༺ 𓆩 Chapter 36 — La Tu Balaka (1) 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
Clang—!!! Clang—!!!
Bessemer's axe swept through the air. The King of Wolves's claws struck it and rebounded with a spray of sparks.
Krrn!
A Hellwolf, which had been watching for its opening, lunged at Bessemer. He managed to cleave one of them down, but the next had already flown at his throat, and he could do no more than give it his shoulder.
The Hellwolf bit down and thrashed its head from side to side as though it meant to rip the shoulder free of the man's body. Bessemer's brow furrowed, only slightly, and then he slammed his fist down upon the ridge of the beast's snout.
Yipe!
The Hellwolf retreated with a cry that ill-suited its bulk. It had moved only to escape the pain, by instinct, but what waited at the end of its flinch was the rising edge of his axe. The blow took half its neck clean through. A mortal wound.
The haft of the axe, sticky with blood only just beginning to dry, grew slick again beneath the fresh wetness.
Under the watching eyes of the Hellwolves, Bessemer set to flaying the dying wolf in plain view. He troubled himself not at all to hide what he was doing.
Whine—!!! Whine—!!! Kiiing—!!!
The dying beast writhed and thrashed against the pain. Yet, with Bessemer's axe driven into its spine and the brute strength of his grip peeling the hide from its back, it could not resist. By the time he had torn the skin free, the wolf was already dead.
Rrrrriiip!
What he had torn away was only a portion of the hide. He gripped that and tore it again, longer, with the same crude strength of his hand, and wrapped it about the arm that held the axe as though it were a bandage. He bound the haft tightly so his grip could not slip. His hands moved with the sureness of a man who had done this many times before.
Through all of it, not one of the Hellwolves dared to move against him. Their tails and ears hung low as though they had been cowed by the screams of their dying kin.
Alone among them, only the King of Wolves still stood upright, glaring at Bessemer without flinching. His right eye shone yellow, but his left, scarred through with a long mark, was a cloudy grey-white, the sight of it dead. No fur had grown back along the line of that scar, and so the wound seemed all the more plain. Blood that had run from his severed ear pooled in the clouded eye and trickled down.
Bessemer finished with the wolfskin bound around his three-fingered hand and the haft, and met the King of Wolves's gaze.
The reason the King of Wolves had lost the sight of his left eye. No man knew that better than Bessemer himself.
As a child, Bessemer had wanted to be strong. His brothers had told him that if he ate the mountain devil mushroom, he would grow strong, and he had believed it. He had gone deep into the Black Forest in search of it, and there he had come face to face with a vast bear.
It had been no mere bear. It was a magic-beast.
When he had felt the certainty of his own death upon him, his father, the great warrior and chieftain, had come for him. With one fearsome blow of his axe he had felled the monster. Yet he had not altogether escaped the beast's claws.
‘Do not weep. You are a warrior.’
Though half his father's face had been running with blood, the man had spoken plainly and without complaint.
The clouded grey-white eye of the King of Wolves. That sight-dead and hazy eye was the only trace of his father that remained to Bessemer. And it was the reason for this fight.
How long had he longed for this fight? How long had he waited for this exchange of words? This was the moment he had wished for beyond all wishing.
All the words he and his father had never spoken, all the longing and all the blame, he would send to the man through the axe his father had given him.
"Ra tu Valaka."
Bessemer drew a deep breath and closed his fist upon the haft.
***⚜***
Krrn!
The King of Wolves slipped the upward cut Bessemer had thrown, set his claws into the earth, and coiled for a powerful bound. Where he had launched himself, blood and mud flew into the air.
What he had his eye on was the arm that gripped the axe. He meant, perhaps, to tear it clean off this time, for his jaws were wide as he came.
Bessemer twisted his body aside, meaning to slip out of the line of the King of Wolves's charge and find his counter. But the King of Wolves's motion that followed was not the driving of his fangs into the man's flesh. Instead, he hurled the mass of his enormous body into Bessemer and drove him off his feet.
"Khk!"
The shock of so vast a beast at speed was tremendous. Bessemer was thrown back through a burning tent, smashing it down as he flew.
“Will he be alright like that?”
"Leave him. This is for Bessemer to do."
Isaac caught Carlson's arm as the man moved to raise his sword.
Matters had taken on a strange cast. Something beyond understanding had settled in the air between Bessemer and the King of Wolves, and with it the battle between the Hellwolves and the soldiers had quieted. Without any command given, the two sides had drawn apart and ringed the open ground in a broad circle.
They stood watching. How their leader fought. They held their breath, and their eyes did not leave him.
"And besides, you know it, don't you? There is no better turn of events than this."
"……"
Carlson said nothing to that, his gaze going back and forth between Bessemer and the King of Wolves.
It was as Isaac said. They were outmatched in numbers. Man for man, they were outmatched as well. That they had held out this long was a mercy in itself, but had the fighting dragged on, the losses would have been close to annihilation.
