Chapter 8

Translator: Willia

Valery, Harold, Gidwin, Tommy, and Hakon had a training routine they performed every morning at dawn.

First, they would all gather in the courtyard and begin to run, crossing through the village until they reached the foot of the mountain ahead.

Once there, they would find the piles of stones the farmers had dug up or cleared while tilling their fields, fill large baskets to the brim with them, sling the baskets over their shoulders like packs, and run up the mountain.

People starting their morning chores would watch with smiling faces, or simply stare, while children in the distance would hop and skip, cheering them on.

Gidwin was the fastest, followed by Tommy, then Valery, then Harold. Hakon didn't carry a basket at all. Instead, he brought food along.

Their thighs and calves felt ready to burst, and several times the exhaustion brought them to the brink where their breath seemed about to give out; but like forging a spear tip that could pierce anything, they pushed their bodies onward through sheer willpower and ran up the mountain.

After roughly an hour of running uphill, they would reach a spring, and if they pushed through the undergrowth a little farther, they could watch the sun rising on the eastern horizon far in the distance.

Golden light bathed the five youths, and it felt as though the sun's energy were seeping into their weary bodies.

Because of what had happened at the horse fair, Tommy now bore two deep blade scars running across his face.

In return, the irritable, arrogant look he used to have in his eyes had given way to something bolder, with more depth to it. If two scars were the price, perhaps he'd gotten off cheap.

What had happened at the horse fair had left its mark on each of them in its own way. And that mark meant change, and perhaps the beginnings of growth.

Harold, who had always seemed such a carefree child, had grown quieter too. His characteristic innocence hadn't entirely vanished, but since he was the one who had been abducted, it would have been stranger if he'd been unaffected.

Since becoming a page, Hakon no longer wore his helmet, and once he'd washed the grime that had streamed down his face, he turned out to be a truly adorable child, like a porcelain doll.

No, in truth he wasn't a child at all; he was the same age as Valery and Harold. And despite being of pure Nordic blood, his growth was unusually slow.

If Valery was above average in build for his age, Harold was average, and Hakon was distinctly below.

His becoming a page rather than a squire at thirteen was probably for the best. He was still learning the basics of daily life, from how to wash himself, how to speak, how to keep himself tidy, and other such ordinary things.

To put it bluntly, before all this, his appearance and behavior had been barely distinguishable from a beggar's.

Lastly, for Valery, the Countess's words kept echoing in his ears.

'I'll be your mother.'

Those words had shaken Valery more than any magic spell, and like aftershocks, they were still faintly reverberating through him.

In that moment, he had wanted to throw himself into her arms and call her by that name. Mother.

Even so, he had forced himself to pull away. Not only because of guilt, but because even if her feelings were genuine, a relationship forged that way could only ever be a lie.

The sun had fully risen. The dawn faded away. It faded as though its work was done.

Looking up at the fully risen sun, Hakon spoke.

"Why is it that no matter how far east we run, we can never find the house where the sun sleeps?"

"Because it sets out from Heaven."

Harold answered.

"I see. So we'd have to die to get there."

"Long live His Majesty the King, fuck yeah."

The one who led the kingdom's subjects to Heaven, Tommy, praised the King and abruptly stripped naked to dive into the spring. A splash rang out.

Valery and the rest stripped down and leapt into the spring as well. The water was cold enough to chill them to the bone, but they quickly got used to it.

Bathing, horsing around, and washing their clothes all at once, they took care of everything in one go, then built a fire, set a pot over it, and tossed in whatever they had to boil a stew.

They each ladled portions into their bowls, blowing carefully on the hot broth as they ate, and plucked the chunks out with their hands, yelping from the heat.

Tommy and Hakon seemed to have grown rather close. They teased each other and looked out for one another, and although it hadn't amounted to much in practical terms, Hakon's attempt to defend Tommy from Lecton's Gang with his small body seemed to have been what brought them together.

Once they'd finished the stew, they washed their bowls and hands in the spring.

They dried their clothes roughly by the fire, and put them back on still damp before heading down the mountain. By the time they returned to the castle, everything had dried, whether thanks to the morning sun or the heat of their own bodies.

