The Insider (Who Was)
His faded hair and beard hung loose to his shoulders, and the marks of age carved plainly into his face left no doubt how old the man was.
Yet no one could dismiss him as some elderly figure merely waiting out his days until death.
After all, he stood a full head taller than even Sir Giant Churchill—the man said to have no equal in sheer bulk.
The old man's name was Richard Felwinter.
For decades he had reigned as the strongest man in Iceland.
Former Duke of Iceland, and the Grandmaster of Knights who, in the present duke's stead, commanded every knight under his banner.
Long past his prime, the old man who still held the absolute peak had no intention of stepping down for the sake of his juniors.
Not while he still drew breath.
Even this living human weapon named Richard Felwinter had things he feared.
Anyone with feelings would.
Wham!
But a special strike force of mammoths and a few kinds of lesser dragon monsters—bones and guts laid bare—plus a swarm of humanoid undead was most certainly not among them.
"Baston! Baston! Where the hell is that half-dead savage fat old man?!"
A hammer that looked as if a dragon's head had been torn off and fitted with a grip smashed down.
Landing as he shattered a mammoth's skull, Richard next ripped the neck clean out of a withered drake that thrust its jaws at him and stomped it flat while he bellowed.
A sudden undead legion uprising.
The moment he received the report of a giant that looked like a colossal golem—likely the caster—plus a suspicious Grizzly Beaver and its colony, and confirmed the undead army itself, Richard immediately ordered the expedition force into emergency retreat.
The expedition abandoned the camp in the blink of an eye.
Without a moment's hesitation they dumped every scrap of loot and fell back in perfect order.
The sudden withdrawal seemed to be succeeding.
Until the undead suddenly slammed into the expedition's flank.
Even Iceland's finest could not simply shrug off an ambush.
Especially one that had been completely unexpected and carried out without the faintest sound.
But they were the guardians who held the outermost line of civilization.
Elites among elites who had weathered every hardship for years—decades, in some cases.
The chaos was brief.
Without waiting for a commander's order they assessed the situation on their own and turned the collapse of their formation into an advantage.
"By Tutatis's power!"
"Left! Left! Wheel left, you crazy rock pile!!"
"Geochang! Now! Drop the wall! Knights—charge!"
"Brothers! Fight so no one notices your skirts flying!"
They plunged into the melee.
And began to reverse-encircle and annihilate the undead that had driven into their ranks.
"Baston! You fat bastard, where the hell—"
Boom! An ice troll with its lower half blown away lunged at Richard on arm strength alone. No—it flew at him.
The undead's attack carried no killing intent; even instinct had long since fled it.
Its bulk made noise, but the surrounding chaos swallowed the sound.
"Hup!"
Yet it made no difference to Richard.
The instant the undead ice troll tensed its arms, Richard's hammer was already swinging toward it.
"Not a chance!"
It was shot out of the air by the tip of the siege-breaking hammer that arrived a beat earlier.
Frozen in the follow-through of his swing, Richard was instantly coated in the stinking fragments of ice troll. His beard quivered as he exploded in fury.
"You stupid fat old coot! You got my beard filthy!"
"I don't know—the voice of a young master calling for me like a cub looking for its mother sounded awfully loud while he was distracted."
"That's your fault!!!"
Richard reversed his grip on the hammer and pounded the ground. A rotting ogre skull that had been rolling toward him in pieces was smashed flat along with the frozen earth.
"The captain of the royal guard is supposed to stabilize the situation, and what are you doing? Mammoth heads? Want me to smash your head instead?!"
A burly, muscular bald old man with a gut that pushed out in front—chieftain of the Vanguard tribe, captain of the Hadrianus Margrave's personal guard, and his close friend—approached, his knee-length checkered kilt flapping.
"Ah, the fist-boys are handling things fine on their own. What more do you want, you brat."
"What? Brat? You insolent obese bald orc...!"
Every time Baston grumbled and twitched his trapezoidal mustache, his right eye—gone milky white—gleamed with an eerie light.
"Tch! Damn it—hooooooo."
