Chapter 81 : Chapter 81
Eastern Central Jershu. It was the middle of the day, with hours left until sunset, but a part of the sky burned a violent, unnatural red.
Beneath that ominous sky lay a village.
“Don’t rest! Don’t give them a moment’s pause!”
From the rooftops, Hunters of Anse struck at the wyverns flying over the village with rope-tethered javelins.
Tusk Tribe warriors mounted on werewolves seized the ends of the ropes and galloped, dragging the wyverns crashing to the earth. The moment they fell, members of the Blanc Knights swarmed the downed creatures.
Sevha walked through the village as the hunt unfolded. After a short distance, an old village chief, who was slumped before a small house, rose and bowed his head.
“Thank you for helping our village. Truly, truly…”
The chief could not finish his words of gratitude, his voice breaking into a sob. Sevha saw the corpse of an old woman lying behind the chief and tried to find words of comfort.
A massive stone flew from outside the village and smashed into the house. It shattered, and a splinter of timber shot out, piercing the chief’s chest. He vomited blood and collapsed.
Sevha bit his lip in frustration and turned his head. Outside the village, trolls were hurling massive stones.
“Kill them.”
At Sevha’s hand signal, several Hunters redirected their arrows to halt the trolls’ bombardment. The Tusk Tribe and the knights charged, trampling the trolls and beginning the slaughter.
Sevha laid the chief’s body next to the old woman’s and closed the man’s eyes. Then he walked on, approaching a large table set in the center of the village. Eshu, Tataka, and Baren stood around it.
“Is this the first village?”
“This is the third we’ve come across,” Eshu answered.
Sevha rephrased the question, his voice edged with a quiet anger. “Is this the first village where we’ve found anyone left to save?”
Eshu recalled the previous villages, littered only with corpses, and ground his teeth in fury. “The Lion King is mad. Why would he do this to his own people?”
After being attacked by the Scorching Flame Dragon at Bianca Fortress, Sevha had somehow managed to regroup with his soldiers.
But there had been no time to rest.
The dragon and the wyverns that followed in its wake left nothing alive in their path. The monsters native to this region, one by one, were driven mad by the dragon’s terror and went on a rampage.
As a result, most of the castles, fortresses, and villages in Eastern Central Jershu were under assault.
“Baren. Where is the wingless dragon’s horde?”
“Based on the origin of the beacon fires, it seems to be at the border with the Empire. Where it meets Jershu, to be exact.”
“So it was a dragon that nested in the Empire. The Empire must be in turmoil. Their border villages and fortresses will be all but annihilated.”
Sevha grasped the situation. Barsh is a clever madman.
To summon a dragon and its horde was pure madness. But the plan born of that madness was quite calculated.
He had lured only the dragon and its winged forces into Jershu. Only as many as could be hunted.
The rest of the unmanageable horde, he had pushed onto the Empire.
The Empire’s border defenses will collapse. If we can just hunt the dragon, then afterward… it would be easy to invade the Empire.
Sevha considered the possibility but immediately dismissed it.
Whatever Barsh’s intention, the eventual breach of the Empire’s defensive line was inevitable. Before that, the dragon had to be killed.
“The dragon must die. Slay the dragon, and its horde will collapse.”
“The dragon… Can we kill it?” Eshu asked.
Sevha nodded without hesitation. “The dragon we must slay is not one from the myths.”
The dragons of myth lived for thousands of years, creations of the gods, stronger and wiser than any other living thing.
But according to the myths, those true dragons fell asleep the day the gods left the earth. They are said to awaken only on the day the world faces destruction, to become its protectors.
“The one we have to kill is a monster.”
“A monster… Sevha, have the Hunters of Anse killed a dragon before?”
“Yes, Tataka. Since the founding of the County of Anse, its Hunters have hunted dragons three times.”
Sevha recounted the records he had read in Anse’s archives.
“The first was the Empress of Frost, who lived in the Frost Mountains. The second was the Emperor of Bewilderment, hunted at the request of the Long-Eared Queen. The third was the Pontiff of Corruption, hunted at the behest of the Sage of the North.”
After each hunt, the Anse had dissected the dragon to perfect their hunting methods.
“Three things are essential for a dragon hunt: troops, equipment, and traps. For troops, you need about fifteen hundred men per dragon.”
“And double that if it has a horde,” Baren added.
Sevha acknowledged this and continued. “As for the equipment and traps, I remember how to make them. We just need the manpower and facilities.”
“Wait… a dragon would fall into a trap? A terrifying beast like that?”
Sevha nodded at Tataka’s question. “It will. Without fail. Even if a dragon notices a trap, its pride will not allow it to avoid it.”
Having finished his explanation, Sevha studied the map on the table. “First, we need to gather people, whether it’s troops to fight the dragon or labor to build the equipment and traps. Where are the forces that fled Bianca Fortress?”
Baren stabbed daggers into several spots on the map. “Barsh and the other Four Knights are each gathering the scattered forces in different locations.”
“Then why has no one come to me, one of the Four Knights?”
Eshu explained, “It can’t be helped, My Lord. House Blanc has long been removed from central politics.”
To the vassals participating in the Great Hunt, Sevha was not someone they could trust. To gather men he could use, he would have to take a different path from Barsh and the other Four Knights.
As he considered his options, an idea came to him.
“Where is Duce now?”
Just as Sevha asked, a wyvern, its body a tattered canvas of wounds, crashed onto the table.
