The fine weather held. A cool early-autumn wind dried the travelers' sweat.
The people who had joined one and two at a time had grown into a group of close to twenty. There is an advantage to forming a body like this: the smaller monsters avoid coming near of their own accord. For greater dangers, travelers tend to wait for a caravan and borrow the weight of its escort mercenaries.
The forest was not especially dense and the lie of the mountains behind it was not rough either, so the people urged one another along the road.
—Creak, rattle.
"Oh, no, a wheel's come off? That's a nuisance."
"Let's push together. Heave!"
When a cart sank into the mud and the column came to a halt, the people put their strength together and pushed.
"Heave! Heave!"
—Rattle! Creak.
With their help the cart came free and the column went on again. It was a single breath, like one great current. Even in the movement of a body like this, people were joined to one another like living matter and carried the current onward.
A child trudged along beside his mother. Up front, the child's father walked gripping the reins of the donkey that drew the cart.
"Noma, don't go near the cart. Come here."
"Yes, Mama."
The woman took the child's hand and drew him along. The man leading the donkey beside her took his wife's bundle and shouldered it.
Behind them another family walked. An aged mother and a young couple.
"Mother, you must be tired, are you not? Give me the bundle."
"I'm all right."
"You'll be worn out if you have to walk until evening. Give it here. Hold Charles's hand instead."
"All right. I'll do that."
The man took the bag from his old mother and led the child by the hand.
"There, go to Grandmother."
The child pattered over to his grandmother and was gathered into her arms.
"Well now, my grandchild. Come along with Granny."
And so the people held children's hands and took the weight of old mothers' bundles, and walked on in twos and threes.
—Rattle, rattle.
—Slump.
The knight's pack was quietly loaded onto the cart beside Hans, who lay in it.
—Swish.
—Flinch.
When Hans glanced back the knight flinched, but when no particular gesture followed he broke into a broad smile.
—Pff.
Hans smiled back.
—Rattle, rattle.
Whatever any of them did, the cart rolled on.
The thick-faced icon of defeat now pushed his pack quietly forward and made an attempt at perching himself on the cart.
—Swish.
—Jolt.
At the very instant his advanced technique was about to be realized, Hans shot upright. The startled knight floundered.
"Ah? Haha. I was only......."
—GRRROAAH.
"An ogre."
"Oh, God."
"Aagh, get clear!"
"Eeeeek!"
The column turned to chaos and screams flew everywhere.
With a resting place where a spring ran just ahead of them, the ogre's Fear rang out and the people scattered out of their wits. An ogre is a monster that amounts to a disaster for travelers. A single practiced ten-man squad working in concert might or might not drive one off, and killing or capturing one is only possible with an Expert-class knight taking part.
It is, in plain terms, a monster it takes an army to stop.
While the people floundered, not knowing what to do, Hans joined his shaft together and stepped forward. The knight and the squire took their places at his side. The boy stood beside Hans as well.
Once they stepped out, several men from among the travelers came forward too, carrying whatever would serve as a weapon.
"Take my rear."
Hans had the boy stand ten paces behind him.
"On a battlefield the rear is within three paces, but an ogre's reach is longer than a man's, so ten paces should do."
At Hans's careful explanation the boy nodded and accepted it.
"An affectionate master and pupil, I see."
"We are not master and pupil."
"Ah, a younger brother, was it. My apologies."
The boy glanced at the two of them and wore a look that said the whole thing was absurd.
The ogre looked down at them and drove out its Fear.
—KRAAAAGH.
The knight let out a great shout and drew the ogre's eyes.
"Hraaah!"
The knight, striking out first, had formidable skill. With no plate mail, he bought time with a cheap shield and a short sword.
—KABOOM.
The ogre's fist struck the ground.
—TAP, TAP, TAT.
In that opening the knight stepped off the ogre's knee, jumped, and swung the short sword out long. And at last he left a long cut down the ogre's forearm.
—SLASH.
—KRAAAH!
The ogre, worked up now, went after the knight.
—SQUELCH.
Into the gap he had bought, Hans rushed in and drove the spear into the ogre's calf. Green blood spurted.
—GRROOARGH.
"Whoops."
Pulling the spear back out, Hans lost his balance and staggered. The strength that butchers men is not enough to drag a spear free of an ogre's locked muscle, and so he had misjudged his force.
'I've been running on habit.'
—GRROOARGHK.
The blade the boy threw scratched the ogre's cheek and glanced off.
As the ogre's great palm came down on him, Hans twisted his body, meaning to sacrifice his left arm. In that instant the knight tackled him, wrapped him up and rolled.
—THWACK, ROLL, ROLL.
The knight rolled twice and came up; Hans rolled three times and barely got himself upright.
"Hoo-ff, hoo-ff...... my thanks."
Hans put his shoulder level with the knight's again. The boy made to step forward, but Hans stopped him.
"Not yet. That dagger you threw just now was good. A little higher and it would have gone into the eye."
The boy nodded and drew back.
Hans and the knight moved in evasive patterns and drained the ogre's strength. The cuts on its body kept pumping out green blood, and just as the two of them intended, it seemed to be tiring by degrees.
—Slip.
"Oh, fuck."
—Splat.
The knight stepped in the blood the ogre had shed and went down. He must have panicked, because for all his noble station a coarse word came out of him.
—GRROOAAARGH.
The ogre came down on the fallen knight. He was a breath from being crushed under that enormous bulk.
"No!"
The squire ran out, but he was far too slow.
—WHUMP.
The ogre's huge body slammed down onto the ground and was hidden in dust.
"It can't be. Young master? Young — mas — ter!"
The squire screamed.
"Are you to go as pointlessly as this? Why. Whyyy!"
"Cough, cough."
As the dust slowly settled, the shapes of two men appeared.
