The Deepest Prison (4)
The emergency escape route prepared for the nobles opened onto the central plaza. In ordinary times it existed so that nobles, finished with their inspection of the prison, could ascend to the surface with their dignity intact, climb into carriages already waiting, and return to their estates under immediate escort. Now, though, the place was no different from a kill line—a net the imperial soldiers had drawn tight to catch the prisoners who had broken out.
Guards lit every corner of the plaza with torches and stood a murderous watch, and with that, every trace of townsfolk moving outside had been cut off. Through the silent square, only the occasional clack of armor joints carried.
"This way."
Go Tae-min gestured to the young man and slipped into the alley beside a bakery that looked fairly new. Beyond it, the grind of soldiers' boots chewing up the ground drew steadily closer.
"Up you go."
He braced the young man's waist and boosted him onto the wall. The far side was an empty lot, sunk in lifeless quiet. Crossing it, they found alleys tangled like spiderwebs, mouths gaping open in the dark.
Sometimes holding his breath, sometimes sprinting like a shadow, Go Tae-min cut across the city. At the sight of it, the young man—dragging his boots and barely keeping up—asked, baffled.
"How have we not run into a single person?"
He had the black robe Go Tae-min had been wearing pulled over him, and on his feet a jailer's boots that looked roughly his size. The shoes were too big; his insteps had to be rubbed raw. Even so, he followed with stubborn grit.
Checking the next corner, Go Tae-min answered short.
"You read the patterns that repeat around you."
"Repeating patterns?"
"Forest, jungle, desert—every environment has a rhythm. A pattern that comes back. Noise, the way shadows move, things like that. Read them, and you can draw the bigger picture."
The young man turned the explanation over for a moment, then nodded.
"The bigger picture... So it's like looking down from above."
A few other things were required as well, but Go Tae-min didn't bother to add them. The sense was something he had beaten into himself as an operative. For a man who had to slip deep into enemy ground alone, cut the power, and take security apart, reading the rhythm of his surroundings had been a necessity tied directly to staying alive.
"This way."
From there he moved the young man through the night streets like a shadow, and before long they reached the outermost edge of Rasgrid. The next gate, though, was on an entirely different order from the alleys behind them.
A massive wall enclosed the whole city, solid as bedrock. Only by crossing that hulking structure—one that swallowed even the moonlight—and getting outside could this be called a true escape. The gates would already be sealed, and the top of the wall would be crawling with defenders and archers.
"Stay low. Match my footsteps."
Whispering it, Go Tae-min dropped his body and melted into the dark. The young man swallowed dry, clutched the hem of the robe, and followed.
From atop the wall came the intermittent tread of boots and the grumbling of the defenders. Whenever the torch flames wavered in the wind, the darkness beneath the wall rolled like a wave. In each fleeting instant when the light receded farthest, Go Tae-min chose the deepest of the shadow and set his foot down.
So we made it this far.
At last an old drainage outlet, left to rot in the dark, showed itself—the base of the fourth watchtower, counting from the eastern gate. The rusted iron bars across it had corroded with age, looking ready to crumble at a touch. The ground dipped there, so the archers' eyes up on the tower never reached this spot. In their place, the smell of damp moss and the stench of sewage stabbed at the nose.
Go Tae-min stopped before the bars and scanned the surroundings. Among the irregular piles of stone stacked along the base of the wall, there was a space that had been packed down unnaturally. His gaze pierced the darkest gap beneath the pile.
"A tunnel?"
"Yeah. A hidden path the smugglers dug. The entrance is camouflaged so well the garrison hasn't found it."
He dropped to a knee and slid his hand into the gap of a foundation stone that jutted out wrong. From the outside it looked like nothing more than crumbled wall debris, but when he put force on it at a certain angle, a heavy stone slid aside without a sound. Beneath it, a deep, dark hole yawned—just wide enough for one adult to crawl through.
"Th-this can't be..."
The young man behind him let out a small gasp. Under a wall of despairing height, a narrow passage opened as if by miracle, and a faint hope gathered in his eyes. The imperial army's layered encirclement, a city like an iron fortress—through all that despair, the certainty that he could truly get out had finally reached him.
