"Then where is Sir Enkrid—the king's intimate friend, slayer of demons, savior of the realm, guardian of the Border Guard, the Knight of Demonic Allure, the heartbreaker, and captain of the Mad Order of Knights?"
The courier asked. From across the table, Kraiss watched the courier spill out the words and catch his breath and thought,
'Aren't you winded? The captain would hardly like a few of those nicknames. And you left out Balrog Slayer.'
Maybe it wasn't time to announce that yet?
Perhaps. If they ended up fighting the South, it wouldn't help to lay all their strength bare.
War, after all, begins long before steel meets on the field.
'Hide me.'
And grasp the enemy.
The South was a volcano that could erupt at any time. Their king had ceaselessly picked fights, and the Demon Realm tangled itself between Naurillia and Rihenstetten.
'So is this war inevitable?'
Or the design of someone.
If one spoke from a political vantage point, one ought to say they could not understand like Krang—but Kraiss was no ruler. Strictly speaking, he had never thought of himself as such. Therefore he imagined the man called the king of the South.
What did that man desire?
'Does he want continental unification or something? You can't know.'
Imagining a stranger at will was pointless.
All he could do was infer the other's desire.
Some people stake everything on their dream. Kraiss had seen such a person right at his side.
'If his goal differs from the captain's—'
Whether that dream was right or wrong, even if in the process people died and those living upon this landmass called the continent were made to carry their suffering through the era—
'If he wants it, a man advances.'
So Kraiss judged. It was a war laced through with the intent of the king of the South. That was his surmise.
"When you meet him, just call him Sir Enkrid. I've never seen him pleased to hear the nickname 'heartbreaker.'"
"Is that so?"
"The captain is on inspection."
He said it as he wet his lips with a sip of tea. Leisure colored Kraiss's gesture.
The Salamander had rampaged, and the mage union called Astrail had targeted the city. Few were unaware of that fact. Many had seen the fighting themselves.
They were moved enough to put it to song? It was Kraiss himself who had hired several bards.
'They'll be uneasy.'
Naturally. Even if told to rest easy, there were those who had watched the fight leaving behind their children, their wives, their parents.
Kraiss judged that soothing was necessary.
Foremost among measures was sending Enkrid into the city.
There is no method more effective than showing the townsfolk the person who protects them.
If he went around the city and dropped in here and there, many would feel relief from just that. That relief would swiftly spread, and that would give the entire city a sense of stability.
So ran Kraiss's calculations. And his calculations seldom proved wrong.
"For several reasons, it's something to be done."
Kraiss skipped the particulars. The courier likely hadn't come to demand immediate movement.
The only reason he remained was to deliver Krang's message in person.
"I see."
The courier nodded. Kraiss turned his gaze out the window. Reclaimed land, and the people living upon it.
Beyond the panes lay the homes, the earth, the city where such people lived.
'War.'
The continent was always at war. Lately they had fought fiercely with Azpen just beyond the border. Skirmishes with the South never ceased.
'Is fighting truly necessary?'
Could they not settle the matter by some other contest?
'Say, a match to see who dances best at a salon?'
If that felt too unfair, couldn't they pick several events?
Vain fancies. You cannot contend for a nation's hegemony with such things.
'But.'
The fact remains that people die in war.
Resources are finite; if someone is full, someone else goes hungry. He knew that. Kraiss had grasped that truth in childhood.
'So war is the only answer?'
He didn't want to nod. He'd known as much for a long time already.
'Seems I've ended up with one foot set upon the captain's dream as well.'
There is a knight who dreams of an end to war and an end of all things. There is one who wishes to live like the hero of that song.
Kraiss knew such a man. Therefore, even if the two characters called war stirred up anxiety, he would not be swept up and shaken by it.
'No—so long as one does not collapse even if shaken a little, isn't that enough?'
He was mid-thought when—
"I will wait."
The courier's words snapped him from his brief reverie. Turning his gaze back from the window, Kraiss answered,
"Do that. He'll be here within the day."
Leisure still showed on his face. The courier felt a quiet admiration as he looked at Kraiss. At the words war and the South's movements, the man didn't even twitch an eyebrow.
