15. Footprints of the Old Saint (2)
A child's voice is heard.
And someone answers that child's question.
"Me? I am a knight."
"A knight? What's a knight?"
To the child's innocent question, a voice rang out, swelling with pride.
"One who overcomes the impossible.
One who can die for a noble ideal.
One who triumphs even over unbearable pain.
One who knows to repent of his own wrongs and mend them.
One who loves justice and goodness more than any other.
One who strikes down wicked foes without hesitation,
and bears the courage to carry dreams and love, hope and faith, and run to the very ends of the world.
That is what a knight is."
"…."
Cariel pulled his hand from the sword and, for a long while, simply turned the voice that had brushed through his mind over and over again.
What was that?
What did I just hear?
-What? Didn't you see something strange, like you were supposed to?
The Golden Girl thrust her enormous eyes right up before him. He let out a startled yelp, but fortunately he recovered his composure quickly enough to spare himself any further disgrace.
As if she didn't know perfectly well that asking now would get him nowhere.
"Ruel? What's wrong?"
Perhaps that was why he had somehow managed to unsettle the others who had been watching him this whole time. To the approaching Alesia, Cariel answered with an air of vague dissatisfaction.
"Ah, that is… I heard a voice."
"A voice? What kind? You're telling me you heard a voice just from touching the sword?"
"Ah, yes. Something like that."
She nodded without a trace of doubt. At that, Filbar, standing nearby, let out a cry of astonishment.
"You can read the echoes lodged within objects? No — in this case you heard it, so 'overheard' would be the proper word, wouldn't it? Yes, that is the apt phrasing! Oh! Inspiration! Paper! Pen! Quickly, now!"
Filbar's servants raced off and returned in a flash with pens and paper rolled into scrolls. He even had someone haul over a wooden board to serve as a writing desk, and with the board held out before him in both arms, he spread a scroll across it with practiced ease and set his pen dancing.
Alesia asked gently.
"What did it sound like? Did you happen to hear anything bad?"
By now it wasn't just her — the Varonens father and his sons had all crowded in as well.
"Well, you see…."
Cariel recounted the exchange he had witnessed between a young boy and a man of unknown identity.
"You're telling me that, by some twist of fate, you heard the very moment Saint Cariel himself taught a child the Knight's Creed? Good grief. What staggering luck."
"But doesn't it differ somewhat from the wording of the oath?" Ludhi raised his doubt, looking a little troubled.
"Not at all. For a child, an explanation like that might actually suit better — far more romantic. Words dressed up like that are grander, aren't they?"
Luke voiced his opinion emphatically, as if to say it was entirely plausible.
"Romance! Splendid! Absolutely splendid! Back in the age when the profession of knight was first kindled in human history, a knight in full bloom of romance, seeking to awaken sentiment over reason! Planting dreams in a child! And such a romantic knight recited the Knight's Creed! It's a picture! A perfect picture!"
The pen in Filbar's hand whirled as if possessed, darting ceaselessly across the blank expanse of the scroll.
"The answer was waiting in a place no one ever thought to look."
Somehow, before anyone realized it, every gaze in the group drifted toward Cariel as if drawn by an unspoken agreement.
"…."
Cariel, wearing an awkward expression, suddenly—
"…?"
—witnessed a vision, as if children were frolicking somewhere.
Two boys and one girl. The three little ones were running off toward someplace.
"What is it you see now?"
"Ah, that is…."
At Filbar's question, Cariel lifted a hand and pointed to one side.
"I can see something — children, I think."
"What are they doing?"
"They're running off somewhere."
"Th-then why don't we follow them?"
No sooner had Filbar boarded the carriage and the tents been struck than Cariel set off after the phantom, which stood with its back turned as if it had been waiting for him all along.
"This place is…."
Cariela.
They had arrived at the very mouth of the city.
"One moment, please!"
The carriage slipped into the shade of the buildings near the entrance. Filbar climbed down, drew out a cloth painted with magic circles, and tried this and that—only to hang his head in disappointment.
"…There is a reaction, but this is not the place either."
"This is becoming more of a headache by the hour," Baron Roia grumbled.
"And yet where else would we have gotten even this much of a lead, if not for me?"
"That much is true."
"All thanks to me, no?"
When Luke snickered as he said it, Alesia needled him right back.
"It wasn't your doing — fortune simply rolled in on its own."
Luke played it coy, insisting that surely that fortune, too, was his merit.
