Excuses Were Shouted (1)
A fever had taken hold of him. That was the thought that brushed through Deathbringer's mind as he stared up at the sky.
"Are you all right?"
"I—I'm fine, really."
It was only to be expected. His condition had improved a great deal, but it was not the sort of injury that healed in a single day.
And on top of that, he had spent the whole day out in the wind. Even if someone had been carrying him on their back, he had still been outside.
"You don't look fine. Your face is flushed."
"Maybe it's just a little hot."
"It isn't a fever?"
"I wouldn't know?"
"…Let me feel your forehead."
"Ah—ahhh!"
So if his condition had worsened, what could he possibly say for himself?
"It would be better if we headed back."
"That's a bit… Where do you think we have the manpower to spare right now?"
"So you mean to tough it out?"
"Just let me watch. Please."
He could not pull back now. Even at full strength he would have been of little use—but not being able to stand watch at all would have been too wretched. It made no difference that the distance was so great he could see nothing.
"If it truly worries you, then just some ice…"
"…Such stubbornness."
And so, despite the Archmage's urging, he clung to his post with grim determination. Of course, he could not help resenting the sky a little—nothing up there but a solid sheet of gray cloud.
"W-wait—hey!"
Then the one among them with the sharpest eyesight began to shout. Deathbringer strained to follow the direction of the man's pointing finger, but whether it was the fever blurring his vision or simply his own mediocre eyesight, he saw nothing at all.
"A speck?"
"No—that's…"
"Someone's falling!"
It did not stay that way for long. The distance closed until even he could make it out.
And what he saw was, astonishingly, two figures locked in an embrace—the silhouettes of the Hero and Berserk.
The mages and priests rushed through their incantations, weaving cushions of soft light and layers of air to ease their landing. Thanks to that, the two touched down without a single new injury—though the wounds they already carried were another matter entirely.
"Are you two all right?"
"Ah—Archmage."
"Berserk is fine!"
Before anyone could even ask a proper question, sheer incredulity stole the words from his mouth.
That woman, Berserk—coated head to toe in blood—and she had the nerve to say she was fine?
There were wounds everywhere that could not be explained by demon blood alone. Some of it had to be her own.
And if you looked carefully at that formidable frame, the veins stood out just a little too sharply, and her eyes were bloodshot.
That meant Demon Energy Invasion had progressed even with the Inquisitor right beside her. In other words, there had been no time to spare for driving the demon energy out.
As for the soft-spoken one—her face looked worse than it had during the defense of Far Enoch. How much power had she poured out? She looked ready to collapse at any moment.
"Berserk, take the medicine first. And Inquisitor—Inquisitor, you…"
Knowing this, the Archmage and the priests closed in on Berserk and the Inquisitor at once.
Berserk looked mildly annoyed but did not refuse. Whatever else might be said of her, the danger of Demon Energy Invasion had clearly lodged itself somewhere in that thick skull of hers.
"Are you all right?"
"I—I'm fine. I'm… fine, but… ah—Demon Knight…"
"Please don't push yourself."
The Inquisitor, by contrast, accepted treatment without protest—but could not calm herself for the life of her.
"H-hey. What about the boss? The boss is…?"
Deathbringer, too, was searching for the one the Inquisitor had named—the last person who should have been here and was not.
The knight to whom he had owed an apology for the wound on her cheek and had never managed to give it; the knight whose faith he ought to have repaid, and who he had never even been able to thank with a single word.
The Inquisitor pressed her lips tightly together.
"Hey, soft-spoken one. Why won't you—"
"Our comrade will come down soon."
Fortunately, an answer came from another quarter. Berserk.
"What?"
"He'll come down together with whatever-it-was venom—gorbi, burbi, something."
The only syllable she had gotten right was "bi," but that hardly mattered now.
"Why alone…"
"Ah. He's coming."
Without the Inquisitor to provide a foothold, how could anyone remain in the air?
Deathbringer had barely begun to form the question when his eyes, by pure reflex, followed Berserk's pointing finger upward.
