The Werewolf King's Trail
But Johan's plans had fallen apart before they ever began.
Aclada had come to his tent.
"Did you rest well, sir knight?"
"I'd wager you were the more tired of the two of us."
"Haha! I could run three days and three nights without breaking a sweat."
"From the way you fought, I doubt that. So — did you know about this hunt?"
"I suspected as much. The Duke dropped a hint or two to our chieftain, you see."
Johan nodded. He'd already guessed as much from Aclada's behavior. The man had been entirely too knowing.
"Forgive me for not telling you, sir knight."
"Don't be. It's nothing worth apologizing for. Just don't let it leave this tent."
"■■ ■■."
At the Eastern tongue from behind him, Johan realized Aclada hadn't come alone. His cousin Euclia stepped out from behind the tent flap.
"She says she's truly grateful for the help you gave her before."
"■ ■ ■■ ■."
"She says the way you fought reminded her of Tangr."
"■■ ■ ■..."
"Could you maybe dial it back a little? Let me get a word in. Didn't I tell you to learn the Imperial tongue?"
Aclada grumbled. He'd come all this way only to play interpreter, and it clearly chafed. Euclia sulked and gave a sullen nod.
"You're setting out tomorrow — wouldn't it be smarter to go in and rest?"
"Heh. Because there's a proposal I wanted to make before we leave tomorrow."
"?"
"Won't you ride with us?"
Johan blinked at the unexpected offer. It had never crossed his mind.
"Isn't the rule that we go alone?"
"I see you're too honorable to have even considered it, sir knight."
"No, I..."
Living long enough to be called too honorable — it was almost insulting. He opened his mouth to object, but Aclada pressed on first.
"Naturally, the Duke commanded that we bring no servants, slaves, or squires. He said we must depart alone. But alone is how we leave. Who's to stop those who left alone from meeting on the road and traveling together afterward?"
"!"
Put that way, the man had a point.
I've been overestimating these knights, Johan thought.
Bands of knights riding out together were perfectly plausible. Why deliberately take a loss when you weren't technically breaking a single rule? Considering how they'd clustered and moved as groups during the tournament, the idea only grew more convincing.
"Don't tell me you truly meant to go alone? Incredible, sir knight. Of all the knights I've met, I've rarely known one as honorable as you."
Aclada's admiration was entirely sincere. Among the Imperial knights he'd encountered in the East, not a single one went a day without the word honor in his mouth — and yet true honorable men among them were vanishingly rare.
The rest would flip whatever they'd said the moment their interests demanded it.
"I was... planning to move alone."
Strictly speaking, the plan had been to rest at a nearby village and return once the hunt ended —
but Aclada could never have imagined such an absurdly lazy scheme.
"If you don't hate us, or despise us, or find us distasteful, sir knight, it would be an honor to have you with us. You don't hate us, or despise us, or find us distasteful... do you?"
"That's a rather dirty way to put it."
"Haha. Take it as proof of how much I want you along. Besides, you'll lose nothing by it. The plains, the mountains, the rivers and valleys nearby — all of it lies in the palm of our hands. The Imperial knights know the region in their own way, I'll grant, but they're sheep who only ever walk the same beaten paths, aren't they?"
Had any knight overheard, sparks would have flown. Johan didn't care in the slightest. And frankly, the offer was tempting.
Wasn't his ignorance of the terrain one of the very reasons he'd planned to sit the hunt out?
The Duke had been generous with the deadline, but it was still too short to pick a monster, gather rumors, and run it to ground from scratch. This was the kind of thing you had to know beforehand.
"All right. Thank you for the offer. I'll come along."
"Truly?! Wonderful! You won't regret it!"
Aclada beamed with childlike delight. He couldn't have been much older than Johan, and the exuberance suited him well.
"■■ ■■ ■."
"That one I'd rather you didn't pass along."
"■■ ■?"
"You're asking me why? Seriously? No. Don't ask me — ask the other adults around you."
"......"
Johan resolved, once again, to learn the Eastern tongue as quickly as humanly possible.
At dawn, with horns and trumpets blaring behind them, the knights began to depart one by one. But to Johan's now-enlightened eyes, something else was visible.
Knights exchanging glances in twos and threes, waving to one another — it looked for all the world as if they'd agreed to meet up again at some appointed point.
Stranger still, he caught Imperial knights trading looks with the tribal knights from beyond the Empire's borders.
I see. So that's it...
Johan understood the situation now.
Imperial knights didn't automatically shun barbarians or nomadic tribes. There were neutral parties, and there were those willing to cooperate when the opportunity arose.
With connections in hand, joining forces cost nothing. The untamed eastern frontier was far better known to these outside tribes, after all. Only the knights who refused to extend a hand would be left behind.
Don't tell me the Duke planned for even this?
When Johan voiced the guess, Aclada nodded with wide-eyed surprise — Johan's reasoning was that plausible. What astonished him more was that a knight who had only just arrived had read the Duke's intent at all.
"It's possible. Duke Brudhe is a man with plenty to spare, even for schemes like that."
"What kind of man do you take the Duke for?"
"A great chieftain who keeps his word. If we bring him tribute, he returns its full worth."
Satisfaction and trust rang clear in Aclada's voice. Fitting enough — the Duke did pursue a conciliatory policy toward the nomadic tribes.
"But the Duke is an Imperial man all the same. If it were our tribe, we'd never have dreamed up something like that."
Arrange the board to favor the outside tribes; let the Imperial knights grow envious and reach for their hands, and harmony follows by design. The knights who refused to play along simply lost out.