The only way out was the death of the King of Wolves.
And now, through this duel between the King of Wolves and Bessemer, the fighting between Hellwolves and soldiers had ceased. If Bessemer prevailed, there would be no further cost paid in blood. And even if he did not prevail, the King of Wolves would be drained, and more easily put down. In the meanwhile, Isaac and Carlson would keep their strength in reserve.
Tromp—!!!
Tromp—!!!
Leaving the toppled tent behind him, the giant came limping out. His face and body were smeared with soot. From pierced and stabbed and sliced wounds, fresh blood ran in sheets, and old blood crusted upon his skin in dark patches.
With the left hand that did not hold the axe, he wiped down his face. The blood and the ash upon his palm left long vertical lines down it. Very like the war-paint his tribesmen drew upon themselves before battle.
Five paces from the King of Wolves, the giant halted.
Clack—!!!
The giant leveled his axe at the King of Wolves.
Grrrr
Heavy furrows drew themselves across the King of Wolves's brow and the ridge of his snout.
"My lord."
"Aye. I know."
Isaac nodded at Carlson's words. Of all those upon that ground, only Isaac and Carlson understood mana as it ought to be understood. And so they could sense it. That tingling along the skin.
The King of Wolves, like Bessemer, could wield mana. Not that either of them had learned the art. As a man's heart beats and his lungs draw breath, both were using it without so much as a thought.
And perhaps this was why the soldiers and the Hellwolves had fallen still. They had felt it by instinct.
A mana at once slow-burning and deep, its edge keen, had begun to gather about the giant and the King of Wolves.
By the time the mana had massed thickly enough that a pale blue light could be seen by the naked eye about them, in the same moment, and without either hesitating before the other, the giant and the King of Wolves hurled themselves forward.
With a rending of air, claw and axe-edge met, and met again.
It did not sound like claws striking steel, but like thunder breaking.
A beat later, the air spreading from the point of impact chilled the soldiers to the spine.
The shockwave raised every hair on their bodies.
Crash—!!!
The battle turned against Bessemer.
He was blocking the King of Wolves' blows, yet could not shake the feeling that it was only barely so.
Every strike was so heavy it felt as though the joints inside his body rang from the impact. His feet sank deeper into the mud or were driven backward. Depending on where the King of Wolves struck, his whole body reeled. The shockwaves deafened his ears.
He swung the axe on instinct, but did not know how he was still blocking, nor what would happen next.
Yet, for all that, Bessemer felt no threat.
He did not feel as though he would die. He might be beaten down, but the sense that his life hung by a thread was nowhere upon him.
Had his survival instinct gone dull, drowned in the frenzy of the fight? No. No, that was not it.
The left forepaw, tearing through the air on the slant. When he lowered his body to let it pass, the right forepaw, as though waiting for it, came driving up from below. When he beat it aside with the axe, as though the King of Wolves had foreseen that too, a heavy charge would come slamming in behind it.
At some point along the way, the King of Wolves had ceased to use his teeth at all. As though he were a man with a weapon in each hand, he was fighting with his forepaws and his body alone.
And the chain of those attacks was something Bessemer knew. Too well. It kept summoning up a very old memory, again and again.
How am I supposed to block something like that!
If you cannot block something like that, you will die in battle.
But—!
Do you think there is a "but" upon a battlefield? You are my sons. One of you will lead the tribe. And if ever I walk the wrong road, one of you shall have to stop me. You may voice your complaints once you are dead.
So his father had spoken, stern-faced, to the brothers whining and rubbing where the stick he used in place of an axe had struck them. And in every bout that followed, he would deliver blows for which they could not even begin to conceive a defense, and grind them down into despair.
Rise! Rise, Bessemer! How long do you mean to weep? Get up and lay hand to your weapon. For a warrior who has abandoned the fight, there is nothing left but death.
That was it.
What stood before Bessemer now was, in body, a great wolf. But in the manner of its fighting, it was his father of the old days. The chieftain who had brought despair down upon his challengers with the axes gripped in either hand.
The King of Wolves's forepaws were swung like axes. Their arc and the shift of weight behind them were known to Bessemer.
It was as though he were at last holding the coming-of-age rite he had never managed to complete. The last trial of the Baitur rite had been to withstand the blows of the great wolf that was one's chieftain.
The axe-stroke he had never once been able to turn aside as a child. He was turning it now, well enough to be called turning. But for all the ten-and-some years since, still it strained him to his limit.
And yet, somehow, a smile had begun to force its way onto Bessemer's face.
Do you remember this one, Father? The rhino's walk you taught me.
Two short steps and then one long, and Bessemer drove his axe up from below. The King of Wolves slipped back lightly and avoided it.
And this? The wolf-cleave, the first stroke I ever got right as a boy.
