Chapter 195 - He’ll Handle It (3)

Immediately after Encrid left, Marcus secretly summoned the border defense captain.

"Are the preparations ready?" Marcus asked. He lounged back in his chair, but his eyes belonged to a predator watching its prey.

"These men have done this sort of thing more times than they can count."

"Good. Then we proceed as planned."

"Won't you inform the Independent Company Commander?"

"I've given him a hint."

He had done no more than hint at it, quite literally, but Encrid would handle the rest. There was no need to burden him with killing a noble, either.

What Marcus meant was this: take the noble bastard who had gobbled up Black Blade's gold and lead him around in circles for a while.

Apparently, he was taking the prisoner along, too. He was welcome to use the captured Beastman for whatever schemes he liked. That meant he had read Marcus's intentions. There was no need to explain further.

'A capable man who can humor that crazy bastard without falling short in skill.'

How many people in the unit could manage that? Marcus had promoted him to Independent Company Commander, but the appointment had yet to receive proper recognition. People still regarded him as lower in rank than the First Company Commander or the border defense captain, yet his ability was as dependable as anyone's. Wasn't he precisely the right man for the job?

Marcus had also sent Encrid off with a sense of anticipation he could not put into words. No, that was not his only aim. He had many.

He also intended to conceal Encrid's ability. Leaving him with the unit would not suddenly give anyone the eye to recognize it, but it never hurt to be careful. The bastards in Martai kept sending spies, so he intended to keep Encrid out of sight for several reasons. The last thing he wanted was some needless feat exposing their military strength.

Encrid was the linchpin of a small elite force, highly skilled in his own right, and capable of command. He was mad about training, but his conduct showed he was a decent person. He even knew how to humor some puffed-up noble.

'Well, now.'

How could Marcus not want a man like that? Besides, Encrid was the one who had lit a fire in his heart. For the first time in ages, his life was full of energy. Rather than repeating one meaningless day after another, he was living to seize something new.

'This is so damned exciting.'

Despite his private thoughts, Marcus simply devoted himself to his work in silence, his eyes serious. That work ill suited the nickname he had given himself: Warmonger.

It had always been that way. The epithet Warmonger was a mask. A mask meant to deceive his opponents.

In truth, Marcus had no particular talent for battle or war. He knew that himself. Of course, lacking talent did not mean he was bad at it.

Marcus knew full well how to use people. He knew how to trust them. He placed his own people in important positions: the First Company Commander, the border defense captain, the Fairy Company Commander, and now Encrid.

His hand was overflowing with jokers. He had aces, too. With so many cards to play, taking the stakes from the man across the table was easier than one might expect.

There was no need to weave a tangled web, so Marcus kept his moves simple and direct. He merely seized the moments his opponent would not expect.

'Those Black Blade Bandit bastards. What scraps do they think they'll get, shoving their snouts in all the time?'

Bastards were like demonic beasts. A demonic beast was drooling over the city he had to protect. Was he supposed to simply leave it be?

"Then I'll be off."

The defense captain saluted. As he turned away, Marcus spoke to his back.

"Kill them all."

"Of course, sir."

Border Guard was a fortress city and a military city. It had shed a brutal amount of blood in the wars against Aspen. If anyone thought it easy prey, it was time to give them a fitting punishment.

* * *

"Not even a platoon's worth? Just three?"

The moment Vice Baron Vancento saw Encrid, Rem, and Ragna, he shot them a disdainful look, and harsh words spilled from his mouth.

"A commoner and two barbarians? What a worthless assortment. You stink. Stay away from me."

Those were his first words upon meeting them directly before the city gates.

Rem's hand slipped smoothly around his axe haft. Encrid reached out with his right hand and caught his wrist. With his other hand, he pressed down on Ragna's left thigh. He shook his head where both could see.

"What's this? You dare fail to pay your respects to a noble?"

Vancento was praying earnestly to the heavens for someone to kill him quickly. Desperately, even.

Encrid had expected something like this, so handling it was no trouble.

"Yes, sir."

He saluted, then planted himself in front of Rem and Ragna, blocking them with his body.

"Like men, like captain." Vancento sneered to the bitter end.

"My axe is crying. It's soaking my trousers. Let's not make my axe sad." Rem barked the words in all seriousness.

"Don't."

At least not inside the city. This would not be assaulting a superior, but murdering a noble. They would have no grounds to complain if the royal palace sent an execution squad after them. Judging by their behavior, it would not end with a mere beating, either.

