III. How to Crush Rock (5)
III. How to Crush Rock (5)
Sir Werner looked down at the ruined rock trolls with a bemused expression.
Their backs were crushed, chests caved in, and the flesh beneath their skin had been roasted whole. Not a single part remained intact.
"Apologies. I should've held back a little more."
Keldric, who had stepped up beside him, spoke with a slightly sheepish look.
As he'd said, the corpses were beyond any practical use whatsoever.
The skin was utterly pulverized, and there weren't many parts where you could even make out a shape. At best, only the useless limbs were left.
Sir Werner studied the sight for a long moment, then shook his head slowly.
"It's fine. Rock troll carcasses aren't of much use anyway."
"Oh, really?"
"More to the point, Sir Keldric..."
Usable or not, Sir Werner's attention was fixed elsewhere.
'How could he possess such strength?'
Old as he was, Sir Werner had only grown more seasoned, and even to his experienced eyes, Keldric was something unusual.
From the sheer force he wielded to his composure—far beyond his young years—and his quick situational judgment.
Raw power and strength could be inborn, but instincts for combat could never be innate. Those were things cultivated solely through experience and relentless practice.
Yet Sir Werner saw before him a knight who was already fully realized.
"First things first. When we get back, see to your armor."
"I'll have to."
That aside, the approach Keldric had chosen had been brutally simplistic.
Then again, a brutal method, if backed by enough strength and instinct, could actually be the most efficient one.
Keldric was living proof of that.
Sir Werner watched Keldric's back as he wiped his helm down roughly.
The broad back, the wide-set shoulders, and the muscle hidden beneath.
'I'd already thought his build was exceptional, but this...'
Sir Werner thought back to his own younger days.
If he compared that man then to himself now, could he come anywhere close to Keldric?
Sir Werner's answer was no.
Even if he could return to the peak of his youth, to the most passionate prime of his life, it was clear he would still fall short of the young knight before him, who had beaten a rock troll to death with his bare fists.
So then, how strong was Keldric among all the knights Sir Werner had ever seen?
Sir Werner could confidently say he ranked within the top three.
There had always been plenty of knights who were veritable monsters, and among those Sir Werner had faced, a few had stood out as such.
But it had truly been a long time since he'd last encountered another monster of a knight.
Keldric was that caliber of knight.
Even to Sir Werner, who had lived out his long years as a knight standing at the pinnacle of martial strength, Keldric was a knight beyond ready comparison.
"Sir Werner. Time we headed back."
Keldric, having roughly wiped the blood from his helm, approached him.
Though wiped down, it had been so drenched in blood that a faint reddish tinge still clung to the steel.
Breathing in the thick iron scent rising from the blood, Sir Werner nodded.
"Yes. Let's return to Lord Yaven."
"What about the bodies?"
"Leave them. The laborers will come clear them away later. Letting them rot would only cause trouble."
Sir Werner imagined the look on Baron Yaven's face when he heard this welcome news.
He couldn't say for certain, but the man would probably be shocked enough to fall over backward.
One troll pounded into pulp with a mace, the other beaten down like a dog with bare fists.
Sir Werner watched Keldric mount his horse with a wistful gaze.
'I was already old, but...'
That young knight, before too long, might well become a knight greater even than Sir Werner.
Sir Werner's years of experience cried out that very truth.
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Though Keldric had returned after successfully subjugating the rock trolls, he was feeling somewhat dispirited.
'I hadn't thought it'd break that easily.'
The cause, of all things, was the mace he'd purchased just a few days ago in Schaffendorf. It hadn't lasted a single day before it shattered.
Keldric looked down wistfully at the mace's haft, now split and splintered beyond any hope of salvage.
The wooden haft had been bound with iron rings in three places, yet even that had snapped apart the moment Keldric put his full strength into it.
The problem wasn't the mace's durability.
As the Schaffendorf blacksmith had said when he'd called it the sturdiest he had, the mace—now reduced to wreckage in Keldric's hands—had been more than sturdy enough for any knight to wield without complaint.
It simply hadn't been sturdy enough to absorb the entirety of Keldric's power.
The situation had reached the point that Keldric found himself worrying whether the spear he'd likewise bought in Schaffendorf would also break with ease.
It wasn't an unreasonable thought; no matter how solid the oak, if Keldric applied force, it would snap in an instant.
He could only be thankful that the spear was for thrusting, not swinging.
"Sir Keldric. Are you all right?"
Jorgen, seated beside him, asked between sips of cheap ale.
It was mostly a polite question, but part of him had asked because it was rare for Keldric's troubled expression to show so plainly on the outside.
"I'm alive, so that'll do. Still, this means I'll have to replace my sidearm."
"There is a forge in Yalta, but I doubt it'd be much different from what they made in Schaffendorf."
Keldric could manage well enough with a sword.
Where he fell short, he could supplement with overwhelming force, and if he needed a blunt weapon, using his fists was quicker anyway.
The real problem was that the gauntlet on his left hand had also been dented and cracked in several places.
Before he knew it, Keldric had lost his weapon and, right after, his gauntlet as well.
It was only thanks to the generous reward Baron Yaven had promised earlier that Keldric was spared having to walk around with his left hand exposed.
'Would it be worth commissioning the artisans in Bellam?'
What Keldric needed wasn't a weapon that answered the question "How efficiently can I use this?"
He simply wanted a weapon for which the question "How sturdy is it?" yielded an answer of unquestionable, absolute toughness.
"If I commissioned the artisans in Bellam, do you think they could make a sturdier weapon?"