And there it was—something vast they had failed to notice while fussing over the two of them—plummeting straight toward where they stood.
At first, foreshortening had made it hard to judge; a few more moments of watching, and the scale of it began to sink in.
"We have to leave this place at once!"
"We need to get clear!"
If that thing came down on top of them, it would crush them flat. One after another, the people who had seen it began to scream.
"Ah. No need. It'll land in that forest."
Berserk, however, was perfectly calm.
"The Demon Knight is not a fool."
Her words proved true.
For all the panic, that enormous creature crashed down hundreds of meters from where they stood.
Of course, something of that size and weight made the heavens roar and the earth heave—but the damage was less than one might have expected. Even with a thing that vast falling out of the sky, the forest beyond the impact site was not reduced to ash, nor was the ground torn inside out. That much was clear.
"What in the world…"
The damage may have been small, but the shock that ran through the people was anything but.
"Come. Quickly."
"Truly—a demon?"
"Is that the demon?"
"Yes. Why do you keep asking? Are you all idiots?"
"…You're hardly one to talk."
Deathbringer followed the Archmage, the priests, and Berserk—the Inquisitor had fainted along the way—toward the place where the creature had fallen.
Neither the heat that gripped his body nor the fog it cast over his mind could stop the single-minded need to confirm that someone was still alive.
"A Great Demon… is dead…"
"A Great Demon, truly…?"
"Good heavens…"
"And Berserk wanted to be the one to take it down…"
But when at last he set foot at the crash site—
what Deathbringer saw was the corpse of a gigantic merman—a demon with a human upper body and the lower half of a fish.
From crown to tail, its length was hard to take in at a glance; even lying on its side, its bulk put any ordinary hillock to shame. And from shoulder to hip it had been sliced clean through, hanging in two limp halves.
"This is the demon's true body…?"
"Was the Great Demon of Envy always this enormous…?"
"The demon energy is vicious. Purification is going to take a long time."
"Three people… really did this…?"
No. No—this was not what he had come to see.
"Boss? Where's the boss?"
Deathbringer barely managed to keep his reeling mind from slipping away. The fever had climbed as far as his throat now, drying out the inside of his mouth and the back of his gullet—but there was still something he had to find.
"If you mean our comrade, I believe he's over there."
"Why are you only saying that now…!"
"Have you found the Demon Knight?"
Perhaps the world was taking pity on him. The one he was looking for turned up almost at once.
"Boss…!"
He had driven a blade into the merman's brow and was sitting slumped against the hilt. It would have been stranger not to find him.
"Demon Knight!"
"W-what? Boss, why aren't you answering…"
"Huh. Did he pass out?"
Covered in sharp wounds, blood streaming from the corners of his mouth, his nose, even his ears—he did not look good by any measure.
"Boss!"
Deathbringer's feet quickened as he climbed the mountain of the Great Demon's corpse.
He can't be dead. The Demon Knight can't be dead. The fever had melted his thoughts down to the simplest of fixations.
"Boss…"
And when he reached the top of that corpse-hill and stood right in front of the Demon Knight—
he saw a chest rising and falling, however shallowly.
He was alive.
In that instant the tension snapped, and the world went dark.
While, in the forest near Ednium, one of the Great Demons was slain without a single fatality—and three of the four wounded fell into an unprecedented coma—
in Camborer, Yohanna, aide to the young lord, was sinking into despair.
There was simply no way to help her friend and liege, the young lord.
"A drink, please."
So she stormed into the tavern she often visited when the day's work was done. If she did not pour liquor into her belly at once, she felt she would die of sheer wretchedness.
"Oh—Yohanna?"
Gambling at one table, a speech at another, a musical performance at a third—the place was a riot of noise. Finding a single open seat at the bar felt like pure luck.
"Here. The usual."
"Thanks."
She took the glass from a familiar server. The first one went down in a single shot.
"Another!"
"…Aren't you going a little fast tonight? Something wrong?"
Even if you ordered the usual, pouring it down twice as quickly was bound to raise questions.
