The Brand
The concept of pouring every last ounce of power into one person was not unfamiliar to Elbridge.
Even in the old days, when holy knights fell in meaningless droves, each combat order still maintained anywhere from dozens to well over a hundred of them. The Rusty Shield Order, however, had never fielded more than a handful. In its leanest times, its knights could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Because the Rusty Shield Order held so few seats in the Heavenly Assembly relative to its paltry numbers, the divine power each knight could wield was vastly stronger than that of any other order. In that sense, concentrating authority could even be called a tradition of the Rusty Shield Order.
But there was a world of difference between having few knights and having only one.
“Goddess. If something should happen to me, what becomes of the order’s future?”
Elbridge. Your goddess shall pour out her whole heart and every ounce of her sincerity to ensure no misfortune befalls you.
Elbridge fell silent. In other words, there was no real contingency plan.
Yet from his perspective, it was not a reckless gamble. On the contrary, concentrating the power on him offered the highest chance of success. The only problem was the catastrophic risk if things went wrong.
While Elbridge walked toward the slums, lost in deep thought, another oracle descended.
Elbridge. What do you intend to do about Viveka?
“That’s…”
Elbridge was not an oblivious man. Over the past several days of proselytizing with Viveka’s assistance, he had gradually realized her attitude toward him was far from ordinary. After stepping back and reviewing the situation as a whole, he had become certain she harbored genuine affection for him.
“What would you have me do, Goddess?”
Elbridge. That is a matter you alone must decide.
“Then… I will speak to her honestly.”
Even by Elbridge’s standards, Viveka was a good person. Her language could be a little rough, but her character was upright and spirited. If they took the time to truly know each other, something better might have been possible.
Yet Elbridge had witnessed far too many tragic endings for lovers. People cornered by extreme circumstances gave their hearts away too easily. Countless soldiers on the battlefield developed feelings for their comrades. Many became lovers; some even held simple weddings in the harshest conditions. But as far as Elbridge could remember, the vast majority of those relationships ended badly. That was simply the nature of the battlefield.
Viveka will be heartbroken.
“Just as I noticed her feelings, she must have already sensed mine, even if only faintly. She never struck me as someone completely oblivious.”
That is true. Even if she does not realize it at once, she will come to understand it in time…
By then he had reached the slums.
Yet Elbridge could not bring himself to enter the temple immediately. He stopped in front of it.
Is Viveka still inside?
He drew a deep breath and stepped through the doorway.
Viveka was gone.
In her place stood an unexpected face.
“Been a while. Or has it? Doesn’t feel that long.”
The half-polite, half-casual tone and the scar across the bridge of his nose were unmistakable. The mercenary Marcus had been waiting for him. Amid his tangled thoughts, the sight was genuinely welcome.
“Marcus! Have you come to join the order?”
Marcus waved both hands in immediate denial.
“Not that. A strange job came up, so I came looking for you. Something weird happened, too.”
“A strange job, you say. Let’s hear it.”
Marcus glanced around nervously, then lowered his voice.
“I was loitering around the mercenary guild earlier when a rather peculiar client showed up.”
“Peculiar how? A mage?”
“Not a mage. A dwarf.”
“Hmm.”
Dwarven society was notoriously insular. They rarely sought outside help even when serious trouble arose within their own clans. For one of them to approach a mercenary guild, the situation had to be dire.
“What was the request?”
“Knights, holy knights, priests, mercenaries—didn’t matter who. They wanted the single most skilled person in the entire Holy City of Soleneon. But they wouldn’t say what they planned to do with that person. Same with the reward. They just kept saying they’d compensate generously, without giving any specifics.”
A request that revealed neither its purpose nor its payment. Under normal circumstances it would have been laughable, but coming from a dwarf it made a twisted kind of sense.
“Everyone else brushed it off, but my gut told me this was big. So after thinking it over, I came straight to you, Sir Elbridge. Right now, the strongest holy knight in Soleneon is you.”
Elbridge considered this for a moment before replying.
“The claim that the reward will be generous is almost certainly true. Once a dwarf accepts help, they never stint on repayment. They simply haven’t decided yet what form that repayment will take.”
If the request involved helping an entire dwarf clan rather than a single individual, they could probably obtain a suit of armor that rivaled anything produced by the Magic Tower. Anything beyond that would not be difficult to negotiate, either.
At Elbridge’s confident assessment, Marcus’s face brightened with satisfaction.
“Hah. So my instincts were right. Still sharp as ever.”
“Where is the client now? I’d like to speak with them directly.”
“He’s dead.”
“You said the request came in only a short while ago.”
“He looked anxious the moment he walked into the guild. Then he suddenly collapsed and died on the spot.”
A situation urgent enough to force a dwarf to seek outside help, followed by the client’s abrupt death. Elbridge’s instincts whispered that the worst possibility he had feared might have arrived.
He answered calmly.
“It is both a strange opportunity and a strange incident.”
Marcus scratched the back of his head.
“I already told you the strange opportunity part. The truly weird part I haven’t mentioned yet.”
“And that is?”
“I was about to enter the Rusty Shield temple to find you when an oracle suddenly descended.”
“…An oracle?”
An oracle delivered to Marcus, who was neither archbishop nor even a holy knight? Even by the standards of two hundred years ago, such a thing was exceedingly rare.
“Are you certain it was a genuine oracle? Not a hallucination?”
