Chapter 38

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Silver coins scattered across the table with a clatter. Like a tiger pouncing on its prey, the Nameless lunged at Haspil, battle-axe in hand.

The entire scene seemed frozen in time: the astonished faces, Haspil on the verge of screaming. But time moved inexorably on.

“Aaaah! Ack!”

CRUNCH!

The vengeance-laden axe struck his enemy’s head. Naturally, Haspil’s skull split like a watermelon. They were supposed to take the head with them, but this was no time to worry about that.

The Nameless crashed to the floor, tangled up with the already-dead Haspil. The bodyguards nearby had no chance to intervene. All they could do was start in shock. The onlookers needed a moment to comprehend what had happened. Then a piercing scream rang out.

“Aaaaaaah!”

That was the signal for the crowd to surge toward the gambling den’s exit. But the doorway was narrow, and there were too many people. They quickly jammed together, shoving and being shoved, almost crushing one another to death.

“Stop pushing!”

“I said stop pushing!”

Tables and chairs toppled, sending money spilling everywhere. Ah, the sound of spilling money. Even now, it was enough to drive people out of their minds. More than a few began scooping coins off the floor, never mind that someone had just been killed. Boribori was among them. Glancing about like a startled rabbit, he shoveled money into his pockets.

The tavern became a scene of utter chaos in an instant. The thieves’ guild members belatedly drew their weapons, only to waver, unsure what to do. They were as overwhelmed and confused by the chaos as everyone else. They scarcely had time to spare a thought for Haspil’s death.

The bodyguards tried to grab the Nameless at close quarters and do something about him, but beneath his cloak he was heavily armored. As he raised his bloody axe again, Ricard climbed onto the table and shouted.

“Everyone!”

His voice struck their ears like a keenly honed spearpoint, bringing the chaos to a momentary standstill. Everyone looked up at him with wide, startled eyes.

“What happens when someone cheats at gambling?!”

Ricard shouted passionately, as though appealing to them. He held the broken bowl and three dice high overhead.

“This man was just caught cheating! You all saw it with your own eyes!”

In truth, no one had properly seen what happened amid the confusion. But the dead could not speak, so Ricard inevitably had the louder voice. He shouted at the thieves’ guild members.

“Get caught cheating, and of course you get your skull split! Are we in the wrong, or are you? You’ve got mouths. Answer me!”

His bold shouts dominated the room. With justification firmly in his grasp, he pressed his opponents hard. Though Haspil lay sprawled with his head split open, it was the thieves’ guild members who shrank back.

“We merely upheld the ironclad law of gambling! And here’s a little cut for all of you!”

Ricard scattered his mountain of winnings like snow, throwing handfuls here and there. Coins rained down on the crowd. Greed-crazed, they dropped to the floor to gather the money instead of trying to escape.

Seizing the opportunity, Ricard called to the Nameless. Under the circumstances, there was no time for courtesies.

“Let’s go!”

The Nameless understood perfectly. He sent the heavy tables crashing over in one sweep to clear a path, then bulldozed through the remaining knots of people like a bull. Ricard sprang down from the table and followed him. Boribori hurried after them, his pockets bulging with money until they looked ready to burst.

But just as the three were about to stride out of the gambling den, someone shouted behind them.

“Get those bastards!”

A few more steps, and they could have vanished into the shadows of the night. A shame, but it made no difference. As though he had been waiting for this, Ricard turned and drew his longsword. He swept it sideways at the first man to charge him.

WHOOSH! THWACK!

Ricard’s precise stroke took off the man’s head. The headless corpse flopped down near the entrance, tripping several of those behind him. The doorway was narrow, and those at the rear could not see what was happening ahead. They kept pushing, sending more and more people tumbling.

The Nameless drew his axe again and hacked at the guild members’ heads as though playing whack-a-mole.

THWACK! THWACK! THUD! THWACK!

The bodies heaped on top of one another jerked and thrashed. Soon the corpses blocked the entrance in a pile nearly as tall as a person.

Ricard sheathed his sword.

“Let’s get our things from the inn and leave.”