"The Bellam artisans should be capable enough. They're not quite at the level of the artisans far off in Bogenberg, but plenty of them hail from those circles originally. It will be serviceable. The issue is..."
Jorgen's expression turned a little awkward.
He worked his mouth for a moment, then took a long, refreshing draught of ale before he continued.
"The issue is, in all likelihood, the iron supply hasn't returned to normal yet."
"Why's that? The rock trolls have already been dealt with, and Lord Yaven will be taking special care to get the iron flowing again as fast as possible."
"We've dealt with the rock trolls that were blocking the iron supply, true enough, but it still takes considerable time for the ore to reach the city, be smelted down, and refined. What's available right now..."
"Won't be much."
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Despite resolving the troll problem, Keldric realized he was now facing yet another difficulty.
The narrowing of his options while he waited for iron to be refined was a secondary concern; the real trouble would come if the Bellam artisans couldn't take on a custom order right away.
Even if there was leftover stock that had been made in advance, he couldn't imagine it being any better than the mace that had just shattered.
Mass-produced goods, supplied to nobles looking to equip their mercenaries or household troops.
By nature, their quality fell short of what a master artisan would produce with painstaking care, and with apprentices pitching in to meet the production volume, the standard dropped even further.
That was what ready-made goods were.
And naturally, there was no way Keldric could use such low-grade off-the-shelf equipment.
'It'd obviously snap after two or three swings...'
Which meant that even if he went straight to Bellam, there was nothing to be done.
Keldric let out a quiet sigh. The gap in his armament stung more than he'd expected.
At the very least, he'd hoped to have a gauntlet fitted, but even that didn't seem likely to pan out easily.
"Sir Keldric."
While Keldric was slowly settling his troubled mind, Alisa had at some point approached his side and spoke.
"Alisa? What is it?"
"Sir Werner has come to see you. He's outside."
"Sir Werner?"
Baron Yaven was a man in a hurry.
That was why he'd rushed to make his departure preparations the very moment the rock trolls were subjugated.
And the same naturally applied to Sir Werner, who traveled in Baron Yaven's retinue.
'I didn't know what this was about, but...'
The Empire was vast, and the continent that held the Empire was vaster still.
Just because Keldric had met Sir Werner here, there was no telling when he might ever cross paths with him again.
Keldric rose to his feet. Thinking of it as sharing a final farewell before they parted, that was fine by him.
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"A man's weapon was wrecked in the middle of a fight. It's only right he be compensated."
The moment he saw Keldric, Sir Werner said that without preamble and ordered his attendant to fetch something.
As Keldric watched blankly, the attendant, having gone somewhere and returned, held something out before him.
"What's this?"
"You are a fine knight."
The conversation between Sir Werner and Keldric wasn't quite meshing.
Keldric looked at Sir Werner, who seemed to be talking past him, with a bemused expression.
It was because the memory of his father, Sir Volfen, occasionally acting like this rose to the surface.
"What a knight needs isn't martial prowess alone. Many young knights believe that strength is the answer to everything, but I don't see it that way."
"I agree with that, but what does that have to do with..."
"You are different. You have something distinctly set apart from every other young knight I've ever seen."
Almost reflexively, Keldric took the object the attendant was holding out. Something long, wrapped in fine linen, it looked very much like a club.
"I suppose I've gotten old myself. When I see a promising knight like you, I find myself wanting to bestow this and that, as old men do."
The cloth was peeled away, and what revealed itself was a single mace.
Keldric blinked and looked down at it.
"This is...?"
"A gift for you."
Sir Werner's words were so out of the blue that it was beyond anything Keldric could have anticipated.
The mace's workmanship was outstanding.
Its overall shape was similar to the one Keldric had been using, but it was larger and the haft was solid steel, which set it apart.
In other words, it was a mace that was heavier, sturdier, and more destructive.
"They didn't seem to have a gauntlet in your size. You'll have to make do with that for now."
"Why give this to me?"
"A knight as fine as you, well—a man's got to get on your good side in advance."
Having said that, Sir Werner gave a short laugh and added that it was a joke.
"Still, what I said about you being a fine knight was in earnest. You seem to be a knight who is fully equipped in more than just strength."
"By 'more than just strength,' you mean..."
"In character and intellect. Knights like you are rare."
Sir Werner was himself a uniquely principled knight among the knights of this era.
And that man was now saying such things to Keldric.
"After we returned from the subjugation, I happened to hear something about you. They said you showed quite a generous hand at Schaffendorf."
"That was, well..."
"It was a fine deed. Actions befitting chivalry aren't something you can squeeze out by forcing them."
Sir Werner's expression looked somewhat forlorn as he spoke.
Keldric stared at him blankly.
"Sir Keldric. I hope you never commit an act you will come to regret."
"...I'll bear that in mind."
"That weapon is one I no longer have any use for, so don't feel too burdened. Now that I've gotten on in years, a heavy weapon like that is beyond me."
"I'll put it to grateful use."
Sir Werner nodded, then turned away without fuss.
Keldric saw him off in silence.
"Ah, yes. Sir Keldric."
After taking a few steps, Sir Werner looked back over his shoulder. A hint of mischief flickered across his face.
"I've been curious since earlier—how exactly did you break that hard stone skin?"
Keldric scratched his chin, unfazed. As if to say—what kind of easy question was that?
"I just... pushed through with force, and it worked."
"...Ah, I see. Force, you say."
Realization dawned on Sir Werner at once.
No matter how many other important virtues a knight might have, the foremost virtue, in the end, was force.
"I've asked a foolish question."
At the end of the day, Sir Werner was a knight himself.
To break a rock, you needed nothing other than force.