WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Prince of Rage ◈
Chapter 85
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Were mad people unaware that they were mad, or did they know and live that way anyway?
Or could one not live without going mad?
Valerie and Ölvir passed through the gate city and left Edelia’s borders. It was the fifth day since they had set out.
According to Ölvir, they should have reached the place where the dragon lived by now, but apparently they had not.
The land had gradually risen as far as the gate city, but beyond it, a vast lowland plain spread before them once more. This was Aldincaster.
Caster meant castle or fortress. Nearcaster meant New Fortress, while Aldincaster meant Old Fortress.
The fact that the word fortress had become a place name meant that fortresses had existed here even before the Astrians lived on this land.
And people believed that every structure whose origins they could not possibly know had been built by giants.
However, they did not see Aldincaster Castle itself. They had somewhere to go, and they had not come sightseeing.
As they continued west, late in the afternoon, the wilderness ended on the distant horizon, and a mountain range stood from north to south.
As if it were saying that this was the end of the world.
“Is Mount Hekla somewhere in those mountains?”
Valerie looked back at Ölvir, who was riding behind him. Ölvir merely rolled his eyes with an embarrassed expression.
He did not know.
In truth, Ölvir did not know where they were. The place felt both strangely familiar and entirely new to him.
“I, I think it might be familiar... Let’s, let’s find some people first.”
Valerie did not even sigh. As Ölvir suggested, he rode toward the mountain range that seemed to block off the world. He adjusted Snow’s speed so that Ölvir would be jostled as little as possible.
As the sun gradually set, they saw a village on a distant hill. A river flowing from the mountains ran beside it, while broad harvested fields and herds of cattle just returning to their barns came into view.
The village was surrounded by a palisade, though it was not very high. When they climbed the slope and reached the entrance, they could see people walking about inside.
Their clothes were clearly different from those Valerie was used to seeing.
They wore colorful bands around their foreheads, and men and women alike wore tunics that came down to their thighs. Whenever they walked, their bare legs showed through, making it seem as though they wore no separate lower garments.
Their clothing alone set them apart from Valerie.
“Who are you?”
Someone spoke to them. When Valerie turned around, he saw a sturdily built man.
“Travelers. We stopped because we have something to ask.”
“Travelers? Travelers come here? Not to Aldincaster? There’s no holy site here.”
Holy sites referred to places where the dragon-slayer had died or where meteors had fallen. People believed meteors were fragments of dead gods.
“We are not pilgrims. We are looking for a place called Mount Hekla.”
“Mount Hekla? Ah... Wait here. I’ll bring my grandfather.”
The man went off, then returned while supporting an old man. The old man walked over with a cane, but stopped short when he saw Ölvir riding behind Valerie.
Then he looked closely at him.
More precisely, at the pattern of tattoos covering his face. They were so old that their color had faded to a pale gray.
Then the old man asked in a trembling voice.
“Ölvir?”
Ölvir had been looking around the village from horseback when he heard his name and turned to the old man. He blinked, then asked with a bewildered expression.
“Do you know me?”
At Ölvir’s question, the old man stared blankly at him. A smile spread over his face, then suddenly bloomed into a broad grin.
It was as if a bright sun had risen on his wrinkled face.
“It’s me. Leofin. Don’t you remember?”
“...Who? I don’t remember.”
“You saved me. Don’t you remember? Even when the other Vikings raised hell, telling you to kill us, you held out to the end, saying you’d die before you could do it. You saved me, Silvir, Osric, Ulf, all of us.”
Hearing the old man named Leofin, Ölvir looked faintly uncertain. He rolled his eyes as though thinking hard for a long time, then suddenly opened them wide.
“...Snot-nose!?”
“Haha, that’s what you called me.”
“Good heavens! You’re still alive!?”
“You’re the one still alive. It feels like I’m dreaming.”
“V-Valerie, help me down.”
Valerie dismounted first, then lifted Ölvir down. Ölvir threw aside his short spear, which was like a cane, and approached the old man named Leofin.
Then a sheen of tears appeared in his dry eyes, which seemed as though every tear in them had long since dried up.
Ölvir felt emotions beyond description. Gratitude, relief, joy, longing, all intermingled without a trace of anything negative.
If all of it could be expressed in one word, it was overwhelming emotion.
“How can this be... I can’t believe it...”
