Chapter 2: One Who Understands the Three Worlds (2)
Chapter 2: One Who Understands the Three Worlds (2)
Despite having run a considerable distance, Homi's breathing was steady.
Bow.
She bowed deeply and respectfully to Goffrey and Eugene.
"We've come to catch the boar that's been threatening the village."
Nod.
She reacted as though she already knew.
Living in a hut at the edge of the forest as she did, she was always the first to notice when dangerous beasts appeared.
"If there's anything that might serve as a clue, would you let us know?"
Homi thumped her chest, volunteering to handle it.
She could not speak the human tongue. She was not physically mute; the problem came from her species heritage.
A thick, long white tail emerged from Homi's trousers as she walked ahead. It swayed gently back and forth, as if she were pleased.
It was unusually striking even for an animal's tail because she was half snow-leopard beastkin.
Even so, the beast blood ran so strongly in her that she could not learn human speech. No matter how hard she tried, only animal sounds emerged from her mouth.
She could speak only a few days each year, when the wildness in her blood receded.
"I am curious about the origin of her bloodline. I have seen countless beastkin, but never anyone like her."
When God took one thing away, He gave another in return.
The potent wild blood had taken human speech from Homi but granted her comparable physical strength in return, though not enough to rival Eugene.
"Spirited though the child may be, wouldn't living alone be lonely?"
"In another village, perhaps, but here, there are many who find her unsettling."
Eugene cast a sidelong glance toward the monastery.
"Well, that is true."
"Besides, life here probably suits Homi better than a crowded village. She's the type who can't keep her feet still."
Around the time Eugene was adapting to monastery life, a new orphan had appeared in the village.
She could not speak, and her appearance openly displayed beastkin traits.
It was Eugene who had extended his hand to the girl huddled in a back alley, shivering with hunger and cold.
His warm smile and gentle touch as he passed from boyhood into youth — Homi still remembered that first meeting vividly even now.
The hut came into view. The place of happy childhood memories greeted its owner, unchanged.
With a flourish.
Homi bent her waist and stretched out her arms.
'Welcome! You are always welcome here!'
Her warm welcome came through without a word.
"Thanks, as always. You've kept it in wonderful condition."
Eugene stroked Homi's head before stepping inside.
"When you first said you would have Homi live here, I confess I was uneasy, but this is far more comfortable than monastery life."
Goffrey said admiringly.
The interior was cleanly swept, and dried medicinal herbs, fruit, and jerky hung here and there.
It was knowledge that Eugene's witch mother had taught him, and which Eugene had passed on to Homi.
On the bed lay a stuffed doll that Eugene had crafted himself and given as a gift. He had made it with a teddy bear in mind, but once finished, it had turned out to be a bugbear.
Although she washed it regularly, it was steeped in Homi's scent because she hugged it every night.
A kettle was already boiling, apparently prepared in advance. Homi steeped tea leaves gathered in the wild and served her two guests.
"Thank you."
"I'll enjoy this."
Homi beamed.
"These impress me every time I eat them."
Goffrey popped one of Homi's dried persimmons into his mouth. Dignified mentor though he was, he could not resist its sweet, chewy texture.
"It's a food from my homeland."
"Were you not living a wandering life from the time you were in your mother's womb?"
"A homeland of the heart, shall we say? I have such a place."
While the two chatted, Homi bustled about preparing for the hunt like the true squire's squire she was.
"No matter how I look at it, that is a most uncouth weapon."
Sensing the massive club beside Eugene, Goffrey shook his head.
"That is a weapon fit for barbarians. It does not suit a knight."
"But proper weapons are all expensive. And they break easily."
In this era, a decent blade was costly. Goffrey, too, having retired and living frugally, possessed only his personal equipment.
There were weapons belonging to the monastery, but those were not things Eugene could lay hands on.
"This one is serviceable enough."
The oak club had been repeatedly coated with a secret witch's blend of sap and left to dry. The resulting dark club was extraordinarily hard.
Once, he had seen a rat try to gnaw through it and break its teeth instead.
"I think this every time, but I have to wonder whether you are truly human."
Large was too mild a word for the massive club. Goffrey could only marvel at the strength of his disciple, who lifted it easily with one hand.
After finishing their tea, the party, now grown to three, set out.
The fence surrounding the hut was coated with a thick liquid that gave off a peculiar scent.
Wild beasts and insects detested it, which was why the hut remained safe despite standing at the forest's edge.
As they took a path not often traveled, a fallen tree appeared, blocking the way.
Thud!
Goffrey laughed at the sound of Homi casually tossing it aside.
"Birds of a feather do flock together."
"Thank you for the compliment."
That was why Homi could live alone in a hut outside the village without trouble.
Any man who trespassed with ill intent would have his soul knocked from his body by one punch. Broken teeth and a shattered nose would be a bonus.
Homi guided the party to a garden plot in the mountains. The village herbalist had secretly made it there and planted valuable cash crops.
The fence erected to keep wild beasts from digging it up was hidden with underbrush, but it could not deceive Homi's nose. The fence, however, was smashed to pieces.
