WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 498: Autumn Had Come Without Anyone Noticing

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The journey back was much the same as the journey out.

Campfires crackling through the night, open sky overhead, and occasional sparring with Rem. Between those stretches, Enkrid repeated what he had learned and turned over what he had come to understand before. That was where his focus stayed.

Did understanding something mean you could do it right away? No. It never worked like that.

How do I use Will while I sleep, in every single moment?

It needed thought. Working things through, trying this and that.

Nothing bent to his will just because he wished it, but there was no point in rushing either.

One of those nights came while they were sleeping under the open sky. A campfire between them, two moons and scattered stars overhead, the four of them sitting close around the light and talking quietly.

"Three, maybe four days at most and the sky god'll go ahead and spill some water," Rem said.

In the common tongue, that meant rain. The seasons were turning, after all. The time when the blistering heat broke and the seasonal rains moved in. Probably a few light drops over several days, then a pause, then all at once.

The heavy downpour was still a little ways off.

"Ugh. Rain."

Dunbakel hated rain. Not that she had any fear of water, she just disliked it on principle. Most Beastfolk tended to avoid washing, but she was worse than most. They had finished sparring for the day and found a small stream along the road, cleaned their bowls, and scrubbed up quickly.

They could have stopped by Thousand Bricks on the way back, but it was already the return trip, so they chose to camp. Nobody minded.

Ruagarne sorted out her own meals, and Dunbakel brought in game with quiet diligence. She had even taken down a large stag at one point, and they had eaten well. Rem and Enkrid handled the cooking between them, so for field meals, the food was more than decent.

"You sent someone to the Western lands?" Rem asked from across the fire, picking up after the talk of rain.

"They said food was short out there," Enkrid said. He cut a portion from the haunch of yesterday's stag and lifted it to his mouth.

Salt and spices gathered in the West had gone on it, and the meat had come out nutty and rich.

Rem found himself thinking, not for the first time, that this man was surprisingly attentive. He had been that way since he was a squad leader, doing more than his share of the tedious work, and starting everything from the same place: respect for the person in front of him.

He was a good listener, too.

Would everyone have accepted him as squad leader just because he had outlasted the rest? No. Enkrid actually listened. To Rem's own words, to the directionally-impaired bastard's, to the wildcat's, to that bear-faced religious zealot's, all of it.

Same as now.

Night sky, two moons and a scatter of stars, the fire, late hours. Not a single Demon Creature had shown up to give anyone trouble, so not even their bodies had been pushed. No sparring. Just washed and sitting around.

They had been quiet for a while when Rem asked about the Western supply run, and Enkrid explained he had sent wagons loaded with food. They would have arrived by now. The Tribal Chief was probably crying somewhere. He had been the sentimental type since he was young.

Then Dunbakel spoke without preamble.

"I'm thinking of heading back early."

Enkrid didn't let that pass. He heard her out.

Rem, for his part, thought back on yesterday, when he had used sparring as an excuse to knock the Beastfolk around.

Trying to get out of taking more hits?

He almost said it. Almost told her that was never going to happen. But Enkrid was ahead of him.

"That so?"

No weight to the question. Like it was perfectly ordinary.

White hair, golden eyes, the campfire's red glow and the moonlight, unusually bright tonight, both fell across her face and cast shadows outward from the bridge of her nose.

There was no wind, so the sparks from the fire rose straight up.

Crack, pop.

A comfortable sound. Something almost fond about that burning wood.

"I want to go to the Eastern lands," Dunbakel added.

"What's in the East?"

Enkrid turned the haunch on its skewer over the embers as he asked.

Dunbakel was not a Beastfolk who chose her words carefully. She kept them plain instead.

"I think there's something to learn under the King of the East."

She wanted to learn more.

Who at this fire would understand that best?

There were plenty of things to push back with. Why bother? You could stay here and work toward the same thing. But it was clear she had been sitting on this for a while. All those moments she had zoned out staring at nothing, maybe that was what she had been working through.

Probably.

"Then go," Enkrid said.

He met her eyes once and nodded.

"You think there'll be nobody to nag you out there?" Rem added.

"I'm not leaving because of nagging. And I'm coming back."

Running, fleeing, surviving, denying herself, days piled on days, and stacked above all of it: proof. That she was not wrong. That she was born, that she lived, that living was something she was allowed to do. She wanted the world to know that.

The only thing Dunbakel was good at was fighting. So she had to be good at it.

But not just good and done.

The reason she had started down this road, the thing that had pushed her, had come from Enkrid.

Why had she looked at a man that way, the Beastfolk way, as something to want? She had thought it was about passing something of herself on, but that wasn't it.

It was that she had wanted to be respected for something other than what she was.

Was it still the same now? No.

He was no longer something she wanted in that way.

