The Third Prince, Part Two
The royal castle of Drail. Inside the chancellor's carriage.
Viscount Malic asked again.
"The Lion King's talent? You can't mean the Third Prince is a Sword Master?"
"Hahaha. What are you saying? How could he be a Sword Master at that age? If he were, do you think we'd be trying to kill him? We couldn't, and if we failed we'd die like dogs for nothing. We'd have thrown our lot in with the Third Prince long ago."
"Ah. Yes, forgive me. A slip of the tongue."
"Quite. But it is certain he has already awakened aura. And in his teens, no less."
"Ah... yes. Aura, already..."
Even exceptional warriors, it was said, usually awakened aura in their early twenties. The so-called geniuses—the master-class knights and warriors whose names now rang across the world—had mostly awakened aura in their teens and risen to the rank of Master only in their mid to late twenties. Measured against that, a Third Prince still in his late teens who could already wield aura was nothing short of extraordinary. It might even herald a new Sword Master in the royal house, the first since the Founding King, after whom the line had died out.
"That is also why His Highness the First Prince is in such a hurry. Suppose time passes and the Third Prince ascends to Sword Master. Do you really think, even then, that people will still want the First Prince on the throne?"
"Ah. I see. So that was the reason."
The chancellor, who had been listening to the two of them, spoke.
"It is certain the Third Prince has not yet risen to Sword Master. Until that day, the throne of this kingdom must go to His Highness the First Prince."
"As you say, Chancellor. Only right."
"Yes, Chancellor."
"I will bear it in mind."
The Third Prince kicked free of the saddle and leapt. An iron bolt screamed in and punched clean through the body of the horse he had been riding.
The horse shrieked and collapsed beneath him. Already airborne, the Third Prince kicked off a boulder in the ravine and flew at the mercenaries.
"Stop him!"
His sword tore sideways. From the tip, a faint, translucent blade-shape stretched long.
"Aura Blade! Dodge!"
The blade-form, stretched now to five meters, sheared horizontally across everything around him. A single lateral line. Whatever lay upon it was cut. Sparks leapt from metal. Blood flashed into vapor. Severed skin blackened as if it had been burned. Five or six men dropped from their horses with necks and torsos hacked apart and chests split open.
The knight commander, jolted by the prince's swordsmanship, snapped back to himself.
"Protect His Highness!!"
The knights threw their strength in and drove their horses at the mercenaries blocking the mouth of the ravine.
"Waaaaah!!"
"Crush the enemy!"
"Protect the prince!"
But the mercenaries were no easy mark. A dozen or more in the front rank hauled up the great crossbows slung from their horses. Black arrows sat nocked along the stocks.
"Iron bolts! So they're in it together!"
A dozen iron bolts shot as one. The swordsmen beat arrows aside with their blades, but iron bolts had been made to kill knights in the first place. Knights and horses alike were struck and toppled.
And the mercenaries' preparations did not end there. Those in the rear raised sheets of parchment. There was no need to look to know what they were. Magic scrolls. One of them ripped the parchment between both hands and shouted the trigger word.
"Chain Lightning!"
⟨ Chain Lightning ⟩
Fifth Circle — Upper-tier Magic
High magic, even among the fifth circle. Sparks burst from the torn edges, and the lightning that leapt free struck the knights. It scorched through the men, then slammed into the iron bolts buried in knight and horse alike. A man caught in the blast collapsed with smoke boiling off his body. From a horse still twitching on the ground rose the smell of cooking meat.
In an instant the knights were cut to half their number. And still the enemy numbered in the dozens.
They were still searching for a way through when a scream burst overhead. A figure wrapped head to toe in black dropped to the ground. The commander looked up. This time black-clad shapes were descending the gorge together, sliding down ropes, crescent daggers curved like moons in their hands.
Assassins. They had even called in the Assassins' Guild.
The one meeting the men dropping out of the air was the Third Prince himself. He bounded between the sheer rock faces like a mountain goat, taking the assassins on alone. So that was why the iron bolts raining from above had stopped. The Third Prince's doing.
But there were far too many of them. At a glance the assassins numbered past thirty, and the mercenaries sealing front and rear looked to be fifty at the least. On this side, five knights remained. The Third Prince was showing swordsmanship beyond anything they had imagined, but there would be a limit.
The commander thought of his last resort.
The iron bolts first. I have to stop those.
The Third Prince kicked off the rock wall and sprang straight up the cliff. Iron bolts poured down after him and slammed into the stone he had just left. Arrows that punched through armor as if it were cloth—even wrapping aura around plate would not make them easy to stop. He ran sideways to slip the volley, and just as he gathered himself to leap again, men in black masks dropped, ropes clenched in their fists, crescent daggers swinging in the other hand. Rope in hand, they ran the rock and sprang with a speed that looked almost natural. Bodies trained for exactly this kind of fight.
