Horses, Horses, Horses
"Nice to meet you, Miss Sierra."
"Please, speak however you like. You're my senior, after all."
Having left the lecture hall, Rai and Sierra strolled the campus grounds, talking as they went.
"That's funny — I know someone with the same name."
"She must be a commoner, then. It's a common enough name among commoners. Nothing particularly remarkable about it."
Rai had offered it thinking of the Sierra he'd met at the Adventurer's Guild, but Assistant Instructor Sierra answered without the faintest flicker of interest.
She didn't seem the type who excelled at conversation. Stiff diction, stiff bearing — a woman who, in some indefinable way, brought Leila to mind.
"I know someone with a similar vibe, too. You wouldn't happen to know Leila, would you?"
"Yes, I know of her. She's quite well-known, and I saw her a few times while I was in the military."
At the news that she knew Leila, Rai nodded and looked Sierra over. She was quite different from Adventurer Sierra. The atmosphere, yes — but the difference in figure was especially stark. Recalling a certain pair of plush, generous mounds, Rai offered a smile to the decidedly androgynous Sierra standing before him.
There was a hint of pity in his eyes. Sierra tilted her head slightly, but she didn't bother asking what he found so curious.
"Anyway, good to meet you. But why didn't I know you were my assistant instructor?"
Rai asked it with a meaningful air, but Sierra answered as if it were nothing at all.
"Perhaps because you don't attend morning assembly?"
"…Right."
He'd been chased by Bright earlier for skipping morning assembly. Remembering that last year, at morning assembly, they'd introduced him to the faculty as a newly appointed instructor, Rai nodded and quickly changed the subject.
"I see. Well… so you're the assistant instructor. What does an assistant instructor actually do?"
"Did you not serve as one last year?"
"Yeah, I did."
Sierra studied his eyes, trying to parse the intent behind the question. He looked as though he were asking out of genuine, unvarnished curiosity. Quite the poker face. Taking it as a test of whether she properly understood the post, she organized her thoughts and answered at once.
"The assistant instructor supports the lead instructor in every aspect of their work. Managing the class and the students assigned to it, analyzing the students' growth and reporting to the lead instructor. When the lead instructor is absent, we also handle duties as a proxy, though most of the actual authority remains with the lead. Every instructor has a different temperament, so the nature of the work varies, but…"
Listening to her, Rai immediately regretted asking. She could have just said instructor's assistant and been done with it, but she was listing examples without end. After a tedious, punishingly long explanation — so long he'd already forgotten the first example she'd given — Rai put on a manufactured smile and gave her a thumbs-up to show he'd been listening.
"Thank you."
Watching Sierra offer that brief word of thanks, Rai glanced at her and asked again, more quietly.
"Do you actually do all that?"
"Yes. Instructor Rai, having been an assistant instructor yourself, I assume you know this well — but lead instructors are busy. Without an assistant supporting them, the workload is considerable."
He had no idea.
Rai, who had been Leila's assistant instructor, had no memory of ever actually doing the work. That was partly Leila's nature — she was only satisfied when every task passed through her own hands — and partly because they hadn't dared assign real duties to a man who'd entered under a false identity. Last year, as an assistant instructor, Rai had done not a single thing related to the academy, and he still knew nothing.
Monthly reports? Development plans? What even are those?
He'd only just learned that lead instructors had to file a report with Bright every month. Come to think of it, Bright had said something earlier — but Rai had been too busy plotting his escape to remember any of it properly.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"No. You just seem so reliable. I love it."
Hiding what he actually thought, Rai smiled, and Sierra answered again with that same brief, unadorned phrase.
"Thank you."
"So what am I supposed to do now?"
When he asked her for the schedule, Sierra — once more convinced she was being tested — opened her mouth at once.
"Today's schedule, aside from the lectures you've been assigned, is to escort the class to the riding grounds this afternoon."
Feeling rather as though he were being briefed by a secretary, Rai nodded without thinking, then asked again.
"The riding grounds? What for?"
"Ah… the second-years have mounted combat planned as this semester's comprehensive training. You… knew that, yes?"
Sierra, finally beginning to sense that something was off, put the question with a note of genuine doubt. Rai shut his mouth, thought for a moment, then spoke.
"Can't I just send the kids by themselves? I'm not going to be teaching them to ride. Do I really need to go?"
"Today isn't training — it's the day they choose the horses they'll be breaking in. Each class takes turns selecting a horse, and as you know, in mounted combat the horse's ability is the most important…"
As her words stretched out again, Rai quickly said he understood and extracted himself from the conversation.
Newly appointed to the academy as an assistant instructor, Sierra was a difficult person for someone of Rai's type to deal with.