"You too, Ragna. No."

He was no different. The blond man's red eyes looked murderous.

"Shall we go?"

Fortunately, perhaps, the bodyguard in a black cloak over leather armor led the puffed-up noble away. Only the noble and his bodyguard boarded the carriage. Encrid and his companions would walk.

Their party had gained one more member.

"Why are we bringing this one?" Ragna asked, tugging the end of the rope in his hand.

The Beastman called Dunbachel, standing beside him, was pulled toward him. Thick cord bound her wrists tightly and wound around her arms and torso. Ragna held the trailing end.

Blood seeped from where the cord had chafed her wrists. Beastman skin should be tougher and stronger than human skin. For it to be that bad, her bonds probably had not been loosened once since her capture. Not that anyone intended to loosen them now.

"A guide."

Encrid did not trust the puffed-up noble accompanying them. That certainly did not mean he trusted the prisoner Dunbachel, either.

'She wants to live.'

His approach had been simple. He had asked the battalion commander to hand over the prisoner, then gone straight to her with an offer.

["Do one job for me, and I'll let you live. Think of it as a commission, if you like."]

She had said she was essentially a mercenary, so he could simply hire her. The payment would be her life. The choice was hers.

["... You'll let me live?"]

Her eyes had been full of suspicion. The more he looked, the stranger he found those eyes. A Beastman with a golden gleam in her pupils.

'Don't they have some legend about golden eyes?'

Encrid recalled something he had heard in his mercenary days. Yet she looked like a rain-soaked puppy. She seemed to have been driven out and battered by life.

He had his suspicions but asked nothing. What use would knowing do him? A deal was enough. Once this was over, they would have no further business. Whether she died or left, that would be the end of his dealings with the Beastman.

["Will you do it or not? Whether you trust me, whether you do it, that's up to you."]

Then Encrid shook his head and spoke again.

["No, you don't really have a choice. Just do it. Doing something is better than being executed. Once you're outside, you might even get a chance to escape."]

["Why bother?"]

Encrid did not answer. No, he could not. How could he tell her? That her eyes, that desperate hunger for life, resembled his own frantic struggle to pursue his dream?

Where Frogs were driven by desire, Beastmen clung to reproduction and instinct. It was natural for her to want to live. Were humans any different?

But the eyes she had shown him in that moment had been different. They were not merely pleading to be spared. They said she wanted to live so desperately that she would do anything.

It was purely a matter of intuition and feeling, but he did not want to ignore it.

["Are Beastmen your type?"]

Hadn't the battalion commander begun with that joke before continuing?

["One Beastman is nothing. Do as you like."]

Release her, kill her, or enslave her because she really was his type. The choice was his. The battalion commander was wonderfully easygoing in such matters.

Encrid intended to release her if she was reasonably cooperative. Was attacking him a crime in itself? By that logic, would a war only end once everyone was dead?

He did not want her life story. This was simply a whim. If he could put her to use as well, all the better. That was why he had made her their guide instead of the halfwit noble. He could also cross-check whether they knew the way and were trying anything underhanded.

At the end of the thoughts prompted by Ragna's question lay his answer. Encrid considered whether he could explain all this to him. Not a chance. Even if he tried, would Ragna listen?

"She looks like she'd be good with directions."

He condensed it down to that, only for Ragna to look oddly hurt.

"I may be bad with directions, but I'm good with a sword."

Who didn't know that?

"I know." Encrid answered simply and stepped through the gates.

Watching all this, Dunbachel could only marvel at the situation. The axe wielder who had tormented her was not even looking at her now. He was treating her as though she did not exist. All he did was stroke his axe haft and stare at the man they were escorting.

Her Beastman instincts sounded a warning.

'Leave him alone, and I think he'll chop that man into about six pieces.'

The man called Encrid seemed to know it too, for he kept warning him.

"Rein in that presence."

"Stop."

"I said stop."

"Rem."

Even so, he was reluctant to take his hand off the axe haft.

'He's insane.'

Dunbachel had sized up the human called Rem at a glance. Her assessment could not have been more accurate.

"Take a wrong turn, and I'll cut you down."

The man holding her was no different. There was not a trace of emotion in his threat. He said it as a simple fact, something he would do as a matter of course. He might as well have said the sun would rise tomorrow morning.

'I'll die if I run, too.'

More importantly, there were the ropes binding her.

'What peculiar tastes.'

