I. Where the Frost Lingers (9)
I. Where the Frost Lingers (9)
In truth, Keldric hadn't thought this would actually work.
It had merely occurred to him that the common difficulty of adjusting when bright light suddenly gave way to darkness might apply here as well.
'It actually worked?'
The situation couldn't have been better.
Faint as it had been, once the torchlight vanished, the kitchen instantly filled with darkness.
As a result, the mercenaries who had been glaring at Keldric moments earlier still hadn't adjusted to the dark.
"U-uwaaah!"
The mercenary wielding an axe in both hands flailed in the darkness.
Keldric's fist, clad in an iron gauntlet, shot out like lightning.
Bam!
The mercenary's nose collapsed in a single blow, and he staggered.
Keldric put his full strength into the next punch. This time, it wasn't only the nose—the man's entire face caved in.
Keldric remained utterly impassive on the surface, but he was slightly taken aback.
He'd only swung his fist, yet the mercenary's face crumpled like a rotten tomato without even a scream escaping him.
Keldric hadn't properly gauged his own strength.
Once an iron gauntlet covered Keldric's already rock-hard fist, it became an excellent killing weapon.
"D-Donovan! Ras! Gather around me!"
"Lucas! Shut up, you stupid bastard!"
While Keldric slaughtered two mercenaries in an instant, the survivors barely managed to group together.
Their voices came from the same spot.
But speaking up in that situation was the worst thing they could have done.
Donovan or whatever—presumably the man with that name—already lay facedown on the kitchen floor with his face caved in.
Keldric strode toward the voices.
Two dark silhouettes came into view.
At first, Keldric had considered sparing them if they surrendered.
But they'd refused to surrender, and, now that he thought about it, weren't five mercenaries already lying unconscious in the front yard?
He didn't need any more prisoners.
If they wouldn't surrender and were of no use, he had no choice but to kill them.
"D-Don't come any closer! Stay back!"
"Get your weapon up!"
The surviving mercenary seemed to have finally adjusted to the darkness. When he saw Keldric approaching, he began shrieking like a girl.
Keldric's brow furrowed on its own.
Men of the North didn't scream so shrilly.
"Damn it!"
In place of the panicked Lucas, Gunther, who looked more seasoned, swung his falchion.
Clang!
But Keldric simply parried it with his sword.
The falchion flew away, skidding several times across the floor before it stopped.
"Aagh!!"
The impact shattered Gunther's wrist.
Keeping a firm grip on a sword was normally the right choice in battle, but not this time.
Clutching his wrist, Gunther quickly recovered and pulled a dagger from inside his coat.
But Keldric had already closed to point-blank range and was faster.
Bam!
"Gugh!"
Keldric's fist slammed into Gunther's solar plexus, and he collapsed with bloody foam at his mouth.
At the moment of impact, Keldric faintly felt something hard snap.
'Had I broken his ribs too?'
That was entirely due to the sheer size of Keldric's fist.
With the added thickness of an iron gauntlet, it was no different from a battering ram to the mercenaries.
One meant to break bodies rather than castles.
"P-please spare me, Sir Knight! I'll tell you everything! All of it! Please!"
After seeing Gunther collapse helplessly, Lucas begged through streaming tears and snot.
Keldric had no intention of sparing Lucas, but he stopped with his sword poised to thrust. He'd hear him out first.
"Are you the whole group? Ten men total?"
"Uh..."
"Answer me! There were ten of you, correct? And who put you up to this?"
"Aagh! Yes! Ten is all of us! And the one who hired us was... J-Joseph! The peddler who came to this village!"
"I already know that."
'Fuck! Then what the hell did he want to know?'
Meanwhile, Lucas himself was on the verge of losing his mind as he faced Keldric.
With the other mercenaries dropping like straw dolls around him, the knight's voice from the darkness and the metallic reek of blood were terror itself.
The sharp smell of blood stung his nostrils as Lucas continued in a trembling voice.
"Th-then, what do you wish to ask...?"
"Did Joseph hire all of you? How much were you paid?"
"That was..."
"Hmm."
The instant Lucas hesitated, Keldric's fist—the same one that had just crushed Gunther—slowly rose.
At the sight, Lucas screamed as though having a fit.
"I-initially, it was two Grasen silver coins per man! But a few hours ago, he said he'd pay us another eight and a half Ducat gold coins if we took a new job..."
"What was the job? Lie, and you'll regret it."
"Aagh! I-I'll tell you the truth! He told us to kill the nobleman of this household..."
Lucas's voice trailed off.
Naturally. He was effectively confessing, 'He asked us to kill someone from your family, and I eagerly accepted.'
Lucas could do nothing but bow his head before Keldric.
"Grrk, cough..."
Lucas glanced at Gunther, who was still coughing up blood, and cursed him inwardly.
'This was all that son of a bitch's fault! Damn him! He could just die!'
Experienced, my ass. Gunther's idiotic decision was about to get them all killed.
Even a life spent rolling in dog shit was better than death.
Whether he became a slave or something else, if there was even a sliver of hope, wasn't survival better?
Because they'd listened to Gunther, every one of Lucas's comrades now lay sprawled on the floor, and he'd added pointless resistance to his own crimes.
