The Hand That Lurks on the Island (9)
A single line stretched out before his eyes. Whenever he set his foot upon the ground the line seemed to tremble for an instant, then stood straight again.
A wave caught the sunlight and flashed it into his face; the line flickered and crackled, then settled once more into stillness.
Monia’s sobs and the voices trying to hold him back made the line go soft and limp, yet it stiffened upright again.
Everything his eyes, ears, nose, and skin took in—every sensation of the five senses—converged upon that one line and poured into Chester.
What was he supposed to call this feeling? Was the line he saw the very thing people named a soul?
If so, one end of it must climb high into the sky and join with heaven, while the other end plunged downward and joined with hell.
Maybe I’m only sensing this because I’m about to die.
Between heaven and hell, the knife Chester swung met the oncoming cutlass.
There was no way a mere knife could turn aside a cutlass swung with full force and proper form.
Rotin was no sailor. He was a traditional noble’s son who had received formal duel training and learned swordsmanship from knights.
His blade moved from correct posture along correct trajectories, nothing like the clumsy arcs sailors used merely to drive off threats, and of course the shock traveled up Chester’s knife and into his body.
“Guh…!”
His whole body hurt. The line shuddered violently.
Yet Chester felt the knife in his grip begin to vibrate and, forcing every scrap of strength he had left, started to push the blade forward.
From the vibrating tip of the knife he felt the cutlass slowly splitting.
“What?!”
Rotin, startled, still shifted his weight with exquisite footwork.
He loaded his body weight onto the sword, knocked the knife aside, left the reeling Chester where he stood, and stepped back.
A moment later Rotin stared at his own cutlass, now slightly cracked and trailing smoke.
“What kind of knife is that?”
“Hah… hah…”
Chester did not pursue the retreating Rotin. He simply caught his breath and tried to gather what little strength remained.
The line did not move. When the line moved, his body moved with it. Chester simply watched the line in silence.
When the line moved, the body moved. He spent strength only in the moments when the body absolutely had to move, and at every other moment he quietly stored it up.
The instant the line snapped like a whip, Chester snapped his body the same way.
In one motion he settled into stance and swung the knife. There was no clear target. He simply swung toward the place that felt as though it needed to be cut.
Clang!
The knife that shot out blocked Rotin’s cutlass before the larger blade could even complete its swing.
“Wha—”
While Rotin, suppressed before he could properly swing, stood stunned, Chester moved his free hand.
Thud.
A light punch.
Yet it struck the exact spot where Rotin’s eye sat and forced him backward.
“……!”
Vision blurred by the blow to the eye, Rotin stared at Chester in confusion.
What was that just now?
Was that the movement of a man on the verge of death?
The People of the Summit who watched, and Urgo as well, murmured in admiration.
Blood kept pouring out of him; strength should have been draining away, yet his bodywork was growing sharper by the second.
—Has he greeted the ancestors?
—Mm. Seems so.
—I heard you need an experience like that to become a great warrior.
—Amazing! Family of the lower levels! He has the vessel of a great warrior!
At first he had swung the knife to meet the cutlass that was already swinging. Next he swung the knife to meet the cutlass before it could swing.
Then what came after that? And after that? With strength leaving his body he could not keep moving forever, but would Rotin last until that “forever” finally arrived?
I misjudged his measure.
The last time Urgo had met Chester he had thought a fight between Rotin and Chester would make a fine match.
Yet the Chester he met again had, for some reason, risen in capability in an instant. He had set one foot, however lightly, into the realm of heroes.
And now, having experienced his senses expanding without limit in the most extreme of situations, Chester was displaying power beyond the limits of his own capacity.
The phenomenon the People of the Summit called greeting the spirits of the ancestors was expressed this way by Urgo’s steppe tribe:
The eye of the soul has opened.
Knights would say he had reached a higher realm; professionally trained assassins would say he had grown intimate with death; priests would say he had heard the words of heaven; monks would say he had attained enlightenment.
An awakening of the brain that occurred only to a vanishingly small number of people across every profession—so extreme it made one wonder whether the person was simply hallucinating on drugs.
If it were now, even I would have a slightly harder time. Still, I’m curious. What kind of eye opened for him?
The sensations people experienced upon reaching that awakening all differed.
Only Chester saw with his eyes the line of light that took in the five senses and reacted at high speed.
Conversely, Chester could not perceive time as slowed the way others did, nor read movements as though he foresaw the future.
The line trembled. The third clash.
This time Chester did not even use the knife; he stopped Rotin’s movement first, then drove the knife into Rotin’s belly.
“Gahk!”
Stabbed in the gut, Rotin was shocked, yet fortunately Chester’s drained strength could not easily pierce Rotin’s trained abdominal muscles.
But what about the fourth clash?
“…….”
Cold sweat began to bead on Rotin’s body.
In Rotin’s eyes the steadily dying Chester was beginning to look like a monster.
…….
Yet he could not admit it.
He did not want to admit it.
This was the man the woman he loved had fallen for. He wanted somehow to find the man’s flaws. He wanted to cut him down by claiming there was some part of him inferior to himself.
Rotin was clever, quick-thinking, courageous, and overflowing with drive. Love was covering over those very strengths. His mind grew dull; he could see only fragments; his judgment twisted.
In the next instant Chester moved before Rotin did.
In the trembling line he found a place that could be stabbed, and he moved his body to stab it.
He snapped his body forward like a spring.
