Chapter 13

Translator: Willia

Those who amassed great wealth and seized high rank and power had, since ancient times, made a practice of hosting weary travelers and those of exceptional skill and talent.

In an age when news of the wider world was itself a rare thing, feeding and sheltering travelers was regarded as a virtue, and among those travelers were heroes who slew monsters to repay the kindness of the chieftain or the master of the house who had received them.

Duke Sven, that is, the ducal House Viðing, possessed such immense wealth and power that it kept a great many houseguests.

A houseguest was someone who, through the recommendation of a trustworthy party or by catching the Duke's eye, was granted room and board at the ducal house without holding any fixed office. Some stayed only briefly before moving on, but most simply latched on and lived there for good.

The houseguests were all manner of people. A mage well versed in herbs, a man who could mimic animal calls uncannily well, a renowned swordsman, a smooth talker, a fine writer, a storyteller, a bard, a wandering knight, an explorer, an adventurer, and even a Viking who claimed to have seen the ends of the earth.

Some among them rendered a service and secured a post of their own; others, though they had no particular achievement to show, won the Duke's favor and received rich rewards and high station.

When some matter arose, or when the Duke had need of them, they made themselves useful, but most of their days were spent flattering the Duke and his sons, or simply idling and feasting.

What such houseguests dreamed of was to be granted a manor or a fief and found a house of their own, and what they feared most was being cast out of the ducal house.

But young men around the age of fifteen were in a somewhat different situation. Most of them were the sons of noble houses, knightly houses, or freemen, and generally served as private soldiers of the ducal house; with luck, they became squires or apprentice knights.

Strictly speaking, they were not houseguests, but most of them were children their own houses had discarded, or concubine-born sons, and so had nowhere to go but the ducal house. In other words, they were houseguests-in-waiting, near enough.

A young man named Arne was one such. He was eighteen years old, tall and powerfully built, and of freeman stock.

A freeman was a station belonging to the Nordic lineage. It was unlike a commoner, and it was a class that dwindled with the passing years.

Through the great wars, the Conquest War and the Beast Wars, the Nordics had become nobles, or run manors, or turned to yeoman farming; those who became none of these were called freemen.

A freeman generally had the freedom to change his place of residence, the right to own property, the right to bear arms, the right to the spoils he had won for himself, the right to resist unjust treatment, the right to a trial by combat, and so on, so that in terms of rights alone he was nearly the equal of a noble. For that reason, even nobles could not treat a freeman carelessly.

But reality was cruel indeed, for lacking land to set foot on or property to lean upon, they were, with the passing of time, gradually being reduced to commoners.

Perhaps Arne would be the last. Arne's children might never enjoy the rights of a freeman, and might live out their lives as ordinary commoners, nothing more.

Maybe that was why Arne trained harder than anyone.

Today, as ever, he rose at dawn and began with physical conditioning, then swung his sword in a state of utter exhaustion. He did this because the knights had told him that in real combat one was never in perfect condition.

"There goes that moron making a show of himself again."

A fellow soldier, just now stepping out of the barracks, said it loud enough for everyone to hear. Arne ignored it and threw himself into his training.

Another comrade looked on with distaste and put in his own remark.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be relieving the watch?"

"I'll wash up and go in a bit."

"Get ready, chop-chop, moron. Do your own job right before you go training. You think showing off's going to make you any better when you've got no talent?"

Working hard did not guarantee results. Arne trained harder than anyone, yet he could not boast of any outstanding skill within the ranks of the private soldiers.

"I've never been late to a watch. Never slacked, either."

"Well, well, listen to the sergeant. Dumb bastard."

At the unrelenting insults, Arne let his sword drop. He caught his breath, then gave up and was about to go wash when someone called out to him.

"Arne, come here."

He turned his head and saw a group of five or six gathered together; they had called out to him on their way to the mess hall.

Wherever young men were gathered, the strongest clique among them was bound to form. The bunch that had called Arne over were known as Skard's Gang, and they were precisely that strong clique.

When Arne approached, weary, Skard, the head of the gang, spoke.

"You've been coming up a lot lately. You know that?"

"......Yeah."

"Straighten up. Otherwise I'll have you on night watch until the end of time. Got it?"

"Got it."

Arne nodded and headed for the yard behind the barracks. There was a well; he stripped off all his clothes, drew water with the bucket, and poured it over himself from the top of his head down. The water was cold enough to stop a heart. Even so, he repeated it several times as he washed.

