The Hound That Bites Its Master
Johan nocked an arrow and drew the string. The knight, so smug in his armor and shield, toppled over in shock at the searing pain of a perfectly placed shot through the one gap in his defenses.
"Boriska! Ordering an honorable knight to do your dirty work, then sneaking mercenaries in behind his back—how disgusting can you get? Have you no courage to face me yourself?"
Johan's rebuke rang out across the field. He didn't particularly despise Boriska, nor was he truly scandalized by the man's methods—but a knight had to claim justification for himself, whatever the situation. That was simply how the game was played.
And it worked. At Johan's shout, several of the knights around Boriska visibly hesitated.
"Drop your weapons and surrender! Do so, and you'll be granted a trial before the Duke."
"Kill that heathen bastard!"
Of course, any knight who would have been shamed into reflection by such words would never have staged this ambush in the first place. Boriska snarled and pointed at Johan.
Wrapped as they were in honor and piety, it was easy to forget that knights were, at their core, savage and violent beasts. When desire ran loose, that nature showed itself all the more clearly.
With a roar, the knights charged at Johan. Johan drove his horse straight into them without an ounce of retreat.
His mace swung with a murderous whistle, and the knights it met were knocked rolling across the ground. Even in the dark, Johan's valor blazed.
That a single rider could carve into their formation untouched—those who failed to stop him wore the faces of men staring at a demon. Same horses, same armor, same training. So why couldn't they stop one man?
"Boriska! Are you frightened? Stop hiding behind your knights and face me yourself!"
"You insolent wretch—how dare you!"
Stung, Boriska gripped his weapon and glared at Johan. A man who lost once and turned coward was no knight at all.
I will drive this spearpoint into the back of his neck if it's the last thing I do!
Boriska spurred his horse forward with a springing burst of motion.
Johan's sudden appearance had rattled him, but he'd already rehearsed a dozen times in his head how he would fight if they ever crossed paths again after the tournament.
Johan's strength was monstrous, as if he'd made a pact with a demon. The answer was to avoid direct clashes, circle him, and bleed him dry of stamina.
Boriska was confident. Even if Johan's strength was beyond belief, his horsemanship couldn't possibly match up.
At that moment, a werewolf burst from the side.
"!?"
The thing was a different order of beast entirely from any ordinary werewolf. Its snow-white fur seemed to glow even in the darkness, impossible to miss.
"GRAAAAH!"
A scream, and blood sprayed. The werewolf had brought Boriska's horse down in an instant and was tearing and raking at him.
"The pack leader!"
Someone's shout snapped Johan back to himself. He snatched up a spear and hurled it. The werewolf king flung itself backward with a bestial shriek.
Its eyes gleamed with a cunning that seemed almost too intelligent for a feral monster. It looked Johan up and down, as if measuring him.
A knight friendly with Boriska recklessly spurred his horse into a charge. The werewolf king snapped the incoming sword clean between its teeth, then swatted the knight from his saddle with one arm.
"No!"
Having claimed two victims, the werewolf king howled in what seemed like satisfaction, seized a man under each arm, and bolted. Patience no monster should have possessed.
"...Unbelievable."
Even Johan was taken aback. A werewolf that broke off its attack and simply ran. Euclia's face had gone stiff with the same absurdity.
"I... I surrender, ser."
"!"
The voices of the knights came from up ahead. Euclia drew a finger across her throat. Johan shook his head.
He had told Boriska he'd grant him a trial before the Duke, but he hadn't meant it. It was a line thrown out on the certainty that Boriska would attack regardless.
Were Boriska dragged before the Duke, the man might yet scheme his way out of it, and if the affair devolved into a war of accusations, Johan the foreigner would find himself with a headache of his own.
Boriska dies here.
But there was no need to kill everyone else.
"Will you swear to testify before the Duke about Boriska's conduct?"
The remaining knights hesitated a moment, then nodded. Boriska had led the whole affair anyway. Now that things had come to this, the mud would land on him regardless.