The server, swapping out her glass, asked carefully. Yohanna's sense of grievance was yanked to the surface.
Bang!
She set the glass down hard.
Her face, already flushed with drink and injustice, worked as she chewed at her lip.
"I can't say."
"It's about the young lord, then."
"Damn it all!!"
Fortunately, the server understood at once.
That was probably thanks to Yohanna's long track record of fretting more than anyone whenever the young lord was abused by that wretched lord and his wife.
"Our poor young lord…"
"Aigoo… Did that damn second son cause another mess?"
"The mess was made ages ago…"
"Tsk tsk tsk. I don't know when that one will ever grow up."
Even without Yohanna's venting, they would have guessed easily enough.
Everyone in the city knew the young lord had fallen from the lord's favor.
After all, this was a lord who had never once taken the young lord to the market as a child—and yet took the second son every other day, stuffing his hands with whatever he wanted.
Even citizens who paid the ruling family no mind at all could not help noticing that kind of favoritism.
And that was not all. The second son's outrages had never once been rebuked, while the young lord was struck for the slightest mistake—that fact, too, had long since spread through the mouths of the household staff. Along with the fact that the young lord had never once talked back or complained.
So there was not a soul in the city who did not pity the young lord. The young lord was the city's sore finger.
"The lord needs to come to his senses. How can he love a witless brat like that over a young lord of such character? Poor young lord…"
"I don't know…"
"When is that man retiring, anyway? The young lord does the work better—he should just hand over the seat already."
"I said I don't know…"
"What, did the young lord get slighted again? Honestly, this idiot of a lord! He'll only learn when someone draws a blade, like in the next town over!"
"Dad, why are you even here… Be careful. What if someone hears you talking about rebellion?"
"I came because you wouldn't come even when I called! And so what if someone hears talk of rebellion? You think they'll massacre us like the next town over? Please."
"…Never say that in front of anyone from Ednium, Dad."
"Do you take me for a fool? Talking like that in front of those people."
Ednium. At that word, Yohanna felt her sinking mood surge up again.
The young lord of Ednium. Biryuho. The names rose unbidden.
"The young lord is the young lord, though. Someone who fights so hard for our rights—why does she go soft only when it comes to her own affairs… Does she still think of them as family?"
"Exactly. Completely damned bastards."
Listening to the father and son, she ground her teeth. Our poor young lord. Born into a family of scum, and now even her lover was a disaster. And what had the people caught in the middle ever done to deserve it?
"Anyway, we're heading out. Don't drink too much."
"Right. If you take leave, who's going to look after our young lord?"
"Nobody cares about me, do they? Damn it. Give me another drink."
"Of course. Coming right up!"
Yohanna, drowning in rising sorrow and fury, drained a fourth glass and accepted a fifth. Tonight she meant to drink herself to death.
"Can't even catch one damned beast, and look at the mess they've made!"
But just as she was about to empty a sixth, a shout close to a scream burst from a nearby table.
"Ah, that old man again."
"…What is it?"
"Hm? Ah—well, the wild beasts have been multiplying like crazy lately. They've been sending out a lot of adventurers, and of course soldiers too."
"…And?"
"That one over there—the yellow-haired fellow—his daughter's an adventurer. The other one's son is a soldier. Problem is, both of them went out for this mess and…"
The owner and the server had stepped away, so she got the explanation from the customer sitting beside her.
But rather than finish the sentence, the customer cut off midway and switched to a gesture—drawing a thumb across his throat. She understood without hearing the rest.
"What did you say, you bastard!?"
"If you soldier types had done your jobs properly, they wouldn't have had to drag adventurers into it!"
"You finished talking?! The ones who volunteered and died for lack of skill were the adventurers!"
"You call that an argum—"
At the same time, their fight began to make sense.
With no way to know what was driving the beasts, they were dumping their knotted feelings on the only people in sight. Having no one to blame was simply too bitter.
"…The real cause is somewhere else."
The problem was that a true culprit existed—and that there was no proper way to punish that existence.
"Hm?"
"Dammit."
