Hans and the boy said nothing. Their conversations never ran long; they traded a few short words only when there was need.
"Are you finished packing up?"
—Nod, nod.
"Let's move."
"......."
The knight and the squire talked a great deal. A squire answering back when his knight gives an instruction is not a common sight. At times he argued with him and even nagged.
"Master! Do get on the horse."
"I feel like walking, though? Stephan ought to rest at a time like this too."
"Stephan is of superior stud stock and will be wanting to run."
"Mm? Now is not the time for running."
The knight gestured with his palm at the column of people.
"Look, everyone's walking, aren't they?"
"......."
The knight looked at Hans's cart.
"Mm. Here, Tyler. What if we bought a cart as well, and......."
"To lie down in? Good heavens. A knight riding along lying in a cart."
"Mmm, don't put it quite like that. I'll ride, all right?"
"I shall tell him everything. I shall tell the marquis absolutely every......."
—Scramble.
The knight belatedly got on his horse and fell in behind Hans.
Two who said nothing and two who said a great deal; and for all that, both pairs looked like people who trusted each other deeply.
On a hill, when Hans got down from the cart, the boy got down after him and lightened the load.
The knight, by contrast, nodded off on horseback, and the squire nagged at him: "Where have you thrown away your dignity?"
"Let's run from that great demon king of nagging. Stephan! Put your back into it."
—Neiiigh.
Stephan showed his teeth and seemed to be laughing. Somehow his step quickened too. Though his stride shortened, so the speed came out the same...... in any sense of the word, he was certainly a fine horse.
"Ah, would you look at that......."
At the sight of it, someone who saw to Stephan's feed and care every day flushed with a sense of betrayal and seethed.
—Pat, pat.
"There's no one like Stephan after all."
And someone else buried his face in his beloved Stephan's thick mane.
Here the knightly figure who had faced the ogre was gone, and in his place was a lazy, brazen knight.
A young knight who cannot hold himself upright for sleep in the morning, is cheerful by day and melancholy by night. An icon of defeat repeating the vicious circle of sipping at drink late because he cannot sleep, and nodding off on the road the next day.
It looked like nothing more than the diversion of an immature noble, but it was human enough. He was not arrogant, which made him likable, and he was no nuisance to anyone around him. It was only that the look of a man carrying alone, beyond himself and those near him, the troubles of the whole world, was not even funny.
The column that had set out early in the morning had grown into a large body before anyone noticed.
Well past noon, Hans ran his eye over the surrounding ground, confirmed a spring and shade, and spoke to the boy.
"We rest here."
—Nod.
When the boy drew the cart up beside a great tree stump, the column halted as well, and people took places here and there and set down their loads. Was it because of the skill shown against the ogre? Hans's party had become the leaders of the group without anyone deciding it.
People found shade and lay down, and those who had missed breakfast beat back their hunger with a snack.
When the hard bread seemed to have softened in the water, David tore off pieces with his hand and put them into the mouth of the grandson sitting on his knee.
—Munch, munch.
The three-year-old took them greedily and ate them down well. It was the common sight of a grandfather watching his grandson eat with a pleased look on his face.
He had been a citizen of Bahama, a low-ranking official at the city hall. He had served some twenty years without giving offense, and though not outstanding he was known as a man who knew his own work. On a poor salary, thanks to a frugal wife, he had raised his children well and managed to send them to the academy.
That was as far as it went.
Once young new hires were brought in, his own generation, aged and set in their ways, were pushed by degrees into idle posts and the pressure to retire was applied. It was then that, with the help of a relative who ran a farm, he had settled up his city life and chosen to go back to the country.
—Toddle, toddle.
His snack finished, the grandson walked over to his mother, who was resting against the cart. His daughter-in-law spread both arms and gathered her son in.
"Grandfather gave you your food, so you say thank you, don't you."
His eldest son and the son's wife, who had graduated from the academy and not yet found work, had followed him. As it happened a tax officer's post had come open where they were going, which was a fortunate thing. His younger son and eldest daughter had stayed in the dormitories.
White-haired David looked back over fifty years of life. It had been a happy life.
Out of the continent's population of roughly a hundred million, how many live past the average lifespan of thirty and see a grandchild? Those who wander in search of a place to settle and die of sickness alone are beyond counting.
Citizens and domain subjects, serfs excepted, are collectively called freemen. Freedom of residence and movement. Freedom in name; the field of choice was not wide. Everywhere the tax rate is fixed at around 50 percent. It was a cartel among the rulers.
On half their income a family of ten can live without starving. But they had to go ragged. When a bad harvest came they had to enter serfdom or else die where they stood.
Where a fine lord rules, relief is distributed when the harvest fails, and when plague goes round priests are called in to look after the domain's people.
In a corrupt domain, on top of the fifty percent tax, the officials' extortion attaches itself like a nightmare. The end of extortion is the domain's people becoming serfs.
This vicious circle led to the appearance of itinerants who drift from place to place their whole lives, and to their becoming a headache for the continent.
For every ten children born, three or four survive to grow to twenty. Even these, once exposed to disease, do not pass the average lifespan of thirty. At this rate the advancement of civilization is hard to hope for. Advancement, nothing — ninety percent of the population is illiterate.
David shook his head. In the twilight of his life his wish was that his son and his grandson should live through the world without trouble.
His daughter-in-law put the child up on the cart and took the donkey's reins. His son came over and picked up David's load.
"Father, it looks as though we're about to set off."
"So it does. Heave."
The people scattered here and there gathered in again.
"After you."
"My thanks. Then excuse me."
—Creak, rattle, rattle.
Carrying each its own hope, the column of carts and people began to move forward like a wave.
