WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 544: A Fervent Speech

= = =

Crackle, crackle.

Beside a large bonfire stood two chairs, crafted with the kind of care that suggested a master's hand. A middle-aged man sat in one of them. Behind him stood four others: a young man in light leather armor, a middle-aged woman, a man who looked a few years younger than her, and a Frog.

The same Frog Enkrid had let go.

He met her eyes in brief acknowledgment, and the Frog gave a small nod.

Firelight fell across the middle-aged man seated in the chair.

He was the king of Azpen.

Enkrid studied him as he approached. The man had put on some weight around the middle, but the underlying frame was trained. Veins stood out across the backs of his hands, and the thin shirt he wore showed a well-developed chest.

His face was not harsh or difficult to read, though his cheeks were slightly hollow, giving him a lean look. Seeing him, Enkrid was reminded of the first time he had laid eyes on Count Molsen.

Not that this man looked like he was about to do anything that insane. The similarity was in the physique, the kind built through years of steady training.

In short, there was nothing about him that suggested a warmonger. Maybe a bit rough around the edges? Then again, warmongers did not come with a particular look.

The king lifted a leather flask and spoke.

"There is drink, if you would like some."

His tone was not gentle. Hard as a river stone, though without malice or hostility behind it.

"I would."

Crang did not hesitate, and he was not flustered either. He walked over with easy, unhurried steps, settled into the chair as naturally as if he owned it, and accepted the drink. He extended one hand and rested the other beneath his wrist in a show of courtesy, every motion unhurried.

Then he took a long swallow.

Watching from the side, Enkrid wondered briefly whether that was a good idea. But there was nothing he could do about it now.

The sight brought back a conversation they had shared on the way here, inside the carriage.

"Aren't you curious why I go this far?"

Crang had asked that on the road.

Enkrid blinked twice, slowly, and answered.

"If I tried to stop an army, would you let me handle it?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you handle things yourself."

That was trust.

"Same with you, then."

With that, Enkrid had said what needed to be said about his faith in his friend and his king. That was the end of it.

Jaxon had not looked curious, and Sinar had not cared.

If Andrew had been inside the carriage, he might have muttered something like "I think everyone in here has lost their minds," but he had been listening to the clop of hooves and the roll of wheels while taking in the night scenery. Hearing the conversation from outside would not have been easy anyway.

Or would he have stayed out of it regardless?

After the question of how Enkrid had stopped an army was asked, Crang had appeared, and what Andrew's eyes did upon seeing that went past shock and past bewilderment and landed somewhere vacant, like a Ghoul's, the kind that had stopped thinking entirely.

"I'm going to try to win over the king of Azpen."

Crang had said it then, and Enkrid had answered with a look that said go ahead, I trust you.

"Are you bothered?"

Crang had asked anyway.

That was the mark of a true king, perceptive even in that.

"No."

Enkrid denied it. The standard deflection.

"Right, forget it."

And they had drifted into idle talk after that. Dunbakel's journey east, things that happened on the battlefield, killing the enemy knight, changes made to the royal training grounds.

When the fighting came up, Jaxon mentioned killing some moonlight elves, but Sinar took it without a flinch.

Humans drew sides and killed along them. There was no reason elves would be any different.

They did the same.

And Sinar understood well enough that when you stepped onto a battlefield where killing was the business of the day, the one doing the killing was not necessarily the one in the wrong.

"Everyone lives by their own will. If rest is what waits at the end of that, it is not such a bad thing."

Crang heard those words and seemed about to say something to Sinar, then closed his mouth.

Enkrid sensed he knew what topic Crang had been reaching for, and at the same time felt that Sinar did not want it raised. So he said nothing more.

"The southern great power made noise, the divinity side tried its tricks, and in the end everyone seems to have landed on Azpen's side. So I thought about it. What do I do here? Go pick a fight over it? That didn't seem right."

Between idle remarks, Crang sorted through his own thinking out loud.

Enkrid listened and gave him the occasional word to keep him going.

His own mind was not slow, but politics was a different territory.

And it was a territory Enkrid had no interest in entering. Even before he became a knight, he had been too busy pushing forward. Now that he was one, nothing had changed. Sword, knighthood, the dream, what to aim for and what to swing a blade in the name of. A path to work out through thought and effort. There was no room in it for politics or anything else.

At any rate, when they arrived, the king of Azpen watched Crang with a face you could drive a nail into without drawing blood.

He looked as though he found nothing particularly remarkable about a man who drank a cup of wine like he had nothing to prove.

Enkrid caught a sharp gaze from the side. He looked over. The young man was staring straight at him.

Calling it a glare would not quite fit. His eyes were clear and his gaze direct.

Jaxon, whatever he made of the look, did not seem to like it. He spoke quietly, his voice low and even.

"Our unit has a leopard who pulls out the eyes of anyone who stares without good cause. I agree with that practice completely."

