The Name of the Imperial Knights
Richt bounded up the stairs in a single breath, pushed Saif ahead of him as the lead, and charged straight down the passage.
By the time the drunkards and gamblers trailing behind them had fallen far enough into the distance, and the two of them had reached a spot where foot traffic thinned to almost nothing, Richt finally came to a stop.
"Guide us to the forest outside the city gates. The Commander will be waiting there."
"Y-yes, sir! I know roughly where that is."
Saif nodded hurriedly, still panting for breath. Are these people actual monsters or what? Each of them had sprinted at full speed with two people cradled in their arms, and yet while Saif was utterly spent, the knights hadn't shed so much as a single drop of sweat.
Richt clapped his companion on the shoulder.
"Go with this man and explain the situation. Hand these people over to the Commander as well."
"Pardon? You're not coming with us, sir?"
"I'm going back. I told them the small fry were free to run, but who knows what kind of vermin is mixed in among them — so we'll round up as many as we can. We can't exactly leave the exit gaping open like this, and the members still inside won't have the luxury of worrying about it."
When a puzzled question came back at him, Richt answered with quiet finality.
"Catch whichever runaways you can and haul them to the gambling den. You join the Commander first."
"Yes, understood."
Without another word, Richt wheeled around and started back toward the den.
As Saif steadied his breathing and stared blankly after that retreating figure, the knight who'd been left behind frowned slightly and asked, "What are you looking at?"
"Nothing, it's just... seeing him like that, he really is such a clean-cut, proper gentleman..."
Saif let the sentence trail off. What would follow didn't need to be spoken aloud to be guessed.
The most knightly of them all — so why was it that whenever he was alongside that absurdly young apprentice, he kept falling apart?
Recalling the sight of that trustworthy face cheerfully hurling a bottle without a shred of hesitation, the two men couldn't help but pull uneasy expressions.
It was the first taste of defeat Merlin had ever known.
He had clawed his way through a rough life in the back alleys without failing a single time, and he'd lived his whole life certain that every one of those successes owed itself to his own shrewd handling of things.
His position as the second-in-command of this gambling den was, in a sense, the crowning achievement of everything Merlin had built over his lifetime.
And that shining name had now been trampled thoroughly into the dirt by a pack of lunatics.
Grinding his teeth, Merlin glared at Arendt as if he might devour him on the spot.
"You. What in the hell are you supposed to be?"
"Me? I told you already, didn't I? A bastard who came to shake down bad people for their money. Can't you size that up at a glance? Really, though — you ought to look a man over carefully before you try to swindle him."
Arendt retorted with a slouched, swaggering shrug. He wore an expression so insufferably smug that even his own allies wanted to land a punch on it.
"Cut the crap. A man like that comes prepared with counterfeit money to pull this kind of stunt? Who sent you? You think I wouldn't figure out you were pulling this kind of dirty trick?"
It took no imagination at all to guess just how furiously Merlin's insides were churning.
"What, feeling guilty about a lot of things, are we? See, this is why people ought to live honest lives."
Arendt made a show of picking at his ear.
"You built a business out of making enemies everywhere you went — did it never once occur to you that you might get hit back? Honestly, you're more naive than you look, old man. If you were ready to stab people in the back, shouldn't your own neck have been on the table as part of the stakes?"
"You shameless little...! You're wrecking everything I spent a lifetime building? And that grand swagger of yours ends today. I'll stake everything I have if I must — I will drag you down to ruin!"
Merlin's face, flushed scarlet with rage, was an absolute wreck.
His once-immaculate clothing had been shoved and jostled every which way until not a part of it sat straight, and his face — dealt one blow by Arendt and another by somebody's elbow — had swollen a deep purple around both eyes.
Arendt wasn't much tidier himself. The cumbersome outer coat had been cast off somewhere along the way, and with his shirtsleeves crudely rolled up to the elbow, there was no trace left of noble decorum to be found.
Even his tightly bound hair had come loose, strands escaping in every direction.
"Ruin? Sounds lovely. But do you really think you can manage it? After all those years climbing the ladder, all you've got to show for it is wiping the backsides of your betters and running a den that bleeds honest folk dry."
A bitter smile curled across Arendt's lips.
"And someone of your station dares to talk about ruining me? That's not even funny."
"I don't care what manner of creature you are or where you crawled out of — you are not the one in charge here. The Den Master will hardly stand by and do nothing!"
"Considering the den ended up in this state before he could ruin me, I'd wager he'll be coming for your head first, won't he?"
The color drained from Merlin's face in an instant.
Looking straight down at him, Arendt continued in a slow, deliberate voice.
"What's the matter? That frightens you a little, does it? Don't worry. Whoever your superior is, the moment they show their face, I'll have them strung up in the middle of the main thoroughfare of this territory."
The voice, which had sounded like nothing more than idle mockery, grew steadily colder until it was as frigid as a sheet of ice.
"You can look forward to it. The spot next to them is yours."
The chaotic lounge fell as silent as if a frost had settled over it, and only Arendt's voice rang out, cold and clear.
It was a presence heavier than anything he'd projected while throwing punches and hurling objects.
Like an actor stepping into the full glare of the stage lights.
Having forgotten even how to breathe, the people present could only stare at Arendt, dumbstruck.
That... was that on purpose?
Or was that genuine fury radiating off the little bastard?
Ryder pondered blankly. The kid was so impossible to read that he couldn't tell whether what leaked out of him just now was the real thing or another act, carefully manufactured like everything else he'd done so far.
