A Chalice Laced with Poison
Had he said this to any of the other young knights with blood still hot in their veins, they would have leapt at him in a fury.
The investiture ceremony was not merely an event for receiving a knight's title.
Granted, the title itself mattered most — but no young knight would ever be satisfied with the title alone.
They always wanted to be seen as the most honorable, the most exceptional knight in the field.
Once the duke bestowed the titles upon his knights in the name of honor and glory, offering his congratulations, the knights' turn came to show off their prowess.
And that was the tournament.
"Wouldn't it be enough just not to embarrass myself?"
"Aye. Shed that pride of yours, and it's an easy post."
Being chosen as the finest knight meant burning one's name into the duke's memory and the crowd's acclaim, a reputation that would spread across the East for some time — but it was a chalice laced with poison.
In a one-on-one duel, who could say? But making a name for oneself in a melee like this took luck and connections.
So long as no edged weapons were used, everything else was war in miniature. Individual valor mattered, yes, but so did tactics and strategy — and in those, a knight backed by a powerful house naturally held the advantage.
Every knight here had been tangled together under their family names long before arriving. In the tournament, too, they would move around those alliances like threads around a spindle.
"In the Kingdom of Erance, you'd have been spared all that."
"?"
"The elf knights would have been chasing you all over the lists."
"Ah..."
Johan gave a dry chuckle, but Swetelg was entirely serious.
"I'm not joking."
"You have a house of your own, and there are far more formidable men here than I. Aren't you overestimating me a touch?"
"And knights are such sharp-witted creatures that— ah. My apologies."
"Feel free to say it. 'Skull' doesn't bother me any more than 'helm' would."
"Much obliged. Though if you were truly that sharp of mind, I wouldn't find it so frustrating. Knights don't think the way you do. If a house is famous, they follow it. If a knight is renowned, they follow him..."
"Do they not follow a man who fights well?"
"I told you I was speaking seriously. It wouldn't surprise me at all if knights began following you."
It was hardly unusual for other knights to trail after a single exceptional knight like a pack after its leader. Even here in this camp, a few such cliques had already formed.
But not just anyone could be that kind of knight.
A man needed the renown and the purse to keep other knights as retainers, and the skill to match. However illustrious the family name, a knight without ability was exposed soon enough.
"There's one like that even now, isn't there."
"Sir Marco? That fellow..."
"Ignore the process and look at the result. He follows you, doesn't he?"
"Very well. If you insist on putting it that way."
Johan was hardly so abrasive a man that he would refuse Swetelg's compliments with a flat 'hardly' every time they were offered. He decided to accept them in good spirits.
"Just don't get yourself killed. Few things are as pointless as dying in a tournament."
"Haha. I'm well aware."
Blunted weapons or not, everything else was the real thing — and men did die.
Naturally, no one ever said 'this is far too dangerous!' and tried to stop them. Violence and bloodshed excited the crowds all the more. It was the spectators who roared 'Death before dishonor!'
From where Johan stood, it seemed a bit much, considering none of them were the ones in the saddle...
"This is outrageous!"
"Why are you the one worked up?"
"Those bastards. What do they take the name of Abner for!"
"Let it go."
Johan reined in Stephan, who was fuming as if it were his own affair.
The reason was simple.
In this tournament, fought between two rival factions, Johan had been assigned to the eastern faction — the one stuffed full of so-called barbarians.
Old friendships and family ties could hardly fail to shape the sides.
And so the knights gathered on the west were all drawn from the knightly houses of the western reaches — houses that counted themselves trueborn imperials — while those on the east were their opposites.
Powerful nomadic tribes from beyond the Empire's borders, barbarian houses only a few generations removed from conversion, even knightly houses that had never converted at all.
As a result, where the western knights were nearly all human with a sprinkle of elves, the eastern ranks were a patchwork of humans, centaurs, dwarves, and attire that varied wildly from one man to the next.