Saying things like "stare at me wrong and I'll gouge your eyes out" or "I'll strangle you with your own guts" could rattle a person, but delivering it this calmly, without a trace of killing intent, sometimes landed harder than any rough threat.

Especially at a private meeting held after a decisive military victory.

"No ill intent."

Before the two kings could exchange a word, the young man spoke first.

Even with Jaxon's threat hanging in the air, his voice stayed clear and unhesitant. Was it the kind of will that says say what needs to be said even if it costs you? Or just the recklessness of youth with no thought for consequences?

No one would bring a reckless hothead to a gathering like this. Probably the former.

The middle-aged woman looked displeased that the young man had stepped forward, and her brow creased.

The Frog showed nothing. The last of the four, a neatly put-together man, smiled with his eyes alone and said, "Better to hold back."

"I only want to talk."

The young man said it with his gaze still fixed on Enkrid.

"You are the Knight of the Iron Wall, yes?"

He asked it before anyone else could get a word in.

Enkrid studied him. Not a face he recognized. Not someone who reminded him of anyone either.

And it was not Iron Wall Swordsman but Knight of the Iron Wall? It seemed that was how his name had spread in Azpen.

"When I was young, the first person to teach me the sword was my cousin. His name was Mitch Hurrier."

A name that had stayed sharp in Enkrid's memory.

Mitch Hurrier. They had crossed blades twice.

"When I surpassed my cousin's skill before long, I was given a godfather."

"A godfather?"

"I am the godson of Barnaas Hurrier. My name is Ilord Hurrier."

The godfather had died by Ragna's hand. The cousin who had first taught him the sword had died by Enkrid's.

To Ilord, Enkrid was something like an enemy. Yet the young man's eyes held no grudge. No resentment.

Still, he lowered his head.

"First, let me greet you. And thank you."

Whatever else he felt, Ilord thought of the larger picture.

The man in front of him had stopped soldiers from dying in droves for nothing. Abnaier had told him some of it, and he had looked into the rest himself.

Enkrid had stood before an army and earned respect on that alone, separate from any grudge.

That was why he wanted to offer thanks. The king had made room for him at this gathering, but going back after this would put him in an awkward position for any number of reasons. It did not matter. He had to say what he came to say.

The man before him had killed his cousin and his godfather. In return, he had saved thousands of soldiers.

Beyond that, while he was Barnaas's godson, Barnaas had over a hundred of those, and Mitch Hurrier had bullied him when they were children. That too made it harder to hold any real personal grudge.

As far as Ilord saw it, he had simply done what needed to be done.

"If my skill is ever enough, I will come and challenge you to a duel."

He said the rest of what he had to say.

He was the kind of person who could not settle until everything was weighed properly, stubborn to the point of bluntness. Exactly the kind who would not easily turn crooked or take on someone else's colors.

"Do as you like."

Enkrid gave a nod. He could not know everything going on inside Ilord, but he could tell at least that those words had not come from a place of malice.

More than that, what the young man had said was full of sincerity.

And there was one thing more. Enkrid found him likable.

Setting your will and acting on it. Was that not how Enkrid himself lived?

Ilord had less tact, but still.

"Have you lost your mind?"

The middle-aged woman beside Ilord glared and snapped at him. The way she said it, this had not been planned. As she spoke, she slid a quick glance at Enkrid. If things went sideways and someone over there started drawing blades, stopping it would be no easy matter, so checking his reaction made sense.

Ilord himself seemed unbothered.

That appeared to make the woman more irritated. The crease between her brows deepened.

Either way, the exchange between those two ended there.

Ilord looked forward again. Jaxon took his hand off the dagger he had been quietly turning in his grip.

Of the two kings, Crang had listened to the whole exchange with interest. The king of Azpen showed nothing.

"A curious fellow," Crang said.

"One who cannot hide what he is thinking," the other answered.

They said their piece and passed the leather flask between them.

As meeting places for two kings went, this was bare. No fine crystal glasses, no rare food. Then again, a king coming out here at all was already an act bordering on madness.

In this age, the very fact of two kings meeting in person was unusual. Cities and walls held back Magic Beasts and Demon Creatures, and even farmland required large numbers of troops to keep it safe. For a king to cross a border and sit with another king was an act of chance-taking on its own.

The concept of neutral ground did not exist. Arrangements to meet fell apart half the time the moment suspicion crept in, and even when a meeting was finally reached, you were expected to bring knights, take precautions, spend time and manpower, at which point the whole thing cost more than it was worth.

Crang had gone to the trouble of arranging it anyway.

Enkrid stood off to the side after that, serving as a guard of sorts.

Nothing came at him from the surroundings. No sense of unease, no threatening presence.

Krais had said the king had no real need to come in person, but also that there was unlikely to be any serious threat. That said, it was very much like Krais to grumble about why exactly someone had to go and invite danger anyway.

Why court trouble unnecessarily, that was his complaint, but Crang had smiled and put him off with a single word: "It's interesting."

