The High Orc (6)
"I gave this careful thought and told you my plan, so why do you hate it?"
"...Because I just do?"
It was an unsatisfying answer. Naturally, Ahak didn't believe a word of it. She was clearly hiding some other scheme.
"Traitor to humanity."
"Please don't say things like that."
Rhea grumbled in disgust. Of course, her face was so mild-mannered by nature that the complaint wasn't the least bit frightening.
Grrrrrrr—
The werewolf beside her, on the other hand, was rather terrifying.
"I simply cannot understand you."
Ahak clicked his tongue in displeasure. Rhea, who had been watching him nervously, changed the subject.
"So where are we going right now? This doesn't look like the path down from the mountain."
"I have things to collect."
No matter what, he had no intention of descending the mountain empty-handed. That would be suicide. If he'd encountered Spotty, the beast at Rhea's side, in the wild, wouldn't he have died on the spot? A human, by rights, only deserved to be called human when he knew how to use tools.
"Wait here a moment."
He'd stashed some things away in secret, on the off chance that something like this might happen someday.
A weapon rarely seen on the steppe. A crossbow.
Ahak inspected the crossbow's condition, then took up a firing stance. Rhea watched him with open disbelief.
"Are you sure you actually know how to handle that?"
She apparently regarded Ahak as some eccentric old teacher, because there wasn't a scrap of trust in her eyes. The look offended him so deeply that he scoffed.
"With this, I could take down a lion."
Ahak glanced down at Spotty through narrowed eyes.
"A werewolf? Well, that's one shot and done."
Whether Spotty understood human speech or simply reacted to the hostility, the beast began to growl. But Ahak wasn't afraid anymore.
"Ha. Not scared one bit."
He had a crossbow now. A crossbow!
So the werewolf was dangerous — but surely it couldn't be more dangerous than a lion? At its largest, it was barely bigger than a lion, wasn't it?
"Feel the difference in power, beast."
He was not the Ahak of before. Now he could meet those eyes with confidence.
Spotty, too, sensed the reversed order of power.
Grrr—
Deflated, Spotty let out a somewhat timid growl.
"Pathetic creature."
Ahak snickered, paying no heed to Rhea's reproach. He was exactly the sort of man who should never be given power — weak before the strong and tyrannical before the weak.
Thoroughly satisfied with himself, Ahak offered a cheerful farewell.
"I'll be off, then."
"I'll walk you down."
"I'm sorry, what?"
What on earth was this woman saying?
"It's the dead of night, before dawn. If you take the mountain path now, you'll get yourself lost."
"Hmm."
Come to think of it, she had a point. Sunrise was still hours away. Which meant he would have to hack his way through pitch-black darkness no matter what.
"And you couldn't use a torch either. We can't risk being caught by the orcs."
Right. A torch was far too conspicuous.
Here's a human, come catch him! That's what they'd be hollering, isn't it.
Orcs did not use torches. Beyond torches, they restrained themselves from using fire altogether.
Not because they had no need of it. Simply because fire left light and smoke behind — and because those things stood out far too much, the orcs had always kept their distance from flame.
If smoke or firelight escaped, the location of the rock cave would be exposed.
A hunter conceals his tracks. To them, the greatest attack and the greatest defense alike was stealth.
An orc met at night is all the more dangerous.
Orcs saw in the dark to a degree no human could rival. And that wasn't all. They could call on the aid of werewolves as well — and those creatures' noses were built for the chase.
What the orcs had abandoned in fire, they had gained in darkness.
When night fell, all they had to do was go looking for firelight. Firelight was, itself, the orc's prey.
Perhaps I was thinking about this far too simply.
Ahak swallowed hard. His footsteps faltered. The courage to push into that darkness had drained out of him.
Rhea sent Spotty ahead.
"With Spotty's help, we can make it down the mountain path without any light. She's a clever girl."
Rhea stroked Spotty's neck with a tender gaze.
"Hmm. There's merit in that reasoning."
This time, Rhea's logic was the more sensible one. Honestly, he had to hand it to her.
At Ahak's embarrassed cough, Rhea smiled sweetly.
"Repeat after me. Please."
"...?"
"Say 'please' and I'll take you down."
He said it.
"Whew. My knees are shaking."
Had Spotty not led the way, he doubted he could have made it even partway down.
"The beast really is clever, I'll grant it that."
Spotty seemed to understand the difference between a wolf's body and a human's. She never once guided him along paths a person couldn't traverse.
He was just thinking what a reliable creature she was when—
Grrrr—
Spotty bared her teeth. Had she sensed some threatening presence?