"The brute's trail. The old herbalist will wail when he sees this."
The ravaged crops brought to Eugene's mind the old man who had greeted them in the village.
In that instant, Goffrey's ears pricked up, and he turned his face toward a rabbit lying collapsed among the weeds.
"We've come this close, and it's still sleeping without a care?"
Homi scurried over, bound the rabbit's hind legs, and hung it from her pack.
"It's a trap mixed with sap that lures beasts, herbs that dull their wariness, and mushroom powder that sends them into a deep sleep. Rabbits fall for it especially well."
That was why the hut had been so well-stocked with jerky.
"A technique that hunters would covet greatly, I imagine."
"A secret method of my family, left behind by my mother. I never teach it to anyone. Right?"
Homi nodded twice.
Homi fervently agreed.
"Do hunters not pester you to teach them?"
Homi nodded twice.
This time she agreed with a frown.
Homi had a half-beastkin's keen nose and the mountain lore gained from years in the wilderness.
"Homi says she has laid traps here and there to lure the boar."
She was capable both as a hunter and as a scout.
"Even her quick wits are just like yours. She'll serve you splendidly on the journeys ahead."
Goffrey smiled with satisfaction.
A squire who served a knight with wholehearted devotion was a treasure. Homi was more devoted and capable than any squire Goffrey had ever known.
"I have no particular intention of leaving the village. Living off the mountain from that hut suits me well enough."
"Your talents are too great to rot away in a backwater like this."
"Well, I'll give it some thought."
They pressed on for a long while, checking the bait traps that Homi had scattered.
"It's caught."
The first to react was Goffrey.
Homi's ears pricked.
Next was Homi.
Grunt!
Eugene located it only after hearing the boar's cry. It was on a rocky outcrop deep in the mountain.
A spot that looked like the rock in The Lion King where the monkey elder held up Simba and proclaimed, 'A king is born!'
Below it lay a sheer cliff dizzying just to look at, and beyond that, a vast forest stretched out.
Grruunk—!
Up on the cliff, in a patch overgrown with weeds, a dazed boar swayed its massive body unsteadily.
"Is it so big that the drug didn't work properly? It's all right. It's not your fault."
Eugene stroked Homi's bowed head as she stood there apologetically.
"It's your turn to step up."
"Of course."
Eugene lifted the large club and stepped forward.
Goffrey and Homi waited quietly. They were certain that even a large boar was no match for Eugene.
And all the more so in its current drugged state.
Squee-eeek—!
Sensing the intruder's presence, the boar turned to face Eugene.
It struggled to keep its drooping eyelids open and desperately forced its buckling knees straight even as its strength drained away.
"...!"
"What is the matter?"
Goffrey grew puzzled at the sight of his pupil frozen before the boar.
"Something is wrong."
Eugene had seen many pigs raised in villages before.
As with other livestock, male pigs were castrated while young. Otherwise their meat grew tough and developed a rank odor.
The boars kept aside for breeding displayed magnificent testicles.
They were not quite football-sized, but the sight of a breeding boar strutting around with two pouches nearly the size of volleyballs was remarkable.
Yet the huge wild boar before him had small testicles, like an immature piglet's.
And that chill crawling down his spine! Eugene trusted his instincts.
"This beast is not fully grown!"
"Do you speak in earnest? Where in this world would a piglet of that size—"
Goffrey halted midsentence and turned to look behind him.
Eugene refrained from asking any obvious question like 'What is it?' Whatever it was, something had clearly pricked his senses.
Far away, the trees began to heave and a flock of mountain birds took flight all at once.
The trembling of the trees surged toward them like a wave, as if some colossal presence was barreling straight at them.
Escape did not look easy. The terrain jutted out long and narrow, and the sole path of retreat was effectively blocked.
"A fine place to corner prey, which meant we were the ones cornered instead."
Goffrey drew his sword. Homi also pulled out the large crossbow slung over her shoulder.
A moment later, an enormous boar nearly twice the size of a bull emerged.
"Good heavens."
Goffrey groaned.
It had long since outgrown the word boar and was large enough to be called a monster. There was nothing between its hind legs; this was the mother.
Goffrey and Homi immediately split to either side, and in the span between them the monster boar barreled through.
Slash!
Goffrey's sword struck at its ankle, but the hide was so thick that the blade failed to bite properly.
This was Goffrey, the man who had broken the limbs of knights swaggering in full plate and slain monsters that even veteran mercenary companies struggled to defeat.
Yet this quarry fell too far beyond the norm. To bring down such a beast required not brilliant swordsmanship but siege engines.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The savage beast's eyes were fixed upon Eugene, who threatened her young. She paid no heed at all to the old knight who had scratched her hind leg.
Then came an unexpected turn.
Staggering about in its drugged stupor, the piglet lost its balance amid the vibrations of its mother's charge and toppled off the cliff.
Gwooooarrr-!
Having lost her young before her very eyes, the mother roared in fury.
"I didn't kill it — you did!"
"Do you think that argument will work? Get out of the way! Even you cannot handle an opponent like this alone!"
Goffrey shouted.
