If I Could Leave (3)
"You're saying we can't go because Jatav is blocking the road?"
"Yeah. He's worked himself into a fury over the Bigabol chief's secret weapon this and the Black Snake that—anyway, if we want into Bigabol territory, it looks like we'll have no choice but to go a round with Jatav."
"Berserk is confident she can fight."
"You might be free to fight, but our Magic Tower absolutely cannot. We only just managed to secure a supply of materials from the Great Forest. If we start a fight, that road closes again!"
"Then what do we do?"
"What else? We negotiate. Odds are high they won't even hear us out, but…"
"So joining the two of you will have to…"
"I'm sorry, Hero. Looks like we'll have to put it off a few days."
"Ah…"
We arrived in Bigabol territory.
"How—how did you people…"
Return without a hitch, receive a warm welcome, then meet Sangun? I had braced myself for it, and sure enough.
"How could you do this!"
"Oh, shut up! I warned you over and over, Atart. You're the one who wouldn't listen!"
"Taposaka! Sammar!!"
As expected, a rebellion had broken out and seized the village.
"Are you… all right? Your face looks rather—"
For the record, putting it down itself wasn't particularly hard. A fair number of people still loyal to Atart remained, and not every resident had joined the uprising. There weren't any tremendous powerhouses on the other side either. Since it was an ideological fight, they'd gone at it without weapons out of sheer squeamishness—and still got driven back in droves.
"Waaah—"
"It's loud, so shut your mouth!"
But the real incident blew up at the very end.
When the rebellion teetered on the edge of failure, the rebels snatched children—toddlers of five or six—from among the civilians and took them straight as hostages.
My eyes flipped. Of course they did. I'd been moving carefully the whole time so no one would die, especially no civilians caught in the crossfire.
Yeah. Kids who only grew up because their parents cherished and protected them, forgetting their own childhood and taking children hostage—why the hell would I forgive that? These insane bastards. These absolute sons of bitches.
"I ask you."
Tradition, heritage, whatever—the moment they laid hands on children, every claim and every justification those bastards waved around lost all force. I carved that fact into my mind as I took hold of my sword hilt. Before me, as a last act of defiance, the rebels had occupied the inner keep and were staging a hostage crisis.
"May I kill those vermin."
The rebel leader held one child in his arms as a shield; the rest of the children knelt along one wall of the rampart with another ringleader, ropes wound tight around them for good measure.
"…You."
The Archmage called my name in a grave tone. I ignored her. Instead I fixed my eyes on the one gripping the child.
Six arms—there was no way I could sever all six without harming the kid. He was holding the child so the top of the small head pressed against his chin, which made cutting the throat nearly impossible too. And even if I attacked him, the safety of the other children remained a problem. I had to think several moves ahead.
"Kill them if you will. I would prefer the heads left intact, but I will be grateful either way."
Just as I had finally, with the utmost care, found my answer, Atart gave me a clear confirmation. That was enough.
"Tell them."
"…?"
"Tell them to close their eyes."
Pitch-black light carved itself into the empty air and punched clean through the man's brow.
Boom!
At the same instant my body kicked off the earth and rose in a single bound.
Crash.
Something like a transparent wall shattered; I smashed through the wooden walls of the inner keep, stomped my way up, and came to a stop before the corpse that was already tipping backward.
"Hngh."
The child slipped neatly into my arms. For a moment, losing my breastplate earlier felt like a stroke of luck.
"W-what—"
After that—well. I pivoted toward the remaining children and swung my sword in the same motion. Whether Atart's message had been delivered or not, most of the children had their eyes shut.
Good.
Shhk!
Flesh parted with a clean edge and blood fountained out.
"Hic—"
In that brief span, snot and tears soaked the front of my chest. That was actually better. A face pressed into my chest meant the view was blocked, and a blocked view meant they couldn't see what was around them.
I adjusted my hold so the child's eyes wouldn't poke out over my shoulder, and checked the survivors.
Maybe it was because I had accounted for how much smaller the children were than adults, and how much lower their heads sat while kneeling. The only ones caught in the sword-stroke were the human garbage—not human at all. The children were spattered with a little blood, nothing more; not a single wound among them.
The plan to get them out without physical injury had succeeded.
"Keep your eyes closed."
I knew the words wouldn't land, but I hoped the tone would carry, kids.
With that empty warning, I set the child from my chest down among the other hostages. Then I swept my gaze over the ones still gaping, unable to believe what had just happened.
The children's safety was secured. Now all that remained was the suppression.
"The children are free! Move in!"
"It may be better to move the children this way first, Chief. That will free him to act."
"Is that so. Then that would be better!"