With trembling hands, Ölvir felt over Leofin’s face. A child of around ten had become a seventy-year-old man, so it was hard to believe even with his own eyes.
“You taught us how to survive. How to hunt, make traps, catch fish, butcher meat, tan hides, use a spear, shoot a bow, use a shield, even how to fight... You tied this around me when I caught my first rabbit. You said I was a proper Viking now.”
Leofin raised his left arm. An old leather bracelet was around his wrist.
Viking arm rings were usually made of silver, and of gold on special occasions, so one made of leather was in truth a fake.
But to some, that fake held a meaning more genuine than the real thing.
At least, it did to Leofin.
At last, a radiant smile spread across Ölvir’s tattoo-covered face, and tears ran down it. The two old men embraced.
“It is good to see you. So good to see you... You lived well. You lived splendidly.”
“Why have you gotten so small? You seemed like such a giant when I was little.”
“Hahaha...”
The two old men held one another and delighted in their unexpected reunion. Ölvir felt as though all the humiliation, shame, and contempt he had endured after the war had been repaid.
Valerie stood there, watching them blankly. So when they called him the Friend of Children, he had truly treated them as friends.
It was strange, remarkable, and moving all at once.
Leofin’s grandson had also been standing there blankly. Then he looked at Valerie and spoke.
“It’s good to meet you. We don’t normally welcome outsiders, but you don’t seem like one. I am Sísrik.”
“Valerie.”
“Leave the horse with me. I’ll show you inside. Grandfather, let’s go in for now.”
“Yes, of course. I’d forgotten all about my aching legs. Ölvir, let’s go inside.”
Ölvir wiped his tears and nodded.
Following Sísrik’s lead, Valerie and Ölvir were invited into his home.
It resembled a Viking longhouse, though strictly speaking, it was not the same style of building. Its walls were laid with brick, its supports and pillars were wood, and its roof was nearly identical to that of a longhouse.
His family lived inside. It was a truly enormous household, as though relatives by marriage and distant kin all lived together.
When two unfamiliar outsiders arrived, the people wore bewildered expressions. The children, however, were full of curiosity.
What eased their suspicion was Valerie’s appearance. His beauty was unlike anything they had seen even in their dreams, and everyone’s eyes widened.
A hearth stood in the center of the house. Sísrik told the people who had been sitting there to move, then seated the two old men.
Ölvir and Leofin continued talking while holding both hands as though they would never let go. Valerie caught bits and pieces of their conversation.
How the other children had fared, how someone had died years ago, how someone had married Silvir and had children, whose children had children, whose children had children as well, how Ölvir had lived, and how Ölvir had nothing to be proud of.
A pot sat over the hearth, and brown stew with a rich scent of meat bubbled inside. Sísrik ladled some out and offered it to Valerie. Valerie accepted without hesitation.
Perhaps because it had been a long time since they had guests, the little children crowded nearby and openly stared at him. Trying to ignore their curious gazes was rather tiring.
“Go away.”
Fortunately, Sísrik scattered the children. They continued to stare from a distance, of course, but that was better than having them so close.
“Sísrik is my eldest grandson. Greet him, Sísrik. This is Ölvir Barnakarl, whom I often told you about.”
“Hello.”
“Oh, yes. You have a fine build.”
“Who is this young man?”
Leofin asked, looking at Valerie.
“Valerie.”
“He doesn’t seem to be your son. Your grandson? Great-grandson?”
“No. We are simply traveling together.”
“Traveling together for what?”
“We... came to find the fire dragon of Mount Hekla.”
“...Heh heh...”
At the mention of coming to find a dragon, Leofin laughed while trying to hide his disbelief.
“It’s been thirty years since I last heard the dragon’s roar. Before this child was even born.”
Leofin said this while pointing at Sísrik.
“A dragon’s roar? Does a dragon truly exist?”
Valerie asked as he ate his stew.
“Of course it does. But it’s not something you can see whenever you wish. I’ve only seen its shadow above the clouds. A dragon’s mighty roar differs from the cry of an ordinary beast. It echoes from beyond the horizon. It seems to shake heaven and earth.”
Valerie had doubted it before, and by now had nearly stopped believing altogether, so hearing a local confirm its existence surprised him somewhat.
But when he thought about it, believing in the dragon-slayer while not believing dragons existed was a contradiction.
“You’re not planning to catch it, are you?”
Leofin asked Ölvir.
