A Knight's Honorable Request
Who's visiting?
Johan loitered around the perimeter of the hall instead of going inside. Wandering in for no reason would only earn him murderous glares from his half-brothers or his stepmother.
Fortunately, Johan had other idiot half-brothers to fall back on. He sneered at them as he spoke.
"Do any of you know who's come?"
"What? Who doesn't know Sir Karamap arrived, you bastard? Are you picking a fight?"
They never picked fights with Johan when he was alone, but with the three of them together, their courage had apparently swelled. Fern, Yan, and Marcel — three brothers born of the same mother — showered Johan with abuse.
"You couldn't get two words out with Sir Karamap anyway."
"Hm."
Johan fell briefly into thought. A knight as famous as Karamap would certainly have connections worth having.
The question was whether the man would think well of him.
While he considered it, cold words were being exchanged inside. Johan joined his other brothers in pressing an ear to the door to eavesdrop.
Crazy. I'd die if I tried to talk to him.
Johan gave up cleanly. Sir Karamap was unpleasantly frigid — perhaps because old Lord Gesen had tried to squeeze money out of him.
"So cool... THAT'S what a real knight looks like!"
"Exactly!"
Idiots, all of them.
Johan shook his head. Those fools had forgotten exactly whom Sir Karamap was so angry with.
"What are you doing there?"
"!"
From the far end of the corridor, an armed elf knight he'd never seen before barked the question. Judging by the young face, the man was clearly still a squire — Johan's age, or a little younger.
A noble knight out of the Kingdom of Erance? One of Sir Karamap's squires?
Unless he was an apprentice training under Karamap, there was no reason for him to be here. Johan swiftly took the measure of the man and turned to leave.
"You. Are you a son of Lord Gesen?"
"What if I am?"
"I am Yein Lochtein, honored squire to Sir Karamap and the knight who will carry the Lochtein name."
"I'm Johan Eitz. Not particularly the knight who'll carry anything."
Yein stared at Johan intently, as if trying to gauge his ability. There was something about Johan's appearance that stirred a knight's competitive spirit.
Elves are hard to tell apart by sex.
Most elves were beautiful enough to blur the line between man and woman, and Yein's voice was high and his frame slender besides.
One of Johan's half-brothers, listening nearby, opened his mouth.
"I am Fern Eitz—"
"I did not ask you. I heard there was no knight worth the name among Lord Gesen's sons, but that appears to be wrong. Will you cross blades with me?"
"I'll decline."
Johan waved a hand and turned away, wanting no pointless quarrel. Yein seized his hand in a crushing grip.
"I have not finished speaking. Why refuse a knight's proper request?"
Despite the boyish, pretty face, the hand was hard and startlingly strong. Johan clicked his tongue inwardly. He'd thought he'd adapted after being born and living long in this world, but apparently there were still habits of mind he could never quite acquire.
Nobles born and raised as knights took that way of thinking utterly for granted.
Of course honorable knights must cross swords!
From Johan's perspective, though, it was a pointless exercise with nothing to gain. Even if he beat Yein, Karamap wasn't going to introduce him to anyone.
"I'm not in the mood."
"N-not in the mood?! Why?! Has something happened? Are you ill somewhere!"
"Er... my heart."
"Your heart! ...Are you mocking me right now?"
Yein's face twisted, and the grip tightened. But it was an elephant showing off its strength before another elephant. Johan's expression didn't change in the slightest.
Realizing it, Yein applied his full strength. He was still a squire, yes — but he had merely never been formally knighted; he was already a knight in every way that mattered. Nearly ten years of training had made him a weapon of war who could cut down a dozen soldiers the moment a blade touched his hand.
A strength poured out of that small frame that seemed impossible. If any of the other half-brothers had been holding that hand, the bones would have shattered.
Shock began to spread across Yein's face. Johan had started applying strength of his own.
Impossible...!
Training as Sir Karamap's squire, Yein had never once lost a contest of strength with anyone. He was small, but raw power was a gift he'd been born with.
The other three brothers shouted at the sight.
"What are you doing, Johan! That's Sir Karamap's squire you're—"
"Did I win?"
"Not... not yet!"
Yein squeezed out the last of his strength, even the strength he'd suckled at his mother's breast, but it made no difference.
The strength of a giant out of legend!
That was what Yein thought to himself. Who would have imagined such monstrous power existed among Lord Gesen's sons?
Johan could have released him, but he held on until the man admitted defeat. This sort would never say the words I lost — let him go early, and he'd come back swinging a drawn sword. Johan had learned what the people of this world were like.
If I get annoyed and crush his hand bones instead, I'll be the one crushed.
If Sir Karamap heard that his squire's hand had been mangled, Johan would not be left in peace. It was filthy and unfair, but he had to hold back.
"I lose!"
"Good. A fine contest. I'm glad to have fought an honorable knight, Yein Lochtein."
"What fine contest was THAT!"
Yein glared at Johan while rubbing his hand. It had clearly hurt quite a bit.
