The Storm-Calling, Stumble-Through Rescue of Kang Jinwoo (1)
The front yard of Kang Jinwoo's restaurant stood at the mouth of Kalian Forest, and there the 1st Squad of the Silbaerin Knights met the morning after searching late into the night. The knights on the last watch looked up at the rising sun and roused the rest of the company.
"Haaah... I'm sore in every joint."
"Tell me about it. Where do you figure they'll have us searching today? We didn't turn up a single trace."
One by one the knights crawled out of their tents, talking as much to shake off the last of their sleep as anything else. Yesterday's search had run its full course without the slightest progress. Would today be any different?
Every last member of the Silbaerin Knights held a deep gratitude toward Kang Jinwoo. It was precisely because of that gratitude that they had been able to answer so forcefully the moment word of his disappearance reached them.
But Silbaerin had never been a large territory to begin with. Farmland, the commercial district, the military quarter—split broadly into those three, it was mostly cold mountain and rough forest, and the places where people actually put down roots and lived were few and fixed.
Today marked the third day since they had realized he was missing. No one knew when he had actually vanished, so the true span of his absence was surely longer still. In a territory as modest as Silbaerin, even stretched to its limit, a disappearance could last a week at most. Had he gone south toward the capital, a sighting would have been reported long ago. Had he remained inside the residential districts, it would have been impossible not to find him.
And yet Kang Jinwoo had not been found. That meant he had headed into Kalian Forest, or else the Kalian Mountain Range—and once that was so, the search drew near the territory of Nuardel, where humans could scarcely search at all. Their lord and commander, Duke Kailan, could not possibly be ignorant of the fact.
"Hmm. Why hasn't he come out yet?"
"Right? Breakfast is nearly on us..."
Huddled in the clearing and checking over their gear, the knights felt a prickle of unease. On any ordinary day their lord rose at first light to prepare the operation. Why had he still not appeared?
It was not only Kailan who was missing. This was, strictly speaking, an operation in progress, and if a commander became unable to issue orders for any reason, command passed at once to the officer of the next rank down. Within a force made up of the 1st Squad alone, that officer was the squad leader, Arthur. And Arthur, too, was nowhere to be seen.
"Where did the both of them go? Don't tell me they're still asleep."
"No chance. They didn't go on ahead and start the search without us, did they?"
The murmuring swelled. Luke, leader of the 1st Platoon, rose carefully from his place, approached the command tent, and called for Arthur and Kailan.
"Commander. Squad Leader. Are you there?"
"......"
No answer came from within. Luke stepped slowly inside.
"Commander... huh?"
The tent held only the traces of recent use. Not a soul in sight. Flustered, Luke looked this way and that until his eyes found a slip of paper on the desk.
Uh... what's this?
Return ahead of us. Should Arthur and I fail to come back within a week, submit the letter beside this as a petition to His Majesty the Emperor. We shall return before this tea grows cold.
A few short lines, in Kailan's unmistakable hand. They had left nothing but this scrap of paper and charged straight into Nuardel? Both of them? A duke of a territory counted among the Empire's principal military regions?
You've got to be kidding me...
With a trembling hand, Luke touched the teacup set beside the note. It was ice-cold.
"It's already gone stone cold..."
And so the 1st Squad of the Silbaerin Knights returned to the city, having produced a miraculous tally: gains, zero; personnel, minus two.
The sun hung low and slanted, announcing morning. Bright light poured down, only to spend itself against the dense press of trees, so that Kalian Forest lay dim even after dawn. The marker proclaiming this ground imperial territory was long behind them.
It was a jungle as thick as any sweltering southern wood, and yet its life was entirely of the north. Two men drove through that strange landscape without hesitation, advancing along a game trail and cutting down every obstacle that barred the way. Steel whispered and bit. Thanks to that crude, brute-force method, their pace was nothing an ordinary man could match.
Haa... what does he think he's doing, really.
Arthur, a Sword Expert, was breaking the trail at the front, and he was in profound distress over their situation. Even granting that they had cleared every urgent affair of state before setting out, Kailan was a duke. A duke. This was not a man who ought to improvise an infiltration into what amounted to enemy ground, where any danger might lie in wait. If something happened to his person, who was supposed to look after Silbaerin?
