Five Years of Bad Blood
I let out a hollow laugh at the mad bastard's mad declaration, then smoothed my expression back into place. The Dorgon raid plan had gone sideways from the very start, and we'd ended up in this horrific place where those people had died — yet strangely, the relief outweighed any sense of displeasure.
Did I want this too?
I couldn't let private feelings ruin affairs of state. I'd told myself that again and again, but the truth was I hadn't wanted to listen. Alone — of the seven of us, the only one who hadn't died — I had wanted to end this nightmare by myself. I had wanted to kill what remained of Kagan with my own hands.
The memories of missing Dorgon again and again for two straight years, the humiliation of failing to catch him for three, the agony of another uprising and another war breaking out — all of it had risen up, and I'd forced it back down.
Not anymore.
But now there was no need to hold it in. Not by my stubbornness, but by Dorgon's own strategy, a one-on-one had been arranged. I had no choice but to face the fight alone.
"I knew it."
Watching me, Dorgon nodded as if satisfied.
"I figured you'd like this too."
That drew a laugh out of me. I didn't know why, but the laughter kept coming.
Then I spoke, low and quiet.
"Whatever the result, it'd make a fine memorial."
"Even the loser will live forever in the victor's memory — and in the history of the continent. Isn't that a splendid thing?"
Dorgon answered with another remark that was anything but normal, then swung down from his horse, so I dismounted as well.
In a one-on-one, the first thing either of us would do was kill the other's mount. Better to leave the horses alive so the winner could ride home. We found ourselves in strange agreement.
"I am master of the Udesr clan and Khan of the Gaar Khanate — Gaar Udesr Dorgon."
Step by step, Dorgon came forward, a faint smile on his face as he spoke.
An absurd introduction. Between the two of us there was neither reason nor need to exchange names so calmly.
"Heir of House Crassius, Count of the Kpelleofen Empire — Karl Crassius of Wiridia."
But I played along. I didn't know why for this either.
"A Count, was it? Rather low for a champion facing a Khan."
"The only Khan under heaven is His Majesty the Emperor. You're nothing but a tribal chieftain."
"Keh. A man who's never once set foot on the steppe, calling himself Khan. Amusing."
Dorgon chuckled for a while, then slowly let the laughter drain away. He brought his sword forward and settled into a stance, looking ready to charge at any second.
"Five years of bad blood should be enough."
"If you hadn't kept running, it would've ended in two."
Then Dorgon and I kicked off the ground at the same instant and surged forward.
— ■■■■■■■■──!!!
When the blades met, something burst with a crack and the earth split open beneath us.
From here on, the only thing that would break would be one of our bones.
The original owner of this body had trained in the swordsmanship of House Crassius. Through the possession I had inherited those memories of the blade, and after possession I never stopped practicing, so even I — the one wearing the body — could manage Crassius swordsmanship passably well.
But that swordsmanship was never something I had built from the ground up. It was someone else's memory handed down. I had never drilled the fundamentals into my own flesh from the start. No matter how many memories and habits remained, there was a hard limit to how fully I could draw them out. Other possessors somehow gained powers they'd never had — so why was I the one losing powers that were already there? It was enough to make a man resentful.
Anyway, the half-baked swordsman with his incomplete technique had been thrown, five years ago, into a hellish battlefield where the Empire's survival hung in the balance. To live through that hell, Crassius or no Crassius, the only option had been to learn a sword that actually fit my body.
I'm not even sure you can call it swordsmanship.
After thrashing around long enough, the half-baked warrior had learned a combat-first style — honestly, a rootless hodgepodge. Form and posture had been discarded long ago. All I learned was how to swing faster than the enemy, harder than the enemy, more times than the enemy.
I'd even trained with spears, bows, and daggers on top of the sword, so I was a grotesque hybrid more than anything. That was why, even if I went around calling myself a swordsman, I could never claim to have truly learned swordsmanship. That was my last scrap of conscience.
Strangely enough, though, I wasn't the only hodgepodge. The son of a bitch who'd survived the steppe's law of the jungle — the man who might as well have been second-in-command of the hundred-thousand-strong nomad host Kagan had gathered — also showed a mongrel martial art with no foundation in sight.
Naturally — that son of a bitch was Dorgon.
Damn it.
Dorgon's blade punched into my solar plexus and my body folded, but I immediately drove the hilt of my sword up under his jaw. It hadn't sunk deep enough to cripple him, but deep enough that yanking the blade free would cost him a delay. In that window I couldn't cut — but I could still bash.
Having paid for wounding me by taking a hit himself, Dorgon sprang back and spat the blood pooling in his mouth.
Huh.
He was in better shape than I'd expected. I hadn't put my full weight into it, but I'd thought I'd at least knock a few teeth loose.
"Look at this doping junkie."
"You're one to talk."
After spitting blood, Dorgon let out a dry snort, and I answered on pure reflex. Of course I admitted I was a junkie — I'd come loaded not only with enhancement magic and holy arts but a whole arsenal of potions. That didn't mean I wanted to hear it from another doping junkie.
I'd already crossed blades with Dorgon dozens, hundreds of times. In the process I'd driven a sword into his gut, dislocated his shoulder, shattered his knee.