From the start, this matter was never meant to come to light.
If they could not punish anyone anyway, better to pass it off as a mere mishap—that had been the judgment of both the young lord and the lord.
Yohanna did not think it was right, but she had not opposed it either. If that was her liege's will, a retainer's duty was to follow.
Even if it meant watching the wretched sight of victims turning their claws on one another, never knowing the perpetrator's face.
"What's all this noise for?"
"Shit."
"Hey, clear it all out. Filthy mess."
And now what was this thunderous little brat doing here?
Yohanna instinctively almost spat out her drink, but managed to hold it in.
A servant of the young lord being rude to the young lord's younger brother simply would not look right—even if the two of them got along as badly as possible.
"Let me go!"
The men who had been fighting—drunk on liquor or on resentment—were subdued by the soldiers. It had not been reported as a brawl, so they were only being held so they could not move.
Whether that was truly a good development was another question.
"I'm going insane. Even here…"
Separately, there had been a voice for some time that seemed to speak for her own feelings.
Yohanna turned her gaze to the seat beside her. The customer who had explained the situation earlier was scowling hard. His eyes were fixed on the second son, who had just walked into the shop.
"Ah. Found you."
Worse—the second-son brat lit up at the sight of the customer beside her. She wondered if they knew each other. She had never received a report to that effect.
"You there, adventurer. Why did you refuse the escort commission?"
"When we met this afternoon, I told you the schedule wouldn't work, didn't I? Even a designated hire doesn't make the impossible possible."
Ah. Now she understood why she had not known. He was simply trying a new line today.
Yohanna silently cursed the shameless wretch who, not content with the women of the castle and the city, was now reaching for adventurers as well.
The silence that had fallen over the room at the entrance of the lord's second son suggested the rest of the crowd shared her feelings.
"I even made it a designated hire—why won't you do it!"
"Young master…"
She did not want to step in. She did not want to exchange a single word. But she worked at the castle. Even if he was not her direct superior, the second young master was still someone she served, in the long view.
So Yohanna intervened to stop the bullying. At her interference, the second son's eyebrows shot up.
"Why are you—"
"You son of a bitch!"
Suddenly, a bean-sprout garnish from someone's side dish smacked the second son square in the head.
Everyone nearby went wide-eyed. Did I do that without realizing? You could see the thought on every face.
Just as Yohanna, without meaning to, looked down at her own hands.
"Young master!"
"W-what! Which bastard—"
"Lucky I found you, you bastard! You're the problem too! If you lot hadn't wasted soldiers on every stupid scheme to keep the young lord in check, my daughter wouldn't be dead!"
"What?!"
"You people killed my daughter!!"
Fortunately, it had not been Yohanna's hand acting without her knowledge. That did not mean the situation was improving.
"What the hell is this bastard saying!"
"Die! Just die already! Useless piece of trash!! Die!!"
"St-stop him!"
"You lunatic!"
Apparently the man who had lost his adventurer daughter had not been present for nothing.
He shook off the soldiers holding him down and seized the second son by the collar.
The so-called escorts did not even manage to react.
"N-no!"
Yohanna resolved then and there to fire every last one of those guards—and let out a groan.
This could no longer be covered up. That idiot would think only of the harm done to himself and would make certain to punish this man.
"Y-you crazy, crazy bast—"
"Let's die together! Someone like you deserves to die!"
"Young lord this, young lord that! You think it would've made a difference if that bitch had stepped in!? Against a tiger cub's work, you think she could've done a damned thing!!"
He would punish him—
"What…!"
"Idiots! Your brats couldn't have been saved even if the young lord's mother had come back alive! Because it was that beast, Biryuho, that you all revere who killed them—!"
"Young master!!"
How the hell did that madman know that, and why was he blurting it out!
Yohanna felt what little drunkenness remained flee her entirely.
"Biryuho…?"
"Why is that name coming up?"
This, too, could no longer be covered up. Because the young lord had spent so long urging them to claim their rights, the townsfolk who had learned to seize those rights for themselves would never leave a question hanging behind them now.