TRHK Chapter 16

Kahron was already smiling, lips pressed firmly shut as if holding back a laugh. He looked to be in a very good mood.

"You've had a fair bit to drink……. Let's see you put up a good fight!"

Joel watched him with a cold eye, then stepped back.

The knights lined up to face Kahron were already waiting on the other side, each preparing to go in turn. The one who had cornered me that time appeared to be last. Ordered by size, it seemed. A strategy to wear Kahron down, which made me more irritated than anything else.

"I heard you've been drinking. Don't worry—I've had a bit myself."

The first knight drew his greatsword and said it with an oily grin. It was the widest blade I'd seen in this world.

Big talk from someone fighting five-on-one, I grumbled to myself.

Coming at him one by one didn't make it any less five-on-one.

As if in answer, Kahron's smile stayed and he drew his sword. It was just a blade coming free of its scabbard, same as the other man's—but the scrape of it clearing the scabbard was, somehow, vicious. The opposing knight must have felt something too, because the grin stayed on his face and went rigid.

"Insolent little wretch. I'll teach you a lesson today!"

The knight let out a hissing grunt and launched himself forward. In the blink of an eye he was already on Kahron, swinging horizontally with the greatsword.

And then Kahron vanished.

"Oh."

Not vanished—he was up in the air. He'd jumped clear of the blade and brought his weight down into the attack in a single motion.

The knight flinched back hard and scrambled to bring the greatsword up to block, but—the force ground him backward across the yard, twenty, thirty steps at least.

CLANG! CLAAANG!

"Wait, wait——. Ugh!"

Kahron gave him no room. He was more merciless than he'd ever been with monsters—when the other man tried to call a pause, Kahron answered by driving at the greatsword like he meant to break it in half.

CLANG!

"Hk——!"

And then it really did shatter. The broken blade flew free—toward Joel's side of the yard, of all places, and everyone lurched.

"Lord Joel! Are you all right?"

"F-fine. Continue."

He didn't seem to be cut. Joel waved it off.

A shame.

CLAAANG!

"I surrender! Surrender, I said!"

The blade was gone but Kahron kept attacking as if there were still something worth fighting, until the man finally threw both hands up.

"Already? That was a short lesson. Hard to say which of us got the education, though."

The fact that a face that beautiful could say something that cutting, that pleasantly—Kahron surprised me every time. The opposing knight trembled with humiliation and fury, but he couldn't very well keep fighting with no proper sword.

Though the result would have been the same if he'd had one.

"Kahron wins!"

"Hoooaaaah!"

The watching crowd applauded, and I found myself clapping along with them before I'd thought to. It was over before my palms even had time to sweat. An overwhelming win, by any measure.

The second knight came out with the face of a man walking toward his own grave. He joined the first on the ground not long after.

And so the fifth and final turn arrived.

The crowd had cheered purely enough at the start, but four lopsided bouts in, their expressions had gone increasingly flat. The most interesting faces in the yard belonged to Joel and the fifth knight—one pale with fury, the other pale with fear.

"I—we've already had four fights, it's not as if I strictly need to——"

The knight who'd been half-shoved into the center of the yard made a desperate argument, then stopped abruptly under the sharpness of Joel's glare. Joel looked angry enough that you'd risk a face full of something unpleasant if you got too close.

"Uwaaaah!"

With his retreat cut off, the knight launched himself forward with the energy of someone who'd decided to stop thinking entirely. Even to my inexperienced eyes his speed was real—he might actually be more trouble than the four before him.

And then Kahron's sword received the charge, deflected it smoothly, and swept fast through empty air.

At first I thought he'd made a mistake—swung wild. But then the knight cried out, blood came, and I understood. He'd read where the man was going to be and cut that exact place.

"AAAAUGH! My arm, my arm——!"

The arm, severed clean below the elbow, rolled on the ground. The watching crowd pressed their hands over their mouths. Otherwise some of them might have screamed the way the knight was screaming.

Landale moved quickly to where the man was and checked him. He turned to the Count.

"If the arm is going back on, he needs the temple now, my lord."

"Take him."

Several knights gathered up the injured man and the severed arm and got them out of the yard at speed.