“A strange voice spoke directly into my ear… definitely not a normal person’s voice. Anyway, it said it was the God of the Fox Rain.”
The wording was rather irreverent for someone who had received divine revelation, but Elbridge chose not to comment. If anyone was going to be struck by heavenly punishment, it would be Marcus.
“What did you reply?”
“I jumped and told them I wasn’t a priest or a holy knight. They said it didn’t matter. That if I came to the temple they could grant me holy knight status on the spot.”
“…”
“So I told them I was more comfortable staying a mercenary. They said that was fine, and that even if I remained a mercenary they would keep a close eye on me.”
Thanks to the Goddess of the Rusty Shield, Elbridge had shed many of his former illusions about the gods. In his judgment, the oracle the God of the Fox Rain had given Marcus was less an act of simple goodwill and more a move with clear intent.
“Was that truly all the God of the Fox Rain said?”
“Of course not. They said it would be easier to grant you luck if I stayed close to you, so I should stick to your side as much as possible. Oh, and there was someone else—the dwarf in the Magic Tower. What was his name again…”
“Rombel?”
“Yes, that’s it. Rombel. They told me to get along well with him, too.”
Elbridge and Rombel shared one obvious commonality: both were skilled individuals who had been active two hundred years ago.
A faint, tickling intuition rose in the back of his mind.
At that moment, the Goddess of the Rusty Shield grumbled.
The God of the Fox Rain. That sly fellow is scheming again. All his holy knights have died of old age, and those left beneath him now are nothing but riffraff… So he intends to keep Marcus—who has a solid connection to you—close by so he can snatch up whatever scraps of fame you produce. How undignified.
Elbridge whispered softly, “Scraps?”
Elbridge. You will surely gain renown. Those around you will naturally receive a portion of that honor as your companions. He is aiming for those crumbs. How shameless…
“Goddess. Should I drive Marcus away, then?”
That is… Hmm.
The goddess pondered for a moment before delivering another oracle.
There is no need to deliberately push him away. Keeping Marcus near you may bring you benefits as well, Elbridge. Still… it does feel rather unpleasant.
“You will lodge a stern protest with the God of the Fox Rain, then.”
The goddess answered hesitantly.
I have never spoken with him before, so that is a little… Besides, the God of the Fox Rain holds eight seats, does he not? It is probably best to let this one pass. It does not seem he guided Marcus to your side with malicious intent…
In short, she would overlook it because the other party held more influence. Realizing this admission somewhat damaged her own dignity, Elbridge worked hard to keep his expression neutral.
Marcus continued, “Anyway, that dwarf named Rombel should prove useful for this request. Dwarves tend to know things other dwarves won’t share with outsiders. Plus there was the oracle.”
Elbridge rose from his seat.
“No point in wasting time. Let’s go see Rombel.”
*
Elbridge and Marcus headed straight for the Magic Tower.
Contrary to Elbridge’s expectation that Rombel would be too busy to leave, the dwarf emerged without much hesitation.
“Is it really all right for you to step away? You said you had a backlog of armor commissions.”
“If you had complaints, you should have chosen a successor when I asked you to.”
The three of them made their way to the mercenary guild.
As expected, the dead dwarf’s body had already been turned over to the undertaker.
Following the guild member’s directions, they located the undertaker’s shop. The man spoke through a narrow crack in the door, voice dripping with reluctance.
“You’ve come to see the corpse?”
“Yes.”
“Nonsense. I can’t show a body to outsiders.”
A clean-cut refusal. But Marcus’s experience told him that “can’t show it carelessly” usually meant “two silver coins will change that.”
When Marcus slipped two silver coins through the crack, the door swung open at once.
“I’ll step out for a bit. Look quickly and leave. And don’t go spreading rumors…”
“Understood.”
The dead dwarf was a heavily bearded male. At first glance, the cause of death was impossible to determine.
Precisely because of that, certain details stood out even more.
Rombel examined the dwarf’s face from every angle, then spoke with a bitter expression.
“He’s from the Red Mountain Range, same as me. Roughly two hundred years old… I may have seen him when I was young.”
“First let’s determine the cause of death.”
“Agreed.”
While Marcus watched awkwardly from the side, Elbridge and Rombel conducted a thorough examination. They parted the thick hair to check the scalp, inspected the forehead and back of the neck, even moved the beard aside to examine the nape. Nothing.
Rombel said, “We’ll have to remove his clothes. Help me.”
Marcus quickly stepped forward to assist.
When the upper garment came off, a chest covered in coarse hair was revealed. To Elbridge it was not a pleasant sight.
I hope we don’t have to remove his trousers as well…
Fortunately, that proved unnecessary.
In the center of the dead dwarf’s chest was a burn-like wound.
Marcus muttered, “It’s a brand. And a fresh one at that.”
Elbridge agreed. Yet unlike ordinary brands whose shapes blurred during the burning process, this one bore an extremely precise pattern: a sword piercing a snake.
“But something’s off.”
What was truly bizarre was that despite the brand having seared so deeply into the flesh, not a single hair on the corpse’s upper body had been singed or curled.
Having witnessed similar scenes before, Elbridge let out a long, heavy sigh.
Huu—
Unlike Elbridge, Rombel suddenly seized Marcus’s right hand.
“Your name was Marcus, yes? Welcome.”
“Huh? What are you congratulating me for all of a sudden…”
Rombel grinned.
“The peaceful, boring age is over. Welcome to a world where we live alongside demons.”