Chapter 17

Translator: Willia

Dawn belonged, for the most part, to the servants. For the sake of the people they served, hot bathwater or a meal had to be ready by morning.

But there were also those who began their day at dawn by their own choice rather than at another's command.

They did so to make the time given to them longer, and more precious, than others did.

Valery and Arne were people of that sort. The two of them began each day at dawn with physical training.

So this morning too they met at dawn to train, but when Arne held out a vest, Valery didn't take it.

"One more person's coming."

"Huh?"

"There's someone I arranged to meet."

"Who?"

"You'll know when you see him."

Arne thought it came out of nowhere, but there was no harm in working out together.

And he was quietly curious, too. It hadn't occurred to him that Valery had, in the meantime, made any friend besides himself.

Before long, someone came down from the hill where the castle stood. In the dawn light only a dark silhouette was visible, and the frame didn't look particularly large.

At first Arne paid it no mind. Coming down from the castle meant the person was either family of the ducal house or one of the attendants or servants who waited on them up close.

But the figure who had come down the hill walked toward them. Naturally, Arne's gaze went to him as well.

As he drew closer, Arne's eyes widened, little by little. Because the person Valery had arranged to meet was none other than Knut, the Third Young Lord of the ducal House Viðing.

At last he reached the spot where the two of them stood. Arne's heart was fluttering wildly. The gap in station was one thing, but it was also because of the notoriety Knut carried.

Knut came up to the two of them without so much as a word of greeting, and stared fixedly at Valery with those big, cat-like eyes.

Knut was a year younger than Valery. He had a larger build than Hakon, but among the three of them now he was noticeably the smallest. He stood a full head shorter than Valery, who was tall for his age.

Yet there was a thorn-like aura that radiated from that small frame, something that made a person needlessly uneasy and cowed for no reason.

Valery, of course, was unbothered. Arne alone fidgeted, unable to keep still.

"There's still an introduction to make. Come along."

Valery said. And with that he set off somewhere, and Arne followed awkwardly, and Knut followed too.

The place Valery headed for was the stable. He tossed off a rough greeting to the stable-keeper and led out Snow. Without even putting the tack on.

When the huge, coal-black warhorse appeared before him with no restraint at all, Arne was at a loss for words. The sheer intimidation of it made his knees go weak.

Valery calmly stroked that very Snow. In the faint dawn light, Snow's coat glinted now and then with a sheen, as though oil had been rubbed into his body.

"Th-this is, uh, the one from the horse fair......"

Arne said. Because he had heard well the tales of Valery's exploits at the horse fair. Proof of the rumors, so to speak; at any rate, seeing it with his own eyes stirred a touch of awe in him.

"Snow, these are my friends. There's no need to be wary."

Valery said to Snow, exactly as if he were speaking to a person. Snow, like a well-trained warhorse, didn't so much as snort, and only gazed quietly at the two people he was meeting for the first time.

"Want to give him a touch?"

Valery urged the two of them to try touching him.

Arne, frightened as he was, on the other hand seemed captivated by this sleek yet massive creature, and cautiously touched its neck.

Knut stayed still, but when Valery gave a little nod as if urging him again, Knut too gently stroked Snow's neck and shoulder.

It felt somehow like walking on thin ice, and yet peaceful. And then Valery said, out of nowhere,

"I'm going to call him Knut. Any objection?"

At first Arne couldn't react, wondering if he'd misheard. When it belatedly registered, his eyes went round.

"W-Wid."

But the man himself, Knut, showed no particular reaction to Valery's rudeness. He neither grew angry nor surprised, neither shook his head nor nodded, and merely went on stroking Snow.

Arne was so uncomfortable he thought he might just die. Whether or not he sensed that mood, Valery went one further and threw a perhaps even more shocking question at Knut.

"Why'd you kill that man Ketil?"

Arne's mouth fell open and he worked it like some kind of fish. He wanted to throw Valery over his shoulder and run then and there. But he only watched Knut's face, not daring to.

Valery had had it explained to him earlier by Arne and had a rough guess, but he'd asked because he had a feeling the man himself might have some other reason.

Knut, still stroking Snow, this time opened his mouth and answered the question. Perhaps his voice hadn't broken yet, unlike Valery's and Arne's, because it truly sounded like a child's.

"He got mouthy."

"Mouthy how?"

