"Oh, Lord."
One of the priests who had lost consciousness from the plague and then awakened shed tears. It was a change that came just when he had thought everything was over.
"Do not worry and take your rest, brother."
At the center of it stood the Apostle of War.
"Judgment of the Lord!"
Some of the soldiers who heard his touch and his song had already converted in all but name. They set up a pole and raised a new Holy Relic. The fist-shaped form was a symbol honoring the God of War.
"A–ah."
Sanctity dwelled in that relic. To an unknowing eye it might look as if he did it with effortless ease.
"On the spot, without devotional rite or prayer?"
The awakened priest was so shocked he was at a loss for words. Is this possible? It is. It was happening right before his eyes. His mind was not so clouded as to confuse reality with a dream.
Was all this an illusion and he merely succumbing to an evil spirit's whisper?
No. Look at the woman singing at the heart of that relic. Her build was close to that of a giant, yet her voice was truly a gift from the heavens. The priest knelt and wept again.
Enkrid passed the weeping priest and approached Audin.
"Not overdoing it?"
The encampment was not small. It was broad and large. Counting those coming and going, there were nearly a thousand soldiers.
They say "a thousand," but that many people spreading tents and living together is no small thing.
Even if ten stayed in one tent, that would be a hundred such tents.
And places where people stay are just that many; space to store provisions is also necessary. Which meant there were also dozens of tents for storing supplies.
From time to time the supply unit also came and went, and they too needed places to stay. For the Southern Front to hold out, supply could not be cut. All of this increased the share of land the encampment occupied.
Audin and Teresa, the two of them, set up a new relic and covered this entire encampment with their own sanctity. They cleared away the ill omen mixed into the Demon-lands' rain and even changed the quality of the air. It was not an easy task. It looked that way even to Enkrid.
"Indeed, brother."
Audin readily admitted it. He nodded. All of this was possible now because Teresa had been singing without end from the center of the encampment.
"We cannot keep it long."
He said it with a smile.
"Even if the time to fight comes, it will be hard for us to take the field."
Luagarne spoke from the side. Having joined as a member of the knightly order, she was the pouch of wits who wove tactics and strategy. That was her role. She recognized the gap in fighting strength.
"Indeed, Sister Lua."
Audin and Teresa poured out their own sanctity in place of a relic. It was not something to do for long.
"How long?"
The question was chopped fore and aft, but its meaning was clear. How long could they endure?
"At most, a fortnight."
Enkrid turned his body. He had not ordered this; Audin had taken it upon himself.
"It's a loss of fighting strength."
Luagarne was right.
"Granted. But I feel good about it. The kind who understand each other without words."
The dragonkin read Enkrid's inner feeling. As Shinar watched in silence, Crang looked over the garrison. Even when he had brought the Royal Guard and the royal army and struggled, the air had not changed.
"My thanks."
He murmured. He was a king wearing a cream-colored cloak. Five Royal Guards acting as his escort surrounded him, yet his voice was not small.
There were many soldiers around, and they too heard him.
"You have done the work I should have done."
The king's heart was sincere. He wished, as far as possible, that his soldiers would not die, and that this fight would not be long.
He wished that the aftershocks of the battlefield would not reach those who were simply living their today.
Not only the people who lived in his land, but even the people of the South—he put them within his bowl. Is this not why one should call him a king.
"Why did you come in person."
Enkrid asked in an offhand tone. It was a question to Crang. Among the Royal Guard, the captain's expression in particular was not good.
He was a man Enkrid knew by face. Something like dissatisfaction showed on it. Of course, it was a faint shard of emotion, the sort one would only notice if one had long experience observing the faces of fairies.
"I do not want the war to be prolonged."
Crang's voice grew smaller. Barely audible. Naturally, Enkrid and his companions heard it. A knight could catch a sound like this even if, on one side, someone were shouting, "Lord! War!"
Crang then spoke in a slightly louder voice.
"Everyone seemed busy as well."
This time it was enough for those nearby to hear.
Enkrid's and Luagarne's eyes met. It looked like several thoughts were passing between them.
"We'll have to hear the details later."
Luagarne whispered. Enkrid also nodded. They were in a relationship to speak with Crang.
"I will fill the place Sir Audin leaves."
Pel said abruptly. His voice carried heat.
He was the person least connected to prayer, sanctity, and miracles. He was a shepherd from the wilderness; the wilderness was a land untouched by sanctity. Not even common pilgrims came there. There is a reason the names of three groups are exalted on the continent.
The Wilderness, the Glacier, the Black Mountains.
Those who dwell in these three places live in lands forsaken by the gods.