But when they reached the castle, a stranger was standing in the courtyard. From the way he stood beside a horse, he appeared to have ridden in, and from his attire and the fine-looking tack, he clearly wasn't some ordinary traveler.

He had a rather stern, fastidious air about him, and though his build was on the lean side, he hardly looked like a man to be trifled with. Valery recognized at once that he was a Swordsman.

And from the letter V and the oak tree embroidered on his clothes, he could tell the man belonged to House Viðing.

House Viðing was none other than Duke Sven's own house. Which was to say, the man before them was Duke Sven's man.

He studied the five who had just entered the castle with a slow, appraising gaze. The five returned his stare in silence. It was the kind of atmosphere where tension was on the verge of building.

A moment later, Count Aethelred emerged from the castle and asked bluntly,

"Who are you?"

He knew the man had come from the ducal house, but as master of the castle meeting the stranger for the first time, he asked all the same.

Rather impertinently, the man did not greet him straight away, but gave the Count a brief sidelong glance before inclining his head.

"My greetings, Count Winsloe. Your illustrious name has long reached my ears, and it is an honor to meet you at last. I am Gael Lothmund, humble Houseguest to His Excellency Duke Sven: Family Head of House Viðing, master of all the lands of Eldeira, lord of Nordlanding and Krisher, liege to the Counts of Winsloe, Winddale, and Levi, and commander of forty-two knights. I have come as his envoy to deliver His Excellency's words."

It was a long-winded introduction, but simply put: Eldeira was his ducal title, while Nordlanding and Krisher were comital titles he held concurrently and ruled directly.

The forty-two knights encompassed his Household Knights, Marcher Knights, and Manorial Knights all together, meaning he could field forty-two knights at a moment's notice.

Counting two or three support combatants per knight, including squires, plus roughly ten common soldiers, forty-two knights meant he could muster a force of about five to six hundred.

With the forces of his Vassals added in, the full mobilizable strength of the Duchy of Eldeira came to roughly a thousand. Armed combatants, not counting peasant levies.

Compared to the forces of a single Count, that was some three or four times as many.

In any case, this was more or less how nobles were formally introduced, but there was hardly any need to recite the whole litany when coming to a Vassal as an envoy. Besides, he himself was ultimately a Houseguest with no office to his name.

Above all, turning up at the crack of dawn without so much as a prior word was a show of disrespect to his host.

Sure enough, Count Aethelred eyed the envoy with visible displeasure before grudgingly speaking. He was, after all, the Duke's envoy.

"Come inside."

The envoy cast a brief glance toward Valery and the others, then followed the Count into the castle.

Watching him, Valery had a fair guess as to why he had come. Not immediately, perhaps, but he was surely here to concoct some pretext or other for taking Harold as a Hostage.

Valery's own actions had altered the surrounding circumstances somewhat, but the overall current seemed unchanged. Duke Sven's peculiar, obsessive persistence paid no mind to petty variables.

Valery sensed that the time was drawing near to repay his debt to House Winsloe and leave.

As meals for a guest went, it was a modest spread. Thinly sliced ham, wild berries, and wine, nothing more. As fare to go with the wine, though, they weren't half bad.

Gael, the envoy, didn't so much as touch the drink or food set out to welcome him before he spoke.

"I've heard the news. About what happened to the Young Lord. I can only imagine your distress, and I offer my sincerest condol......"

"Get to the point."

Count Aethelred cut the envoy off. His eyes seemed to be telling the man to clear out as soon as possible.

"The point...... Yes, very well. It spares me trouble too. There has been a Royal Decree. The Einherier are to be selected."

At the mention of a Royal Decree, Count Aethelred's brow twitched for an instant.

The Einherier referred to the Royal Guard, and each individual member belonging to it was called an Einheri.

In the old days when the gods still lived, the word had denoted the warriors preparing for the Final War, and its literal meaning was "one who fights alone", or a "one-man army".

True to the name, the Royal Guard, though a single body, operated not through coordination but through each member acting on his own.

There was a saying: if a knight could stand against a hundred common men, an Einheri could stand against a hundred knights.

