A Late-Night Blade at the Training Grounds
When Arendt arrived at the Martial Training Grounds, the first thing he did was draw the sword.
Shring— with a cold ring of steel, the blade slid smoothly free of its sheath.
"So I grip this... with one hand? Or not? Two hands, maybe?"
Rolling the hilt around in his palm, he soon found a stance his body felt remarkably comfortable with.
Arendt wrapped one hand around the sword and brought it forward, then drew his body slightly back and settled into a stable balance.
Getting that far hadn't been difficult, so he moved straight on to the next step.
What would a typical movement be, with a sword in hand...?
After a moment's deliberation, Arendt adjusted his grip to both hands.
Then he swept the blade down in a great arc, from high to low.
Fwoosh!
The tip of the sword cleaved the air with a fairly vicious hiss.
"Oh."
It seemed passable, more or less.
Next, he took the sword in a single hand and slashed it horizontally through the air.
Then a diagonal cut.
The moonlit blade traced a clean line across the empty night.
When the sequence was finished, Arendt slowly lowered his stance.
"...Better than I expected, actually."
His body recognized the sword as if it were an extension of itself. His balance held even when he moved without thinking, and swinging this long, heavy thing around brought no ache in his wrist, no awkwardness at all.
A smile bloomed at the corner of his mouth.
He took up the sword again and repeated the basic forms. The body had doubtless drilled them countless times before, and it found its way along the familiar paths with ease.
The more he ran through the repetitions, the steadier his swordwork became.
At some point, Arendt's eyes had settled on the tip of his blade and refused to leave it. He followed the arcs the steel drew through the air, sinking deeper and deeper into the movement of himself and the sword.
It was the dead of night, everyone asleep. No one was around to disturb him.
Or so he thought.
"What the hell are you flailing that sword around for?"
"Wa—shit! You scared me!"
At the voice that popped out of nowhere, Arendt leapt clean off the ground.
He whipped his head around and spotted a figure standing near the entrance of the training grounds.
Clutching his pounding heart, Arendt sized the man up first.
Well-tanned skin, a mischievous face, and a mop of light brown hair growing every which way. From that appearance alone, Arendt could place him easily enough.
Arthur Norbert.
The youngest knight in the order—the man who had held the baby-of-the-group spot until Arendt arrived as an apprentice.
Cheerful, friendly with everyone, free-spirited, the one who loosened up the stiff atmosphere within the knight order... or something like that.
Which was presumably why he was one of the subordinates Laios was rather fond of.
He was a genuinely capable knight, too.
Arendt's face twisted into a scowl in an instant.
"What do you want?"
"Haah..."
Arthur, frozen for a beat in bewilderment, twisted his lips.
"I followed you sneaking out in the dead of night, and this is what you're doing?"
"Why? Worried I might be off to assassinate someone with this thing?"
Arendt crossed his arms and shot back with a sneer. Arthur's expression crinkled almost imperceptibly.
"So that mouth of yours survived a near-death experience without getting fixed, huh."
"Sorry to disappoint, but it wasn't quite my time yet. People only change when they're about to die, you know."
"Right... apparently your lifespan's still got a ways to go."
At the reply, dripping with sarcasm, Arthur let out a little pfft, like air escaping a balloon.
"You were really something back there, though? Honestly, I thought this time I'd finally get to watch your head roll across the floor."
"I'll take that as a profound expression of regret that it didn't happen."
"Well. I won't deny it."
As Arendt replied with obvious surliness, the corner of Arthur's mouth twitched.
"But still. If even a bastard like you gets doted on as a subordinate, don't you think the Commander's guts would rot if you went and kicked the bucket like that?"
"..."
"So behave yourself, got it? Before I take your head off myself and present it to him."
The moon was bright, unmistakably so, and yet the darkness around Arendt suddenly felt unusually sinister.
Because being alone out here with Arthur was not a situation he welcomed.
Inside the scabbard hanging at Arthur's hip was a live blade, and if the man so desired, he had more than enough skill to take Arendt's head. And it went without saying that the entire 3rd Knight Order was a company that fervently wished Arendt's neck and body a permanent separation.
