V. O, Glory of the Tournament! (9)
V. O, Glory of the Tournament! (9)
Two things were required to enter the tournament.
One was a guarantor to vouch for the identity of the participating knight, and the other was the warhorse and arms to be used in the tournament.
Keldric had both.
He could not know what kind of guarantors other knights from distant regions might present, but Sir Herman's recommendation carrying weight was no small matter.
"Where do we go now?"
"Over that way will do."
Keldric, moving within the group, carefully studied the direction Sir Alan indicated in the distance.
A soaring tent stood there, with something like a banner inscribed in the Imperial tongue.
"The Heraldic Registry?"
"Not just anyone can enter the tournament, can they? When introducing you to the spectators, they must also know your house."
"By that reasoning, Sir Alan would be better off not going. Wouldn't it be a disgrace if a shoddy Britas knight like you turned up?"
"Sir Henri. Shut it, would you?"
While Sir Alan and Sir Henri were bickering again, Keldric calmly urged his horse forward and approached the Heraldic Registry.
The crowds gathered near the tournament grounds were beyond counting, but the actual line of knights before the Heraldic Registry was not long.
There was still a little time before the tournament began, so it was clear that knights with no sense for money or time were loitering about, sightseeing.
Thanks to that, Keldric could stand in the waiting line much more comfortably.
To join the waiting line, he had to dismount for a moment, but thanks to Alisa and Sir Henri, Keldric entrusted Boreas's reins to them without worry and quickly got in line.
Sir Alan, who had likewise dismounted, pressed close behind Keldric.
"Is Sir Keldric new to tournaments?"
"I have experience with trial by combat, but this is my first tournament."
"...That's rather unusual. Do most not gain tournament experience first?"
"Ah, well..."
Listening to Sir Alan, Keldric's career was certainly out of the ordinary.
He had utterly crushed the mercenaries and cavalry who raided his house, and immediately after that he had joined forces with the Ram Mercenary Company to annihilate a mounted bandit gang from the Duchy of Rhees.
Not content with that, he had simply beaten three rock trolls to death, and immediately after that he had gone to Bellam and even taken part in a trial by combat for Sir Herman's honor.
The very reason he had left his house was not out of ambition for promotion or becoming a great lord, but mostly simple curiosity to see the world.
Keldric realized anew that he had accomplished quite a few feats in a short time.
Of course, those were feats recognized only in the local area. Now that he had left the North, the vast majority of people knew nothing of him at all.
In other words, he lacked renown.
As Sir Alan had said, that was precisely why the first external activity knights undertook was usually the tournament.
To knights, upright and lofty honor was important, but the renown to spread that honor far and wide was no less important.
A knight's ultimate goal was to extract a fief from a lord and settle down.
Once they distinguished themselves somewhere and received even a quiet country village as a fief, that alone was a successful life as a knight and a great honor to their house.
To do that, they had to distinguish themselves, and to gain the opportunity to distinguish themselves, they needed high renown.
It was only natural that lords would not blindly trust some mangy cur of a knight who had come rolling in from who knew where.
Thus, knights of relatively young age often chose the tournament as a means of proving their skill and elevating their renown.
It was less deadly than fighting on the battlefield, and on top of that, people did not treat them as cowards but rather acknowledged their victorious achievements.
Moreover, in a large-scale tournament, the prize money and rewards were not negligible, so whenever a tournament appeared, knights went mad with excitement and rushed to join.
"Sir Alan. Have you had experience entering tournaments?"
"A few times. I've won about three."
"Oh..."
Strictly speaking, Sir Alan was not that sort of knight.
Rather, considering that he served the Earl of Bankshire, a noble of the Kingdom of Britas, he was akin to Sir Werner of House Henzer, who had served the Count of Bogenberg for generations.
But even for a house with a generational calling, it was important for a young heir to go out and gain experience.
"To be honest, at first I left my house under duress. My father pestered me relentlessly, telling me to go out and tour the tournaments at least."
So said Sir Alan.
A son who merely holed up at home with no achievements could not be made heir.
"For the first two years, I toured tournaments within the Kingdom of Britas. During those two years I entered about ten times, and at exactly the tenth tournament I claimed victory."
"That is... monumental."
Sir Alan, twenty-two years old like Sir Henri, had left his house at the age of eighteen, like Keldric, and traveled the tournament circuit.
It was also a rather different start from Keldric's.
Keldric had racked up various feats the moment he left his house, but Sir Alan had traveled all over for two years before he barely managed to win a regional tournament.
"The feeling at that moment was truly... almost beyond words. I'm not good at poetic expressions."
"What does that matter? In which city did you win the tournament?"
"A place called Briarford. Have you heard of it?"
"First I've heard of it."
Keldric knew nothing of the geography of the Kingdom of Britas.
When he was practically a layman even regarding Imperial geography, there was no way he could know the territorial circumstances of a foreign country across the sea.
"Anyway, after that, I won once more within the Kingdom of Britas... and then crossed over to the Empire. And in the south, I earned one more victory in a small regional tournament."
"Are you aiming for victory this time as well?"
"To be honest, I have no confidence for the Bogenberg Tournament. Just the knights visible to the eye now—how many are there? To win, I would have to be peerless among them."
Yet the reason he had entered was, most likely, simply that he placed significance on participating at all.
Keldric quietly nodded.
Certainly, behind the waiting line that had shortened while he chatted with Sir Alan, a line longer than before had snaked into formation.
All of them were knights. Keldric had wondered whether renowned mercenaries might be mixed among them, but Sir Alan's single remark—"The scale is too grand for lowly mercenaries to attend."—convinced him.
