The Last Wolf
At some point, my swirling head cleared. My blurred vision and ragged breathing returned to normal. Of course, this was not the process of wounds healing. How could injuries that had cost me my lower half and both arms possibly recover?
This was nothing more than a final spark. Just as a flame burns brightest right before it dies, my body was briefly flaring up.
Stubbornly tenacious to the point of spite.
After laughing for a long while, I stared blankly up at the sky. No matter how many strengthening charms I had layered on, I had still taken the shock of Sky Slashes colliding head-on and somehow avoided dying on the spot. Thanks to that, I had ended up rambling this embarrassing story to him. I had always known my life was tenacious, but this was excessive even for me.
Yet it was a strange thing. I had meant to die without a word, but once I spilled everything, I felt nothing but relief. The thought that the archenemy who had granted me my end would remember the path I had walked actually made me glad.
"Do all the tribes that follow you share the same thought?"
At those words I turned my gaze back to Karl Crasius and let out a short laugh.
"Yeah. Every last one of them is like me—ready to die, and incapable of coexisting with the Empire."
Lunatics who had shaken their heads when told to go to the Empire if they wanted to live, and refused even the offer to simply disappear. Fools who said they would rather die as nomads than live under the same sky as the Empire. And refuse that would have to vanish for a new world to be born.
I had led those refuse as their chief. I had given them one last chance to pour out the resentment they carried.
"They're the ones who stuck it out until the very end, so their stubbornness is something else. If I told them surrender was allowed, they'd tell me to surrender first."
They were the sort who would fight to the death whether I surrendered or not, which made the whole idea hilariously funny.
"The Empire is generous to those who surrender."
"I know. That's why I did all this."
I laughed again at his quiet voice and answered.
What he had just said was Karl Crasius's consideration. If—just if—those men wavered at the news of my death, broke their stubbornness, and surrendered to the Empire, he was promising them decent treatment.
"They'll probably choose suicide over surrender, but thank you for leaving the door open."
So I spoke honestly. Their hatred of the Empire ran so deep that they would rather snap their own necks than bow their heads—but I was still grateful he had opened a path to life.
At the same time it was frustrating. Lower their heads even a little and safety and status were guaranteed. Why couldn't they do it?
I'm hardly one to talk.
Thinking about it, I myself wanted nothing more than to die fighting the Empire. Hoping the others would surrender while I felt that way would have been shameless. Just as I carried my grudge, they carried their own.
A grudge, huh.
I turned my gaze from Karl Crasius back to the sky. I had fought both to follow Him and realize our ideal, and also to settle the grudge I carried.
That collapsed ideal we had achieved, however clumsily, at the cost of my life and theirs. We had failed to build our own nation, yet at least we had escaped the Empire's threat and secured a measure of prosperity.
But the grudge? The grudge that was mine alone, not our ideal—had it been resolved?
I failed.
No matter how generously I looked at it, I had not. My grudge would simply vanish with my death.
It was a shameful thing. A man who had blathered about comrades and the will of the people had failed to settle even his personal affairs. No—if it had truly been only personal, I might have let it go as unavoidable.
How am I supposed to face Mother?
But it was not only personal. Failing, as a son, to avenge my mother's grudge was something I could not lightly dismiss.
The imperial soldiers who had crushed the nomads like insects. My mother, who had suffered humiliation at their hands. The one who had taught love to a life that deserved only curses.
And after Mother died of illness, the man who had treated a mere nephew like his own son and raised me.
What a mess.
I had neither punished the Empire that had violated my mother nor fulfilled the dream of the man who had regarded me as a son. I was simply collapsing here.
Only with death at my doorstep did I understand. I had believed I had cast off every regret and lingering attachment, but I had not. I had been full of attachments from the start, and those attachments were what kept me alive. I had simply looked away because it was a grudge I could never settle.
From the moment He fell, from the moment my people lost hope, punishing the Empire had become an eternally unreachable goal. I, alone, could never avenge my mother's grudge.
Perhaps that was why I had clung even harder to the ideal. An unblessed birth. A life that had failed to serve the man who was as good as a father. Incompetence that had failed to answer the will of my people.
I had run so I could look away from all of it, so that when I someday met Mother I would have at least a scrap of an excuse.
"Karl Crasius."
"What."
"In your eyes, what was I?"
At the sudden question, Karl Crasius's face twisted. I understood. A dying ringleader floating off on some empty nonsense would be absurd enough—and then asking how he looked? Of course the answer would be "a son of a bitch."
But I wanted to hear it. He was the only one left at my side, and I believed the view of this tenacious, bitter archenemy would be more accurate than anyone else's.
