If I Don't Go, That's the End of It
"Hold her!"
"Vice Commander! Snap out of it!"
"Rotate in! Don't stay on her alone!"
"Hey! Rupiaaa! Get up! I said get up!"
By the time I arrived, the place was nothing short of a disaster. Rupia, blood-soaked from head to toe, was swinging her sword in every direction, crimson light blazing in her eyes.
"Ahahahaha!"
She laughed like someone who had lost her mind.
"Hey! She's breaking through! She's breaking—whoa, here she comes!"
"Pull yourselves together! We were supposed to wake her ourselves before the Commander got here—huh? Damn it! I told you! I clearly told you!"
"The Commander's here!"
Relief lit the faces of the knights in black armor, their plate dented and gouged all over. All but the one still locked with Rupia sprang back at the same time.
"Commander! Save me!"
"...Out of the way."
I let out a sigh.
"Rupia."
"...!"
She came at me grinning wide enough to bare every white tooth.
The greatsword, trailing a red aura, split the wind with a low howl and drove straight for my throat. Killing intent sat plain in the blow.
"...Hah."
I kicked off and cleared it in a backward leap, drawing the sword at my waist as I went. Muscle locked down my arm with a creak. Black heat-haze began to rise along the longsword, and I swung as if to cut—
—and threw it.
"!"
For an instant the blade wiped the crimson glare from Rupia's eyes. Sight blocked by steel, she dove low to win her view back and never once broke stride.
But I was faster.
My fist sank precisely into her solar plexus. A dull, heavy impact rang out.
"Whoa...!"
"Urgh..."
The knights who had been watching the vicious exchange let out a groan.
Rupia's waist folded hard.
"Kkhh...!"
She couldn't kill her own momentum. With a strained sound she collapsed into my arms, and I caught her on reflex as she pitched forward.
"Com...mander...! I... I'm awake..."
"How... hard did you... hit me...!"
Face buried in my chest, hands clutched over her solar plexus, she slid slowly down my front.
"I held back. You felt that, didn't you?"
Before that sliding face could reach anywhere unfortunate, I caught her under both thighs and gathered her up.
"...Still. One Sand Howler, and you end up like this?"
She hadn't looked anywhere near that far gone. I had watched her carve the thing into dozens of pieces, and maybe her body had been hidden behind that bulk—I hadn't even noticed her eyes had rolled.
Head lolling back, Rupia spoke without strength.
"That thing... wasn't... elite grade..."
"What?"
She clutched her solar plexus and hacked for air.
"...Cut it, and it... came back...!"
"......"
I shut my mouth.
...A Sand Howler out of the northwest coming all the way down here was already strange.
A mutant above elite grade? And the pack only three strong?
...Something's been wrong since last time. No question.
The Stone Tusks, abandoning their nests to flee south from whatever they were running from. Even a massive drake—a Grade Two monster—had left its nest behind.
And now a Sand Howler as well?
This was not the sort of thing that happened because one or two slightly stronger predators had shown up.
"......"
I sank into the problem for a moment. Monsters of the North. The barbarians. The strange omens out of the West. And...
"Tsk."
Useless memories, today of all days.
If I don't go, that's the end of it.
I already had more than enough to be irritated about. I stopped thinking.
"Com...mander..."
I looked down at Rupia, groaning in my arms.
"I'm... dying..."
She hung utterly vacant in the crook of my arm, limp as a wrung cloth, her face buried in my shoulder and drool wetting my collar besides. The hand on my clothes trembled—whether from the pain, I couldn't tell.
No. Looking closer, she was shaking as she wrung and tore at my collar.
"That must have hurt, Rupia."
Her face crumpling toward tears, she gave a tiny nod.
"Espe...cially getting hit... by you, Commander..."
"Stop talking. You'll only get worse."
I turned my head toward the knights standing well off, muttering among themselves.
"Hehe. That's why I said to wake her on our side."
"......"
"C-Commander... thank you for your hard work!"
"We're heading back."
I set off with Rupia held gently in my arms.
"C-Commander, take us with you!"
"You've returned, Viscount Rian...?"
Keberg's eyes caught on the woman hanging limp in Rian's arms.
"That person... wait. Red hair...! Don't tell me that's the Vice Commander?"
"......"
"Surely not the Sand Howler...!"
Rian gave a slight nod, his expression dark.
"If there's somewhere we might lay the Vice Commander down, just for a moment..."
"Of course! There's a side chamber!"
"...My thanks, Baron Keberg. Medson!"
He dipped his head to Keberg in thanks, then called for someone.
"Yes, Commander."
Medson came over. She had been treating the wounded and had only just stretched out on a pile of rubble for a moment's rest—a knight who had learned medicine at a monastery before joining the order, and not a former mercenary.
While Rian passed Rupia into her arms, the half-conscious woman's hair swayed in the air.
"Medson..."
"Yes."
Rupia's eyes went wet.
"What am I supposed to do if I can't have babies..."
"Do you even have someone in mind?"
"I did... I'm reconsidering, right now..."
Medson heaved a long sigh.
"Haa. Which is why I told you—if it starts feeling too rough, fall back a little and fight within reason."
"...Uuuugh..."
"And you went and fought until you couldn't tell up from down. Again."
It was too unfair. A single tear rolled from the corner of Rupia's eye.
"This way. I'll show you."
Medson ignored the forehead thumping repeatedly against her shoulder and followed the attendant.
"Your Grace the Grand Duke... why would you do that to our child... hhk!"
"Yes. Get the nonsense out while you still can. I won't be hitting a patient."
"Commander, you've changed...!"
"Be still, would you."
Rupia's damp complaining grew farther and farther away, until at last it couldn't be heard at all.
"Changed? I did hit her. I'll give them that."
