WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 15

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What Was Lost and What Was Gained (4)

After Kyle left to meet the count, Katrin and Veil lingered in the reception room even though their business was done and their payment settled. The least they could do was say a proper goodbye. Short-lived as the acquaintance was, they owed Kyle a great deal.

"He's taking quite a while. Must be close to an hour by now."

"Sounds like the conversation ran long."

"And there aren't any more cookies? Don't they usually serve these with tea...?"

Katrin grumbled, tapping the empty plate in front of her. The desserts set out for guests had been picked completely clean.

"You ate five of them. Show a little restraint."

"Five? You had three yourself, Veil."

"That's..."

He trailed off and pressed his lips shut. Katrin let out a snicker.

"Now that you think about it, you're not exactly in a position to talk, are you?"

"Haah... let's drop it."

"You were the one happily eating them a moment ago. Honestly, I've always wanted to try the tea nobles drink too."

Just the desserts they'd already eaten were worth gold coins. Noble food was expensive enough that ordinary mercenaries could barely dream of tasting it.

"You'd be better off worrying about something else. Depending on how this goes, we might have to pick up our weapons again."

"Our weapons?"

"Already forgot what Kyle said earlier?"

Katrin's furrowed brow slowly hardened. Now that it was mentioned, Kyle had said something offhand before leaving. That calling in soldiers to kill them would be faster and easier than paying them off.

"Oh..."

"Remembering now?"

She looked again at the empty plate. The desserts she'd been happily eating moments ago didn't seem to be sitting well anymore. Maybe they'd been poisoned.

"No way."

"I'm not joking."

"Uh..."

"Always assume the worst. That's one of the few famous sayings in this line of work."

"Then what about Kyle?"

"You're worried about him?"

Veil let out a short laugh. He was right, of course. Worrying about Kyle was about as pointless as it got. Even that middle-aged knight from the trade convoy had been forced to give ground against Kyle. Neither Veil nor Katrin could easily picture Kyle dying.

"Five more minutes, then we head outside."

Veil pulled the halberd propped beside him a little closer.

"If we're waiting, the front of the inner castle would be better. At least we'd have room to run if something went wrong."

"Fair enough."

The reception room fell silent. The two of them stared quietly at the clock hanging on the wall, watching the hands move. Every tick set their nerves a little more on edge.

Nothing serious can happen. Soren, the second son, seemed like a decent enough person. Count Metis has a reputation for being generous, so surely he'd let it go.

Thoughts still tangled in their heads when the reception room door suddenly swung open. Katrin and Veil jumped to their feet on reflex.

"Oh, you're still here."

"...You actually waited."

Soren and Kyle. They'd been braced for soldiers to come bursting in, and the tension went out of them all at once.

Whatever they'd been dreading turned out to be nothing. Kyle looked just as he had when he left. So did Soren at his side. If anything, the two of them seemed perfectly at ease.

"Unlike me, you could have left right away," Kyle said, dry as ever.

"I thought the least we could do was say goodbye. We owe you our lives."

"But why did it take so long? Did something go wrong?"

Katrin asked, eyes searching their faces. Kyle gave a small shake of his head.

"Nothing happened. The payment just took some time to sort out."

It was the truth. Getting into the Metis estate's underground treasury required a complicated procedure. Between personally selecting the top-grade magicite stones and a conversation with the count that ran far longer than expected, it was no wonder the two waiting here had grown anxious. Without Soren, Kyle would have been gone long before.

Soren looked at each of the three in turn and bowed his head deeply.

"Thank you again, truly. I'm alive because of you. Without all of you, this trade run would have failed, and Sir Mihail and I would not have made it out with our lives."

They had been spotted transporting a relic by agents of the essentially defunct Marquis Filein household. And yet the convoy had succeeded. Without the three hired on in Traben, that would have been impossible. To be precise, without Kyle, the ones buried on that hillside at noon today would not have been those riders but every last person in the trade party.

"Courage and recklessness are different things. Be more careful going forward. Gambling on luck is a fool's errand."

Soren gave a wry smile at the blunt advice.

"Yes, I'll take that to heart. I'll do my best without pushing too far, just as you said, Kyle-nim."

***

All three of them said their final words to Soren and stepped outside. Looking up, the sky that had been awash in deep red not long ago had begun to take on a dim, dusky blue at its edges.

"Haah... honestly, I've never had such a long ten days in my entire life."

"Our pockets are fuller for it, though. Twenty gold. That's enough to live comfortably for a good while."

Katrin and Veil talked over the trade run between themselves, openly. The contemptuous stares from the soldiers guarding the inner gate barely registered. Soldiers on fixed wages had no love for mercenaries walking out with a small fortune.

"Hey, Kyle. I've been wondering about something..."

Katrin glanced around, then cast a sidelong look at him. For some reason it reminded him of a few days ago, and he instinctively narrowed his eyes.

"What did the count give you?"

"You mean the payment?"

"Your extra payment. We got an extra ten gold on top of our share, but if the count called you in personally, you must have gotten something way more impressive."

He'd been waiting for that question. Looking over, it wasn't just Katrin. Veil was clearly just as curious.

"Something reasonable."

"A magic artifact?"

"That was the first offer. I turned it down. Took money and some top-grade magicite instead."

"Magicite? Why?"

"Because it suits me better."

Kyle brushed it off lightly. He didn't mention the curse, or the fact that he couldn't hold mana inside his body. Katrin and Veil both looked at him blankly. It lasted only a moment.

"We should probably find an inn soon. If you're up for it, how about a drink, all three of us?"

Veil said. A celebration after a job was a regular thing among mercenaries, and not just for fun. Widening your network was part of the trade. In this line of work, knowing a lot of people mattered more than most expected.