But at least for this one moment, no one could deny a single fact: every last person here had been utterly overwhelmed by him.
No matter that he looked less like a knight or a nobleman's son and more like some gutter thug — none of that dimmed Arendt's particular brand of arrogance in the slightest.
Golden eyes brimming with a chill fury swept slowly across the room.
The staff who had fled to the corners when the brawl erupted, the mercenaries who'd been fighting tooth and nail, Merlin himself — and even the knights on Arendt's own side — all stood with mouths slightly agape, their attention completely stolen by the apprentice knight.
"Hey, brat. Way to kill the mood."
But that ice-thin tension shattered spectacularly at a single remark blurted out from one side — Arthur, naturally. Arendt just shrugged, as if he'd never been anything but casual.
"All this was just stalling. Drag a brawl out too long and you wear yourself out, right?"
"Please, for the love of the goddess, have some restraint. If I have to keep cleaning up after your nonsense, I'm going to be picking pieces of you out of the wreckage."
Arthur exploded in exasperation. With the tension broken, the wary customers began slinking toward the exits, sensing their chance.
"You there. Hold it right there."
But at Arthur's next words, their footsteps froze in place.
Arthur held up a thick bundle of papers he'd had tucked inside his coat, displaying it high for all to see.
"You'll want to stay. Unless, of course, you'd like the chance to explain yourselves in person. This looks like a ledger of everyone who frequents the place, doesn't it?"
"Wha...?"
Stunned voices spilled out from every direction at once.
It took Merlin a beat too long to recognize Arthur's face.
"You... the one who was with that brat earlier..."
Come to think of it, the group that brat had brought in the first place had been fairly large. Yet the ones who'd whipped the lounge into this pandemonium numbered only three.
Then where were the others?
Only now did the figures standing behind Arthur come into view. At first he'd taken them for customers, but on closer look, several of the faces were familiar. When Merlin picked out Enoch's face among them, his mouth fell wide open.
"You... you... how dare you!"
"Dare what? Threaten me again, maybe? My sister already left with the others. As for Father — eh, he can live or die, whatever."
Merlin's rage erupted on the spot, but Enoch simply glared right back, refusing to yield an inch.
Fists clenched, Merlin strode toward the boy — and Arendt stepped squarely into his path.
"Kidnapping a child and an old man, holding them hostage and locking them away. Truly a successful life you've made for yourself, eh?"
The handsome face that curved into a smile was laced with a cutting chill.
"What, want to take a swing at me? Go ahead. By now, I'd think the shape of your situation is starting to sink in?"
He was right. Merlin was slowly realizing just how thoroughly he had fallen into a trap.
It had been absurd from the very start — fighters of this caliber allowing themselves to be captured meekly and hauled off to prison.
Merlin's lips barely managed to move.
"Kill... "
"Kill them all, you mean? You think that'll work?"
Arendt tilted his head at a lazy angle.
"Choose your next move carefully. If even one of them stirs, I'm grabbing that ledger and bolting. You confident you can stop me?"
The manager's mouth clamped shut into a hard line.
The sound of grinding teeth slipped out between his lips. His clenched fists trembled violently.
The initiative had long since slipped entirely into that brat's hands.
What made it all the more unbearable for Merlin was the knowledge that no matter what desperate gambit he attempted, he would only look like a defeated man barking impotently at his betters.
The mercenaries, too, noticed the scales had tipped decisively against them and began inching backward — trying to slip away before they got entangled in anything messier.
But that attempt was cut off by a cold voice ringing out behind them.
"Did you not hear me say not to move?"
Richt.
He had returned at some point, and with a firm grip on the back of the escapees' necks, he stood blocking the stairs leading up to the surface.
Thud. Thud.
Having unceremoniously dumped the unconscious gamblers back into the lounge, Richt radiated a frigid intensity that made it perfectly clear: escape would not be tolerated.
A terrified mercenary shrieked in a panic.
"W-we did nothing wrong! We only did what our employer told us to do, I swear!"
"And your employer, at that employer's direction, abducted a helpless child and an old man, locked them in the underground, and coerced people under threat into borrowing money at ruinous interest. Is that about the shape of it?"
But there was no chance of that working.
Richt declared, his voice ringing with authority, enunciating every word.
"In the name of the Imperial Knights, all who took part in the illegal exploitation of the Empire's citizens will answer for it."
"Th-the Imperial..."
"...?!"
The name of the Imperial Knights rang out, crisp and unmistakable, through the den frozen in a cold silence.
The manager, the staff, the mercenaries... and the customers — every last one of them turned to stone on the spot.
Only when the words fell from Richt's lips did Merlin finally understand everything, from beginning to end.
Why they were inexplicably unbreakable, why they were so hell-bent on tearing the den apart — and even why, after hiding their identities all this time, they were only now choosing to reveal them.
"Ah... ah."
A strangled groan of terror escaped him. Its source was Merlin, who had at some point collapsed in a heap on the floor. Faintly, a cascade of footsteps could be heard pouring down the stairs from the surface.
It was the sound of Knight Commander Laios storming in with his men.
"Wh-why would the Imperial Knights be here? The information blackout was airtight..."
"Why do you think? You made the mistake of getting tangled up with that insane apprentice knight, that's all."
Arthur snickered, looking thoroughly satisfied.
It did not take long for Merlin's groans to turn into full-throated screams.