The Margrave's 10th-Class Ne'er-do-well Chapter 42 : Chapter 42 — The New King of Wolves

༺ 𓆩 Chapter 42 — The New King of Wolves 𓆪 ༻

「Translator — Creator」

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

Besser had heard a strange tale from the villagers who had joined the encampnt. The hellwolves still lingered in the country round about Vinfeldt.

The King of Wolves, the very pivot upon which the pack had turned, was dead — that was certain. The hellwolves now were creatures wholly given over to their wild nature, no different from any other beast of the wastes. And to such creatures, what mattered above all was prey. Beasts did not discriminate when it ca to feeding; any living thing that bore mana within it was prey enough. If they ate a thing, it was to draw out the mana that creature held inside it. So if they fed on a man, that man would be one in whom mana had pooled; if upon an animal, that beast too would be a beast of mana.

For such creatures, Vinfeldt held no good hunting. Most of the soldiers here could not handle mana at all. Besser carried a powerful current of it within him, but he was far too strong for any re beast to hunt down. The hellwolves, already broken apart by the death of their king, could not band together with any sort of cunning to bring down the likes of him. Like the wolves of the wild, packs would surely have already ford amongst them, and there would have been quarrels over territory, kin devouring kin. Once that was settled, they should have moved on to a country richer in prey. There was no reason for them still to be circling Vinfeldt. That was plain common sense.

And yet why had they not gone? It was a thing that wanted looking into. Carlson and Besser had co to that conclusion between them.

"Why didn't you report it to ?"

"You were out of your wits over that stone."

Besser answered curtly. The stone he ant was the King of Wolves's mana stone — though it had passed through Isaac's hands now and beco a runestone.

"I did report it to you once already. It seems you didn't take in a word of it."

". . . Did I, now?"

Isaac scratched at his head. The King of Wolves's mana stone had been a strange thing even by the asure of all Isaac's past life. It held a warmth like the heat of a man's body and at the sa ti bore within it a current of mana as wild and rough as Isaac's own. And yet it showed no defining effect, the way the frost stone had. Either there was no real peculiarity to it — or one had simply not yet been found. Which was precisely what made it worth studying.

Looking back, he had perhaps grown a little too feverish over the thing. After all, even he, who had given a whole life over to the study of magecraft, had never seen a mana stone of its kind before.

"Hmm. So, have you turned anything up these past days?"

"Nothing in particular."

“They haven’t attacked other villages?”

"Doesn't seem so. They're not after at. They're after the mana that's in the at."

"That, at least, is sothing to be grateful for. Carlson —"

"No."

Carlson answered before Isaac had even drawn another breath.

"I haven't said it yet."

"You'd send the captain out on patrol now too?"

"What. I just thought — since I can't sleep, we could go out for a bit of a walk under the stars."

"What sort of madman takes a walk through the Black Forest at night?"

"You. And ."

Isaac pointed his finger at Carlson, then at himself.

"Hold on there, brother. You an to go into the forest now?"

"Mm. I could do with clearing my head."

Isaac ran a hand through his tangled grey-black hair. After ten days shut up in his tent he was desperate for a breath of clean air. His study of the King of Wolves's runestone had run up against a wall, and perhaps stepping outside might shake sothing loose.

It was, of course, a notion not in any way grounded in good sense.

"Have you really gone mad as he says? Facing beasts inside the Black Forest is nothing like facing them out on open ground."

Besser spat as he spoke, urgently impressing on him just how perilous it was to enter the Black Forest at night. By night the mana grew thicker still and the beasts more savage; the night-bound forest could turn even a veteran around, and there was no telling where or what might co at one out of the dark. So fervent was he that the veins stood out plain on his bald head.

Unfortunately, what went in one of Isaac's ears went straight out the other. To him, just now, the Black Forest was less a place of danger than a thing to be wondered at.

'I had been wanting to see it once by night.'

If Vinfeldt was to be reborn as a city, a trade road would have to be cut through the Black Forest — for traffic with the port towns of Oton on the marches. A road that rchants might pass along in peace, by day or by night. How was such a thing to be made possible? In so quiet corner of his mind Isaac was already working at the answer.

"Are you even listening to ?"

"Yes. I heard every word. Thank you for your concern. Hans — not the horses you've just brought back from patrol; ready two that have rested properly. Easy-tempered ones, mind."

"Lord, at once."

Hans hurried off at a trot toward the hastily set-up stables.

"You really an to go?"

"Yes."

Besser looked over at Carlson. Carlson shook his head. The look in his eye said that the boy was a young master afflicted with a sickness that would surely kill him if he didn't get his way.

