The Pursuit (2)
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
The camels’ hooves hammered against the desert floor with savage intensity.
“Find him! He couldn’t have gone far!”
“Yes, sir!”
At the sound of the Cellabris soldiers and their commander following close behind, the boy held his breath and curled his body into a tight ball.
Every time he felt the shifting of the sand and the soft, gritty texture against his skin, his heart hammered in his chest. Eventually, the sound of the hooves began to fade in one direction. Even after the camels had moved on, the boy remained curled in his hiding spot, counting to one hundred in his head.
[Move now.]
The voice spoke. The boy sprang up from the sand.
[Go around the dune in front of you, angling to the right.]
The boy acted without a moment’s hesitation, following the voice’s instructions. As he rounded the right side of the dune, he found a patch of shadow cast by the angle of the moonlight. He moved through the darkness until he reached the opposite side of the dune.
There, an incredibly long downhill slope appeared. This dune was strangely different on either side.
[Hurry, move.]
“Okay.”
The boy hurried down the slope. Miraculously, every time he ran, the sand slid down in a soft cascade, covering his footprints behind him.
He had received the voice’s help several times since leaving the royal tomb, now roughly two kilometers behind him. The army’s pursuit was incredibly thorough. Yet, whenever they drew near, the voice would command him to press himself flat against a dune, and the sand would cover his body as if by some ghostly trick.
There was no doubt in his mind that this was the work of the voice’s owner.
A mountain of questions surged within him, but he decided to focus entirely on relying on the voice for the moment.
[Keep your spirits up. We’re almost there.]
“Haa, haa. Where, where are we going?”
[In the direction where the sun and moon set.]
“The west?” the boy asked, his breath hitching from the effort of talking while walking. “Why that way?”
[There is a tributary of a river to the west. We must cross it.]
A river to the west. The boy knew what that river was. No one in Cellabris was unaware of the river that originated in the kingdom and stretched out in a cross shape. The name of the river that cut across the path of the sun and moon was Laoras.
The problem was that the boy couldn’t understand why he had to cross it.
“Why the river?”
[Because we can shake off the pursuers. Did you really intend to keep dragging them along?]
The boy was left speechless. Deep down, he knew. This kingdom had become a place where he could no longer exist. But to a small boy who had known nothing but the royal palace, the reality that had suddenly descended was so harsh he wanted to look away.
“How much further?”
[Nine dunes away.]
Nine dunes. Just hearing it made him feel exhausted. But the next words made him bite his lower lip hard.
[I’ve used up almost all my strength. We must hurry.]
“What happens when your strength runs out?”
[I won’t be able to advise you.]
A predictable question, a predictable answer. The boy was satisfied with that. The conversation with the voice was a lifeline, keeping him going when his heart was so overwhelmed he could barely stand it.
[What matters now isn’t talking. Once we cross the river, things will be fine for the moment. It won’t be too late to talk then.]
It was true. The boy nodded to the voice and pushed strength into his legs, moving forward.
He crossed the dunes diligently. It was a relief not to worry about leaving footprints. However, the problem arose when he crossed the seventh dune.
“Did you find him?”
“We haven’t!”
Huran, the captain of the guard responsible for a corner of the capital of Cellabris, wore a frustrated expression.
Why did this have to happen on his shift of all times?
He had arrived at the scene late, summoned by his subordinates who had brought the news.
Huran was a man who preferred to live quietly, always doing just enough to get by. His work was no different. Since his days as a guard, he had possessed a sense of duty regarding the capital’s security, but he usually handled even the most explosive conflicts with ease.
Impressed by his ability to resolve things smoothly, the citizens in his sector had recommended him without hesitation when a position opened up in the guard management.
“If it’s Huran, we can trust him to handle it.”
Smooth conflict resolution. It wasn’t something that stood out on the surface, but it was Huran’s greatest strength.
However, the fact that his "do-just-enough" philosophy kept being encroached upon was a truly troublesome matter for him.
And that reputation had spread among those in positions of power, eventually leading him to meet a figure he could never have imagined.
“Are you Huran? I hear your work is smooth.”
He never expected the Sun Priest Order, the royal priesthood, to seek him out. And for such a grave matter—finding the cause of the National Soul Festival’s failure.
“Good grief. A servant spiriting away his own son. They’ve got more guts than I thought.”
Recalling that moment, Huran gritted his teeth, inhaled, and let out a long breath.
“I’m good at untying knots, not weaving them.”
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”
Regardless, Hamses had trusted him with this order. He had to do what he could.
“He’s just a young child. This is a direct order from Priest Hamses. Yet here we are, riding camels, and we can’t catch one kid. Do you think that makes sense?”
“No, sir.”
Was his voice too low? Huran moved his camel toward the soldier, who was standing at strict attention, and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Try a little harder. Whether we get results or not, we need to show that we’re making an effort. Dealing with superiors is always like that.”
“……Yes, sir!”
The soldier reacted a beat late to the encouragement, which had come at an unexpected moment when he’d been bracing for a scolding.
“Still, if we’re going to suffer, we might as well do it systematically, right?”
The soldier who had come to report tilted his head, thinking, Isn’t that contradictory? Huran asked.
“Where have you searched?”
“We searched the eastern area, then moved in a semicircle through the south and north, expanding the radius.”
“The east? Is there a reason you chose that as the first direction?”
“Because there’s no river there, sir.”
To the soldier who asked with wide eyes, Huran replied with a knowing look.
“So you’re thinking that a young boy wouldn’t cross a river in this freezing desert night. Is that it? And you included the south in the search because there’s a bridge?”
“That’s correct.”
“Hmm.”
