Chapter 157 - The Black Horse and the Young Donkey (2)

His square jaw was as striking as his broad shoulders.

He was short, but he was not a man one could call small.

The gaze such a man sent out did not bend in the slightest, even before Peter's presence, which filled the room.

"To be honest, I don't like it."

Sigurson looked at Peter with a slanted gaze as crooked as the words he had spat out.

In a way, it was rude behavior, but Sigurson had reason enough for it.

"Why did you suddenly change the mayor of Soara? No matter how I look at it, this seems like a measure that ignores us."

"... That was absolutely not our intention."

The news of Joseph, who had vacated his position almost as if he had fallen from power, caused a great stir among the dwarves.

Anyone would have been bewildered if the person they had been working well with suddenly disappeared.

Peter thought he could manage this vacuum well, but the world of the dwarves, which he was encountering for the first time in his life, did not move according to his thoughts.

"Bayezid's welcome toward Nidavellir will not change. It is merely that the person proceeding with that work has changed, so please do not..."

"That is exactly the problem."

SCREECH.

With the sharp sound of scraping against the floor, the chair Sigurson had been sitting on was being pushed back.

His figure as he rose from his seat made it clear to anyone that he no longer wished to listen.

"The problem is that the person changed, is what I am saying. Human lord. Peter Bayezid."

"..."

The man sitting right before him was the lord of Bayezid, but Sigurson did not particularly care about that.

Because to him, the most important standard right now was not what position a person held, but how much that person could be trusted.

"The reason we came all the way here to Soara was because of Joseph Bayezid and knight Vlad. If not for them in the first place, we would not even have thought of opening exchanges."

The long history of persecution the dwarves had suffered had made them closed off, and that remained the same even now.

The only thing that had melted the dwarves' wariness even a little until now had been Joseph's courteous letters, sent along with the young dwarves.

"Bring us Joseph Bayezid, or knight Vlad. If you wish to speak with us again, that is."

Sigurson began to fold his arms tightly, as if he had nothing more to say.

The dwarves' manner of speech, upright and therefore direct, pointed straight at what they wanted.

"... Joseph Bayezid or knight Vlad."

It was a demand so direct that even Ragmus, the adviser standing beside him, was flustered, but Peter himself, the target of that demand, merely sank quietly into thought.

Peter was neither flustered nor offended by Sigurson's demand; he simply needed a brief moment to organize his thoughts.

'People certainly do call those names a great deal.'

Sigurson did not know it, but lately, he was not the only one who had sought those two names from Peter.

The lord of Heinal and the green-haired girl were also looking for the two who had suddenly disappeared.

'So that is why he said he would try.'

Only now did Peter clearly realize Joseph's true intentions, and he quietly lowered his head while suppressing truly complicated feelings.

'You have worked hard gathering them all this time.'

Nidavellir, with whom there had been no exchange.

The fallen Ravnoma.

The unimpressive Heinal.

And even the scrawny boy from the back alleys.

Perhaps his second son had crouched quietly, picking up the things that had fallen to the ground while his older brother was out stringing together shining honors.

Until he had polished them smooth enough to shine.

※※※※

"Spare us, please spare us, my lord."

"We were wrong. Please, just our lives..."

Inside the village grain storehouse.

In this cool darkness, men hanging upside down were quietly crying out for their lives.

Among them, the false priest hanging highest of all had already been beaten until his white vestment was bright red.

"You want me to spare your lives?"

Hearing the pleas of the band of swindlers, Vlad snorted in disbelief and drew a dagger from his breast.

"Aggravated assault, intimidation, fraud, extortion, and on top of that, blasphemy."

With every sin he spat out, pieces of jerky were cut away little by little.

It was no great action, but the killing intent felt from that action was real.

"If I were to count up all these crimes, I would have to bring you back to life after you died and behead you again."

"We're sorry! Sir knight!"

"Please, just spare us! Please!"

At Vlad's words, which were practically a notice, the false priest and his shills clamored for their lives.

Because the man smiling down below them truly had the authority to do that.

"You want to live?"

"Yes! Yes!"

"Then hand it over."

"What?"

Vlad held out his empty hand as if it were obvious.

The false priest, hanging upside down as he looked at that hand, was briefly bewildered.

"You must have something you stashed away while doing this. From the look of it, this wasn't your first or second time."

"..."

He had not seemed like the sort of person who would do this.

Just a moment ago, Vlad's figure as he drew his sword along with the hymn had shone brighter than any knight.

But now he looked only like a thug from the back alleys.

"If you don't want to, just say so. The fire at the stake still hasn't gone out."

"We'll give it to you! Everything we have!"

The swindlers now dangling there probably did not know.

That the young knight smiling before them had already splendidly committed aggravated assault, intimidation, fraud, extortion, and on top of that, blasphemy.

A greater evil suppressing evil.

Vlad's gaze, smiling inside the dark storehouse, looked eerie.

※※※※

You said you would spare us!

That damn swindling bastard! Go to hell!

The group of swindlers being dragged away by the villagers was noisy.

They had exploited innocent faith to take property and had nearly burned even a perfectly sound person to death, so even if they died, they would likely not die peacefully.