And Nuardel was a nation in its own right. Was a high noble truly free to barge in without His Majesty the Emperor's leave, or the leave of Nuardel's own ruler?
Arthur glanced back at Kailan, walking behind him. Their eyes met, as if on cue.
"Hm? What is it?"
"It's only... even now, wouldn't it be better if you went back, made a proper report, reorganized the men, and returned?"
"Arthur. Didn't I tell you I was fine? Out in a northern backwater, this is the sort of thing you smooth over with a little discretion. Just clear the path."
"Yes, sir..."
If no one made it a problem, it wasn't a problem. And if a problem arose? Bring overwhelming force to bear, and erase the problem itself. It was the course of a conversation they had already repeated several times over. They judged that Kang Jinwoo's actual time missing would come to a week, and Arthur understood well enough that every hour counted.
He avoided Kailan's eyes as best he could and studied the man's bearing. A face set in earnest gravity. A presence standing razor-sharp, ready to answer any sudden turn. Arthur let his gaze drop a little lower.
Light as a feather. For all the weight of that upper body, Kailan's steps moved as if he might take flight. One might have taken it for the secret footwork of a seasoned warrior. Arthur knew better.
He's just excited. Excited at the thought of moving his body for the first time in ages.
In his younger days at the Imperial Academy, unable to contain his overflowing hot blood, Kailan had sparred with all manner of opponents day after day. Then power had been handed down to him, and his shoulders had grown heavy along with it. They had given him the epithet Mad Spear for the way he wielded a spear like a man possessed and relished a fight like a lunatic—and yet for years now that name had rung hollow, for Kailan had scarcely had cause to take up a spear at all.
"Heh. Thinking of our mess officer suffering out there... even my spear is trembling."
A faint shiver ran the length of the shaft. Of course, Kailan was also regarded as a lord of high virtue, so there was surely some part of him hurrying for Kang Jinwoo's sake. Still, old habits die hard. He was a warrior to the bone, it seemed, and there was no helping it. Well—the water was already spilled. Fretting over it further wouldn't change a thing.
Arthur gave up and focused on clearing the way. The farther northeast they went, the thicker the fog grew, until it seemed a single misstep might cost them all sense of direction.
His Lordship said he knows the way, so it should be fine... right?
Arthur trusted Kailan and kept opening the path. Kailan followed without a word, which suggested they weren't going the wrong way. Setting aside how he knew the route at all—by what landmark was he finding it, in visibility like this? The question nagged until Arthur asked.
"What are you looking at to find the way? I can't see a thing."
"Hm? I'm not looking at anything in particular."
"Then how...?"
"We're just going northeast."
Two perfectly formed question marks seemed to hook themselves in the air over Arthur's head. What in the world was that supposed to mean? The man had declared, bold as a banner, that he knew the way, and dragged Arthur out here on the strength of it.
"I know what you're thinking. Earlier there wasn't time to explain, so I spoke loosely. There is a method."
"Truly?"
"To understand this method, one must first know of the Silbaerin house..."
"Ah, then never mind. My curiosity has quite evaporated."
"Aww..."
Who knew how grave the secret might be? He wasn't about to listen blindly. Sometimes ignorance was the better medicine, and if he learned something only to let it slip, the trouble would be enormous. Kailan, who had fully expected to be pressed for the secret, felt unreasonably put out.
There was a blood tie between the Silbaerin house and the elves, and because of it a pure mana manifested all the more often even in those who were human. That pure mana was the qualification required to enter Nuardel. His daughter, Ishilla, was not here now, and in all of Silbaerin the purest mana belonged to Arthur and to Kailan himself. They could not have brought the other knights along in any case. Their mana was not pure enough to meet the requirement.
Arthur's gotten a bit prickly...
He seemed stifled by conduct unbecoming of a duke, but Arthur was still Arthur—a loyal comrade Kailan could trust with his back, and a steadfast guard. He had become a Sword Expert of late, besides, so his martial strength was considerable. With an Arthur like that, and himself, who had done his share of spear-work in his younger days, Kailan judged that the two of them would be enough.
"Oh? The fog's thinning..."
"This direction is certain! Let's hurry!"
The knotted, bulging tree roots sank away, and the fog began to thin. Proof that they were drawing near Nuardel. Arthur and Kailan pressed on at once. Kailan was simply looking forward to it, as if the whole affair would be nothing but fun. Arthur's worries ran ahead of him.
