WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 158: He Received Gratitude from a Mother Who Raised Her Son Alone

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Azpen had lost. But it hadn't collapsed.

Winning and losing just kept happening.

No matter how thoroughly you prepared, problems arose. Defeat was, well, just a problem you had to endure.

"Could lose, sure."

He could accept that.

But like this? With every preparation shattered one after another? The strategy he'd laid out had seemed to bite in the early stages, and then it had been swept aside entirely.

Even accounting for a defensive position, this complete a rejection?

Azpen's brilliant strategist, Abnair, had been quite confident. Not a perfect victory, maybe, but he'd believed they wouldn't be pushed back so easily. The preparations for that had been more than one or two.

They'd pulled in giants.

Hidden their true strength.

Lured the enemy into complacency, fed them a rough outline of the strategy.

The crux of it was this: win the flanking route battle and split Naurillia's main force. Dividing their main force was the whole foundation of the plan. And it had gone wrong from the very start. Losing a battle they couldn't afford to lose. That was where everything unraveled.

Like one bookshelf toppling and bringing the rest crashing down with it.

"Doesn't make a lick of sense."

Absurd. The words slipped out on their own. Abnair ran a hand through his green hair.

Out in the bright sunlight, a child played beyond the window. A few attendants hurried after the child, struggling to keep up. The child spotted him and waved. Abnair leaned his elbows on the open sill, waved back, then let himself enjoy the sun.

A fine day. The kind of season where the warmth crept back in.

The child climbed onto the swing hung outside.

Eyes on the child, mind chewing over the start of the campaign. That was how Abnair worked.

Why?

Why had they lost?

The failure of the entire campaign had started at the flanking route. Several reports flicked through his mind. Tracing back to find the root of defeat, following the beginning of the beginning of the beginning.

It started with a soldier's duel.

That was where it stalled. Then Mitch Hurrier died. And at the flanking route battle, there were fighters who showed a force no one had anticipated.

At the center of that. What, who?

There was a name in the report Abnair had received. Sent by their commander in his final moments.

Mad Platoon. Squad Leader Enkrid.

The name wasn't unfamiliar. Turning it over, he placed it: this was the one the Hurrier Family had sent an assassin after.

Just a squad leader? And all of this traced back to him?

He didn't know. From here, it was pure instinct. The instinct of a strategist. The instinct of a soldier.

"Won't be a loss."

When the Hurrier Family sent their assassin, it had seemed pointless. Maybe that had been the right call after all. Abnair decided to use an assassin. Eyes on the future, specifically, the next war after the peace. Still just one squad leader to kill. There was a long-established guild operating in Azpen. Use them, and there'd be no trace left to follow.

Thoughts settled, he moved. He stepped back from the windowsill, headed straight into the city, summoned the assassination guild, and placed the contract under the palace's name.

"Cross a border and the fee triples. Unreasonable contracts get refused."

Abnair sent his answer. A note with the amount in Krona.

"One squad leader? You're spending this many Krona on a single target?"

It was enough to buy a mansion in the capital of the Azpen Duchy. The guild had no reason to refuse. Not a named noble. Not a key military figure. Just one squad leader. Strip away the border-crossing risk and it was simple enough.

The guild accepted the contract and moved. Three assassins selected and dispatched.

"Failed?"

The guild master thought he'd underestimated the job.

"Mid-rank assassins."

Come to think of it, the half-elf had failed too, and she'd been mid-rank as well. That's exactly why he'd sent three, accounting for that possibility.

"Send two."

So two more went.

"Boss."

"Failed again?"

Why were they dying the moment they arrived?

"Two mid-rank assassins?"

"Yes."

What on earth.

Should he send a high-rank assassin? At this rate, it was about time to start calculating the losses.

"Send a high-rank."

They saw jobs through to the end. Above all, this was a direct order from the palace. On the surface it operated as an assassination guild, but Monterre's Swamp was palace property in everything that mattered. The guild master knew that well. Pick a fight with the palace, and making a living off assassination here was finished.

So a high-rank assassin departed.

"What is this!"

One of Monterre's Swamp's top ten, and no word back. Unless some generous mage had appeared out of nowhere to undo the imprinted spell carved into their body, they were dead. Sure enough, two days later, the assassin's head arrived. Delivered right to Monterre's Swamp's hidden safehouse.

"Send word to the palace."

Continuing like this would be devastating. The other side had something. The high-rank assassin hadn't escaped, they'd been cut down. And the location had been compromised too? A group superior to them was involved.

"That's my assessment."

The guild master went straight to the palace. Laid out everything that had happened. Said further progress was impossible.

Abnair swallowed a hollow laugh.

The assassination guild failed?

Absurd, even by his standards. He had no bandwidth, no room to push further.

"We'll let it go."