"I'll go first. Right behind me."
Go Tae-min folded himself in without hesitation. The passage was narrow and damp, but the farther in they went, the more it became a fairly solid tunnel, shored up with supports. Clearly a secret route the smugglers had spent a long time carving. The young man came through the tight entrance after him.
How long they crawled, he couldn't have said. Beyond the clammy earthen walls, cool air began to mix with the damp scent of forest.
Hah.
Go Tae-min let out a breath of relief. The worst of it was behind them. They had left the zone where the Empire's watch was tightest; from here, if they only set their route right, they could shake pursuit well enough. A dense forest that killed line of sight was no different from his own yard for a man built for infiltration and concealment.
Watching the faint moonlight filtering through beyond, he drew one last breath. He had reached the end of the tunnel and was about to climb into the open—in that very instant.
"Hmm. To think something would actually crawl out of this hole."
"...!"
A cool young man's voice, from overhead. Go Tae-min froze mid-motion, still in the posture of pushing his upper body toward the surface. Lifting his gaze, he found a massive silhouette standing with the moonlight at its back. Silver armor sheathed the whole body without a gap, and on the chest a shield emblem was worked in gold: a roaring lion.
A knight.
Why is there a knight here...?
Go Tae-min stared, blank for a moment. Then he bit down on his lip. The imperial army hadn't left this hole unattended out of stupidity. They already knew where the rats would pop out, and they had posted their sharpest blade at that chokepoint.
Outside the hole, the knight who had been strolling at his ease along the narrow clearing beyond the wall looked down at him with interest.
"When I got orders from Sir Blaine to watch this hole, I thought it was a waste of time. But I've hooked one little rat, so perhaps I ought to call it luck."
"..."
"I'll arrest you for breaking imperial law and daring to dig a secret passage under the walls. Of course, you're welcome to run. Do that, and I gain grounds to execute you on the spot. Well? Care to thrash around a little?"
He came closer with a leisurely smile—then caught sight of the young man poking his head out of the tunnel behind Go Tae-min. In an instant the smile vanished, and his brow twisted viciously.
"That one... a heretic!"
The air froze. The knight set his hand on the sword at his waist. It lasted only a moment, but the killing intent pouring off him filled the mouth of the tunnel.
This just got messy.
Without taking his eyes off the knight, Go Tae-min rose slowly. Behind him was the target, not yet fully clear of the tunnel. Turning his back and running now would be the same as handing the man over.
"So the devil's lackeys moved to spirit him away after all! Did you think things would go your way on imperial soil?!"
Before the sword had even fully cleared, the knight's body exploded forward. Go Tae-min instinctively crossed his blades and guarded high. What crashed down on him was no simple cut. It was overwhelming brute force, like a boulder the size of a house dropping on his head.
SKREEEE—!
"Guh—!"
His knees buckled, and he slammed into the ground. The jet-black blade screamed as it met the knight's sword. Strength and speed—neither was on the same level as anyone he had faced until now. The knight piled more weight onto the blade, as if mocking him.
"Hard front teeth, for a mouse."
Go Tae-min clenched his jaw and threw his body sideways. Forcing off the crushing pressure, barely slipping the attack, he used the recoil to spring up like a coil—and swung, slipping past the red trajectory lines.
"Slow."
The knight flicked every one of those attacks aside with the tip of his sword and snuffed them out lightly, the overwhelming ease of an adult batting away a child's tantrum with the back of a hand. Three red trajectory lines clung in around Go Tae-min's body.
I'll die like this.
With his empty left hand he drew the dagger at his chest and locked the weapons together. Bracing the greatsword's heavy mass with the dagger, he shed the impact off to the side, and off that instant of friction he launched himself along a diagonal. The target was the nape—the only span of bare skin where helm and armor met. A trajectory for cutting a man's breath without a sound, carved into his body through endless repetition in his days with the Ninth Operations Unit, shot through the air.
CLANG—!
The dagger never reached skin. The knight's gauntlet stopped it. Without so much as turning his head, he slapped the blade aside with his left hand and kicked the chest Tae-min had left open.