He was a light that didn't go out. For her, at least, that was what he was.

The problem was that her sword arm was not much use to that light.

If fighting was the only thing she had, and she was weak at it, what use was she?

Was she still hoping her worth came from being a woman?

That she didn't want.

Dunbakel was honest with herself. To prove herself as a woman, at least not now. What she had gone through in the City of Aoara had changed her. That was the real reason she was leaving.

In the Eastern lands, there was something like a monster: a Beastfolk who had risen above knights.

She knew it in her gut.

The King of the East was Beastfolk, and he was the best landmark she could point herself at right now.

So she would learn from him any way she could. Steal it if she had to.

Leaving here was how she climbed higher.

The East, that harsh ground, would be a good stage.

Go there, face death, survive somehow. That was her short-term goal.

After that, come back and stand beside the one who had started all this, and prove herself.

Enkrid's dream was large and hard and looked nearly impossible. But even if failure was all that remained at the end of it, she wanted to be a sword at his side.

That was her long-term goal. That was how she would prove herself.

"Sure, if you say so," Rem said, in that sharp way he had.

"Broken-headed barbarian," Dunbakel fired back.

"Yeah, alright. Let's go a round. Sparring, is it? Wonderful."

Rem closed his fist and started to rise.

"Leave it," Enkrid said.

Rem hadn't really intended to beat her up anyway. A bit of grumbling from Dunbakel was worth letting go once in a while.

"The road to the East is long," Enkrid said, and laid out what he knew of the route. Dunbakel had her own plan.

"I'll stop by Martai to resupply first."

"So you do use that thing sitting above your neck sometimes."

Rem sounded genuinely impressed.

"Unlike some people."

Dunbakel ended up getting smacked in the head anyway.

Enkrid smiled.

"Laughing while someone else gets hit is a bad habit."

Had it started around the time of Aoara?

At some point, Dunbakel had stopped filtering what came out of her mouth.

"Say that kind of thing in the East and you'll have plenty of people wanting to kill you," Enkrid said. Honest concern.

"I wouldn't have said I was going to the East if I wasn't going to say what I need to say."

Her mind was made up and nothing was going to move it.

"Right answer. If you've chosen your road, walking it is what matters."

Ruagarne sat beside the fire, poking at the embers as she said it.

Crack, pop. Sparks flew upward and died.

Some dreams were like those sparks, lighting up a wide, dark sky for a moment, then gone.

But knowing that, seeing the end coming, was not reason enough to stop.

That was why Enkrid wanted her to go. Wherever she was headed, the East or anywhere else, if she had something she wanted, she should go after it.

The night deepened. Two humans wrapped in wide cloaks, one Beastfolk, one Frog, all lay down near the fire. It was time to sleep.

They settled in side by side, something warm passing between them. The moonlight was soft and bright tonight.

If someone had been there to put it on canvas, it might have looked like a scene from a sentimental painting.

Into that warmth, Rem spoke from where he lay.

"Hey, thick-skulled Beastfolk. You dying? It's your watch."

Dunbakel let out a short noise and sat up.

"Forgot."

"Proud of yourself?"

"Not proud. But anyone could forget."

"That's not wrong, so why do I want to hit you?"

"Because you have violent tendencies. You can't feel satisfied unless you're beating someone up."

"Rem."

Enkrid stopped him before Rem's hand reached the axe, then closed his eyes.

Even after that near brush with death, Dunbakel started humming to herself.

Crack, pop. Her low humming wove through the sound of burning wood.

It made a good lullaby.

* * *

When is an ordinary human being at their peak?

Giants will say from birth until death.

Frogs say it is when they are most true to their own desires.

Both were fair answers.

Ruagarne had lately felt her combat style and overall capability edge slightly upward.

Humans, it was said, had a short peak but a fierce fire.

For Elves and dwarves, the word meant nothing, since humans lived so briefly.

More precisely, when you measured humans and Beastfolk against their lifespans, youth was the peak. For those who used their bodies, the brightest years usually fell between twenty and thirty. Generous estimates might stretch it to forty.

But were there no humans who grew after thirty?

There were.

That was why Ruagarne had decided that peaks were different for everyone.

The proof was walking in front of her right now.

Enkrid was in his mid-thirties and still growing, shining more brilliantly than he ever had before.

For those who stepped into knighthood, the peak would need an entirely different measure, and what Enkrid might become when that time came was something she could not guess.

That was still what made her heart move.

"This is enjoyable," she said while walking.

"What is?" Enkrid asked.

Ruagarne answered not with words but with teaching.

Her own skill lagged behind his now, and yet she still had much to give.

"Are all knights the same kind of knight?"

The question landed, and Enkrid's eyes lit up.

An interesting question. He wasn't particularly curious about the enjoyment remark, what made her happy could come up later, or never, and that was fine too.