Watching the scene from a little ways off — feeling, somehow, like a spectator viewing it all from across a river — Cariel found everything bewildering.
Everything that had happened to him was bewildering. And yet, at the same time, at finding himself absorbed in something alongside all these people — without any burden, without any tension — a small warmth stirred in his chest.
To be able to mingle with so many others, unburdened and at ease…
…he was beginning to grasp just how extraordinary a thing that truly was.
And then, suddenly.
Deep within the city.
He caught sight of someone standing amid the flow of the crowd.
The figure stood there in silence, utterly still.
Its gaze fixed, unwavering, straight ahead.
-Most humans. No — sentient beings of every race and rank, high or low, take little interest in others. Unless, of course, they offer amusement of a size beyond all imagining.
-A child unfolding a fairy tale for a bit of fun will shine-eyed over the story of the hero, the protagonist — but for the unremarkable little runt who is neither protagonist nor key ally, the one meant to be skipped over in a heartbeat, not a scrap of attention is spared. But what if the runt were the hero? What if the runt were the protagonist?
-By that point, the book gets shut. Because it isn't my concern! Because it isn't the story I wanted. Because he isn't the character I wanted!
-How utterly heartrending it all is.
Cariel glanced briefly up at the Demon King, who was grumbling away overhead as though talking to herself. He could hardly begin to fathom what she was going on about.
-That one standing over there — was he fortunate in that regard, I wonder? Or unfortunate?
At length, among the passersby streaming past—
Cariel drew near to the one standing within them.
But there was nothing solid there.
Even now, several people were passing straight through the man's shoulders — through his very torso.
In other words, this was something only he could see.
-What do you think?
"…That is not mine to judge."
Cariel gazed at the phantom standing in silence.
A man rooted in place, and yet looking for all the world as though he might crumple, might crumble, at any moment.
Hair newly grown hung about him in wild disarray, and his clothes were a ruin — torn, caked with dust and filth and mud.
Yet he paid himself no mind whatsoever, and simply stared straight ahead.
The sword held in his hand.
"…."
Cariel knew what this was.
Until yesterday, he hadn't. No — mere moments ago, it had been something wholly beyond his knowing.
But now he knew.
"This man is…."
Though his body looked hale enough, his present figure was wretched beyond description.
This man was—
—the one from three hundred years ago.
The man whose name—
—was the origin of his own.
"…."
Cariel reached out his hand.
He could feel it — something was about to happen. What omen it would herald, or how it would end, he honestly could not say.
And yet.
He didn't know why — but he knew, with bone-deep certainty, that it had to be done.
The moment Cariel's hand touched the man's body, a torrent of images rushed past.
A boy sprawled on the ground.
A knight clad in jet-black armor, offering him one instruction after another, guiding him along.
Following the knight's movements, the boy took up a crude wooden stick and copied them.
Even after the knight had gone, the boy did not rest.
He ran the plains to build his endurance, climbed hills up and down, scaled trees and dropped from them, swam against the current of rivers as though defying them.
And then, once more, he swung the stick.
And strangely, that figure looked achingly familiar.
The black knight returned from time to time, corrected his posture here and there—
and then left without a word.
The boy, too, began to come of age; his frame grew sturdy, his face took on a quiet gravity. The boy and girl who had kept him company likewise grew into a fine young man and woman—
—joined hands, and held a modest wedding.
The young man watched it all, unbothered, and swung his stick again — no, a sword of steel now, when had that changed?
He felled trees and gave the timber to the village, taking a measure of food in return.
He caught fish barehanded from the river, and hunted besides.
Self-sufficient as he was, he still devoted half of every single day, without fail, to the sword.
He had no parents; those he had were only his friends.
But apart from them, he stood somewhat apart from the world.
He didn't care.
When the knight returned, the young man presented him with a gift — a steel sword of no small craftsmanship.
"At that level, you could go anywhere and make something of yourself."
"I did not swing the sword for the sake of success. I swung it because I wished to become a man like you."
The boy had become a man.
For more than ten years he had swung the sword with dogged stubbornness, like a fool. He tempered his body, and even learned his letters, just in case.
"Is there truly reason to strive that hard?"
When the black knight asked, the man did not hesitate.
"My parents told me to live a life without regrets."
It had been their dying wish. Look only forward, they said. Do not weep remembering us.
"And yet I regret, every single day. Because I was weak, I could not protect the two of them."
No one blamed him for it.
There was nothing to be done. He had been only a child.