The rope wrapped once beneath her breasts, then around her arms above them, and on around her neck and wrists. It was more than uncomfortable. It made anything but walking impossible.

They had barely taken a few steps when the noble opened the carriage window. Border Guard's walls were still visible behind them. In other words, a sharp-eyed patrolman could still recognize who they were.

The noble spoke through the open window.

"You look entertaining. You, Beastman. Come to my carriage tonight."

Watching his nostrils flare made her wonder what it would be like to jam her claws into them.

"Will you untie me, then?"

"It would be more entertaining to do it with you tied up."

Seeing the desire and lust written so plainly on him, she felt less disgust than a sense of how easy this man would be to handle. Far easier, at least, than the man holding her rope, the axe wielder, or the man who had captured her.

At the noble's words, a smile appeared on the lips of the madman called Rem. She could tell this was truly dangerous.

The quiet one, Ragna, added impassively, "Move without permission, and I'll cut you down, too."

Again, he might as well have been saying that the moon rose at night.

'Does he mean he'll kill me if I do what the noble says?'

Dunbachel looked at the most unruffled human in this entire situation. Encrid, was it? As the carriage set off, he drew his sword beside it and began swinging.

'What is he doing now?'

WHOOSH. SWISH.

The blade sliced through the air. Training while walking? Or was it conditioning? From the way he shifted his feet about as he went, he seemed to be practicing footwork, too.

The noble's bodyguard, who doubled as the driver, snorted at the sight.

"A grub can roll around all it likes. It won't become a butterfly."

Did he have any idea what he was talking about? Dunbachel had fought Encrid. The man possessed frightening skill. Yet watching what he was doing now stirred curiosity rather than fear.

She glanced back and saw Ragna studying his captain intently. Unable to contain her curiosity, she asked, "With skill like that, why does he push himself so hard in training...?"

Unsure how he would react, she let the question trail off. But Ragna answered more readily than she expected.

"The Captain used to be terrible. He couldn't even handle a single Ghoul properly."

A single Ghoul? Surely not. Dunbachel had fought Encrid. She knew his skill all too well. She was the one who had faced it most directly of late.

"Yet he swung his sword like that every day. Even when all it did was toughen his palms a little and put a little muscle on him, he kept at it. Every day was the same. Always. Without fail. How can someone do that?"

Ragna had seemed to be answering her at first, but by the end, he was plainly talking to himself. Or had he been talking to himself from the beginning?

Dunbachel looked into his eyes, wondering what had gotten into him. They seemed to burn strangely. These were the eyes of someone absorbed, utterly entranced by something. She did not think she could speak to him now.

'He couldn't even handle a Ghoul?'

And yet he swung his sword? Every day? Just like this?

"That's the kind of man he's always been. A man you couldn't believe was still alive. I couldn't understand why the hell he was trying to make a living by the sword. When did he get so good?"

Rem chimed in, too. He had shown no interest until they started talking about Encrid, then suddenly came over and spoke. There was no sign in his voice or manner of the man who had mocked her while digging into her wounds.

He was still insane, though, so Dunbachel edged away from him. Then she looked at Encrid, still swinging his sword as he walked.

Dunbachel wondered, 'When did I stop?'

After the Beastmen had driven her out, she had struggled desperately to survive. Then she realized she was only half a Beastman. Unable to learn Beastman techniques or anything of the sort, she had hastily concluded that improving further would be difficult.

She could see no possibility of further improvement or growth. With no path forward in sight, she had stopped training and conditioning herself.

'That man once couldn't even handle a single Ghoul?'

Beside her, she heard the madman Rem muttering, "It hasn't even been a year. Was he actually a genius? No. He wasn't. He definitely wasn't."

A year? Could someone change that much in a year, starting from too little skill to kill even a Ghoul?

Before she knew it, Dunbachel was staring at Encrid's back. What a strange, extraordinary human. He had not risen through exceptional talent, but had swung his sword day after day despite lacking it? They had no reason to lie to her, so it had to be true.

Everything about this situation amazed her. Amid that wonder and curiosity, envy suddenly stirred, too. And regret: what if she had lived like that herself?

Putting that brief regret behind her, Dunbachel looked to either side.

'Hmm.'

She gave no outward sign, but she had spotted a Black Blade marker. A choice was required now. Should she tell them, or let it pass? She stood at a crossroads.

That was the situation. As Dunbachel deliberated, the carriage stopped.

"Let's rest here before we go on," said the black-clad bodyguard and driver.

And Encrid stopped swinging his sword.