Too False to Be a Lie
A short knight muttered.
"But he's alive, isn't he?"
Someone answered him.
"How did he live? He wasn't even a knight back then... just some nobody of a hunter..."
Chris folded their reactions into the bluff.
"A body on fire goes looking for water. And there happened to be plenty of it. The two monsters had torn holes all over the ground while they fought, and with the storm coming down, every pit was full to the brim. Half out of my head, I threw myself into a pool. I was so hot the water came to a rolling boil."
"How does water boil? That makes no sense."
"He ate a sunfruit."
"Even so. If you were hot enough to boil the water around you, you'd have been dead long before that."
"Right. The blood in his body would have boiled away to nothing."
"The sunfruit must have kept him from dying."
The argument ran on.
"Even with my mind half gone, I understood. That much water wasn't going to be enough. I was going to die. Then there was a tremendous crash. The giant snake had fallen. Its throat was split wide open, and blood was pouring out in sheets. A moment later the human-faced tiger went down as well."
The listeners grieved over it.
"Spirit beasts, and they killed each other."
"What a waste."
Chris muttered to himself. I invented those creatures. What's there to waste? His manner, though, said otherwise. He settled his weight as if he agreed.
"A cold energy was flowing off the snake's blood. Thin ice was forming all around it. The moment I felt that chill, I went for it the way a mosquito goes for blood. I put my mouth to the snake and drank until my belly stuck out like a woman come to term. It went past cooling. I started to feel as if I were freezing, so I pulled away, and I lost consciousness on the spot. Then my body heated up again and I woke. I drank more blood, stopped when I cooled, and drank again when the heat came back... rest and drink, rest and drink. After a while I started on the snake's flesh, and while I was tearing into it I came up against a smooth, round lump. I had this feeling I absolutely had to eat it..."
"A force core."
"That's a force core."
Chris muttered inwardly. What in the world is a force core? Around him the noise swelled to a roar.
"You ate it?"
"Did you eat it?"
Chris nodded.
"Well, I'll be. Lucky."
"Lucky man."
Chris shook his head, his face grave.
"It was anything but luck. The moment I swallowed it, I knew. I'd made a mistake. I went past cooling and started to freeze. The shining fruit seemed to have spent itself. I crawled to the shining grass. I tore it up and ate it, then dug out the roots and chewed those too."
"Oh, hell. You can't do that."
"Why not?"
"Leave the sungrass alone and it'll bear another sunfruit."
"Ah. Of course."
"I meant to pin down where this happened once the story was done and go looking. If he ate the roots, it's finished."
Chris had lied about eating the roots for precisely that reason.
"Even after I'd eaten every last rootlet, my body wouldn't warm. I was in agony, rolling on the ground — moving without rest, hoping to raise my temperature even a little — when the human-faced tiger caught my eye. I thought, a monster made me suffer, so maybe another monster will cure me. I started drinking the tiger's blood. And amazingly, warmth began to come back into me. Then temptation got the better of me, and the human-faced tiger's..."
Whenever he broke off, the listeners filled the gap themselves.
"You ate the human-faced tiger's force core."
"You shouldn't have eaten that too."
"He's not a pig. Anything that goes in his mouth, down it goes."
Chris shrugged.
"Balance was hard to keep. Eat the human-faced tiger and I burned. Eat the snake and I froze. Hot, then cold... and yet, somehow, my body adapted. Later I got hungry and ate the flesh of both monsters. I only learned how much I'd changed after I left that place. I seemed about twelve times stronger than before. Just as much faster. I don't injure easily, and when I do, I heal at once. I can stay awake three nights, sleep three or four hours, and feel light as air."
Then he closed his mouth. A long silence followed before the count asked.
"Is that the end?"
"Yes."
"And becoming a knight?"
"I thought a body like this might do for a knight, so I knocked at the gate of Calmer Manor."
"And why hide your skill?"
"It wasn't that I meant to hide it. The manor's heir kept insisting we spar... I let him win once, and after that... well, you know how it goes."
"What is it I'm supposed to know?"
"He's the heir to the manor. I'm a commoner who used to hunt."
Baron Calmer's face went hard.
"You thought that if you beat my son, I would drive you out?"
Chris hunched his shoulders and turned both palms up. Then he looked around.
"There are a great many nobles here... and if I may speak plainly, there are more narrow men among them than generous ones."
"Ahem."
Coughs rose here and there.
Chris went on, watching their faces.
"My face still hurts where Sir Betrand struck it, and my throat hurts from all this talking. I'll withdraw."
The count allowed it.
"Go on, then."
"Thank you."
Chris bowed and left the hall.
Cedric, commander of the knights, asked.
"My lord, do you believe Timothy's story?"
"It's hard to believe. Harder still not to."
Betrand cut into the talk.
"Because the proof is right in front of us."
Cedric asked.
"Proof?"
"Timothy's body. That power is the proof itself."
Three days later the count's host left the city and marched north. Feeling the border of Grant Kingdom draw steadily nearer, Chris understood.
Damn it. This isn't a feud between domains!
The count's army was marching to war. Against Grant Kingdom.