Still like that, he went back into the barracks and dried himself off, and put his sweat-soaked clothes into the laundry basket. Then the men on duty would come, wash them clean, and set them back in place.

After that he dressed himself in full. Over a gambeson that reached to his thighs he fastened a belt, and put on the helmet called a spangenhelm, securing the chin strap. Then he went to the armory and received a sword and spear. The sword he belted at his waist.

Arne left the citadel along with the other men on duty and headed for the city's watergates. The city had two outer wall gates and three watergates.

When he arrived at the assigned watergate with the comrade sharing his watch, the men of the previous watch, who had been sitting and dozing or lounging about idly, rose to their feet.

"Arne, why don't you just take the night watch instead?"

"There's a separate person who draws up the roster."

"No fun, no money, fuck......"

One of the men who had stood the night watch grumbled.

They made a proper changing of the watch, then opened the watergate. Before long, the boats that had been waiting at the nearby landing came in.

They were loaded with all sorts of cargo, and Arne's fellow guard went about jabbing at the goods with the butt of his spear, picking fights with the merchants passing through.

"What's this, then? What? Olive oil? Would you look at this filthy little bastard. You thought this would get through?"

There was nothing at all wrong with the goods, but not as far as the watergate guard was concerned. The truth was, the provocation was entirely deliberate.

Sure enough, the merchant gave a groveling smile and handed over a copper coin. At that the guard scowled deeply, as if displeased, and the merchant handed over more.

"Next time this won't get you off. Move along. Next."

In this way the guard went on squeezing money out of them.

It was a world with no concept of a bribe at all. Neither the giver nor the taker gave the slightest thought to it being wrong; it was simply one of those things taken for granted. In the case of slave merchants, some even offered up a female slave.

Even so, one could not squeeze too hard, and had to pick and choose. Someone plainly without money, just passing through, or a powerful magnate within the city, or a mighty merchant company, might be let through without a word.

But though no one had taught him or told him not to, Arne simply found these things distasteful. Everyone else did it, yet his inborn honesty made him balk.

This was what Skard had meant earlier by telling him to straighten up. Squeeze the money out properly. Hand Skard the set amount, and one could pocket the rest for himself.

But Arne could not bring himself to do it, no matter what. He couldn't stop the others from doing it either; he was simply left uneasy, alone, all the time.

Now and then, though, the rougher merchants would push back.

The truth was, venturing out into the outside world, which was little different from wilderness, buying goods and hauling them long distances to sell, was no easy thing.

To do such work one had to have some measure of force at one's command, for now and again the merchant himself happened to be a fine fighter. In a word, they were no pushovers.

"Oh-ho? This one? You dare defy the ducal house!?"

"Hey, you fucker! Ducal house or your mother's goddamn bullshit, you'd squeeze the liver out of a flea! You and me, we'll go down together!" [TL Note: "squeeze the liver out of a flea" renders a Korean idiom for extorting even the destitute, being so greedily petty as to strip a flea of its innards.]

"Oh-ho!?"

"Sir! Put your blade away!"

Arne, uneasy the whole while, stepped in. A quarrel had to be broken up, after all.

A fierce scuffle broke out, and it ended with the merchant simply being let through.

"Damn it! Fuck, ptooey! I've got that bastard's face memorized, you hear!?"

"......Ease up."

"What? Ease up? Didn't you see that bastard defy us just now? That's a challenge to the ducal house, too!"

"Haah......"

Arne let out a deep sigh. Standing watch was harder than even the most grueling physical training.

"Hey, you thick-headed idiot. You think you'll climb anywhere just training every damn day? Take what you can while you can. Good grief! Don't you know Skard's got it in for you?"

Maybe his comrade was right. More than once, Arne had thought about just squeezing money like everyone else.

He only had to do what everyone else did. There was no one to say a word against it. And yet Arne couldn't bring himself to. He wavered, like a man standing at some grave crossroads. That was what tormented Arne.

In any case, after a hard watch one way or another, the twilight came. The night-watch men arrived and relieved the watch, and Arne returned to the citadel.

When he entered the citadel, preparations for the feast were in full swing. Today was the day of the Great Feast, not the feast held up at the castle on the hill for the Duke and Duchess and only the most important figures, but a great feast in the citadel courtyard in which every member of the household took part.

By head count alone it came to around two hundred. Counting outsiders as well, it might be even more.