Lucas felt as though he might weep tears of blood.
The metallic smell of the knight's chain mail and the reek of blood blended into an eerie harmony.
The combination relentlessly assaulted Lucas's tear ducts and bladder.
"Who did he ask you to kill? Did he name a specific target?"
"H-he told us to kill the current head of the house... That's what he said. His n-name—"
"Hilmer. Hilmer of House Bellaf. Correct?"
"C-correct..."
Lucas nodded and desperately bit his trembling lip.
It seemed he'd said everything he could.
What would happen now?
"I see."
The answer was simple.
Something long and sharp in the giant knight Keldric's hand touched Lucas's throat.
Goosebumps rose all over Lucas as he felt the chill of the metal.
The heavy killing intent radiating from the man before him raced down his spine.
'I didn't want to die.'
'I didn't want to die in a shithole like this!'
"O-Outside!"
Just before Keldric swung his sword, Lucas barely remembered something and shouted. Keldric's blade stopped in midair.
Seeing that, Lucas thought.
Maybe. Just maybe.
Could he survive?
Lucas seized desperately upon that tiny spark in the darkness, convinced it was hope.
"There are knights outside! Joseph brought them!"
In the process, Lucas made the wrong choice.
He lied.
The mounted soldiers wore thick gambesons and leather lamellar armor. They looked well equipped, but they were nowhere near the level of knights.
Poor knights in leather armor weren't unheard of, but knights sent at a noble's command wouldn't be dressed like that.
"There were about six of them! I counted six, but there might be more!"
The lies poured from Lucas's mouth as smoothly as water.
Ironically, Lucas hadn't intended to create this situation when he blurted out the lie.
If he'd been even slightly clearheaded, he'd have thought it through and offered information mixed with enough truth to sound convincing.
But Lucas was not remotely clearheaded.
He feared that his mother's face might appear in the final flash before death, while the overwhelming violence responsible for that terror pressed on him until his lungs felt crushed.
Normal conversation had been impossible from the start.
"Six, you say?"
Keldric was deeply bewildered by Lucas's panicked claim.
'Hadn't he said ten earlier?'
What a fucking mess.
Lucas's story had abruptly changed, and now six knights were supposedly waiting outside. It had come from nowhere.
The claim that there might be even more only magnified Keldric's unease, until it passed a certain threshold and burned itself out at once.
"Didn't you clearly say there were ten?"
"O-our mercenary company does have ten men! But that bastard Joseph brought the knights...!"
"Six knights, huh. So Joseph has that kind of money?"
"H-huh? That, that was..."
Hiring six knights merely to destroy the impoverished House Bellaf.
Fully armed knights mounted on warhorses, no less.
Surely Joseph wouldn't have had that kind of money...
'What a joke.'
There was no chance he did.
If he had, Joseph wouldn't have involved himself in a mess like this.
He'd have been living lavishly in some great city, ordering around a handful of slaves.
Even setting aside the money, calling six proud knights to a remote place like this would have been difficult even for Baron Yaven.
Having them launch a night raid on another noble house would also have been deeply dishonorable.
Then what of Fritz, who'd bankrolled Joseph?
Did he have that much money—and a justification?
If Fritz emptied the entire village operating fund and found knights willing to move for the lowest possible fee, he might just have been able to hire six wandering knights for one day.
But that was a pipe dream.
Hilmer wasn't the sort to let the village operating fund roam free like a stray dog. He would've hidden it somewhere secure.
Therefore, six knights could not possibly have been here.
Keldric knew all too well just how cold and cruel reality was.
Lucas's violently trembling form caught Keldric's eye.
He couldn't make out the details in the darkness, but Lucas's twitching silhouette alone showed that he wasn't in his right mind.
"So you're certain there were six."
"Y-Yes. They were all on horseback."
"Hmm..."
Even heavy cavalry seemed unlikely. At most, they were probably six well-trained light cavalrymen.
Keldric's estimate was correct, but the situation remained serious even if the additional troops weren't knights.
Six light cavalrymen were enough to pose a serious threat to Carlton Village.
And if there were more...
Another heavy concern settled in Keldric's mind.
The information could still be important, so Keldric prompted Lucas in case he knew anything else.
"Anything else? Tell me everything—and tell me the truth!"
"Th-Then, will you spare me?"
At Lucas's response, Keldric swung his sword without hesitation.
In an instant, Lucas's head was left dangling by a thread, and his body collapsed weakly to the side.
Keldric's reason for swinging his sword was simple.
As a rule, when people had nothing more to offer, they'd begin focusing on what the other person wanted from them.
If Keldric had promised to spare Lucas, the man would've piled lie upon lie and invented things that had never happened.
Keldric clicked his tongue and started to sheathe his bloody sword, then stopped.
Putting a bloodstained blade into its scabbard would damage the sword.
Keldric rested the bloodied sword on his shoulder and resumed walking after the long pause.
Keldric left the kitchen. Only Lucas's gurgling final breaths remained as warm blood poured from him in spurts.
Gunther, whose broken ribs had pierced something vital, drew his last agonized breath and closed his pain-filled eyes.
And he regretted it.
He shouldn't have accepted that damned merchant's offer.
It didn't take long for silence to reclaim the kitchen.