“We came to catch it.”
“...Well, if you had been normal, my friends and I would have died.”
Ironically, he meant that if Ölvir had not been a little mad and had acted according to the common sense of the time, Leofin and his friends would have died.
But Ölvir thought Leofin was simply mocking him.
“You rascal, a dragon-slayer caught a dragon, so why couldn’t I? The dragon-slayer had arms and legs, and I have arms and legs. The dragon-slayer died, and I’ll die someday too. There’s no difference at all.”
Leofin was dumbfounded, but he only laughed, thinking that Ölvir had not changed one bit.
“But do you need to do this now, my friend? Wouldn’t it be better to live peacefully with me and die that way?”
Ölvir firmly shook his head.
“To go to Valhalla, I have no choice. Even if the gods are dead, Valhalla must surely exist somewhere. If I kill a dragon, I’ll gain the highest honor, and even if I die to one, I should be able to reach Valhalla’s threshold. There’s nothing to lose.”
The premise was so wrong that no one knew where to begin correcting him. So rather than deny him, they could only nod.
“A Viking remains a Viking.”
“I remember now. We docked a ship and landed far to the northwest of here. I heard the dragon’s roar then as well. My friends and I followed that sound as though enchanted. Those magnificent wings, that red majesty, flames that melted even rock. I remember now. I think some village was laid waste then...”
“It was probably a Cambrian village.”
“Cambrians? Is that what they are called?”
“That’s what we call the people living beyond those mountains. They think dragons are gods. They’re more isolated than we are. Wait, I’ve never thought of it before, but could the dragon’s roar be heard every thirty years? If the last one was heard thirty years ago, then perhaps...”
That meant it was now.
Valerie and Ölvir looked at each other for a moment.
Were they lucky, or unlucky?
In any case, they seemed to have arrived at the right time, and the two smiled at each other.
Leofin and Sísrik thought Valerie and Ölvir were a truly peculiar pair. One was an exceptionally handsome young man, while the other was an aged Viking.
The thought that the two of them were going to catch a dragon was absurd, but it also made them want to cheer them on.
“Sísrik, guide them to the Cambrian village.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“And Ölvir, please stay. I would regret letting you go like this. I ask you as well.”
Ölvir turned to Valerie, and Valerie nodded in reply.
“It’s getting late, so we should be the ones asking the favor. Thank you.”
“...Wait, are you perhaps a noble?”
“I’m not.”
Valerie lied without changing expression.
“Hm... In any case, you are welcome here.”
Valerie’s handsome face and noble manner seemed to make Leofin suspicious, but whether he was a noble or not was not important.
As he talked with his old friend, more old memories seemed to return to Ölvir. After quietly thinking for a while, he turned to Valerie again.
“Wait a moment, you...”
“Yes?”
“Have we met somewhere before?”
“I am fourteen years old.”
Valerie indirectly said that they could not have met. He was only fourteen, and he had spent most of that time in Winslow. When could they possibly have met?
Ölvir frowned and tilted his head.
“That cannot be.”
“Are you saying that can’t be my age?”
“No... Ah, I remember. Sigurd, Sigurd the Dragonslayer. The greatest hero among us Norsemen. I think he looked exactly like you.”
“Perhaps I was lucky enough to resemble him somewhat.”
“Is that so... Well, I only saw him from afar. Even from far away, his eyes seemed to shine. I had only heard of his fame, but when I saw him in person, he was not so much beautiful as somewhat frightening.”
Ölvir tilted his head, then decided that must be it.
In any case, Valerie and Ölvir were able to stay in the village thanks to unexpected hospitality.
It seemed Ölvir had not earned the nickname Friend of Children for nothing. He played with Leofin and chattered without pause.
He especially got along well with Leofin’s great-grandchildren. Even when the cheeky children reached out to tug on his beard and fiddle with his tattoos, he only smiled and let them.
The two men, now in the twilight of their lives, were as happy as children as they talked late into the night.
This was the western edge of the kingdom. At the end of the world, and at the end of their lives, the two men joyfully reunited.
As if they had lived such painful lives for the sake of this very day.
Their reunion was meaningful to Valerie as well. The journey of the past five days had not been wasted at all. He thought he had done well to help Ölvir, and to follow him.
Watching a sight where a fleeting decision made in life could forgive everything and bring happiness, Valerie thought this.
It was like a miracle.
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