"Khuk—!"
Struck square in the solar plexus, Go Tae-min flew back like a sheet of paper and slammed into the wall. The air left his lungs all at once. His vision strobed white.
Damn it.
Steadying his swaying body, he spat the blood pooling in his mouth. This was bad. The man was strong—far too strong. Tae-min could take pride in having reached a certain mastery of fighting, but the thing in front of him was a power of another order entirely.
Didn't they say knights were high-ranking NPCs who don't even show up until the World League, at the earliest?
No chance of winning like this. He had to find another way. He dragged in a rough breath and charged again.
CLANG! CLANG-CLANG—!
Sharp metal shrieks tore the forest's silence without pause. That scream of friction rode the night air and spread, pulling the presences atop the wall toward them. Far off, he could feel torches wavering, the noise rising.
"Of all places to run into a knight..."
Adrian, hiding at the mouth of the tunnel, watched with a face gone bloodless. In his eyes Go Tae-min looked desperate. Every time the knight's sword grazed him, the leather armor tore, and red blood seeped from the cuts. The more wounds piled up, the more visibly heavy his movements became. A losing fight, obvious to anyone. At this rate he clearly wouldn't last.
In truth, Go Tae-min's own senses were creeping toward their limit. The throb in his chest and the burning in his lungs gnawed slowly at his reason.
I have to change the flow.
He clenched his teeth. A sensation boring through his whole body raised a chill along his spine. Tricks wouldn't work. Hit-and-run had a clear limit against this monster, and in pure swordsmanship he wasn't even in the same conversation.
I'll have to try everything I've got.
He suddenly gave a long step back and hurled the dagger he'd been holding in a reverse grip.
TING—!
It struck the tip of the knight's sword and rang clear.
Let's see you dodge this one too.
As the knight closed the distance and drove in, Go Tae-min boldly threw even Waldstein, the last weapon in his hand.
"A-are you insane?! Your sword—!"
The knight's eyes flew wide; he couldn't hide the shock. To a man who had lived his whole life steeped in chivalry, a swordsman discarding the blade that was his very life was something he could not even imagine. The sword that split the air flew for his chest, and that unexpected ambush did its job beautifully. To block it, he had no choice but to raise his own blade on reflex.
Go Tae-min's hands were free in that exact instant.
Now!
He kicked off the ground like a shot. Beneath the knight's raised arm, a gap lay wide open. Without hesitation he struck the wrist hard and drove in.
CLATTER!
The greatsword lost its center in the knight's grip, traced the air, and tumbled to the ground.
"...!"
Disarmed so suddenly, the knight's eyes shook. Go Tae-min pressed the momentum, wrapped the man's waist, and threw them both at the dirt. They rolled savagely over the rough ground.
"Guh—!"
The moment the wild spin stopped, a scream of a groan leaked out of him. The weight of the heavy plate the knight wore was grinding him like a millstone. When the dust settled, the knight was on top.
"Did you think you'd win just because I don't have a sword?!"
Snarling, he pinned Go Tae-min's right arm under his knee. The pain was as if the bone would crush; Tae-min couldn't even scream. His left arm was seized in the knight's grip and stripped of freedom, and with the arm he had left the knight grabbed his throat.
"K-kh...!"
His breath stopped dead. He twisted desperately, kicked his legs up, strained to knock the choking arm away. The knight's strength was past imagining, and the armor crushing his whole body made even a sliver of space impossible to win. His vision grew distant. He thrashed and tried to knee the man, but his knee only slammed into solid greaves and hurt as if it would shatter.
As his senses dulled, the armor's crushing weight began to recede. Even so, he didn't give up. Scrabbling, he kept driving his knee up and desperately twisted his head, fighting for an airway. Veins standing out, he strained to pull his pinned arm free. The knight only looked down at him, cold.
"Useless struggling. Farewell."
The hand on his throat tightened further, as if to crush bone. Strength drained from the limbs that had been thrashing, and the consciousness he'd been clinging to thinned.
That was when Adrian, watching from behind with a face gone white, came running with a shout.
"Get your hand off him! You bastard!"