"I'd wager they already knew most of the others by face, and couldn't very well place me in the east — so they tossed me in here to balance the numbers."
"Sir Johan. Say the word and I'll go lodge a protest."
The men of House Zarpen had gone stiff-faced as well.
However much consideration was shown for old comrades, assigning a man who had come all this way to the eastern side — they might well have marched to the duke and demanded answers in Zarpen's name.
"I really don't mind... but doesn't marching over to complain seem, well, rather disrespectful to the knights who were assigned to the east? You'd go fishing for goodwill and net yourself nothing but enemies."
"Ah— no, that's... true, but still."
Stephan flushed. He plainly hadn't thought of that.
Stephan and the Zarpen men were imperials through and through. To them, the knights were the western faction — never the eastern one.
"And Stephan — stop hawking the Abner name about so freely. If Ulrike decides to kill you, you'll be stopping her with your own two hands."
"I'm not the man I used to be. Of course I've been careful."
Stephan grumbled, but Johan didn't believe a word of it, and turned to Marco instead.
"How was it?"
"Pardon? Ah— well..."
"Speak freely."
"It was all quite... humble, I suppose?"
"Why does that sound like a question? Never mind. Understood."
Marco, embarrassed, tried to change the subject.
"And how was the investiture itself, my lord?"
"Wasn't as if it were my first conversation with the duke. He simply hands them out, I gathered."
"......"
The reaction was so listless, so far beyond anything Marco had expected, that he was left floundering.
He himself, a baseborn son, had been so consumed with anticipation on the eve of his own investiture that he hadn't slept a wink. He still remembered, vividly, bathing in purification and praying through the night at the temple...
"What did you receive?"
"A sword, a cloak, and a belt, my lord."
Looking at the objects alone, one might wonder why anyone had crossed such a distance for them — but the meaning bound up in them was anything but light. The duke's name and his house's honor were sewn into every piece.
"Have you given any thought to serving under the duke?"
"I haven't given it a moment's thought, to be honest."
Now that he held a title, serving beneath the duke and angling for a fief was far from a bad choice.
But this land was still foreign to Johan. The Empire's west had at least lain not so far from the world he'd fallen asleep in — this place felt like an entirely different one altogether.
Let the tournament end first, and then think. That was what Johan decided.
"Goiden. I'm counting on you."
"Yes, my lord! Leave it all to me."
"If anything goes awry, I'll be the one giving the orders — so don't you worry."
When a knight fell inside the lists, it was the duty of a servant or a slave to drag him out.
Goiden, who knew exactly what that duty entailed, wore a tense expression.
Running lightly through his mental checklist, Johan urged his horse toward where the eastern knights were mustering. More than a dozen knights were already prepared, sitting in formation and waiting.
No edged weapons. No mounted knight striking one on foot. Leave the field and you surrender. The defeated forfeit armor and weapons. When the duke declares it, the fight is done.
Nothing especially remarkable. Losing one's armor and weapons stung, but any knight in attendance at an investiture like this was hardly going to die for want of them.
His neck, though, was another matter. One bad hit, one snapped spine, and Johan would die just like anyone else.
"My lord! I only asked after the Alchia Tribe, and here they come to find me?"
"!"
A playful voice rang out from ahead. Aclada stood at the center of the warband, waving with a broad, welcoming grin.
"You came from the west, so I thought you'd stand with the west. What a surprise!"
"I came because I like you better, that's all."
"Did you hear that? This is the kind of man he is, everyone!"
Aclada burst into laughter, and at that laughter the other knights cast friendly looks Johan's way.
"What weapon do you favor, my lord?"
"Hard to say. I suppose I manage tolerably with a sword."
"What nonsense is this! You're a knight, my lord!"
Aclada laughed until tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. Johan's words were simply too funny. He had never once met an Imperial-born knight who spoke that way.
"And yourself?"
"The bow is my finest weapon. My spear is nearly its equal, mind you — but when it comes to the spear, Euclia here outdoes me. Go on, introduce yourself."