"Above all, the other knights would not accept it."
"That is true."
Knights deal only with knights. That was practically common sense.
While he conversed with Sir Alan about the tournament, Keldric's turn came before he knew it.
Keldric strode up to the herald seated inside the tent.
As a great shadow fell across the tent interior cast by his enormous frame, the herald's expression flinched.
"Ho, honorable Sir Knight. Welcome. To enter the Bogenberg Tournament, would you kindly inform me of your name and house?"
"God be with you. I am Keldric of House Bellaf."
"Sir Keldric. The arms of the honorable House Bellaf—are these the correct arms?"
Keldric studied the somewhat crude drawing the herald indicated.
The profile of a brown bear rearing on its hind legs against an ultramarine background. It was identical to the one drawn on Keldric's surcoat.
"Correct."
"Indeed! House Bellaf... I would by no means dare to doubt Sir Keldric's identity, but do you perchance have a guarantor?"
"Sir Herman of House Kassel. I have been granted his entry eligibility. I also have the letter of recommendation."
Two letters emerged from Keldric's breast.
One was the letter Sir Herman had written transferring the entry eligibility, and the other was the letter of recommendation Ludovico had handed over.
"Confirmed. Sir Keldric of the honorable House Bellaf. Please affix this cloth in a conspicuous place."
His identity was clear, his guarantor was suitable, and he even had a letter of recommendation.
Thanks to that, Keldric could obtain his entry eligibility more easily than others.
While Sir Alan was finishing his arms registration, Keldric ran his hand over the long strip of blue cloth.
No particularly high-quality fabric had been used; it was clearly a piece of coarse, low-grade linen roughly torn and dyed.
It was a way of distinguishing the tournament teams. When Keldric glanced around, he saw knights here and there going about with a colored cloth tied to the shoulder of their surcoat.
Seeing that, Keldric likewise tied the cloth to his shoulder.
Though he occasionally spotted other knights who also bore the blue cloth, Keldric did not rashly approach them to speak.
Even if they wore the same colored cloth, there was no knowing whether they would be teammates or fight on the same side in a round.
Before long, Sir Alan, who had likewise bound a dyed cloth to his shoulder, approached Keldric. Sir Alan's cloth was yellow.
"Sir Keldric. That finished more quickly than I expected."
"Mm. I did have a letter of recommendation. You took quite a while."
"Good heavens, if you're not an Imperial knight, the identity verification is terribly stringent."
The arms registration had to be thorough. The chief purpose was to prevent any riffraff from entering, declaring "I'm a knight."
Which meant that, at the very least, the knights gathered here would all be men duly qualified to enter.
Keldric swept his gaze over the faces of the other knights standing nearby, then turned his steps to follow Sir Alan.
The matches had not even begun, and trying to gauge the martial prowess of knights who might or might not become opponents would only give him a headache.
Keldric simply intended to smash them all just as he had always done.
And, for the most part, everything Keldric had faced so far had been resolved by exactly that alone.
☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩
The tournament field was considerably large.
Not just merely large—since the joust was held alongside, it had to be long enough for warhorses to gain sufficient speed.
Keldric stared blankly at the field split in two by a sturdy rope.
The rope, stretched taut between two posts, had colorful triangular cloth pieces dangling along it in a row, and it looked as though anyone who crashed into it while charging at full gallop would likely topple straight over.
Keldric's hand, stripped of its gauntlet, slowly stroked Boreas's mane.
For a horse Sir Volfen had bought in a backwater like Carlton village, Boreas was strong and clever.
It had almost come to the point that Keldric suspected—though it surely could not be so—that Sir Volfen might have procured him separately for Keldric.
"Sir. Still nervous?"
"No, well..."
There was no way he was not nervous. Keldric had a certain measure of confidence, but the joust he was encountering for the first time was full of unfamiliar elements.
He also had to use the tournament lance provided by the organizer, and delivering fatal blows that threatened the opponent's vitals or life was strictly forbidden.
Keldric well understood the reason.
The knights had gathered at a tournament where the danger was low and their renown could be elevated, so if knights ended up dead in the middle of a match, the noble who hosted the tournament would also be disgraced.
Above all, one might earn the vicious and dishonorable epithet of having killed an opposing knight in a tournament.
But when the match grew intense, no one could say what would happen.
Keldric trusted his reflexes, but he worried he might accidentally pierce his opponent's throat.
"The weight feels a little... awkward."
"That's because you're unusual. They're normally on the heavy side."
The shape of the tournament lance was not the cone-tipped lance Keldric had imagined.
It simply looked like an ordinary spear with a round plate near the grip, and the material was quite hard while the tip at the end was ground round, making it unsuited to piercing.
Even if it looked like that, it would do a fine job of crumpling armor, but at least it could not kill easily.
"Sir Keldric. You said this is your first joust, did you not?"
"That's right."
"At the moment you clash with your opponent, the lance will probably shatter. It's a lance designed to do just that, so do not be too alarmed."
What was more, if it was designed to break the moment of impact, it was all the harder to kill with.
Keldric nodded as though convinced by Alisa's explanation.
"Where are you in the order?"
"I'm told I'm sixth."
"That's good. We can watch together in the meantime."
Keldric followed Alisa and Sir Henri toward the spectator seating. It was a spot that commanded a full view of the field where the joust was about to commence.
'This will be something to look forward to.'
The duel between Sir Henri and Sir Alan had been entertaining enough, but he could not even begin to guess what a joust would be like, with the combatants charging one another on horseback.
Keldric looked out over the field, eyes bright with anticipation.
Out on the field ahead, the two knights assigned to the first match were riding in on their horses.