Still...
Rolling his eyes, Arendt let the tension that had crept into his body drain away.
He wouldn't lash out recklessly.
He was not the type to express hatred through violence. That was the image of Arthur Norbert Arendt carried in his mind.
Arendt tilted his head at a insolent angle.
"To think I'd receive a senior's concern as well—I'm overwhelmed with gratitude, truly. But..."
Then Arendt's fine brows eased apart, curving into a fishy smile. Arthur's expression, in contrast, began to crease by degrees.
Arendt flashed a broad, showy grin and tapped his own neck a few times with pale fingers.
"I'll look after my own head, thanks. Why don't you focus on keeping yours attached instead, senior?"
"...Ha. This guy is genuinely insane."
Arthur burst into a hollow laugh.
That was not a joke.
Arendt sniped inwardly.
The first casualty of the whole affair was this guy, after all.
Before the full-scale battle broke out, Arthur had gone out on reconnaissance and been caught by the enemy. He might have saved his own life—by betraying the order, or somehow managing to escape. But Arthur did neither.
His life, or his god.
Forced to choose between the two, what he chose was an honorable death. He took his own life before any of the others could lay a hand on him.
A trace of irritation seeped into the gaze Arendt fixed on him. It had been a character he rather liked—when he'd first read that scene, he'd clutched his phone and gaped in disbelief.
And later, mourning his death, Laios had gone on about how it was "a sublime sacrifice"—Arendt had nearly lost his affection for the man over that, too.
Death was nothing but an eternal exit from the stage.
Living for honor, dying for honor—fine for a play, maybe, but that way of thinking had never been to his taste.
Standing askew, Arendt scrunched up his face and spat out in irritation:
"Besides, if you followed me all the way from the dormitory, you saw everything already. So why bother asking?"
"That's exactly why I'm asking, you little shit. You never come anywhere near us normally—what are you doing out here at this hour of the night?"
Arthur trudged over until he was standing right in front of Arendt.
Come to think of it, looking at the long game, this might be an opportunity. To the cast of a story, death was an exit—but within the story as a whole, a single death was also an enormous omen.
Right now he needed to read the currents with keen sensitivity, so observing the person closest to a scheduled death was necessary work.
And if he could prevent that death while he was at it, all the better.
Every additional fighting force counted.
The moment the thought reached that far, a line of dialogue—perfect for keeping the good-hearted Arthur Norbert rooted to this spot—popped into his head.
Season it generously with "Arendt von Eckhart" flavor—suitably rude and insolent, of course.
Arendt shrugged and tossed it out casually.
"My business. Anyway, since you're here, make yourself useful and help me out."
At the words that tumbled from his mouth, Arthur made a strangled, dumbfounded noise.
"...What?"
"If you don't want to, don't."
Arendt drew the sword again and picked up right where he'd left off, behaving as if Arthur's very existence was of no interest whatsoever.
But his eyes alone spared no gap, sweeping over Arthur in that brief instant.
Just as he'd predicted, Arthur stood rooted to the spot, staring at him blankly.
Easy.
Hiding the corner of his mouth as it threatened to curl upward, Arendt turned his attention away from the man.
He's a simple sort, that one, in his own way.
There were plenty of stories where it all began with a single line of dialogue and ended with saving the world.
So shifting a man's perception with one carelessly tossed remark? Entirely within the realm of possibility.
Once Arthur realized that the traitorous junior he'd been ready to beat to death was, unexpectedly, a human being like anyone else, he would be unable to bare his fangs any longer. That much was certain.
Arthur stared at Arendt, his soul half left his body.
Help him?
Never once—not a single time—had he imagined those words coming out of that mouth.
Dragging Arendt to the training grounds was something Arthur, along with every knight belonging to the 3rd Knight Order, had long since given up on.
Apprentice knights were supposed to receive instruction from the full knights—that was the whole arrangement—but Arendt had apparently hated that fact to death.
It likely made it worse that most of the knights who tried to teach him were commoner-born.
That was how it had always been, and yet...
Did the guy have a change of heart?
Arthur's brow furrowed slightly. The man had very nearly died and come back—it wouldn't be strange for that to shake someone.
