Forbidden Ground and the Knight (3)
The Margrave of the Borderlands, wearing round glasses, had deep shadows under her eyes. In her hand she held documents she hadn’t yet finished processing; the edges where she gripped them were frayed and worn, as if she had read through quite a lot. It was a far cry from the high-ranking nobles back in the royal capital or peaceful territories who simply lounged about while managing their domains.
“You’ve come a long way. There’s nothing urgent at the moment, so I’ll give you plenty of time today to settle into your quarters and reorganize. And…”
The Margrave folded the documents and slipped them into her coat, then let out a long sigh.
“Damn it all. Anyway, wait here a moment. I should at least explain what’s happening here and what kind of place this is.”
After speaking, the Margrave returned to her residence. The moment the door closed behind her, Paola let out a hearty laugh, clearly amused.
“Last time I saw her, she was the Margrave’s bright young daughter.”
“You knew her?” Roberto asked. Paola shrugged.
“Even back then she had quite the promising spirit. Her language was rough, though. What impressed me was how she threw herself into the front lines without sparing herself. Looks like she’s still doing well.”
It wasn’t long before the Margrave opened the door to her residence again. The glasses she had worn at first were gone; she must have taken them off after reading the documents. She planted her hands on her hips and looked over the Raven Knight Order.
“The royal family sent some decent people this time. I was honestly skeptical… So the famous Sword Demon of the Snow Country is your commander, Theodora Benning?”
The Margrave directed the question at Theodora. As always, Theodora responded in a calm voice.
“Yes. It is an honor to be recognized.”
“Anyone who failed to recognize you would have eyes worse than knotholes.”
The Margrave clapped Theodora on the shoulder.
“You’ve been suffering in the north and were finally sent somewhere to rest, only to end up here. Your hardships must be no small thing.”
Then the Margrave’s gaze moved past Theodora to Paola. She broke into a wide, toothy grin.
“There’s one face that looks familiar. Fifteen years ago, didn’t you come as part of the reinforcements defending this place? If my memory serves, you were a soldier then. Now you’re a knight.”
Roberto’s eyes widened as he stared at Paola. Christine and Maxim also turned to her with surprised expressions. Paola shrugged awkwardly, as if conscious of the attention.
“It is an honor to be remembered.”
Paola flashed that foolish-looking smile of his.
“Back then you were just a young knight, and now you’ve become a splendid lord.”
“A comrade-in-arms—especially one who performed such great feats—is impossible to forget. Thank you for making the long journey back to this land for its sake.”
Having finished her greetings, the Margrave stepped forward.
“Let’s head to the ramparts first. It’ll be faster to explain while you see the overall situation.”
The Margrave began walking toward the ramparts. Even in her casual stride there was no opening. It was the bearing of someone perpetually prepared for battle. The commoners working in the territory paid little attention even when the Margrave, their lord, passed by. A few glanced over, but most treated it as routine and returned to their tasks.
“I suppose I need to explain a bit about No Man’s Land.”
The ramparts up close were far taller than they had appeared from a distance. The uneven, shadowed stones would normally be covered in moss, yet strangely the surface was dry and solid, as if the blocks had just been quarried. The Margrave cast a regretful look at the elevator installed along the wall before turning toward the stairs.
“Normally I’d use the elevator… but there are too many of us now. My apologies.”
As she climbed the stairs, the Margrave began speaking about No Man’s Land.
“No Man’s Land is exactly what the name implies. It’s a space where people cannot exist. A wilderness teeming with monsters that devour one another. Out there, there is no hierarchy among monsters. They simply charge at anything that moves in order to eat it.”
The sound of the knights’ footsteps echoed up the stairs. Maxim listened closely to the Margrave as she climbed without hesitation.
“No one knows when, why, or how No Man’s Land came to be. We don’t know what lies beyond it, nor how vast it is. To find out, one would probably have to go back far beyond the history of the Liant Kingdom—perhaps even before the Empire itself.”
The higher they climbed, the clearer the sounds from atop the ramparts became. Maxim could hear soldiers running urgently across the wall, someone shouting commands, and the sharp clang of weapons colliding.
“Beyond that lies land even more barren than the wilderness you’ve already crossed. The duty of this territory’s soldiers and knights is to kill the monsters that climb the cliffs at its edge.”