As the sun went over the western ridge, a beautiful sunset spread out.
"This looks like as far as we go today."
The tired people unpacked and began setting up camp.
When everyone was near sleep, the knight spoke in front of the fire.
"As a noble, and as a man, I am ashamed before you."
"......."
"I find myself pitiful and shameful, for turning my back on noblesse oblige in a national crisis and hiding in an academy."
The squire, sitting apart and seeing to his gear, stopped, then slowly went back to working his hands.
The despair of the man who had been the friend of his childhood and was now his master saddened him.
'Master, there is no dishonor in you. How were you to refuse the order of your own father, the marquis?'
But the squire did not put what was inside him into words. For his master's honor, he could not disgrace the head of the house.
The shadows on the knight's face deepened in the firelight. His eyes, fixed on the burning wood, wavered, and spoke for what was in him.
Raking the dying fire with a stick, Hans spoke.
"You are a good man."
"No, I......."
"I know your sort."
At the raised voice the knight flinched like a child being scolded.
"The first to die on a battlefield. They throw their lives away for victory, or to save a comrade, and they die."
Hans's voice dug cruelly into the other man's heart.
"It gets dressed up as a noble death and spread about. By the time everyone who remembered has died and it has been forgotten, it will be left in the records and handed down."
"Mm......."
"The hundred-commander I served under was your sort as well."
As the flames sank, Hans threw in more wood. Then he took the bottle from the knight and poured it over the wood. The fire flared up.
"He......."
Hans's gaze fixed on the fire. His face was faraway, and it was a glad face and a sorrowful one at the same time.
"He looked after a sixteen-year-old conscript who turned up at the front knowing nothing, like a son. His age, which I learned later, was a mere two years from my own."
He had every reason to be angry at having his bottle taken, but the knight did not react. He only listened to Hans, as though his interest had been caught.
"His judgment on the battlefield was exact, and under his command our hundred did not produce a single death."
Hans glared into the fire for a while, then lifted his eyes and looked somewhere out into the dark.
"Not one of us died. Not until he did......."
"How did he die?"
"The obvious story. Trash who envied his noble character and his ideals threw him in as bait for a worthless war of attrition."
The fire reflected in Hans's eyes created the illusion that Hans himself was blazing with rage. No — the knight thought his eyes really were burning.
"We were flung at an impossible mission, and the hundred-commander......."
His voice dropped. Low and unsteady, as though it would break off pitch at any moment, a sound like an animal's howling.
"He was like a hero out of legend. Surrounded by five hundreds, he burned up everything he had...... and became ash."
The knight nodded with an expression that said, 'Just so.'
"Your superior was a model of a knight to the very end."
In that instant.
"Kraaaaagh!"
That was truly an animal's sound. Rage and remorse and the savage killing intent that had seemed buried and hidden inside him blazed out.
Hauled up by the collar in Hans's grip, the knight closed his eyes. The stinging killing intent coming off the other man pricked his skin and felt as though it would tear both his eyes apart.
The squire rose and drew his sword. People who had just been settling into their tents for the night came out in alarm.
The knight put out a hand and stopped the squire where he stood.
Fortunately, Hans did not run wild any further.
"There is no noble death in this world."
With no reply from the other man, Hans's words went on as though they were a monologue.
"He was not a man who should have died like that."
Watching Hans's state carefully, the knight answered.
"No one deserves to die like that. But did his death not save the lives of your hundred?"
The hand gripping his collar seemed to tremble, and then it set the knight down. Hans's rough breathing settled. The focus seemed to come back into both his eyes.
He spoke in a somewhat steadier voice.
"After he died a new hundred-commander was posted in, but we were not the hundred we had been."
"......."
"The first to die on a battlefield are the good men. They die in a comrade's place. The second to die are the men of high skill. Men who trust their own ability and throw themselves forward die when their strength runs out, or by a mistake. The last to die are the weak ones who were forever being helped......."
Hans caught his breath for a moment, closed both eyes, and said.
"The trash survive to the end and enjoy the glory of victory."
The knight's face became that of a man struck by something.
"If the hundred-commander had been just a little more cowardly, if he had compromised just a little and secured himself a voice in the command, and so led them all, the war might have ended sooner."
Hans dropped down where he stood and looked at the knight's blank face.
"As though he were the hero of a tragedy!"
Hans, who had called himself trash, was cruel to the last.
"Do not go looking for a place to die. Compromise a little and you can save more people. Is that not a noble's duty?"
"That I...... am looking for a place to die?"
Hans did not answer.
The people scattered, and the squire put away the sword he had drawn.
Inside the tent the boy turned over for no reason. The rim of his eye glittered, and a single tear ran down.
Early the next morning the squire woke and was startled to see the knight already up and making ready to leave.
"Master!"
"We ride hard and return to the main house."
Thick beads of sweat ran down the knight's face as he tightened the saddle on the back of his beloved Stephan.
"Have you...... made up your mind?"
"I will find out what my younger brother, who is after the headship, has staked on it."
"Gerald von Bieri."
"Hans Zimmer."
"May fortune in arms fill the road ahead of you."
—Bow.
For the first time, Hans bowed his head to the knight in respect.
The knight answered with a smile, and the squire bowed his own head in return, thanking the man who had turned his master in a new direction.
Watching their backs as they galloped away, Hans suddenly shuddered.
"Why did I do that?"
Gooseflesh had risen all over the forearms of the head-shaking Hans.
'I want to say a thing, but I have not the intellect for it, so I appeal to feeling alone and end up running wild.'
Hans looked his own problem in the face.
'If you know the problem, there is room to improve.'
The teaching of the man he had respected came back to him.