suspicion.
Her betrothed gave his answer, and Ashtien smiled. That smile — even in the heart of a night so dark, even from so far away — remained perfectly vivid.
"Then should I not believe? Trust is something you give. Vesta — and I have already given mine to you."
Along with that trust, she had handed him the twin blades. Come to think of it, it seemed it was from the moment he received those swords that he stopped fearing the darkness. To speak precisely — the sun that rises to drive the darkness away.
A tomorrow that demanded bloodshed no longer terrified him.
The Princess called out to Vesta, who had been standing there in silence.
"Let's go. The wind has turned."
"Right. I'm right behind you."
He wanted to see what waited at the end of this journey.
He walked after the girl, the scenery whirling past so fast it made his head spin.
Ahor, standing in the desert, came into view.
"If you would promise it, my lord, then I shall be your sword. I shall be your hooves."
As those words faded and the scenery shifted again, insects came swarming into view. Ahor was standing on the same battlefield as Vesta.
"I believe in destiny, Vesta."
A gaze like burning fire. But even those blazing eyes were swept aside.
"Do you mean to return to the Empire?"
Via's voice, this time.
He already knew what she wanted to say.
It was what she had told him on the road back from meeting Lycaon. And what she had said to Vesta, bound as he was to the Arena.
"I am a nomad. I do not stay in one place. And you can be that too. We will take you with us — Baatar."
And then. Once more.
"Ashtien."
The memory of last night.
She had been holding Vesta in her arms. No words had passed between them. If feelings could be given and received directly, there was no need to clothe them in the shape of speech. There was only the pounding of a heartbeat, loud enough to fill his ears.
When that sound finally subsided, Vesta found himself standing in a place he had never seen before. Night — and not merely night, but its very heart.
This was it. This very moment. The present tense in which Vesta existed.
Beyond this line, only the future stretched onward.
"Ready?"
the girl asked. Vesta nodded and took one great step forward.
"Ugh."
A wave of scorching heat rushed over him.
"...This is the future?"
Was this the Steppe? That grassland he had wandered with Ashtien? It couldn't be. Was this not a land of utter ruin? Scorched and broken?
It was not even worthy of the name Wasteland. It was nothing but a wasteland.
"This is the future of the Steppe?"
Where Vesta's emotions boiled over, the girl answered calmly.
"I can't say for certain. The future is not fixed. Just as people are bound to one another, countless possibilities are bound to one another as well. We choose in every moment, and sometimes those choices shape the future and carry us forward."
Really? Does the world change just because we choose? Whether she had read his feelings or not, the girl nodded.
"Some futures can never be stopped, and they dim the luster of the many choices we've made."
Before an overwhelming change, weren't the choices of individuals nothing more than a meaningless struggle?
"Can you snare the wind in a lasso? Can you cut water with a blade? Impossible. Against the world itself, we are powerless."
The girl turned to face Vesta.
"But as long as the world exists. As long as life exists. The attempt to change the future will never stop."
And sometimes, that attempt saves the world.
"Someone must stand at the very edge of fate, and make the choice."
As she said this, she looked Vesta squarely in the eye.
"I am only a guide. The choice is not mine to make — it belongs to the hero."
What can I possibly do?
"I chose you."
Look there. Saying this, the Princess pointed at the sky.
The pitch-black heavens were churning like a wave. Looking closely, he saw that the wave was alive and breathing.
"A swarm of insects..."
The sky itself was made of them.
"Desert locusts. No — perhaps 'locust' is the wrong word for them."
Yes, it was the wrong word. They were far too dangerous to be compared to any mere cloud of grasshoppers.
The Steppe grew grain only in the relatively warm South — and the grain was raised to feed the centaurs, not the elves, who did not depend on it.
Even the livestock they raised were the same. Those beasts had adapted to their environment so they could graze on the Steppe's tough grasses. Even when winter came, they would not wait for grain — they would dig through the snowfields in search of grass roots.
And so even under a locust invasion, elven society would not collapse.
But these desert insects were the opposite. Their staple food was blood and raw flesh. Flying in from the desert, they would feast upon the livestock scattered across the Steppe and thrive. Man and elf alike would have been swallowed whole by that onslaught.
"If not for you and the elves, that calamity would have descended upon the Steppe."
Thanks to you, the calamity was averted. That future never came to pass — so the Princess told him.
"The future can be changed, Baatar."