The drill ground I arrived at, following Camilla.
Though not on the scale of the outer ward's training grounds I had seen before, the inner keep's drill ground was also large enough to hold several dozen people with room to spare.
The soldiers who had been busily sweating in accordance with the daily schedule went rigid at the abrupt appearance of a knight commander.
"Ryan Cabellon, Second Corps doctrine training division! Wh-what brings you here?"
"Nothing special. Carry on."
The thoroughly tense instructor asked, and Camilla waved her hand.
The instructor, flustered, was ironically older than Camilla.
'......There's no measure as meaningless as age.'
At that useless thought that suddenly surfaced, I let out a hollow laugh.
To be going on about age now, of all times.
Perhaps I had been abruptly affected by memories of a previous life from centuries ago.
"And this one beside you......."
The instructor's gaze went, oddly enough, not to Camilla or Drik but to me.
The reason, it seemed, was the Order's armor I had been wearing ever since my old leather armor was shredded by Walter.
Fully armed from head to toe with a matching helmet, I looked for all the world like a paladin belonging to the Talios Order.
"Ahem!"
Camilla asked without a word, glancing at me for my reaction.
May I reveal who you are?
I answered with silence in turn.
No.
"This friend joined recently. I'm teaching him doctrine and a few other things, so pay him no mind, instructor."
Camilla had no talent for lying.
That a knight commander would personally escort a rank-and-file follower was a story not even a dog would believe.
Yet her position was at a level that made it possible.
If Camilla said that cats danced and dogs sang, other people had to believe it.
That was the sort of post a knight commander was.
The instructor at the drill ground looked as though he had something to say, but his mouth only opened and closed, unable to push out any sound.
We passed them and headed for a corner of the drill ground.
It must have been a space prepared for sparring, for the sand-covered ground was flat, and on one side wooden swords and other weapons were arrayed.
Camilla picked one of them up.
"Take whichever you like."
"They've been kept well."
Drik ran his hand over a sword carved from wood for sparring.
Even to me, who had no expertise in the field, it was clearly top-grade timber.
"For the record, in the paladin's trial we use iron swords. We make it as close to real combat as possible. If you'd like, I can face you with a live blade right now too."
"No, I'll use this."
Camilla snorted a laugh.
She had already taken up a wooden sword and set her stance.
She had her basic gear on, but her attire was comparatively light.
"Come at me as soon as you're ready."
Drik clenched and unclenched his grip for a moment and moved his body lightly, finishing his preparations for the spar.
"Sir knight, I like how brisk you are."
Drik charged out at once without any signal.
Aiming at the left shoulder of Camilla, who stood still, his sword swung horizontally in an instant.
Rather than blocking meekly, Camilla struck Drik's sword away hard.
"Kh!"
Having forcibly broken Drik's posture, Camilla brought her sword down.
Drik barely fended off the strike falling toward his collarbone.
The clash of wooden swords rang out loudly, and Camilla's blade continued.
With only slight exaggeration, in the blink of an eye Drik was beaten so hard that dust would have flown even on a rainy day.
Drik pulled his body clear quickly, but the impact points visible to the eye alone numbered over ten.
"There's a real satisfaction in hitting you."
Camilla read Drik's movements completely and controlled the distance.
When he stepped back a pace she stepped forward a pace, and when he closed in tight she dropped away at once.
A distance where Drik could not reach but Camilla could.
Camilla, who slipped cunningly into that very small gap, was in some respects more of a monster than Walter.
Camilla's sword curved and knocked Drik's blade upward.
At the same time Drik's upper body was left wide open.
At this rate Camilla's sword would land on his flank.
Drik hurled himself backward in a rush to avoid Camilla's blade.
But Camilla did not swing.
"Openings, you see."
Instead she leapt high and raised her sword up.
"Sometimes they make an even bigger opening!"
Drik's head was perfectly exposed to that attack delivered a beat late.
An unblockable sword with Camilla's full weight behind it.
An attack that stabbed at the flaw within the flaw, a very model of veteran craft.
"You're right about that."
Drik vanished in an instant.
It was a movement fast enough to feel that way.
He had waited until Camilla committed to a large motion, then whipped his body around in one go.
Slipping inside Camilla's guard in a flash, Drik swung his sword in the same rotation.
———WHOOSH!
Drik's sword tore the air sharply.
Camilla had ducked her head and evaded.
It was the first evasion Camilla had shown.
"An opening breeds an opening. You've got quite the opening yourself, sir knight."
The great backward dodge had been an opening Drik intended.
The instant he lowered his sword, Camilla had, exactly as Drik intended, tried to bring hers down on his head, and Drik had turned his body handsomely and evaded that blade.
On top of that, the attack that flowed on like water proved that he too had not survived by luck.
Camilla smiled so widely at Drik's words that her face looked ready to split.
"That's it! A fight ought to be like this! Those paladin bastards trust nothing but strength and swagger about!"
Cackling with laughter, Camilla swept her sword up at an angle.
Drik, evading it by moving only his head, thrust his sword toward Camilla's solar plexus.
Camilla caught Drik's blade with her bare hand and kicked him hard.
