The First Story: Vesta (1)
Narinhoon could not understand the boy.
That's supposed to be a human child?
The boy was human. The ears made that much plain. A human—of the race Narinhoon had always taken for a feeble people. Had a human truly thrown himself forward to save a centaur, here on this steppe?
Foolish.
Did you actually think you could win?
No. Impossible. For those who had waded into the killing line, death carried a weight that was all too real.
Narinhoon knew the boy had resolved himself to die.
He thought he had seen that face somewhere before. The day Narinhoon had fled without even properly crossing blades with the golden centaur—the boy had been there too.
Yes. I remember now.
He was the human the two centaurs had been protecting.
It was humiliating. Flight and defeat were no shame among orcs, and still Narinhoon felt a disgrace he could scarcely bear. To stake one's life on a fight that meant nothing. It was because the boy had done what he himself had not—what he had not even dared to attempt.
The boy's fight was desperate. On two human legs he was weathering riders who came pounding in on rough-bred horses. He hamstrung one mount, then closed with the orc who had been thrown. When the orc lunged with its jaws wide, he rammed his sword down its throat.
In the same breath as dying, the orc's claws raked a deep furrow across the boy's neck. The boy jammed his fingers into the wound. Had he decided it wasn't serious? He pressed on without so much as a pause to bind it.
The kid was shining like that.
Narinhoon did not believe the little one would survive to the end. Charging straight into the pack without creating distance had been a rather good judgment. Otherwise, once the orcs grasped the situation, he would have become a pincushion of arrows. In truth, if it weren't for that centaur loosing shafts from an injured body, he would have taken an arrow and dropped dead long ago.
Narinhoon started toward the centaur.
The centaur woman spotted him and drew her bowstring. But an arrow loosed from a prone position was no threat at all. The trajectory was far too simple.
Ping—
Narinhoon slipped the shaft with luck and keen senses, then sent an arrow back as if answering a challenge.
"Ugh!"
"So you've fallen to the ground."
Even with her arm pierced through, the centaur did not let go of her bow. But she would not be loosing another shot. Narinhoon closed in and leveled his own.
"Stop..."
A powerless voice. It belonged to the human child who had been held in the centaur woman's arms. He looked dazed, as if he had lost too much blood, and he was pointing a centaur's sword at Narinhoon.
"You think you can protect them?"
Narinhoon could have cut the child down in a single stroke. He stepped toward the kid—toward Rahan—and raised his sword overhead.
Whum—
At the heavy sound, Narinhoon turned his head. The thing that came flying had torn his cheek open. He did not even let out a groan as he checked the blade tumbling across the dirt.
It was an orc's.
When he lifted his gaze, that red boy came into view. The boy who had gone into the orc pack alone. The boy shouted something—just one word.
"Fight, Rahan!"
A wet thud. Narinhoon looked down. The human child had driven a sword into his foot. Narinhoon gave a short laugh, then kicked Rahan away.
Not bad.
Narinhoon turned on his heel. They were opponents he had already put down. He had more important business than finishing them off.
He had to see to the spark. He had to step in before it burned itself out alone, fierce and then gone. Impatience needled him.
The boy was taking on the orc pack with nothing but his own body. He rolled across the ground, and rolled again.
That sight made Narinhoon's heart pound.
I won't be able to lie anymore.
He walked toward where the orcs had gathered. Toward the ring the pale wolves had whirled into being. A circular arena of savage men.
My body's worn out.
Everyone had a limit to their stamina. Even someone whose endurance far outstripped the rest still had a clear ceiling. The moment when being out of breath gave way to the body feeling dull and heavy.
The limit is coming.
Soon the body would slow. Reactions would lag. Then would come the moment when the body would not move at all.
From the instant Vesta had charged the orc pack, he had not stopped moving.
It's amazing that my body is still moving at all.
Several horses crashed in at once. There was no answering that. He could only fling himself aside to keep from being crushed under hooves. A heavy thud—his ribcage colliding with the ground, a shock as if his heart had slammed into a wall.
A shadow fell across him. He thrust his sword. Nothing was cut. The horses seemed to exist in a different time from Vesta. They closed on him in an instant, then receded in an instant to a place beyond reach.
Twang.
"...!"
The sound of a bowstring snapping. Vesta did not even see the arrow. The vividness of the sound alone turned his guts to ice.
Arin's covering fire has stopped.
Vesta barely pushed himself to his feet. Blue beasts whose mud camouflage had melted away filled his vision to the brim. He raised his sword.
That was when it happened.
"Make way."
Someone walked into the circle the orcs had formed. An orc man with his hair in a long braid. His eyes gleamed with a savage light, the pupils looking as if they were fiercely pursuing something.
"Narinhoon Ibahtar."
The orc pointed at himself. Vesta did not know the orc tongue, but he could tell the man had given his name.
"Bestiarii."
That was the only name he had to offer an orc.
"Bestiarii, Bestiarii. I see."
Narinhoon strode closer. Not only Vesta but the orcs too were thrown by the move. Narinhoon looked back at the murmuring pack.