Servants and houseguests alike butchered pigs and cleaned out their innards, hauled great casks, arranged the tables, set a large campfire in the center, and set bonfires here and there throughout the fortress grounds.

It seemed there was to be some sort of talent show; some people wandered about in ridiculous costumes, and the bard plucked the strings of his lute in practice.

By the time Arne got back to the barracks, washed, and changed his clothes, several people were already singing outside at the top of their lungs.

When he came back out, many of the city's high-class courtesans and elaborately made-up women had arrived as well. Perhaps because this was the seat of power for the city, and beyond it for all of Eldeira, they came of their own accord, without so much as being summoned.

The night grew darker and darker, and drink and meat were carried about busily. The bonfires blazed more fiercely. It seemed to awaken the dark instinct buried within man.

"You hear about it? Word is a bastard's coming soon. You know, the one, Winsloe's bastard."

A fellow soldier seated near Arne said. He wasn't speaking to Arne; it was talk among themselves.

"Bullshit. Rumors are all lies to begin with. Crack him one in the jaw and he'll go down same as anyone."

"Right. And if it comes to it, we all pile on and beat him. Nobody wins against a gang."

"You, don't you have any pride?"

"Nope."

"Heh heh heh, moron."

Since the man in question wasn't before their eyes, they tore into the subject of the rumor among themselves. Tearing at meat, too, and drinking.

"Anyway, still no opening in the guest wing?"

Skard asked his underlings.

Within the ducal house, that is, Torvik Citadel, there was in effect a status hierarchy all its own, with the Duke and his family dwelling in the castle on the hill, then the important figures in the guest wing, the rest in quarters shared with the servants, and then the barracks. The place where ordinary soldiers, Arne among them, lived was the barracks.

The guest wing housed the Duke's advisors, knights, and honored guests. Those who had homes of their own within the city sometimes came and went daily, but from the guest wing up, the standard of life was truly of another order.

For the soldiers, the guest wing was a goal and a dream. The inside of the citadel was a small world unto itself, and to live in the guest wing was itself a kind of high station.

"Won't an opening turn up soon? You're an apprentice knight, Skard."

"That's right. An apprentice knight at your age, there's probably not another in the whole kingdom."

The underlings were forcing praise on their leader, but it wasn't so. The kingdom had plenty of people with insane levels of talent at even younger ages. Of course, not all of their roads through life turned out well.

Before long the Duke and his three sons, too, sat at the high seat and laughed and talked freely and merrily.

They were not simply idling and feasting; some, with grave expressions, cautiously approached the Duke to make a discreet request, and the Duke soothed them or laughed it off as he conversed.

In the midst of this the Duke looked for his eldest son. He had been right there a moment ago, and now was nowhere to be seen.

But even at his father's summons, the eldest son, perhaps because he had taken so long to be found, came running in haste from the far garden after a good while.

The way he was hitching up his trousers made it plain enough what he had been up to. He was very tall and big of body, but there was something dull-witted about him.

At the sight of that eldest son, the Duke's expression soured. In turn, the great crowd of people, reading the Duke's mood, hushed their chatter. The bard's hand plucking the lute stopped as well.

"You called, Father. I mean, Your Excellency, Duke."

"How long are you going to carry on like that?"

"What? Wh-what did I...... everyone else does it too...... Agh!"

The eldest son, for all his great bulk, stood thoroughly cowed, and then suddenly let out a yelp. It was none other than because the Duke had seized hold of the thing between his legs.

"So you've done nothing wrong, is that it? Then it must have been this that did the wrong. Let's be rid of it."

"W-wait! I was wrong! I was!"

For the eldest son of a ducal house it was a truly unsightly display, and sure enough the faction that followed him glared murderously at everyone else, telling them with their expressions to look away. Arne, too, kept his eyes fixed on his wine cup alone.

Just then someone came swiftly up to the Duke and whispered in his ear.

"Ah, yes. That bastard. Arrived, has he? A feast is under way just in time, good. Lower the drawbridge. As if that's some great matter to report to me over."

Opening the gate and lowering the drawbridge at night was a grave enough matter that reporting it was in fact the correct thing to do.

What everyone regarded as most important was the state of the Duke's mood. When he was in good spirits he might, on a whim, hand out rewards or raise a man's station, and when he was in ill spirits he might find some pretext to punish a man for no good reason.

