The air goes cold.
Rumor travels fast. Rumor inside a closed body of people travels faster still.
Ethan beat Karon.
Ethan is raising a subjugation party.
For the party's first member he picked a stable servant.
He is out of his mind.
His conceit pierces the sky.
Rumors like these were sprouting thick.
The regular subjugation the Blante clan carried out was an opportunity to prove one's valor and one's worth.
For apprentice knights it was also a once-in-a-lifetime chance to earn merit and be appointed full knights.
Of course, since it was a battlefield they went out to with their necks on the line, they could lose their lives there.
Which is why they went out having steeled their honor and their resolve all the harder.
And now a wastrel had turned up in that sacred subjugation and was muddying the water.
Taking a servant as his first member had not been enough; he had come to the very place where they trained to insult and mock them.
The proud apprentice knights were all of them furious in silence.
At being compared with a servant who had been minding a stable.
"What? Getting cold feet?"
Ethan asked it with a corner of his mouth up.
"Hardly. The one who has taken fright seems to be that fellow there. Or am I wrong?"
"Surely not. Hey. You scared?"
He trod down firmly on Hugo's foot and Hugo looked at him with bewildered eyes.
The look alone made it plain what he was saying.
'What in the world do you intend by this......'
But whatever Hugo thought, Ethan had no intention of backing off here.
'The best training is the real thing.'
He knew Hugo's potential in any case. On physical ability alone he would not come up short against most knights.
'The biggest problem is the spirit.'
Hugo's spirit was tender.
'I have to draw the nature out of him.'
The situation was not comfortable enough for him to sit and watch a calm growth drama.
The regular subjugation's schedule had already closed right in.
There would be no further chance to let him experience the real thing, and Hugo's spirit was not the sort of thing you changed by tearing it apart and rebuilding it.
The surest way to remake Hugo's mind was the real thing.
He meant to let Hugo experience it at this opportunity.
Ethan whispered at Hugo's ear.
"You just do exactly what I tell you."
Ethan went on. As Hugo listened, his complexion died away to a dark, muddy color.
Then, after a moment's hesitation, Hugo spoke.
"A bastard with a cock on him sure talks a lot."
'There we go.'
Not a wholly satisfactory delivery. The voice wanted confidence.
But even this much was enormous progress. Ethan was satisfied.
As proof of it, the apprentice knight who had just been insulted to his face by a servant nobody could not hide his fury and shook with it.
'Because this is what I was after.'
Trash talk.
Trash talk is inseparable from an entertainer like a fighter.
'And it's not purely for the box office.'
Match, sparring, duel, or the real thing.
The most important thing was composure.
Only by holding cold reason could a man show everything he had prepared.
But Gato was an apprentice who had not yet been knighted.
His experience of the real thing was thin, and he would never have met provocation like this.
All of it was already showing on his face.
'Good.'
Gato, who had been unable to control his rage, suddenly went cold.
But Ethan knew the reason for the sudden change.
'He's so far past furious that his head's gone cold instead.'
A laugh threatened to leak out of him.
"Further insult is difficult to bear. From the young master I might somehow understand it, but......"
The apprentice knight's gaze, thick with killing intent, went to Hugo.
Hugo tried to shuffle back, but Ethan was already standing in the way.
Having blocked his retreat, Ethan grinned.
"As I said before, the way of proving it is simple. Challenge him to a duel."
"......If that is what you want, I shall oblige. It is already too late to regret it."
The apprentice knight pulled off a glove and threw it at Hugo's face.
Hugo dodged the glove reflexively, without meaning to, and the thrown glove tumbled across the ground.
'A scene I've seen somewhere before.'
Ethan let a smile settle on his face.
"What do we do about this? He says he doesn't even want to be hit by a glove of yours."
"P-please...... stop......"
Hugo looked helplessly between Ethan and the apprentice knight.
The apprentice knight paid Ethan's sneering no mind and kept his eyes on Hugo.
