"What are you on guard against, my lord?" Beruneke said from the back seat of the open-topped two-wheeled carriage.
After bidding farewell to the four families, who had seen them off with great enthusiasm, the moment the carriage cleared the line of sight from Northwild Town
"Sigh, I should have brought Pat along this time. Sedekamp, I've pushed you so hard to cultivate
Sedekamp protested indignantly, "But my lord, just the other day you said I was better suited to wielding a pen than to fighting! How is it now I'm useless?"
Lorist said, "Even if you're wielding a pen, you should take a leaf out of Knight Shrade's book. His penmanship is no worse than yours, yet he's already at Silver Three Stars and will advance to Gold rank in another two years."
"My lord, how can you compare me to Lord Shrade? I couldn't possibly measure up to him. He has the makings of a prime minister — at best, I could manage a single manor castle." Sedekamp knew his own limits perfectly well.
Beruneke was bundled up tightly and propped in the back seat with a large shield laid over him. Watching master and servant banter while keeping up an air of tense alertness, he couldn't help but voice his confusion.
"Hey, Brother Bek, doesn't it strike you as odd? I didn't make you drink that medicine Master Dunbassen prepared for you, and yet you haven't felt the slightest discomfort. All that talk about not moving freely lest your internal organs shift — that was utter bullshit. Master Dunbassen had you completely fooled for two whole years. He poisoned you with qi-scattering toxin so you couldn't cultivate Combat Force and recover. It was as good as house arrest in Northwild Town," Lorist explained.
"Cough, cough, cough…" A fit of violent coughing seized Beruneke. He opened his mouth to say something after hearing Lorist's words, but the cold wind blasting his face choked the words right out of him.
Lorist reached out to adjust Beruneke's scarf and then patted him on the back to settle him. "Don't speak, Brother Bek. I know what you want to say, and why they did what they did. Sedekamp, give him a briefing on the family's recent situation — what changed in the three years since Brother Bek was injured."
Sedekamp acknowledged the order and began recounting events from the time of Beruneke's injury: how the old master had fallen in battle, how the garrison had refused to follow orders, how Viscount
Six riders emerged from the woods ahead, their faces hidden behind black cloth. Crossbows in hand, they fanned out and took aim.
"Sedekamp, release the horses, stop the carriage, get to the back seat and shield yourself and Brother Bek," Lorist ordered.
At the sound of his voice, Sedekamp reined in the horses and drove the pointed brake stake beside the driver's seat hard into the ground, locking the two-wheeled carriage in place. He then unfastened the reins of the two draft horses to keep them from bolting in panic or going wild if injured, which would tip the carriage over. After that, he vaulted into the back seat and used his shield to cover both himself and Beruneke, whom Lorist had wedged into the footwell beneath the seat.
Lorist had already seized the moment Sedekamp released the reins to leap onto the back of one of the sturdy draft horses. Clamping both legs against its flanks, he charged straight toward the nearest rider, one hand gripping the mane while the other brandished a javelin to bat aside a crossbow bolt shooting straight at him.
Of the six riders, all but the leftmost — who was facing the charging Lorist — had their attention fixed on the carriage. Crossbow bolts flew in a hail, and a dozen or so had already embedded themselves in the carriage and in the shields covering the back seat.
Lorist had just deflected two crossbow bolts fired in quick succession, and the distance between him and the enemy was closing fast. The rider opposite saw that his bolts had been useless, gave a cold snort, put away his crossbow, drew his longsword, and spurred his horse forward to meet Lorist head-on. The flicker of sword aura told Lorist that the rider was Silver-rank — but what caught his curiosity was that the aura seemed unstable, flickering between long and short.
The two riders were about to pass each other. The enemy raised his longsword high and brought it down in a powerful overhead slash. Lorist used his javelin like a couched lance, meeting the descending blade with a light parry that turned it aside effortlessly. Before the enemy rider could recover from his shock at why his sword aura couldn't bite through what looked like an ordinary javelin, the javelin's point had already buried itself in his throat…
Lorist kicked the corpse from its saddle with one foot, then vaulted nimbly from the bare-backed draft horse onto the fully saddled warhorse.
On the other side, the five remaining riders, seeing their crossbow bolts useless, were already closing in on the carriage. The lead rider had nearly reached the front of the carriage and had already drawn his sword. Just then a javelin flew through the air, striking him clean off his mount and sending him tumbling a full yard past the carriage. The javelin had pierced clean through his chest; he twitched twice and drew his last breath.
The remaining four riders were stunned. They turned and saw Lorist circling around their flank. The new lead rider flew into a rage, pointing at Lorist and bellowing, "Kill him first…"
Three of the four riders' longswords blazed with sword aura. Lorist showed not a shred of fear, drawing his own blade and charging straight into them…
In the blink of an eye, Lorist had clashed with and surged past the four riders. In the instant five riders met, sword light crackled like lightning and a roar of wind and thunder broke loose.
One of the riders screamed in terror and tried to flee.
Lorist sneered. "You think you can get away?"
He unhooked the crossbow slung at the side of his saddle, strung it, aimed, and fired. The bolt struck the fleeing rider square in the back. The man gave a wretched cry and tumbled from his horse.
Lorist rode up to the carriage and rapped his sword against the shield. "Sedekamp, get out here and clean up the battlefield."
The shield was pulled aside, revealing Sedekamp's face. "My lord, is it over?"