Richard, veins rising, dragged a hand down his face. He pressed hard on the throbbing vessel at his temple and repeatedly clenched empty air in front of his face as if yanking something toward himself.
Calm down. Calm down. I am a kind grandfather. I am a kind grandfather.
"I promised our cute little cub I wouldn't lose my temper."
"Ha—you're actually keeping that promise. I figured you'd last half a year at most."
"Hoo. Peace of mind. Peace of mind."
Of course he would.
What grandfather in the world wanted to be hated by his grandchild?
Especially the adorable youngest granddaughter who, by some miracle, had appeared among the all-male field cultivated by his reliable but utterly un-cute sons, and who took after the daughter-in-law.
Even Richard, strongest man in Iceland, was reduced to a doting neighborhood grandfather who doted helplessly on his cute little granddaughter and never knew what to do with himself.
Far too high-ranking and powerful to call "ordinary," but still.
"Enough noise. Status?"
"Can't you see? Casualties light. All the veterans are fine."
"If they'd made a fuss over this, they'd all have died in the Great Famine."
"Ah—there are a few who got scratched, though."
"Have them spit on it and gulp holy water. Miasma isn't something you just tough out."
Richard waved a hand, wary of his subordinates' needlessly macho, needlessly prideful natures.
"Anyway—by now we should be getting a response from the fortress..."
Every combatant at Afterglow Fortress was an elite of elites.
And the expedition beyond the mountains was the cream of that cream.
Which meant they could not afford to lower their guard.
This was beyond the mountains.
Proof of that: even the expedition had taken a few casualties.
Under normal circumstances they would have stopped an ambush like this without a single loss.
"Hm? Come to think of it—how many days since we started the retreat?"
"Three straight days of nonstop marching through the night."
"And still no support from the fortress?"
"Something must have happened."
"Even if something blew up at the fortress, there should still be standby forces, right?"
Richard was uneasy. No matter how many absurd, gut-wrenching disasters he had lived through, the thought that something might have gone wrong at their home base was enough to worry him.
"...Ah. Right."
Baston scratched under his mustache, snapped his fingers, and reached inside his kilt. He pulled out a small orb.
"Ta-da."
A translucent bead with a glittering spark floating inside.
A specially modified Flower of made for sending signals.
"...Did I just take a hallucination spell without noticing?"
"Would that even work on you when you're fully armed?"
"...Then why is this thing still sitting here intact?"
"Because I forgot."
As stated earlier, they could not afford to lower their guard.
But Richard's strength drained out of him in an instant.
He covered his eyes with one hand and, without thinking, smacked the smooth back of Baston's head.
Crack!
"You...! Going senile?! Of all things to forget, you forget to send the signal?!"
"Ah, come on! I can just set it off now."
"Bullshit. A blizzard's about to hit—you think anyone will even see it? You should've set it off ages ago!!!"
"All right, all right! I said I was wrong!"
For a conversation between a margrave and the chieftain who served as captain of his personal guard, it was so lacking in formality it was downright rude and crude. Yet the expedition force, as if long accustomed to it, simply finished mopping up the undead and checked on their comrades.
Macho specialty: whether the bosses fight or not is none of our business.
Even so, a warrior wearing the same style of kilt as Baston approached.
"Boss! Chieftain! Stop fighting already. Situation's over."
The two muscular old men who had been gripping each other's beards and glaring like children who refused to act their age released their holds at the same time.
"Aigoo, son. This is how I live. When you get old you should just die. Aigoo."
"Then why didn't you just hole up in Coldon?"
"Ah, that I absolutely cannot do."
Richard's expression turned deadly serious.
"Why do you think I abandoned the dukedom and ran away in the first place."
"...How the hell did a bastard like you ever hold a duke's title and play noble?"
"Because I did exactly what my wife told me to!"
In that moment Richard shrank in a way that did not match his bulk and sniffled in a voice thick with lament.
"Khhhuuung! Aaaah, Rosetta. My single rose that bloomed on the snowfield. Why did you leave this old man behind and go first! My love!"