Pel saw the aftermath of what Audin and Teresa had done. People change. Logs are thrown on a faint flame. He had never dreamed of something like saving people.
Even now, in the deepest place of Pel's chest, only the sword for himself shone purely.
But—
"If I can."
Could he not go in a better direction than now?
When he watched Enkrid and learned, did he pluck and learn only a bit of sword-skill and mindset?
"What is more important than talent and effort?"
Audin and Teresa burned their sanctity. With that they poured their all into protecting these people.
For something more important than sword-fighting.
"Where does my sword reach?"
He asked himself. An answer did not come easily. No one turned to look, but Pel awakened alone and opened his eyes. So he stepped forward and spoke.
Lawford squarely faced the change in his rival and was moved. He too stepped forward.
"I will make up what is lacking."
It was a statement of will that Sir Audin's absence would not even come to mind.
Just to see the two of them step forward was reassuring.
The affection between the two was truly warm, and that too was pleasant to behold.
"...Lacking? We are quite enough without you."
Pel reacted to Lawford's words, and Lawford was cool.
"No, lacking. Alone it is impossible. I will not be half of Sir Audin. Moreover, Sir Teresa is missing as well."
Facing reality.
"Hey, you prim little gentleman who cries every night looking for a red cloak. Know when to stick your nose in."
A personal attack.
"That is why I stuck it in. So you just do as you're told: if I say cut there, cut there; if I say cut here, cut here. Do only that. I will fill the rest."
Their fights were an everyday thing. Enkrid patted both their shoulders.
"Save your strength."
He also offered counsel. It would be troublesome if they spent their strength here. The fight with the South had not even begun.
If one were to pick the person most surprised by what Audin had done, it was, of course, Ingis of the Red Cloak Order.
Even as rain-soaked hair clung to his face, he stood still, staring at Audin and Teresa, then at Crang, then at the mass of soldiers.
"If they stand in place of the relic, we suffer a loss of fighting strength. Thus we must dissuade them. What matters in the fight against the South is the elite few—that is, the knightly strength. The sacrifice of soldiers is inevitable. Therefore, stop those two's eccentricity at once."
One gives up what must be given up. Only then can one gain even a little advantage. To take two knights' fighting strength out here—madness.
Thus this was exactly what Ingis should say. Words from the head. But what came out of his mouth were not words from his head but from his chest.
"Is this allowed?"
What should one call it.
Those who garrisoned the Southern Front were now brothers and family. They saw each other's faces every day. They sat at the same table and rolled together.
There was a hand-span-long scar on Ingis's belly. It was a soldier at his side who had stitched that wound then.
Ingis could not abandon the soldiers, the unit. It was for this reason that Southern Rihinstetten used a strategy of targeting ordinary soldiers to bleed away the knights' strength.
In the eyes of Southern Rihinstetten, the Red Cloak Order was soft butter. Butter brought out in the summer sun melts easily, and even a light poke mashes it. Dull and soft.
"If they can be saved."
Ingis was prepared to throw away his life. Yet, almost as if to make that resolve seem pointless, two holy knights protected his unit and his soldiers and his brothers.
Had every crisis passed? No.
But the iron-masked Ingis felt something hot surge up in his chest.
"It is."
An answer came to the words he muttered to himself. Black hair, blue eyes, captain of the Mad Order, the king's close friend.
It was the answer of the man he had glimpsed in passing when the civil war ended.
He answered and turned his eyes. His gaze went to the outer edge of the encampment. The man who had originally guarded this land, who had guarded it until now, was walking from there.
"Right, I had heard he was quite a handsome man and thought it wasn't true."
Light brown hair with strands of white mixed in, an ordinary face you could see anywhere.
Introduce him as a peddler coming out of some inn and setting off to do business, and one would nod; one could also picture him hauling fruit on a cart back and forth.
No extraordinariness showed. And yet this man was the first sword who had supported Naurillia until now.
The unit Enkrid had originally belonged to took this man's name.
"You, are you Enkrid?"
He came forward readily and asked. Beside him, Rem smiled with only one corner of his mouth raised. What should one call it, a smile full of killing intent.
Dunbakel stood with a wall of wariness raised.
"Sir Cypress."
Enkrid spoke the other's name. Crang acknowledged it with a greeting of the eyes.
Their gazes met. Even back when Enkrid had roamed the continent, this man's name already resounded then. Naturally, Enkrid had dreamed of meeting him. He had wanted to meet and ask many things and learn.
"If you meet him, why don't you ask whether you have talent."
A sword-bearing companion he had occasionally fallen in with had sneered. It was mockery for bringing up a needless thing.