"He crossed a line."

"What line?"

"He said the two of us were no different in our lot."

"That crossed a line?"

"To be exact, he said there was no real difference between my mother being a whore-turned-concubine and her getting her head cut off. So I killed him. Any objection?"

"......"

Whether Ketilmund had said such things in some misguided attempt to build common ground, or meant to belittle him, was impossible to know.

At any rate, hearing it straight from the man's own mouth, some corner of his heart felt strangely subdued.

"......No, no objection."

"Then I've no objection either."

"Hm?"

"You said you'd call him Knut."

"Ah."

Valery nodded.

Arne's heart was pounding and pounding. And he couldn't quite grasp what on earth was happening. Maybe it was Snow, and the Third Young Lord, and the mood the dawn cast over everything, but it all felt somehow unreal.

Come to think of it, station aside, this was a conversation between a prince and the third son of a ducal house. Arne wasn't yet used to the particular force or charisma that such people carried.

"Back then you nearly killed me, and I nearly killed you, so let's call that even, one for one."

Valery said, and Knut nodded.

Did this mean there was no bad blood between them? For the two of them, at least, there was none, but to Arne's eyes it was nothing if not precarious.

Be that as it may, Valery pressed on with his questions without hesitation.

"There's one more thing I want to ask. I heard that when you were little you cut open a servant's belly looking for a watermelon thief. Why'd you do that?"

"Because he was trying to pin it on me."

"The servant?"

"Yeah. Cut his belly open and out came the watermelon."

The explanation was a bit lacking. When Knut was young, he had witnessed his mother's beheading and had developed something close to muteness.

Around that time, one of the servants had secretly eaten a watermelon belonging to the ducal house, and when the Duke happened to come looking for the watermelon, the servant pinned the blame on Knut.

Had Knut stayed quiet, it would likely have blown over well enough. Surely the Duke wouldn't punish anyone over a single watermelon.

But, Knut stabbed and cut open the servant's belly on the spot, with a knife.

"I see."

Valery nodded as though he understood.

No matter how he tried, Arne found it hard to adjust to the two of them talking. The one saying shocking things, and the one just nodding along as if it were nothing, he wondered what kind of conversation this even was.

"I'm going to talk now. Arne, you listen well too. The Duke has given us a mission. It's not some kind of training. It's the real thing. The three of us are going to do it. Got that?"

"Wh-what? Hold on."

Arne said hold on, but Valery ignored him and went on.

"To put it simply, it's closer to an assassination, or a contract killing. We're going to kill a bastard named Creed in the city of Grinnen. He's famous by the nickname the Ball-Ripper, apparently."

"......The city of Grinnen?"

Grinnen might be close to Torvik geographically, but when it actually came to going there in person, it could feel far.

It was a city that didn't belong to the ducal domain, and one with a well-earned notoriety for drawing every kind of criminal.

"That's right. But if the three of us just go strolling into Grinnen, we'll be spotted by the Thieves' Guild right away. They'll figure out in an instant who we are, where we've been and what we've done, and what purpose we've come to the city for. On the off chance this Ball-Ripper is tied to the Thieves' Guild, we need a story that holds up before we ever set foot in Grinnen. A reason for why we came."

"......"

Arne blinked. Valery had suddenly brought up something serious, and it was unfamiliar business, so it was hard to follow all at once.

It was the same for Knut, but unlike Arne he didn't let it show on his face. No, the truth was he hadn't understood a word of it, and simply kept up that characteristic sulky look of his.

"......So how do we do that, then?"

Arne asked.

"A business."

"A business?"

"Yeah. We're not going to go find him, we're going to make him come find us on his own. It'd be good to run a business that whets his appetite. It's dangerous, of course. Nobody who runs a business in Grinnen does it without staking their life. He might try every trick to wreck our business, or take it over, or get rid of us. You follow so far?"

"......So basically, we need a kind of false identity, don't we."

It wasn't a false 'identity', exactly, but again, even if Arne didn't catch all of it, he grasped the heart of the matter well. Compared to people who were dumber or more foolish than one could imagine, he was practically a genius.

"To sum it up, we grab his attention, then pin down who he is, seize the chance, and kill him. That's the gist of it."

The gist was the gist, but thinking about the process, Arne wondered whether it wasn't impossible. Running a business, being threatened with assassination, and then there'd be blade-work, and it wasn't as if that would be over after doing it once or twice.

