Chapter 11

Translator: Willia

For the time being, nothing about Valery's daily routine changed.

He woke before dawn to tidy the bedding, ran out to the mountain in front with the boys and hauled piles of stones up its slopes, returned to the castle, and spent his afternoons drilling the boys in swordsmanship. The same day, over and over.

Now and then he made time to ride Snow across the fields. Even the winter that had occasionally lingered was drawing away, and it was fine weather for riding. The flowers on the plains had put on the colors of spring, bright and many-hued.

What Count Aethelred was thinking, he had no idea, but he wasn't much interested. There was no reason for their paths to cross anyway.

If anything, it was the boys who seemed worried, letting slip their unease over one thing or another. And every time, it was Valery, of all people, who ended up soothing them.

"What if the Duke's army comes to take us?"

"That won't happen."

"How can you be so sure? Wouldn't it be better to run for it now?"

"I'll fight alongside you."

"Hakon, you being still is the help we need."

"Don't hate me, Wid."

"I never hated you."

"Then what?"

"You're just a nuisance, that's all."

"So what do I do to stop being a nuisance?"

"Stop being a nuisance."

"?"

"But honestly, it felt good to get it off my chest. If it had been a real fight, lives on the line, I'd have won. Swordsmen seem to learn nothing but nasty little tricks."

"Since it's come to this anyway, wouldn't it have been better to just take his head off?"

"Tommy, you still haven't cooled that temper of yours?"

"That's a thing to say to Wid, not me. I didn't do a thing."

Conversations of roughly this sort passed back and forth. Boys were boys.

Even so, Valery far preferred the boys' childish chatter to the affairs of grown men. There was no calculation in it, nothing but words tossed out without a second thought, and that put his mind at ease.

Harold, though, was unexpectedly quiet. Only now and then, when the two of them were alone, did he slip in a question.

"Aren't you worried?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's plain to see."

"What is?"

"Duke Sven. He's a consistently cunning bastard, so he'll pull some cunning scheme this time too."

"What kind of scheme?"

"He'll coax me along, quietly build up my strength. And then use me as a check against House Winsloe."

"......Wid, are you living your life second time or something?"

Valery turned to look at Harold and smiled. As always, when Valery smiled it was truly like something out of a painting.

"You've caught me."

"I know. That you mean to go to the Duke's house in my place."

"......Is that so. I didn't know you'd know."

"I might have a childish streak, but I'm not blind."

"I knew that much."

"Hey, Wid."

"What."

"Why is it that the way you talk never sounds quite human?"

"What are you on about?"

"I'm worried, you know."

"Are you sulking at me right now?"

"Yeah. So what. What are you going to do about it?"

"......"

Valery let out a helpless little laugh, dumbfounded. Still, it left him in a good mood. He shook his head and said,

"Don't worry. Nothing's going to happen to me, and I have no intention of doing anything to Winsloe. If anything, there's more I can do at the Duke's house than here. If they mean to use me, then I can use them right back, with an easy conscience."

"Well, that's a relief then."

"Feeling any better now?"

"Not at all."

"You're unbelievable."

Valery found himself laughing again. It felt just right. The right sort of distance, one might call it, neither clinging too close nor pushing each other away.

"Would it upset you if I said I envied you, Wid?"

"No. It wouldn't upset me."

"You have things I don't, Wid. And the reverse is true too, I suppose. In the end I've no choice but to be bound to this place, but you aren't."

"......"

Valery thought that this was fair enough. Once, he might have glared and called him naive, but not now. If there was anything that had changed after his regression, this was one such change.

A spring breeze blew. Those standing at the threshold between boyhood and the age of manhood had to learn how to set old feelings, and feelings they could carry no further, out onto the wind.

It was two weeks after the instructional duel.

This time a runner came ahead of the rest, bearing word that an envoy of Duke Sven would be arriving.

And three days later, a man named Ketilmund, one of Duke Sven's adjutants, came to Winsloe with an attendant.

An adjutant was one who assisted with practical affairs at the sovereign's very side, and Ketilmund, concubine-born though he was, carried the blood of the Duke's house. It was a visit measured out with its own courtesy and rank.

For that reason the Count of Winsloe and the people of his house, too, came out from the castle to receive him, observing proper form and matching his rank.

Ketilmund dismounted at the foot of the castle hill. Then he came up on foot. To look down on a superior or a noble from horseback was against the rules of courtesy.

In many ways it was unlike the visit of the man called Gael. And, unlike that Gael, Ketilmund was the more accomplished operator.

"Oh, come now. Why. You needn't have come out to meet me. I don't know where to put myself, Count."

"No. It would be a discourtesy not to."