Abnair gave up. There was too much happening inside Azpen to pour more effort into this.

If that person had something.

If he truly had something.

"We'll meet again."

With that, Abnair tossed the name Enkrid behind him. If they were fated to meet on the battlefield, he'd simply go along with that fate.

Someone who wouldn't be finished off by a hired blade.

* * *

A shadow had been loitering around the barracks for several days. Familiar movement, but disguises good enough that a careless eye would never peg them as the same person.

With the target ahead of him, Jaxon killed his footsteps and held his breath. Presence extinguished completely, fogging the target's senses.

"What's this."

An assassin. He'd clocked it at a glance. Same trade.

A thin wire unspooled from Jaxon's hand. Thick cord, blackened with ink and treated with special oil so it caught no light. It looped around the assassin's throat. Before the assassin could react, he yanked, elbow driving hard into their back, jerking them in tight, and half-broke the neck.

Crack. The head twisted sideways.

A broken neck means death. Obvious.

Jaxon looked over the body. Would this have been tricky for someone else? His people at Border Guard weren't fighters, they were information gatherers. Not that they'd just take it lying down, but still.

Third.

Three attacks in three months since returning from the campaign. This third one had been deliberate, pressed against the barracks wall for three days straight, cycling through disguises: a beggar, an old man, a merchant.

Not bad.

People like this were slipping into his city. The target seemed to be inside the barracks. If they'd been after a company commander, a battalion commander, some noble, they'd have moved differently. The first ones had posed as new recruits. Their target was too obvious.

The Mad Platoon.

Following the flow, the target came into view.

The squad leader. They were after Enkrid. But Enkrid hadn't stepped out of the barracks or the training grounds for three months solid, so they were trying to go in instead.

"Damn idiots."

All this manpower for a single squad leader?

Hidden behind two large trees near the barracks wall, Jaxon shouldered the body and moved clear of any eyes, setting it down near the alley where the vagrants gathered. He arranged the body into a rough sleeping pose, bought a bottle of liquor, doused it around the body, and left the bottle beside it. Like that, nobody would bother looking for a cause of death. Just a dead vagrant.

After disposing of the body, Jaxon walked into the red-light district.

He was a regular there.

When he arrived, a few of the women glanced over. That face wasn't exactly common. Jaxon ignored every glance and walked into a room like any other regular customer.

Inside, a young blonde beauty in a state of undress greeted him.

Jaxon bent and straightened a few fingers on his left hand, signing his meaning, and the woman spoke.

"No listening ears."

"Problems?"

"No more problems, either."

Before, he'd missed a half-elf assassin slipping into the city. Even if he hadn't spread eyes across the entire city, how had that happened? It had stuck with him. A wound to his pride. When assassins kept filtering in after that, he'd killed them as fast as they came. As long as he was stationed at Border Guard, no other assassin or anything like one was getting through.

Not that this was necessarily about the squad leader.

Absolutely not.

Jaxon leaned his back against the door, expression blank as ever. The woman, studying that face carefully, spoke again.

"They're from Monterre's Swamp. What do you want to do?"

Monterre's Swamp was an assassination guild rooted in Azpen.

"Let them know this is my territory. Our way."

Kill anyone who crossed the line the moment they arrived. She nodded.

That might become a war between guilds. Probably a war nobody would ever know about. The place she belonged to was, by its nature, exactly that kind of place.

After that, Jaxon spent the night with her. Work had bound them together, but there was a physical pull too. They were close enough to call lovers.

The woman woke before dawn and had a few of her subordinates cut the head from the body Jaxon had killed. She sent it straight to one of Monterre's Swamp's bases.

A warning.

If they still came after that, the regret was theirs to carry.

After that, Monterre's Swamp stayed away. Made sense. If they operated with Azpen as their stage, the other side moved with the entire continent as theirs.

* * *

"Is this the right way?"

Kraiss peered into the grimy back alley and asked. The smell hit first. The floor was streaked with filth you'd rather not look at. An alley near where the vagrants gathered. The question was aimed at Jaxon.

Enkrid glanced over too.

He'd asked whether a Whistle Dagger might be found while they were out gathering supplies.

"I can get one."

That's what Jaxon had said, and told them to follow. So here they were. He'd half-expected Jaxon to have no time for this, the man had been making rounds through the red-light district and god knows where else, barely stepping foot in the barracks lately.

Jaxon didn't so much as pretend to hear Kraiss. When he deemed something not worth responding to, he didn't. Classic Jaxon. The silence carried its own meaning. Sometimes that was answer enough.

Kraiss had asked, but he didn't press. A bit of filth wasn't going to stop him.

"This way."

Jaxon said it without interest and walked in. Enkrid followed.

He'd been looking for a forge, specifically a skilled blacksmith, but that front was already a dead end. Kraiss had run down every lead.