The knight was sitting some way off, and Hans stood holding him by the scruff of the neck.
"Debt repaid."
"Cough, cough. Ah, my thanks. Eh, heh, hatchoo!"
"Young master!"
The squire ran over, felt all over the knight's body to check nothing was wrong, and sagged with relief.
"Ah, what a relief."
The handsome squire's face was a mess of tears and snot.
When its last blow came to nothing, the ogre limped away. Watching it soften its ferocity and flee once the humans had cooperated against it, Hans found himself unsure whether that really was a monster with nothing but instinct left.
'Perhaps having nothing but instinct left is exactly what makes it wise.'
"Ungh."
—Slump.
The knight seemed to be getting up, then suddenly clutched his side and sat back down.
"Hah. Young master, where does it hurt?"
"Ah, that's right. I wasn't wearing plate mail."
"Ah, what a relief. Boo hoo hoo."
"Hey, Tyler. That's enough. It isn't the ogre that's going to kill me, it's the embarrassment."
At the knight's grumbling, Hans looked down at him with an expression that said, 'What sort of fellow is this?' Presently the travelers came over, each saying well done, holding out wet cloths or clapping them on the back. To the knight they gave their thanks with proper courtesy.
The knight's suggestion that they track the ogre and take its byproducts was dismissed by Hans's reply that 'life matters more.' The others all turned away from it as well.
"He must have read a great many hero tales out of children's books."
With no one taking him up on it, the knight scratched his jaw in bewilderment.
In the past monster byproducts were precious, but these days ironwork of respectable quality is common. If anything, pushed aside by upmarket brass and bronze goods, they are steadily being driven off the market.
They say such things are traded as collectibles among the nobles, but that is a story about items with a history behind them. Relics like the arms of Bahama von Bieri, hero of the northern frontier, or the field tent he used, are the representative collectibles made from monster byproducts, and were used as decoration at noble functions.
***
"Did the tea reach them well?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. I conveyed your intent well enough."
"Well enough?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"You did not make them understand, it seems."
"Your servant is no different in this, but they are politicians who have lived their whole lives in a world where the strong eat the weak. Your Majesty's ideal will be hard for them to grasp."
—Nod, nod.
"But they are men of consequence who can faithfully keep to the value of obeying a royal command."
"The knight's oath, you mean? That was an oath sworn before my father. And you tell me they will carry out the promise down the generations?"
"Because they are men who believe that oath is the thing that proves their own existence."
The king nodded and accepted it.
"True. They are men who have lived through such an age. Seen a certain way, it is a simple rule, is it not. Swear loyalty to the strong and be granted strength."
"Yes. Just so."
Seated on the throne, the king put his elbow on the armrest and rested his chin on his hand. His expression was idle, but his eyes were fixed on something abyssal.
"Come to that, Marquis Offenhauts is a man of consequence himself. He is trying to break the rule."
"He is merely a man without virtue."
"Heh heh heh. A man who cut down his own blood to sit in this seat is hardly in a position to say anything."
"Ah. Y-Your Majesty."
The Lord Chamberlain, Count Grace, was briefly stopped for words, stammered, and then hurriedly bent at the waist.
"Y-your grace is boundless."
"It was a joke. You and I need to step outside the forms to some degree. We are obliged to sit alone together for long hours; how are we to keep to the proprieties every moment?"
"Your servant is much lacking......."
The king did not bother to elaborate.
"Of the lacking, you are the best of them. Had it not been for you, I doubt I could have held this seat. And the same goes for my dull-witted friend, who is not here now — your son."
Count Grace's son had rendered great service in putting down the half-brothers' rebellion. And in the final battle he had taken an arrow in the king's place and died.
"I kept the throne, and lost a friend instead."
The Lord Chamberlain bent lower still.
"To uphold the will of the king my son gave his life to protect is the wish of what remains of mine."
"Very well. Straighten up now. You'll put your back out."
The king's gaze went to the garden. The day was cool, and the King's Garden, with the sun strong on it, was at the height of its autumn feeling.
The flowers had fallen, but the fruit was ripening. There was hope yet.
***
The boy and the squire pitched the tent while Hans prepared supper.
"You go and pick up whatever will do for firewood."
"Ah, I think I've cracked a rib."
The knight grumbled, but he ambled off and came back with wood.
Once Hans had the soup boiling he looked at the squire, and the squire took a little pepper from his pocket and scattered it over the surface.
When Hans went on looking, the squire spoke.
"More is not better."
***
When the meal was done the squire brewed tea and brought it out. For some reason both the boy and Hans savored it quite naturally, and at the sight the knight and the squire turned interested eyes on them.
The fire burned low. Hans threw in the last of the wood and asked, in a passing tone, as though talking to himself.
"There's a wide gap between the skill you showed in that duel in the Belborn plaza and the skill you showed in front of the ogre."
The other man was plainly a noble, and Hans dropped the formal speech all the same.
"Mm? You saw that? Ah, that's...... haha......."
The knight flinched, rolled his eyes about and visibly cast around for an answer, and the well-turned-out squire, watching him with something close to exasperation, told it in his stead.
"The truth of it is......."
'The knight's friend loved the lady but had no boldness in him and could not get his feelings across. So the knight deliberately picked a quarrel with that friend and came to blows, then committed a rudeness against the lady himself, was challenged to a duel by the friend, lost, and is now in flight.' So the squire said.
Having heard a beautiful tale of youth's love and friendship, the boy looked at the knight with admiration in his eyes.
—Slurp.
The knight hung his head low and drank from nothing but an empty cup.
'This is a fraud, surely?'
And Hans thought the story sounded like a romance between adolescent boys, but he did not go out of his way to put it into words.
Across the dark night sky, a meteor shower drew out a long tail.