"No, no. The old saying goes that in his own home even the farmer is a king, does it not? Then I am but a servant, and it is my duty to look up to you, Count. There's no need to stand on ceremony with someone as lowly as me."

"Well, in any case, come inside. We've prepared a banquet."

"The greatest of honors. Thank you, my lady."

Ketilmund did not forget to greet the Countess either. And in that brief moment he ran his eyes over the assembled people. Harold, the knights, and Valery. Valery, with his strikingly handsome features, caught the eye at once.

At the banquet table were Count Aethelred and his wife, Ketilmund, Harold, and Valery. The attendant who had come with Ketilmund and Aethelred's two knights stood attending against the wall.

Ketilmund kept up his easy patter, and Count Aethelred played along as befitted the occasion. The matter of the instructional duel went deliberately unmentioned.

Then, when the meal was more or less finished, Ketilmund said he had something to show them and gestured toward his attendant. At that the attendant brought forward some sort of box.

Ketilmund set the box before himself and said,

"A gift, if you'll call it that. I do hope it's to your liking."

And with that, staring fixedly at Valery, he opened the box.

"Gah!"

The Countess reacted so violently she nearly toppled from her chair. The Count caught her in haste. Harold flinched and recoiled as well.

For inside the box was a mound of salt, and set in the middle of it was Gael's head. The nose was gone, the whole thing shrunken somewhat, its color a dull, livid blue.

Valery, of course, showed not the slightest trace of alarm. Ketilmund observed him from first to last, as though determined to catch even the smallest twitch of a facial muscle. It was a ploy, springing a shocking object on them to check their reactions.

"What is this?" Count Aethelred asked, his brow drawn into a deep frown. It angered him that his wife had been startled, but a thing like this had no business on a dinner table in the first place.

"I'm told this man dared to speak insolently to you, Count. These days the lower sort get so full of themselves they forget which way is up and which is down. The Duke's house apologizes on his behalf. This is a token of that apology. Will you accept it?"

The Duke's people were always like this. Insolent in deed, apologetic in word.

Count Aethelred turned his face away as if he could not bear the sight and said,

"......I'll accept the sentiment. Take it away at once."

At the Count's reply, only then did Ketilmund close the box.

"Thank you. And, His Excellency the Duke takes a keen interest in Young Lord Wid. The Blackcen horse fair, was it? Word of what he did there was on people's lips for days even in Torvik. On top of that, he put this arrogant swordsman in his place, which proves that when it comes to battle, at least, he's nothing short of a prodigy. His Excellency the Duke wishes to see the Young Lord as soon as he may."

It plainly and simply meant, you, come. And having gone this far, it was in truth difficult to refuse.

Had they threatened, there would at least have been grounds to push back, but they had brought Gael's very head, and the Duke's side had bowed first and even offered an apology, so to say he could not go would be to hold the Duke as a fool outright.

For Count Aethelred it was a genuine dilemma. Because he bore the duty of keeping and protecting the prince's secret. That Valery might slip out of his hands was an unease of no small measure.

Yet Valery, by some means he could not fathom, knew his own name and station. And above all, the words "You're not a vessel fit to hold me" had lodged in his chest and still echoed in his ears.

Helplessness, guilt over his own incompetence, and shame welled up in him. And so he closed his eyes.

"I'll go."

Valery spoke first. At that, Ketilmund put on a genial, good-natured smile that fairly dripped with pretense. It was the kind of smile made by a deliberate working of the muscles, the eyes crinkling too much, the corners of the mouth curling too far up.

"Young Lord Wid wishes it too, so you'll permit it, won't you, Count?"

Aethelred sat for a long while without answering, then reluctantly gave a nod.

"Don't you worry too much, Count. What, do you imagine we mean to eat the Young Lord? As I say, his renown is so widespread that it's out of sheer admiration we wish to have him at the Duke's house. On horseback the distance isn't so great, is it? You can see him whenever you like."

Not knowing the man's heart at all, Ketilmund prattled on under the pretense of soothing the Count.

But he did not know. That Valery, in turn, was observing him.

Strike while the iron is hot, as they say, so once this and that had been readied, they settled on setting out two days later. The clothes and daily necessities he'd been using all along. First of all, Valery packed the gambeson the Countess had made for him.

For all that a sudden upheaval like this might well have left his mind in disarray, Valery passed the time exactly as he always did, with none of that. Up before dawn, tidy the bedding, run up the mountain, come back and drill swordsmanship.

There was nothing weighing on him, no restlessness at all. When the boys couldn't join him because of their duties, he rode Snow across the fields.