"They're different," Enkrid said.

He knew it from what he had lived.

"This is what the Scribe Knight laid out. Care to hear it?"

The Scribe Knight was the historical name given to an old knight who had written and recited poetry in his own hand, a peculiar man said to have burned with more passion for teaching letters than for teaching the sword.

"I'm listening."

Enkrid's pace slowed a little. That was how it began.

Rem, walking alongside them, tilted his ear in too.

It was interesting from several angles, not least the question of how this differed from Sorcery.

"When you first become a knight, what do you think is the biggest change you feel?"

"The eyes," Enkrid said at once.

Seeing differently was something he had felt himself. Being a junior knight had been one thing, and now was another. Something that shifted a little every day as he learned.

He was calling it eyes in rough terms, but what he meant was a difference across all five senses, and in whatever lay beyond them.

Rem nodded.

"That's the first marker of knighthood. The eye. It's called Future Sight."

Like a sight that reaches one step ahead.

It meant the sharpness to read an opponent's intent from their movements. Though it was called sharpness of eye, it described a broader sense for reading the other person. Future Sight and insight were used interchangeably that way.

"After the eye comes the body. Iron Body."

Ruagarne's large eyes moved to Enkrid's side as she said it, the side Rem's kick had torn open.

Enkrid's body was unreasonably hard compared to any ordinary person. Getting there had meant beating on himself without restraint. Audin had been the one to show him how.

"Iron Body is when Will takes root and the skin across the whole body hardens."

Rem nodded again. Sorcery had something similar.

"After that comes Strong Legs. A tough lower body."

A few more concepts followed.

See clearly through insight, harden in an instant, drive strength into the legs.

Then Expansion, Transference, word-bond, time.

Expansion was spreading Will through the whole body without obstruction.

Transference was passing Will beyond the body to something else.

Word-bond meant putting Will into speech itself, at that one, Rem gave a quiet sound and shook his head slightly.

Time was said to mean walking a different flow of time from everyone else.

Half of it was beyond what Enkrid could follow just from hearing it.

Rem, though, had understood most of it well enough. Some parts felt strange, but the bulk of them matched things he had felt in his body.

"Some things can't be explained in words. You do it and you know," Rem said as they walked.

There was no way to put into speech the fine sensation you got from feeling total power and then learning to hold it.

Enkrid nodded without drama.

Listening to this kind of talk, he still felt something like a roaring fire rise inside him.

Become a knight.

He had run and run toward that, wanting it, and that running had brought him here.

"There were also two things the author himself wasn't certain about," Ruagarne continued.

"What were those?" Rem asked.

What had been said so far seemed to hold together. None of it had sounded like empty talk. And if the one who wrote it was a knight, it was probably right.

"There is said to be a stage where Will neither dries up nor breaks, that is called Ousque. There is said to be a stage where the very nature one is born with becomes something different, that is called Induless. Both are ancient language."

Never heard those before.

Rem filed them away. Enkrid marked each one carefully.

Going through everything up to now had made one thing clear to him.

Talent or no talent, he had to climb each stage one step at a time.

Of those stages, Future Sight and Iron Body were ones he had already begun training in.

"That corps member who got caught up in religion, you said his training method was something else. What he's doing is the tempering method passed down for holy knights to build that hardness. Where he could have learned it, I can't say."

Ruagarne said it in passing. Both Enkrid and Rem had a rough idea. You only had to look at how Audin carried himself to make a reasonable guess about his background.

"I'm off."

At the fork in the road, Dunbakel left.

Getting bitten and killed by a Demon Creature on the way was not going to happen to her. Rem might knock her around here, but Dunbakel's skill was the kind that would be treated as monstrous in a small city. Her hearing was sharp even in sleep, her alertness never dropped, and traveling alone posed no real danger.

"Go safe."

"You die on the road, you don't come back."

"You walk the road you chose. That's your real stride."

Enkrid, Rem, and Ruagarne sent her off in turn. Dunbakel raised a hand, turned, and was gone.

The three of them kept walking at their own pace toward what would have to be called Border Guard territory. When Enkrid, who now bore the title of General and had land to his name, set foot on that land, he found the way ahead blocked by a construction site.

Walls going up, new buildings rising on ground that had been empty. Cut stone, a crew that looked to have come from a stonemason's guild, and beside them a cluster of soldiers camped under canvas.

Drop by drop.

Rain began to fall, and they picked up their pace.

"How long has it been since it rained," Ruagarne said, sounding very pleased.

She was not a frog, but she was a Frog who loved the rain.

Enkrid felt it settle over him and understood, quietly rather than all at once, that autumn had come while he wasn't watching.

The cooler air, the seasonal rain coming down.

Those were the things that greeted him first on his return.

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