Even he had never faced a monster of this caliber with only three people.
Twang!
Just then, Homi's crossbow loosed a bolt.
She had aimed for the eye, but the bolt missed by a hair and left only a graze nearby. Its hide was every bit as tough as expected.
As if ignoring a buzzing gnat, the mother boar kept charging.
Click.
Unfazed, Homi ran while reloading the massive crossbow, a weapon fit for siege warfare.
Strong men normally had to brace the crossbow with a foot and pull with both hands, yet Homi reloaded it while running. Her strength was truly monstrous.
Eugene also moved to the left and opened a clean angle of fire for Homi to aim more easily.
Then came the second shot.
Thunk!
This one struck true.
SQUEEEAL—!
The bolt buried itself deep into the left eye of the mother boar, who had driven straight ahead in mad rage.
With half her vision gone and a searing agony unlike anything she had ever endured, even her maternal love and thirst for vengeance were blotted out.
The mother boar wheeled about and fixed her remaining, hatred-filled eye upon Homi, who was already beginning a third reload.
"Where are you looking?"
At that moment, Eugene's voice reached her ears as he sprinted up her rump and back as though flying.
SQUEEE—
BAM!!!
Before the squeal even ended, a stout club smashed down upon her crown.
With a thunderous report, her head slammed into the earth, and the recoil sent her hind legs — each as thick as a grown man's torso — kicking into the air.
Blood poured from her nostrils, each wide enough to swallow a man's head whole.
Yet her breathing had not ceased. As she staggered and tried to rise, a full swing struck her temple once more.
CRACK!!!
This time she could not even scream.
The colossal bulk listed, then fell tumbling over the cliff after her offspring.
She bounced and spun for some time against the rocks below before coming to a stop before the dark wood.
"Oh, God above."
The absurd sight left Goffrey speechless. He had known of his pupil's prodigious strength, but never imagined it reached such heights.
'The world is vast, and hidden mysteries have no end. I was arrogant too.'
Because this was a mountain village, he had never had the chance to meet a truly formidable foe, and so he himself had failed to accurately gauge his pupil's limits.
Goffrey made the sign of the cross.
"I thought I was raising a tiger cub and sharpening its claws, only to discover it was an ogre cub."
Homi pulled out a towel and ran over to Eugene.
'So that actually worked?'
Meanwhile, Eugene looked down at the club he had gripped so tightly.
He had been so tense before a monster the likes of which he had never seen that even now, in victory, his hand would not unclench.
Yet when they faced it, for some reason the thought of fleeing never crossed his mind.
'It is prey.'
'Devour it.'
It felt as if an inner voice had sounded from somewhere within him.
And as luck would have it, Homi's bolt had blinded one of the beast's eyes and diverted its attention the opposite way.
That had swept away the last hesitation lingering inside Eugene, and he was able to charge.
With each step he advanced, he felt a colossal power he had never tapped before being released.
The true strength that had slumbered until a crisis of life-or-death had awakened.
The result lay below: the boar's carcass, raising a spectacular cloud of dust where it had crashed.
"I'm fine. No injuries, and I didn't even break a sweat."
After having carefully wiped his forehead, Homi offered him a waterskin.
Instead of drinking from it, Eugene poured it over his hands.
Thud!
As the cool water soaked in, his fingers, rigid from tension, finally loosened and his weapon fell away.
He had gripped and swung it so fiercely that the handle had shattered and the body bore multiple cracks.
"It won't serve any longer."
Drinking with a touch of regret, Eugene suddenly exclaimed, "Ah!"
"What is the matter now?"
"There's no proof that we fulfilled the mission. How do we prove it to the monastery?"
They had accomplished a feat far greater than originally intended, yet the proof lay at the foot of the cliff.
Already drawn by the scent of blood, large wolves had sprung out and were tearing into the young boar.
Perhaps fearful of the enormous mother, they had not yet approached it.
Tap tap.
Homi tapped Eugene on the shoulder.
Out of nowhere, she held up one of the mother boar's tusks — she must have picked it up when the skull had been smashed earlier.
"This should suffice."
Taking it, Goffrey nodded.
Though small in proportion to the female's body, it was still larger than an ordinary male boar's tusk.
The ever-resourceful Homi had already cleaned the blood and spittle from the tooth.
"You have a squire far finer than you deserve, you thick-skulled club-swinger."
"With all due respect, Master, even had you stabbed it with your sword, you would only have angered the beast."
"If only you could not talk."
Goffrey tossed the tusk to Eugene.
"Where could a monster like that have come from all of a sudden?"
'I have never seen one like it either.'
Homi spoke through sign language.
"I do not know either. A creature like that should never appear in a backwater like this."
The party gazed out at the western forest, whose end was nowhere in sight. From that vast, unknown expanse, nothing that emerged could be called strange.
"We must warn the villagers who climb into the mountains. Even a few more young ones would pose a danger."
"There will not be more young ones. Ordinary beasts whelp many, but those near to monsters bear few. One is the norm, and two are rare."
Watching the large wolf pack edge slowly closer to the mother, the party turned and headed back.