"If this were the old days, we wouldn't even be able to talk right now..."
I ignored the less-than-loyal muttering at my back and walked over to the monsters piled off to one side.
"C-Commander? I didn't say a word, I swear—huh? Oh."
"Finally getting to it, are you?"
I tightened my grip on the sword.
"Kiiik...!"
"Graaah..."
Seven strokes, delivered in an instant. Black afterimages hung in the air, and not a single monster was left with breath in it.
I flicked the blood from the blade. Alfred, who had come up with perfect timing, poured oil over the mountain of corpses. Flame took with a rush.
"Huuu..."
"Finally putting them down."
The soldiers and knights of the Sahar barony let out long breaths. Listening to hundreds of monsters die for that long had been enough to drive a person mad.
"...Anyway. So why, exactly?"
Gratitude for the favor he'd done them was one thing. Why he insisted on killing the monsters with his own hand was another, and the question had hold of everyone.
"...My lords."
Baron Keberg seemed to feel it too. He walked over to Rian's knights.
"Yes?"
"Would any of you happen to know why your lord does that?"
The knights looked at one another.
"No idea."
"We don't know either. He's been like that since the first time we saw him."
Raast—the knight with the thinning hair and the scar across his forehead—spoke up.
"Our Chief Administrator might know, if anyone does."
Keberg's gaze turned to Alfred.
"...Hmm."
Alfred made a low sound and, for a moment, looked at the shadowed line of Rian's back.
...My lord.
His lips stirred. Then he shook his head.
"...I don't rightly know either."
"Well, there you have it. If even our Chief Administrator doesn't know, nobody does."
"......"
Keberg had no particular reason to dig, and he turned his head again. The oil fire crackled higher.
"...Still. Why on earth was he like that?"
The soldiers were no less puzzled by the sight.
"Maybe he enjoys butchering things while they're still alive..."
"Watch your mouth. He's our benefactor."
"Or maybe he's got some deep grudge against monsters..."
"Heh. Ignorant swordsmen, the lot of you."
"...Old man?"
While the guesses flew, an elderly soldier opened his mouth.
"Don't any of you read?"
"...Old man, all you ever read is novels."
Anyone listening would have thought the man a great scholar.
"Anyway, what is it?"
The old man lowered his voice.
"Tsk, tsk. You don't remember when Lord Raven Reinhardt put down the orc clans of the North?"
"A novel again..."
"He didn't leave a single one to anyone else's hand. He cut their breath himself, and afterward he bowed his head in silence."
The old man went on.
"He may fight alongside his men, but the responsibility of ending a life—that, he carries alone."
"We read that too. We know. But..."
"...Raven is a person in a novel."
"Tsk. Isn't he a character the author modeled on Lord Rian?"
The soldiers' mouths shut.
"Think back on the fight just now."
"......"
"Those knights, wild with the joy of it, left the monsters alive and gathered them up. And at a single word from him they went silent, without so much as an answer."
"...Now that you mention it."
They recalled the moment, only a few hours past, when Rian had first shown himself.
"Wasn't that because they were scared of a duel to the death?"
"Fool! Do those bloodthirsty knights look like the sort who'd meekly fold if someone leaned on them?"
"That part's true, but..."
The elderly soldier set his eyes on Rian's shadowed back.
"It's respect. For a lord who means to shoulder every killing alone."
The soldiers who had been hesitating looked, all at once, to the same place.
"......"
A black-haired man watched the monsters burn down to ash, his face empty of thrill and empty of anger.
"It's true..."
"...Mm."
Even those who still held a little doubt closed their mouths as if spellbound. There was something almost solemn in the sight. The soldiers shut their eyes with him and held their silence.
...Three days, by the feel of it.
Neither too little nor too much. About the lifespan he had expected. The impulse to confirm how much remained stopped there.
I shook the blood from my sword and passed between the soldiers staring at the monsters.
"Trekker."
"Yes, Commander."
"Look over the one Rupia brought down."
Trekker's gaze turned toward the outer wall.
"Yes. I'll check the carcass before it starts to rot, then confirm the route it came by."
"Do that."
Trekker headed for the outer wall ahead of me.
"...Hot."
My face was starting to burn. I turned and set off.
"Kaisen... no. Viscount Rian."
Keberg, whose eyes had met mine as I walked, called out.
"There's a great deal I'd like to say, but... it's gotten late."
"...So it has."
Night had come at the end of a fierce battle, and yet by the clock not even a full day had passed.
"We'll rest, and continue tomorrow what we couldn't say. And..."
I listened.
"Viscount Rian, everyone here is alive because of you and your knights. Once more, in the name of Sahar, I offer you my thanks."
"You honor me more than I know what to do with."
I nodded and returned a brief courtesy. An attendant stepped out from behind Keberg.
"I'll show you to a room in the guest hall, my lord."
"No. That's all right."
"Pardon?"
"There's something I still have to do. I'll be going on ahead."
I turned and started walking. In the dead of a night when everyone was exhausted, a solemn thanks receded behind me.
"Uuuugh..."
"...Lady Rupia, please be quiet and sleep. If a patient keeps this up, it interferes with recovery."
"Northern Grand Duke...!"
After enduring the nonsense for far too long, Medson rose from the sofa with a vein standing out at her temple and her teeth set. She picked up a spare pillow and brought it in front of Rupia's face.
"...Uh, M-Medson?"
"Why, exactly, is the patient not following instructions?"
When the pillow came close enough to touch the tip of her nose, Rupia's voice began to shake.
"Will you stay quiet, patient?"
"Y-yes...!"
"That's right. Sleep quietly."
"Mmph...!"
As a final warning, Medson pressed the pillow lightly over Rupia's face.
"......"
And her eyes met Rian's. He had opened the door without a sound and stepped inside.
"What are you doing...?"