Johan left the camp alongside the surrendered knights. Behind them, mercenaries who had barely survived the werewolf rampage crawled out with the souls half-drained from their faces.
The knights heaped curses on the mercenaries the moment they saw them.
"You worthless trash of hunters! You caused this whole disaster! Eastern Rangers, my ass! Secret methods, my ass! You're nothing but mongrels that bite the hand that feeds you! Hiring your kind was the mistake of the century!"
"...You done? It's the middle of the damn night, and thanks to this whole circus I'm in a filthy mood already..."
The mercenaries, furious at the abuse, gripped their weapons. Johan watched them and spoke.
"Draw, and I'll cut you down."
"?"
The mercenaries stared in confusion at a knight's face none of them recognized. Who was this stranger?
"Boriska's been carried off by a werewolf, and the knights here have surrendered. What do you intend to do?"
"......"
"...W-we surrender too."
The mercenaries read a room a cut above the knights. The moment they grasped how badly the situation had turned, their weapons hit the ground.
Boriska was gone and the knights had capitulated—the story was over. There was nothing they could do about it, they held no real loyalty to anyone, and...
"Which of you is the Eastern Ranger?"
"This one here! This bastard's all mouth and nothing else, I swear—"
The mercenaries dragged Galambos forward. His face was a mess; someone had worked him over when he'd tried to bolt.
Galambos cried out desperately.
"This wasn't my doing! The werewolves have gone mad, they—!"
Watching him scramble for excuses, Johan felt a twinge of guilt.
Apparently not a single person here suspected that Johan himself had herded the monsters here like a shepherd driving a flock.
"Shut up, you blockhead. You nearly got us all killed."
"Quiet."
Johan silenced the mercenaries and made Galambos recount what had happened.
The secret methods of the Eastern Rangers proved fascinating—fascinating enough that Johan forgot the situation entirely and simply listened.
"The pack leader seemed far too healthy to be rabid."
"That's... well, you see... the powder worked on the werewolves, but... it doesn't seem to have worked on the werewolf king."
"You absolute dimwit!"
The mercenaries choked with frustration, but Galambos had a point. A mutation like that was beyond anyone's ability to predict.
Galambos racked his brain desperately.
He didn't know about the others, but with things having gone this far, he was well and truly hanging from a scaffold.
"I'll track the pack leader, my lord! He left plenty of traces—more than enough to follow!"
The mercenaries looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. The camp was in ruins, and this man wanted to chase the werewolf again?
But Johan was tempted.
Returning to denounce Boriska's misdeeds before the Duke and see him punished was one path—but above all, wouldn't it be proper to bring back real quarry?
"You can track it?"
"I'll stake my life on it, my lord!"
Just then, the tribal warriors came galloping in from the distance—search parties sent out when Johan failed to return. Aclada took in the wrecked camp and asked what had happened.
"That's our lord for you! We cannot let prey like that slip away!"
Aclada was wholeheartedly in favor. Whether a few mercenaries and knights died in the process was irrelevant. The only question that mattered was whether the quarry was caught or lost.
The crowds that had gathered near Bayen showed no sign of dispersing. Feasts like this were rare enough, and everyone was curious what quarry the knights would bring back.
As the knights returned one by one, the crowd cheered and went wild. When one came trudging back empty-handed, the jeers rained down without mercy.
And when the sun stood highest in the sky, Johan and his party returned.
At first the onlookers wondered at the sight of so many knights together, but the question died quickly.
Because the quarry among them was simply extraordinary.
"A werewolf!"
"A werewolf? Werewolves aren't that impressive, are they?"
"What a lunatic... Does he even know how savage a werewolf is?"
"N-no, that's true, but those mercenaries who came through our village last year caught one too."
"You fool. You can say that because it's not in front of you. Get up here and look! Does that look like an ordinary werewolf to you?"
