Ren ran.
He didn't think about it. His body made the choice before his head caught up, rolling back off the wall and into the dark field, coming up on his feet already moving. Behind him, the camp exploded into noise. Men shouting. Horses screaming. Kenta's voice over all of it, roaring something that might have been his name.
He went straight for the ridge. Uphill, over the rocks, where the horses couldn't follow.
Behind him, he heard Kanzaki's voice, calm and clear in the night. "North ridge. Moving east along the top."
Ren changed direction. Ran west instead.
Ten seconds later: "He's turned. West now. Downhill."
Ren stopped running.
He crouched behind a boulder near the top of the ridge, breathing hard, and pulled open his status screen. He focused on the red line at the bottom until it expanded.
Writ of Pursuit (Inquisitor Skill)The Inquisitor has judged you guilty.While you remain within 20 miles, the Inquisitor knows your direction and distance at all times.
Twenty miles.
He sat there with his back against the cold stone and made himself think about it the way he'd thought about the doors in the Hall of Radiance on the first day. Calm. One piece at a time.
He couldn't hide. Not from Kanzaki. Every rock, every ditch, every patch of dark, the man would point straight at it.
He couldn't outrun horses on open ground. Not for twenty miles.
He couldn't fight eight Radiant Knights and two heroes at once.
So he needed somewhere the horses couldn't go, a fight on ground he chose, and a way to put twenty miles between himself and Kanzaki fast.
He pulled out Ferren's map and held it up to the moonlight. The river road. The Thornwood. Hadley's Rest. And twelve miles south of Hadley's Rest, a thin line crossing the road, with a tiny drawing of a raft and a single word.
Ferry.
Ren put the map away and started moving south along the ridge.
***
He ran all night.
Not fast. He couldn't afford fast. He kept to the hilltops and the stone walls and the rocky ground where hooves would slip, and every time he heard horses on the road below, he went higher. Twice they came close enough that he could hear the knights talking. Once he could see Kenta's huge shape on a horse that looked too small for him, pointing up into the dark.
Kanzaki never shouted again. He didn't need to. Every time Ren changed direction, the riders changed with him.
***
Kanzaki Shuhei did not enjoy riding.
He'd never been on a horse before this week. The Church had given him a gentle gray mare and told him she was the calmest animal in the stables of Solenne, and she probably was, but every step still sent a jolt up his spine. He sat as straight as he could and kept his hands still on the reins and didn't complain. Complaining changed nothing.
Ahead of him on the dark road, Fujii Kenta was complaining enough for both of them.
"We should split up," Kenta said, for the fourth time. "Send half the knights up the ridge. Box him in."
"The ridge is too rocky for the horses," said Kanzaki.
"So they walk."
"Then they're slower than he is, and he kills them one at a time in the dark." Kanzaki closed his eyes for a moment and felt for the Writ. It was always there now, a faint pull at the back of his mind, like a fishing line with something heavy on the end. South. Two miles. Moving along the high ground. "He's going somewhere. He's not just running. We follow and we see where."
Kenta made a disgusted sound. "You talk like he's a case file."
"He is a case file."
"He's a murderer." Kenta twisted around in his saddle. His face in the moonlight was ugly with anger. "You were there. You saw what he did to Takeru."
"I saw it," said Kanzaki.
He had. He'd been standing by the wall of the training yard when the sword came down, and he'd seen the whole thing, and he'd seen what came before it too. The glowing practice blade swinging at Kuroda's neck. Ser Brannoc shouting stop. Saionji not stopping.
He didn't say that to Kenta. Kenta wasn't interested in what came before.
"High Seraph wants him alive if possible," Kanzaki said instead.
"High Seraph said his head if not."
"Yes."
"So I'm bringing his head." Kenta turned back around and kicked his horse into a trot. "I promised Yui."
Kanzaki watched the big man ride ahead into the dark. He thought about the hearing in the Hall of Judgment. He thought about Kuroda standing in the middle of the black floor in chains, saying *he was driving* in the same flat voice he'd used every single time Kanzaki had ever heard him speak, in every hearing, for a year.
Kanzaki had never once doubted the case. Six witnesses. The car. The keys. The blood alcohol. He had built it piece by piece, the way he built every case, and it had been clean.
He still didn't doubt it. Not really.
But he'd started, very slightly, to notice that he was telling himself so.