The four men stepped back as the creature slowly raised its head and looked at Sevha. It then stretched its maw wide, as if to say that resistance to such overwhelming power was futile.
Instantly, Sevha drew his handaxe and brought it down on the wyvern’s head, forcing its jaws shut. A second blow drove the wyvern’s head into the table.
Sevha wiped his blood-splattered face with his sleeve.
“Find Duce. Whether we’re hunting a king or a dragon, we’ll need him for it.”
***
Dawn, Eastern Central Jershu
Bolga Ranch was the largest of its kind in central Jershu, a place that bred warhorses.
But now, there were more people than horses within its fences.
And as many monsters as people.
“Any stable will do! Get inside, now!” Duce hollered, leaning on his sword like a cane as he looked toward the large stables scattered across the ranch. At his back, a flood of refugees ran for shelter.
Duce turned against the tide.
“Do not fall back! Fight!”
Duce’s knights, the Ornament Knights, were fighting wyverns diving from the sky. They were also fighting the various monsters that had broken through the ranch fences.
The Ornament Knights were too few to fight off the monsters, but they struggled valiantly. They did not, however, know the ways of the hunt.
And so, they were steadily pushed back.
Just then, rumble!
Sections of the ranch fence were torn from the ground as if by a wave, flying into the air. From the earth where the fences had stood, underground worms crawled forth.
A moment later came the impact of something falling. Crash!
Duce turned his head to see a wyvern had smashed through the roof of a stable. The refugees inside shrieked and scrambled out.
“I want that wyvern dealt with right—!”
As Duce was about to command his knights, he saw them. A boy and a girl lay collapsed inside the stable.
Duce ran. He screamed to the refugees fleeing past him.
“There are children still inside! Save them!”
Despite his cry, the refugees only fled faster. Not one turned back.
Seeing this, Duce ran harder. He stumbled and fell, but scrambled back to his feet and ran again.
“What are you doing! It’s not too late! Save them!”
His pleas were ignored. The refugees ran right past him.
“I said save them, don’t run!” Duce screamed, the sound a ragged death rattle as he stumbled and rose again and again, finally making it into the stable. Alone.
The two children must have been injured before reaching the stable; they were bleeding. They were both clutching a single sword.
“A-are you all right? I’ll help you. Le-let’s get outside…”
Just then, the rest of the stable roof collapsed, and the wyvern landed behind Duce. He heard the creature righting itself, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn around.
A fragile thought took hold: to turn around was to face his terror and die.
But then the boy and girl looked past Duce and got to their feet. They drew the sword they held and tried to lift it together, but it was too heavy even for both of them, and the tip of the blade dropped to the floor.
Duce watched them, the question escaping his lips. “What… are you doing?”
“We’re going to fight,” the boy said. “With our father’s sword.”
“Before our father died fighting a wyvern, he told us,” the girl added. “A knight does not flee when there are those to protect and serve.”
Duce’s eyes widened as if he were seeing something blinding. “You want… to be knights?”
The two children nodded in unison.
An instant later, Duce let out a roar to cast off the fear that had gripped him.
As the children stared at him with startled faces, Duce forced a smile, strained but brilliant, to summon his courage. “I almost gave in to fear again, didn’t I?”
His own sword, the children’s sword. Duce grasped both blades and turned around. “Do you know something? I want to be a knight, too.”
The wyvern was advancing on him, its maw open. Duce let out a roar, refusing to retreat, and tensed his arms.
Just then, a rope-tethered arrow flew from the stable entrance and buried itself in the wyvern’s head.
As the creature thrashed in pain, Sevha, holding the other end of the rope, swung in and landed before it. He yanked the rope, slamming the wyvern’s head into the ground.
“Duce! Strike!”
Duce immediately roared and plunged both swords into the wyvern’s head. The creature shrieked and collapsed. He stumbled back from the falling wyvern and landed hard on his backside.
Sevha dropped into a crouch.
Duce looked up at him, his eyes full of admiration. “As I thought. You’re incredible.”
Sevha glanced at the two children behind Duce. “If you think so, then get up. They’re watching.”
Duce looked back. The children were staring at him, their protector, with eyes full of awe.
Duce felt a rush of joy, as if he had finally been acknowledged. He laughed, a sound so full of emotion it was like weeping. “Right. With them looking at me like that, I can’t just sit here in the dirt.”
Duce pulled his two swords from the wyvern’s corpse and got to his feet.
At that very moment, thump!
The stable wall burst inward, and a monster as large as the wyvern stepped through.
Its arms were long for its legs. Its belly was fatter than its already massive frame. Its head resembled a pig’s, but with flesh and wrinkles that sagged downward.
“W-what is that?”
“An ogre. Stupid, and as strong as it is stupid.”
The ogre saw Sevha and Duce, then stared blankly at its own empty hands.
“Ooh?”
It glanced around, saw the wyvern’s corpse, and grinned stupidly.
“Oh!”
Then it grabbed the wyvern by the tail.
“Oooaaaarrgh!” It swung the carcass like a club. A blast of wind washed over Sevha and Duce.
Sevha nocked an arrow to his bowstring and said to Duce, “Don’t die.”
Duce caught his breath and replied with a grunt of effort, “If I’m about to, save me.”
The two broke into laughter, then stood side by side to face the ogre.
The two children behind them saw it all. Sevha with his bow and Duce with his twin swords.
And the children prayed for their victory—to the twin goddesses of Judgment Hall, whom the two men before them now resembled.