"...There's a saying that the son of a tiger is a dog."
Karl Crasius trailed off there, let out a deep sigh, and spat the rest as if irritated.
"A wolf's a dog too, I guess."
"Ha."
Laughter burst out of me.
"High praise indeed."
Watching his face twist even further at that, I closed my eyes. I had said everything I needed to say and heard everything I wanted to hear. My life had burned its final spark; it was time to go.
Now that I was actually dying, I was curious. What would the afterlife look like?
If possible, I hoped it would be a single world without heaven or hell. If they were separate, Mother would go to heaven and I to hell.
If they were divided, so be it—
but if the afterlife was only one,
and if I saw Mother there,
I would tell her that I had not avenged her grudge, yet I had tried,
that I had somehow managed to protect my people's safety.
So please, to this inadequate son,
tell him he had worked hard,
that he had done it alone—
just once—
Dorgon, eyes closed, did not open them again.
A faint smile lingered on his face, as if he had left while dreaming something good.
"Is it over?"
Yes.
Looking down at Dorgon's face, I answered the voice ringing in my head.
It's over.
"...Yeah. It is."
Eternal Blue Sky murmured in a sunken voice and only spoke again after a long while.
"Long ago I was as good as the one true god. Until the concept of settled life appeared, every race on the continent lived as nomads, and I was the sky god they worshipped."
It was sudden self-praise, but I listened in silence. It would not be mere boasting.
"As time passed and settled peoples appeared, the number and range of the nomads dwindled. My power weakened naturally with them."
I already knew that. When I first met Eternal Blue Sky I had even told her that "with the rise of settled peoples, the decline of the nomad god was only a matter of time," and afterward she had whined and lamented to me about it often enough.
"I grew weaker and weaker, yet the nomads still worshipped me. Those children were the only ones who served me, and the only ones I answered."
Ordinarily I might have said, "Seems even the nomads don't worship you anymore," but I kept silent. Her voice had already sunk past mere heaviness and was now laced with tears.
"I'm not saying those children were right. Just as they suffered at the hands of the settled peoples, the settled peoples suffered too. We spilled blood for so long that no one even remembers who struck first."
That much was true. The history of conflict between settled peoples and nomads was far too long to start arguing over who attacked first at this late hour. They had probably been fighting since before anything called a nation even existed on this continent.
"...Still, if even I turn my back on those children, no one will embrace them... May I ask one favor?"
Yes. Speak.
"If possible, would you burn this child's body? The nomads prefer cremation..."
I see.
"Ah—b-before the cremation, do whatever you like. Even among nomads, making a show of an enemy's corpse was common."
She hurriedly added the last part, as if afraid I might refuse. I nodded.
It was not a difficult request. The Empire itself preferred cremation over burial; even without the request I would have burned him in the end.
Understood. I'll do that, so don't worry.
"Mm. Thank you."
Leaving behind a voice that sounded a little more at ease, I continued staring at Dorgon's corpse.
Making a spectacle of an enemy's body was common enough. Like beheading a traitor and displaying the head, it was the quickest way to show what happened to those who defied authority.
Yet strangely, I did not want to. I simply wanted to burn Dorgon's body in an ordinary way.
Sympathy?
No, that was not it. I had no intention of whitewashing him with "he was actually a good guy deep down." Whatever his circumstances, Dorgon had been a clear enemy of the Empire.
But the desire to hate him any further had simply vanished. Dorgon had paid the price of his bond with death—death at my hands—and thanks to that, my own lingering attachment had disappeared as well. I would not defend him, yet I no longer had a reason to hate him either.
I could have ended up like that.
With neither defense nor hatred left, only an objective view remained. That Dorgon's end could have been my end. That if I had twisted even a little, I would have looked just like that. Thinking so, I wanted to send him off without any further fuss.
...Come to think of it, wasn't that sympathy after all?
Tch.
Fine, call it sympathy. He was already dead—couldn't a victor do that much for him?
I let out a small sigh and expelled every scrap of mana from my body. The battle was over; it was time to return, yet the horses were somehow already dead. They must have been caught in the Sky Slash.
So I poured out my mana as a signal. A sudden mass of mana moving across the empty plain would look strange to anyone. If their side had finished fighting as well, they would send someone.
It's over.
Only then did it truly sink in. It was really finished now.
Five years of bitter entanglement, three years of lingering attachment—over. The peace those people had longed for had arrived.
It's over.
I gently lifted my head and gazed at the sky.
Perhaps because two Sky Slashes had collided, the heavens were torn open in the shape of a cross.