He put the thought away. It wasn't useful. Ilvane had given him a class, a skill, and a task. The Inquisitor judges, and then the Inquisitor pursues. That was what the description said. He had read it very carefully.
And if Kuroda got away from him, there was one more thing he could try. Something Ilvane had told him about, quietly, before they rode out. He didn't like it.
He hoped he wouldn't need it.
***
By dawn, Ren's legs were trembling. The wound on his ribs from the boar had opened up again. His arm, where the wolf had bitten it, had gone stiff and hot. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
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But he could see the river.
It was wide here, maybe a hundred yards across, brown and fast with spring melt. The road ran down to a muddy landing where a flat wooden raft sat tied to a post. A thick rope ran from the post, across the water, to another post on the far bank. Beside the landing stood a small stone hut with a thin line of smoke coming out of the chimney.
Ren came down the hill at a stumbling run.
The ferryman came out of the hut as he reached the landing. An old man with a white beard and a pipe in his teeth. He took one look at Ren's face and the sword at his hip, and his pipe fell out of his mouth.
"Get inside," Ren said. "Bar the door. Don't come out until they're gone."
"Who's gone?"
Ren looked back up the road. Two riders had just come over the hill. White tabards. Lances. They'd seen him. They were coming fast.
"Them," he said.
The ferryman didn't argue. The door of the hut slammed.
Ren turned around and drew his sword.
The two knights came down the slope side by side, lances lowered, horses throwing up clods of mud. Ahead of the others. Eager. They'd probably been told about the five hundred crowns.
Ren opened Read the Field. And this time, something new happened.
Level 10 reached earlier tonight, somewhere on the ridge in the dark, and he hadn't even noticed. Now the screen bloomed open wider than before.
Radiant Knight · Level 19STR 38 · AGI 24 · VIT 35 · INT 12 · WIL 20
Radiant Knight · Level 18STR 36 · AGI 26 · VIT 33 · INT 14 · WIL 19
He could see their stats.
His own Strength was 21. Theirs were nearly double. But their Will was barely higher than his own, and his Authority was 34.
They were fifty yards away. Thirty.
"Kneel."
He aimed it at the horses.
Both animals went down at full gallop. Their front legs folded under them like paper, and they hit the mud nose first, and the knights went flying. One of them landed hard and rolled. The other one hit the post at the landing with a sound like a dropped bag of tools and didn't move again.
The first one got up. He'd lost his lance. He drew his sword and came at Ren screaming.
He was strong. Much stronger than Ren. Every blow Ren blocked jarred his arms to the shoulder. But he was angry, and he'd just been thrown off a horse, and he swung like a man who was used to hitting things that didn't move.
Ren waited for the big overhead cut. He'd known it was coming for three swings. When it came, he stepped inside it and cut across the man's thigh where the mail split at the hip, and when the knight's leg gave out, he finished it.
Level up. Level 11.
He turned toward the river.
And Kenta hit him from the side like a truck.
Ren never saw him coming. One second he was turning. The next, a shoulder the size of a door slammed into his ribs, and he was in the air, and then he was in the mud, rolling, with the sky and the ground swapping places three times before he stopped.
He came up on one knee, spitting dirt, and his sword was gone.
Kenta stood ten feet away, breathing hard, with his axe in both hands. He'd jumped off his horse at full speed to tackle Ren. His horse was still running, empty saddle, off up the riverbank. Behind Kenta, on the road, more white tabards were pouring down the hill.
"Kuroda," Kenta said. He was grinning. There was blood on his teeth where he'd bitten his own lip. "Man. You don't know how long I've been waiting."
Fujii Kenta · Berserker · Level 11STR 41 · AGI 18 · VIT 36 · INT 8 · WIL 9
Will 9.
"Kneel," said Ren.
Kenta's knees hit the mud.
For one second, his face was pure shock. Ren was already moving, diving for his sword where it lay by the water.
Then Kenta roared.
It wasn't a word. It was a sound that came up out of his chest and kept coming, and the air around him turned red, actually red, like heat shimmer over a fire. His eyes went bloodshot. The veins stood out on his neck like cords.
Skill activated: Bloodrage.Immune to fear and control effects.
The weight of Kneel slid off him like water. He stood up.
Ren got his hand on his sword just as Kenta reached him.
