WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Ode of the Brave ◈
Chapter 28
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Ricart, Ice, and Pallen headed south again, following the senior adventurers.
Beringen was a frontier region in the northeast, while Thorweil lay on the eastern frontier, so the roads were not particularly well maintained.
To the east, a magnificent mountain range ran north to south across the continent, towering as though it looked down upon the land.
Wind that began high above, where the snow never melted, blew toward Ricart and his companions. It was truly cool. Cool enough to make him wonder what they would do if summer never came.
“By the way, who's this kid called Ricky?”
One of the four senior adventurers walking ahead spoke. They had a large hooked nose.
“Me.”
Ricart raised his hand beneath the hood of his red cloak.
“Huh... You're completely different from what I expected. I heard you killed that jackal bastard, so I thought you'd be some big, arrogant guy.”
“You must be pretty good, huh?”
“I don't know about that.”
“No, I mean, go easy on us. We're fucking weak. We came from the same Academy, after all.”
There was a concept of seniors and juniors, but the hierarchy between them was not particularly strict. And there was a saying in this line of work: whoever fought better was the senior.
Ricart merely smiled faintly at the Academy graduate who was talking himself down. He could tell they were quite strong.
“Still, that's a relief. I was worried about what we'd do if you were some selfish brat. If you killed the Jackal, we'd be unable to handle you.”
“By the way, how old are you?”
“Eleven.”
At the mention of eleven, the four adventurers ahead whipped around. Their eyes widened.
Ricart had developed a little faster than children his age, so although they knew he was young, they had never imagined he was eleven.
“...Is that even possible?”
“What is?”
“No, I mean... What was I doing when I was eleven?”
“You were getting worked the fuck over in the chicken coop.”
“That was before I got into the chicken coop. Oh, right. I got the shit beaten out of me by my father. My brother beat me up too, and then I'd go into town and get beaten up again.”
“Anyway, that kid is seriously handsome. What's your name?”
“Ice.”
Perhaps because they were strangers, Ice answered coldly. The adventurers quickly caught on that this was someone they should not talk to. This one was trouble.
But they did not take offense and smoothly changed the subject.
“If you're eleven, Ricky, then by the time you're fifteen and an adult, you might become one of the Nine Swords of the Empire.”
“Come on, no way.”
“You cut off the Jackal's head at eleven.”
“...Maybe.”
“What is that?”
Ricart cut into the conversation to ask.
“If you're going to be an adventurer, you should know the basics of this business. The Nine Swords of the Empire are the nine best blades in the Empire. Nobody officially chose them, but that's what people call them. The four Emperor's Champions, Steiner, the leader of the Ernberg Five, X the Nameless One, Randel the Steel Arm, let's see, how many are left... One, two...”
“The other two live in the west anyway, so you don't need to know. You'll never have reason to go that far in your life.”
“Ah, fuck, who were they...”
“Are they Sword Masters?”
Pallen, who was curious even though Ricart himself was not interested, asked.
“Nine Swords is just a title. Not all nine use swords. The Emperor's Champions are definitely Sword Masters, but I heard two of them are old and on their last legs. We don't know about the rest. We've never seen them. Adventurers can't really wander around where the Nine Swords operate. That's their territory.”
Territory made them sound like wild animals. Of course, human society was not that different from the wild in many ways.
In the wild, enemies who might compete for survival were simply killed. Just as lions killed hyenas and other predators, an adventurer wandering around in their territory might find that it did not end with words.
Perhaps the heart of any justification for fighting was eliminating rivals. Power struggles, wars, even petty knife fights.
“Anyway, that's what I mean. Hey, Ricky, if you're born a man, shouldn't you reach the top at least once? Don't you have that kind of ambition? Ricky the Golden Broccoli, one of the Nine Swords of the Empire!”
Ricart snickered. He thought all that was merely empty fame.
Honestly, he had been called every sort of title in his previous life, so it did not move him much. Killer among killers, demon among demons, Steel Reaper, and so on...
But thinking about it, those were all nicknames that inspired fear in others, whether barbarians or Imperials. The Nine Swords of the Empire, on the other hand, were admired. That did seem rather nice...