Of course, since setting the direction was what mattered, Valery had for now laid it out only in rough terms.

Arne stared blankly at Valery, then turned his head and looked at Knut. Then he looked at Valery again, and at Knut, and finally at Valery as he asked,

"The three of us...... you did say that, didn't you?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"This kind of thing, it doesn't seem like something for us to be doing...... a knight, or some kind of expert, ought to step up......"

"Then when are you going to do it?"

"Huh?"

"When are you ever going to take on a proper mission and do it, is what I'm asking. You going to do it after, what, ten years of training? Look, Arne. Crisis is another word for opportunity. The bigger the crisis, the bigger the opportunity. When do you think a chance like this is going to come along in your life? A mission handed to you by the Duke himself."

At present Arne served as a private soldier of the ducal house, mostly assigned to guard duty. Every day he rose at dawn and trained and drilled hard, but there was no guarantee his lot would improve because of it.

He was just one soldier, replaceable at any time. Never mind the Duke; even among the knights, the majority had no idea who Arne was.

And yet the reason Arne couldn't readily say he'd do it was that it would be his first time. On top of that, when that first time was something dangerous and yet so important, hesitating was only natural.

Arne wandered between an uncertain future and a stifling present, and yet when it came down to it, he was afraid to take that step toward the future. Like any young person.

If the king died and a storm swept over the world, he might well reveal his true worth in the whirlwind of fate, but for now he was nothing more than a stone with a gleaming jewel inside it.

"Arne."

Valery called out, gripping Arne's shoulder. At that, Arne, who had been hanging his head, turned to look at Valery. Valery's hand tightened on his shoulder.

Valery looked at Arne earnestly, with that intense gaze of his, and said,

"If you can't trust yourself, trust me. I know. I know what a shining human being you are. The one thing that no one in the whole world dared to do out of fear, you, and you alone, did. The Arne I know is the bravest man there is. Trust me and follow me. Then I'll help you come to be sure of it yourself."

There was something odd about the tense of Valery's words. But he said it so earnestly that no one took any notice of it.

Valery's words truly did carry a powerful force, it seemed, for Arne felt that if there was ever a time in one's life, it was now. And wasn't it true, after all? He couldn't very well spend his whole life just training.

"Alright. I'll do it."

At Arne's answer, Valery nodded. He knew Arne was the kind of man who, once he committed, would truly give his life to it.

"And you?"

Valery asked, turning to Knut.

"Did I have a choice?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're the one who pulled me out of the cage."

"That's true, but I'm not forcing you. I'm asking whether you want to, of your own will."

"Of my own will...... I don't really get that, honestly. Can't I just trust you, same as him?"

"You can, sure."

"Right, let's do that, then."

It was rather anticlimactic, but Knut seemed somewhat numb to things like dying, or the weight of some great undertaking.

In any case, with this it was decided that the three of them would carry out the mission.

The day grew steadily brighter. Valery turned to look at the sun that had only just risen. The morning sun resembled the twilight. A reddish color shot through with gold.

Valery fetched the tack and put it on Snow. Stepping up into the stirrups, he spoke to the two who were looking up at him.

It was not a flame full of grudge and rancor but the fresh light of morning that shone upon Valery's eyes, and they gleamed, truly, as limpid as jewels.

"We'll ride around outside the city today. Knut, do you have a horse?"

"I had one, but I don't."

As a son of the ducal house he naturally had a horse, but only ever one provided by the Duke; he had none of his own. Since killing Ketilmund, Knut was currently unable to make use of a horse.

"Can't be helped. The three of us will ride together. Bring the mounting step, Arne."

Arne went into the stable and brought out the step. He rode at the back, and Knut in front. Valery was in the middle.

There was no reason three people couldn't ride one horse, but sitting in a row like that, they did make a rather ridiculous sight.

Valery walked the horse on slowly. Arne, at the back, hesitated for a good while, then carefully spoke to Knut, seated at the very front.

"Um...... Young Master, are you feeling alright?"

Having been shut up in that dreadful place for two whole days, his condition could hardly be sound.

But Knut, just as when they'd first met, kept his mouth shut and gave no response at all.

Only a smile like the morning light spread across Valery's lips.

Chapter 5 – What Comes After the Dawn. End.