Flung away and losing his sword besides, Drik let out a laugh of disbelief.
"Enough with trusting nothing but strength and swaggering about."
"Did you forget? I'm a paladin too."
Catching the sword Camilla tossed back to him, Drik staggered to his feet.
"That's quite something!"
Their spar continued for quite a while.
In most cases the picture was Camilla hitting and Drik being hit, but the sword Drik swung now and then threatened her sharply enough to make even Camilla break into a sweat.
The two had become an interesting spectacle of the drill ground before anyone noticed.
One of the soldiers who had crowded around muttered.
"That's got to hurt......."
I could not hold back my laughter and snorted.
Drik had been beaten so much that he was swollen and puffed up.
"Shall we stop here?"
Seeing Drik's face, which contradicted his easy voice, Camilla burst out laughing too.
"You're pretty good, though. At this level you won't be getting knocked around anywhere."
Twilight had just begun to catch on the horizon.
Camilla with her refreshed expression, Drik pretending composure, and the soldiers surrounding them were all dyed yellow.
"A knight commander's nothing much."
Camilla, on her way to return the wooden sword, faltered at Drik's words.
"What? Obviously I went easy on you."
"If you'd been serious, that'd be even more embarrassing."
"Up to now I was facing you as a mercenary."
"I'm sure you were."
Camilla was a veteran who had become a mercenary at a young age and held out for a long time.
Which is to say, in common parlance, an ill-bred bastard.
Camilla glared at Drik's provocation.
"Shall I face you as a knight commander, then?"
"I'd welcome it."
Drik grinned and raised his sword.
"Come at me as soon as you're read—"
———THWACK!
Camilla, who had closed in behind Drik at a speed invisible to the naked eye, cracked him across the back of the head.
A small cloud of dust rose around Drik as he pitched straight over.
"Runt of a thing, acting up."
Camilla, snorting, glared down at the unconscious Drik.
"......Commander of the Third Corps."
It was the first time I had opened my mouth since arriving at the drill ground.
To think the moment would come for a reason this childish.
"Ah, well, this is......."
Receiving my glare, Camilla hoisted the collapsed Drik onto her back.
The crowd her gaze fell upon parted in a rush, and Camilla, flustered, watched my face for a reaction.
The sight was so like a puppy that needs to poop that laughter kept leaking out of me.
I nodded and granted her permission to move.
Camilla, carrying Drik, vanished like an arrow, and I too moved off following after her.
"Um......."
The instructor standing among the crowd stretched out a hand, then slowly lowered it.
His eyes pleaded desperately for me to explain something, but I told him nothing at all.
If a knight commander is a rank that makes absurd things plausible, then the apostle above that.
I couldn't say for sure, but surely he could get away with having no manners whatsoever.
***
Several days passed after that.
According to Kallen, the search for Findel Morein was progressing smoothly.
The people's complaints about the sudden sealing of the ramparts were said to be considerable.
But what could they do? The ramparts' owner was the Order, and the Order was a body that could put a blade to their throats this very moment.
If they valued their lives, they had no choice but to keep their mouths shut however much they resented it.
Kallen these days seemed run off his feet, being called here and there by the guard corps.
It had become harder to see his face than even the Order's chapter master's.
I, on the other hand, was passing the most leisurely days I had known in some time.
The Order was handling the search on its own, so in the end all I could do was tend to my rusted sword or take walks about the outer ward and things of that sort.
For lodging in Pirberg, the Order had given me the finest room in the inner keep.
As I had no particular reason to refuse, I was using the room next to Walter Schneider's.
"Brother, a little higher up."
Drik reached a hand behind his back and pointed to a wound.
There was a great deal of something smeared on my hands.
An extract of the components of aspen bark mixed into animal fat.
Put simply, an analgesic salve.
"Don't you get tired of it?"
"Of course I get tired. Even so, I'm not giving up until I land one on that bastard's mug."
Ever since being pounded at the drill ground, Drik had been challenging Camilla at all hours.
Thanks to that I was spared sparring with Camilla myself, which was fine by me, but Drik's state had by now reached a level that was hard to look at without wincing.
Out of nowhere I thought of Eladin.
Of her, who used to apply salve like this on the days I was wounded.
'How careless you are. And a paladin, no less.'
'......Did you contribute anything to my becoming a paladin?'
'Of course. If I did not contribute, who would?'
It was hazy now.
The voice that spoke to me then, the touch of the hand that stroked my wounds, felt as distant as another person's affairs.
'Can't a god heal even a wound like this?'
'If that were possible, I would be a god of healing, not of domination.'
Only one thing.
That expression as she gazed at me, that alone.
That expression, so sorrowful it made the chest ache, was for some reason branded into my mind.
'......Would that it had been so.'
"Brother."
Drik was standing with the shirt he had taken off now back on.
The salve-covered wounds appeared to have been wrapped in bandages.
"Is something the matter?"
"No."
I rose from my seat.
As though shaking off long-settled dust.
"It's nothing."
Drik's paladin trial was drawing nearer with every passing moment.
Since I had agreed to be his sparring partner today as well, I could hardly sprawl about in my quarters forever.
I set off walking.