“I think it would be nice if we rounded it out to the Ten Swords of the Empire.”
“Oooh!”
“No wonder he killed the Jackal. He thinks differently.”
“Holy shit. Are we traveling with one of the future Ten Swords of the Empire? Someone at that level could be a guild master, right? Save me a position.”
“No, I started talking about the Nine Swords first, so I get first dibs.”
“First come, first served.”
“This bastard always does this annoying shit.”
“Fuck off.”
“What did you say?”
“Hey, hey, hey! Stop it! Here you go again. There are kids around.”
For some reason, two of them started to fight, and the other two adventurers hurriedly stopped them. Ricart had no idea what this was about, but they were not that old themselves, so they had childish sides.
They were all in their early twenties, adventurers whose three years of activity after graduating from the Academy had ended only recently. Still, thankfully, they were not bad people. Though Ricart wondered whether there was really anything to learn from them.
Fortunately, there was.
The guild had not requested assistance from Academy students for any major reason. They simply needed to search a wide area.
They needed more people, which meant the work itself was not dangerous.
Still, there was no telling what the deserters might do in their desperation, so it was not entirely safe either.
In any case, what Ricart learned as a student from active adventurers was how to question people, search, and establish contact networks.
In his previous life, aside from his military experience, he had always traveled alone. He did not know much about organizing and managing things like this.
Questioning people was not particularly difficult. Most rural people were born in their hometowns and lived there their whole lives, unlike city dwellers, so they found strangers unusual and remembered them clearly.
Thus, when asked whether they had seen anyone suspicious recently, they answered with near-perfect accuracy.
After tracking them for three days, they finally caught up to one deserter. But there was one problem.
“You fucking bastards! Don't come any closer!”
At the entrance to a crumbling hut, a man in ragged clothes held a young girl. He was holding a crude knife to her slender neck and taking her hostage. That was the problem.
Villagers poured in and surrounded the area to watch, while the girl's mother sat on the ground and wailed.
“Oh, no! Oh, no! Take me instead!”
Yet the girl being held hostage only stared blankly, as though she did not understand her situation.
“Ah, fuck...”
The adventurer leading Ricart muttered a curse. Usually, he was playful and cheerful, but now his face showed genuine irritation. After muttering fuck over and over for a while, they suddenly shouted.
“Hey! Put the knife down! What are you going to do with one little kid? You're dead anyway, you bastard!”
“Yeah! Taking one little kid with me when I die sounds good! Come on! Come over here!”
“Ha! This fucking... Ha...”
The adventurer seemed ready to die from rising blood pressure and could only keep cursing. There was no solution. They could sacrifice the girl or let the deserter go for now. Those were the only choices.
In truth, sacrificing the girl would not cause much trouble. This was an era when few people would consider the death of a peasant girl from the countryside a big deal. Letting the deserter escape was more likely to become a problem.
Still, even the adventurers knew it was not something a human being should do, which was why it troubled them.
“What do we do?”
“I don't know either, fuck...”
Ricart, Ice, and Pallen could only stand at a distance and watch. They could help if a fight broke out, but this truly seemed to have no answer.
“What if we shot him with an arrow...”
Pallen muttered. But there was no bow or expert archer capable of making that shot from far away. More than anything, the girl might get hurt.
Ricart watched for a moment, then approached the senior adventurer.
“Should I try talking to him?”
“Sure... Do whatever you want.”
He did not say it was not Ricart's place to step in. He simply seemed to have given up because the situation itself was so frustrating. All that remained was whether he would make a decision.
Having received permission, Ricart removed his hood and walked steadily toward the deserter.
“What the fuck! Don't come any closer! That sword on your shoulder! Put it down! Put it down!”
Once he had come close enough, Ricart obediently removed the sword from his shoulder and threw it far away. Then he threw his dagger as well. To show he had nothing else, he opened his cloak wide.
“What, you're just some little brat? What's with your hair? Are you making fun of me? Huh!?”
Only after Ricart discarded his weapons did the deserter seem to see him properly. The deserter was that tense. No one knew what might happen, and one wrong move could kill the girl.