At any rate, with the sound of thick iron chains turning outside, the drawbridge came down and the gate opened.

Presently, far off, beyond the moat, a pitch-black silhouette of someone on horseback came into view, and he entered the citadel slowly.

Clop. Clop. Clop. Clop......

Every eye was fixed on him. When he reached the place where the light of the blazing bonfires touched, gasps broke out here and there.

"Hah."

"Whoa......"

It was none other than because the man was so handsome it was hard to believe even while seeing it. His beauty was such that even the word "perfect" fell short, as though something beyond it had been added.

Platinum hair swept back, a straight nose, sky-blue eyes. Those eyes swept over the feast.

Arne, too, gazed at him blankly, as if spellbound.

He dismounted and strode, thud, thud, toward the place where the central campfire blazed. He did not kneel; he only bowed his head to pay his respects to the Duke, then spoke.

"Wid of Winsloe. It is an honor to meet you, Your Excellency."

He had seemed drunk, but the Duke's gaze had sharpened at some point. He studied Valery closely, then said.

"......The rumors weren't exaggerated. They fell short."

"You flatter me."

"But where is Ketil? There was to be someone traveling with you."

"He is dead."

"......What did you say?"

If this was a jest meant to liven up the mood at a feast, the moment was ill-suited to it. The Duke had been out of temper until just now on account of his eldest son. But if it was no jest......

"We made camp for one night, and at daybreak there were attackers, and he died. He took a bolt to the neck and a bolt to the arm, crossbow bolts; he was spared instant death, but did not last long before he died."

"......Your proof?"

Valery went back to Snow and brought over the pouch-like things that had hung in clusters from the saddle, along with the crossbow and other weapons. The pouches were brown, the blood that had pooled at their bottoms gone stiff.

When he set the pouches down on the ground with a thud, human heads came rolling out of them, tumbling. Something that could never belong at a dining table.

"Gah!"

"Eek!"

Those unaccustomed to corpses, and to severed heads in particular, sucked in sharp breaths.

Some of the heads the Duke recognized. No, not only he, but many people recognized them, for they were houseguests who lived in the citadel.

Besides the heads, Valery set down the attackers' weapons as well, and one glance made it plain these were not the weapons of some ragtag brigands but the sort a regular army would use.

No, in the first place, the weapons used by the ducal house came from set suppliers, so a weapon of the ducal house could be recognized at once.

The Duke gazed at them quietly, then turned his eyes and looked at his eldest son.

"I-it wasn't me! It's true! Really!"

Next he turned to his fat second son. He did not make a fuss like the eldest; he shook his head and spoke calmly.

"It wasn't me either."

Last, he turned to his third son.

The third son wore a garment that came up to his neck, and looked to be of an age with Valery.

His large eyes with their upturned corners gave him the look of a cat, and he did not take his eyes off Valery, and gave no answer to his father's question.

"......"

With that, it was roughly clear who had done it.

Duke Sven did not go flushing red and purple in the face, but his sitting there in silence, saying nothing, made it plain to anyone that he was angry.

The feast ground was so quiet that a single swallowed gulp would have rung out loud, and the only clamor was the sound of the campfire and the bonfires burning.

Then Duke Sven spoke.

"You've had a hard journey. Show him to the guest wing."

And then he rose to his feet and climbed the hill road up to the castle. His close attendants and his sons followed after, and with that the feast was over.

Valery stood beside the campfire, waiting for someone to guide him. The campfire flickered like a demon's tongue, casting its red light over Valery as if licking at him.

Everyone stared at him and murmured. Such stares and murmurs would have been a burden to most, yet Valery paid them no mind at all and simply stood there at ease.

Over a deep blue gambeson he had a short cloak fastened at the right shoulder with a pin, and at his waist he wore a single sword.

The garments were not especially fine, but perhaps because of that face, an aura somehow hard to approach hung about him.

Arne, too, could not take his eyes off Valery. He was struck to the heart with a deep impression, and Valery felt to him like a being of an altogether different order.

"This way, please. I shall show you."

Presently the man come to guide him approached Valery and spoke. At that Valery followed him, walking toward the guest wing, and the eyes of the crowd followed along.

When Valery disappeared from sight, the feast ground shifted from murmuring to a buzz.

"That was wild, huh?"

One of Skard's Gang said.

Straight to the guest wing the moment he arrived, it didn't quite sit right, but the six heads sprawled near the campfire shut everyone's mouths.