VIII. A Knight Craves Battle (2)
VIII. A Knight Craves Battle (2)
Count Bogenberg rarely summoned Keldric.
As a result, Keldric suddenly found himself with nothing on his schedule.
Confined to a guest room in the inner castle, he did little more than get up in the morning to exercise or train with Arno.
"Arno."
"Yes, Sir Keldric."
Keldric looked Arno over from head to toe.
Thanks to the training he had kept up since taking Arno in, the young man's once-lean frame had filled out and grown firm.
A youthful confidence shone in his bright blue eyes. Keeping up with Keldric's training had gradually become easier for him.
When something everyone else found difficult started to feel easy, conceit was only natural.
Arno was no exception, though Keldric saw no need to point it out directly.
"You've improved considerably since we first met, but this isn't enough. Don't grow complacent here."
"I will take it to heart."
"Train harder and keep aiming for a stronger body. Before long, you'll be taking part in a full-scale territorial war..."
Once Keldric had finished giving advice and putting Arno through various drills, there was little else to do.
He would talk with Alisa about whatever had recently caught their interest, or go outside and make a circuit of the city.
There was an indescribable satisfaction in watching the city go about its daily life.
The people were not starving. Smiles rarely left their faces. Some even recognized Keldric as the tournament champion and came over to press apples and other small gifts into his hands...
But that peace was maintained by force, and a clash of force against force meant war.
"Have you heard as well? From Rasau's side..."
"A friend of mine visited Bellam not long ago. He said the mood there was already deadly serious."
Peddlers were the quickest to hear rumors.
They traveled from place to place, and Count Bogenberg had to use merchant companies whenever he ordered provisions or other supplies.
Large orders for military supplies were pouring in from Count Bogenberg, Baron Yaven, and nearby Salzhoff. The peddlers had quickly guessed why.
A territorial war was coming. Their opponent would be Count Rasau, who was likewise stockpiling food and weapons.
The feud between Count Rasau and Count Bogenberg was not so widely known that every commoner had heard of it.
Anyone connected to the local notables, however, knew what mattered. That included guild masters affiliated with the merchant companies.
Keldric urged Aveline briskly through the murmuring crowd.
Everyone who saw the pitch-black warhorse beneath him flinched and promptly fell silent.
There was no advantage in letting rumors of war spread unchecked. False reports and opportunistic swindlers would only cause trouble.
Still, some warning had to circulate. The people also needed time to prepare.
'The available troops are probably...'
Conscription would be unavoidable. And the fief's productivity would plummet in an instant.
The County of Bogenberg was not Keldric's own territory, but it would still hurt him if the lord he currently served saw his coffers emptied.
Keldric watched the people continue with their peaceful routines.
Knowing that this ordinary life would soon fall apart... did not sit well with him.
After wandering the streets for a while, he eventually reached a quieter part of the city.
Keldric stopped and looked around. A faint stench teased his nose.
"Hm?"
Mixed into it was a familiar and deeply unwelcome odor.
His instincts prickled in warning. Something was here—something exceptionally foul.
Keldric carefully guided Aveline toward the familiar scent.
It led him to the entrance of a narrow alley. He flared his nostrils.
The metallic reek of blood, the earthy smell that rose after rain, and a faintly sour odor of decay...
'...Erosion Larvae?'
It was the same smell that had come from Sir Ortvin's blood.
Keldric's eyes turned serious at once.
☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩
The old man slapped the dust from his filthy robe several times.
Dust billowed and bits of dry straw clung to the cloth, but he paid it no mind.
There was no reason to tidy his appearance. After glancing around the nearly lightless alley, he thrust a deeply wrinkled hand from beneath his robe.
Thud! Thud!
The door was unusually solid for such an alley. Each forceful knock produced a deep, heavy echo.
After a brief wait, the door cracked open and a burly man poked only his head outside.
"Old man?"
"Open the door, you goddamn bastard."
The man withdrew, and moments later the iron-reinforced door slid open.
The old man stepped inside without hesitation. The heavily built man locked the door again.
The door was secured by two, even three separate locks. There was good reason for such caution.
The old man ignored all of it and dumped the contents of his robe onto the table.
A jumble of objects spilled across the oil-lamp-lit table: small bottles filled with unidentified liquids, plant roots, shed snakeskin, and more.
"No luck again today?"
The burly man asked as he sat across from the old man. In the candlelight, a flame-shaped mark stood out on his bronze forehead like a brand.
The old man glanced at it and answered gruffly.
"Are you mocking me when you already know? What I'm looking for wasn't there."
"Nothing seems to be going our way."
"Exactly. Fucking miserable place. Now the gate guards have suddenly decided to do their jobs..."
The old man grumbled, but his hands never stopped moving.
Rather than merely sitting at the table, he sorted the items he had dumped out and added them to the nearby cauldron a little at a time.
"What you brought last time was useful, but it wasn't lethal enough."
"..."
"Jamash. Don't you have anything besides the Erosion Larvae?"
Jamash, the burly man with the flame brand on his forehead, rolled a silver coin between his fingers as he answered.
"There isn't. The knights are tracing our connection to the Godmother."
"Then we'll have to disappear."
"We'll need to lie low."
For once, Jamash agreed with the old man. He had picked up a curved sword at some point and was inspecting the blade when he asked casually.
"By the way, old man, weren't you planning to cross the sea soon? The House of Wisdom won't remain open to you forever."