Of course, reality was a little different.
Kraiss was barely suppressing the surge of anxiety within.
'Even if you collapse once, perhaps you just need to get back up again.'
While thoughts like these kept coming.
Nurath, sensing her lover's unease, gazed at him steadily from the door. Once the courier left, she would crack the joke that they should run away again.
Her lover, saying such things, was the pillar that stood and bore it all. Nurath knew that. Therefore, it was natural to her that she should show the very look of admiration the courier had shown.
If some look to Enkrid and feel relief and call him a hero, then Nurath called her lover a hero and respected him.
***
"Uh—hey, you—no, you're the captain now."
The city of Martai had once been the Border Guard's neighbor and the emblem of the power struggle with Azpen.
Now it was fully subsumed into Naurillia and had become one pillar of the Border Guard's fortress cities.
The city's castellan was Torres, a man who had once been a member of the Border Guard's vaunted Frontier Defense Unit.
He had been a fighter skilled at the "hide knife," a method of concealing a dagger in the sleeve; now anyone would deem him fit to be called a castellan. He'd put on flesh, and he had a wife and child.
"Call me comfortably."
Enkrid said.
"Can I?"
"Think of Torres, who was called the Butcher of the Frontier. Not Torres-of-the-spare-tire."
At the offhand joke, Torres snorted a laugh.
Same slick tongue as ever, this bastard.
"So what brings you here?"
"A day out."
"If it were just the two of us, we could've called it a date."
The fairy spoke immediately from right behind. Torres's gaze turned to her. He wondered if she was truly that former fairy company commander.
'She seems oddly softer, somehow.'
She had joked plenty back then too, but now it seemed even more excessive.
Well, she must have gone through something while he wasn't looking.
Torres was an adult. He knew everyone had their own circumstances.
"Shall we have a drink?"
They were comrades-in-arms meeting after a long while. They had once stood on the same battlefield. Therefore, Enkrid too felt easy with this man.
"Gladly."
He didn't usually indulge in drink, but he knew to raise a glass for a comrade. It wasn't strong liquor. His wife fetched wine herself and poured.
She was a brewmaster's daughter, if he remembered right.
The wine tasted excellent. Properly astringent and tart, with fruit fragrance rising amid the sweetness.
Torres was a man who fulfilled the role of castellan faithfully. He understood why Enkrid had come without warning.
He had walked in from the start with his face held proudly for the city to see.
Those who saw that would be abuzz that the captain of the Mad Order of Knights had come to Martai.
Considering the feats he had achieved and what he possessed, Enkrid did not go out and about often.
'He's probably training all day.'
Correct. Enkrid spent most of his hours gripping and swinging a sword and tempering his body.
"The name Frontier Defense Unit is old talk now. It's gone. Still, as endings for units like that go, it's the best retirement."
After wetting his lips with three cups of wine, Torres spoke as he crunched thin slices of potato fried in oil.
Units that represented a region, like the Frontier Defense Unit or the Grey Dogs, had always existed. They disappeared, and soon enough people made them again.
"You know what it means to be the ones who take on the most dangerous missions at the front, don't you?"
Torres spoke as if asking. Of course, Enkrid knew. The dangerous places carry a high risk of death.
Therefore—
"The end of such combat units is, more often than not, that most of them die and the unit disappears. Then, as time passes, a new one forms."
Nothing is eternal in this world. Especially the lifespan of armed units that existed to be expended in war is shorter still.
"I owe you."
Torres said it. Had he kept living as he had, he would have finally laid his body down in war.
Torres had honed the skill of hiding a dagger up his sleeve. Why? To survive. All those in the Frontier Defense Unit who'd thrashed to survive shared that same heart. Thanks to this man, they had met a new life.
"For that, your unit looked awfully tight."
Enkrid had seen the soldiers filling the drill yard on his way in.
"...That coming out of your mouth?"
Torres had seen the Border Guard standing army. In the past, the Frontier Defense Unit had gathered only those rated above upper rank by Naurillia's soldier grading; how about the standing army now?
Even if they weren't at so-called "continental" level, men with enough skill to spread their name through a city stood, without fanfare, among the standing ranks as common soldiers. He even spotted the odd squire-grade soldier.
