The Pebble That Struck Back
The confrontation between the mercenaries and the knights had only grown more dire. Both sides had drawn their weapons. One side would have to die for the other to live.
Of course, which side would die had already been decided.
The Red Fox Mercenary Group.
It was common knowledge that a single knight could handle ten Bronze Plate Mercenaries without breaking a sweat. Mercenaries who had spent years grinding through the field, however, knew a knight could do far worse than that. The only person here who could even trade blows with a knight was Ayla, a Silver Plate Mercenary.
"Goddamn it. So this is our grave?!"
"If we're dying anyway, we die swinging! I'll be damned if I go down without a fight!"
"All of us — pile on them together! Even if we fall, we carve the shame into them before we die!"
They were men who had rolled through the field for years, and the venom in their voices showed it. Buried in that venom was a wish. If only the knights would hear this and feel a flicker of fear. If only their own trembling legs would just stop shaking.
Anyone who could keep their composure with death staring them in the face would never have been a Bronze Plate Mercenary to begin with.
Ayla, Silver Plate though she was, had lost her composure for an entirely different reason. Guilt.
This is all my fault. I let greed blind me and dragged my family right off a cliff. I'm so sorry. To every last one of you.
"Captain, you don't have to look like that. This isn't on you. We all let our guard down."
Even Gaston's comfort couldn't ease the tightness in Ayla's face.
The knights, by contrast, were having a grand old time.
"Well then. Shall we have ourselves a taste of blood?"
"Young Master, if we dispose of them all, we'll have no meat shields left."
"Haha, Sir Ramang! Did you just say 'meat shields'? For a man who opposed this plan at the start, going on about chivalry and whatnot, that's a rather cheap choice of words, kahaha!"
"The water's already been spilled, in any case. We still have to deliver the fruits of success before the Viscount. That means cooperating with you as fully as we can, Young Master."
"Well, fine by me! Here's my plan. We take the lot of them apart — arms, legs, torsos, the whole works — and load the pieces onto the packhorses. The monsters in the Forest of Resentment may be strong, but they're still just monsters. They'll be mad for the taste of meat. We toss them a piece at a time and move through quickly. Simple, no?"
It was the kind of scheme only a psychopath would entertain. Then again, a high noble of this era might well clap him on the back and say, Hmm, rather inventive of you, my boy.
Such was a world where even the worth of a human life came with a class ranking. And when a man born with a deep appetite for killing happened to be a noble, he was a fish that had found its water.
"Besides, I've been thinking — the village has a fair number of people in it. Now that the first plan's gone sideways, we should gather as much meat as we can and head into the forest!"
"Hmm. In that case, wouldn't it be better to take them all alive? Monsters surely prefer their meat fresh. They'd rather we butcher it on the spot."
"Wahaha! Sir Ramang, I do believe this is the first time the two of us have been so perfectly in step!"
It was a conversation that would have made the devil himself weep and walk away.
The fact that they were bellowing this bloodless, tearless exchange at the top of their lungs was entirely by Ereb's design. And it was already working. Sniffling had begun to leak from among the mercenaries — the younger ones, the ones who hadn't seen enough of the world yet.
Even when the greenhorn beside him sniveled and wept, a veteran couldn't say a word. His own body was shaking too.
The knights' formation swelled with confidence. From the mercenaries' ranks, the shouting had died away, replaced by nothing but muffled sobs.
The tension wound to its breaking point. The moment a single bird burst from a tree and took flight, that would be the signal, and the knights would come surging in—
"Pffhah!"
...Someone had laughed.
At first they thought it was one of the mercenaries. It happened sometimes — the tension so crushing a man simply snapped and lost his mind. But the laugh that followed, a long hiss like steam escaping a kettle, drew every gaze toward its owner.
"M-Messi. H-have you lost your mind, boy? Why—why are you laughing, you idiot?!"
Only the village chief, standing nearby, had gone the color of death. He clung to Messi, but Messi just laughed and shoved him off.
Messi glanced sidelong at Leto. Their eyes met, and Leto, as if something had just fallen into place, burst out laughing as well.
"Hahaha!"
"Pffhahaha!"
"What—Leto, you too? Have you both gone mad?!"
With only the village chief standing between them, at a complete loss, neither the knights nor the mercenaries could quite process what they were seeing. That a laugh could sound this unreal. It was a thoroughly unfamiliar experience.
Everyone was still reeling when Ereb recovered first.
"Have you lost your mind? You find this situation funny?"
In truth, the one who had been laughing the most until a moment ago was Ereb himself. That, of course, had been purely for intimidation. He hadn't actually found any of it amusing. These two, however, were laughing from the heart. A strange, insulted shame even crept over him.
"Heh. How could it not be funny? Both sides are going to die together in that forest anyway, and here you are squabbling like children. I couldn't not laugh."
"You... you can speak our language?"
The sudden, fluent Central tongue coming from an other-race's mouth made Ereb's eyes go wide.
"I pretended I didn't understand because I'd rather not field Young Master's questions. I figured you'd start in with 'an other-race, hmm?' and pick me apart, and if you didn't like the answers, you'd kill me. I'd prefer not to die. My apologies."
"What?"
To Ereb, Messi had been no different from a dog. Something less than a commoner. Livestock. Perhaps not even a living thing. A pebble lying in the road.
And now that pebble had flown up and struck him across the face, insolent as you please.
It stung more than it should have. And it was humiliating.
That settled the creature's future. He would kill him. Without fail.
He had reached that conclusion and was about to pass sentence when Ramang caught his arm.
"Young Master, could I ask you to calm yourself for a moment?"