"Would you stop muttering that half-baked romance—oh for—"
While he carried on, Baston ordered the expedition to abandon the site and the loot and prioritize regrouping.
It was an order that might well have drawn protest.
Yet not a single person objected.
Even those who had questioned the earlier dumping of loot now understood.
The exact circumstances were unclear, but this was an emergency.
Instead they treated the wounded, recovered serviceable weapons, and properly handled the few dead and injured. Then the expedition immediately re-formed for the continued retreat.
"Hoo, Richard. Stop crying before your sister-in-law sees that face of yours and jumps out of her urn, yeah?"
"Sniff. Can't do that. Rosetta needs to rest in peace."
Richard scooped up snow and rubbed it over his face to compose himself. When a lightly equipped snow-elf archer approached and started to drop to one knee, he waved the man off.
"Your Grace. Reporting return."
"Mm. Good work. So how are things in the rear?"
"Unchanged. No—if anything, they're taking their time and swelling their numbers."
Richard's brow furrowed at that.
"Not pursuing, but approaching while multiplying?"
"Yes. As a result the distance between them and the expedition is gradually increasing."
"A light probe, then. Well done. Rejoin your unit."
Baston watched Richard give the snow elf a brief word of praise and dismiss him, then scowled fiercely.
"Even if there are a few high-grades among several thousand undead, most are low-grade. No matter how much they multiply, they shouldn't be able to take the fortr—ess..."
He whipped his head around and locked eyes with Richard.
Certainty burned in Richard's gaze.
"...How many priests are left at the fortress and in the town right now?"
Most of Afterglow Fortress's priests were with them.
The priests conscripted or hired from the town had gone with the expedition toward the Highlands.
Baston reflexively smacked his own smooth scalp.
"Whatever scheme this is—there's an insider!"
"Whether that insider is a traitor or an infiltrator, I don't know."
With the blizzard drawing near, Richard gave the order.
The expedition increased the speed of its retreat.
"...Holy water, you say?"
"That's right."
Karem knew what holy water was.
Salt water that had undergone a priest's consecration rite, or into which a powerful sacred relic had been dropped.
Its strength varied by grade, but its effects—purifying and breaking various forms of corruption and curses, and serving as a sovereign remedy against certain monsters and demons including vampires, undead, and fiends—were known to everyone.
So why, out of nowhere, was that pure, colorless, sacred liquid coming out of this? No one had consecrated it, so—
Wait a second.
How was holy water made?
By subjecting salt water to a priest's consecration, or by dropping in a powerful sacred relic or holy artifact.
The common element: divine power.
And Karem had offered endless prayers until successful batches of meju appeared, and he carried Skadi's relic with him at all times, wherever he went.
...So "the gods' help" (laugh) had actually been the gods' help (truth)...?
Watching the rapid shifts in Karem's expression, Catherine reached the same conclusion. An indescribable feeling crossed her face, leaving her with an odd look.
"You—just what kind of prayers did you offer to—no, we'll put that aside for now. There's a more important fact."
Deciding to shelve the matter for later, Catherine turned her head to the traces of what had been Rowan on the floor.
"As absurd as it is, if this stew is... holy water? And if something melted away in holy water like that, then it was—"
"A monster such as a vampire, undead, fiend, and so on."
Wallace finished Catherine's sentence. The moment he heard Gordon's words, his eyes sharpened with the seasoned, piercing look of an old eagle whose territory had been invaded.
"...Don't tell me Rowan..."
"Looks like he was the insider."
"I have no face to show His Grace when he returns."
"Well, at this point figuring out who did this, how, and why matters more than assigning blame."
Gordon gathered Rowan's priestly robes and belongings and rose to his feet.
Catherine immediately snapped her fingers to draw every eye.
"Then guide us to this Rowan fellow's place of work."
"Of course. His workplace doubles as his quarters. Before that—"
Only after doubling the security perimeter at the site did Wallace lead several soldiers and knights and guide the party to the herb room that served as both Rowan's workshop and lodging.