The Hand That Lurks on the Island (7)
Just before the two-pronged sword and the machete could meet, Urgo’s instincts screamed a warning.
That vibrating machete. Touch it carelessly and something terrible would happen.
Heeding the inexplicable alarm, Urgo twisted the path of the blade he was swinging. He had meant to smash the machete by clashing edge against edge, but he abandoned the idea at once. Instead he slipped past the machete’s edge and slammed the flat of his sword against it, driving it upward and away.
The machete’s ferocious vibration scraped savagely along the side of his blade, sending a shower of furious sparks flying.
KAAAANG!!
The instant the machete was knocked aside, Chester’s body twisted and he leapt into the air. In one explosive motion he released the coiled power in his waist and whipped his toes around. Like an arrow loosed from a fully drawn bow or a bullet from a slingshot, the concentrated force of his foot slammed into Urgo’s shoulder. Then he bent his knee, used that same shoulder as a springboard, and kicked off, retreating in a blur.
He’s gotten even quicker.
Urgo felt the dull ache bloom in his shoulder as he watched Chester. It was like raising a kitten only to discover it had grown into a tiger. The Chester he had thought dead only days ago and the Chester standing before him now were not the same man. He was teetering right on the edge of the realm where one might be called a hero—clinging by his fingertips to the cliff’s brink.
That machete especially is dangerous.
Even a glancing blow against the flat had thrown sparks bright enough to blind. Had the edges met cleanly, the two-pronged sword itself might have been sheared apart.
“Rotin.”
Urgo flung the two-pronged sword behind him and called out. Rotin drew the cutlass he had been keeping ready and hurled it. Chester moved at once to intercept, but Urgo was faster still—snatching the cutlass from the air and sweeping it toward Chester in the same motion.
Chester dropped low, ducking the cutlass, then slipped past the knee Urgo thrust forward and answered with a slash of his own. Urgo twisted clear of the machete and immediately lashed out with a kick; Chester interposed the machete’s edge in the path of the foot, catching the blow. The moment Urgo’s kick stalled, Chester withdrew and reset his stance. Urgo pursued, cutlass flashing.
The cutlass was far lighter than the two-pronged sword. After swinging a massive longsword, it felt like switching to a knife—and Urgo whipped it with terrifying speed. So fast that even Chester struggled to track the tip.
Yet he dodged. Using every ounce of elasticity and flexibility, he wrung the last drop from his reflexes and slipped past a blade whose movements he could not fully grasp.
Is he a beast?
The thought crossed Urgo’s mind. Chester was taking the knowledge, experience, and technique of a man and driving them with the instincts and senses of a wild animal.
I’ll have to make it more complicated.
The cutlass’s trajectory began to change. No longer simply aiming at Chester, it hunted the directions Chester meant to move. Sometimes Urgo shifted foot or arm first, sealing off one avenue of escape before driving the cutlass into the remaining space. He would start a swing and then move his body instead, or start moving and then send the blade, or feint with the angle of toe and knee only to explode in another direction entirely—tricks meant to deceive a human brain and kill it. Feints. False openings. The art of lying with the body.
Remarkable.
Yet Chester was answering them.
He’s reacting to my movements on pure instinct.
But that was not all. A hunter sets a trap and erases every scent of his presence. He leaves bait the beast cannot resist and draws it into a place from which there is no escape. He tracks the signs the animal leaves behind and waits for the single unguarded instant to cut its throat. The targets and the methods differed, yet the techniques of deception and death were no less refined in a hunter than in a warrior.
And so Chester could feel it—where the trap had been laid, which movement would get him killed. He read not Urgo’s limbs but his eyes, his face, and moved accordingly.
It was not easy. Still, he could turn mortal wounds into shallow ones. Skin split open across his body and blood ran freely, yet he never let the blade bite deeper than the surface. Offering up layer after layer of skin to Urgo, Chester slipped counterattacks into the briefest openings. Using his elasticity and reflexes, he drove strikes into the split-second moments when even Urgo could not react.
Thwack!
One of those blows punched straight into Urgo’s solar plexus.
“Ghk!”
Vital points worked even on a man like Urgo. Solar plexus, throat, shoulder, ankle, wrist—Chester hunted them all. Sometimes he aimed for the body’s natural weak spots; sometimes he targeted the complex joints that were structurally fragile. The visible damage looked minor—just a bluish bruise—but it accumulated. Bruises swelled and pressed; hairline cracks formed in bone and made every motion a little harder. He was stacking those injuries, one by one, to bring the great tower that was Urgo crashing down.
