Chapter 156

Translator: Willia

Friendship was something less hot than passionate love, yet warmer than cold indifference. Like a campfire that warms the body at just the right temperature.

Ricardt had a pleasant dream. He couldn't remember what it was, but it was the kind of dream that left him awake yet unwilling to open his eyes.

He could hear the ones who'd risen earlier gathering their things. The creak of leather belts being cinched tight, the scrape-scrape of feet dragging across the floor, the rustle of someone packing up.

And then a familiar voice.

"I know you're awake. Your breathing changed, Ricky."

Ice said. Ricardt, curled up on his side, opened only his eyes.

The campfire was still burning low, as though someone had taken care to keep it warm. To look after another without making a show of it, naturally: this, precisely, was the temperature of friendship.

The rain had thinned, but outside the cave it still fell. Even so, there wasn't the slightest dampness; his clothes had dried out just right, and the feel of them brushing against his skin was pleasant.

The world beyond the cave was bright and blue. It was morning.

When Ricardt sat up, the hair on the side of his head, from sleeping on it, was either pressed flat or sticking out. He smoothed it with his hand, though it didn't do much good.

One of the knights brought him some soup. Though calling it soup was generous; it was more a thick brew of water, cornmeal, jerky, and hard bread all boiled down together.

He blew on it and drank, and the savory, faintly salty taste was decent enough. His belly grew warm.

When he'd finished the soup, he rinsed out his mouth with water and swallowed it down with a gulp. Then he got to his feet.

He straightened his clothes, adjusted his belt, drew his sword a little way to check the blade, then slid it back in. With that, he was ready.

At the mouth of the cave, the others had already finished preparing and stood waiting. Ice was standing there too.

Ricardt looked over Ice's disciples. Two women and three men. They still had a youthful air, yet their bearing wasn't entirely that of greenhorns. They'd probably killed before.

"How long have you trained with the sword?"

"..."

Ricardt had asked, but the disciples didn't answer. It wasn't that they were shy or embarrassed; closer to it was that, being still young, they found a stranger hard to face.

"I've never taken on idiots who can't even answer a question as my disciples."

Ice, watching from beside them, put in a word.

Here Ricardt felt the difference between Bori and Ice. Bori had seemed to hold affection for his disciples and yet been indifferent, whereas Ice seemed stern and yet full of affection.

Because Ricardt could feel that Ice was a little upset, watching disciples who couldn't even answer.

"The four of us have studied for four years now, and this one for three."

"Then you've learned plenty. A year's enough, really. Anyway, you lot, do you know who I am?"

"No."

They didn't seem to be from the religious order. One thing they had in common was that none of them had parents; they were children who regarded Ice and the nuns as their fathers and mothers.

"I know. The commander of the Order of the Flame Knights."

One of the female disciples said.

"It's the Order of the Steel Knights. The name's changed. That aside, you'll have to work alongside me and these fellows here. Think you can manage?"

"Doing what..."

"'What' nothing. Weren't you out to wipe out the bandits?"

"We are, but we follow our instructor, so..."

"Do as you're told."

Ice said to the disciples, who seemed reluctant about something.

But while Ice knew Ricardt well enough, it was only natural that children seeing him for the first time would find it somewhat hard to accept.

Ricardt smiled faintly and spoke as though to calm them.

"Ice told me about it. You've been fighting by whittling their numbers down bit by bit, I hear. Not bad. The straightforward approach. But here's the thing, I'm short on time. I'm going to kill every last bandit before the day's out. It might be rough, so I'm telling you ahead of time."

"...Today?"

The disciples of the Miquella Monastery widened their eyes. Because they thought it made no sense.

The gap in skill was wide enough that killing them was easy, sure, but the hard part of a few facing many came down to stamina. Killing a great number of people was, in truth, close to heavy labor.

The bandits led by Snake-Eye Ashtad, in particular, numbered a full hundred or so. The newly joined knights came to just eleven, Ricardt included.

Unless the bandits all just stood there, killing a hundred in a single day was, by any reasonable measure, simply...

"Nothing in this world is impossible. There are only people who think it is. Once it's done, you'll see it was nothing much. If you really can't believe me, then believe your master, who believes me. Let's go."

Ricardt pulled his hood over his head. Then, stepping out of the cave, he found the rain wasn't pelting down the way it had the day before.

When Ricardt set out first, the knights followed, and the monastery's disciples followed Ice, who followed Ricardt. It was like a procession of wolves.

The bandit base said to be led by the man called Snake-Eye Ashtad lay not far off. About ten steady minutes of walking brought them to it, and it sat below the spot where Ricardt and the others stood.

It was a mountain village set beside a flowing ravine stream. The water ran very rough from the monsoon rains.

The village wasn't all that broad, but from the entrance its buildings climbed upward in terraced steps.

From the start, the village's position and layout resembled a mountain fortress. It looked well suited for bandits to dig in and hole up. They'd reinforced the palisade and put up watchtowers, giving it the look of a genuine military fortress.