"A swindler? What do they mean by that?"

"Do not mind them, Acolyte. Men like that keep trying tricks until the very end."

Vlad idly patted his now-heavy pocket once, then quickly turned Jean by the shoulder and headed for the Village Head's house.

Screams of men came from behind him, but only a smile lingered on Vlad's face.

"By the way, what happened to the man who was hanging there? Did he die?"

"Fortunately, he is alive. God must have protected him."

While Vlad was working over the swindlers in the storehouse, Jean had been focusing on treating the man who had been burned at the stake in the Village Head's house.

Priest Andreas was a man renowned for the miracle of healing, and perhaps because Jean had inherited the nature of such a teacher, the boy could handle at least a small amount of holy power.

"Oh... honored guests. Please, come inside at once."

As if waiting had made him anxious, the Village Head, who had been standing outside the door waiting for Vlad and Jean, bent his waist until it could bend no farther and guided the two inside.

"If the two of you had not been here, what would have happened to our village..."

The Village Head, having learned that they had nearly been deceived by worthless swindlers, was bowing his head over and over to an excessive degree.

The mad burning ceremony that had just taken place was something that, by law, could be punished by the knight before him, and by doctrine, could be condemned by the young acolyte.

"Because a plague was spreading in a nearby village, we were completely fooled. They said that if we did not capture that man at once and burn him, the plague would spread to our village as well..."

But following the swindlers' words had also been an unavoidable choice for the Village Head.

Fraud and incitement enter through human anxiety.

Anxious because they were unsafe without a lord to protect them, and anxious because a wicked being had been nearby, the Village Head could not simply leave alone the suspicious man said to have brought in the plague.

"Ugh..."

"I think he is waking up!"

Inside the house they entered under the Village Head's guidance, there was a man who had begun to regain consciousness before they knew it.

Perhaps because he had gone through something terrible, he could not easily raise himself, and while Jean hurried to support him, Vlad quietly began checking the belongings placed beside him.

Drawing on his experience as a pickpocket, Vlad examined the inside of the man's robe with a single glance, and it was full of all sorts of odds and ends.

'This bastard is suspicious too.'

His upper garments were pitch black all over, not because of the soot, but from the beginning.

Inside the small pockets packed densely into the shabby robe were half-burned leaves and strange bone fragments.

"Where... where am I?"

"Have you come to your senses?"

And what was most suspicious of all was the bizarre mask he had been wearing.

The swindlers who had been hanging upside down had told Vlad.

That the bizarre mask had been on the man from the start.

"Who... are you?"

"I am a knight of Bayezid. Vlad."

Vlad held the mask in his hand up to the man lying down.

Its size and shape fit his face perfectly.

Just as the swindlers had said, this mask belonged to the nameless man.

"I have told you my name, so now it must be your turn."

"... My name is Nibelun."

A small voice flowed from the man, who only now began to speak haltingly.

But what was heard from the man who had finally opened his mouth was only an ominous phrase.

"I came here chasing death."

"... Death?"

The mask held close had a bizarre shape, as if a crow's face had been fitted into it.

A black robe and a strange bird-beak mask.

The man's face, seen through the eyeholes of the mask, resembled a cat.

The man who revealed that he had come chasing death was a beastman, a rare sight in the North.

※※※※

The mansion shining under the moonlight looked desolate.

Long, long ago, it might have had an antique elegance, but now, abandoned as it pleased, it merely stood there after losing its original color.

In the deep forest where not even a single birdsong could be heard, the mansion received the falling moonlight alone like that.

SLOSH, SLOSH.

"... So that was it."

A small sound came from inside the collapsing mansion.

The sound of water being carefully poured.

A sound as if someone were being bathed flowed out from the old mansion.

"So that was why you could not leave."

The hall of the mansion, where even the ceiling had collapsed and the pitch-black night sky could be seen.

But though everything was old, only the bathtub against which the woman leaned gleamed ivory and blended with the darkness.

"Poor soul."

A woman whose hair began blue and ended black as pitch.

She was now carefully filling the bathtub and washing the man inside.

The movements of the woman's hands as she washed the man sitting without the slightest motion looked skilled, as though she had done it many times.

"You must have worried about what remained. I understand."

The moonlight floating in the sky began to slowly seep into the mansion through the hole in the ceiling.

Then the scene inside the bathtub came into view.

It was filled not with water, but with bright red blood.

A man with snow-white hair had his head bowed.

The man the woman was carefully holding was deeply wrinkled, like a withered corpse.

"... How afraid of the dragon you must have been, to go this far."

The woman whose feet did not touch the ground smiled with the warmth of a mother and drew the corpse's hand out of the bright red bathtub.

It was now deeply withered, but the achievements accomplished with this hand were greater than anyone else's.

"So now, you must rise. Your Majesty."

Along with the woman's voice, which was like an incantation, the corpse's hand began to open.

Ominous fingertips slowly began to bloom like roots drinking water.

Each time those fingertips opened, the blood in the bathtub diminished little by little.

The moonlight, having fully reached the edge of the sky, shone upon the collapsing mansion.

There, where only the moon could see, corpses in gruesome shapes lay scattered without heads.