Even to Johan it seemed an elegant gambit. So what could possibly be the problem?
"Why do you say that?"
"Because if it were me, I wouldn't lift a finger just because some arrogant knight came whining for help after years of looking down his nose at us. The other warriors think much the same, I'd wager."
"But some of them already seemed to be joining hands, didn't they?"
At Johan's words, Aclada gave a small, dry laugh — and it sent a chill down Johan's spine.
"Don't mistake that for joining hands, sir knight. Imperials trust one another on an oath. We do not. First, we look at whether the other man is a warrior worth respecting."
If a man wasn't worth respect, any promise made with him meant nothing — whether it was sworn on a god's name or on honor made no difference.
How sincere the warriors currently pairing off with Imperial knights actually were, no one could say. If they betrayed them at the first opportunity and vanished, it would surprise no one.
"An interesting custom, I'll grant — though hearing it now, after we've already agreed to ride together, leaves me feeling a touch uneasy..."
"Oh, don't fret, sir knight. I'm the one who asked our tribe to come find you, remember? That should tell you everything."
He'd never have said such words about a man he didn't respect.
While Aclada chattered away for fear Johan might doubt him, a handful of warriors began drifting over — men who knew Aclada by face or had ties to his tribe.
They too had fought on the Eastern side at the tournament, and they greeted Johan with unmistakable warmth.
"Never thought the Troll-Slayer would come along!"
"Feels like we've already won."
Watching the group crowd around and bicker, Johan suddenly realized he'd neglected to ask the single most important question.
"So what exactly are we all here to catch?"
"...Wait. Aclada. You never even told him?"
"What kind of knight follows a man without knowing that? Did you just tag along blind?"
"And what if I'd heard it and wanted out, hm?"
"Ridiculous. You think a warrior would turn back over that?"
"Fair enough. Poor choice of words on my part."
As the warriors grew rowdy, Aclada signaled them to shut it.
"Forgive me, sir knight. I forgot the most important thing. ...Though I'm more curious why you never asked."
"I trusted you, that's all."
"Do you expect me to be moved by that?"
He said it, but his face was glowing. Once the company had roughly assembled, he raised his voice and roared:
"Warriors gathered here — warriors rough and relentless, warriors fierce as untamable lions, warriors with fire in their eyes and light upon their faces! Let us bring back a hunt so mighty that Brudhe itself will forget to breathe! Let us show these people who is master of this steppe! To the arrogant Imperial curs—"
"Er, Aclada. There's a knight right there..."
"...To the arrogant Imperial curs other than that knight, let us show who is master of this steppe! Onward! We ride for the head of the Werewolf King!"
The warriors massed before the forest answered his cry by raising their weapons high.
The Werewolf King.
That was the quarry for every warrior gathered here.
Centaurs and men alike rode out threading through the forest. Every one of them except Johan had slept in this country at some point, and they could have galloped these trails with their eyes closed.
Out of consideration for him, the warriors had placed Johan in the middle of the column — but to their surprise, he kept pace without the least trouble.
"Sir Johan. You've ridden through forests often, I see?"
Riding through woodland wasn't something instinct and reflex could manage. It took experience and craft.
The signals the forest gave off — the shape of the path, the direction the branches leaned, how the leaves and soil lay piled. Reading all of it to know where to steer took years of practice.
And Johan's teacher of the woods had been Joseph.
Joseph the gamekeeper — a hunter of the Eastern Rangers.
Johan found himself realizing, anew, that the man had been an Eastern Ranger. Everything Joseph had ever taught him proved just as useful here in the East.
Euclia had drifted close, apparently ready to help if he fell behind — instead, she watched in open admiration.
"Fast, like, a snail— no. Cool...! Very cool...!"
"...Maybe just speak the Eastern tongue."
Euclia flushed scarlet and nodded. Since Johan wanted the practice anyway, talking in Eastern was the better bargain.
"Sir knight. The werewolves have been multiplying of late."
Aclada spoke as he lightly plucked his bowstring. The arrow in his hand was unlike the others — far shorter, and wickedly barbed.
"They were never the type to lose their heads enough to raid a village... but their numbers have swollen, you see."
Monsters whose prey had thinned grew far more savage and aggressive. The werewolves knew full well that touching the villages meant death.
If they attacked anyway, only one explanation remained.
"There are any number of reasons the werewolves might be growing — but our tribe's shamans and the shamans of every other tribe spoke the same prophecy. A head has risen among them, they all said. Without a doubt."
Werewolves were not naturally pack creatures. They fought so viciously over rank among themselves that they could rarely stand one another for long.
But every so often, one was born strong enough — and lived long enough — to subdue its rivals and forge a warband of its own.
With a strong head at their back, such a pack endured, held together by order.
And when already-savage monsters began moving in disciplined ranks...
"We meant to report to the Duke and requisition soldiers for the hunt, but with things as they are, we judged it better to take the beast ourselves. Think of the glory!"
"So how do you intend to kill it?"
"With these, of course."
Aclada held up his bow and arrow. Even against monsters, ordinary arrows were of limited use — his confidence had to run deep for him to say it so plainly.
"You slew a troll yourself, sir knight, so you'll know. What matters most when hunting a monster?"
"A sure way to cut its breath for good."
"Just as I thought."
Aclada grinned. He'd taken Johan for a man who thought exactly as he did.
"A poison vicious enough to stop a werewolf's heart. That's what we've prepared. You'll have something like it too, surely — the poison you used on the troll?"
"Uh..."
"Hm? Don't tell me you burned it to death?"