But.
If only he had been strong — perhaps he would still be living alongside his parents now. Perhaps a little sibling might have been born. The uncle next door, the grandfather, the grandmother — turned to corpses in a single night by brigands and thieves…
All of them might still be alive.
"There was nothing I could do."
But.
"I do not want other children to carry the same regret and grief that I did. For that reason, I want to become strong — strong like you, sir."
"…."
The black knight heaved a long, deep sigh.
"One goes about expecting disappointment, and yet the ways of the world remain forever beyond knowing. After circling through so many lands, so many places, to find — in a spot where I held not the slightest expectation — a soul bearing such unclouded resolve."
The man could not grasp what the knight meant by those words, nor what weight they carried.
Perhaps he would never understand them for the rest of his life.
"Perhaps this, too, was part of the design," the black knight said. "You wish to protect someone — to guard them, to shield them, that you may be spared regret. Was that not what you said?"
"It was."
"Why so? Is one's own self not more precious than others? With that strength you could rise in the world, take yourself a fine spouse, watch your children grow, and live well enough."
"Would that make the tragedies vanish? The world is hell, is it not? Even my own prosperity would amount to nothing more than covering my eyes and turning my face away from it all."
"Young blood may well dream of changing the world. But that dream is wasted toil."
The black knight knew it better than anyone.
The moment a single, solitary individual resolves, by their own will, to change the world—
—at that very instant, they are made to face it.
Beneath this vast, sprawling world.
Beneath this ugly yet glittering world.
Just how powerless the strength of one person truly is.
Just how pitifully, heartbreakingly frail the strength of a lone soul truly is.
"But if no one else will do it, then must I not do it myself?"
"…."
"You did the same, didn't you, sir? Going from place to place, hoping to find someone who would change the world?"
"That is…."
Strange. The time we have known each other is fleeting at most. Why. How. Does this child. See straight through to my heart?
"I only ever wanted to become someone admirable."
In the beginning, that was all it was.
But as he came, bit by bit, to understand the structure of the tragedy that wracks the world—
as he drew ever closer to its true form—
he came to realize that it, above all, was an enemy that had to be struck down.
And yet it had no shape.
And so it could not even be struck down.
How lamentable a thing. How bitter a thing to curse.
"Is that not enough?"
"Enough? Why?"
"If today's me cannot do it, then tomorrow's me will — isn't that enough? And if I cannot, then another tomorrow's me will, or my heirs after me, my descendants after them."
"It is not such a simple thing, I tell you."
"Then I'll never know unless I try, will I?"
When he had first taken up that wooden stick—
when all he possessed was the training method the knight had bade him carry out, held within his head—
the boy had thought only this:
Can someone like me really do this?
Nothing but that single doubt.
"If it fails, then it fails — that much cannot be helped. But that is no reason not to try. It is no reason it must not be tried, is it?"
"Enough. Go any further than this, and regret will surely follow."
The walls of the world are terribly high.
The moment one finally understands that their height reaches all the way to the heavens, they become a barrier that can never, ever be crossed.
A mere castle wall becomes nothing at all by comparison.
And yet the reality is that even those castle walls are more than any lone individual would ever dare attempt.
"But… your words carry reason in them, too."
Then show me.
"From this moment onward, you will engrave every word I speak into the depths of your soul."
Without fail. Without fail.
"Live beneath the heavens without shame. You may stumble, and you may weep. Weariness may bring you to your knees, may lay you flat upon the ground. But there is one thing alone you must never forget."
Live, I beg you, without shame.
"If you can keep that, then some part of all you have spoken of will be fulfilled."
Perhaps—
"—a tomorrow better than the one you hoped for may yet follow."
At length, the knight turned his back to leave.
"Will I never see you again?"
The man felt the premonition settle over him even as he asked.
"I mean to return to my homeland."
"Your homeland, sir?"
"Aye."
There was nothing left for him to do here.
The black knight murmured it softly.
When they had first met, he had been such a towering, unbreakable figure — so vast, so blindingly radiant—
that all the boy could do, helplessly, was chase after that figure.
"What should I call you, Master?"
"'Master'? An overgenerous appraisal, that."
And then the black knight fell silent for a long, long while, before at last he answered.
"Grandeus. Call me that."
And remember your own name well, too — keep it with you always.
"Cariel. As the successor who will carry on the will I cast aside, I hereby appoint you. Henceforth, in the Middle Realm, you shall stand as my proxy."