But her reaction was different from usual. She didn't look wary — she looked frightened.
Something is scaring a wolf bigger than a man?
The instant he grasped that fact, Ahak raised his crossbow.
Aimed at whatever Spotty was growling at. Postured to fire the moment it came into view.
Something wavered in the darkness. It was enormous. Bigger than Ahak, bigger even than Spotty standing on two legs.
It's coming this way. Without a shred of hesitation. Why? It should have sensed the werewolf?
Soon its outline resolved out of the black.
"A crossbow?"
It even spoke.
A deep, heavy voice. The imperial tongue. No race of the steppe would open a conversation in the Empire's language — which meant that massive shape was human.
But was it truly a man?
An absurd height. A torso thick and broad as a bull's. Arms that hung past his knees. Could that frame honestly be called a human body?
"For hunting? That thing couldn't kill me."
An outrageous man. Even with a crossbow trained directly on his life, there wasn't a trace of fear to be found in him.
As if he simply could not perceive the threat.
Impossible. The crossbow in Ahak's hands was a rare 'genuine article' on the steppe, a weapon every bit as lethal as Ahak had boasted — capable of killing a lion.
"Hard-pressed to take down a bear either, I'd wager. I'd recommend something bigger."
If it couldn't kill a bear, the man seemed to say, then killing him was out of the question.
Grrrr—!
Even at the werewolf's threat, the man did not slow his stride. Spotty lost ground in the contest of spirit. Ahak froze solid, crossbow still raised.
"Ahak?"
Even Rhea's worried voice drew no answer. His whole body was trembling.
"Ahak. Snap out of it! What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"
"...That... that man is—"
"Oh? You know me?"
"A gladiator."
And, at the same time, the most dangerous man in the Empire.
Theo. Theodoros Baranthios.
Theodoros — Theo, for short — was a common enough name. Gladiators named Theo were common as well; there were probably hundreds of them.
But there were only a handful of gladiators whose names Ahak knew by heart — which meant the man standing before him was one of the most famous gladiators in the Empire.
Theo. The gladiator they called the most dangerous man in the Empire.
Was he the Empire's strongest gladiator? Or was it because he was the strongest that they called him the most dangerous?
No one could say for certain. It was a debatable point. He had never fought every gladiator in the Empire.
And yet he was called the most dangerous man for one reason beyond all argument: he was the strongest human in the Empire. As a pure human — that is, a human without arms or armor — no citizen of the Empire surpassed Theodoros Baranthios.
He was the only man alive who entered the gladiatorial games bare-handed.
When the Empire's greatest boxer committed a grave crime, the Emperor sent Theo to the arena and decreed that the beasts themselves would sit in judgment.
"Here, before this seat, all shall learn how worthless a creature naked man truly is."
Theo did not run from the bull that charged him in a frenzy. He charged back, and in the end snapped its neck. He strangled a bear to death with his bare hands, and tore a lion's jaw apart with nothing but his grip.
The Emperor held an execution every single day. He could not kill Theo.
Theo was one of the only men in the Empire whose crimes were pardoned by strength alone.
And now that man stood before Ahak.
Stronger than any wolf, stronger than lion or bear. And more dangerous than all of them.
With hands that would not stop shaking, Ahak leveled the crossbow.
"Wh-what are you doing here?"
"Not sure I should say. I was busy killing some orcs."
"Orcs?"
"The ones who were headed to see my chief."
They must have been going to report the situation. The chief would have moved to resolve it. But if things end too quickly, we don't get our fun.
Theo looked down at Ahak with listless eyes.
"So. What exactly do you plan to do with that crossbow? If you're going to shoot, I'd rather you hurry up and do it."
Theo's expression went flat with boredom. This is starting to get dull.
"Shall I come closer, then?"
Thud.
Close. A hand's breadth from the crossbow's tip. At this range, no man alive could dodge the bolt. Yes — even the strongest human in the Empire.
And yet Ahak could not pull the trigger. Because he could not picture, even in his imagination, the sight of Theo dying with a bolt in him.
"Shoot."
"U-uh..."
The moment he pressed the trigger, Theo would kill him. And even if he didn't press it, Theo would kill him anyway.
"I'll count to three."
He had to find a way out.
"Uaaah, uaaaaaah!"
Ahak hurled the crossbow to the ground.
"I don't recall approving abstentions... oh?"
I have to satisfy him.
Theo whistled.
"Guard up?"
Ahak took a boxer's stance — before the man said to have beaten hundreds to death in the ring.
Before that Theodoros Baranthios himself.