This man is trying to get in my way. The instinct was immediate. There was no other reason he would stand in Ereb's path.
So that rare feeling of being in sync was an illusion. Right. This is the kind of man he's always been.
"Consider our objective, if you would."
"Objective? What of it? So the objective is all that matters, and a noble's honor is worthless?"
"Your honor matters, Young Master. Of course it does. But there is something that matters more, is there not? You may have conceived this plan, but the moment the family head approved it, it became his affair. It must succeed. And for that, we need a guide more than anyone. Or do you intend to retreat and go looking for a new one?"
Ereb's teeth clenched.
This idiot... saying that in front of all the knights? If I kill the other-race now, it means I disregarded my father's honor. If I don't, I become the green Young Master who couldn't even handle a single other-race because of something a subordinate said.
A noble's power was rooted in honor and authority. If it was certain that anyone who damaged a noble's honor and authority would pay the price, then no one would dare look down on the nobility. But if that certainty wavered, authority crumbled. At first it might seem like nothing more than a hairline crack. Then it would pass through the gossip of countless commoners and slaves, and the hairline would become a fissure, the fissure a gap, until at last a great castle came crashing down.
Sir Ramang had no political instinct. He was the sort of man who believed loyalty was the entirety of knighthood. A knight with even a shred of political sense would have offered Ereb a way to back down with his dignity intact, and Ereb would have pretended to yield. Instead, Ramang had given him only two options — both of them a trap — and Ereb found himself cornered.
Then, from an unexpected quarter, a lifeline was thrown.
"Haha. Kill me if you like. But Young Master — think carefully about what I just said. I told you that once you enter that forest, both sides die. And if you don't even have a guide? Well. That would be quite the spectacle."
Hm? Is this creature perhaps...?
He could neither kill him nor spare him. But if he had to choose one without damaging his own honor, he needed a powerful justification. Ereb saw the possibility in the rope Messi had tossed him, and he caught it with a flourish. A slightly theatrical one.
"What did you say? Is that the truth? What do you mean by that?!"
"Yes, Young Master. Exactly what I said. You knights are taking the Forest of Resentment far too lightly."
He had dressed it up, but the gist of Messi's words was simple.
You're weak.
"Too lightly...? As far as we know, the Forest of Resentment is classified as an A-rank danger zone."
At Ereb's words, Ayla's face trembled with rage. That was a full three ranks higher than the information Vice-Leader Noas had passed along. A threat of that level would require dozens of Gold Plate Mercenaries to even attempt. They had truly intended to use her people as nothing more than meat shields.
"My knowledge is limited, so I can't speak much to danger rankings. I'll simply tell you by my own measure. Knights and mercenaries alike — in that forest, you are nothing more and nothing less than a pile of perfectly friendly meat. So I meant you shouldn't waste your strength fighting over who gets to die first."
"And I apologize for laughing at something so grave. But I'd be grateful if you'd consider my position as well. When the chickens in a coop start raising hell because neither wants to be the first to die — how am I supposed to keep a straight face?"
The surroundings had gone so still that Messi's words rang out with unusual clarity.
Friendly meat. Chickens in a coop. Was that how they looked in that other-race's eyes?
It was possible. Entirely possible. On one condition: that everything Messi had said was true. And if it was, then this entire quarrel was meaningless.
"Young Master, are you actually believing what that creature said? This is data from the information guild, the Sky Castle. If the Sky Castle's assessment says so, then that is so — isn't that what we've all been told since we were children?"
Ramang's right. They told me I didn't have to believe my parents, but I should always believe the Sky Castle. But why? Why does this other-race's word bother me so much?
Ereb sank into thought. Then Boyle the healer drifted into his field of view.
That's right. This one has skill that surpasses human magic. And given how fluently he speaks the Central tongue, he's no savage. He's not stupid, either — not the kind of fool who'd tell a lie that would be found out in minutes. So where did this go wrong?
As Ramang said, the Sky Castle's records contain no falsehoods. Then...?
Ereb's eyes moved with the tangle of his thoughts, then locked onto a single point.
Ayla. The moment he looked at her, a suspicion began to bloom with startling force.
What if — and perhaps this was too wild a leap — he himself was in no different a position than that woman?
An assumption flashed through him.
The one who obtained the Sky Castle's data for me... who was it?
At last, Ereb's head turned, slowly, toward Ramang.
The retainer his father had assigned to him. A man who followed not Ereb, but his father. A knight who believed his master's word with blind faith.
It couldn't be you... no. Then that would mean it was Father's will? That he's already chosen my brother as heir?
Just as it had for Ayla, the moment Ereb's head went cold, a hypothesis assembled itself in his mind. It was a vision of hell, enormously disadvantageous to him, and he did not want to believe it. But he had been raised in a world of nobles where political schemes ran rampant. It was entirely possible. He had seen worse.
If this is true, then even retreating now would only hand them a pretext for a punishment severe enough to knock me out of the succession contest. And if I enter the forest, I die. In this situation, the best I can do — or at least the next best — is...
...to make this expedition succeed, no matter what, and return alive.
His eyes found Messi. A worthless other-race. And yet, at this moment, the most useful being here. The only key that could break him out of this trap.
Everyone stared at Ereb in shock.
That savage noble had just spoken the name of a worthless other-race. What that meant was unmistakable.
It meant he acknowledged him.
"Yes. An other-race from the Forest of Resentment. Messi of the Forest Tribe."
"You seem to be pitching me your usefulness right now... am I right? This doesn't sound like you're trying to talk me into retreating. More like if I simply follow your advice, I can achieve my goal."
Got him.
A smile of quiet triumph touched Messi's lips.
"As expected. You are a wise man, Young Master."