Chapter 46 - Through Countless Battles (2)

Encrid learned that a healer had come to treat the cuts and puncture wounds all over his body.

"Fortunately, they say there won't be any permanent disability. Lucky fellow, our Squad Leader."

Big-eyes smiled.

"You almost sound like you wanted me hurt."

"No, I'm worried. Worried! You should feel honored. You're the first man I've ever worried about."

"Of course, of course."

He had expected them to withdraw soon, but their army was still facing off against the Principality of Aspen. Would there be more fighting? Even if there was, it would have nothing to do with Encrid. Returning to the battlefield in this state was out of the question. Unless he was only going to watch.

Big-eyes left him an apple, and he was crunching away at it when Rem came in. The entire squad had gone out, leaving the tent empty. Rem sat beside Encrid, planted an elbow on his knee, and rested his chin on the back of his hand. With his lips pressed into a straight line, he stared at Encrid.

"If you're about to confess your love, let me turn you down now."

"Don't you know I like women? If you and some woman I'd never met were drowning, I'd save the woman. Assuming she was pretty, of course."

"That's fine. I'm a good swimmer. I'll survive without your help."

"Then save me next time. Come to think of it, I can't swim very well."

Then how the hell had the bastard planned to save a drowning woman? Encrid thought that was just like Rem.

"Sure. I'll throw you a rock."

It was their usual banter. Then Rem fell silent and stared at Encrid. His steady gray eyes held Encrid's gaze with an unfamiliar seriousness.

"Something you want to say?"

"How'd you know it was a spell?"

Hmm? Encrid hadn't expected that question here.

"I saw it on the scouting mission."

"You figured it was a spell just from that? Looked like you were running straight for the flagpole, knowing it was the target."

True. That had been his target. He had known everything. But he couldn't say he'd learned it by repeating today. He needed a plausible excuse.

He was about to cobble together some lies and excuses, but those gray eyes staring at him kept pricking his conscience. Rem wouldn't believe him even if he told the truth. But did that mean he had to lie his way out of this?

A clumsy lie would be seen through at once. That was his instinct. Encrid didn't want to treat Rem that way. So he mixed in some truth.

"I once spent some time with a former frontier settler."

That was true. Rem had been a frontier settler.

"He told me a few things."

Also true. Rem had told him about spells.

"So I thought it over and worked it out."

That wasn't strictly true, but from a certain perspective, it was close. Rather than thinking and guessing, he had repeated today and put himself through hell to find out. He could say he had thought with his body instead of his head. At least, that was what Encrid believed as he spoke.

"The flagpole seemed to be the spell's medium. I noticed their formation was strange before the fog came down, and, well, after that I charged."

"Hmm."

Why did people so readily believe lies mixed with truth? Because the speaker was being sincere. That sincerity made it hard for even someone with good instincts to spot signs of a lie. Apart from what he couldn't reveal, Encrid spoke with complete sincerity.

Rem believed him. Even if he didn't believe every word, there was little he could challenge.

"So that's how it was? I thought it was strange you knew at a glance."

"What did it matter if it was a spell?"

"I wanted to teach whoever cast it not to go throwing those things around."

"Really?"

Rem nodded. Encrid remembered Rem's absence on the day of the battle. They had certainly charged together, so he'd expected Rem to join him, but he hadn't. He'd remained out of sight until he returned to their unit.

"I've been meaning to ask where you went during the battle."

"Nothing much. I was curious who'd set up that flagpole, so I went to have a quick look."

"... A look?"

"Had a little chat with my axe, too."

Rem grinned and left the tent. Encrid recalled when he had brought down the flagpole. The shaman had been jingling some bells, then quickly disappeared. He'd been too busy ruining the flag to pay attention at the time. Apparently, the shaman had fled alone toward the rear afterward and run into Rem's axe.

Encrid dismissed it as nothing unusual. It wasn't the first time Rem had gone off on his own. In an earlier battle, he had even charged into the enemy ranks to kill someone called Claws of the Hawk or something.

Knowing this, the Platoon Commander simply excluded the troublemaker squad when reckoning his fighting strength. He counted only the remaining squads. This time had been no different. Except for one thing: Encrid had been the first to break formation. That was unusual.

"Hey. You all right?"

That same Platoon Commander came to the tent.

"Here to visit the wounded? Aren't we heading back?"

Encrid asked outright. The Platoon Commander shrugged.

"No orders from above yet. Everyone's on standby."

Winter was approaching, a difficult season to keep fighting. They wouldn't abandon this position entirely, of course, but since their battalion had done so much in this battle, they would be relieved. It was strange that orders to return hadn't come yet.

The Platoon Commander scratched his head as he looked at Encrid.

"You..."

"Yes?"

At the time, he hadn't thought Encrid's breaking formation was a particularly big deal. He'd merely wondered if Encrid had finally gone mad. Then the shouted orders to get down and raise shields had barely saved his life. Just when he'd thought he was going to die in the fog, it had suddenly cleared. They had turned around and fought the enemy.

Later, he had learned that the fog was a spell, that spells had media, and that the spell wouldn't lift unless its medium was damaged or the shaman died. All of that had come from the Company Commander.

["Who could have done it?"]

The Company Commander had asked, fixing her green eyes on him. Encrid's name had come to mind then. At the very least, he'd decided that squad must have done something. After all, hadn't Encrid dashed out before the fog came down? And those shouts had sounded like his voice.

The Platoon Commander gathered his thoughts and spoke.

"They say that fog was a spell."

"Ah, yes. That's right. I reported it."

Right. That was what Encrid had reported after being sent out to scout.

"Hmm. You did."

After looking at Encrid for a moment, the Platoon Commander told him to take care of himself and stood up.

'It's impossible.'

He knew Encrid's ability. He wasn't lowest-grade, but at best, he might make militia captain in some village. There were plenty of frightening men in his squad, but Encrid wasn't one of them.

Unless the enemy were complete, utter imbeciles, the spell's medium would have been deep inside their lines. That meant someone would have had to infiltrate that far.

'Through all that thick fog?'

Through a rain of quarrels and arrows? The troublemaker squad's leader? Not a chance.

He'd asked Rem just in case, but Rem said it wasn't him. Ragna was out of the question. Once the fog lifted, he was already fighting nearby. Perhaps the other squad members, then? But they, too, had been fighting as part of the platoon's formation farther back.

'Did the main force send reinforcements?'

With that thought, the Platoon Commander stepped outside the tent. The temperature had dropped sharply, bringing the cold.

"Are we really not heading back?"

He, too, missed the city's air. He missed his home, his wife, and his little daughter. He wanted to roast potatoes over the hearth and get a good night's sleep.

* * *

After two days in bed, Encrid felt well enough to get up and move.

"How about not overdoing it?"

Big-eyes was worried, but Encrid felt better than expected.

"That beast is gone, right?"

At Big-eyes' question, Encrid nodded from where he sat propped up on the bed and looked around.

"Looks like it. I don't see it."

"It seemed pretty attached to you."

"Weren't you scared of it?"

"Of course I was. It's a wild beast. A wild beast."

"It still looks like a cub to me."

"You know that hunter, Henri, who was on the scouting mission? He said he went out with you."

Big-eyes asked out of the blue. Encrid nodded, thinking how well-connected the fellow was. How did he even know Henri?

"He used to hunt on the plains, you see."

Encrid knew that better than anyone. He'd learned plenty from him firsthand.

"Henri says there are lots of wild beasts on the Green Pearl grasslands, but one stands above all the others. Know what it is?"

"What?"

"A black panther with blue eyes. A Blue-eyed Panther. They call it a Lake Panther, too."

Big-eyes grew animated. The story seemed to fascinate him.

"They're called Lake Panthers because their eyes look like lakes. Anyway, they do hunt gazelles and Nu, but apparently they usually live by consuming some sort of energy in the ground. They're spirit beasts. I hear just one claw is worth over ten thousand Krona."

The Krona was a unit of currency created by the Empire. One copper coin was worth one Krona. A hundred coppers made a silver, and a hundred silvers made a gold. Ten thousand Krona, then, was worth one gold coin. A gold coin for a single claw. That was more than Encrid's pay.

"I've seen those claws slit throats. Think you could pull one out?"

"... Oh, no. I'm not greedy."

Big-eyes waved his hands in denial. As Encrid continued moving gently, sweat formed on his forehead. A dull pain rose, too. Still, if this was all it was... Having died so often, he could easily gauge a wound's condition from how much it hurt.

"Overdo it and you'll make the wounds worse."

Jaxon had been watching him. Wherever the others had gone, only he and Big-eyes remained.

"I'm pacing myself."

Encrid answered absently and kept moving, recalling how he had deflected the mustached man's strike. How had that been possible? Could he do it again if asked? He wasn't sure. Perhaps not? No, he felt he might manage it with a few more tries.

While he pondered that, Rem and Ragna returned.

"Keep your distance. Your laziness is catching."

Rem needled him.

"Why are you so desperate to die every single day?"

Ragna gave back twice as much. Before the argument could escalate, Encrid spoke.

"There's something I want to ask. About swordsmanship."

Both turned to him.

"Go ahead."

"If it's swordsmanship, I should be the one to answer."

They started glaring at each other again, so Encrid hurried on with his explanation. It was nothing complicated. He had seen an enemy do something a few times, and it had sunk into his body and emerged without conscious thought. That was the gist of it. He described the experience as matter-of-factly as he could.

"Well, doesn't that just happen if you keep at it?"

Rem answered first.

"An interesting experience. It's happened to me since I was little, so I don't consider it special, but in your case, hmm, yes. A blessing from the gods. The goddess of fortune tripped and spilled her gold."

Ragna followed.

Neither answer was particularly helpful. Then the two started bickering again with Encrid between them, and a more detailed explanation emerged.

"Sometimes combat opens your eyes. Usually, they say it takes countless battles—truly countless battles—for that to happen even once. If you've acquired Concentrate on a Single Point, the chances would be higher."

"You've got a bit of a handle on the heart of the beast now, haven't you? You can watch your opponent without shutting your eyes. If you've had chances like that, to watch someone use a sword right in front of you, there may have been times you could see how they wielded it or distributed their strength. Then sometimes your body reacts on its own. But that's only if you've got the fundamentals."

"Fundamentals are one thing, but you'd still need hundreds of brutal battles under your belt."

Their words gave Encrid his answer.

'Ah.'

What had been just one today to someone else had been hundreds of fiercely contested todays for Encrid. And he hadn't spent those todays giving up and going through the motions. He had struggled and given his all at every moment. The countless hours he had endured and enjoyed had brought him this luck.

In truth, it wasn't even luck. It was only natural. It was the reward for studying how to overcome his opponent while being cut, stabbed, scratched, and even killed. Underlying it all, of course, were the boldness granted by the heart of the beast and Concentrate on a Single Point.

'Another reason to be grateful.'

So he owed it to these two. Ragna had even rebuilt the foundations of his swordsmanship from the ground up.

His battle with Mitch Hurrier, the mustached man's pursuit, his today on the battlefield. A tangle of thoughts filled his head and kindled a single desire. He wanted to hold a sword again. To swing it. To try that final deflecting technique and see how deeply it had sunk in.

"I want to spar."

At Encrid's murmur, both Rem and Ragna shook their heads. Rem added something, too.

"Ever since I was little, people have been telling me I'm not right in the head, asking if I'm mad. But the way I see it, you're even crazier than I am, Squad Leader."

Of all people, Rem was the last one Encrid wanted to hear that from. Wasn't he always tormenting the soldiers around him? Trying to take his superior's head off? To be put on the same level as a lunatic like that—no, to be called even crazier...

"Today, I have no choice but to agree. How are you going to spar in that condition?"

Really? They were ganging up on him just because he wanted to spar a little? Encrid felt deeply wronged.

"Sparring is out of the question in your condition, Squad Leader."

FLAP

The voice came as the tent's entrance flap was pushed aside. Encrid looked up to see the Fairy Company Commander. As he tried to rise, she strode toward him.

"Was it you?"

The Company Commander asked outright before he could even salute.

Encrid looked at the beautiful Fairy, cold and sharply defined as an artist's sculpture. He started to speak, then first moistened his parched lips.

In truth, he had expected the questions to come from her, not Rem. How had he broken the spell? That was a question for command to ask.