Once I broke the stalemate, the stalled suppression swung back onto its rails. The Archmage's magic shattered the barrier—the one I had smashed earlier and they had hastily recast—along with the barred doors, and warriors poured inside.
"Taposaka… Sammar…"
Atart was among them. He had climbed the wall to take charge of the children, then fell silent for a moment. At the end of his gaze lay the corpse of a man with a hole through his brow, and a short distance away, the body of a woman.
A look tangled with affection and fury finally closed behind lowered lids. Whatever those two had been to each other, it was no ordinary bond.
"I'll take it from here."
Whatever they were to each other was none of my business.
I handed the child off to Atart and to the Archmage, who had stayed close for safety while casting, and left.
Thud.
My body landed below the wall, kicking up a thin swirl of dust, and pressed forward.
"…Most of them being taken alive. Consideration for the executions to come, I suppose."
"I doubt that is the only reason…"
I beat down the rebels who kept resisting to the end, then charged straight into the building said to hold the priests. Rebel warriors were still on their feet out there, but I left them to the Bigabol fighters.
I knew better than to give priests—mages—time.
"The maze is almost complete! Once this is done, they won't be able to get in!"
I sprinted through the building and kicked in the door where the voices were coming from.
Bang!
"Good, it's finis—?!"
"Wh-what!"
"They got in this fast?"
"You filthy outsider…!!"
What they'd been up to—well. Looking at those faces flushed red and twisted up, I figured they were cursing me. Since I didn't understand a word, the impact was zero.
"Ah—the children, we need to take them hosta—"
That shout was so grating I just seized them and started thrashing them.
Violence is a stopgap at best, never a true answer, and I don't believe it can change people—but I had no choice.
Not content with the hostages outside, they had tried to grab the spare children they'd stashed deeper inside. Birds of a feather. Exactly like the ones outside.
"I hope you come to understand how precious the humanity you discarded truly was."
You absolute garbage. Be grateful the children are right here. I held back because they were watching.
"Otherwise you'll have no choice but to bite your tongues and die of shame."
Real bottom-of-the-barrel human trash…
"P-people without arms…"
"A monster came to catch us…"
"Waaah. Mommyyyy."
I drew a deep breath through the ringing in my ears and the heavy silence. Whether my expression had gone thoroughly foul, the children took one look at me and burst into full-throated wailing.
The rage that had been climbing collapsed under a wave of flustered embarrassment.
"…Don't cry."
Leaving the human garbage with their broken limbs where they lay, I went first to the sobbing children. It stung a little when they twisted and shrank away the moment my hand came near—but I would have been scared too if a large adult man in black, the kind who'd just beaten grown men to pieces, came walking toward me.
Regardless of the fact that the people I'd pounded were the kidnappers, there was a visual threat that came across plain as day. And these kids didn't look old enough to weigh the full before-and-after.
"Hic. Waaah—"
"Waaaaaah!!"
"Daddyyyyy!!"
Still, the ear-bleeding soundtrack was hard to take. Midway through tearing apart the vine ropes, I decided on emergency measures.
"Look at this."
"Hic, snff."
"…Pretty."
Adventurers who cursed me for handing out dead stock—I apologize. You had foresight.
From Tatara's gift bundle I pulled out the truly useless, worthless things that were pretty and shiny: an octagonal ornament that called Korean mother-of-pearl to mind, knotted decorations of five-colored thread, a tiny bell, a wooden doll painted in patches of color, a bracelet of low-grade crystals strung one by one, and so on.
Even to my adult eye they were rather lovely—how much more wondrous must they have looked to these children? Their attention was stolen in an instant.
Crrrack.
Now. While the kids hiccuped and stared, I ripped the vine ropes apart with abandon. The bastards had gone to the trouble of binding each child individually and then binding them all together again, so there was a lot of work. They'd tied them hard enough to leave rope marks on the kids' skin, too.
See you on the way out, you sons of bitches.
"B-behind you."
Hm? I saw one of the newly freed children looking past my shoulder and let out a long breath.
Thud!
"Ghk!"
Even without the kid's warning, the limp had given him away early—but damn, what a tenacious cockroach. With that kind of grit he should have staged a reverse trial against the chief instead of a rebellion.
I tripped him, then drove a fist into his face. No mana behind it, so he probably wasn't dead. His nose looked shattered, twisted sideways with blood pouring out, but still.
"It's all right."
More importantly, why were Atart's warriors taking so long? Don't tell me they farmed the work out to me and went off to play.
I finished freeing every child still playing with the ornaments, then decided to lead them out. I might have subdued everyone, but I wasn't about to leave kids among criminals.
"Let's go."
Different language, same instincts. I scooped the youngest—still fiddling with a knotted decoration—into my left arm and headed outside with the rest clinging to my head or legs. I'd put the sword in my inventory so they'd have an easier time hanging on, which left me a little light on weapons, but it was fine.