Horses have always been among humanity's most vital livestock. They pull carriages, work the fields, and on the battlefield become steadfast companions. In the history of warfare, horsemanship became an indispensable skill, and even after those who bore weapons learned to wield mana and their physical abilities soared, horses fought on beside them to the very end.
Once warriors could split stone and move faster than arrows, horses nearly found themselves reduced to mere transportation. But as countless techniques advanced through the Era of Strife, warhorses changed as well. To keep pace with ever-stronger warriors, horses were crossbred, turned into chimeras, those chimeras crossbred again. Magical tools were fitted to them, and specimens of higher intelligence were even taught to cast simple spells.
Beneath the unrelenting will to breed a better horse, breeders, magicians, alchemists — countless people — conducted ruthless experiments without end, until they had created breeds one could scarcely still call horses at all.
"That is a horse, right?"
Cesset asked Rai, staring at the animals turned out in the paddock. Her confusion was entirely reasonable. A creature with a lion's mane, a body like a hippo's, and hide layered as if it were wearing plate armor was peacefully cropping grass among the others.
The horses grazing beside it were no less strange. They had the shape of horses, but one was green, and another had fangs jutting long and sharp from its mouth. Students from families that had served in the military for generations seemed accustomed to magically modified warhorses, but Cesset, a Pure Magician, had never seen anything but ordinary ones.
"That one's Dopey, that one's Green Turd, and that one's Pooping Fang."
"…I don't know why it's all poop, but your naming sense is garbage."
"Hey, that's actually what they call them."
Rai felt genuinely aggrieved. He had no idea what names the scholars and magicians had given them, but among soldiers and knights, those were the names that stuck.
"Soldier slang. The breeds are, in order, Arkerian, Greenwood, and Kapatros."
"Whoa — Instructor Sierra is so smart. I wish a certain other instructor would take after you a little."
"Hey. You really think 'Arkerian' fits that pig?"
Cesset had praised Sierra, but in her heart she agreed with Rai.
"Anyway, go pick whatever you want to ride. Let's get this over with."
Rai called out to the students who were still standing around watching, clearly already bored. While the stablehand explained the horses to the class, Cesset and a few others remained where they were, simply looking on.
"Why aren't you going?"
"I'm a Pure Magician, so I'm exempt from mounted combat training."
Cesset answered for the group.
"Oh. Sitting pretty while everyone else suffers. Nice work if you can get it."
"My schedule's packed with other training instead, so it's not exactly a picnic. Pure Magicians have Pure Magician problems, you know."
It was an academy built around knights and commanders, but the curriculum for Pure Magicians was properly constructed in its own right. If it weren't, those who dreamed of becoming Pure Magicians would hardly have chosen Legandia Academy over anywhere else.
"This one's a Siborza. They're docile, so their combat ability is low, but they're sturdy and fiercely loyal, which makes them popular."
Zeroa had, at some point, fully inhabited the role of stablehand and was introducing the horses to the other students. Aria quietly stroked one horse's head as she listened, and the rest of the class could only stare, dazed, at the sight.
"What the hell has that kid even done with his life? Is there a job he hasn't tried?"
"If you asked, he'd probably say, I worked as a stablehand's assistant."
Cesset seemed to agree, mimicking Zeroa's manner of speaking as she nodded.
Lying on his side atop the fence, Rai spotted Emilia watching the students from outside the paddock.
"Your Highness isn't even a Pure Magician. Why are you spectating like this is someone else's problem?"
Sierra stared, startled that he'd address a princess so casually — but Emilia didn't seem to mind in the slightest. She smiled lightly.
"I'm not allowed to participate in training because of that incident last time."
"Even training that happens inside the academy, not out in the field? Aren't they wrapping you in a bit too much cotton?"
"I know. I actually enjoy riding, so it's a shame."
Because of the assassination affair, Emilia had been barred from every large-scale training exercise. During last semester's Tactical Training she'd had no choice but to sit and watch, and it was the same this time. She was still speaking with a touch of regret when a great commotion erupted from the students looking over the horses.
By the time Rai turned his head, Aslan was soaring through the sky.
"You son of a bitch!!"
Aslan bellowed, righted himself in midair, and landed. One look at Aslan raging at the horse, and at the horse with its hind legs still coming down, was enough to reconstruct what had happened. It still had the shape of a horse, but it looked twice the size of the others, and it turned to stare down at him.
"You arrogant little…"
"No, no, you mustn't! You can't!"
Goaded by the contempt in the horse's eyes, Aslan reached for the greatsword on his back — and the stablehand came running to stop him.
"That horse still has a very strong wild streak. It isn't easily broken. We brought it here as a special case, so the academy could test what kind of horse you students would choose and how you'd go about taming it."