"You think I don't want to? I'm desperate to learn what they know... Damn it, everything's become too tangled."
"Those knights are tenacious. I never expected anyone to survive the Erosion Larvae."
"Isn't that because you brought me such worthless specimens? You made such a fuss about that damned sorcery of yours!"
Jamash fell silent. He had no answer.
As the old man said, no one had expected the Erosion Larvae to fail to kill the knight.
The likeliest cause was the enormous knight they had seen at the tournament.
"The blow to his chest was too strong. The larva had just begun coiling around his heart to build its nest."
"It would've been better if that lance had skewered him to death... Tsk. I told you we should've killed him quietly."
"Assassinate a knight? You might as well order me to die."
"You're built like a mountain. What are you so afraid of?"
The old man grumbled as he uncorked a small vial. Inside was a liquid the color of a gleaming silver coin—mercury he had struggled to obtain.
"I've killed three knights myself. Scratch their pride and they charge like colts with their tails on fire."
"Only after preparing everything in advance, didn't you?"
"Of course I fought them on ground I'd prepared, you idiot. How else would anyone kill a knight? They may be ignorant, but you can't underestimate their strength."
"The knight from House Riesenbrunn is inside the inner castle. We can't simply assassinate him."
"Not even if we called in the Al-Kafa Brotherhood?"
"We haven't heard a word from the Al-Kafa Brotherhood."
Jamash silently watched the old man prepare the concoction.
The old man never looked back. His movements appeared careless, but every measurement was exact.
A vile stench rose from the ingredients going into the cauldron. Jamash's brow furrowed involuntarily.
"That smell is horrific every time."
The old man answered only by stirring the cauldron with his ladle. The unknown mixture bubbled ominously in the silence.
They intended to leave the city soon. Nothing good would come of remaining in Bogenberg.
The knight of House Riesenbrunn had survived. Once he awakened, it would only be a matter of time before Count Bogenberg found their trail.
Count Bogenberg was no fool. Jamash had sent more than one imperial noble to the grave, and he knew the count would not be an easy mark.
Where had it all gone wrong? Jamash closed his eyes and traced the sequence of failures.
It was strange enough that the Erosion Larvae had failed to kill the knight, but the tournament champion was even more baffling.
The man's massive build had been ominous from the start, but extracting a larva embedded that deeply with nothing more than an external blow should have been impossible.
The victim had even been wearing armor. Jamash could not begin to imagine the force of the impact.
"We should've implanted it earlier after all."
"What?"
"It's nothing."
The old man clicked his tongue, muttered under his breath, and set the finished concoction aside to cool.
"Either way, it's best if we leave as soon as possible."
"Agreed. This place is too stifling. There's nothing I can accomplish here. Perhaps farther south—"
The old man never finished. Jamash drew a sharp breath as well.
Clink. Clank.
An unfamiliar sound was approaching—the interlocking clatter of metal, followed by heavy footsteps.
It came from beyond the heavily barred door. From the footsteps alone, Jamash could roughly identify whoever approached.
'A disciplined gait. It's an armed soldier... no, perhaps...'
"...A knight?"
The old man's whisper was barely louder than a passing breeze.
Whether the person outside had heard him or not, the footsteps stopped abruptly.
Of all places, right in front of the door.
Srrring.
Jamash cautiously adjusted his grip on the curved sword. With his left hand, he drew a fistful of powder from the pouch at his waist.
Thud! Thud!
"...Who is it?"
The old man called out, but the uninvited visitor outside said nothing.
Tension thickened. The old man looked at the scattered ingredients, the suspicious vials, and the large jar containing the unused Erosion Larvae.
Whoever stood outside, they were fucked if any of this was discovered.
Jamash met the old man's eyes. The old man slowly drew a vial and nodded.
'Kill them?'
'If we want to live.'
Thud! Thud!
The door shook again. The old man steadied his trembling voice and adopted the frail tone of an elderly man.
"Who is it out there?"
[ Open the door. ]
"...What? Who the hell are you—"
Thud!
A heavy impact rang out. The old man flinched despite himself.
The creeping certainty that they were fucked began to consume him.
Bam! BOOM!
The visitor had not been knocking out of courtesy. They were trying to smash the door down.
But the door was reinforced with iron plating. Unless some Knight of Superhuman Strength had come, there was no way anyone could tear the whole thing off its hinges...
BANG—!!
"...!"
It should have been impossible, yet it happened.
The old man coughed in the billowing dust and stared in disbelief at the door lying several yards away.
Fistprints, boot marks, and ugly dents from some unidentified piece of iron covered its surface.
No—it had practically been ripped apart.
"Oh, fuck..."
Jamash ground out the uncharacteristic curse.
The old man's bulging eyes slowly turned toward the entrance left gaping by the torn-off door.
A body large enough to block the entire opening stood there.
Tightly linked chain mail covered the figure beneath a massive plate breastplate. One iron gauntlet held a lump of metal seemingly made for crushing human skulls.
'Th-the knight from the tournament...!'
It was the Knight of Superhuman Strength who had folded not only House Riesenbrunn's knight but every contestant in the tournament like paper.
How had he found this place?
Hooooh—.
A deep breath escaped the bucket-like helm.
The old man saw dark blue eyes gleaming within.
They were fixed on the jar shattered by the flying door.
Erosion Larvae wriggled across the floor where they had spilled from it.
"Surrender now, and I'll only break your limbs."
Soon, two more creatures would be crawling on the floor.