"Drinks? I'm in."

Katrin brightened at once. But Kyle shook his head.

"Sorry, can't manage that. I'm leaving at dawn tomorrow."

"Dawn? Why?"

"No reason to stay here any longer. What about you two?"

Katrin and Veil looked at each other, then answered one after the other.

"I was planning to take it easy for a while. Made good money... Veil, what about you?"

"Same. Resting properly is part of the job too. I was thinking of staying in this city for a few days..."

"Then this is goodbye."

Never grow attached to anyone. Never love anyone.

Kyle went over the rules he'd set for himself to survive in this world. The heavier your feet grew, the longer regret trailed after you. Leaving cleanly meant no loose ends. Like now.

"A shame, but it can't be helped."

"Thanks for everything these past ten days, Kyle. This trade run is something I'll never forget."

The two of them were reluctant, but said nothing more.

"Will we meet again?"

The question came just as he was about to go. Katrin.

"If fate brings us together."

If we're still alive by then. Someday.

He swallowed the rest and turned away. He pulled his hood back up. The hem of his cloak caught a breath of wind, then fell still.

Night was almost upon them now. Beneath the evening sky where deep red and dim blue scattered together, Kyle's retreating figure grew slowly smaller. Katrin and Veil saw him off in silence until he disappeared from sight entirely.

***

"So he's gone."

The count's voice carried low through the study. The harsh sunset glare that had been cutting through the windows not long ago had already faded without a trace. He had been standing at the window gazing toward the inner gate, and now he turned around.

"Will you not have him seized?"

"Seized? Who?"

"That mercenary, my lord. He heard too much. The complications are more than a few. If the Marquis Filein household were to make contact with him..."

Mihail murmured, worry plain on his face. The count let out a quiet laugh.

"Needless anxiety. You worry far too much, Mihail."

Night Crow was already a well-known alias in these circles. An obscure mercenary with a short career but a record that spoke for itself. Offers must have come pouring in over the years. Some of them likely from high nobility no different from the count himself.

"Whatever moves they make, it won't amount to much."

The count wasn't particularly concerned. Turning down the offer to become a retainer had been a shame, but in another sense, a relief. A free spirit who rejected the offers of high nobility would just as cleanly refuse any approach from the Filein household.

"Nor could brute force solve it. The ability to kill four elite knights single-handedly makes that plain enough."

In a sense, perhaps he was simply too large a vessel to be held by a minor noble of a small kingdom. It would take at least the imperial family or a federal royal house to hold someone like that.

"But still..."

"Let me put it to you plainly, Mihail. If I gave you the troops, could you bring him in here on his knees before me? Or better yet, could you kill him?"

Mihail's lips moved, but nothing came out. The count nodded, as though he'd expected exactly that.

"As I thought. You know his ability better than anyone."

That he did. Mihail still could not forget the white brilliance of that night. A single straight streak of sword light falling beneath the moonlight. The pure white sword qi wrapping the blade had been that overwhelming. In all his life, he had never seen anything like it.

"And besides, the man is a noble. He's not like the rest of the rabble."

"Pardon?"

"You didn't know? Well, you've always been a bit too rigid, so I suppose that tracks."

Leaving the knight with a startled expression, the count opened the box sitting on his desk. Several cigars lay inside.

"Habits ingrained over a long time don't change easily."

"Then..."

"He was probably a knight of considerable renown at some point in the past. Those heads he gave us as gifts, every last one of them was someone dear to Marquis Filein."

The count took one and put it between his lips. A touch of his finger brought a small flame to life. He watched it catch, then turned back and threw the window wide open.

Cold air poured into the study. Darkness had settled over the city, and the lights of the night rose one by one across the skyline. White smoke curled and spread out beyond them. His mind drifted back to the conversation he'd had with Kyle earlier.

The count had spent the better part of his life moving through social circles as a high noble of the Kingdom of Brendel, and he'd seen all manner of people in the process. Not by choice, simply inevitably. Nobles bloated with pomp and ceremony. Knights stupid enough to throw their lives away for a hollow thing called honor. Merchants who gave up their humanity for a handful of coins.

Maybe that was why.

This one mercenary stood out. The level of force that put him in a different class entirely, a bearing too dignified for the life he led. And in those dark eyes, a deep undercurrent of regret and resignation. Each of those things could be found on its own in this world, but no single person carried all of them at once.

He had stood face to face with a count and not flinched. He had cut to the heart of the matter with only a few clues to go on. He had even used the payment as leverage to press the count himself. No ordinary mercenary could have done any of that.

"Now that I think about it, he spoke with a northern accent. The base intonation was more imperial, but..."

Where was he from. The Empire. Or the North.

"...My lord?"

The count stopped short. Mihail called to him from behind, but he didn't respond. The suspicions circling in his head were narrowing to one.

A swordsman with ability that defied belief for a common mercenary. Bearing too dignified for what he was. An underlying imperial cadence threaded through with the archaic lilt of a northern noble dialect.

"Could it be..."

There were many famous knightly orders across the continent. The most renowned among them were mostly affiliated with royal households or the Holy See.

The Celestial Knights of the Imperial House, who rode wyverns through the sky. The Chevaliers of the Federation, composed solely of the sons of high nobility. The Santo Ardente of the Crescent Theocracy, who gave everything to their god.

And last of all.

"The Knights of Ash...?"

A name that had once stood at the very peak of the continent, then vanished from history with the fall of the Hailen Kingdom. The count found himself looking reflexively toward the spot where Kyle had gone.

Beyond the tightly shut inner gate, there was nothing to see. Only long dark shadows stretched out beneath the small flames burning atop the castle walls.

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