The axe came down where his head had been. It buried itself in the mud up to the haft. Ren rolled, came up, and cut at Kenta's arm. The blade opened a long red line across his bicep. Kenta didn't even flinch. He ripped the axe out of the ground and swung it sideways, and Ren barely got his sword up in time.
The impact threw him five feet. His arms went numb to the elbow.
This was different from the knights. Kenta had no technique at all. He swung like a man chopping wood. But he was so strong, and so fast when the rage was on him, that technique didn't matter. Ren could see every swing coming a full second early, and it barely helped. He had to dodge every one. If he blocked even one more, his sword would break, or his arms would.
He cut Kenta three more times. Shallow cuts, quick ones, the only kind he could get. Each one opened easier than it should have. Hero Slayer, he realized. The title. His blade bit harder into summoned flesh.
"Stop running!" Kenta screamed. "Stand still and fight me, you coward! You killed him! He was on his knees and you killed him!"
Ren slipped another swing. The axe took a chunk out of the ferry post behind him.
"He killed a woman," Ren said. "You were there when he told you."
Kenta's next swing was wild. Ren ducked it easily.
"Shut up," Kenta said.
"You signed a statement. You said you watched me drive away."
"Shut up!"
"You were standing next to him when he walked back into the house with blood on his shoes."
Kenta screamed and swung so hard the axe went right past Ren and kept going, spinning him halfway around.
Ren didn't cut him. He ran for the ferry.
He made it to the raft just as the first crossbow bolt hissed past his ear.
The rest of them had reached the landing. Six knights, on foot now, spread out along the bank with crossbows raised. And walking down between them, in no hurry at all, came Kanzaki.
Ren turned toward him and pushed as hard as he could.
"Kneel."
Nothing.
Kanzaki didn't stumble. He didn't even blink. He just kept walking, his hands clasped behind his back.
Kanzaki Shuhei · Inquisitor · Level 10STR 15 · AGI 17 · VIT 20 · INT 34 · WIL 46
Will 46.
Ren's Authority was 35. It wasn't even close.
"The Inquisitor class favors Will," Kanzaki said. He sounded almost apologetic. "I read the description very carefully. I thought it might come up."
Ren slashed through the rope that tied the raft to the landing post.
The current grabbed the raft at once. It swung out from the bank, still attached to the long cable that ran across the river, and started sliding along it toward the far side. Not fast. Too slow.
"Shoot him," Kanzaki said.
Ren dropped flat. Bolts thudded into the planks around him. One hit his left shoulder. He felt it punch through the coat and into the meat behind his collarbone, and the world went white for a second.
The raft reached the middle of the river.
Ren pushed himself up on one arm. He looked at the long cable stretched over his head, the one that guided the raft from bank to bank.
Then he reached up and cut it.
The raft lurched. The river took it all at once, spinning it around in a slow circle, and carried it downstream. The banks started sliding past. The landing shrank. Kenta was running along the shore, screaming something, but the current here was faster than any man could run.
Ren lay on his back in an inch of cold water, with the bolt sticking out of his shoulder, and watched the sky turn.
Behind him, on the receding shore, Kanzaki's voice carried clear across the water. He'd raised it for the first time.
"Kuroda!"
Ren didn't answer.
"I thought you should know before you go." Kanzaki's voice was getting fainter, but every word was perfectly clear. "Ogawa Sumiko was taken last night. She confessed. She gave you the key. She bribed the guard. She sent you down to the river."
Ren went very still.
"I don't blame her," Kanzaki called. "She's a defense lawyer. That's what they do. But the High Seraph doesn't see it that way."
The raft hit a rock, spun, and kept going. Ren didn't feel it.
"You have thirty days to come back to Solenne and surrender," Kanzaki shouted. "Thirty days, Kuroda. After that, she hangs."
The river carried him around a bend, and the landing disappeared behind a wall of trees.
For a long time, Ren just lay there.
The System chimed softly. A line at the bottom of his status screen faded from red to gray.
Writ of Pursuit: Out of range.
Then another.
Level up. Level 12.
He didn't look at either of them. He was staring up at the sky and thinking about a small woman in a borrowed cloak, gripping the bars of his cell, telling him she'd be fine. Asleep in her bed tomorrow. Looking surprised.
Thirty days.
He had no way of knowing if it was true.