'What on earth are you building?'
The words sprang up unbidden. Leaving his long-unseen comrade behind, Enkrid set out from Martai.
"To the great knight."
Torres raised his cup toward the departing man. Lined up behind him, the Martai security force—former members of the Frontier Defense Unit—rendered military salute.
They pressed left hands to their belts and bowed their heads.
It was by that man's existence that their lives had changed.
The sky was high that day. Few clouds, a cool breeze.
The air was full of clarity.
"A fine day."
Shinar said. The dragonkin only observed all this in silence. Luagarne puffed out her cheeks over and over and said,
"I'm happy enough for all of us."
Would Enkrid's heart be any different? It was the same. He was glad. He had just watched the lives of those standing behind his back flow on like a stately, mighty river.
The inspection was to give relief to everyone, but Enkrid's own heart swelled as round as a Frog's cheek.
"Yes, not a bad day."
No sooner had they left the city than, from beside the safe road, a wild horse came clattering up—du-du-du-du.
Hiiiiiing.
A horse with two different-colored eyes. He had named him Indomitable, but they called him Odd-Eyes.
"I didn't forget. I didn't."
Enkrid stroked the horse's mane. Odd-Eyes tried to chew his hand a few times. The hard clack of teeth sounded rather grim.
"Curious—curious."
The dragonkin's interest extended to the horse. To him, everything around this man was a stimulus in itself. Had a scholar of the Empire or a kingdom who studied dragonkin seen it, they would have been struck dumb in astonishment.
By nature insensible and coolly contemplating the world, dragonkin had the nickname Observer attached to them. That was another appellation for their kind—yet this dragonkin—
"Do horses bite people by nature?"
—showed interest even in a horse. It was a beast that had overcome the blood of monsters. The purity of its will was exceptionally high.
"No, they don't. It's affection. Mm."
Enkrid broke off—Odd-Eyes bit the back of his hand. Tooth marks stood out clearly on the skin.
"He bites."
The dragonkin spoke and read the horse's inner state. If a being's will was distinct, there was no reason he could not read a beast's mind.
'Frustration.'
Stifled vexation. Such things were glimpsed. If that emotion was a small dot, then joy was a great sun big enough to cover the whole dot.
"His back looks worse, doesn't it?"
He said it because a bluish bruise showed on Odd-Eyes's back. The swelling had grown more severe too.
Hiiiing.
Odd-Eyes only shook himself as if it were nothing.
"Come along."
Enkrid took Odd-Eyes as a companion as well and headed for the city—Lockfried. There he met Leona, head of the caravan and castellan.
"What wind blows you to such a shabby place?"
Judging by the talent for sniping, Leona too was gifted.
"Right. Good to see you too."
At Enkrid's answer, Leona smirked. This guy did as he pleased, always. Well, that was very attractive.
If this man weren't the captain of the Mad Order of Knights but just an ordinary soldier—
'I would have made up my mind and tried to seduce him.'
The dragonkin read others' inner thoughts.
"She harbors impure intent. That woman is aiming for you."
At those words, Leona's cheeks reddened briefly, and Shinar twitched her brows. It wasn't common for a fairy's brows to twitch.
"Where do you think you're laying hands? His fiancée and the Golden Witch is present."
The fairy wasn't shy about calling herself a witch with her own mouth. Leona shook her head.
"That's not it."
The fairy city was one of the caravan's core customers. The various goods they made were popular across the continent. The relationship between the two had continued smoothly out of the public eye.
Even Shinar's words now were the kind of thing they could hear, take as a joke, and pass over.
"His demonic allure is the problem."
Shinar clicked her tongue. It wasn't easy to catch sight of a fairy clicking her tongue either.
What followed was idle talk. The core members of the city of Lockfried had looked the previous threat square in the face, but now they saw Enkrid and their castellan strolling the streets as if they were on charming terms.
"Coming here was Kraiss's idea, right? That head of his really turns well."
With that brief talk with Leona concluded, Enkrid moved to Cross Guard. Since he was already making the rounds.
And in the city where he arrived thus, he met someone he hadn't expected.