Uncle can beat kidnappers bare-handed.
"How did you even get in there…?"
That was when I ran into the ones coming in.
The Archmage looked at me with a peculiar expression, as if the sight of me leading a trail of chicks had stolen her words.
Escorting hostages outside shouldn't be out of character. Like I said earlier, I couldn't leave hostages—children—in the same space as their kidnappers and just walk out. So I figured this much was fine… wasn't it? Did I mess up?
My mind spun hard over the Archmage's reaction.
"…I knew you were generous with children, but, hmm. Hand them over to the warriors for now. I don't think this is a good place for them to remain."
I worried a little about getting blindsided later, but that part I was glad to hear. I was going to hand them off anyway. With someone available to take them, keeping them myself any longer really would have broken character.
"You—you! Take the children out!"
"C-come on."
"Thank you, Armless Warrior."
"Warrior, bye-byeee."
"More importantly, what are you kids holding?"
"That warrior gave them to us."
The Bigabol warriors hurried the children away. In the process they took the one in my arms as well—
"Hand the child to me."
"Nngh."
Yank.
Kid, thanks for not yanking my hair, but the clothes and the eyepatch are another story.
The child's grip was so strong that the button fastening the eyepatch from behind tore free, and the patch peeled clean off. My hand shot up to cover my right eye.
"Nooo. I don't wanna go. Hngh."
"Aaagh!"
"Blood!!"
Torn away from me by force, the child bawled and flailed the hand still clutching the eyepatch. The fistful of my clothes didn't look ready to let go either.
"That won't do. A good warrior does not cry at parting."
"Here, look at this."
But someone arriving late from behind, and the Archmage's desperate little display of magic, snapped the child's gaze around for a critical instant. The warriors used that opening to pry the kid free and return the eyepatch to me.
"Waaaaaah!!"
Baby's crying. Sigh.
"The crying is loud. Take the child out at once. And to you, I truly apologize. The child's rudeness… ah." In the common tongue: "I apologize on the child's behalf for the discourtesy. We have not educated properly."
"…Unnecessary."
Education, my foot. Kids that age are all like that.
I fastened the returned eyepatch quickly and reached into my inventory. There should have been one more toy I hadn't pulled out earlier.
"The priests had raised a maze barrier, yet you entered with ease. Inviting you truly was an excellent decision. Worthy of the Black Snake's warrior."
Ah, so that was why they were late. I had thought they were taking forever.
I half-listened and kept rummaging. Once I'd opened the bundle, the inventory was packed with so much junk that finding what I wanted was hard.
My eyes sharpened.
"…If the children's behavior offended you, I will issue a firm war—"
What is this lunatic saying. A perfectly natural reaction and he wants to warn them? You should be thinking about bouncing the kids on your knee and covering the bad memories, not that. Is this guy crazy?
"I already said it was unnecessary."
Face still twisted, I brushed straight past Atart.
"Just keep your promise."
My stride caught up with a warrior withdrawing with the crying child.
"Hic, hngh."
Plop.
"Nngh."
A hand that had hovered a moment dropped something into the arms of the child whose crying was winding down from sheer exhaustion. A ball of colored thread about the size of a baseball rolled into the small hands.
"Wow!"
"Huh?"
With that, the dead stock was cut in half. Yes.
The Archmage watched the receding back of the one who had casually handed a gift to a child and walked away.
It was nothing special, yet the child had stopped crying and was beaming—just as everyone who had ever received the Demon Knight's help had done.
"…More generous than he looks."
"Isn't he?"
Perhaps that was why. She couldn't decide whether to call it surprising or exactly like him.
Always hostile toward others, and yet growing gentle toward the ones easiest to look down on—those wounded and near death, those who had lost so much they had to worry about the days left to them, children still young enough to need help—that side of him was, truly.
"His manner and speech are rough enough to invite misunderstanding, but he walks only the right path."
Even for a strong person of that caliber, softening toward the weak is no easy thing.
"A rare sort of person in this age."
Yes—the Demon Knight was a good man. Far too precious to hang a bomb meant to kill himself around his own heart… a truly rare person.
"Of course, I do wish he would correct the way he refuses to spare himself in walking that path."
And so the Demon Knight deserved a better life.
A life that did not require carrying a suicide bomb, that did not drive him toward death, a life with rest and happiness woven through it—he ought to have that.
He was allowed to. Whether he believed so or not.
"Hmm."
The Archmage watched the young man grow smaller in the distance, her face warm with satisfaction.
"Truly… a fine person."
And because of that, she failed to see it.
"How just."
Atart smiled, cold as ice.