All six thousand troops couldn't be quartered in the buildings, of course, but by pitching tents and making use of the surrounding terrain, it was a place where they could keep out of the rain well enough and conserve their strength.

Ricardt swept his eyes over the terrain once and at once a plan came to him. He simply saw it. That if he did this and that, it would work. Just as it always had.

"It's an isolated spot, good for holding off large numbers, but by the same token it's not a place where they can move freely either. Here's what we'll do. First we draw the enemy out, and while they're out, you seize the gate and shut it. Ice and I will handle the fighting, so all you have to do is hold the chokepoints, there and there. They won't be able to come at us all at once, so they'll be easy to deal with."

It was a truly simple operation. Draw the enemy out of the stronghold, then bar and lock the gate behind them and settle matters outside.

Seizing the gate was the knights' task, and blocking the chokepoints was left to the monastery's disciples.

Blocking the chokepoints was the comparatively easier job. Because, judging by swordsmanship 'alone', the monastery's disciples looked serviceable enough.

"That spot's left open, though?"

Ice said, pointing to a spot.

"It's left open on purpose. So they'll flee that way. And as they do, they'll end up killing each other."

"Killing each other, you say?"

One of the disciples asked.

"When a crowd's packed into a tight space, fear spreads fast and they start shoving at each other. And if they go over into the ravine, that's death."

It sounded plausible enough, but it didn't quite land for them.

"But how do we draw the enemy out?"

"That part Ice and I will handle. Get to your positions. Once you're set, we'll move."

So Ricardt gave his orders. The knights followed without expression, while the monastery's disciples seemed a bit bewildered.

From the mountainside he watched them take up their positions, and once it was just him and Ice, Ricardt said,

"Ice, are you any good at lying?"

"Where's this coming from?"

"We're going to kill the ones roaming around outside, but I'll let one of them live to carry a message. Tell him something like, pay up and we'll stop harassing you. That Snake-Eye character's probably been spoiling for a fight all this time, so thinking it's just the two of us, he'll drag his men out."

"...Do I have to be the one to do it?"

Ricardt grinned and said,

"Lying gets easier with practice."

And with that, he went down the mountain together with Ice.

Holed up in their stronghold though the bandits were, they still had to send people out at regular intervals. Whether to scavenge food, dig up herbs, hunt, or sell slaves. That was how they got by.

They knew it too. That some bastards were prowling around the stronghold, picking them off.

Perhaps for that reason, the parties sent outside kept growing larger, until now they moved in groups of about ten.

It had been a few years since they'd taken over the mountain village. What had been done to the people who'd lived there was plain enough. The men killed, the women violated, the young children sold off.

So anyone worth selling as a slave had run out long ago, and with many mouths but meager takings, getting by grew harder by the day.

Just as every person has their own fate, a band of bandits, once it grew large, was bound to splinter and collapse. That was the fate of a bandit gang.

Grievances piled up, they turned selfish, and grew crueler and crueler. A starving man was many times more dangerous than a starving beast.

And with someone killing them off in the middle of all this, their nerves couldn't help but fray.

"Fuck, sell off just one of the boss's sex slaves and we'd eat our fill sitting pretty for ten days."

One of the bandits said as he walked the narrow path. The ten of them walked together, all looking like beggars. Dried streaks of grime were drawn down their faces in long lines.

"More to the point, don't you think we're being way too jumpy? What's a Knight Order amount to, fuck, that we can't even work for days on end? Does that make any sense?"

Another bandit said. The work he spoke of meant robbery.

"Beats dropping dead, so what can you do."

"Hey, starving to death or getting cut down, dead's dead either way."

"You'd think differently once it actually happened to you. And from the way you lot are griping, sounds like life's still bearable enough."

Whenever three or more people gather, one of them is bound to be a sensible one. Compared to the other bandits, full of nothing but complaints, this one man was thinking somewhat normally.

"How about we flip the whole thing over while we still can?"

"Flip what over?"

"Overthrow them. You don't get what I mean?"

"And you've got what it takes?"

"I've got connections, you know. These days the second-in-command's doing better than the boss. You lot know it too, don't you? Way more of a man, smarter, knows how to look after his people."

"This bastard's stirring the pot..."

"Think whatever you like. But the fact that life right now is shit isn't because I'm stirring anything up. Am I wrong?"

Whether a nation, a merchant company, or a bandit gang, every group had a structure. A power structure, that is. The leader at the top, the officers who backed him, and the lower ranks beneath.

For all that they kept loyalty forever on their lips, the group with the least cohesion of all was the bandits. When a crisis struck, when unease spread, cracks ran through the group in no time.

Left alone for just a little while, they might well destroy themselves. But that did not mean they would vanish.

Splintered into several groups, the bandits would scatter to other places. Like the spores of a poisonous mushroom.

As casually as everyday chatter, words of betrayal flowed out naturally. But before that betrayal could ever be carried out, the bandits met strangers standing in their path.