That was a level beyond human, and so there were tales that when the gods died, fragments of their power had passed to the Einheri, or that they had awakened to Rune Power.

From the present day, the Conquest War lay some fifty years in the past, and the Beast Wars about thirty. Whenever a major war broke out, the Einherier had been drawn into it whether they liked it or not, and eyewitness accounts and tales of their valor passed down through the survivors.

A single stamp of the foot splitting the earth, a single stroke of the blade severing a horse's neck, lightning and fire spewing from their mouths, and so on: they were described as scarcely human at all.

It was hard to believe unless one belonged to a generation that had lived through the wars. On top of that, since they were so few in number, even some who had seen war refused to believe. The current King's Einherier numbered about ten.

However, they had been present during the War of Royal Succession before Valery's regression as well, and so Valery had seen them with his own eyes. That unbelievable might, which could genuinely turn the tide of a losing battle single-handedly.

And yet every one of them had a fiercely uncompromising, single-minded temperament, and would not readily follow anyone but the King or a Prince. Which was why they often invited isolation upon themselves and met miserable ends.

And among them, too, there were those who did not serve in the Royal Guard but lived quietly until war swept them up. Valery knew roughly who they were and, roughly, where they currently lived.

"I've heard of them. I don't know the particulars. What of it?"

Count Aethelred asked in a tone that said, what has the selection of the Einherier to do with me?

"The selection of the Einherier is carried out only by Royal Decree. Rune Mages are dispatched to every region, and they are the ones who identify the candidates. And to ensure they can make their selections properly, every Duke or Marquis is obliged by Royal Decree to extend every convenience to them. Put simply: to assemble those with talent. You wouldn't have any objection to the Royal Decree, would you?"

"......"

Under the pretense of screening talented individuals, their scheme to carry off Harold was plain as day. And yet, with the Royal Decree being invoked, there was scarcely any escape from it.

But Count Aethelred was not a man to take such things lying down.

"How could I dare defy a Royal Decree. What does give me pause, however, is that the one who received the Royal Decree was not me, but His Excellency the Duke."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean I'll screen the talented ones myself and send them on. Rather than have His Excellency pick them out."

"......Producing an Einheri is the highest honor a house can know. Moreover, should such a thing come to pass, being granted new lands by His Majesty, or elevated in rank, would be a foregone conclusion. Fame throughout the kingdom would come as a bonus. Do you mean to turn down such an opportunity?"

"What opportunity? And how would you know whom I intend to send?"

Gael inwardly cursed his slip. He had betrayed his intent to take the Heir.

He had heard well enough that Count Aethelred was no pushover, but the man was proving even more formidable than he had expected.

In terms of sheer wits, he was a step above the illiterate Count of Winddale. Granted, dealing with ignorance was its own kind of torment.

Frustrated, Gael downed in one go the wine he had yet to touch. Then, caught on the back foot as he was, he cast about for the best move he could make. Each side had long known the other's intent anyway. It hardly mattered.

"Let me hold an instructional duel with them. Talent isn't something one hides, is it? His Excellency sent me to carry out the Royal Decree. If you, Count, were to take matters entirely into your own hands and simply send me back, I'm afraid His Excellency would be displeased."

Count Aethelred sipped his wine slowly as well. There was a faint threat in it, but it wasn't entirely wrong. When a Duke had sent an envoy, telling him to turn around and leave because one would handle things oneself could certainly risk giving offense.

In any case, the Liege Lord and Vassal relationship put him at a considerable structural disadvantage. The best he could do was make the most of matters within that; open defiance was out of the question.

Count Aethelred set down his cup and said,

"Very well."

At the Count's reply, Gael's eyes gleamed. If, under the pretext of the instructional duel, he could kill that Bastard whose name had recently been spreading, it would count as a result of its own, or so he thought.

Only with that Bastard out of the way would the justification for taking the Heir still stand. The aftermath, he trusted, His Excellency the Duke would see to. Perhaps he might even be rewarded with a commendation and an office for a job well done.

The tightness in Gael's chest loosened into ease, and he allowed himself a faint, sly smile.