SBTMK Chapter 37

THUD-THUD.

At the sound of someone pounding on the door, the knights rose like blades unsheathing, gathered their gear, and filed out of the inn.

Dawn's grey half-light was already climbing the sky.

Their eyelids were still heavy, but a lungful of the morning air cleared their heads fast enough.

"Move out."

Hakra's voice, weighted now, filled the open air. The "scattered but easy" side of him she'd noted before was nowhere to be found.

At their commander's order, the knights fell into motion, each locking into place and not breaking it.

They passed through the mountains, stopped once more partway to rest, and before long the count's territory came into view.

By the time they reached the count's castle, it was late night.

Amid the welcome, the knights were shown to rooms just long enough to drop their bags before reassembling.

The exhaustion of a full day's walking and constant vigilance had already reached its limit, but the knights lined up rank by rank, sharp and unbroken, and waited for their commander without a hair out of place.

Commander Hakra, the vice-commanders, the count, and the count's own knight-commander emerged after a brief meeting.

At first light, the full force would split into squads and search the mountain.

Flora was assigned to Squad One. Paul was placed elsewhere.

"Any mana-user in a squad who locates the Demon Hollow is to fire two flares into the sky the instant it's found. We don't yet know what rank of beast is inside, so under no circumstances is anyone to go in first. There's a report of a demon-beast loose on the mountain—if you encounter it, kill it without hesitation. If a squad finds itself outmatched, fire one flare. When a single flare goes up, only the nearest squad moves to assist."

"……."

"The terrain is rough. Watch your footing on the climb. Search continues until the Demon Hollow is found. If it isn't found by nightfall, halt movement and find suitable ground to rest. Beyond this, each squad leader sets their own rules, and squad members follow them."

When Commander Hakra finished, the squads scattered along their assigned routes.

Flora was in Squad One, moving with Hakra himself.

Her squad included Sarthe, an elite knight of the White Knights, alongside knights and soldiers from both the Black Knights and the count's own forces.

Since the soldiers held the rear to keep watch and guard the group, Flora naturally settled into the middle ranks.

They climbed the mountain slowly, following the lead.

The pre-dawn mountain air was cold enough to raise gooseflesh straight through her skin.

The sound of leaves crushed underfoot, wind scattering itself between the trees, and the cries of birds overhead all blended together, deepening the mountain's uneasy hush.

The terrain was rough, and the climb wasn't easy. In places a wrong step would send you sliding, so everyone had to watch the ground carefully. Their stamina drained fast because of it.

As time passed, the search slowed further. A few soldiers began falling behind, but the moment word came that they'd reached the point where the 5th-rank demon-beast had been sighted before, everyone sharpened back to full alertness.

They'd moved for some stretch of time—how long, exactly, was hard to say—when an unfamiliar awareness and a bad feeling sharpened Flora's nerves further still.

Commander Hakra seemed to have caught it too; he stopped walking for a moment and swept the surroundings.

The soldiers' ragged breathing and a low, hollow moan of wind filled the air between the trees.

It was in that gap that she felt it again—the movement of some unknown, unfamiliar presence.

"……AAAAGH! AH!"

A soldier at the rear started screaming.

Flora had an arrow nocked and aimed toward the sound before she'd finished registering it.

Two black beasts shaped like feral dogs were savaging two soldiers.

The other soldiers stationed at the rear swung their spears, but the beasts' hides seemed built of something dense — ordinary force wasn't drawing blood.

Wounded or not, once a beast had its prey clamped in its jaws, it wasn't letting go.

Flora gritted her teeth and loosed the arrow with everything she had. One beast went down, its skull punched through above the eye. She was already reloading when—

"Watch out!"

—a blade rang out from the front this time. She glanced over her shoulder; the same kind of beast was there too, teeth bared, ready to strike at any moment.

The front wasn't her concern. Flora put an arrow through the skull of the beast attacking the soldiers behind her.

They hunted in packs, and their build was small—5th-rank, without question.

The front rank was cleared almost before it needed defending. All three dead—flesh torn off, every one of them.

The most disgusting thing about 5th-rank demon-beasts was that they ate people.