Two men, the hoods of their cloaks pulled down low. The hems of their cloaks jutting out at the waist suggested they wore swords. The rain was scattering down in a fine spray.

At the sight of the two men, all ten froze at once. They stayed that way a moment, and then one of them said in a low voice,

"Fuuuck..."

"Wh-who are you? Don't you know whose turf this is? This is Snake-Eye Ashtad-nim's territory!"

Having had betrayal on his lips only moments before, the instant he met someone who looked like an enemy, he hid behind the boss's name.

"Only one of you lives. Who wants to be the one?"

One of the two swordsmen said. Whether the words were merciful or merciless, there was no telling.

"It-it's you, isn't it? You're the ones who've been killing us off lately, right? Aren't you? Who sent you? The Arn Mountain crew? The Grimm Brotherhood?"

The bandit spat out whatever came to mind. Meanwhile the others scrambled to pull out their crudely made weapons. Mostly short things, or tools from everyday life that had been reworked. Sickles, hammers, things shaped like long kitchen knives.

As the bandits drew their weapons, one of the two swordsmen drew his. The other simply stood still.

Ricardt spoke to Ice, who had drawn his sword.

"Don't let it glow. They might get spooked and refuse to come out."

"Got it."

Ice nodded and stepped forward, trudge, trudge. The ground was muddy, though not so much that his feet sank deep into it.

One man standing still while only the other drew his sword and advanced left the bandits bewildered. Was it a bluff, or was he truly some master of the blade?

The path was too narrow to surround him. Still, as ruffians always do, they drew courage from their numbers.

Someone flung what looked like an iron spike. For a run-of-the-mill bandit the aim was decent; he seemed to have practiced that one thing over and over, endlessly.

But to the bandits' misfortune, Ice merely tilted his head slightly aside and let it pass. And then, as if he'd come sprinting from far off at full speed, he suddenly closed the distance.

At a movement faster than they could have imagined, the bandits couldn't manage any response and flinched. That was the last thing they did.

When Ice, sword in one hand, swung it from the inside of his body outward as if flinging it loose, the glistening blade swept across two of them at once.

And then, as though it were a single motion, he gripped the sword in both hands, swung it back the other way, and slipped off to the side.

In the end, two strokes of the blade, swish, swish, and four men fell.

At an ordinary person's reaction speed, it took time to see a comrade die and make sense of it.

And the time it took to accept that reality and reach the conclusion that one had to run was, by a master's standard, far too long.

At the very moment their eyes went wide with shock, Ice's sword swung with the precision of a measuring ruler. To the bandits' eyes, of course, it wasn't even visible. All they could see was the faint flutter of a slightly damp cloak.

Nine corpses didn't take long to fall. Not quite the blink of an eye, but very near it. Most astonishing of all was that none were merely wounded; every one had died from a single stroke.

The last survivor, the strength gone from his legs, dropped down with a thud onto the wet ground. And there he met the eyes that looked coldly down at him from beneath the hood.

Ice's beautiful face was nowhere to be seen; he looked like nothing but a ghost.

"Tell Snake-Eye this. If he doesn't want to take any more losses, he's to pay up. Tell him we're willing to negotiate, so he should come meet us in person."

His tone was as cold as his gaze. So cold that not the faintest human warmth for a fellow human could be felt in it.

Whether the last remaining bandit had understood properly or not, there was no telling. His jaw shaking hard enough to make his teeth clack together, clack-clack-clack, unable even to stand, he pushed himself away from Ice with his feet.

Then, once he'd put a bit of distance between them, he scrambled to his feet and fled.

Ricardt, who had been standing behind, came over only then.

"You lie pretty well."

"And who do you think I learned it from?"

"Huh? I'm not exactly someone who lies all that much, am I?"

"I wonder."

Ice gave an inscrutable smile.

Ricardt found it absurd but shot back with a snickering grin. As they traded jokes that way without a shred of tension, before long Snake-Eye Ashtad really did come out, leading all of his men.

The pupil of one of his eyes was stretched vertically. Not split sharply into a vertical slit like a real snake's eye, but somewhat blunt in shape. It seemed to be a kind of deformity.

His beard was unkempt, and he wasn't as big as one might have expected. With his face deeply scowling, he said,

"I've been keeping things quiet for a while on account of the Knight Order, and now every worthless little shit takes me for one too."

"Aren't you overestimating yourself a touch? You think a Knight Order would spare a thought for the likes of you?"

Ricardt said evenly. But as he spoke, bandits appeared on the path behind them. They seemed to have come around the slope and cut off the retreat.

"What would a mere swordsman like you know? This, right here, is what's called tactics. However splendid your swordsmanship may be, you'll cut down three or four at most before you die."

When the bandit boss spoke of tactics, Ricardt was so dumbfounded he lost his words. And it wasn't as though the man would believe him if he said he was a Knight Order commander.

It was the kind of situation where telling the truth would only make him out to be a liar.

"...Unbelievable. For real."

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