"It's a werewolf king! They've taken a werewolf king!"
Even to untrained eyes, the werewolf's massive frame and white fur looked anything but ordinary. One well-traveled soul spoke up, and the word spread like wildfire.
The mercenaries driving the cart bearing the werewolf's corpse through the center of the crowd received their cheers with anything but joy. They were anxious and on edge.
"Is this really all right?"
"What else? You want to run for it?"
"Shut it, all of you. Unless you'd fancy a date with the gallows."
Their nerves were understandable enough.
This had been a hunt held on the Duke's honor.
A minor infraction might have been overlooked, but separately hiring mercenaries was a frontal assault on the Duke's authority and prestige. No noble on earth let such an affront slide.
With luck, the gallows; without it, something far worse.
Johan had promised their lives would be spared if they showed no further treachery, but honestly, they couldn't quite bring themselves to believe it.
These were men who had lived by betraying others. Even facing an honorable knight, the thought what if? was hard to suppress.
Up on the city wall, Duke Brudhe wore a satisfied expression.
"The Alchia Tribe never disappoints me."
"Indeed they do not."
"Though he had to fight alone..."
"Quarry fit for a knight isn't so common. Had he given chase, he might well have crossed paths with several at once. And is it not honorable for knights to join their wills to take a beast?"
Knights banding together was a possibility even the Duke had anticipated, and once he said as much, the others let the matter drop.
"There are the bodies of knights among them as well."
"A glorious death."
It might have seemed strange, at a glance, for several men to die at what was meant to be a joyous festival—but in this world, it was simply how things were.
Just as a handful of unlucky knights had failed to wake from the tournament, so too with the hunt. In the pursuit of honor and glory, lives were counted cheap—never more so than among the knightly class.
The onlookers traced holy signs and mourned the fallen. But at the sight of the banner hung over one of the bodies, the Duke's brow furrowed.
The House of Pedeo?
Death, of course, was impartial. Any knight could fall to a single ill-fated arrow.
Yet Boriska hardly seemed the sort of knight to thrust his head willingly into danger. Wasn't he the man who had weighed every gain and loss while riding safely behind the others' protection?
Moreover, it struck the Duke as odd that it was the eastern tribal warriors who had recovered the corpse. The two parties were hardly on friendly terms.
What exactly happened out there?
The first to receive the quarry was the Duke's Master of the Hunt.
In practice, the work differed little from that of a groundskeeper, but the honor was of an entirely different order. It, too, was a coveted post reserved for a lucky few among the lesser nobility.
Competition for it was fierce, and a man of insufficient skill did not hold the position long. A Master of the Hunt had to be seasoned beyond comparison with ordinary hunters.
"...?"
That same master now wore a bewildered expression as he probed the werewolf's body with his hands, this way and that. The thing that should have been there simply wasn't.
There was not a single wound on the beast.
Naturally, he'd assumed it had been taken by poison—but there was no trace of venom, no sign of a sword or a spear either...
Then what in God's name killed it?
"Might we enter the city now?"
"Y-yes, enter."
Johan and his party passed through the open gates and into the city proper. Last time, the tournament had forced them to remain outside the walls, so this was their first time within.
A beautiful city.
He'd felt it even from a distance—a city dating back to the days of the Ancient Empire carried a grandeur that could not help but inspire awe.
"Did you see the Master of the Hunt's face?"
"I suppose it would confuse anyone."
Aclada burst out laughing. He knew exactly why the man had been flustered. Frankly, had he seen that carcass himself, he'd have been startled too.
Then his laughter cut off abruptly.
"But why in the world did you bring that bastard's corpse back and tend to it?"
From secretly hiring mercenaries to attempting to disrupt a sacred hunt—none of it was remotely forgivable. By rights, the body should have been left in a field for the scavengers to pick clean, and that would have been a mercy.
"Mercy."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Don't look so shocked at a single joke. Things being as they are, I merely decided the corpse might prove useful."