High Orc (7)
Ahak hurled the crossbow aside.
"I don't recall allowing abstentions... hm?"
Curiosity began to glimmer in Theo's expression. It was a good sign.
—I have to satisfy him.
Ahak gritted his teeth, and Theo whistled.
"You're raising your guard?"
In front of me?
His bewilderment was understandable. Ahak had taken up a boxer's stance. In front of a man rumored to have beaten hundreds of people to death in the ring.
In front of none other than Theo Baranthios.
"A human doesn't often do that in front of me. Impressive."
Impressive doesn't begin to cover it.
Theo's height, build, and sheer weight had to be considered entirely outside the dimensions of a human being. He was closer to a savage beast like a lion than to any man.
Throwing away a weapon before such a giant. Raising a fist. It was not the act of a sane mind.
Even a lunatic, upon recognizing how dangerous Theo was, would have cowered in fear, frozen, or fled.
"All the more so if it's an imperial citizen."
He was right. Anyone who saw Theo's frame would feel fear. But that was all it would be — the primal dread of facing a wild beast.
What an imperial citizen felt — what Ahak felt — was something else entirely. To the people of the Empire, the man before him was more than a beast.
—It's like meeting a giant out of legend.
A murder monster. The imperials all knew that Baranthios was a butcher. No matter how strong one's nerves, no one could stand calmly before a man who had personally beaten hundreds of people to death.
—Gladiators kill people only to survive. But that man is different. He enjoyed killing long before he ever became a gladiator.
Theo had been a celebrity of the Empire even before his days in the arena. He had won immortal fame as the finest pugilist the Empire had ever produced.
The Empire was a nation that worshipped the god of war, and so it exalted martial prowess as a matter of state. Every city held countless athletic festivals, sometimes drawing over a thousand competitors.
The fighting tournaments offered no guarantee of safety. Abstention was taboo — victory was decided only by death, or by incapacitation bordering on it.
Theo was a competitor who had fought in nearly a thousand such matches. As far as Ahak knew, he had never lost a single one.
Which meant that Theo had killed, or crippled, close to a thousand human beings.
—Even though his overwhelming skill would have let him subdue opponents without killing. He beat them to death anyway, without mercy.
He had swept every tournament, conquered even the great festival held once every four years.
In a festival that had continued for a thousand years, there had never been another man like Theo.
And by the same token, no man had ever murdered so many.
And Ahak had raised his guard in front of him.
—I'm not doing this because I want to die. I haven't misjudged the situation either. Absolutely not.
In Ahak's eyes, this was the only way to keep his life.
Ahak was a man far more familiar with ink than with blades. He knew little of gladiatorial games or gladiators.
Yet, paradoxically, there was one thing he did understand — their way of thinking.
And that understanding was thanks to his first disciple. Vesta.
—Gladiators are a strange breed.
The more experienced a fighter, the more ruthlessly pragmatic they tend to be in combat. But gladiators were a little different.
Though they fought as routinely as they ate, they preferred a fair fight. They seemed to imbue their duels with meaning, to approach combat as something more than survival.
[Disciple, why are you agonizing over this so much? Just aim for the back of his head.]
[That's... not really my style, sir.]
There had been a time when Ahak had pondered long and hard over why Vesta was like that.
—Win by foul means, and the victory is never recognized. Sometimes the offender is even executed. Because they spent their entire lives fighting in that peculiar environment, their thinking evolved differently from other fighters.
No bows, no crossbows. Meaning granted to a one-on-one contest.
That was Vesta. He did not enjoy fighting, yet he fought as though it were his life, his duty. In single combat, he had absolutely refused to let Ahak interfere.
As though he were performing a sacred rite.
By discarding the crossbow, Ahak had sparked Theo's interest.
—No gladiator will duel a man holding a crossbow. But a man with his bare hands raised? He'll answer.
Theo grinned and lifted his guard. It was a rock-solid guard — anyone could see it. The caliber of his fundamentals was on another level, the dignity of his form another world.
Naturally, Ahak had no intention whatsoever of trading blows with him.
What he meant to extract from Theo was not victory. It was respect.