He threw his whole strength into the knight. It wasn't nearly enough to shove a man that size, but it was enough to split a gaze thick with killing intent.
"Out of the way, heretic!"
The knight swung his arm as if swatting a fly.
THUD!
Struck by the steel gauntlet, Adrian rolled weakly across the ground. But in that instant of recoil, the knee pinning Go Tae-min's right arm lifted—just a fraction.
"...Kh, ghh...!"
He didn't miss it. Ignoring pain that felt like the arm would shatter, he yanked it free and struck hard at the forearm on his throat.
"Hahk! Hah—hah—hah!"
At last his airway opened. As he sucked in a rough breath, the vision sinking into darkness came back fast. Senses that had been blurring sharpened again with the smell of raw iron, and the chain of thought that had been breaking reconnected, clear. He twisted, trying to slip out in the moment the knight's balance broke.
The response was far quicker than he'd expected. The knight caught his shoulder and slammed him back into the ground.
"Where do you think you're going?! As if the likes of you could get away!"
He stopped choking and put that overwhelming strength into pinning him instead. Then he drove his fist into the exposed stomach, chest, and face.
THUD!
"...!"
With every blow, chunks of consciousness tore away. The steel gauntlet layered over the studded leather glove was no fist. It was a heavy hammer.
THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!
Go Tae-min instinctively raised both forearms over his face. The mask, at least, kept him from blacking out in a single hit. Even so, the impacts pouring over his guard shook his entire skull. The bones of his arms screamed, and hot blood gushed from his split lips. Droplets mixed into every rough breath and stitched the air in a messy spray.
Now!
Reading the rhythm of the fists from behind his guard, he twisted and slipped the punch. In the same motion he grabbed the arm planted on the ground and pulled, hooking one leg over the knight's shoulder. The other leg drove in under the armpit, and he clamped down hard with his thigh.
A jiu-jitsu hold—the triangle choke.
"...?!"
Armpit and neck squeezed shut, breath cut off, the knight's eyes flew wide. He had never imagined an airway could be compressed this way. His face, neck crushed against his own shoulder, turned red.
CRRK—
Under the force of thighs swollen as if they might burst, the leather guard on the knight's neck warped with a grotesque sound.
"Grrraaagh!"
He let out a beastlike howl and, with core strength alone, lifted Go Tae-min and slammed him into the ground. With his remaining arm he hammered the stomach and clawed at the thigh choking him. Nails dug in and blood ran in streams, but Tae-min put his weight behind it and wrung the knight's neck with every last shred of strength he had.
Please—just—!
"Mmph! Mmgh! Mmph!"
With nothing but the will to kill each other, the two men wrung out what life they had left, each in his own way.
How long it went on, he couldn't have said.
THUMP—
The knight's body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Even then Go Tae-min held on a good while longer before he released the thigh. The knight's body, face gone purple, slumped bonelessly.
"Hah... hah... hah... hah..."
Spread-eagled on the earth, Go Tae-min dragged in rough breaths. He had squeezed out so much that his legs trembled as if in spasm. His back burned from rolling across the ground tangled with the knight, and there wasn't a corner of his body that didn't hurt.
The young man came over, his face a mask of blood.
"Th-thank goodness. I thought you were dead..."
He was a wreck himself from the gauntlet and the tumble, but he seemed more worried about Go Tae-min sprawled on the ground than about his own pain. Still stretched out flat, Tae-min barely forced out a line. A hoarse voice leaked through his torn lips.
"Hah... hah... My weapons... bring them."
"Ah! Yes—here."
Once he'd gathered himself, Go Tae-min forced his body up, enduring the pain stabbing his lungs. This was no time to get drunk on the fact that he was alive. After a commotion like that, soldiers from atop the wall would come pouring down before long.
"We move."
Braced by Adrian, he put strength into his staggering legs. Cool night wind slipped through the leather armor torn in the grapple. He could barely twitch a finger, but he held his flesh together on will alone.
"That way."
He jerked his chin toward the dark forest beyond the wall. The dense woods, where even moonlight didn't reach, were their only refuge now.
"Understood."
Toward the dark, the two of them took limping steps, leaning on each other.