Aclada's cousin Euclia was packed with muscle so dense it showed even through the gaps in her armor.
It went without saying that centaurs dwarfed humans, but Euclia stood out even among centaurs for sheer size. Her spear, too, looked half again as long as the ones the others carried.
She worked her mouth with a troubled look on her face. Johan found it curious.
Was she unwilling to speak with an Imperial human knight?
"You know a fair bit of Eastern, so speak as you like."
"Ah. G-greetings, my lord."
"Pleasure's mine. They say your spearwork is remarkable — I'll be watching for it."
"Oh— n-no, my lord! It's really nothing at all, so please don't expect anything! It's just that, spearwork is, in the end..."
"That's enough, Euclia. Your underbrush is showing."
Aclada clapped his cousin on the shoulder, then went on.
"It is a bit of a shame she can't draw a bow, but what can you do? The Imperials want it this way, so we bend to their games. To receive one thing, you must give one thing. Isn't that so?"
"Just so. ...Wait. 'Receive' one thing?"
"But tell me, my lord! What role do you desire in this coming fight? This Aclada will help you claim whatever role you wish."
"You can manage that?"
"Yes. Of course."
Johan was quietly taken aback. Which meant that among these eastern knightly factions, Aclada carried the standing of a commander in his own right.
He was from an even greater house than I'd thought?
"I've no particular ambitions. Besides, you've all fought together many times before, haven't you? Your hands and feet will move as one. Put me wherever's convenient, and I'll fight my hardest there."
At those words, Aclada's expression grew stranger still. The more he looked, the more remarkable the man seemed. However he studied him, Johan was nothing like any Imperial knight he had ever known.
"Do you know, my lord? You are the most curious Imperial I have ever laid eyes on."
"And you are the most curious centaur I've ever met."
"What other tribe have you met besides... ah, hah! I see. That's what you meant. Very well, my lord. I shall place you wherever suits you best."
Crowds beyond counting poured in until they packed the ground around the vast field, while the knights lined up in orderly ranks from one end to the other.
It was a magnificent sight — several dozen knights in full arms glaring across at one another, each side watching for its opening to charge. For all the din outside, a skin-prickling tension hung over the field.
Horns and battle cries. And the answering roar that met them.
Before the reality of it could even settle in, the knights of both sides hurled themselves at each other. Johan felt his instincts howl.
His instincts were screaming at him.
Crack the skulls of the men ahead! Snap their necks!
Hm. Best to restrain myself.
soothing the instinct, Johan slowed his horse's pace. The first clash was already winding down. The thick dust thinned, revealing the knights scattered from their saddles, and above them knights swung their weapons at one another in a hail of curses.
Some lay unmoving. Some writhed. Some struggled to crawl free. The crowds shrieked at them savagely to fight on. To knights they would never have dared address on any ordinary day, the spectators screamed, 'Die rather than run!'
"?"
The duke's face showed a flicker of surprise.
Even amid that furious chaos, a handful of knights had failed to join the fight at all — caught up in the blind rush of the charge, they'd never found their places.
But once such men grasped the situation, they wheeled their horses and plunged into the fray without delay.
Johan, however, simply stood at the very center of the battlefield, his face as calm as a man out for a stroll.
"For honor!"
A knight spotted Johan and spurred toward him. His lance had shattered earlier, apparently, for he drew his sword instead.
Johan drove his lance at the man's shield. The knight's lips curled upward into a confident grin.
He was sure his shield could take an impact like that and hold.
"Ghk—!"
With the collision, the knight flew from his saddle. Johan uncurled his stinging fingers and tossed the ruined lance aside. The man had taken the full force of the blow; he wasn't even managing to rise from the ground.
"Sir Boriska! The nerve of this whoreson—!"
"Avenge Sir Boriska!"
He had evidently been a knight of some standing, for those nearby came at Johan like wolves gone mad. And Johan knew, in his gut, that things were not going quite the way he had planned.