The Tiger's Den (2)
"Before we set out, there is something I must make clear."
Kalman said coldly.
"I do not know what your relation to that man is. To me, he is nothing more than a demon I first crossed paths with in the Demonic Realm. If you want my cooperation, you had better offer an explanation I can accept."
Well, well. He's come a long way. This from the man who used to swing his sword at me on the spot out of sheer suspicion—and now he's willing to hear an explanation.
"Do you know what kind of betrayal the demons find truly unforgivable?"
"…Tell me."
"Teaching the sword to the heir of House Esterji."
Kalman crossed his arms, as if inviting me to continue.
"As you know, my family is the sworn enemy of the demons. A private tutor? With them, even assassinating me would be letting them off easy. And yet Caroi stayed at my side for five whole years teaching me the sword—until his own funds ran bone-dry."
"My funds did not run dry."
Caroi cut in.
"In any case, I'll vouch for this man. If things go wrong, then you can just bury Ruby and me in the ground alongside him."
"…"
Kalman fell silent. He was evidently still weighing it.
"And your name is?"
Caroi asked. Kalman answered with a snort, so I had to supply it myself.
"Kalman, the Sword Duke."
"One of the present Pillars of the Empire, are you."
Caroi gestured with the tip of his blade at the corpses strewn around them.
"A Pillar ought to have the eye to read a sword wound. If I told you half of the dead rabble lying here fell by my hand—would that change your mind?"
Kalman's gaze slid over the bodies. Come to think of it, this was the man who had once identified a demon's weapon from the shape of its muscles alone, back at the Floating Castles.
Kalman deliberated a moment before speaking.
"Very well. I will cooperate for the time being. But if I find so much as a hint of something suspicious…"
"Then we can find out how sharp a Pillar's blade really is. It has been far too long since I last crossed swords with a human. I find myself looking forward to it."
Sparks flew between the two men.
"Caroi, spare me the posturing and guide us to my father."
I rebuked him. Both of them were formidable Grand Masters; if they ever started trouble in earnest, even I would struggle to rein them in.
"As I said, it's not far. We need only head a little northwest."
We set off after Caroi, toward the Black Dragon's territory.
Stragglers peeled away from the demon main force and swarmed us along the way, but every last one of them was cut down by the two swordsmen.
Midway, we also picked up traces of the Steel Guard—corpses of monsters that had clearly fallen to the knights. It was too early to breathe easy, but I felt more hopeful than before. When we had first come upon that battlefield carpeted with bodies, I had truly wondered whether this was the end.
"What manner of dragon is Ulkaard?"
"Only this much is known: she is on poor terms with the demons. But don't pin your hopes on her cooperating with humans, either. Dragons scorn every race but their own as inferior."
"Peep?"
Ruby chirped at the word dragon.
"What's this? You brought that thing along too?"
Caroi examined Ruby from every angle.
"But why is it still the same size? I fed it so diligently."
"It stays small because it likes it that way. You'd be amazed how much it's grown in the meantime."
"It can already regulate its own size?"
"So it seems."
"…Hoh."
If Caroi was marveling, then our Ruby really was a bright one. I would have to raise it well myself—into an honest dragon who didn't go about despising every other race, unlike the rest of its kind.
The Black Dragon's domain was blanketed in acid wetlands. Even in toxic swamps that seemed incapable of sustaining life, an ecosystem existed.
At the foot of the mountain, we found the mouth of a cave.
"So this is the entrance to the lair."
Guarding it was a company of puppets made of acid slime, melting even as they stood. They looked like marionettes conjured by sorcery.
"You're certain they retreated this way?"
"The trail does run into the cave, but there's no sign a battle was fought there."
Getting inside meant dealing with the puppets—unavoidable. But we couldn't know whether open hostility might provoke the Black Dragon.
"I'll take them."
Just as Kalman stepped forward, the puppets began withdrawing to either side.
"…They seem to have no wish to fight."
"Or it's a ploy to lure us in."
"And if not that, perhaps they were cowed by a Pillar's renown."
Caroi appeared to be enjoying himself, pricking at Kalman little by little. At this rate they'd have to settle it with a real duel before either of them came to his senses.
A path opened between the puppets, leading into the cave. I took point and passed through its middle. There was no longer any room to hedge.
The cave twisted and coiled, studded with glowing mushrooms. Puppets were plentiful here as well, their slime casting a faint green glow through the dark.
"Young Lord Iden!"
And there were the knights. Every one of them bore the marks of desperate fighting from head to toe.
"Where is my father?"
"Inside, my lord, but…"
In that instant, instinct told me something was wrong. I slipped past them with a lightening technique. Deeper in stood even more knights—at least fifty by the look of them. The moment they spotted me, they dropped in a hurry to their knees.
"Young Lord Iden!"
My father lay at their center. He lay straight-backed and utterly still. I sprinted the distance and dropped to the ground beside him.
"Father?"
His face was ghastly pale. He looked worse off than I did—and I suffered from the severed-pulse affliction. Beneath the wan skin, his veins stood out starkly.
He was not dead. He was breathing. But he could neither open his eyes nor speak. I gripped my father's hand with all my strength. There was not a trace of warmth in it.
None of it felt real—that the shield of the North had broken, and that I was sobbing.
Whenever Father departed for the north, we behaved as though no such thing as a demon had ever existed in this land.