The Margrave thumped the rampart with her palm.
“This wall is literally the last bastion. Day and night, without rest, we face waves of monsters that cross over at least once an hour. Sometimes we open the gates and go out on direct extermination missions.”
The top of the stairs came into view. The sky that reappeared was at the very edge of twilight; darkness was beginning to settle. Torches flickered busily back and forth.
“Here we are. The rest, you can see and feel for yourselves.”
Maxim looked out across the endlessly stretching ramparts and took in the sight of the front lines. He had imagined a desperate battlefield with monsters surging endlessly, but the wall was calmer than expected. Yet when he saw the cold sweat on the faces of soldiers carrying torches, he changed his mind. Calm was the wrong word. A taut tension filled the ramparts. It was closer to unease. Like watching a lion kept in a cage. The cage was safe for now, but it was destined to break someday, and they were the ones trapped inside with the lion. Whether knight, commander, or soldier, everyone stood guard over the wall beneath a tension that gripped their hearts.
“…The atmosphere is very different from when I came fifteen years ago,” Paola muttered.
He must have grasped the current mood atop the ramparts. The Margrave answered him.
“In terms of abnormal phenomena, it’s similar, but the essence is quite different. The monsters’ assaults have only increased—never suddenly decreased like this.”
The Margrave approached the edge of the rampart. Maxim and the knights followed her and looked out over No Man’s Land. What spread before them was a wilderness steeped in ominous dread. It was both a vast plain and a savage wild. A damp chill rose from the ground, utterly different in dimension from the scenery the Raven Knight Order had passed through on their way here. Not a single tree or blade of grass could be seen; what filled the land were monster corpses and yet another monster approaching to tear at them. It was a hellhound panting on all fours.
“Are you deliberately leaving that hellhound alone?” one of the Raven Knight Order members asked abruptly.
“Yes, we are. Leaving one or two of them wandering about is better. If you shoot it dead for no reason, the smell of blood will draw other monsters from somewhere, and then they’ll start fighting and eating each other until it turns into complete chaos.”
Maxim could easily imagine the scene.
“Especially when it’s this unnaturally quiet, we must be even more cautious. Doing something unnecessary and inviting disaster is the most avoided action on the front lines.”
The hellhound glanced around before hurriedly beginning to tear at the corpse. Behind it, a massive mantis was approaching. The hellhound, oblivious to what was coming up behind it, focused solely on ripping apart the corpse before its eyes. Then—
With a wet thud, the mantis’s scythe pierced the hellhound’s abdomen, and the two monsters began a life-or-death struggle.
“Aside from patrols combined with extermination, we refrain from deliberately seeking out and killing monsters. There’s no need to throw more variables into a battlefield already riddled with them.”
The Margrave watched the scene beyond the rampart with a displeased expression. The hellhound had torn off one of the mantis’s arms, but the mantis refused to release the remaining arm still buried in the hellhound’s belly.
“That’s why we must hurry and find out what this is a sign of.”
“Is there really no possibility that things have simply gone quiet beyond…?” The member who had asked before spoke again, but the Margrave shook her head sharply.
“None. I stake all my titles and honor on it—there is none.”
The twilight faded, and the surroundings grew dark enough to be called night. The darkness of the wilderness crept in slowly, then suddenly swallowed the world. The only space Maxim could perceive with his naked eyes was the narrow area lit by torches. Beyond the rampart came only the sounds of monsters tearing at flesh. Whether it was the hellhound or the mantis, there was no way to tell. Perhaps both.
“Do you understand more or less now?”
The members of the Raven Knight Order realized that investigating No Man’s Land would be far more brutal and far less romantic than they had imagined.
===
Late at night in the borderlands, the daytime and afternoon bustle had vanished like a lie. The streets were empty. It was as if the lively scene of just hours ago had been a cheerful play, and this—after the curtain had fallen—was the true face of the borderlands.
Following the quiet street upward stood a two-story building that no one would think belonged to a count. It was where the Margrave stayed. Except for one servant on night duty, the rest of the staff had left for the day. Yet the room the Margrave used as her office was still lit.
Camilla Fey, the Margrave, sat sunk into the sofa with a slowly burning pipe in one hand. Seated across from her was Theodora Benning, commander of the Raven Knight Order.
“Care for a drink?”
The Margrave lifted a glass. Cheap wine sloshed inside. True to her taste, the Margrave claimed expensive liquor didn’t suit her and preferred cheap, sweet wine.
Theodora pushed away the glass the Margrave offered and declined.
“I must decline.”
“You might regret not drinking tonight.”
“I’m weak to alcohol.”
The Margrave laughed without withdrawing the glass.
“It’s written all over your face, so I know. I’m suggesting a drink anyway, forgetting that fact. We’re both noble ladies who turned our backs on balls and tea parties, dresses and finery, and grew up only looking at iron and swords.”
“…I’ll take just one glass.”
Theodora accepted the glass and took a sip, as if merely wetting her lips. It was astringent, sweet, bitter, and vicious all at once. Theodora frowned slightly and set the glass down.
“To be honest, I’ve heard quite a few rumors about the Raven Knight Order over the years. A dumping ground that gathers only the worst fools among knights. We’ve sent a few ourselves.”
“His Majesty has declared a reorganization this time.”
“Yes, it was a structure that wouldn’t have been strange to reorganize at any point. It’s almost miraculous it was left neglected this long. I don’t know what picture His Majesty is drawing, but—”
The Margrave poured more wine into her empty glass.
“Reorganizing the Raven Knight Order and sending them here at the same time—I can see it’s to let them earn solid military merit and then give them real power.”
“His Majesty has asked this order to become his blade.”
The Margrave nodded.
“I don’t know what’s happening inside the kingdom, but the atmosphere feels like something is bound to occur.”
Gulp. The Margrave drank the wine in one go and set the glass down with a clack. It looked less like she was enjoying wine and more like she was drinking fruit juice.
“Well, before that, we have to deal with this damned No Man’s Land first. Even if we wanted to investigate, we were short on manpower—never mind soldiers, we lacked anyone at the knight level or above. You really came at the perfect time.”
Theodora took another sip of the astringent wine that carried a strange addictive quality. The taste was still terrible.
“Do you have no estimates at all?”
“Of course I do. I can assume at least three worst-case scenarios right now.”
The Margrave took a long drag on her pipe. Smoke billowed up in thick clouds.
“The investigation will be quite difficult. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to share some of the burden.”
“As much as needed. It doesn’t matter.”
Theodora drank the wine again. What she was about to say to the Margrave from now on seemed to require a little help from alcohol.
“There is one request I would like to make.”
“Say anything. As long as it’s not a lecture about finding romance.”
Theodora managed a very faint smile at the joke. But soon her lips tightened and she began to speak.
“There are still two people in our order who were active in the previous Raven Knight Order.”
The Margrave raised an eyebrow.
“That’s unexpected. Were they skilled enough to keep?”
“Yes. However… one of them, I…”
Theodora bit her lip.
“I cannot tolerate that person’s attitude at all. Not as a knight, nor as one who faces the sword.”
And the way he treats me.
She wanted to add that, but Theodora kept those words locked inside.
“Is that so? That doesn’t sit well with me either.”
The Margrave took the pipe from her mouth. Her eyebrows drew together unevenly; she truly seemed displeased.
“What should we do about it?”
The Margrave asked with the corner of her mouth lifted. Theodora drew in a breath. To somehow express these feelings toward Maxim. Theodora opened her mouth.
“Please assign that person to the most dangerous and difficult place during the investigation.”
It was a memory from three years ago.
The time when Maxim and Theodora were still lovers, before Maxim had taken on the curse that gnawed away at his body.
A night without stars was impossibly dark. Maxim, completely unaware of what Theodora had said about him, had placed a chair by the window and sat staring into his own reflected eyes. The recent events kept forcing him to recall the past. His meeting with Emil Bourdin, his conversation with Theodora, even the mission that would begin tomorrow. He didn’t want to think about it.
Maxim gazed at the sky outside the window with dull, sunken golden eyes. Memories came and went regardless of his will, like seawater pulled by the moon’s gravity and repulsion. He was alone in the room. Solitude only deepened his sentimentality. Maxim gave up trying to push the memories away. It was quiet. A good environment for contemplation. He closed his eyes and began a long recollection.