Chris had no loyalty to the kingdom of his birth. He had crawled on his belly as a slave; patriotism had never had anywhere to take root. But having no affection for a place and invading it were different matters. He did not want to kill the soldiers of his homeland.
He wanted out. The count, one of the chief powers of Albar Kingdom, had his eye on him, and flight was not so easily managed.
Chris had the body of a grandmaster. He had never learned a single spell meant for real combat, but he had studied alone and mastered a great deal. He was especially skilled at handling mana, and vanishing so that no one knew would have been as easy as spooning up cold soup. The problem was what came after.
If he disappeared without a sound, what would the count do? Suspect him, and put out a warrant across the whole kingdom.
He wanted to avoid being hunted in Albar on top of Grant. Nor did he have any wish to shave down bone and tear his own flesh to remake his face yet again. For the time being, he decided to watch how the war took shape.
A fortnight later they joined a vast host — the army of Albar Kingdom. A rough glance, nothing exact, but there looked to be a hundred thousand at the least. This is a real war. Raise a force of that size and rumor was inevitable. His homeland, Grant Kingdom, would have mustered troops of its own. Why did this war start?
As a slave, ignorance had gone without saying, and even now that he was a knight he knew nothing of affairs between kingdoms. He couldn't begin to guess. Ask the count later.
The count's troops moved to their assigned position. The count and the other principals, guided by the central army, went to the supreme commander.
Chris's standing had been near the very bottom even among the knights, but after his spar with Betrand his value had risen, and he now moved with Betrand. His affiliation had changed as well, from Calmer Manor to the household of Count Trent.
Baron Calmer received formal sanction to pass his title and manor on to his son, and ten horses besides, as the price of approving the transfer.
Before a great tent that looked as if it could house fifty, Chris dismounted. When he had sparred with Betrand he had been promised a new sword; the man had not stopped there, and had furnished a horse and armor as well. The sword was ordinary, nothing one could call a famed blade, but the armor was a staggeringly expensive piece laid with magic. A prestige armament, they said, of the kind worn by knights approaching a Master's caliber.
Count Trent, Betrand, Knight-Commander Cedric, Viscount Cashew, and the other lords went into the tent in turn. Chris passed through the entrance last.
"Welcome, Count."
Marquis Dominic, supreme commander of Albar Kingdom, threw his arms wide to welcome Count Vernon Trent. The two were clearly close; they embraced with real warmth.
Marquis Dominic caught sight of Betrand and held out a hand.
"It's been a long time."
"Yes, my lord."
Betrand saluted smartly and took the hand. It was no simple handshake. The two gripped and tested their strength against each other. Who was losing became clear at once: color rose in Betrand's face.
As time passed, veins stood out on his forehead.
"Nnngh."
Only when a groan escaped Betrand did the marquis let go.
"You've improved a fair bit."
Betrand showed his forearm and grinned.
"I worked hard."
"Let me see your hand."
They stripped off their armor, opened the distance, and drew. The people around them stepped back to give them room. The instant Chris saw the marquis draw, he knew. A Master.
Chris had never once seen a Master fight. He fixed his eyes on the marquis and tried not to miss a thing — the swordwork, the footwork, the movement of the torso, the handling of the gaze, the breath, the presence, the use of mana.
In both speed and power, the marquis overwhelmed Betrand. He turned Betrand's sword aside, stepped in, and stopped his own blade at the young man's throat.
"Your strength is still wanting."
"I will apply myself."
"See that you do."
The marquis put up his sword.
"Even so, among those your age, you are the finest. Vernon raised his son well."
Betrand's gaze swung toward him, and Chris tried to kill it with a look. Don't.
Whether Betrand failed to read the look or read it and ignored it, he pointed at Chris.
"That's true for now. But that friend of mine may yet pass me."
What Chris had not wanted came to pass. The supreme commander took an interest.
"Ho. Is that so?"
"Yes."
The marquis beckoned him over. Chris cursed under his breath and walked. I don't want this attention.
"Who are you?"
Chris paid the commander his respects and answered.
"A knight newly joined to the Trent order. My name is Timothy. No surname was ever granted me."
The marquis looked at the count.
"Is this fellow that promising?"
"He is."
The marquis looked Chris up and down.
"Take off the armor."
Chris took it off.
"He doesn't look like anything special."
Betrand said,
"He has a body to rival a Master's."
"Oh? Truly?"
"I sparred with him myself."
"And the result?"
"I won. Only just."
The marquis looked at Chris and asked,
"If you have a Master's body, how is it you lost?"
Chris bowed his head and muttered.
"Because my swordplay, and my method of cultivating mana, are miserable."
The marquis tilted his head.
"If your mana training is miserable, how did you come by a Master's body? That doesn't hold together."
Delighted, Betrand repeated the tall tale Chris had spun. Out came the human-faced tiger, the snake that spat lightning, the sungrass, the sunfruit. The nobles in the tent were only half convinced.
"Can that even be real?"
"Hard to say."
"I don't believe it."
"The man himself is standing right there."
"Sounds like a lie."
"It's so much of a lie that I think it has to be true."
"You think so?"
"No one in his right mind would tell a lie like that."
"He might not be in his right mind."
The wrangling went on for a long while.