"Watch in silence."
"What are you trying to do."
"Stay out of it. Just watch. This isn't something you'll see every day. Perhaps never again."
They could not understand each other's language. In the midst of that, Narinhoon looked at Vesta, drew his sword, and took his stance.
Facing an opponent with a blade was familiar. Vesta settled into his own stance as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"One on one?"
"Just you and me."
"No idea what you're saying."
"Here I come, Bestiarii."
Narinhoon charged. The sword was considerably fast. Vesta raised his blade to meet it, and his brow furrowed at the force. Metal screamed as he let the cut slide off and drove his point toward Narinhoon's throat.
Narinhoon neither hesitated nor stiffened. He lifted a leg and kicked Vesta's forearm upward. A bold defense. Vesta's expression twisted. This one was different from the orcs he had faced until now.
He was a born fighter.
Vesta calmly opened the distance. Narinhoon did not rush him. He circled slowly, like a wolf probing its prey. From his eyes and the rigid line of his shoulders, from the way his toes bristled against the dirt, a beastlike presence came through.
I'm not fighting a human body right now.
Narinhoon was closer to a beast that understood, with perfect precision, what a weapon was for.
"Where did you learn a sword like that?"
Narinhoon asked even knowing the other could not answer. Vesta gave him nothing, watching his shoulders instead, reading for the next motion.
"You reek of a winner. Have you always won? Have you always avenged every defeat?"
Narinhoon was the first to step in. He cut on a diagonal. Vesta meant to drop his weight and take the wrist—
A heavy whoosh of air. As he ducked, he realized the reaction was not coming as it usually did.
My body's slow. I can't keep up.
The chance to counter went to waste, and Narinhoon was not a man to miss an opening like that. He slammed the pommel into Vesta's back.
A grinding crunch. "Ghk." Pain followed as if a shoulder blade were twisting out of true.
Still low, Vesta drove forward. Narinhoon rammed a knee up; Vesta caught it and shoved his sword into the man's calf. Blood came properly this time.
"Hmph."
Vesta was too close for a killing cut. Narinhoon slammed the pommel down once more—and met the flash of the boy's eyes.
He saw it coming. I got hit.
Vesta's blade sought the underside of Narinhoon's jaw. Narinhoon snapped his head back, but he could not stop the orc snout—longer than a human's—from being pierced. It did not reach the brain. And that was enough.
Beastlike black pupils stared clearly into Vesta. Narinhoon's left hand seized his head. The sword in his right went for the throat.
Vesta abandoned the cut through the jaw. He snatched the scabbard and struck upward with everything he had. His eyes could not even follow it. He staked his life on an uncertain gamble.
They stared each other down to the last.
A grinding shriek. The sword was deflected. It could only be called luck. Vesta poured strength into his hand, meaning to saw the jaw apart. Narinhoon's jaw muscles swelled. The corners of his long, slashed mouth pulled into something like a sneer. Vesta's hand shook.
It was not shaking from fear. The sword would not come free, forced back by the sheer power of Narinhoon's bite.
"This..."
Narinhoon shoved a hand into his own mouth, seized the blade, and drove a knee into Vesta.
Vesta's body folded of its own accord. Even then he did not let go of the sword. Narinhoon kicked his upper body again, and Vesta went flying. An alarm rang through his skull. He barely got his feet under him.
"Ah..."
His hand was empty. He had lost the sword he regarded as his life.
"Damn."
Vesta looked at the beast that had swallowed his blade. Narinhoon was pulling it free, pouring blood in thick ropes. The orcs roared, certain of his victory.
"Kh. You're loud."
Narinhoon had used the human tongue, and the orcs did not understand him. He looked down at Vesta. He found himself thinking, as if for the first time, how small the boy standing before him was.
"Out of weapons? Pathetic. You don't even carry a sidearm."
Narinhoon picked up the scabbard that had fallen to the dirt.
"Or did you throw the blade you'd have used as one at me?"
He sheathed the sword and tossed it to Vesta.
"There will not be a second time."
The pack murmured in surprise. Narinhoon paid them no mind. It did not matter either way.
"...Why?"
"Because I did not come here to hunt."
"Pick up your sword."
Vesta staggered, and raised the blade.
Is today the day I die.
It was a rather belated thought.
You knew it would come someday.
That was why he had always said it, before a fight began. Always.
We who are about to die salute His Imperial Majesty.
"No."
The Emperor isn't here.
Vesta was on the steppe, and the steppe was not the Emperor's land.
Then.
The Khan, driving her horse hard, turned her gaze to her waist.
It was hot, as if it were burning. Strange. The only thing hanging there was a single sword—the Twin Sabers she had shared with Vesta. It was heating up on its own.
"Are you calling for me?"
The Khan—Ashtien—closed her hand around the hilt. She gripped it as if clasping someone's hand. The sword was hot as flame.
"Vesta."
Vesta gripped the hilt hard. As if clasping someone's hand. Just like that.
"Khan."
If I fall today—
Then send an eagle down for me as well.
Vesta drew the sword.
Flame roared up.