"Gato, apprentice knight of the Blante clan, challenges you to a duel. State your name."
Gato's words, with rage packed down hard inside them, had thorns on them.
Hugo hesitated a moment, then spoke.
"Hugo, member of Ethan's subjugation party...... I accept the duel."
The curtain went up on the duel.
***
"Young master, what do we do now?"
Hugo looked at Ethan with the face of a man about to burst into tears.
There was resentment in that face too.
"You talked well enough a moment ago, and now this?"
"That was because the young master told me to......"
"Come now. A man doesn't say two things out of one mouth."
"......Hah."
Resigned at last, Hugo let his head drop.
Ethan wiped the playfulness from his smile and looked at him.
"I told you not to waste energy worrying, didn't I? You win."
"But...... the man is a knight. How could I possibly."
"Bullshit. Who's a knight? He's a fledgling apprentice bastard at best."
"......"
"Don't worry. Do exactly what I tell you and you win. Erase losing from your head. It has no meaning anyway."
"No meaning?"
"Because if you lose to that bastard, I'm going to kill you."
"......"
Hugo's face died away to black.
***
A space was prepared at one side of the training ground.
A considerable crowd had gathered and not even a murmur could be heard.
The silence spoke for their fury. The air was heavy.
Out of that murderous air, Gato stepped forward first.
Gato's coldly settled face gave a glimpse of how furious he was.
Gato was a talented apprentice knight.
However brutal the training he bore it without one complaint or grievance, and in the middle of it he showed the camaraderie of a man who looks after his comrades.
The other apprentice knights acknowledged Gato as both comrade and rival.
They had no doubt that Gato would make a fine knight.
Today too, Gato had come forward as the representative of the insulted.
Their pride and their self-respect rode on Gato's shoulders.
Hugo's expression was ambiguous.
He stood facing Gato with a look as though something were making him uneasy.
Gato did not care for that look on him.
'In the end, has this one too only been used by the wastrel......'
The coldly settled rage subsided, and reason began to return.
A thread of pity found its way in among the anger.
'But even so, the price has to be paid.'
However much he was no more than a manipulated puppet, somebody had to take responsibility.
"Kneel even now and beg forgiveness, and I will end it without pain."
It was the last mercy Gato could extend. But Hugo spat out an answer that ran against Gato's expectation.
"B-bullshit. Getting cold feet?"
In that instant, a great vein rose on Gato's forehead.
"Do not imagine this will end gently!"
Hugo, for all the murderous roar, was beckoning Gato on at his leisure.
The wooden sword in Hugo's hand sat badly.
It was not the grip of a man who had trained with a blade.
Even Gato, still only an apprentice knight, could see that much.
Countless sparring matches showed Gato the future.
Gato did not doubt the victory. Even inside his fury he could see the sword-road to it.
Hugo, by contrast, was nothing but weaknesses.
The sword in his hand sat badly and his stance was riddled with gaps.
Certain of the win, Gato charged.
All the blood and sweat he had spilled over the years was showing its result.
FWISH!
Then Hugo threw the wooden sword. Gato's eyes widened and he batted it aside.
Gato's response was fast and accurate. Even in that moment he did not panic and made the optimal judgment.
But at speed, Hugo was no small matter either.
Hugo's physical ability, won by beating back punishing training day after day, went past what Gato had allowed for.
Hugo closed on Gato like an animal. Gato raised his sword into a guard, trying somehow to answer it, and the attack that followed went outside his expectation.
Hugo leapt.
Elastic muscle made a leap past common sense possible.
Carried on that leaping power, Hugo drove a knee up.
Even then Gato bent the sword's path to defend against Hugo's attack, but.
CRUNCH.
The wooden sword shattered pitifully and Hugo's knee buried itself in Gato's jaw.
CRACK!
With the sound of something breaking, Gato's body tipped backward.
The curtain came down on the duel.
***
'I knew it would land.'
There is an enormous gap between holding a weapon and being empty-handed.