It was when he dreamed the dream of being a knight. When he said he wanted to meet someone who had already stood at the summit, that was the reply.
"Have you come to fight?"
Sir Cypress asked.
"We have come to help."
Enkrid answered. The two stood still and began a dialogue. There was no one in particular who tried to stop them. Onlookers increased.
Not only the Red Cloak Order and the Mad Order, but even the mass of soldiers who had been crying out for war turned their eyes.
Though there was not a single platform in the encampment, people filled every side. And thus, with everyone watching—
"If you go to the very end, do you think you will win?"
Cypress asked. A question thrown out of the blue.
Did he mean the fight with the South, or something that went farther still.
Its meaning was unclear.
"I do not know."
Enkrid answered.
"If you go to the end and even then it does not work, and if, at that end, nothing remains—what will you do?"
"We'll only know when we get there."
"Are you not afraid? Are you not anxious?"
Enkrid suddenly recalled his conversation with the Ferryman. Those words that had urged him to give up until now.
The words thrown by the knight named Cypress now felt like part of that. So it was not hard to answer. They were words he had repeated inwardly countless times, and the very words he had boiled down as the standard of his life.
"If you give up because you're afraid and anxious and it's hard, what remains? So we simply do it. We walk to gain what we desire, according to what we believe. If we cannot walk, we crawl."
Though he had revealed his will in simple words, it seemed as if light lingered.
The rain that had been pattering stopped. Through a sky packed with dark clouds, a single shaft of sunlight fell.
It was lemon-colored sunlight blending with the white radiance Audin and Teresa had poured out. Warm-tinged light spread in all directions. It reflected off Temares's hair, brushed Rem's face—expressionless now that his dissatisfaction had vanished—and lightly tapped the lips of Shinar, whose mouth corners were lifted so slightly as to be almost invisible, and lingered around the soldiers.
None of the soldiers watching opened their mouths lightly. Silence passed. Even the sound of rain plopping receded. Under the lemon-colored sunlight, Cypress held out his hand.
"Welcome."
Enkrid clasped that hand.
He had once hoped for such a day to come. It was a moment he had, on some day in the past, taken as a dream and a wish.
"To guard my back with Sir Cypress at my side."
Neigh—
Up in the sky where the rain had stopped, a winged horse flew through the air.
A few of the soldiers who saw it, startled, lifted the weapons in their hands and aimed at the sky. Only then did the soldiers' tongues loosen and a commotion arose.
"A gryphon?"
"No. It's a horse."
"Now it's winged horses?"
"Bring the crossbows!"
While Ingis was stopping such men, Enkrid spoke.
"A friend."
"You take winged horses as friends as well?"
Cypress glanced up at the sky and asked.
"Yes, somehow."
"Well."
Beastfolk and the barbarians of the West were no pushovers. He had experienced enough of that on the way here.
"He is a comrade. All members of the Order will show him full courtesy."
Cypress said with a laugh. At those words, the junior knight of the Order who had been glaring savagely at Rem until now lowered his head.
"My discourtesy. Junior Knight Ferdinand."
His attitude changed in an instant. Rem narrowed his eyes. Even so, the other remained as he was. No hostility showed. In that moment, Ragna spoke.
"Do we finally get to eat something cooked? It would be nice if there were even a field cook."
Hearing Ragna's words, Rem said:
"I'm Rem; that one over there is a food-vacuum and a directionless fool."
Naturally, it was the start of a commotion. The Red Cloak Order were the sort whose very momentum changed with a single word from Cypress.
The Mad Order—
"Enough, fighting later."
Enkrid headed it off before a fight could break out.
"So those two have become the totems here or what?"
Rem picked his ear and asked about Audin's situation.
"Not totems but Holy Relics, brother. If you have no need of ears, by all means take them off."
Hearing that, when Audin came over and asked after his health—
"He's just a chaff who only has a loud mouth from the West. If you deal with him, only you will suffer."
Ragna added.
"The rain has stopped. Now it's finally become rain worth standing in. By the way, who built this encampment? When is the commanders' meeting?"
Luagarne said her piece while ignoring everyone around. Either way, they fight even if you stop them and fight even if you leave them. So she simply did her work.
"This one is my fiancé."
In the midst of it, Shinar raised her voice in a way uncharacteristic of a fairy.
"Bewilderment, confusion—what are these? Are they monsters transformed? That is what they are thinking."
Temares read some of the soldiers' inner thoughts and reported them.
"Hahaha."
Cypress watched all of it and burst into laughter. There was no fluster in him. He, too, was a human of a different caliber.