And still he moved like nothing had happened. There was no way he could do that unless he, too, had come drowning in every enhancement charm and potion he could find.
What a goddamn bastard.
That was why I hated him. Owner of a formless hodgepodge style, so you never knew where the next attack was coming from — and the type who valued his life over his pride, so he doped without a shred of shame. It wasn't even a mirror match, and fighting someone with the exact same traits was not a pleasant experience.
On top of that, I'd fought this bastard far too often. Time and again we'd clashed without either of us dying, and each time we'd pulled back having learned a little more of the other's habits and tendencies.
The more that happened, the lower the odds of winning became. I knew him as well as he knew me. Where an attack would come from, how the other would react — it was all too obvious.
A long fight is out of the question.
I forced my limp left arm back into its socket — something in it was out of place — and ran the calculations. Full doping was a burn-the-bridges tactic; sustaining a long battle was impossible. Push the body too hard and it wouldn't hold, and the enhancements themselves could unravel.
And in that situation, the opponent was a doping junkie too. No matter how hard I hit him he stayed upright; break something and it sealed right back up. A short decisive fight was impossible. That much was certain — Tala herself had praised me as a monster the likes of which she'd never seen, and even I couldn't crack him open.
I'm losing my mind.
I knocked aside Dorgon's charging blade and the old nightmares rose up. Every time the number of clashes with this bastard climbed, I'd sworn that next time I would kill him for certain. And I really had fought with everything I had.
Even so, with this bastard the final verdict never came, not even at the very end. I was afraid it would happen again this time — that we'd fight as if it were the last battle, only for nothing to be decided, and part ways with a "see you next time." That would be too cruel, wouldn't it?
As if Dorgon shared the thought, his sword strokes grew even more vicious. To steel yourself for a final battle with your nemesis on the ground where your father died — and then both walk away unscathed — that would be a serious problem.
No choice, then.
I leaned back at the waist as if to dodge, then took the cut on my body instead. My chest split open and blood sprayed, but the distance between me and Dorgon closed by the same measure.
As long as I don't die, it's fine.
I would accept serious wounds. Abandon defense and evasion and go pure offense. Dorgon's durability was about the same as mine, but even so, an all-out offensive was the only way to raise the odds of killing him even a little.
If he dodged, his stance would break; if he took the hit, the damage would stack. Either way, no loss.
— Or so I thought, as I thrust my sword and Dorgon stopped it with his mouth.
More precisely, he bit down on the edge with his teeth and held it.
"You son of a bitch."
I couldn't help blurting it out loud at the sheer animal stunt.
An actual beast, this one.
My waist was cut halfway through, but the bleeding stopped almost at once. I shattered Dorgon's knee, and it reattached. My ear was torn off, and it grew right back. I sliced open the corner of Dorgon's mouth, and it sealed over.
We were clearly dealing each other steady damage, and yet neither of us could overwhelm the other. To break this stalemate I'd have to take off a limb at least.
The problem is I can't cut them off.
Warriors who handled mana could harden their bodies to begin with, and on top of that we were both wrapped in every enhancement imaginable. Ordinary attacks might damage skin or muscle, but they couldn't sever a whole limb.
Of course, if I fired a Sky Slash at a person, enhancements and doping would all be punched straight through — but Dorgon wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't just stand there watching me wind up a finishing move. He'd charge in the middle of it and put a blade through my heart. Even with enhancements running, a clean stab to the heart would kill—
...Ah.
For an instant, Tala's face flashed through my mind.
"Karl Crassius — you and I are evenly matched! Why not simply trade our strongest blows and finish this?"
If you were worried about the opponent interfering, you only had to create a situation where interference was impossible. A simple, clean solution — the kind an ordinary person would never even dare to imagine.
"Dorgon!"
Even at my shout, Dorgon gave no answer. As if he'd rather swing his sword one more time than waste the breath.
A natural reaction. The fact that we'd been trading flaming trash talk up to now was the strange part; keeping silent against an enemy was normal.
But the words that followed made even Dorgon flinch.
"You and I are evenly matched! Rather than repeat what happened three years ago, let's trade our strongest blows and settle this!"
"...What?"
Dorgon knew what "strongest blow" meant. Ever since Kagan had displayed that world-ending power, "the strongest blow" in the North had referred to one thing and one thing only.
After all — if a technique that cut the sky and shook the earth wasn't the strongest, what else could possibly claim the name?
I was confused. I couldn't understand what that man was saying right now.
"If we keep fighting like this, we'll both walk away without either of us dying. We steeled ourselves for death in front of the dead — and then both of us go on living."
And yet, strangely, my heart was burning hot.
"The strongest, is it."
I forced the heat down and opened my mouth.
"It doesn't sound like you're tossing that word around lightly."
If the proposal was a trick, the fight would end in hollow farce.
And yet it was a strange thing. My head was full of suspicion and reluctance. Common sense said that in a fight where a single second decided victory or defeat, making an offer like that made no sense. But my heart was screaming at me to accept.
"Think of Tala."
That drew a short, dry laugh out of me.
Why were there so many lunatics in this age?