The knight who'd been announcing victories stayed quiet this time, watching the Count's and Countess's faces. The blood soaking into the ground looked like the aftermath of a killing. Hwirozen let out a long breath.

"That crazy bastard……."

I looked at Kahron with a complicated feeling I couldn't resolve into agreement or disagreement.

Kahron met the horrified stares of everyone present without so much as blinking. He even had a faint smile still at the edge of his mouth when he turned toward Joel.

"You really did see blood."

Anyone who'd seen what just happened would have had no doubt. The incident just now had been entirely on purpose.

"You dare——"

Joel's face went through several colors. He looked as if he'd very much like to grab Kahron and do something painful about him.

Just then.

The Count began to applaud—slow, deliberate, one clap at a time—and stepped in front of Joel.

"Ha ha ha. Magnificent!"

And with that, the people who'd been holding their breath slowly joined in. The announcing knight finally opened his mouth.

"Kahron wins!"

It was a victory announcement into a very cold room.

The Count crossed to Kahron and put a hand on his shoulder. The height difference made it a slightly absurd arrangement, but no one dared find it funny.

"As expected of the knight I've had my eye on."

The direct words drew surprised sounds from the knights around me. Apparently the Count doing this was unusual.

"Well—do you still have no interest in joining my order? If there's something more you want, name it. I'll accommodate what I can."

With this many people watching, and a knight having lost an arm moments ago, the Count stage-managed a situation in which refusal was very difficult, and publicly made his offer to Kahron.

In the original work, Kahron never accepted the Count's proposal. Whatever changes my presence had caused to the future, I couldn't imagine something like that would be one of them.

But then Kahron, who I'd expected to refuse cold, glanced at Joel—and turned back to the Count with something that looked almost like courtesy.

"The honor is mine. But as I've mentioned, I'm a traveling man. I'll need a little more time to consider."

"No trouble at all! Time is plentiful, and a capable young knight has his whole future ahead of him. You've been clearing our estate's monsters—surely I can spare you a bit of time for that."

Where Joel had barely been able to hide what he was feeling, the Count handled Kahron with practiced ease. Looking at each other, both of them smiling, they looked almost as if an arrangement had already been reached between a lord and his man.

"Father. What are you——"

Joel, catching up to the situation belatedly, frowned and tried to pull his father back—and then stopped at the cold look he got in return. The Count was staring him down.

"Let's call the party here. Joel, go inside and rest."

The Count declared the party over and left with the Countess, and the servants streamed back toward the party hall. The nobility could simply go inside and retire—but servants had cleanup work waiting.

I was one of those servants, and I was moving to follow, but I went to Kahron first.

"Are you hurt anywhere?"

Hurt, as if. He'd been flying around the yard while supposedly drunk. I thought it even as I asked—I hadn't been able to watch close enough to know. He might have taken something I didn't see. I ignored the fact that my eyes had dried out from staring at him so hard.

He'd been smiling prettily enough just a moment ago—not that anything he'd said or done matched it—and now Kahron had settled back into a blank face. He looked at me.

"When do you finish?"

That question came out of nowhere and caught me off guard.

"Work? Tonight's going to run late, I think……."

If not for the party we'd have been done by now. A party thrown for someone like Joel. What a waste of everyone's time.

Kahron took a step closer and dipped his head toward mine.

"You said you'd do everything."

"……."

"I won. Me."

The voice had just the edge of a smile in it, and somehow it got under your skin. I worked to settle my hammering heart and corrected him.

"I didn't say I'd do everything. I said I'd do something……."

And I'd agreed without even knowing what he'd want. A Sword Master couldn't lose a fight like this—it had been an absurd promise.

"What are you going to ask for?"

I looked up at him with worried eyes. His lit with interest. That made me more worried.

"Who knows."

He tossed it back at me and walked off toward the outdoor bathing area. I wasn't going to make the mistake of trailing after him to the bath again, so I called after him instead.

"You did well!"

Did someone's arm get cut off, and I'm saying well done? But he had won, and he hadn't been hurt, and I really was glad.

Leaving the training yard, I noticed Joel still there. I stopped, startled—he gripped his fist tight, turned sharply, and was gone.

He'd gone, and I was relieved. But underneath the relief, an uneasy feeling settled in—that this was not the last of it.