The distance a man has to be conscious of lengthens, and even attacks thrown lightly arrive as a serious threat.
Fighters, too, tend to find a long-armed opponent awkward to deal with.
How much more, then, an opponent holding a sword.
By ordinary means, victory cannot be seized.
It is possible, of course, if the gap in ability is large, but Hugo had been taught nothing properly yet.
So Ethan had taught him what he could do right now.
'First, provoke your opponent.'
Drawing out the first attack raised the odds.
'And then throw your sword.'
This was a method Ethan favored himself.
Dodge it, or block it.
Whichever the opponent chooses, a sliver of an opening appears.
And that sliver was enough.
What was left was Hugo's physical ability.
With speed and spring that called an animal to mind, Hugo could send a man away in a single stroke.
And the attack best suited to that spring was this.
The flying knee.
Nothing else came close.
In his training with Hugo, Ethan had taught him only the motions that built toward the flying knee.
'He thought it was conditioning work.'
Everything Hugo had done was the preparatory motion of a flying knee.
'His physical ability was so good there was hardly anything to teach.'
He had reckoned from the start it would work.
Because Hugo's physical ability had gone past the human level.
'He's a fellow it's awkward to call human in the first place.'
Ethan looked at Hugo with a satisfied smile on his face.
When a knee with acceleration behind it lands properly on the jaw, there is no man who holds on to his senses.
Against a mana user the story might differ, of course, but regrettably the opponent was only an apprentice knight.
He had not yet acquired that order of durability or reflex.
Victorious in the duel, Hugo looked around with an uneasy, uncertain expression.
The assembly was wrapped in silence.
'I...... won?'
Hugo could not easily believe it.
He had only done as Ethan told him.
He had been half in doubt.
Ethan had been certain, and Hugo had doubted.
But the result proved it.
Ethan had been right, and Hugo had won.
Hugo looked down at his own hand, still uneasy.
'I beat a knight.'
An apprentice knight, to put it honestly, but that was not the point.
To Hugo, apprentice or full, they were all people too high above him to look at.
Because until very recently Hugo had been a servant despised even by the other servants.
His first taste of victory was electric.
Then Ethan came over and clapped him on the shoulder.
"I told you not to worry, didn't I?"
"S-so you did......"
"Then let's go back."
The harvest could not be gathered in until tomorrow anyway.
***
The next day.
Sure enough, Gato came to the annex.
Nade said he had come before the sun was even up.
There was something meaningful in Nade's look, as though he had already heard the rumors, but Ethan ignored it lightly.
"Make him wait a while longer."
"Understood."
To land a big fish you have to cultivate patience.
So he finished the morning session and, before beginning the afternoon's, called Nade.
"He hasn't gone yet, has he?"
"No. He is still waiting."
"Then lead the way. Time I met him."
Nade let out a small sigh at that.
"Understood."
Gato was standing at the small gate that led to the annex.
Gato's eyes were clouded. The sharpness they used to have was nowhere in them.
'Entertaining.'
A man whose pride as a knight had run high had fallen. Of course the shock would not be small, Ethan had thought, but this much.
It was beyond what he had expected.
"Wasn't it already finished? What's the reason for dragging yourself all the way here?"
"......I cannot accept it."
Gato's voice was rough. As though he had swallowed sand.
"Accept what?"
Ethan snorted a laugh as he answered, and Gato looked at him with blank eyes.
"I have trained my whole life. I have given my life to one goal, becoming a knight. And if I am defeated in a manner like that, then what becomes of my life?"
Ethan blinked at that.
"So you came all the way here to throw a tantrum like that?"
"A tantrum......!"
"Be quiet. It's one of two things. Either you have no talent, or you slacked at your training."
Gato shut his mouth.
He felt wronged. Duel again and he was certain he would win.
He would never fall for a cowardly method like that a second time.
"Drop the pointless thinking. Had that been the real thing, you'd be dead. A loss is a loss."
"......"
Gato was silent at the answer.
It was a fact that left no room for rebuttal.