Between the dead beast's jaws, a strip of the dead soldier's flesh was still clamped. A few of the ordinary soldiers, unused to handling corpses, gagged.

Since the soldiers were too shaken for it, the work of searching the dead for keepsakes and recovering their mage-stones fell to Flora.

Where there was nothing worth taking, she cut a strip of collar-cloth from beneath the armor instead—in case the bodies themselves couldn't be recovered later.

She handed the mage-stones and keepsakes off to a soldier to carry, then fell back into formation and kept walking.

Her stamina had already been chewed down by the climb; the fight had worn her thinner still.

Commander Hakra must have been thinking along the same lines, because once they reached a stretch of relatively flat ground, he called a short rest.

She found a spot against a tree trunk and sat.

The ground was hard and her whole body felt grimy, but even this managed to feel almost sweet right now.

Flora thought back to the beast she'd just faced and ground her teeth, faintly.

"Dame Flora. Impressive work back there."

Someone dropped into the space beside her. It was Commander Hakra.

Flora started to rise to greet him properly; he pulled a face like she'd said something horrifying and waved his hands no.

"Sit, sit. It's a rest break."

His face wore an easy grin, as if the authority he'd been radiating minutes ago had never existed.

Unlike how he'd looked at the castle, his uniform was creased now and his cheek and jaw were flecked with the beast's purple blood, but he still managed to look extravagant somehow.

Flora's gaze drifted briefly to the jeweled brooch pinned to his coat, and she pressed her lips together.

He was probably the only man alive who'd show up to a subjugation mission wearing jewelry.

"Still such a damn waste, you know that? Still not too late—come join our corps."

"I'll pass."

"Doesn't even flinch at monsters. Heh."

Hakra wrinkled his nose and looked at her like she was something marvelous.

"I should have taken the rear instead."

Flora looked down at her bloodied hands. The residue was from handling the dead soldiers' bodies just now.

Hakra looked down at her hands too, wordlessly, then pulled out a canteen and a handkerchief and scrubbed them clean for her.

Then he spent a good long while beside her, chattering about nothing at all.

Some shop in the capital with pretty brooches, some country where a rare mineral was mined—genuinely, it was the kind of small talk that could empty your mind out entirely.

He kept talking right up until his own subordinate physically hauled him away.

When Flora's expression finally curdled, the Black Knights knight actually apologized on his commander's behalf.

In the quiet that followed, Flora closed her eyes.

Useless as it had been, the chatter had done some good—with her mind emptied out like that, she hadn't gone digging any pointless holes for herself.

What she felt wasn't guilt over the dead soldiers so much as a plain disappointment that casualties had happened at all, when they hadn't strictly had to.

Some time later, Flora fell back into line at Commander Hakra's order to reassemble.

Since she was carrying a bow anyway, he told her she could stand at the rear if she liked, and she naturally drifted back behind the soldiers.

The search was slow, but the knights didn't give up. The sky stayed quiet, which meant the other squads hadn't found the Demon Hollow either.

Before long the sun was setting. Everyone halted, found flat ground to rest on, lit fires, and ate the thin flatbread they'd brought as field rations.

It was hard and dry, but hunger made it easier to force down out of duty. Keep chewing, it'll taste better. Some flavor's gotta show up eventually. By the time she'd swallowed enough of that thought, her stomach was full anyway.

Squad One had ten people total, and they agreed to rotate watch in groups of three.

The one remaining member, Hakra, volunteered for the first watch without anyone asking. So the first watch ended up with four.

Flora took the second shift, alongside Sarthe and one soldier.

The commander told them to hurry up and sleep, they'd need it, and walked off ahead.

Flora blinked at his retreating back a few times before dropping, more or less collapsing, onto the hard ground and going out cold. She was too exhausted to spare a thought for anything else.

……should've just stayed home, goddamn. That was, she thought, about the fifth time she'd had occasion to remember it today.

Then a hand shook her arm gently, and she opened her eyes. She realized it was time for her watch. She forced her eyes open against their will and got up.

She walked out to where the watch was posted and stretched hard. Her joints popped. Crack. Crack.

Sarthe and the soldier standing nearby glanced at her with faintly barbaric looks in their eyes, but Flora ignored the looks without effort.