"Hh."

The two big n sighed almost as one.

"I'll co too."

"You as well? You've only just got back."

"As far as the hellwolves go, you won't find anyone with more knowledge of them than ."

“Fine by . Less lonely. Then the captain can stay—”

". . . I'll co. If anything befalls the young master, His Excellency will not let it stand."

Carlson made no secret of his weariness with it, but he went into his tent and brought back canteens and dried rations.

"Captain, Lord. I'd like to —"

Hans had co back leading the two horses and put it in without reading the room.

“Not you.”

"Don't push your luck, Hans."

The two n answered, again, almost as one. Both Carlson and Besser were of a mind to lighten what burden they could.

***⚜***

"How has this beco a real walk under the stars?" Carlson grumbled.

"How should I know." Isaac shrugged.

The original plan had been to ride. Inwardly Isaac too had been looking forward to handling the reins himself. Whether by virtue of the King of Wolves's runestone or simply of his own growth, he had grown enough that his foot, he thought, would now reach the stirrup. He had ant to ride at speed and savor the cool of the night.

Sadly, that wish was not to be fulfilled.

"What in the na of all gets into horses to make them carry on like that?"

Besser, his axe-haft slung across one shoulder, shook his head too. With his great bulk he was the sort of man who had only to mount up to make any ordinary horse look pitiful. And yet even those horses had given their backs over to him without a fuss. But the mont Isaac — barely up to Besser's flank in height — drew near, the horses lost their senses in fear and began to lash out. They kicked and bucked as if confronted with their natural foe, anything to be away from him.

"Have you laid so wicked spell on the poor beasts?"

"As if I would. They're my own property in the end."

"Even so — you've grown a bit, haven't you."

Besser had marked the change in him.

"Aye. Late growth, I suppose."

Isaac answered, as though it were nothing.

But Besser's eyes glinted with sothing more than idle interest. It was not rely that the boy had grown taller. His whole fra had filled out, evenly and well. The shoulders had broadened, the limbs lengthened. Anyone who did not know would only think the lad had grown a little older. To Besser's eye it was sothing else. Isaac's body was growing in the way fit for a warrior. Two hours and more they had gone now at a fair pace, and yet there was no sign of fatigue on him. And not over flat ground either — through hill country, up the slope and down it, over rough ground where they had to pick their way. To Besser and Carlson it was nothing at all. But a few months earlier Isaac had been a young master raised like a hothouse flower in his father's manor.

'Was Goethe a knightly house?'

Besser tilted his head. What had brought him to his knees before the eldest of that house had not been any prowess of arms; it had been the Margrave's rcy of nature. Nor had the Margrave been born to the warrior's mould. So the change in Isaac, surely, was the legacy of his mother Adele, and not of his father.

"Brother. Have you any thought of taking up the axe?"

When Besser of Baitur saw a man with that kind of innate gift, the blood ran hot in him. They were a people who esteed strength above all.

"Later."

"Tch."

At Isaac's offhand reply, Besser clicked his tongue.

The Black Forest by night was very darkness itself. The thick canopy gave no glimpse of the sky above. Carlson struck a flint to a torch, but it scarcely served to give them any sight at all. The dense mana that hung in the air drank the light.

"How would it be to turn back, even now?"

The thick mana steeped into the air gave Carlson a creeping unease — like sothing far stickier than damp air clinging to the skin. Carlson disliked this kind of air. As a ranger, he had been on a scouting party in a magic zone once where his comrades had been wiped out to a man. With the strength he had now, he might have saved at least half of them. But the past did not co back. And so he was vexed and angry.

"Turn back if you like. I won't keep you."

"………"

Carlson glared at him, but Isaac paid no mind and walked on ahead. His steps were strangely light.

From near and far ca the cries of all manner of beast. Through the underbrush ca rustlings of things one could not na. The dark of the Black Forest was deeper and thicker than the darkness of any other wood. The dense mana in the air collided unceasingly with the mana within the body, wearing the flesh and the spirit thin. The Black Forest was as good as a faded copy of a magic zone. It bred in a man a fear that struck at the bone.

But what Isaac was feeling was sothing else entirely.

A sense of rembering.

Strange in how familiar it was, and stranger still in the longing it stirred.

"Are you all right?"

"Hm? Yes."

To Besser's worried question Isaac nodded vaguely.

"Let's stop and rest a mont."

"I'm fine."

"This isn't the ti to be stubborn. When the mana around you grows thick, the mana inside is affected. The flow can twist or run backward. In a bad case, it can run wild."

For Carlson it was an unusually firm word. Ordinarily he would shrug and follow Isaac's whim, but not this ti. There was even a look about him as if he ant, if it ca to it, to put the matter to him with force.

'The soldiers really do have it hard. The pressure of the man.'

Isaac let out a small laugh at Carlson's bearing. The look on him said he would cheerfully snap an arm if Isaac wouldn't listen.

"You know how to ditate, I assu."

"I do."

"Then settle on your breathing."

Half-forced into it, Isaac sat himself on a stone, closed his eyes, and drew long breaths. Yet the reason he went into ditation was not that the mana of the Black Forest posed any threat to him. The truth was that the density of the mana now circulating within his vessel surpassed even that of a magic zone. The mana of the Black Forest could not work upon him by so much as a single grain.

It was only that he wished to feel it more clearly.

— Co with ! To the eternal battlefield!

It began with the mory of the last cup raised at the rite.

The first ti he had entered the Black Forest, he had thought it only the work of an overheated imagination, of a mind too long given to its work. He had thought it a fancy born of dwelling too deeply on the King of Wolves's runestone. But the further he went into the forest, the more vivid the mory grew.

It was not Isaac's mory.

It was the King of Wolves'.

The shapes of the land he had ranged over in wolf-form — caves, ravines, waterfalls, strange weather-worn places, marshes, hollows, ponds, cliffs. Where what beast made its lair. Where one might drink, and where the hunting was good. The wind brushing through the hairs of the pelt; the temperature of the air; the sll of mana; the feel of muzzle wet with blood; the sll of grass; the sll of flowers; the scent of living things; the touch of earth and root and stone beneath four feet.

By that mory, the Black Forest was no place of peril. It was a place to long for. As one's native country. As one's own ho. It stirred in Isaac a quiet, settled ease.

Yet what made him look upon this wood with that kind of hosick fondness was not, in the end, the mory itself. It was a thing past sense, a connection he could not put a na to. Faint, and yet plain; far off, and yet close. Sothing stranger to him than anything else in his experience. A thing one could know without seeing it with the eye, without hearing it with the ear. The feeling of being bound, sowhere, by sothing firm.

— I swear it in the na of Balaka! We are warriors sprung from one root. Together we fight, together we conquer, or together we go to the land of fate!

That had been the oath the King of Wolves had made on becoming chieftain — the bond he had sworn as one of the great warriors. An oath of a tie that would not be broken.

That oath had not faded. It remained.

The King of Wolves's last will, conveyed through the runestone. And the bond of the warriors, branded as instinct even into them as hellwolves.

"Brother, brother!"

Besser was shaking him. Quietly, Isaac opened his eyes.

"I know. Don't panic."

"This isn't the ti to be at your ease. The hellwolves here will be many tis worse to deal with than the ones we faced at the camp."

"Not a word amiss in that. Get yourself up. He and I will cut a road through."

Carlson agreed; Besser sided with him.

Rustle—!!! Rustle—!!!

In the dark, silhouettes deeper than the dark itself were taking shape, one by one. Their eyes, which had drunk the day's sun, burned red without exception. This was no open ground, no bare wasteland — this was thick wood, where a thing might hide itself anywhere, where there was no telling where what would co from. From all sides ca the rough breathing of beasts and the press of unseen things. The thick mana that hung in the air was poison to those who could not stand against it; to beasts it was a tonic. They could move stronger and quicker for it. Besser and Carlson had felt it on their own skins already. The only one who seed not to grasp the danger of the mont was Isaac.

"You haven't the least idea what I've just seen."

"Saw what you saw, get yourself ready to run. On the count of three this place is going to be a sea of blood."

Besser paid Isaac's words no heed. It was natural enough. Isaac had beco, to him, a man for whom he would throw down his life if it ca to that. By any reckoning, the one in greatest danger here was Isaac. Frost demon or whatever else they called him, if he could not master the mana, he could not put it to the use he wanted.

But that thought of Besser's was one he had to take back within seconds.

"Kneel."

"What nonsense are you on about?"

"Lord?"

At Isaac's voice, pitched no differently than usual, Besser and Carlson doubted their own hearing. Nor could they tell at whom the order had been given.

"Not the two of you."

"...…..?"

The two big n could not believe their own eyes.

Whine —!!!

The dozens of great wolves that had begun to show themselves before them, overwhelming in size, with eyes full of wild and pelts black as soot, every one of them lowered itself and bared its throat.

It was the gesture of submission.

"Th-this . . ."

Besser, overpowered by the sight before him, had to look at Isaac and be struck once more.

"Brother — your eyes . . . ?"

Isaac's eyes were glowing yellow.

Just as the King of Wolves' had.

END σϝ CHAPTER