“I'm not making fun of you. I just want to talk.”
“Talk about what? I've got nothing to say! Just let me go! Let me go! I want to go home! I don't even need the three months of pay they owe me! Just let me go! I want to see my mother!”
The deserter shouted as though he were crying. Ricart simply listened in silence until the man had poured out all his resentment.
Only when the deserter tired himself out and began gasping for breath did Ricart speak.
“Where were you stationed?”
“What?”
“Where was the battlefield?”
“...Raeldorf. Why?”
“Was winter cold?”
“Huh?”
“No matter how thick your fur boots were, didn't moisture gather inside them and make your feet swell?”
“...How do you know that?”
“Once in a while, you have a good day, but most days are hard. The comrade you traded jokes with until last night is dead by morning. Moldy bread, rotten fruit. You try to sleep with alcohol in you, but the nightmares never really go away. Right?”
“...”
The deserter's eyes widened. He blinked several times.
Everyone here considered the deserter nothing more than a madman. But not Ricart. Ricart understood. He understood the pain and sorrow that person must have felt.
Losing limbs or having one's body ruined was, if anything, better. What was truly unbearable on the battlefield was having one's mind destroyed. Ricart knew that pain better than anyone because he had experienced it himself.
That was why Ricart felt a kinship of shared suffering with the deserter.
“The worst part is the fucking stupid orders that come down from above, from idiots who don't know the situation on the ground. You know it's wrong, but you go out anyway, and people die. Alcohol, gambling, women. Even that can only comfort you so much. It's not because you're weak. It's because you're a good person. You just weren't suited for the battlefield.”
The deserter became dazed, as though listening to a hypnotist. He blinked, shook his head, then became dazed again. Like someone dreaming with their eyes open.
“So you don't need to do this. Let the girl go. Her mother is crying over there. Her heart must be breaking. The girl has done nothing wrong. Isn't that right?”
The deserter stared straight ahead. But his eyes were unfocused. He seemed to be looking past Ricart instead of at him.
He was not looking at the people either. His gaze was directed beyond that distant horizon, beyond time, toward the past. But in the end, he could not overcome that terrible past. He, too, must once have been innocent.
At last, the deserter seemed to lose all strength, and the arm binding the girl fell limply away. He stood there blankly for a moment, then suddenly straightened and shouted.
“Raise spears! Hup! Spears forward! Hup! Seventh Infantry! Advance! Keep in step! Hup! One! Two! One! Two! Thrust! Hah! Thrust! Hah!”
He was not a human being. He was a broken machine.
And that broken machine drove the crude knife into its own throat with all its strength, without a moment's hesitation. As though carrying out an order.
“For God and the Empire! Glory to the Crown Mercenary Corps!”
Stab!
He fell in a rigid posture, his head striking the ground hard. Eyes wide open, mouth agape, blood soaking into the earth. He trembled violently, then went limp.
A cold silence settled over the scene. The hollow wind blowing through felt especially cold. Ricart approached him, closed his eyes, and shut his mouth.
Then he took the girl's hand and walked back. Every person who had gathered to watch, children and adults alike, stared at Ricart as though they had seen a ghost.
Magic? Was that magic? Mind magic?
He returned the girl to her mother. The mother had stopped crying without realizing it and only stared at Ricart with wide eyes. She had witnessed something so shocking that she could not even think about how her daughter had nearly died moments ago.
Ricart walked away from the crowd.
“Ricky.”
Ice called him. But Ricart walked unsteadily with unfocused eyes, as though he had not heard. Like a puppet with its strings cut.
Perhaps because of the chilling atmosphere around him, even the senior adventurers did not dare call out to Ricart or stop him. Pallen only hurriedly gathered Ricart's sword and dagger from where they lay on the ground.
Ricart was completely out of it. All he could hear was the ringing in his ears. What had just happened was far harder on him than being ambushed and fighting in the forest. It was not even comparable.
Right now, he simply wanted to be alone, so he walked without purpose, farther and farther away.
And so, the eventful deserter commission came to an end.
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