The three slipped into the night’s shadows and headed for the inn near the city gate. Boribori hurried along clutching his waistband like someone desperate to piss. His pockets were crammed with silver.

The coins jingled through the nighttime streets, but there was no danger of the sound giving them away. The other gamblers were also fleeing in every direction with their own windfalls. The jingle of coins came from all around, and the thieves’ guild members grabbed anyone they could.

Rather than pursuing Ricard, the thugs simply killed people on the spot and stole their money. They were just as blinded by greed as everyone else. What loyalty would thieves have to their organization or their dead boss? Everything had already gone to shit; they might as well get their own cut. That seemed to be their thinking.

The three burst into the inn as though raiding it. People bedding down in the hall started in alarm, but the trio paid them no mind. They hurried up to their room on the second floor, grabbed their belongings, and went straight back out.

Outside, a fiery glow lit the area around Mother’s Sorrow. It appeared to have caught fire. What a heartwarming sight on a cold winter night.

Unfortunately, the city gate was shut for the night. Just as they wondered what to do, the Nameless, well accustomed to this sort of thing, strode to the barracks beside the gate. He kicked the door open with a bang, startling the guards who had been quietly playing cards inside.

“Wh-what the hell?”

The sight of a huge, heavily armored man in a dingy black cloak left them too frightened and bewildered to attack. The Nameless began turning the large, cogwheel-like mechanism that opened the gate. It normally took several people working together to move it, yet he pushed it around alone.

The thick chains wound up with a heavy, shrill clanking. Ricard and Boribori joined in, though they were little help. Once the gate was open, they strolled out of the barracks. The dumbfounded guards could only blink.

And so they had succeeded in killing someone who, in some respects, was a more difficult opponent than the Ehrenberg Five. They had failed to collect his head, but revenge was complete. That was all that mattered.

The winter night air was cold, but their inexplicably buoyant spirits left no room to feel the chill.

“That was easier than I expected,” said Boribori, carrying his bulging pack.

“There might be plenty of them, but they’re just grains of sand. Give them a little push, and they scatter. What else would you expect from thieves?”

They were not all like that. There were countless thieves’ guilds in the world—practically one in every city. Some were highly organized, secretive, and terrifying. Even thieves varied in caliber.

The Nameless suddenly glanced back. He could see the glow of flames beyond the city walls. He felt different than he had after his other acts of revenge. He had never done this to feel better or vent his bitterness in the first place. Still, perhaps it was best described as feeling nothing in particular. He did not know whether it was because of the boys beside him, but an inexplicable sense of emptiness brushed his heart.

“That ended more easily than I expected. While we’re at it, how about taking out the bandits too?” Ricard asked the other two.

“Why?”

“They’re bound to have people locked up for trafficking and all sorts of other nasty business. We’ve killed their leader. Let’s use this chance to wipe them out.”

The idea of three people exterminating a sizable bandit gang was absurd. But that was only looking at the numbers. With sufficient skill and good judgment, it was hardly impossible. Hadn’t they just experienced that for themselves?

“All right. What about you, Dad?” Boribori asked the Nameless.

Dad? Had he decided that was what he would call him from now on? In any case, the Nameless nodded silently.

With that settled, the three crossed the bridge over the river in the dead of night, then walked openly up the mountain path. It was too dark to see anything, but they could make out their destination: torches and other lights were burning in the bandit stronghold.

Ricard approached the stronghold with his companions, then hid behind a tree to inspect it. A few men stood atop the palisade, but rather than keeping watch, they were watching the fire in the city. He could hear them talking, though he could not make out the words.

The Nameless quietly drew a throwing axe, but Ricard reached out to stop him.

“Let’s look around first.”

They circled the stronghold. Its shoddy construction left plenty of gaps, and there were many places where they could simply grab hold and climb over. Bodies lay scattered around it, ranging from bare skeletons to relatively fresh corpses. Most of the bones were small. They probably belonged to children.

Of the people taken for ransom or sale, children often failed to survive the harsh conditions. Sadder still, many parents sold their own children because they could not pay their debts or bear their hunger any longer.

Looking down into the stronghold from the rear, Ricard got a rough sense of its layout and climbed over the palisade first. The Nameless and Boribori followed. Torches and braziers were burning inside. Following the layout he had surveyed, Ricard headed to a building where the bandits were likely sleeping. He opened the door to find what looked like fifteen men fast asleep.

“Let’s burn it down.”

When dealing with large numbers—or carrying out a massacre—it was efficient to lock people in a storehouse or barn and set it alight. Stabbing and hacking people to death one at a time was hard labor too.

Ricard, Boribori, and the Nameless fetched dry straw and entire braziers. They tossed armfuls of straw into the bandits’ quarters and overturned the braziers, then barred the door from outside.

“Ah, fuck. What? What’s going on? Shit!”

“What’s happening?!”

“Cough! Cough! What the hell?! Hey, quit screwing around!”

“Help! Hey! Let us out!”

Waking to find their quarters ablaze and filling with smoke seemed to leave them utterly disoriented. The commotion brought the men on the palisade and those sleeping elsewhere out to look. By then, Ricard’s party had hidden behind another building. They ambushed the bandits rushing to rescue their comrades.

The Nameless sprang out first and brought his axe down again and again. A man fell with every stroke.

THWACK! THWACK! THUD!

His axe work was frighteningly precise. One difficulty with an axe was that an inaccurate strike could leave its wielder in serious trouble, but he never missed. As the startled bandits scrambled in confusion, he hurled a throwing axe at an enemy holding a bow in the distance. As always, it buried itself squarely in the man’s head.

THWACK! CRUNCH!

The men who had rushed out of bed had not even put on their equipment properly, let alone armed themselves. Boribori cut them to pieces while Ricard calmly surveyed the scene, identifying and killing potential threats as they arose. The three worked so seamlessly together that, despite being overwhelmingly outnumbered, they were practically conducting a massacre.

The remaining bandits could not begin to understand what was happening. Sensing only that it was beyond anything they could handle, they opened the stronghold’s gates and fled. And once one man started running, the rest inevitably followed, swept along in the flight.

All the while, the flames grew. Finally, Ricard opened the door to the prisoners’ enclosure. He had already caught a hint of it outside, but now the full stench of shit, piss, and worse washed over him. Women huddled in a corner, clutching one another, stared at him and his companions in terror. Hearing people dying outside and smelling smoke had already frightened them badly.

“Come out. We’ll take you as far as the city.”

“Wh-who are you?”

The women never dreamed they had been rescued. Such things did not happen even in legends. Legendary heroes slew evil dragons and vanquished demons. There were no tales of them saving people.

“Hmm. X the Nameless and the kids? Anyway, hurry out. This place is on fire,” Ricard said.

Even so, the women remained too frightened to know what to do.

The Nameless went inside and dragged them out. Only then did they finally emerge. Their eyes widened at the flames spreading through the stronghold and the bandits’ gruesome corpses strewn about.

“Come on, hurry up.”

Ricard strode calmly out of the stronghold as he spoke. The women followed.

Only after they had descended the mountain and reached Runenberg’s gate did the women collect themselves enough to offer their thanks.

“Th-thank you.”

“Thank you, brave heroes.”

The fires in the city and the mountain stronghold cast light from both sides. It was not very bright, leaving them dimly visible to one another. The smell of burning hung thick in the air. The women looked to be in their teens or early twenties. To their eyes, however, Ricard and his companions seemed like beings beyond humanity, draped in a reddish veil of night.

Ricard gazed at them for a moment, then tossed them a purse to help them recover and pay their way.

“Have a good life.”

Then he simply left with Boribori and the Nameless.

Was it pity, goodwill, or compassion? It certainly did not seem to be a sense of justice. They simply acted that way. Even they did not know what feelings had inspired their actions. But when dawn broke and the city gate opened, word of the trio’s deeds spread through the rescued women.

And at some point, people began calling the three the Heroes of Siegfringer—the heroes who had defeated villains and saved lives.