Nuardel... I've never been.
A country so closed that not even the simplest news escaped it, let alone diplomacy or trade. Humans who had so much as met an elf were rare. To visit their country? This was an experience even the imperial house could scarcely claim, one that could be counted on a single hand.
What sort of order did the elven nation keep? Had their long lives let them achieve wealth and strength of arms long ago, a self-sufficient realm with no need to deal with the world? Or were they closer to a devout religious state, preserving the elves' lofty dignity and grace?
Right... they specialized in magic and spirit arts.
Innate reserves of mana and an affinity for spirits, born of the World Tree's grace—add to that the lifespan of a long-lived race, and the martial power of each individual elf far outstripped a human's. What let humans hold an advantage against such elves was numbers. Overwhelm them with a crushing population, and turn the situation from a fight between individuals into a war between armies. And yet the ones now setting foot in Nuardel were a mere two humans, however freakishly strong. Worry was only natural.
They pressed on, and then—
A low hum rose from the empty air. Arthur, leading the way, was flung backward with a grunt and a dull thud, rebounding off nothing at all.
"Hmm... so this is that Vert Veil, is it."
"What... some kind of barrier?"
"That's right. Step aside a moment. There's something I need to try."
Kailan stood before the veil and reached a hand into the empty air. A resistance met him, like thrusting a hand into a marsh—but once he passed the surface, it parted and let him sink in smoothly. Then he circulated the mana of his entire body, beginning from that hand. Light burst outward.
"Wh-what. The scenery changed."
"The veil... it opened. Let's go in."
A secret of the house, passed down by his father—and that father had received it from his own, a transmission descending from ancestors still further back.
Before the biting cold that steeps the north, the verdant green itself shall draw inward.
Strictly speaking, it had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with mana mixed with elven blood. Nor had the Vert Veil drawn inward. It had sensed that aura and granted them passage. All the same, Kailan and Arthur stepped through into a landscape of stark contrast.
A world brimming with benevolent vitality met them the instant they crossed—a pleasant temperature, neither too hot nor too cold, and fruit hanging lush and ripe even on trees that looked like untended wild growth. Storybooks described it as the elves' paradise, watched over by the World Tree. Nuardel was a fantastical country worthy of the phrase.
Arthur and Kailan forgot, for a moment, that they had properly set foot in Nuardel's territory, and simply took in the land around them. A mere human did not get many chances to behold the World Tree's creations.
They walked deeper still, and something fragrant began to prick at their noses. A sweetness, as if zucchini, eggplant, and the like had been left to simmer low and slow, threaded through with the bright freshness of herbs. But one scent among them refused to be named. By its green freshness it was plainly a vegetable, and yet the smell carried a deep, clinging savor, underpinned by a bright sour-saltiness.
A stomach growled. Kailan and Arthur had skipped a meal and rushed toward Nuardel since the crack of dawn. They had brought plenty of hardtack, but resisting a scent this violently appetizing was another matter. Drawn as if spellbound, they approached the source, and the moment they came within arm's reach of the heart of the fragrance, voices reached them. Arthur and Kailan dropped low on instinct.
"Nom, nom. Sir Jinwoo is definitely a master. Even the Grand Elder couldn't make food like this."
"I know. Honestly, we ought to keep him bound to House Sildiel for life."
"Ahaha—!"
Two sentry elves, looking a little slack and dopey, sat side by side on a stump, shoveling down eggplant, zucchini, and something blazing red. The two men had come following an appetizing smell, but that no longer mattered. They had just overheard a conversation they could not let pass.
Arthur and Kailan exchanged a look.
You must not kill them. Subdue them only. Please.
I know.
Kailan's hand closed brutally around the shaft of his spear. He let out a short breath—and then the world cracked.
"Kyaaaaah!!"
"Wh-what?!"
His spear-strike had leapt like a shot and shattered the stump. But elves were elves. With the agility peculiar to their kind, they slipped the ambush and snatched up their weapons in a scramble. While they were still getting their gear in order, Kailan spoke with perfect composure.
"No!! Didn't I say you weren't to kill them? If that had landed, he'd be flat as a sheet of dried fish!"
"I know. It didn't land."
"Haa..."
Kailan answered Arthur's scolding with a grin. It was less a smile than a madman's laugh.