It really wasn't the smell of liquor. Enkrid steadied his mind. He'd dozed off in the middle of drinking, but he had seen everything he needed to see and heard everything he needed to hear.
His memory never cut out, so he remembered all of it to the very end. Everyone got drunk and then fell asleep, and nothing happened.
Rem howled "Yayuul!" like a wolf.
Watching that, Jaxon muttered, "Puppy love doesn't suit you. So die," and threw a dagger.
Ragna woke from sleep and shouted that it wasn't heat but a blade, while Audin began to sing, "Lord, Lord, Lord," and Enkrid finally understood why he hadn't chosen sacred spear or chant as his main strengths.
His voice was sonorous, but he couldn't carry a tune.
When he sang quietly, it seemed passable—was that the result of effort, or nooooble effort?
"Wasn't there a saying that singing is a talent?"
The thought popped up out of nowhere.
Who said that? Nurat's face came to mind, and then the face of someone already forgotten brushed past.
Right—
"Captain Garett?"
Garett Gyro, that was the name. He was a man gifted at singing who retired, declaring he would live as a minstrel rather than a soldier.
Afterward, now and then news of him drifted in. He'd composed songs called "The Demonic Knight" and "Heartbreaker," but people said his talent for writing songs wasn't all that great.
When Kraiss gets uneasy, he feels pressured, and to relieve that pressure, he chatters.
That was part of his chatter.
"Don't you remember Garett Gyro? He's gotten fairly famous lately."
"Who was he again?"
Expecting a man who repeats the same day to remember every fleeting acquaintance is asking too much.
"Sometimes you seem kind of dumb, you know."
Enkrid flicked his finger against Kraiss's forehead as he muttered.
"Ack, my head's going to explode."
"So?"
"No, just saying."
He'd gotten famous for singing, but was fretting because he had no knack for composing—something like that.
He said he'd gotten a letter from his lover and bodyguard, Nurat.
"Your mind's wandering."
At the Ferryman's words, Enkrid lifted his head. It was peculiar. This place was a dream, or a world of impressions.
And yet here he was, lost in idle thoughts.
Also, the Ferryman today struck him as kind and mild-spoken.
Even when Enkrid fell into stray thoughts, he waited and simply stood where he was.
"What brings you here?"
Enkrid asked. He wasn't the sort of being to call someone over just to say hi.
"Watch."
The Ferryman abruptly stretched out the hand not holding the lamp. At some point a long pole had appeared in it. Its body was jet black, and violet light ran through it as if pulsing.
Enkrid didn't know what it was, but his body took a stance on reflex.
At some point his own hand held a sword shaped exactly like Dawn Tempering.
Whoosh.
A spear came flying in. A spear is a polearm. In a fight with distance between you, it has the advantage over a sword.
The skiff had somehow widened, enough to move freely. The planks making up the floor felt harder than marble.
He raised his sword and batted aside the spearhead.
Ting.
If you deflect the thrust's force along its line, an opening appears. Slip inside that gap, and the distance now belongs to the sword's wielder.
It's a simple thought-structure, but none of it was calculation—it was intuition. Meaning the moment he shed the spearhead along his blade, he was already ducking his body and lunging forward.
And then Enkrid saw the far end of the spear shaft whip up high.
'If that hits, I die.'
Because he knew it a beat ahead, he could brake his charge and yank his sword back into a cut.
Clang!
Shaft met blade with a crisp ring. With that sound, the exchange ended, and so did the bout.
The Ferryman had already withdrawn far back—more than ten paces. Even so, his voice carried crystal clear.
"It's a killing strike."
The meaning wasn't hard to grasp. There are similar arts in swordplay.
In terms of principle, first comes armor-breaking.
'Striking down one who wears armor.'
In technical terms, it means targeting parts not protected by armor.
'Like the spear shaft that just went for my neck.'
Even if you aim at the armor, with sufficient strength you swing for a spot the armor doesn't truly protect.
Second is attacking with a part that isn't the edge. That means an attack usually reliant on the blade changes form.
In short, it becomes a finishing means with surprise value.
'A method that decides the match in an instant.'
It's similar to Pel's. It shares the trait of ending a fight in a single blow.
