The Woodsman's Fortress

"At last... we made it."

Ereb's face was touched with something close to awe.

He had wanted his father's recognition. He had wanted to surpass his older brother. And he had wanted to become the head of House Ahental—which was why he had come all this way. It had been a journey that risked his life, but in the end he had produced a result.

He had arrived at the Woodsman's Fortress, a place he had known only from the records of the Sky Castle.

"You've done well, Young Master."

"You've done well yourself, Sir Ramang. Come. Let's go in."

"A few of you stay behind and look after the groups coming up behind us. The rest follow Messi inside."

Ereb, Ramang, and the knights vanished into the hole at the base of the tree.

"I never thought we'd get here alive. Thank the gods..."

"Captain. You've been through hell for this."

Ayla's face was flushed with feeling as well. At Gaston's comfort, her eyes grew wet.

She had fallen into a trap and nearly gotten eighty mercenaries killed. But she had clawed her way through and kept most of them alive. Even this brutal contract was on the verge of success.

"We should get inside too."

Ayla nodded, and together with Gaston and her mercenaries she entered the fortress.

The Woodsman's Fortress. An intermediate facility developed to provide rest and safety to the woodcutters working in the Outer Forest.

The Outer Forest teemed with monsters, and ancient magical beasts would burst out of nowhere, so as the pioneering work went on they needed a space where they could rest in safety. But building a shelter in a forest that dangerous meant they couldn't exactly put laborers to work constructing a building.

For that reason, a Woodsman's Fortress was often made by using the terrain itself. The fortress raised in the Forest of Resentment had been hollowed out of the largest, oldest tree in the vicinity.

A cabin with a ridiculously high ceiling.

That was the first impression Messi and his companions had of the place. It had been carved from a colossal tree some hundred and twenty feet tall, so the feeling was understandable. The interior had been divided into stories, a hole bored through the center of each floor and joined by a spiral staircase—the better to separate the living quarters and house a great number of people.

"It's nothing short of astonishing. How did they even make this?"

"Young Master, I'm curious about that myself. This tree is Black Wood—its hardness rivals iron. It's so elastic they usually use it for weapons... How did they hollow it out? Remarkable craftsmanship."

"Look over here—there's water coming out! It looks like sap!"

"This is... a privy, I think?"

Ereb, Ramang, the knights and the mercenaries toured the interior, marvel piled on marvel. The praise had nothing to do with her, and yet Kkyu—who had no connection to any of it—puffed up with pride all the same.

As it turned out, there was a reason for that.

...Why are you popping up here?

...What?

Ah. Now the picture came together.

The ants, the weakest creatures in the Forest of Resentment, had been put to forced labor by invaders who had appeared out of nowhere. They hadn't only been preyed on by the forest's monsters—humans had shaken them down too.

What is this, the Japanese occupation all over again...

Never mind... There's a sad chapter of history you don't need to know.

Messi felt his eyes grow unexpectedly damp and turned away from the princess. To be this innocent after having your labor plundered...

So at least your safety was guaranteed. That's something, I guess.

...They promised, didn't they?

No... You're badly mistaken about something. That was not your fault...

Messi couldn't bring himself to tell her the truth.

That isn't making peace. That's getting shaken down...

The queen must have paid that so-called friendship fee with tears of blood. The princess's bright, guileless voice only made it hurt more. On the way back, Messi decided, he would try to harm as few ants as possible.

"Hey, Messi. Are you sure this place has been sitting abandoned for decades? There's less dust than I'd expect. Feels like it was being kept up until a few years ago..."

Ayla asked as she swept a finger across the dust on a table.

Messi didn't know either. This was the first time he had ever set foot inside. He had come here with his master only once, and even then they had merely passed it by on the road.

Could it be?

A few years ago, his master would still have been alive. Messi had always been frightened when the old man vanished, saying he was going somewhere—and now he wondered if that somewhere had been here. The thought that he might uncover a trail of his master's he had never known sent a jolt through him. He rummaged through every floor in a hurry, hunting for even the smallest clue.

At last, standing at the top of the thirtieth and final story, he found it.

It was a study. Sunlight spilled through a small window behind the desk and chair—possible only because the tree stood so tall. Dust motes hung in the light. The place was utterly still.

This had been his master's room. There was no question. Papers written in a handwriting Messi knew by heart lay stacked in piles. The books his master had loved stood on the shelves.

When he was teaching me to read, books would appear out of nowhere in a house that didn't even have a bookshelf. I always thought it was strange... He brought them all from here.

He had believed every trace of the man had vanished forever in the fire that consumed their home. But his master was still in this world.

"What's this? Looks like someone important used it."

Ereb had followed him up. Messi had grown so suddenly agitated that the young lord was bound to be curious.

"Young Master. I'd like to use this as the guides' room."

"This place? Well, it is the only cramped one, so it would do for the three of you. And with a window cut through, it would be easy to keep watch outside...."

He let the rest trail off. Ereb was no fool. He could tell Messi wanted this room with a kind of hunger. The papers stacked on the desk seemed to be the real object, but he gave no sign that he had noticed.

"Just use it yourself. I don't know what this is about, but I'll see that no one from the lower floors bothers you. We made it here thanks to you... No one will complain if you take a room to yourself."