"Mm. Six of them. Not one got away."
"Right, my lord, I'll get to the cleanup at once." Sedekamp scrambled up in a flash and cheerfully set about looting the corpses.
Lorist climbed into the carriage and helped Beruneke back onto the rear bench. Only then did he notice that Beruneke's face was streaked with tears.
"Brother Bek, what's wrong?"
"They… how could they do something like this? This is outright treason! Without the
"Ungrateful? Heh…" Lorist chuckled. "Brother Bek, you think far too well of them. More than two hundred years ago, our ancestors took them in as subjects. You should know what kind of backgrounds their forebears had — swindlers, vagrants, criminals, thieves, gamblers, defaulting debtors. With nowhere left to turn, their ancestors risked their lives in the Northland. Our forebears took them in, built towns for them, and helped them settle. But were their ancestors ever grateful? No. On the contrary, they exploited our ancestors' negligence and the gaps in the family's territorial rules to grab as much from us as they could. It was only our ancestors' generosity and concern for face that let them get away with it. In their eyes, they'd probably be better off without us Nortons altogether."
"Pity they've forgotten that Galentea is a world of lords. No effort, no reward. Their ancestors' short-sightedness has cut off the path upward for every one of their descendants. Our family has never once considered them our own — we guard against them more strictly than we guard against enemies. They cultivate Combat Force like anyone else, yet not one of them has ever been guided after a breakthrough, taught how to continue. They can't even organize trade caravans to go out and do business. With nothing but commoner status, they'd be lucky not to be swallowed whole by some noble from another territory. So only now are they finally starting to understand — dreaming of squeezing quasi-noble status out of our family… heh…"
"But my lord, didn't you already allow them to expand their garrison and promise to grant the title of Knight Aspirant to three of them?" Beruneke had forgotten his grief in hearing Lorist's words and remembered the promises Lorist had made at Northwild Town.
"I did indeed intend to grant three Knight Aspirant titles. But I only said I *intended* to — I never said it would be immediate. If they want to become Knight Aspirants, they'll have to work hard to carry out my orders until I'm satisfied. As for when exactly I'll be satisfied… that could be ten or twenty years from now, or even decades. By then their families may not even exist any longer," Lorist said.
Their families certainly wouldn't exist by then. Once
"My lord, you will become a great lord," Beruneke said.
"Of course. I think so too." Lorist nodded solemnly, to show that he fully agreed with this view.
……
"My lord, I've finished packing everything up." Sedekamp brought back five riding horses, their backs laden with leather armor, crossbows, longswords, and an assortment of miscellaneous items. Not far away, six stripped corpses lay on the ground side by side. Sedekamp busied himself re-tying the two strong carriage horses to the wagon.
When Sedekamp was nearly done, Beruneke said, "Sedekamp, drive the carriage over there. Let me see if I recognize any of them."
Sedekamp agreed, walked round to the back of the carriage, tied the five horses he had brought along with the mount Lorist had just seized to the rear of the wagon, then returned to the driver's seat and drove the carriage over to where the corpses lay.
Lorist turned Beruneke's body to one side so he could clearly see the faces of the six dead men on the ground.
"I recognize two of them. The corpse on the far left is Master Dunbassen's nephew. Two years ago, when my external wounds hadn't yet healed, he would often come over with Caxi to help wash and bathe me, and he frequently asked me technical questions about using Silver-rank Combat Force. At first I gave him a few pointers, but later I grew wary and stopped speaking of it, and he stopped coming. That was also when my condition relapsed. Master Dunbassen said it was all because my internal organs had shifted…" Beruneke said.
"And that big-bearded man in the middle — he's also some relation of Master Dunbassen. He came to the small courtyard a few times and even brought me fruit. He was the one who brought the news of the old lord's death back then. But apart from that, they never said anything else. I truly can't understand — when Viscount Kemmes brought troops to besiege the family's manor castle, why did they just stand by and do nothing? They clearly had the strength to defeat Viscount Kemmes… Did they not realize that once the Norton family fell, their own foundation would crumble with it?"
"They never considered themselves part of the Norton family. They never had the slightest intention of sharing our family's fortunes through thick and thin. When their initial act of betrayal went unpunished, they took our family's magnanimity for weakness and incompetence, and they only grew more brazen, treating their treachery as something perfectly natural."
"Brother Bek, now you see why I insisted on sending your attendant Caxi with Steward Kedan to handle the registration of the bereaved families and the dispossessed townspeople. In Northwild Town, I cannot trust a single person. Besides Sedekamp, I don't even dare trust Steward Kedan — especially given your current condition, where even a seven- or eight-year-old child could deal you a fatal blow. Caxi is your attendant, but he's lived in Northwild Town for many years, and you can't guarantee he hasn't been bought off. For your sake, that's why I chose to have just the three of us return to the manor castle together."
"Truthfully, I guessed right — Master Dunbassen could only resort to ambushing us on the road. It's just that they never expected the six men they sent would be cut down so easily by me. Heh heh, this is what they call swallowing your broken teeth in silence, suffering with no way to vent. Sometimes I really feel it's beneath me to play mind games with these bumpkins from Northwild Town who've never seen the wider world. Whatever they want to do, whatever scheme they're hatching, it's all written plainly on their faces — one look and I see through every trick. There's just no sense of accomplishment in it at all. Let's go, Sedekamp — what are we still standing here for? Hurry up, let's get home early."