A Hand from Beyond the Sea (6)
“Damn. I messed up.”
Chester clicked his tongue, feeling the arrows lodged in his shoulder and back.
He had launched the ambush the same way as before, but among the sailors there had been someone calm and steadfast who quickly restored order among the crew and countered him. Because of that, Chester had been forced to fight for a long time, using corpses as shields to block and dodge arrows, until exhaustion dulled his body and he took two arrows and a single sword stroke.
Fortunately the blade had struck the leather clothes Monia had made. The fur and thick hide stopped the edge cleanly, leaving Chester unharmed. A poorly maintained sword, swung without skill, could barely cut a sheet of paper. Thick leather was tougher still—something that demanded a dedicated knife, sharper and smaller than an ordinary sword so the force could be concentrated. A knight-level fighter might have carved through it with a blade, but these men were sailors. They handled knives for daily work and had little reason to swing long, cumbersome cutlasses. They did not even wear them, simply tossing the weapons into storage. Busy enough keeping their own bodies alive against the rough sea, why strap a heavy length of metal to their waists? Cutlasses existed only as a threat to keep pirates from attacking casually, and as last-ditch protection if the threat failed.
Monia had assumed the knives sailors carried were familiar tools. In truth they were anything but.
As long as it doesn’t reach the skin, a sword isn’t much of a danger.
Having grasped that, Chester decided he could block blades well enough with his clothing and sliced through a bowstring with his knife.
“…Truly sharp.”
To test the hidden property of the ore Monia had described, he set the knife vibrating and cut the bow. The wood parted as lightly as butter melting under a hot sun.
At this rate I could slice thin bone without trouble.
Monia had casually sheared through a skull with her vibrating machete.
Does the strength of the vibration depend on the amount of ore? My knife doesn’t shake nearly as hard as Monia’s machete.
Hers had vibrated so fiercely even Chester had been startled, carving through wood as if it were nothing; his knife was far milder. He considered how best to use the property—that the metal vibrated when it touched certain other ores.
If I had something like a ring, I could trigger it easily.
Clashing knives in both hands every time would be a nuisance. Chester hated any situation that left both of his hands occupied.
“I’ll have to give up on using it for now.”
“Really? When the machete vibrates I can cut people easily even with my strength. It seems useful.”
“It would be fine if you set it vibrating before you ambush them, Monia.”
While they talked they lightly filled their stomachs with the preserved rations they had brought from home.
“We have to keep moving, so don’t eat too much.”
“Okay.”
Even as the two ate, Ant never stopped sniffing, tracking the sailors’ approximate positions—those nearby, those farther off, those whose scents lingered only as faint traces. At first the ant-wolf had not been especially wary of “unknown smells.” After ignoring them a few times and paying dearly, however, he had developed the habit of automatically tracking any unfamiliar scent. That habit was proving invaluable now. On this vast island they could pinpoint the locations of men who might be anywhere, conserve their strength while heading straight for them, and strike from ambush every time. With that alone, the end of this endless, grinding hunt came into hazy view.
It was hopeful.
“Getting used to the bow?”
“Yeah. It’s harder to draw than the one I made, but I think I can aim.”
Monia showed him the bow she had taken from the sailors—only those she judged she could manage.
“How about you, Chester?”
“Yeah. It’s easy to shoot, so aiming’s easy too. I’ll get the hang of it soon.”
He had never used a crossbow, yet he could land near-perfect hits with far more difficult slings and thrown weapons through pure sense and experience. Learning to aim a crossbow was no challenge.
“Good. Then from now on let’s do it this way.”
Chester held a crossbow and a bow as he spoke.
“Let’s start by thinning them out by about three.”
How much time had passed since they landed on the island?
Guided by the lights he had seen the night before, Rotin had been searching toward the upper reaches of the island when he finally called a halt to rest.
“Phew. We finally set foot on land and the food’s no different from shipboard fare.”
“I want something greasy. I’m sick of fish.”
“Are you all right, Captain?”
“How could I be?”
Rotin sighed and forced the meal down. Now and then fishing yielded a true delicacy, but those moments were rare. Life at sea meant meals built almost entirely from tasteless ingredients chosen only for how well they kept. Huddled in a corner of the Floating Island, the sailors endured the dry, hard texture of thoroughly desiccated preserved food, washing it down with rum.
“But Captain—are you sure you saw those lights properly?”
“I told you I saw them.”
“What I mean is, is there any chance it isn’t Miss Monia?”
“Hmm.”
“Honestly, that house on the coast… hard to believe a noble young lady built it…”
“That’s certainly true.”
Rotin nodded coldly, accepting the point. It was more realistic to believe Monia had died and someone else lived here than to believe she had survived nearly a year on this island.
“I know the odds she’s dead are highest. I still hope she’s alive.”
The last time Rotin had seen Monia was in childhood, before he left home to begin his travels. One night, from a distance forced by the gulf of status, he had glimpsed that doll-like girl’s face. In that instant he understood that angels truly existed. Young Monia possessed a beauty so unreal that boys of that age could scarcely believe she was flesh and blood. She had captured the hearts of boys just beginning to burn with first passion, and Rotin had been one of them.
Most of those boys would have surrendered her because of the status their parents had taught them. Even those who clung to hope would have closed their hearts when her engagement to Prince Jordy was announced at the next ball. Yet Rotin, who had known many women while wandering the world and never again felt what he had felt that night, could not let go of Monia.
He was intelligent. He knew that remaining in the kingdom with his exceptional gifts would throw his family into turmoil, and that turmoil would make life hard for the people of their lands. He was also passionate. Most men, knowing that, would have chosen quiet obscurity. Rotin left the kingdom instead. He traveled the world, learned languages and cultures, made friends, gathered knowledge and information, and sent it all home so his family and their people could live well. Because he was that kind of man, he understood that this feeling was utterly irrational—and that he could not master it no matter what he did.
Love. That unreasonable force that could bewitch even a man who had risen from bare dirt to become a merchant whose name shook a kingdom, and destroy him. Rotin was moving under its power now. He knew he was not being rational. He knew that was why some of the comrades who had traveled with him for years had left. He felt not the slightest regret. His entire life had been lived for others. Was it not allowed, just once, to burn irrationally for himself?
While he thought this, the undergrowth suddenly thrashed and a sailor burst out.
“Captain! Captain! I-I found them! Finally!!”
He looked as though he had been thrashing through the forest for hours—body mottled green and brown, bruised and torn, blood seeping from a dozen places. The moment he saw Rotin the tension drained out of him and he collapsed. Then he crawled weakly forward, trembling.
“Cannibals…!”
“What?”
“There are cannibals on this island! Cannibals! Those bastards ate all our comrades!”
They had only killed, never eaten, yet the man sincerely believed Chester and Monia were cannibals and that his companions had already been devoured.
“Wait—calm down. All right? Calm down and explain.”
“Th-th-that! That! So—!”
“Here. Drink this.”
The sailor gulped rum and began, slowly, to recount what he had endured.
At that same moment Chester and Monia were wiping out their fourth group of sailors.
“Starting by dropping three with arrows seems best, right?”
“Yes. Much better than you charging in recklessly.”
“Hahaha. I’m still not used to the bow, so killing them cleanly is hard. But if I hit them somewhere decent a lot of them just drop and can’t move, so it’s fine.”
“Isn’t Chester the strange one for walking around fine after taking arrows?”
They bantered as they moved toward the next target.
And then—
Bang!
“Huh?”
“Eh?”
From somewhere far away came a loud, sharp report neither Chester nor Monia had ever heard in their lives.
It was the signal for every sailor on the search to assemble at the coast.