"Sorry, but I was never properly trained as a knight. A real match would be out of the question."
"I-is that so? My apologies."
Yein said it with a start of surprise.
Being a knight's son did not guarantee a knight's training. Some men carried only the bloodline.
"But you have the aptitude. It isn't too late even now — you'd do well to learn."
"I'll do my best."
"If you do learn, come fight me again!"
One of Johan's half-brothers, who had been listening to the whole exchange, cut in.
"I am Fern Eitz. Yein Lochtein, will you not cross blades with—"
"You are far too weak. Go train first."
"......"
Yein was a well-trained squire. Having lost a duel he himself had requested, he bore no grudge over it. It was the code of knighthood — but the world was hardly full of men who kept the code. The fact that Yein actually honored it earned him a good mark in Johan's book.
Had Yein nursed a grudge and breathed a word to Sir Karamap, Johan's life would have become very, very tedious.
So no trouble came to Johan — but trouble came to the Eitz family instead.
The soldiers who had arrived with Sir Karamap began to make themselves at home on the family's lands. They committed no outright outrages, but neither did they show the slightest consideration for the Eitz household's circumstances.
The servants who worked the estate had to host the soldiers with nerves stretched taut. And it was doubly miserable with Eldest Son John shrieking that Karamap had to be sent away, even as Lady Eitz tried to climb onto Karamap's back and work some angle of her own — the two of them at each other's throats.
"This isn't beer. It's ditchwater."
"M-my apologies, my lord."
"Have you no wine?"
"I'm sorry, my lord..."
"Expecting anything better in a place like this makes me the fool. Fine."
"It smells bad enough just having it, doesn't it."
Johan had been roaming outside. Yein, apparently smitten with Johan's talent, kept pestering him to come learn swordsmanship. If it had truly been a bother, Johan could have simply shown Yein some swordwork and sent him on his way — but he didn't.
At first he assumed he was just worried Yein would pester him harder. Thinking it over, though, that wasn't it.
Johan was being wary. Of Sir Karamap and his men.
Ah. And I don't even believe in superstitions.
What Kaegal had left behind with him kept gnawing at his mind. If he showed Yein his swordsmanship and subdued him with it too, it would surely reach Karamap's ears...
Somehow, it bothered him. For no reason he could name, he didn't want the man to know.
"Joseph. Are you feeling unwell?"
"Lord Johan."
Johan spotted the hunter Joseph walking along with a gaunt face.
"It's... nothing at all."
Joseph started to answer and stopped himself. He was afraid of saying something that would only make trouble. The other villagers assumed Joseph was close to Johan, but Joseph thought no such thing.
Just as wolves and deer do not become friends from living side by side, so a noble and a ser could never be friends. They might look friendly on the surface — but a noble had only to wish it, and Joseph's head would leave his shoulders. How was that friendly?
Johan was among the politer and kinder of the nobles he'd met, but Joseph did not relax his guard. Keep your distance from nobles, and be careful even then. That was the wisdom of a man who had survived long as a hunter.
"I see it's something you can't tell me."
"N-no, my lord! It's only... it's a story I'm ashamed to bring before you..."
"That stings. To think I'm a knight who can't even hear his own people's troubles."
Bastard.
If only he'd curse him outright or slap him across the face — instead, Johan tormented him like this, all in circles, and Joseph grumbled inwardly. Unlike the other brothers, Johan was deep and crafty. What could a man do when a noble played him like this? Crawl, obviously. On his own.
"It's the knights who've come to the fief, my lord."
Strictly speaking, only a few of them were knights — the rest were mounted heavy infantry following their orders — but to Joseph the distinction meant nothing.
When an armored man on horseback with a sword at his hip said I'm a knight, you bowed and said yes, of course you are, my lord knight. You didn't exactly say, you're no son of a knightly house and you never received a knighthood either, so strictly speaking aren't you just a commoner mercenary, sir?
"They keep trying to enter the forest after hearing rumors of the Black Wolf, so... they've put me in charge of guiding them."
Entering the deep forest required permission, so the matter had clearly already been settled between Philip and Lady Eitz. Neither of them was the type to refuse.
They figured it was better to just let them in than make enemies over it, I suppose.
For Joseph, of course, it was a bolt from the blue. In several senses at once.
First, simply entering a forest that held a clever monster like the Black Wolf was already a problem. The knights might be confident in their strength, but he had no faith in his ability to face the Black Wolf himself. And would the knights protect him? He'd be lucky if they didn't use him as bait.
And if luck held and they never met the Black Wolf at all, that was a problem too. Where, exactly, would the knights take out their frustration?
Serfs like him were property of the fief, so even the worst of the Eitz sons never crossed the line when they vented their cruelty. But those knights were another matter entirely. Joseph meant nothing to them; if he died, not one of them would blink.
"Is that so? I'll help you."
"My lord?!"
"I said I'll help. Are your ears bad?"
"N-no, it's just..."