It was a convincing explanation. The royal palace of Cellabris was located at the top right where two rivers intersected. Among them, the Knus River, which flowed vertically, wasn’t very wide, and even when it rained, it rarely flooded, so there was a bridge the capital’s citizens could use.
“The reason you expanded the search radius is…… no, don’t tell me. I’ll guess.”
Too wide a search radius to catch one child. The time elapsed since the National Soul Festival. Using these two clues, Huran reached his conclusion.
“It’s because there are no footprints.”
The subordinate nodded and added, “Yes. That’s right. We don’t know when that boy escaped from the ritual.”
“If he was really fast, he might have fled on the day the ritual ended, so we’ve wasted two days.”
“Do you think we can catch him?”
“Well. I don’t know.”
Huran shook his head at the soldier’s question. Huran didn’t know much, but the trust the soldiers had in him was high. He was a superior whose mere presence seemed to boost their own reputations. The kind-hearted citizens of the capital would sometimes hand a bottle of wine and some snacks to the guards just because they served under him.
Above all, his smooth way of handling things meant he rarely made enemies. People had no reason to dislike a man who accepted the good things smoothly and let the bad things slide by just as easily.
But this time, even Huran felt a twinge of annoyance that made his stomach ache.
In any case, this job was about catching a young boy and offering him as a sacrifice for the king’s culture. Huran cursed his luck for being on duty and getting tangled up in such a foul business.
“We’re changing the search direction.”
“Sir? Where to?”
“To the west.”
“But sir, you said there’s a river there-.”
“Yes. I said there was a river. But you see……”
The soldier smiled faintly and said, “It’s Morocha.”
“Right, Morocha. It’s my theory. When a situation starts, I look for similarities.”
“Similarities?”
“Hmm. It’s similar to predicting a motive when tracking a criminal, but let’s call it the property of creating connectivity in an event.”
“……I don’t like complicated talk, sir.”
“To put it simply, it means this isn’t an ordinary case. Right?”
“That’s true. It’s never happened in history, has it? Refusing to be a sacrifice for the National Soul Festival and running away.”
Huran felt something rising in his throat, but he swallowed it with effort and smiled kindly.
“Right. Then shall we connect the special things together?”
Huran raised a finger and began to fold them down one by one.
“First. There is a boy who ran away from the ritual. Second. The Sun Priest Order is moving to find him. This alone makes this case we’re involved in anything but ordinary.”
“That’s true, isn’t it?”
“Then we can think of a third thing. How would that boy move?”
“Sir?”
To the soldier who countered, Huran said, pulling on the reins of his camel, which was chewing on something.
“People in the royal palace are, in other words, masters of survival. One of those who survived in a place where a single slip in etiquette gets you thrown into a freezing prison saved his son. And he did it during the kingdom’s greatest ritual, the National Soul Festival. Do you think that boy is an ordinary child? If I were his parent, I would have prepared a way for him to survive.”
The soldier’s eyes sharpened.
“That makes sense.”
Huran lightly pulled the reins to turn the camel and said, “Include the west in the search range. If we can’t find him, it can’t be helped, but isn’t this the High Priest’s order?”
“What if we find him but lose him?”
“What? You’re asking what happens if we can’t find him?”
It meant don’t think about it. The soldier was shaking his head.
Whistle—!
A sharp whistle. The sound came from the west. The dots that had been scattered across the desert began to draw lines in the direction where the moon was setting.
[Oh no.]
The voice spoke in an anxious tone. The boy, feeling equally anxious, asked, “Why? What’s wrong?”
[We’ve been tracked.]
The boy’s steps, which had hesitated for a moment, became even faster than before.
[They are heading exactly in our direction. It seems there is someone with a sharp mind among them.]
Now the boy was climbing the last dune, almost running on all fours.
“We can just hide in the sand again.”
[No, my strength is at its limit. Look behind you.]
The boy looked back as the voice commanded and felt a chill run through his chest.
“Footprints…… they’re still there? Since when?”
[It was when you crossed the third dune. Since then, I haven’t been able to erase them because I had to save the strength to talk to you.]
“That’s……”
[Anyway, at this rate, I cannot protect you. You must get to the river somehow…….]
Towards the end, the voice began to fade. The boy urgently called out to the nameless voice.
“Voice? Are you there?”
A voice full of conviction. Right now, the voice was the only thing guiding him. But if even that disappeared? The boy moved with unsteady steps, calling out to the voice desperately.
[Below the river…… find the thing that shines…….]
“The thing that shines?”
[At the river…… if you are kind…… you will know…….]
The voice, which had been speaking urgently, faded away.
In the end, the voice sank into the darkness of his mind, leaving behind words he couldn’t understand. The boy felt the fear he had briefly forgotten coming back to life.
Pii-iiiii-.
The sound of whistles calling the soldiers from afar reached him. The boy bit his trembling lips and began to run. This was the last dune. He couldn’t be caught after coming this far.
‘I have to get to the river. Then I’ll know.’
He crossed the last dune and looked down at the flat, hundreds-of-meters-long terrain lying before the river. In the distance, the pale river was shining. Because the Laoras River would occasionally overflow and sweep the area when it flooded, the surroundings were far from the dunes and flat for dozens of meters.
“Haa, haa.”
He had used quite a bit of stamina just climbing the last dune. His mouth tasted of metallic sweat from the long forced march, and his limbs were shaking.
Covered in sweat and sand dust, the boy ran down the dune as if rolling, and barely catching his ragged breath, he began a difficult run toward the river.
Just then, he could hear the crying of camels howling on the dunes far away and the shouts of the people who had been tracking him.
“Found him! There he is!”
“Catch him!”