No.
A change of heart... that was only possible for someone capable of reflection.
Arendt was the type who had shouted his own innocence from the courtroom bench right up until this very moment.
Laios and the other commanders seemed inclined to believe him, but the rest of the knights were not.
Even if Arendt weren't in a position to take action at any moment, Arthur couldn't let his guard down.
That was why, even after lights-out, he had muffled his presence and kept a solitary watch on Arendt's room.
And sure enough, he'd caught Arendt slipping quietly out of the dormitory in the dead of night.
Certain the man was up to something, Arthur had tailed him without delay.
But what he'd witnessed following in Arendt's footsteps was entirely unexpected.
First, poking around the dormitory grounds as if sightseeing; then wandering outside ambling along without a care in the world; then suddenly gaping up at the night sky in open awe.
And once he reached the training grounds, Arendt had drawn a sword and thrown himself into moving this way and that, utterly absorbed.
Even now, nothing had changed. Moving the sword with considerable skill, Arendt frowned as if something didn't suit him and sank into thought.
Arendt von Eckhart.
Second son of House Eckhart. The prodigy who had passed the knight's exam the moment he turned eighteen and been hailed as a genius of the sword.
With outstanding talent piled on top of striking looks, everyone had regarded him with warmth and goodwill when he first entered the Imperial Palace.
That he would rise to become the single biggest headache of the 3rd Knight Order—no one could have predicted it.
The 3rd Knight Order counted more commoner-born knights than any other order. Arthur himself was one, and Commander Laios was the son of a fallen noble house.
Arendt, raised soft in a noble household, had always looked down his nose at that fact.
For a brief spell after joining, he'd seemed to watch his step—but that lasted no time at all. The moment eyes were off him, Arendt caused trouble; whenever he went into the city, he raised hell.
Trading fists with his comrades at the drop of a hat was practically routine.
Just as the entire order was tearing its hair out trying to manage the single lunatic in their ranks, within a year of his enlistment he was thrown into the underground prison on charges of betraying both the knight order and the Emperor himself.
And after the storm of a trial had ended, Arendt became the only human being to walk back out of that prison alive.
In the end, the nobles in the courtroom had lent their ears to Arendt's words.
The same had held true for the operation at the East Vault not long ago.
When the knights received the absurd order to lie in wait inside the vault and ambush the enemy, they'd all been thrown into confusion. The moment they learned the plan had come out of Arendt's head, every last one of them was half ready to lose their minds.
But in the end, the operation had gone well. Word circulated that Branch Manager Neumann, who had handed over the vault for whatever reason, showed him remarkable goodwill besides—and against an armed force of that size, the knight order hadn't suffered so much as a single serious injury.
The commanders' judgment, in deciding to trust Arendt, had not been wrong.
Which, put the other way around, meant Arendt had made them listen to him in the first place.
But is that even possible? From that Arendt?
Arthur had entertained the question for a moment before shaking his head.
The question was meaningless. The results were already speaking for themselves.
So Arthur let out a long, deep sigh.
"Fine... whatever you say."
Commander Laios had chosen to trust the traitor, and the traitor had already delivered results. So setting aside personal likes and dislikes, Arthur had no right to judge him or cut him down.
And if by some chance there were sides to Arendt that Arthur didn't know—sides that, in turn, proved useful to Laios and to this Empire—then as his senior, Arthur had a duty to answer that request for help.
Whatever whim the man was indulging, it made no difference.
"Tch."
Clicking his tongue in irritation, Arthur drew his own sword in one smooth motion.
Beneath the moonlight, Arthur's blade took on a cold gleam.
"Forget the tip—face your opponent. No, to be precise: stare down your enemy. Put your strength into it. All you're cutting right now is the air's surface."
"..."
At those words, Arendt lowered the sword he'd been swinging around aimlessly.
A satisfied curve settled over his lips.
"Well then, by all means—teach me a thing or two, senior."
"You insufferable little brat."
Even as he said it, Arthur spun the sword in his grip in a single smooth turn, settling his hold.
Arendt's eyes glittered, as if determined not to miss a single thing the man did.