—And with that respect, I'll ask him to spare my life.
A worthy opponent — that, he might kill. But Ahak was nothing of the sort. He was no different from any ordinary man, an unmistakable weakling.
—If he feels I'm a weakling worthy of a shred of respect... he won't kill me.
If there was any path to survival, this was it.
"Not coming to me?"
Then I'll come to you, apparently. Theo took one enormous stride forward.
—!
It was absurdly fast.
That massive body of his slid across the ground as though skating. In the time it took to blink, he was right there.
—If I'd fired the crossbow, I'd be dead.
There was no other way to think about it.
—He's closed the distance, and yet he isn't attacking. That's deliberate.
Theo held still for only an instant. But a boxer of Theo's caliber could have thrown strike after strike in that same breath. He could have killed Ahak three times over.
He had stopped for something. Of that, there was no doubt.
And Ahak knew what Theo wanted.
"Aaaaagh!"
Spitting out a cracked, strangled cry, he thrust out his fist. Theo stared straight at it without so much as a blink. It made his skin crawl.
Ahak felt a crushing terror at the very idea of striking Theo. And yet — he had no choice but to do it.
Thud.
Perhaps it was the thickness of his neck. He was so absurdly durable that even taking a blow to the face, he didn't stir so much as a finger. Instead, it was Ahak's fist that hurt, as if he'd slammed it into a solid oak. It might even have cracked.
—Doesn't matter. What comes next matters more.
Heart in his throat, he waited for Theo's reaction.
"Weak fist, but you've got guts. Or maybe you've just got sharp eyes. Either way, it makes no difference."
Theo said it with an easy smirk.
"Had you frozen halfway through, I was planning to throw the counter. Good judgment."
And then Ahak saw Theo's two fists. Fists the size of a man's head, lumpy and misshapen, like boulders.
—If something like that connected, my head might simply come off. Instant death.
His heart lurched all over again.
"Killing you would be a waste."
Theo lowered his guard and returned to his usual slouch. He stretched out one long arm and clapped Ahak on the shoulder with a thump.
"Ghk."
Ahak's body folded in half.
"Been a while since I had any fun."
With his back turned and completely undefended, Theo walked away.
He didn't spare so much as a glance for Rhea or Spotty. He simply vanished down the dark mountain path — fearing neither the darkness, nor whatever lurked within it.
"Ah."
The moment his tension broke, Ahak collapsed in a heap.
"Ahak!"
"I'm fine, I'm fine."
"Fine? Look at you, you're drenched in sweat..."
He had kept his life, but he felt as though he had aged a decade in the space of a few minutes.
—Vesta. You lived elbow to elbow with monsters like that?
It struck him anew what an outrageous creature his disciple was. He had fought for years in a living hell that caged such monsters — and he had survived it.
"Still... I didn't flinch. I didn't flinch at all..."
If they ever met again, he would brag to his heart's content — how he had driven a straight punch into the face of the great Theo Baranthios. How the one draw on his personal record of eight wins, one loss, and one draw in ten bouts had been a draw against Theo Baranthios himself.
He comforted body and soul with such idle fantasies. He didn't want to admit it, but Rhea's chatterbox fussing beside him helped enormously.
"...We should get moving again."
"Are you well enough?"
"Whether I am or not, we have to move. That man said he killed orcs earlier. Smelling the blood, other orcs — or a werewolf — could come."
Even as he said it, one question flickered through his mind.
—Spotty didn't smell the blood? Why did he lead us down this path?
The beast would never have guided Rhea into danger. Could he simply have missed the scent?
The question answered itself before long.
"This..."
"...That man's doing."
Corpses lay in ranks upon ranks. The huntsmen of a terrifying night — orc corpses.
"How terrible."
Rhea murmured a prayer. Ahak, as if possessed, crouched low.
He examined the state of the bodies as best he could by eye.
"There's nothing left to see."
"......"
"Ahak?"
There wasn't a single wound of slashing or piercing anywhere on them.
Which meant — they had not bled. Not even in the instant of their deaths.
Alone. In the dead of night. Against orc warriors?
A chill crawled up his spine.