Honestly, even if the king of Azpen had something hidden up his sleeve, it would not have mattered much. That was why Jaxon and Sinar had come.

Standing there and watching, Enkrid saw the two kings begin to talk.

And what followed was nothing like anyone had expected.

* * *

The king of Azpen had been waiting for Crang to make demands.

An apology for breaking the non-aggression treaty. Unconditional surrender. A demand to kneel.

"Or maybe vassalage?"

Whatever it was, he had steeled himself to bear it.

The meeting itself was strange from the start, he had to admit.

"Is he here to kill me?"

Would someone go through all this trouble just to kill a single man?

If that were it, would they not have chosen a cleaner method?

No. This was not that. What the other side wanted was submission. Humiliation.

Come when I call you. And know your place.

The king of Azpen was not willing to watch soldiers and subjects die for the sake of his own pride. He was not particularly clever, but he knew what had to be protected.

That said, he was not going to be led wherever the king of Naurillia decided to take him, so he spoke first.

"What would you do if I had hidden troops waiting to move against you? Why agree to meet at all?"

It was a statement of intent. Bend me if you must, but I will not break easily.

Crang smiled at that and asked in return, "Do you have hidden troops?"

He knows all the knights are dead, so what is he playing at?

The king of Naurillia had a devil's tongue. Looking at him, the king of Azpen could almost see something demonic lurking behind those eyes.

How much had he been laughing at him from afar before agreeing to this meeting? Was what lay behind that smile a conqueror's satisfaction?

Fine. Let him have it. Let him drown in that petty pleasure.

He would kneel. He would bow. He was capable of it.

But not forever.

Ten years. Twenty. Thirty. Time would pass, and Azpen would rise again. After he was gone, his son would lead. Knights his son raised, and new people with new purpose, would stand up in their place.

The king wanted to fix Crang with a look of raw fury, but he held it back. This was a moment for patience and composure.

It might have appeared that Azpen struck first, but the war between the two nations had really been a fight over Greenfield. Azpen had dreamed of using Greenfield as a base to stockpile food. Naurillia had been wary of a neighboring nation building up that kind of military strength.

Stockpiling food was as good as building an army.

Feed your soldiers well enough and sell the surplus, and the proceeds went straight toward military spending.

Greenfield had exactly that kind of potential.

Now, it seemed, Azpen would be reduced to a vassal state, its borders pushed back.

He had come prepared, yet even so, he was not going to give everything up without a fight.

Then Crang said it.

"If that is my fate, then so be it."

Just like that.

The king of Azpen puzzled over it for a moment. It was an answer to the implied question, what would you do if there were hidden forces, what would happen if he tried something.

The answer was not what he had expected, and in the pause while he tried to make sense of it, Crang spoke again. His voice was clear and easy.

"I am very much in the middle of struggling to stay alive, but just living is not enough. There are things that living alone cannot satisfy. And if heaven, if the gods, take a look at someone like me and decide: this one has grown dull, time for him to go, what can I do? I am not strong enough to argue. I suppose I die."

As he said it, Crang raised his right index finger toward the sky. Against the black canvas of night, two moons and a scatter of stars hung above them, and for a moment it seemed his fingertip almost touched them.

The king of Azpen knew that everything Crang said was calculated. His head told him that clearly enough. He knew Crang had knights with him, knew Azpen had nothing capable of stopping those three, knew that a clumsy assassination attempt or ambush would only make things worse. He knew the fallout from anything like that would be ruinous. A man whose head could not work that out was better off without it.

And still, he could not look away from Crang.

"You are mocking me," the king of Azpen said.

"If I had come to mock you, I would not have dragged myself out here in secret, aches and all. Do you have a dream? I have one. Small, but solid."

Crang rose from the chair. Slowly, as smoothly as when he had sat down.

The three behind the king of Azpen, the Frog aside, flinched. The Naurillia side did not move at all.

Their eyes simply followed Crang.

Under a sky lit only by moonlight and the bonfire, Crang stood alone, and something about him seemed to glow.

"Erase the Cursed Ground from this world. Erase the Cult. Then line up every last person doing senseless harm on a gallows, call everyone together, and say: enough fighting."

What in the world was this.

You could hold back Demon Creatures. The Cursed Ground was beyond anyone's power.

And what was that? Call everyone together and say enough fighting?

Every word of it was absurd.

And yet there was something in Crang's voice, in the way he moved his hands, that pulled at you.

He spread his palms wide. "We, every race, humanity included, have never once combined our strength. Am I wrong? That is as true of Naurillia and Azpen as it is of anyone."

Every gaze in that clearing locked onto him.

Crang spoke against the silence of the night, his words pouring out in a torrent.

"Utter nonsense!"

The king of Azpen shouted it, face going red.

Hearing that, Enkrid thought the man had already come halfway over.

That reaction could only come from someone who had been listening in earnest.

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried