༺ 𓆩 Chapter 54 — The Stranger's Attack 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
The greatest church in the city of Bern. The Cathedral of Polbern.
It was no day of worship, and the hour was early, and so the prayer-hall lay nearly empty. Apart from a woman seated upon the pew nearest the dais, no presence stirred. And even she sat with her hands folded toward the silver cross that rose at the dais, given wholly to her prayer.
Through the stained glass set into the dizzyingly high ceiling, light ca in a play of colors, and within those colors floated motes of dust. The prayer-hall seed to lie sunk in stillness and in peace.
It did not last long.
Crash—!!!
Both leaves of the door to the chamber were flung open. A man with eyes like a rat's ca striding toward the dais, glancing about him. He wore a silken doublet, tight-fitting hose, and shoes with sharp-pointed toes. A long, full cloak of velvet ran down his shoulders and clung to him as though it were poured.
Though he had marked the praying woman, he did not so much as think to hush his step. On the contrary, glaring up at the silver cross of the dais, he made the more of a presence.
"Beautiful, every ti I look upon it."
It was a voice peevish and laced with mockery. Spoken to no one in particular that one could na, the voice rang within the prayer-hall and then was gone. The man flung himself down upon the pew where the woman sat. Every movent carried the scent of vexation.
"How long do you an to keep up that worthless playacting? You hold no faith."
"Faith I do not hold, but trust is needful."
The woman opened her eyes. Her dress was the dress of an ordinary woman of Bern such as one might et anywhere in the city, yet there was sothing of the noble about her bearing. Her brown eyes rested not upon the man at her side but upon the motes of dust floating in the window.
"You will have heard the news?"
"Baris is dead."
"Have you any guess?"
"A thod I have not seen before. I sent n to comb the area around his manor and to search out every corner, but not one of them found anyone who could be set down as the perpetrator."
"And the hand upon the slip of vellum? The likelihood that the brat of Goethe is bound up in this?"
“We are currently investigating. There is nothing concrete yet.”
“How impressive.”
"Also…"
"Also?"
"One of the swordsn, it seems, has been taken to Goethe."
"You are certain?"
"He was seen being dragged from the slums, and the one who took him was a soldier said to escort the eldest son of Goethe. By the gate-watchn's account as well, they were drawn off in the direction of the Goethe manse."
".............."
The stillness of the prayer-hall fell heavy without asure. The man held his silence; the woman set her clasped hands more tightly together.
"Kill him."
The man's voice was cold and without bending.
"But he has a daughter."
"Kill him. That is the certain course."
"My lord Marquis. Pray reconsider…"
"Weissmann."
The Marquis caught at the woman's jaw and drew it toward him.
"No. Violet. When I tell you to kill, you kill."
The man forced his mouth upon hers.
The woman did not even close her eyes; she received the kiss with no expression upon her face.
"You shall do as I bid. When I say to crawl, you crawl. When I say to bark, you bark. So shall you have what it is that you want."
"…As you say, my lord."
"Count yourself fortunate that I bear a knight's manners. Were it not so, every ti you set your teeth into a word of mine I would have stripped you naked before the priests and taken your backside."
"Yes."
The woman, not even averting her eyes, only nodded at his words. The look upon her face seed not to please the man, for he forced the corners of her mouth up himself.
"Smile. Before I tear that mouth of yours open."
The woman lifted the corners of her mouth, in a way that did not sit upon her.
"Once this business is brought to its close, I shall take you as a concubine. You shall have your run of so great manor in this city, playing not a procuress but a madam. Of course, you shall be able to gather in your own pitiful folk besides. If that is what you would have, then play your part rightly. Do you hear , Witch of the Revolutionary Party?"
"…yes, my lord. But, my lord, before that, might I ask one thing of you?"
The woman nodded and asked it. The Marquis' coarse manner she let pass without a sign of caring.
"Ask."
"The city's self-rule, my lord. Is it certain we shall have it?"
"Has there been a thing of mine that has not co to pass?"
"…There has not."
"Then no more nonsense. Now give your husband-to-be a long kiss of parting."
The woman, her face dry of feeling, set her lips to the Marquis' cheek. Her lips, ill fed and ill watered, were rough.
"You cold woman."
The Marquis pushed her back, rose, and left the prayer-hall. The hands that had been folded in prayer had at so point clenched into fists. Within a prayer-hall in which no wind could blow, her hair stirred fiercely about her.
"Palicci."
"Yes, Madam Committee-mber."
From behind a column of the prayer-hall a figure stepped forth. A man cloaked in a worn mantle, with a blade at his hip.
"Let the address of Committee-mber be set aside. Violet is enough."
"It has settled upon my tongue, Madam Committee-mber. What is to be done."
The man answered lightly.
"You heard the Marquis' word?"
"Shall I dispose of it as he commanded?"
"No. Bring our man out first. If that should prove past doing, then… without pain, I beg of you."
At the woman's word the man nodded.
***⚜***
"Is that the truth of it?"
"By what I myself saw, at least."
"Ha."
In the Goethe manse, the captain of the guard sat playing cards with Carlson. The reason the two of them had settled themselves in this place was to forestall any attempt upon the captured swordsman's life. So the captain of the guard understood it. The order Isaac had given Carlson in secret was to take the would-be assassin alive.
"Pull, pull every last one of them, you bastards… teeth, balls, whatever you like… you sons of bitches… from … you shall have…"
The man, even in the depths of his pain and worn out to the bone, strained to show that he was not broken. Every fingernail of his ten fingers had been pulled, and yet he had not let out a word of what Weissmann was, nor of the Marquis' workings beneath the table. Whether it was loyalty or whether it was fear, no one could say.
"Tsk. That one does not tire."
The captain clicked his tongue at the sight of him.
"So by your account, the young master of twelve, even in the midst of scores of Hellwolves, did not lose his calm, brought down one of them himself, and so raised the n's spirits… oh, damn it."
The captain, turning his cards one at a ti, threw them down at last.
"I had best fold this hand. Have you, while I was not looking, taken up the trade of a bard? Your hand at exaggeration is hardly less than those swindlers'."
"……"
When Carlson only looked at him, the captain coughed.
"Well, it is what it is, no? By what you say, our young Master Isaac is the very hero of those tales one's grandmother used to tell in the long evenings."
"In the training yard, it was you who praised the young master's swordsmanship most highly."
"To swing the wooden blade in a bout, and to swing the steel before great magic-beasts, are two altogether different things."
"To believe is a matter of one's will. I have no cause to speak a lie just now."
"That is so."
Carlson shuffled the cards, laid three out, and dealt two to each man.
"Sitting like this, it brings back the days at Winterband. There were weeks that were as a single day, and there were single days that were as weeks."
"…So they were."
Carlson understood what the captain ant. War, death, pain, the cold. These things, between them, threw a man's sense of ti clean out of its course.
"Beside those days, you have changed a fair bit."
"I have?"
"Can you not see it? You have grown a great deal more talkative. The more so when speaking of Master Isaac."
"We are always at one another's side. It cannot but be so. This hand, I think, goes to ."
Carlson laid his two cards down and pushed three columns of ten coppers each toward the middle of the table. It was all he had to lay down at the mont.
The captain grinned.
"Now, now. Are you not perhaps a bit hasty?"
The captain rattled his purse and set down upon the table the sa count of copper as Carlson had laid. Then he, too, laid out his two cards.
Two cards bearing the ornate marks. The number written upon them matched the two cards laid out at the center.
The highest combination in this ga of betting cards.
A coolness entered Carlson's eyes.
"Eh? Why those eyes of yours? You shuffled and dealt this. I do not pull cards from the bottom."
The captain spoke as one wronged, looking at Carlson's hard-set face. At length, Carlson laid his hand upon the sheath leaning against the stone wall.
"Y, you cannot be serious? For thirty coppers?"
The captain put on a look of being put out.
"If you are in want, only say so… hk!"
The words by which the captain ant to settle Carlson's heat did not co on. For Carlson had drawn the blade and swung it.
Klang—!!!!
"Carlson, have you lost your…"
Tink-tang—!!!
A shard of iron rolled upon the stone floor. The shard, flung clean to the foot of the torch sconce, was a dagger. The captain felt the cold sweat upon his brow. Had Carlson not swept his blade up and turned it aside, that blade would have struck him in the brow or in the neck.
"They are co."
So Carlson said, his eyes shining.
Only then did the captain take the asure of the mont. He drew his short sword. At the entrance of the prison, an unfamiliar figure was already showing. Even Carlson had not felt the presence of him. He was a man of considerable skill.