Behind Enkrid, Frog followed too. And for some reason, Esther had come along.

Stepping into the alley, Esther climbed the wall and took to the rooftops instead.

"That one's something else."

Ruagarne said it, watching.

Enkrid half-agreed. Didn't look anything like a person.

Ruagarne wore boots made for Frog. Eight straps that wrapped tight across the arch, with a sole built from dense wood. An unusual design. With every step, the stone ground met the sole with a hard clack.

"Here."

Jaxon stopped and said it.

Travel meant preparation, a lot of it, especially for a mission. Of everything on his list, Whistle Daggers were what Enkrid wanted most.

"...Quite a few visitors today."

An old woman with a stall spread right outside her open door spoke. A crystal ball, faded curly blonde hair, wrinkled hands. A fortune teller.

"It's here?"

Enkrid had seen plenty. Black markets? Visited a fair share. During his mercenary days he'd even stumbled across illegal slave markets held in secret. Not even a black market, a fortune-telling old woman? Whistle Daggers were hard to come by. The sort of weapon you rarely spotted even in black markets. And this fortune teller had them?

"Yes."

Jaxon answered and signed with his hand. Whatever the signs meant, it must have been the right signal, because the old fortune teller let out a low hmph through her nose. The exhale looked like permission. He wasn't imagining it.

"What are you after?"

"Whistle Daggers. The more the better."

Enkrid answered.

"Payment?"

"This one."

Enkrid pushed Kraiss forward.

"Yes, I suppose I'm paying."

Even knowing it was reluctant, on the surface it looked generous. Since he'd already decided to spend, Kraiss properly opened his purse. You had to invest to profit, after all.

"I'll send it to your unit."

"You know who I am?"

The old woman let out a clicking laugh.

"In this city right now, there might be people who don't know the battalion commander's name, but there's no one who doesn't know yours."

What was that supposed to mean?

He'd meant to ask more, but the fortune teller folded up her stall right then and started gathering her crystal ball and tools piece by piece.

"Well then, that's that."

What would he even grab her to ask as she slipped back inside? She'd clearly done this before. Everything was packed and gone in the time it took to draw a few breaths.

It crossed his mind sometimes. How did Jaxon know places like this? Even Kraiss had thrown up his hands on this one. Not that he'd ask. The goal was Whistle Daggers, not Jaxon's past.

"You think she'll actually get them? Doesn't feel trustworthy at all."

Kraiss said it beside him. Skepticism was his baseline.

"If she can't, she can't."

Enkrid said it and walked on. They were already out, so he'd pick up a few things at the market while he was at it. The jerky stall with the incredible seasoning. Maybe a forge to get his armor looked at.

Too hot to layer up with a gambeson. But he couldn't go out unarmored either.

A looser leather armor, he'd been thinking. His old leather armor was gone, he'd meant to at least throw it on in a pinch, but one day Esther had raked it apart with her claws.

"Seems to me you should be selling your claws to pay for the armor."

He said it up at Esther, still walking the rooftop above.

"Kir."

A low sound from the panther. It sounded exactly like: don't make me laugh.

Enkrid had just tossed it out there. It was a joke.

So they headed to the jerky stall to put in an order.

"Thank you."

The owner came out with a bow before anything else.

"For what?"

Enkrid tilted his head, and the owner bowed two more times on the spot. White streaks showed through the parted hair.

"I'm grateful. As the mother who raised a foolish son, how could I take Krona from the person who saved him? Take as much as you'd like."

"Huh?"

Enkrid hadn't known. He'd just fought as hard as he could. Risked his life and threw himself in. Fought desperately just to push forward.

And because of that desperate fighting.

"Thank you. Without my son, I'd have no reason to live."

He received gratitude from a mother who had raised her son alone.

What had happened on that battlefield. Many people owed their lives to Enkrid, and all of them had roots in Border Guard.

"The armor, just pay half."

"If it's a leather canteen you want, this one's better."

"Are your boots still holding up? I've got some new ones made. If you bring your squad members, I'll take their measurements and make a set for all of them."

"All I have to offer is flowers."

"Please take this."

"Would you try an apple?"

"I've been saving dried fruit."

"Can I give you some charcoal?"

The market vendors, who hadn't seen Enkrid in three months, welcomed their hero. It was something Enkrid had truly never imagined.

"Tch, feeling good for no particular reason."

Kraiss said it beside him, and Enkrid felt the same.

He hadn't fought desperately to save anyone in particular. But keeping those around him safe was something he'd always held in his heart.

A thought came to him, fresh.

What was a knight?

Someone who protects.

Someone who guards the smiles of those they claim as their own, and presses forward with conviction built along the way.

For Enkrid, it was a thoroughly satisfying outing. A good day.

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= = =

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