But—
The Third Prince shifted his sword with exquisite control, slipped the driving dagger off to the side, and cut. The assassin's chest opened. He lost the rope and fell. The ones who came after, the prince dealt with one by one, steadily.
Even so, on a cliff with nowhere to plant his feet, his movement could not stay free forever. The assassins only grew in number. At last he could climb no higher and was driven down toward the ground. More than twenty of them still leapt and charged along the cliff face, ropes in their fists.
"Do you want me dead so badly? What am I, that you'd go this far?"
The Third Prince clenched his teeth. That was when the knight commander's voice reached him.
"Your Highness, we will hold them. Flee while we do."
The prince's face crumpled, close to tears.
"I can't. How could I..."
"This is for our sake. Now—go!"
Without waiting for an answer, the knights spurred their horses and charged the mercenary company.
"Open a path!"
"Kill them!"
"Die!!"
They crashed into the mercenaries. The prince chased, a beat too late. He had already taken the measure of both sides. Knight commander or not, there was no breaking through that company.
"No!"
Inside the gorge, black-clad assassins lay dead on the ground all around the Third Prince. More than thirty of them. Dozens of mercenaries and knights lay among them as well. Those still standing numbered about a dozen.
Among the living mercenaries stood a man with a massive battle axe—the one who had stopped the commander's breakthrough by hacking into his shoulder. The axe was the black peculiar to steel, but now the red blood of the dead ran down its edge. Captain of the Blood Axe Mercenary Company. Bloody Axe.
"Impressive. And here I thought you were just some powerless princeling shoved out of the game. At this rate the losses are far too steep."
As he said, half the mercenaries on the ground had fallen to that Third Prince's sword. But the prince himself was nowhere near whole. His breath came ragged. He was barely on his feet, the point of his sword braced against the earth. After cutting down dozens, his stamina and his core were all but spent. He no longer had the strength to draw an Aura Blade. The last few he had taken with nothing but muscle and technique, and in the doing his own flank and thigh had been opened.
Bleeding, his gaze moved from Bloody Axe to Viscount Malic, who stood glaring at him while he stanched a severed arm.
"Wasn't it enough to kill me? Did you have to drive these men—no, all those soldiers—into a death trap?"
"It couldn't be helped. For the greater end, the lesser must be sacrificed. Nngh. Damn it. My arm. Ghk. If you'd just died on the battlefield, the kingdom could have found its peace."
"Peace for the kingdom? What have I ever done?"
"Hmph. A prince's very existence is a blight upon the kingdom. Truth be told, until a moment ago even I wondered whether we truly needed to kill you. Looking at you now, I'm certain. At that age, to possess talent like that... I think I understand why they ordered you dead."
"My talent. That is the reason I have to die?"
"It is. If that talent had belonged not to you, but to him, there would have been no reason to kill you at all."
The Third Prince hesitated, then asked.
"Could it be... my eldest brother? His Highness the First Prince?"
Pain surging up from the stump of his forearm blurred Viscount Malic's judgment.
"That's right. You're a threat to his throne. Removing you is only natural, isn't it?"
"I—I have never once wanted the throne!"
"Hmph. You don't desire the throne? And will that still be true later? Even after that talent of yours makes you a Master?"
"I... I have never even thought of such a thing..."
The Third Prince had only ever loved the sword, and so he had swung it and trained. As a child he had followed his elder brother, learned the blade, and given himself to it. But one day, after the aura first extended from his sword, everything changed. People were struck dumb with shock. From that day his bond with his eldest brother grew cold as well. No—the sense that the First Prince was avoiding him was already an old one.
Watching the shock on his face, Viscount Malic let slip a sneer.
"Talent, you see, is a blessing only once it rests in the hand of someone permitted to hold it. Talent in the possession of one who was never permitted—like you—stirs other men's envy. No. Something past envy. It stirs rage."
The prince gave no answer. The viscount spoke.
"Now we put an end to this."
Bloody Axe lifted his axe into a ready stance.
"Like I said, the losses are brutal. Wasn't part of the original plan, but a head like yours... even a king who's lost his son might still see fit to pay out a reward."
At his lead, a dozen-odd mercenaries who had them encircled front and rear began to close slowly in on the prince. And in the instant before the order for the final attack—
A deep roar rolled down the gorge. A steel carriage, a Humvee, came racing in and drove straight at the mercenaries blocking the way.