And why didn't I know any of that? Curious, Rai looked over at Sierra. The academy had deliberately prepared a wide variety of breeds to develop the students' taming ability. Among horses of every temperament and every capability, each student would have to choose the one that suited them, form a bond, and grow their horsemanship that way. He let her lengthy explanation wash over him like background music, and by the time the students had heard the stablehand out, they were all staring at the black horse that had kicked Aslan.
The highest difficulty — and, according to the stablehand, the finest horse here. It was more than enough to set their fighting spirits ablaze. Aslan, having somehow already prepared one, pulled out a carrot and approached the horse.
Is that from the kitchen?
While Rai was contemplating the contents of the kitchen, the black horse meekly accepted Aslan's carrot and ate it. Satisfied by the newly docile animal, Aslan reached out to stroke its head — and the horse whipped its face around and bit his arm. He dodged by a hair, and in that same instant the horse walked off as if it couldn't have been less interested.
"That little…"
"Your intent was way too obvious. Horses are intelligent creatures."
Philia walked right past Aslan and approached the black horse with complete confidence. She wasn't from a military family, but she'd been around horses since she was small. She knew how knights bonded with them, and she moved her hand slowly enough not to startle, laying it on the horse's head. As she stroked it, the black horse gave a pleased snort and tossed its face. Philia shot Aslan a look that said See?, and he could only scowl.
The horse shifted its head this way and that, rubbing against her as if asking for more.
Ptoo.
"…"
Philia looked at her hand. Being a horse, it had soaked the entire thing. Whether phlegm was mixed in or not, a long, sticky strand of drool stretched from her fingers and dripped, and behind her Aslan burst out laughing.
"You horse-meat bastard…"
"No! No! You mustn't kill it!"
Philia's hand went to the sword at her waist as naturally as breathing, and the stablehand rushed to stop her. Other students took up the challenge in turn, and failed just as thoroughly. Kicked, treated to the sight of the horse relieving itself in their faces, bitten — after every humiliation imaginable, the students arrived at a single, unified conviction.
They were going to kill that horse bastard.
If it hadn't been academy property, they looked ready to run it through on the spot, and the stablehand alone floundered in the middle of it. Diana declared that she didn't like the black horse and never challenged it to begin with, and Abigail picked a different one. Aria, who had thought she might just manage it, was rejected as well. Her beauty apparently transcended species: the horse didn't insult her the way it had the others, but when she hesitated and stared, it turned its head and declined with almost courtly politeness. Watching that, the students who had received far worse from the same animal only grew angrier.
Zeroa, who had actually worked in a stable, approached by the book — and the horse charged him immediately. He was driven off without accomplishing a thing.
"Puhahaha. You morons actually lost to a horse?"
Rai, who had watched the entire spectacle from behind, jeered, and the fury that had been aimed at the horse poured onto him instead.
"Oh, for— then you try it."
"Why would I? I'm an instructor, not some student who loses to a horse."
Rai cackled at Aslan's complaint. The mood was turning ugly, and Sierra was looking back and forth between the students and Rai, trying to decide whether to intervene, when Cesset shot her hand into the air and called out in a bright, ringing voice.
"Then let's get a bet going~ First, everyone who thinks Raikkang can't do it, speak up."
"You're gambling here too?"
"I could hardly let a setup like this pass me by."
Cesset grinned as she collected money from the students. Finding himself, quite naturally, volunteered to challenge the horse, Rai pulled a sour face, then addressed the stablehand.
"Mind if I give it a try?"
"Well… I suppose it doesn't matter, but…"
The stablehand hesitated, then came close and whispered.
"Instructor… that thing's so wild that even active-duty knights gave up on it. Nobody could tame it, so it got passed around until it ended up here. If you value your reputation, I'd advise against…"
Rai clapped the worried stablehand on the shoulder and dropped down from the fence. There was something the man had misunderstood. For people like academy students — and like Rai — hearing a warning like that meant they had no choice but to take the challenge.
"Listen up, you idiots who can't even handle a single horse. Taming a horse is simple."
Rolling his arms in loose circles, Rai walked past the students and looked up at the horse that was looking down at him with such insolent eyes.
"I'll teach you the fastest, shortest method there is. Pay attention."
The students who had bet that he couldn't do it watched him with uneasy eyes. They'd told him to try it in a fit of temper, but once the wager was on, a few of them — Aslan among them, who had thrown in what little of his entire fortune remained on he can — looked on with hope.
Smiling, Rai stretched both hands toward the horse's head. He held them out the way a child does when begging to be picked up, and when the horse tossed its head as if it couldn't be bothered, he caught it by the neck.
What he did next made every student present go wide-eyed with shock.
CRACK.
Rai had sprung straight up and smashed his forehead into the horse's.