Rafin didn't look away. Looking closely at the glass sphere, he saw the blue light flashing out at random, like sunlight glittering on rippling water.
And a hot energy welled up inside Rafin. It was as if it were reacting to the blue light of the glass sphere.
A moment later, the blue light died down.
Only then did the people look at the Eye of the Corridor again.
Baltaro turned around and looked at Anchin and his vassals behind him.
"Krilmar has answered. If a shadow of invasion approaches from the South, the Eye of the Corridor will show it."
Anchin smiled brightly.
"So this glass sphere will show us any invasion from the South."
The Rosrad party had achieved the purpose of its visit to the Temple of Krilmar. They took their leave of the priest and the messengers and returned to Barad Castle.
Rewad couldn't fall asleep in the quarters, waiting for Rafin to come back. Late at night, in the silence, footsteps sounded in the corridor of the quarters. Rewad sprang up in bed.
The door opened, and he saw Rafin come in.
"You're back."
"What's this? You weren't asleep yet?"
"I wanted to know how the trip to the temple went."
"I'll change my clothes in a second."
Rafin changed into comfortable clothes, gave his hands a quick wash, and went over to sit on Rewad's bed.
"Did the lord meet with the priest of Krilmar all right?"
"Yeah. The two of them talked, and since I was attending the Knight Commander, I heard what they said from up close. The lord had a reason for visiting the Temple of Krilmar."
Rafin told him what he had seen and heard at the Temple of Krilmar.
"Of course there's no such thing as free. The priests did their sums right in their heads. How much do you think he gave them?"
"Must be a lot. The leather pouch looked pretty heavy."
Rafin said nothing about the energy that had welled up inside his body as he watched the blue light of the glass sphere on the altar.
"If they're sending the expedition in two waves, you're the Knight Commander's squire, so you'll set out first."
"I guess so. Anyway, from the outside, people will take the advance force for the main force, so the Knight Commander will go with the advance force."
"But I think I'll be going with the advance force too."
Rafin picked up one of the pillows on the bed and put it on his lap.
"Why's that?"
"Sir Lancis, the one I serve, is from House Lorestir. House Lorestir was a house in the South about 100 years ago."
Rafin didn't know the details about House Lorestir.
"If it was originally a house from the South, the lord wouldn't trust it completely."
Rewad smacked Rafin, who was beside him, on the shoulder.
"You've got it. House Lorestir has a history of rebellion in the South. It's not like Sir Lancis is about to betray House Rosrad or anything, but they won't leave him at Barad Castle, just in case."
Two days later, Barad Castle's troops set out toward Orpul in the northwest. Just as Rewad had said, Sir Lancis was included in the advance force.
The troops House Rosrad could mobilize directly in Unton numbered some 5,000. The advance force numbered some 1,000. The fact that the troops had been split into an advance force and a follow-up force was kept strictly secret so that it wouldn't leak outside Barad Castle.
Seen from the outside, only some 1,000 troops had been sent on the expedition, so it was assumed that a considerable force still remained in Unton.
Anchin appointed Knight Commander Gerhardt as overall commander of the expedition, and Artin, Vice Commander of the knights, as commander of the follow-up force.
As the squire of Gerhardt, the overall commander, Rafin was marching in the middle of the advance force's column. From Unton to Orpul was a march of some 20 days.
The commoners of Unton were watching the expedition march. Some of the more curious had come close to Barad Castle and watched from the moment it crossed the drawbridge.
Watching the expedition, the commoners shared their impressions with the people beside them.
"How many are marching?"
"Over a thousand, I'd say."
"I heard it's only part of the troops Unton can muster."
"I see a woman knight too."
"Where?"
"Over there. The knight with red hair."
"Oh. You're right, she looks great."
The expedition left Barad Castle in an imposing array and headed northwest.
Rafin turned to look for where Rewad might be toward the back, but there were too many people, and he couldn't find him.
Some of the commoners recognized the man riding alongside Gerhardt as Rafin, the winner of the jousting tournament.
That was because, although commoners couldn't enter the jousting arena and so didn't know Rafin's face, they knew that Rafin had won the tournament and become the Knight Commander's squire.
Rafin had never fought on a horse with stirrups. In his past life he had fought well on horses without even stirrups, so he wondered how well he could fight with them.
From Unton, they had to pass through Geston before reaching Orpul. They were following the highway. On the highway the road was well kept, so the soldiers used up that much less stamina on the march.
Some 10 days after leaving Barad Castle, they passed Geston. When dusk fell, the expedition camped near the highway.
The baggage train pitched the tents the knights would sleep in and got ready to cook. The squires and soldiers each spread blankets where they would sleep. Since they had to sleep exposed to the blowing wind, they at least covered themselves with thick blankets.