Bessemer pursued the King of Wolves into the distance he had opened and brought the axe straight down from high. As Bessemer drove into his guard, the King of Wolves lashed out with a forepaw.
Crash—!!!
The exchange went on, stroke after stroke. Bessemer looked as though he might fall at any moment, and when he put his whole soul into a swing he had to hold his breath and would be choking for want of air. And yet, for all that suffering, his body, caught up in its own momentum, would not stop moving.
But there was a limit. That could not be helped.
Crash—!!!
Another cloven howl through the air, another shockwave sweeping the open ground. Bessemer's guard collapsed. His body had long since passed what it could bear. His legs could not hold his unbalanced trunk, and at last he was thrown down.
Over him, where he had fallen into the earth, a great black shadow came down. He could see nothing of it but the two eyes glowing yellow above him.
Krrrn!
By a hair, Bessemer got the haft of the axe across the King of Wolves's jaws.
Grk. Grk.
Teeth, each one like a well-whetted dagger, scored and gnawed the iron of the haft.
"Wait."
Just as Carlson raised his sword, Isaac stretched out an arm before him.
"At this rate he dies."
"Can you not see? He is smiling."
At Isaac's words, Carlson narrowed his eyes and looked at Bessemer.
As Isaac had said, Bessemer was smiling.
"Well, of course. The man is not in his right mind."
"Are you sure of that?"
While Carlson fidgeted in place, Isaac watched Bessemer with calm eyes. The King of Wolves's jaws were all but at Bessemer's face. At any moment his head might be crushed between those teeth. And yet Isaac could feel no unease at all.
Two warriors stood there. The two warriors were speaking to one another. There was no cup passing between them, no word exchanged aloud. But to Isaac's eyes, this was a conversation between a father and a son, fiercely loosening the old emotions that had long sat between them.
"Let us not interfere with their last talk."
"My lord?"
Carlson asked again, but Isaac did not answer. He only folded his arms and watched.
Bessemer was remembering. The last lesson his father had given him.
If ever you face a foe you cannot defeat, wait until the very last moment. The moment when you think everything is finished, that is your chance to strike back. Your enemy will grow careless.
To demonstrate, his father had, in a bout with another warrior, deliberately let himself be pressed down. His back had been to the ground, and his standing opponent's downward strokes had been merciless. In that very moment, with a skill that bordered on art, his father had slipped the crisis.
This was the same.
What had his father done, in that moment?
Bessemer thought it through. Or rather, his body moved before the thought could finish.
Both hands tightened upon the haft. One leg rose. And then, with everything he had left to give, he drove his body into a turn that bent inward along the line of his raised leg.
The muscles along his thigh, his hip, the sinews of his lumbar, all tightened with a spring's tension and threw themselves into that rotation.
Clack.
Where the haft had been, the King of Wolves's teeth clashed upon one another. The axe slipped free of his jaws and turned, in a single instant, a full revolution, and grazed the King of Wolves across the cheek.
The King of Wolves flinched and drew back. Bessemer sprang after him without pause. He aimed the stroke precisely at the King of Wolves's brow.
The axe-edge drew a straight line through the empty air.
Father, I have been too long.
A night of singing grass-insects. Deep in the Black Forest, upon the piled wood, the corpses of warriors burned. These were the bodies of those who had died to Goethe in defeat. They had fought and died as warriors, and so their souls would surely have gone to Valaka.
The youngest, Bessemer, stood at the King of Wolves's side.
The King of Wolves was no longer in the shape of a great silver wolf. He was in the shape of the Baitur chieftain. Silver hair hanging loose, beard grown down to his chest. An old warrior.
Beside that giant of a chieftain, Bessemer stood as a small child. The very shape he had worn back when they had mocked him, calling him "coward Bessemer."
"Your timing was well met."
The King of Wolves spoke.
It was a mighty soul that had held off the beast within for thirteen years without being devoured. And even so, now, it had been on the very brink of being consumed by the wolf-nature itself. In the welling up of blood and impulse, it had been losing the shape and the reason of a man.
"So you meant to face me this time?"
"With Birpi dead, what meaning is left to my being?"
"Do you hold it against me?"
"……"
The King of Wolves laid his hand upon the child Bessemer's shoulder. It was a hand heavy as though iron had been laid upon him.
"My soul shall be free. And so shall the souls of our kin. That is your doing, Bessemer."
"……"
"But is your soul free as well?"
"……"
Bessemer could not answer.
"For what, now, shall you live?"
"I do not know. But I shall find it."
"Aye."
The King of Wolves nodded once and laid his thick hand upon the boy's head.
“Vinfeldt… I leave to you.”
Thud—!!!
The great wolf toppled, all strength gone from him. The edge of the axe was buried deep between his brows.
Bessemer, no longer with the strength to keep hold of the axe, slid down against the corpse of the King of Wolves and sat there, leaning upon it.
"I shall wait in Balaka."
He thought he heard his father's voice.
END σϝ CHAPTER