The spearhead is the feint, and the follow-up shaft attack is real—psychological triggers layered into the strike.
"Be faithful to basics, but do not size up the opponent."
He turned the words over the moment he heard them.
The Ferryman taught, and Enkrid lowered his sword and listened. It was something drawn from experience—or understood on the verge of death.
At some point the sword in his hand vanished, and the spear shaft the Ferryman held unraveled like smoke.
"Are you enjoying yourself?"
the Ferryman asked.
Enkrid raised his empty hands, meaning would he spar once more, and said,
"A few more rounds and I think I'd enjoy it even more."
Instead of indulging Enkrid's wish, the Ferryman said,
"They say if you know a foe's desire and fear, you can know the foe."
The violet lamp was still. Today even the river swelled less than usual. The skiff was that quiet. Even when they'd just been swinging spear and sword, it felt as if they were moving a skiff of steel set on solid ground.
When Enkrid stared blankly, the Ferryman's mouth opened again.
"Do you want to know the demon's desire?"
He understood the instant he heard it.
An offer. A temptation.
"I will tell you their fear."
The Ferryman didn't stop speaking. He went on.
"And you could dream such a pleasant dream every day as well."
It was a promise to give a man obsessed with technique, swordplay, bouts, tempering, and training the thing he loved most.
And to reveal the identity of the veiled enemy.
Naturally, it wasn't a conditionless offer.
The Ferryman always wanted something.
"Repeat the day you just spent. Ten times will do. Simple. Right now say you wish to die at once. That will do. For the remaining nine, kill yourself before the day ends. It is not difficult."
He'd died in so many ways already. For Enkrid, a few suicides were nothing. True—this wasn't hard.
Even so, he didn't open his mouth easily. The skiff was still, the river steadier than ever—yet somehow his insides still felt queasy. Silence settled between them. The Ferryman's lips—dry as if they belonged on a wasteland that hadn't seen rain in months—parted again.
"Five times?"
The number had dropped.
Enkrid understood what the Ferryman desired.
He wanted a day without darkness, a calm day without thunderbolts. He urged him to repeat that day and wished for one thing.
The Ferryman desired tranquility.
"Go on as if you've never died once."
That was a different Ferryman from the one who'd said it.
Yet what they desire is unchanging.
Well, maybe each Ferryman varies a little. Knowing he can't know everything, Enkrid hadn't bothered to pry into such parts.
"Will you?"
Only then did he open his mouth to ask back.
"How about three times?"
He knows today is precious because it won't return.
Enkrid knows that even if someone granted him magic that would let him arbitrarily repeat today, he wouldn't.
Because he has to move toward tomorrow.
Because he may have used death to make repetition of today his chance, but he must not grow complacent.
His straight conviction did not waver.
"Twice?"
The number the Ferryman wanted dropped again, but Enkrid didn't grant it.
"You will regret this."
At last a curse slipped out.
"Aren't you sick of saying that?"
The Ferryman realized he'd been repeating the same kind of threat.
"...You truly will regret it."
Apparently today's Ferryman was a bit short on vocabulary.
Enkrid opened his eyes. Those sprawled drunk were waking one by one.
"Why am I here?"
Squire Lawford blinked at the clothes and boots he'd taken off and neatly folded.
"What kind of liquor did you bring?"
Jaxon added a word of his own. He stared at Rem with languid eyes.
When it came to liquor, Jaxon wasn't inexperienced. But even he couldn't handle what they drank last night.
"Hell if I know, punk. Anne said it doesn't build tolerance in the body, but she was going to make a drink that gets you drunk fast."
"That's not liquor, that's medicine."
Anne, who'd shown up in the morning, answered flatly.
"So that's what you did with it when I sent it out. I told you, it's for people whose daily life falls apart because of alcohol—to sip a little every day."
Anne's research field is broad. The Border Guard's recent prosperity had bred leisure, and leisure gave birth to various hobbies.
Some of those led to excessive drinking that harmed the body, and a man who pinned his dreams on running a salon dreamed up a drink that would get you tipsy with less strain on the body.
You can't sell tea in a salon.
"Isn't there a liquor you drink that gets you drunk but reduces the burden on the body?"