As though he had become a single spear, he stretched his whole frame and thrust the knife; it grazed Rotin’s throat.
“Huh?”
There was no pain.
It had pierced exactly the perfect opening born amid the shaking emotions—the blank space in consciousness.
Only when blood erupted from his neck in a volume he could not control did Rotin realize he had been struck, and only when he saw Chester collapsed face-down on the sand did he understand that he had lost.
He pressed his palm to the side of his neck, but the knife had clearly severed a major vessel deep inside.
With one hand still clamped on his throat, Rotin tried to draw his pistol with the other.
Yet a pistol cannot be loaded with one hand. And the round he had loaded in advance he had already fired a moment earlier.
Yes. He had fired. He had fired first.
Urgo had fought him first and driven him to the brink of death; he himself had fired the pistol first; and when the other man held only a single knife, he had charged in with a cutlass.
That’s what I did. I acted like a man who knew neither honor nor pride.
So why was the one dying him and not that bastard?
He had lost the woman he loved and now he was losing his life as well.
In bottomless resentment and bitterness, Rotin’s consciousness was slowly painted black.
Both men had fallen. Both were dying quickly.
Realizing the fight was over, Monia rushed to Chester in shock and examined him.
Chester had poured out every last scrap of strength and lay unconscious, while Rotin still glared at him and twitched.
“Rotin.”
When Urgo approached, a frightened Monia clutched Chester to her chest, and the People of the Summit gathered around as though to shield him.
Urgo watched them a moment, then went to Rotin, turned his body so he could see the sky, and helped him.
Rotin glared at Chester, looked even at Monia with eyes full of resentment, gazed at the clear sky, then looked at Urgo and spoke quietly.
“Damn it all.”
That was the end.
No further words left Rotin’s mouth; he departed the world with open eyes, cursing it.
Urgo carefully closed those eyes, wiped the blood flowing from Rotin’s neck with his thumb, and drew a third eye upon the man’s forehead.
After death had closed his eyes in peace, Urgo had given him a third eye to use in the afterlife.
“It’s finished.”
“Finished? You’re still here.”
“No. It’s finished. Because Rotin is dead.”
Urgo spoke calmly.
“Everything was Rotin’s will. I followed that will. But Rotin is dead, and his will is ended.”
“…….”
“I’m lost.”
And then he said:
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to live from now on.”
He looked at the People of the Summit.
“I don’t even know whether I still have a life ahead of me, but that isn’t what matters.”
This was a life he had already offered to another when he took revenge for his family. Urgo had no intention of doing anything simply to stay alive.
The People of the Summit, though they were family, were not parties to this matter. Their stance was that the choice belonged to the parties themselves—Chester and Monia.
Sensing that will in their gazes and realizing the choice was hers, Monia looked at Chester.
She glanced at the wounds covering his body and for a moment glared at Urgo with resentment, yet at the same time she remembered the night Urgo had looked the other way for them.
After thinking a long while, Monia opened her mouth.
“Then.”
The invaders were gone. Everything was finished. Yet one problem still remained unfinished.
Chester’s treatment.
“Why? Why?! If we just sprinkle that blue stone like last time—!”
When Black Wind carried Chester into the shaman’s cave and then behaved as though treatment was impossible, a frantic Monia demanded to know why.
Black Wind told her to stay calm, then began to explain in the “pictures” he had learned from Chester so that Monia could understand as well.
The Grace of the Summit could heal any wound. Though the People of the Summit did not know it, it could even cure every disease, including cancer.
There was, however, one problem.
The Grace of the Summit affected only a body that had already received the Grace. If a foreign object had entered the body, the Grace would not automatically expel it.
If a broken animal tooth, a splinter of wood, or a fragment of stone were lodged inside and causing trouble, no amount of healing would help until that object was removed.
In the same way, something lodged inside Chester’s body right now was the problem; even treatment with the Grace of the Summit was useless.
“C-can’t we just pull it out…?”
Yet they could not pull it out either.
This was a fundamental problem.
Compared with the People of the Summit, Chester’s body was far too small. One of their fingers was roughly the thickness of Monia’s forearm; they could not perform the delicate work of extracting something lodged in that body with such tools.
Moreover their strength was far too great, while Chester’s body was far too fragile.
In the middle of an operation they might accidentally crush something like his heart and inflict a fatal wound even the Grace of the Summit could not save.
“…….”
Understanding all of it, Monia looked down at Chester lying quietly.
Perhaps because the battle was over, the blue war-paint that had risen across his body had vanished, and the wounds that had been carved all over him had cleanly disappeared.
Yet the Chester who ought to have been lying in peace occasionally twisted in pain and clutched his belly.
Something inside there was tormenting him. Something terrible that rendered even the Grace of the Summit useless was lurking within.
Monia thought.
She knew perfectly well what she had to do for Chester.
But could she actually do it? Yet it was something that had to be done, wasn’t it?
Her body trembled with terror. Her vision swayed.
The People of the Summit understood the look on her face.
How could the reality of having to cut open the belly of the one you love yourself not make a person nauseous and horrified?
“Ugh… khh…”
Yet in the end Monia, weeping, took the knife in her hand.
“Che… Chester… hhic! Khh!”
Tears streaming, hiccupping, she cried for a long time before she looked at the suffering Chester.
Chester. Chester. Chester.
She thought only of Chester. For Chester’s sake, for Chester, she had to do it.
“…….”
Having steeled herself, Monia brought the knife to Chester’s belly.