A Hand from Beyond the Sea (8)
Ant focused every scrap of attention, drawing in the scents of humans who were nothing like Chester or Monia, the ones who had lived on this island.
— Grrrr…
As he worked the air, Ant felt the smell swell far larger than before. He ground his teeth and let out a low, keening whine.
“What’s wrong?”
Chester, waiting on Ant’s trail, stroked the ant-wolf’s head and waited for him to explain.
After a short cry Ant settled and told him everything with whines and body language. He tapped here and there with a forepaw, then scraped those spots together into one place and tapped the gathered pile again.
“……So that racket earlier really was a rally signal.”
“Th-they found us after all? Because I let one get away……”
“No. You couldn’t have known. It isn’t your fault.”
They had been split into neat groups of ten. Counting the one who fled, the total had to be roughly twenty-one or twenty-two.
“Why twenty-two?”
“Because the leader’s group is probably ten men plus the leader himself—eleven in that squad.”
“Then what do we do?”
“…….”
What to do. Chester answered simply.
“We give up.”
“What?”
“Even ambushing ten of them carried a heavy risk. Now we’re looking at more than double that number, and not from ambush—head-on.”
Honestly, there was no good answer.
“So we drop the ambush.”
The plan of slipping in among them, planting fear and shock, then killing them one by one—that was finished.
“From here on we use this.”
As he spoke, Chester cocked the crossbow with one hand and one foot, then drew the sling with his free hand.
“We pick them off one or two at a time from a distance and fade. Monia, you run with Ant.”
“What? And you?”
“I’m fine. I’ll move on my own.”
So he wouldn’t be slowed by watching over Ant and Monia, Chester chose to travel light and alone.
“…….”
Monia carefully caught the hem of his clothes.
“We said we’d do this together.”
“…….”
Chester looked at her and smiled.
“All right, then. I thought it was still a little early to teach you this, but learning early won’t hurt.”
He rose with a grin.
“Let’s go.”
He held out his hand. Monia smiled and took it.
Of all the knowledge and skills Chester had poured into Monia, two things had received his fiercest care.
First: the bow.
Monia had clever hands; once she grasped something she usually mastered it quickly on her own. So rather than scatter his effort, he drilled her hard on archery. He had no desire to die with an arrow in his back.
Second: climbing trees.
In danger the fastest, safest escape was up a trunk. Chester himself could weave through terrain at a run and shake pursuit, but Monia could not, so he taught her tree-climbing with special intensity.
Of course, some threats—the People of the Summit, the giant beasts of the upper layers—could not be escaped by simply climbing. Ant-wolves could reason their way up a tree; bears climbed well. So the next stage of the art was required.
It was simple. Hardly even a technique.
“Come on, Monia! You can do it!”
While Ant kept watch and they waited for the sailors massed on the beach to enter the forest, Chester taught her.
“Ugh……”
At his words Monia eyed the unsteady branch beneath her feet and the thicker one where Chester sat.
“It’s easy! Find a branch thick enough to take your weight and just jump!”
What Chester was teaching was the “art of flying through the forest,” once possessed by a wild tribe some had called elves, passed from Chester’s father to him. The first step was learning to move without hesitation from tree to tree, branch to branch.
Only when you could instantly judge a solid branch and leap without the slightest pause did you graduate from the basics.
If your legs failed and the jump fell short, you plummeted. If you landed off-balance and slipped, you plummeted. If you misjudged and stepped on a branch too thin, already dead, or damaged, it snapped and you plummeted. And a fall to the ground could mean bruises, broken bones, or death.
Chester had learned it from his father the moment he could walk and run; he had been doing it since earliest childhood.
“Th-that time you ran so impossibly fast—does that have something to do with this?”
“Hm? Of course. That running is just an application of what I’m teaching you now.”
Sometimes Chester ran as if nothing in the world could bind him, almost flying. When he did, even Ant was overtaken in a blink or left behind by the terrain, and island beasts far swifter than any human were caught with pathetic ease.
“Could I do that too?”
“If you master it properly. It’s all right. I’ll help you.”
Monia steeled herself, took a light run-up on the branch she stood on, and sprang.
“Oh.”
For a first try he had chosen a short, safe distance, yet courage was still required. To conquer the fear of falling, to cast off the chains of the ground, to learn to run as if flying—this was the first step.
“Hyaah!”
She landed, wobbled, nearly toppled—but Chester was already there, catching her before she could fall.
“See? Not as scary as you thought, right?”
“It is scary!”
Terrifying, in fact.
“……But it’s fine. I can do it.”
“Yeah? That’s my girl.”
Chester looked at her the way he once had whenever she managed something new—the gaze of a man watching a toddler who had just taken her first steps, a child he still needed to protect.
Monia disliked that look. She puffed her cheeks and glared in protest.
Chester chuckled and steadied her until she stood firm on the branch.
“All right, next one.”
With that he leapt lightly to a tree a little farther off. Monia followed, moving carefully from tree to tree after him.
“……It’s quiet.”
The man the sailors called “Big Brother,” Urgo, had answered Rotin’s summons and reached the beach. Watching the forest, he spoke.
“Quiet?”
“Yes. The sounds of living things are almost gone.”
Urgo.
A man of the steppe tribes who had lived from birth as one with the horse, a single blade of wind. His tribe had been swept away and destroyed in some nation’s war of conquest. Captured as a slave, caged in iron, he had watched everything he cherished violated and crushed, and in that despair he met Rotin—who happened to be passing nearby on his travels.
News of the war had made Rotin detour; by chance his path brushed the ruins of Urgo’s people. Rotin saved him. Having lost all that was precious yet still able to take revenge, Urgo thereafter devoted his life to Rotin and followed him from the grasslands out onto the sea.
The blazing years of youth had passed; he was entering the long decline of age. Yet the body born with monstrous strength had only grown harder, tempered by every sea, every land, every foe. Among sailors he had become a living legend—a mast that stood unbowed before any wind or wave. In some regions he was even treated as an object of faith.
“When the forest falls this silent, some great disaster must have struck recently. The animals have all fled.”
“I see. I hadn’t noticed.”
Rotin listened with a smile, then studied the profile of the man who still gazed into the trees.
In this world there were people born different—people who deserved to be called heroes.
What was a hero?
One who overcame what ordinary men could not. One who achieved what ordinary men could not. One whose footprints remained in the history of mankind, never erased, passed from generation to generation, respected and praised.
Ordinary humans could not defeat a demon. If told to face head-on that monster who had casually slaughtered dozens, even Rotin would have no confidence. But that was only because they were ordinary.
Urgo was different.
Unmistakably a vessel for heroism. Not mere talk—throughout his life he had left footprints in every place he walked until he became an object of faith itself.
“There’s a demon in that forest. Well? Can you beat it?”
“If you order it, I will see it done.”
Hearing Urgo’s confident reply, Rotin laughed, clapped him lightly on the shoulder, and walked forward.
“Good. Then let’s go.”