The stranger, standing at a distance of ten paces and more, was wrapped from head to foot in a cloak. In both his hands he held, in twin grip, a falchion of curved edge and a dagger.
Skreeeee—!!!
He dragged the falchion along the stone of the wall, and from the entrance onward set, one by one, to severing the torches upon their sconces. The re touch was enough to lop the ends of the poles clean off in great chunks. Once the cloth, soaked in pitch, had been cut away, the light at once went out, and only the dark remained.
When five paces or so remained between them.
Tat-tat-tat.
The stranger broke into a run upon Carlson and the captain.
Klang—!!!
Klang—!!!
The captain caught the falchion's swing upon his short sword, but was thrown back. It was not the eting of blade upon blade. It was the eting of his bare body upon stone. At the sa instant Carlson's blade was caught upon the stranger's dagger.
The stranger swung the falchion again, more widely.
Whoom.
Another sconce went dark.
Klang—!!!
Whoom.
When the stranger swung both blades again, the whole quarter passed in an instant into dark.
Klang—!!!
Klang—!!!
Within the dark, the gleam of blade-light ca and went in sudden flashes. The captain could neither set himself to one course nor to another. With nothing for the eye in the chaos of Carlson and the stranger weaving in and out, the captain knew, by his instinct, that this fight passed beyond the common run.
The years at Winterband. About those who fought wielding mana there hung a sharp peculiar wave, a thing that pressed upon the skin like sandpaper. In the fight of two such beasts, there was no place for an ordinary man as the captain to set foot.
If he could only see, he could judge and et the mont. He gripped at the whistle hung about his neck and weighed it back and forth. The ans by which to give the rest of the watch warning of the danger. But the instant he should blow it, the stranger would set the blade at once upon his own throat. To slip out and gather the n, on the other hand, was difficult, with the stranger and Carlson clashing in the narrow passage.
Kkkkiing—!!!
The horrible wailing of blades, and the sparks where the edges struck at full strength. The captain had no faith that he could move within those storm-strokes that ca one after another without falling into them. In that busy weaving of blades, with not a word between them, not a change of breath, he could only grow more and more anxious. For should Carlson fall to this stranger, his own neck would go with him.
In the midst of being unable to move either way, he sensed another presence.
"Carlson, Carlson! What are you about, putting out every light?"
Isaac appeared, lantern in hand.
"An assassin, my lord! Go out and call for aid—"
Smack—!!!
The captain's hurried shout broke off in a dull sound and a flash before his eyes. Struck by the flat of the stranger's falchion, he fell senseless.
"He moves on you!"
Carlson shouted.
The stranger, judging that to remain at sword's reach of Carlson was no longer his profit, had turned and was running upon Isaac. He ant to take Isaac for his hostage. By Isaac's bearing and his look, the man was plainly of this noble house. Should he be able to make a trade of Isaac's life for that of the imprisoned swordsman, his task would be done. Of course, what he could not have known was that the very thing was the working of Isaac's own design.
"……!?"
For an instant the stranger felt ti draw out and slow. Such a feel ca only when one was in danger, when the whole of one's faculties rose to mark the danger and to buy ti by which to turn it aside. In that breath the stranger saw that the eyes of the youth before him were shining yellow. A color like to gold, and yet not gold. It was the color of the wild. The skin upon his forearms drew up in gooseflesh. It was not a matter of fear. It was a matter of instinct. A coldness ran through his body. He took it for a thing of his own mind, but in truth his body had grown the slower. The youth, as though he had been waiting for that very mont, drew a blade from his belt. He had not been startled by the sight of the stranger; he had had his blade ready. And the manner in which he drew it was as natural as the flow of water.
"……!"
The stranger knew that he had walked into a snare.
He had not ant to draw it forth so soon, but he called up aura. His falchion took on a pale bluish glow. rcy in the stroke was not to be had.
Klang—!!!
The aura-clad blade and Isaac's blade t. With the great cry of iron upon iron, a broken blade-shard flew off. Isaac's blade was sheared off in the middle.
Yet ti enough had been bought. While the five senses of the stranger were turned upon Isaac, Carlson's scabbard ca down upon the back of the stranger's head.
Whump—!!!
The stranger fell.
END σϝ CHAPTER
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