Had Urgo been a wild animal like a bear, it would never have worked. Such creatures could fall from high branches without so much as a roll and walk away unharmed. But for all that he was a hero, Urgo was still human. And humans, sadly, are not creatures built for combat. They are fragile under prolonged strain, fragile under sudden shock; their intricate joints break easily and heal slowly. Even when a man punches another in the head, it is often the striker’s own fingers and wrist that suffer more. Humans are born hunters—gathering in packs, wearing prey down with relentless endurance, and killing with the throwing power of their complex shoulders. By nature they can never truly be “warriors.” That is why warriors and knights are so revered.
“Mm.”
When Urgo took a large step, the sharp twinge in his ankle and the electric jolt in his knee told him exactly what Chester was doing. The shoulder that swung the sword was growing steadily more awkward. His wrist ached so badly he nearly dropped the blade without meaning to.
He’s gotten stronger.
Urgo looked at Chester. While his own body throbbed in a dozen places, Chester was soaked in blood from head to toe. Sacrificing a layer of skin sounds simple. In truth it means that a mistake measured in millimeters will split muscle and flesh; a larger mistake will open a major vessel buried deep. And even when the sacrifice succeeds, blood still flows.
“Hooo…”
Chester’s vision swam. He had lost too much blood. His body trembled. Dodging an invisible blade tip was like walking a path of knives with his eyes closed. Tension poured sweat from him like rain; stamina drained away as if through a broken dam. He could feel it clearly: his own limit would arrive before Urgo’s joints finally failed and left a decisive opening. At this rate he would die.
Giving up a layer of skin isn’t enough.
Then he would have to steel himself further. Even so, offering flesh would be too much—he would cripple himself and lose the ability to cut even a single layer of the enemy’s skin.
Even against a hero, the gap is this wide…
Merely setting one foot on the threshold of the heroic realm was nowhere near enough to close it.
Urgo felt it too. If things continued, he would win as surely as water flows downhill, as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, as the wind that sweeps the steppe can never be stopped. The outcome would be as natural and inevitable as the laws of the world itself. Yet he did not believe a man who had nearly lost the woman he cherished would simply stand by and accept it. Had he not been the same once? In those days he had hated everything under heaven so fiercely he wanted to tear it all apart.
That butler will stake his life to take mine.
If the opponent was prepared to die, then he too must answer with matching respect. Urgo thought of the wind of the steppe—the souls of the ancestors, the stories woven by those buried beneath the vast and gentle earth. When he died he would become one of those stories. When he told his life to the ancestors, when he told it to his descendants, he must live so that he could become a wind without shame.
“Come.”
Back to the steppe. That was the thought in Urgo’s mind as he settled into his stance—when Monia burst from the undergrowth near the beach.
“……!”
Seeing Chester covered in blood, Monia cried out in horror.
“Chester! No!”
The voice shattered the total concentration Chester had locked on Urgo. Startled, he turned without thinking. Monia was running toward him in tears.
“Stay back!”
The instant Chester shouted—
Why?
The moment he saw Monia grown into a woman, Rotin’s heart was dragged back to that day. A lavish party of nobles. As a mere baron’s family whose lands were far from rich, Rotin’s people had been little more than the decorative trim stuck to the edge of a jewel box filled with glittering gems—something that could be swapped out or swept from sight the moment it displeased the eye. His older brother had been dazzled by the splendor; Rotin had known the slimy darkness that lurked beneath the glittering canopy. Someday that darkness would swallow his family whole. That fear had driven him to the sea. Inside the kingdom he could never make his family strong, so he had gone looking for a path beyond its borders.
Yet even that Rotin had once forgotten the darkness inside the jewel box in a single heartbeat, his gaze stolen completely. By a little girl. Expressionless as a doll, yet shining brighter than anyone else in the room. And now that girl stood before him as a woman.
The short limbs of childhood had lengthened into elegant, feminine lines that still carried a healthy firmness. The doll-like face had not been marred in the slightest by the harsh island life; it looked like a national treasure, carved with loving care by a master artisan and preserved by the state. And above all, the clothes she wore were dizzying. Crude scraps of beast hide and rope that looked like something only a butler would wear—trash, really—yet unlike the butler who at least wore proper garments, she had only the remnants of a dress wrapped around her chest and waist. On a child Monia it would have seemed merely mischievous. On the adult Monia the effect was devastating. Male desire surged without limit; his chest felt ready to burst. The long-buried affection he had kept sealed away poured out like magma.
And yet.
And yet.
Why?
Rotin could not understand.
Why is Monia looking at that butler with those eyes?
He could not understand, but something deep in his heart began to whisper. Is she crying like that over a bleeding butler? The whisper wore the face of hatred, bore the name of jealousy, and carried the weapon of rage—a single demon. Why those eyes, as if she is looking at the man she loves?
The demon born in his heart whispered, and Rotin obeyed. He drew out the thing he had wrapped in layer upon layer of leather pouches for protection before abandoning the ship.
And then—
BANG!