Having passed Geston, they were halfway to Orpul. A few days before the advance force passed Geston, the follow-up force of some 3,000 had left Barad Castle in the middle of the night.
The follow-up force left the castle without a single lamp, relying on the moonlight, even breathing carefully. They knew that even the smallest whisper, coming from thousands of mouths, would swell like an echo.
***
With even the follow-up force gone, Barad Castle felt empty. Stormmond had finished his meal in his chamber and was taking a walk around the castle grounds.
A few days earlier, Lord Anchin had told him that, to guard against threats from the South once the expedition left, Anchin had gone to the Temple of Krilmar and arranged countermeasures with the priest.
So if troops from the South approached Barad Castle, they would know in advance, and he had been ordered, as a mage, to hold off the enemy with magic when the time came.
Stormmond was walking every corner of the grounds, thinking about how he would use fire magic on troops breaking down the gate and climbing over the walls. He climbed a watchtower and surveyed every direction.
But there was a well-built stablehand he had been seeing strangely often lately. As Stormmond came down from the watchtower and was heading back to his keep, his eyes met the stablehand's. The stablehand looked away quickly, as if caught sneaking food.
Stormmond remembered the eyes of his colleagues at Himister's Mage Tower in his youth. They had been eyes that kept him under watch.
Decades had passed since his close colleagues had gotten him thrown out of the Mage Tower and he had come to live in the North, but the memory of that betrayal lay inside a shell in one corner of his heart. The moment his eyes met the stablehand's, that shell peeled away.
Sweat began to bead on Stormmond's chin.
After returning to his chamber, he waited for night to fall. After sunset, servants didn't come to his chamber unless there was some particular business.
Stormmond passed some time reading a book. At length the sun set, and the chirping of insects in the grass began to drift in through the window. Just in case, he opened the door of his chamber and checked that no one was around. There was no one. He stood in the middle of his chamber and quietly raised his hands. A blue light hovered at his fingertips. He concentrated his mana. Then he called to mind the stablehand he had seen during the day.
"Gate of darkness, open.
Breath of the dead, answer my call.
Behold the shape held in my memory.
Until he draws his last breath
Pursue him like a shadow and stop his heart."
A moment later, a skeleton soldier in the hazy form of smoke appeared before Stormmond. Unless one looked closely, it was hard to tell whether it was smoke or a figure. The skeleton soldier held a scimitar in its right hand.
The skeleton soldier flew like smoke out the window. Then it flew straight to the quarters where the castle's workers slept.
In the form of smoke, the skeleton soldier wandered here and there through the quarters, searching for the stablehand in the shape Stormmond had given it from his memory.
Even with the doors shut, it could seep into the rooms like smoke through the cracks. After going through three or four rooms that way, it found the face it had seen in the remembered shape.
All that could be heard in the room was the snoring of the workers. Worn out from working all day, they were sleeping like the dead.
The smoke drifted close to the bed where the stablehand lay, and then the smoke slowly turned into the form of the skeleton soldier.
Then the skeleton soldier aimed at the stablehand's neck and brought the scimitar down in one stroke. At once the skeleton soldier turned back into smoke and flowed out the window.
There was a thunk as Mofford's head dropped to the floor, but the other workers kept snoring in their sleep.
When the skeleton soldier vanished into the night air, Stormmond knew it had completed its task. He thought the stablehand's head, fallen in the workers' quarters, would serve as a warning to the bastard who had put him up to the watching.
The next day, the quarters were thrown into an uproar. Mofford's head was on the floor of the room, and the bed was soaked through with red blood.
The room reeked of blood. The news reached Anchin.
Anchin had a bad feeling when a stablehand was murdered just as he had sent the advance and follow-up forces of the expedition to Orpul.
'I even went to the Temple of Krilmar for the sake of a successful expedition, and now this happens inside the castle.'
Barad Castle sent a courier off to the expedition marching to Orpul.
The news reached the advance force and the follow-up force.
The follow-up force had halted its march on the highway near Geston and was eating lunch.
Artin was eating mutton stew from a pewter bowl when he heard the news, and he dropped the pewter bowl.
The soldiers murmured among themselves, each putting forward his own idea of why the stablehand had died and who had killed him.
But no one except one person thought Stormmond had killed Mofford.
Artin's squire, Atad, saw Artin's face go white.
"Sir, is something wrong?"
"...I need to take a leak."
Artin got up and walked out onto the grassland away from the camp, where no one was around. Then he relieved himself.
His head was in a tangle over what to do next. It was certain that Stormmond had killed Mofford.
'How much does Stormmond know?'