But the demons had never once disappeared, and Father was, in the end, only a man. I understood that far, far too late.
"Young Lord."
I raised my head. It was Talon. He was in even worse shape than I was.
"There is something I must report. Something you must know, my lord."
"What is it?"
"We were ambushed by the enemy deep within Grimscale's territory. But that is not why the Duke lies in this state."
"…Then why?"
Talon's expression turned grim. For a moment, he seemed as though he might simply fade into the cave's gloom if he looked away.
"We successfully repelled the demons' first offensive and fell back to Stormrock. That was where the trouble began. Stormrock had been occupied by the Raven Knights, and they refused to open the gates."
"…What?"
"We petitioned them again and again, but the gates never showed the slightest sign of opening. With no other choice, the Duke made the decision to withdraw to the dragon's territory—the Neutral Zone. On the way, we collided head-on with the demons' main force and suffered heavy losses, and the Duke fell, gravely wounded by the enemy commander."
Chris.
So you truly have crossed the last line. And then you came strolling back and had the gall to prattle on about "strategic choices"?
Killing intent boiled up from my gut. Never in this life had I felt such murderous fury. I wanted to tear that cursed soul to shreds, piece by piece, so that it could never again enter the wheel of reincarnation.
"And there is one who has been aiding us."
Where Talon pointed stood a figure utterly out of keeping with this place. A girl in her late teens. White skin, black hair, and a black dress that seemed to swallow light itself.
"And here I thought you were one of my kin."
"To think you were nothing but a human girl."
My shoulders twitched. The power the girl possessed was beyond any question of strength or weakness—the only honest way to put it was that everything before my eyes had turned pitch-dark.
Ulkaard.
The girl was the very ruler of this land. The shape before me was nothing but an illusion. Fairy tales had mentioned it a hundred times—how dragons delighted in taking human form.
"Your name?"
"I am called Iden Esterji."
I offered the girl a full, respectful bow. She possessed intellect to rival the sages of humankind, and she had lived through thousands of years. Above all, she was my father's benefactor.
"So you are this man's son."
"I am."
"In three hundred years, you are the first human I have seen fight those revolting things so well. That is why I chose to intervene—nonaggression pact with them notwithstanding."
"Thank you. I will not forget this debt."
"Your thanks is premature. I have merely postponed his death."
Ulkaard raised her right hand. Black flame wavered above her palm.
"If I willed it, I could postpone it forever. But you humans would rather share even a life as brief as an instant, would you not?"
"You know us well."
As I said it, I laughed at my own folly. Transcendence arts, longevity arts—how empty all those techniques for forestalling death suddenly felt. To share an instant with the ones you love; that, in the end, was what I truly wanted.
"Then let us make a bargain."
The flame blooming from her hand wove itself into the figure of a demon with a heavy, powerful jaw.
"The commander of the demons is one called Ragnor. He is the culprit who has driven your father to death's door—and, as far as I am concerned, a tumor sprouting from my land."
In all my years of heir's education, I had heard the names of many demons who bore grudges against our house, but Ragnor was a stranger to me. Which meant he was a high noble of an entirely different order from the rabble pushed toward Stormrock.
"Bring him before me alive, and I shall restore your father to life."
Hold on. Alive?
"Ragnor is a Demon Duke," Caroi cut in.
"You haven't forgotten the teaching, I trust: should you ever meet a Demon Duke, you run, and you do not look back."
I knew. If even the formidable Grimscale had been merely a Count, then a Duke would be monstrous beyond measure.
They wanted me to capture alive a creature that could chew through Grand Masters and still have room for more. Ascending straight to the Immortal Realm would have been easier.
"How exactly do you define 'alive'?"
First, I had to pin down the definition.
"Is it enough that he still breathes?"
Ulkaard considered the question.
"I shall overlook a scratch or two. But no limbs lost, and no wounds that require healing."
One mountain range after another, then.
"If he arrives in such fighting condition, might that not prove… inconvenient for you, Lady Ulkaard?"
"That inconvenience is precisely what I desire."
"And if the capture goes poorly, and the Duke dies in the attempt?"
"Then the bargain never was."
Ulkaard wagged her fingers playfully, and each time, the flame at her hand rippled around my father.
"When you say you will save my father—in what manner? Whole and unharmed, as if nothing had happened? Or alive in a state worse than death?"
"That is a great many questions."
"This is the last. It is not a matter I can leave vague."
"I do not care for word games. When I say save, I mean restored whole to what he was before his wounds. It will be no trivial labor for me, either—the price of excising a tumor is never a light one."
Reviving a dead man whole and unbroken—was that truly possible?
"…Not at once."
First, buy time.
"Bringing the knights home is one matter, and we still have to drive the enemy force out of our territory."
Even at this moment, the demon main force was trampling south across my father's lands. Count Andrassy was no incompetent, but I could not promise how long he could hold against their main body.
"But give me enough time, and I will find a way."
"I place no limit upon your deadline. I have an eternity at my disposal. You, however, do not."
True. My time was limited—far more than that of other men.
"I accept the bargain."
I made my decision. It had never really been a dilemma at all. Had she demanded not the Demon Duke but the Demon King himself, I could not have turned back.
"Good."
The flame left her hand and came to rest upon my chest. I felt that alien power begin to work its change upon me.
"I will be watching you, Iden."