He raced upstream along the river, on and on, until he reached a place where it felt as though he were alone in all the world, and there he brought the horse to a halt. Spring blossoms swayed in the wind, and the water glittered, scattered with sunlight.

He simply stood a while, taking the wind, when from the direction he had ridden came the sound of hooves. He turned his head to look and, to his surprise, the one who emerged past the ridgeline was Count Aethelred.

He rode up on horseback to where Valery stood. Then, drawing his mount's head level with Valery's, he looked out over the river, the fields, the scenery of spring.

Valery did not bother to speak. Neither of them said a word. And yet there was no discomfort in it, no awkwardness. It simply was.

Then, as if setting it out on the wind, Count Aethelred began to speak. Not as prince to Count, but as one man to another, or as one being to another.

"It was around this time, I think. Fourteen years ago. Though the fires of war had long since died down, the last embers still lingered. We were gathered at the royal capital, Valdene, and mustered for the operation to hunt down the remnants of the defeated. But 'remnants' in name only, they were seasoned warriors who had fought in the Conquest War. They say His Majesty the King won the Beast Wars thanks to his knights? From what I saw, not at all. I watched more of my fellow knights than I can count die screaming, struck down by axes hurled suddenly out of the brush. It was a fearful thing. Facing those madmen, those warriors. And the dread of it, not knowing when or where you might die."

Count Aethelred's gaze, as he looked upon the scenery of spring, seemed to reach beyond the landscape and touch the past.

"Snow was falling. Spring snow. Just like when the horse fair opened recently. It came pouring down. We had lost men and were retreating in haste. The night was deep, I couldn't tell one direction from another, and I thought I was surely done for. That was when I met the Rune Mage. A person of mystery, wearing a great big hat, a faint moonlight seeming to wrap about the figure. Younger than I'd have thought, perhaps? I can't quite recall. I followed the mage’s directions, and there stood an old ruined tower. And there, in it, was you. Truly no bigger than this. Can you believe it?"

Count Aethelred held up his palm. Valery looked at it.

"You who were once this small have now become what you are. I hardly know what to say. In any case, you looked as though your cord had been cut not long before. Is it true, as they say, that a prince is parted from his mother's arms the moment he's born? At the time there was such confusion, and the Rune Mage vanished, leaving only your name and a warning. Valery. Keep the secret and protect it. Mourn the Dead Gods...... From that moment on, my own life meant nothing to me. There was only the thought that I had to keep this creature, so very small and frail, alive."

"......"

"As you know, I had lost two wives and two children before. Having gone through that twice, life became something I loathed. Perhaps that's why, when I first saw you, you truly seemed like a son the Dead Gods had sent to me. It was only later, after I returned home from the operation, that I learned Sybil had been with child."

Valery only listened quietly to Count Aethelred's words. It had a different feel from when the Countess laid bare her heart. There was no lump rising in his throat, and yet he was not unmoved either.

Something like a melting feeling, one might say, or perhaps a heart growing lighter and lighter. Like a spring breeze. At any rate, that was how it was.

"......What is it you want to say?"

"The place where I found you was on the outskirts of Lingestrae. It lies not far from the royal capital, Valdene. Perhaps your mother lived somewhere thereabouts. Whether she still lives there now, I couldn't say. And Valery is neither a Nordic name nor an Astrian one. A prince's name, as I understand it, is given by his mother, so I wonder if she wasn't someone from a foreign land. That is what I wanted to tell you."

"......"

Valery stood still, taking the wind. Then he asked one more question.

It might not have been a question he needed to ask. But it was perhaps a question he could ask only in this moment. If he let this moment slip, there might never be another chance for it.

"If one of the two of us, Harold or I, had to die, which would you choose?"

It seemed a childish question. Yet Count Aethelred did not take it as childish in the least, and he agonized over it for a good long while. He was asking himself what he would truly do, should such a thing ever come to pass.

"......I would kill you, and then I would die myself. Because that is my responsibility."

The instant he heard those words, Valery found himself smiling in spite of himself. Because nothing could have satisfied him more.

Valery, still smiling, held out his hand for a handshake. It was rather out of the blue, and Count Aethelred made a face as if to ask what he meant by it.

Valery said,

"Let's make peace."

'Peace?' The Count turned the meaning of it over in his own mind. He traced back over how he had treated Valery these past fourteen years, and recalled, too, how Valery had recently saved Harold. It struck him that he had fallen short in many ways.

Count Aethelred clasped Valery's hand and said,

"I'm sorry. I fell far short. Forgive me."

Valery answered without a word, with a deeper smile still.

It was spring in full. Amid the coolness, a warm breeze blew from time to time.

Chapter 3 – A Farewell for Reconciliation. End.