That was the request.
In short, the liquor they drank last night was the result of research funded out of Kraiss's own pocket.
Meaning it was something Rem and Kraiss had made together, hand in glove. They tried it to taste it and to see how strong it was.
"A good sweat should clear you up."
That was Enkrid's line. He'd woken later than usual, but he moved as if it were nothing.
He lives the same way every day, but even that constancy isn't always constant. There are days he skips training. Enkrid knows that's possible.
Only continuous effort must not stop.
"Anyway, you all sure drank well."
Anne's eyes shone. The proof that the drink—medicine or liquor—she'd made was effective lay strewn before her.
A knight got drunk, and a Frog got drunk, and a fairy got drunk, and even a bear beastman got drunk.
'Ah, not a bear, that's wrong.'
Correction. A mixed-blood giant got drunk instead.
Teresa got up wearing only a tight underlayer and hurriedly gathered her clothes.
Lawford stared openly. He wasn't the only one who'd undressed to sleep.
"Right. A bit of sweat and it'll pass."
As always, Pel agreed with Enkrid.
***
The Mad Order of Knights could be doing whatever, but Rem's assault unit did what they did every day.
Training doubled as a patrol along the skirts of the Pen–Hanil Mountains.
Along the roads that tie the mountains to the city and along the mountain's base, they had sectors under their watch, and there were also sectors handled by ten swordsmen under Ragna.
Naturally, the Holy Infantry had areas of responsibility, too.
And among all of them, Rem's assault unit went deepest in.
Did they ask for that? As if.
"Our unit goes deepest. No objections. If you've got one, your head gets split by an axe and now you've got no objection."
Rem didn't explain. He merely made a courteous request and wished.
Of course, it was courtesy in Rem's style.
The upside was that his psychology wasn't complicated. He didn't speak in circles, either.
He just didn't want to lose.
They liked that, too. If they were going to do it, they should be the best at it.
That simple thought-pattern might not have originated with Rem; maybe he'd gathered people who already thought that way.
Rem's assault unit numbered over a hundred. If you counted the reserves and trainees, it sometimes topped a hundred and fifty.
And among them were a few good enough to be called the Rem Guard.
In the Border Guard they were called Rem's personal guard; inside the assault unit they were simply "First Unit."
Its headcount was a little over twenty, and every one of them kept up with the training Rem demanded. Among them were several from the West.
They'd either followed after Rem in the first place, or Western drifters had joined up.
Naturally, nobody cut each other down or fought over birthplace.
Which is why their training was brutal—brutal enough to grow brotherhood where there hadn't been any.
To them, the assault unit was brothers and family.
Race and origin didn't matter.
Those twenty had bunched up and were poking and tearing through corners of the range.
If you don't periodically clear out monsters or beastmen in these mountains, they turn into a nasty problem.
That's what the patrol was for—and a live-fire drill besides.
"Hey, you ever seen one like that?"
one of the unit asked—a guy whose habit was twitching his eyebrows.
A Western-born warrior hefted his axe.
"And it's already too damn hot."
It was summer. Inside the range it was damp and hot. Sweat ran thick and sticky.
And out in that heat, a monster appeared—its whole body made of flame. It looked like a lump compacted from roaring firewood.
Three legs, two heads.
A misshapen monster.
"First I've seen."
They all lived like brothers, but of course there was a command structure.
Usually a warrior who'd earned Rem's recognition served as commander. Earning his recognition meant taking Rem's axe and surviving it.
A former mercenary with a long scar at the corner of his eye—now the commander of the Rem Guard—spoke.
"Hell with it. Smash it."
Run from a monster you've never seen before?
Rem's assault unit didn't do that. One of the men moved on the word and flicked a hand axe.
The steel-forged axe punched through the monster's body.
Boom!
Flame spread in a circle, then clumped back together.
And now it had one more leg, and one of its heads was half-pulped.
Fwoosh.
It opened its intact mouth and fire surged forward. A flame two handspans long scorched the grass around it.
In this humidity it wouldn't catch easily, but—
"Doesn't work."
said the brother who'd thrown the throwing axe. It was a monster that shrugged off ordinary weapons—iron refined by smelting.
And it breathed fire, too.