Ereb wore an expression that said, You're welcome. For once, it was a kindness Messi was truly grateful for. Apparently satisfied by the earnest thanks, Ereb went back down.

Messi approached the desk and touched the papers. His master's handwriting, after so long. A sting rose at the corners of his eyes.

Without quite realizing it, he had missed the old man terribly.

"Ah. Right. You're here."

He had thought he was alone and had, for once, let himself sink into the feeling. There was a pest in the room.

"My master. The strong human you talked about."

"Friends? A person and an ant?"

"We've known each other for how long, exactly?"

"Never mind that. Just answer the question."

She's so annoying. Maybe I should just kill her...

It actually had been real. He just didn't let it show.

Messi stuffed a piece of the Village Chief's jerky into the frightened princess's mouth. She brightened at once, and everything she had been curious about came tumbling out.

It sounded less like a lifespan problem than a food-chain problem... but Messi didn't bother picking the fight. The princess had estimated the queen's remaining life at two thousand years, so the total span was, in fact, enormous.

...That sounds like a threat. The "friends" part, Messi suspected, existed only in the princess's head.

"Did the queen ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠find it for him?"

He couldn't go back and ask the queen, so perhaps there were hints in the papers stacked here... Messi thought it over.

Besides, during a period of rest and refit, a guide didn't have much to do. Which meant these countless pages were likely to be the last lesson his master had left him.

Messi sat in the study's only chair and began to read the stacked papers in order.

"Young Master, I was thinking of taking Messi and a few knights to inspect the condition of the ruins."

Ramang asked the moment Ereb came walking down the stairs. Ereb shook his head.

"What's the rush?"

"Pardon?"

"Let's rest a while ourselves, Sir Ramang. We've reached the fortress. That's as good as being there."

"P-pardon?"

Ramang wondered, not entirely in jest, whether someone had swapped his young master for another man in the ant tunnels. The Ereb he knew would have been hopping in place, demanding they scout the ruins at once.

"What's with that look? Like you think I've been replaced."

"Ah—no, Young Master. I'll tell everyone to put rest and refit first, then."

Watching Ramang's back recede as if a ghost had hold of him, Ereb sank into thought.

Strange... If Ramang had some other game, there should have been a signal of some kind before we reached the fortress. Why hasn't there been one?

The Woodsman's Fortress and the ruins were close. If the man meant to try something, he ought to have shown suspicious movement before they arrived.

Or perhaps he means to start now.

There was no one else even worth suspecting except Ramang, who had obtained the Sky Castle's records. Raud was watching Ramang and the knights of the First Squad, so they would be able to respond the instant anything happened.

It might have been too hopeful a wish, but part of him hoped the Sky Castle's records had simply been wrong—that this was all a misunderstanding.

We barely made it this far...

Please, he thought, let the thing he feared not come to pass. Ereb wished it fervently, in silence.

Messi tried to read what his master had left behind, and very quickly found himself in an impossible position.

The only language his master had taught him was Central, the common tongue—and the papers were a riot of tongues. He could not understand why the old man had scribbled like this, switching languages as he went. He didn't remember any such habit while the man was alive. Messi sank into the puzzle of it.

"I noticed. Thanks to which his idiot disciple can't read a word of it."

A flicker of resentment crept in. The old man might at least have written it so he could tell what it said. The only Central on the pages ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was everyday vocabulary and a handful of conjunctions, all easily parsed.

As if he had meant for it not to be read...

Wait.

He made it unreadable on purpose?

The thought carried him to a hypothesis.

In this forest there had only ever been his master and himself. If the old man had wanted someone not to read this, there was only one person that someone could be.

Him.

The people who know where this fortress is... the woodcutters who made it out alive, my master, and me. And the one most likely to find this is me.

His master had told him that in this world, the ability to use many languages was proof of learning and high station. That was why the old man had urged him to pick up a few more. Messi had had no gift for languages, though; even Central alone had been more than enough.

So this is a cipher aimed at me and me alone. What on earth is in it?

"Huh?"

The answer had jumped out from a direction he had never expected.

Don't tell me...

"You can read this?"

It was going to be that easy?

The larva he had been debating whether to kill turned out to be useful after all. Messi felt as if a lottery ticket he had picked up off the road had just hit.

"You said you've only been alive a hundred years."

Now that's a convenient bit of lore...

Then again, a race that lived so long would have piled up a vast store of knowledge over the ages. Passing it by word of mouth ran a high risk of loss, and leaving it in written records made storage difficult. That peculiar method was probably a product of their own evolution.

Wait. Then perhaps...

"...Can you read this too?"

Messi drew the sword and turned the face of the blade so the princess could see it clearly. He had only ever pointed the edge at her; he had never shown her the flat.

The sword Gaston had given him bore an indecipherable pattern that Messi had guessed might be writing.

Sure enough, the princess took one look and put on the air of someone who knew it at a glance.

"Little People?"

She meant a race like the dwarves Ereb had mentioned in passing, then.

It was sealed?

He had used it a few times on the ants and already thought it a fine sword. If this was its sealed state, how good was the real thing? The two Little People artisans, Ttaksigani and Doroku, were clearly no ordinary craftsmen.

To have a blade of theirs fall into his hands. And a living translator besides.

Messi could sum up his present circumstances in a single phrase.

"I really am lucky."