Chapter 150 - As You Sow, So Shall You Reap (2)

There was a vast canyon that looked as if it had risen straight out of the earth.

The tips of the canyon, jutting up sharp as awls, were fierce enough to pierce the sky, and their steeply slanting shape looked as if they might come crashing down on the wasteland at any moment.

"This is as far as we go."

A wasteland where dry dust drifted through the air.

Peter lowered the cloth covering his mouth and quietly looked at the canyon blocking the way ahead.

Between his narrowed eyes, he could see a massive gate far in the distance.

"So that is the Orlangbar Gate I've only ever heard about, Father."

"It is."

At his son's quiet words as he came up beside him, Peter gave a silent nod.

As Rutiger had said, the gate standing as if to block the narrow canyon was Orlangbar Gate, one of the thresholds the West prided itself on.

The natural fortress, famous enough to be known even in the North, which had little exchange with the West, sat within the canyon and perfectly cut off the road heading west.

"They call it the wall of the West, and it truly does not look easy to break through."

Rutiger shaded his eyes with his palm and looked at Orlangbar Gate ahead.

The narrow, winding gap between the canyon walls, like the path of a snake, was said to have once been the bed of a river in ages long past.

If that had been so, then the place where they now stood would likely have been one of the great river's branches, not a dry wasteland.

"The advance... stops here."

When Peter gave the order, the thousands of soldiers who had reached the canyon entrance came to an orderly halt.

It was precisely at a point where they could make out the soldiers squirming atop the gate far ahead.

"This should be enough."

After giving his order, Peter raised his head and looked at the entrance of the canyon they had entered.

It was not as well positioned as the gate ahead, but this place too was just as narrow and rugged.

It was terrain that seemed capable of fulfilling its role well enough, if even a rough fortress were built there.

"The allied forces?"

"They are said to be coming down two days behind us, my lord."

"Good."

After hearing the report from his adviser Ragmus, Peter looked at Orlangbar Gate.

As expected, it was a western gate that seemed as though it would allow no invasion.

"... Once we put a lid on this, this war will be over."

But a narrow, deep passageway would not apply only to those trying to enter.

Those trying to come out would also have to force their way through it, so the disadvantage nature had created would be equal to all.

"We wait here until the allied forces arrive."

"Understood."

At Peter's order, thousands of the Bayezid army began making camp within the entrance of the canyon.

Yet the western forces ahead only watched the scene and could not think of rashly coming forward.

"We will end this war here."

At Peter's low words, the officers around him nodded.

It had begun with Gaidar, but Bayezid would bring it to an end.

By sealing off Orlangbar Gorge, the gateway of the West.

The Northern Alliance forces that would still be coming down behind them were men arriving under the Iron Duke's orders to build a fortress at the canyon entrance.

The fortress newly built from this point on was meant to shut in the West while also becoming the southernmost outpost of the Northern Alliance forces aiming at the Central.

* * *

Soara in the sunlit afternoon.

The light coming through the window was warm, but Got, who faced it, only broke into a cold sweat.

"... Yes, Got. Welcome back to Soara."

Was it because his back was to the sunlight, or because the shadows beneath his eyes had grown darker since they had last met?

Joseph's face looked dark as he gazed at Got.

"Th-Thank you."

TWANG, TWANG.

But for Got, there was something even harder to endure than Joseph's dark face or the murderous glare Jager was sending him.

"Is this not the knot?"

"..."

The sound of Vlad's rope came from beside him.

A squire's mistake was a knight's mistake, and Vlad, who had been dragged here without knowing why because of that, was now quietly tying knots beside him.

A thick rope that seemed more than capable of handling one grown man was gradually turning into an ominous knot at Vlad's fingertips.

The sort that seemed fit for a gallows...

"Yes. We can decide right and wrong later."

Got, whose mind had been briefly stolen by the rope, forced himself to get a grip and decided to focus on Joseph's words.

Though it had been true only in name, he was someone who had insulted the child of a count's house, and the one before him, Joseph, would be the one to decide his punishment for it.

"I heard you came up from the Central. I want to hear about that place."

"Yes, sir! Understood!"

Joseph's gaze began to sweep over Got's appearance.

His hollow cheeks and his clothes, torn and dirtied here and there.

Even a glance showed that his journey until now had not been easy.

"A few months ago, I parted ways with Sir Vlad in the city of Marcina..."

The beginning of his memory was in Got's hometown.

After the battle with Colin the mud boar, Got, who had urgently fled as a refugee, had ultimately been unable to turn away from his family and so had parted ways with Vlad.

"Marcina should be a city with a decent foundation of its own."

"Yes. It certainly was."

As Joseph said, the city of Marcina was a fairly decent place.

Although it stood before war, it was not a city one could imagine being easily occupied, and so Got had planned to use the money he had received from Vlad to secure his family's safety, then leave for Soara again.

"The Central is in complete chaos right now. As if everyone had been waiting for this moment, wars are breaking out everywhere, bandits are plundering..."

But in the end, Got had failed to find safe land where he could leave his family.

Just before Marcina fell, Got and his family barely escaped the city and wandered through several nearby towns, but all they found was the conflagration of war beginning to spread everywhere.

"Is it truly that serious?"

"Do not even ask. Territory Wars are breaking out all over the Central now, to the point that cities without fires are rare."

As if the memory alone made him shudder, Got's face began to turn pale.

How bad would it have to be for him to have brought his elderly mother all the way to Soara, a city in the North?

Though he could not trust him deeply, Joseph knew that Got was not a man who would play foolish tricks, so he merely nodded in silence.

"I see."

Although there were telegrams sent by crows, they ultimately belonged to his father, the master of Bayezid, and Joseph could obtain only fragmentary information.

In the midst of that, now that he had heard the vivid testimony of one who had experienced it, Joseph was able to recognize that the situation in the Central was far more serious than he had expected.

"Rest for a moment, then come back here this evening. We will need you to mark in detail on a map the path you took."

"Understood, Lord Joseph!"

If Got's words were true, the central authority that had been creaking even before the Emperor's death had finally collapsed.

If so, now that the Emperor was dead, it would begin to shake all the more.

After all, with an emperor of weak legitimacy already being put forward, there could be no better opportunity for the nobles who had been holding their breath until now.

"Of course, before coming to me, you must first receive forgiveness from Miss Charles. Vlad?"

"... Understood."

At Joseph's order, Vlad rose from his seat, clicked his tongue, and began untying the knot.

Seeing that, Got was relieved that he had survived, but he did not see that Vlad was soon tying the rope into a different shape.

The knot that made the end blunt looked, at a glance, very much like a whip.

* * *

"Uuugh..."

"Stop whining."

Vlad grimaced as he watched Got flail toward his back, which he could not reach.

"You need at least that much of a mark for her to let you off."

"I mean, that's true..."

Several fierce red welts were etched across Got's clothes.

Joseph had lightly told him to receive an apology from Charles, but it was all too obvious that the process would not be smooth.

"No, I swear, no matter how I looked at it, she was just a stablehand."

"Should I change the knot?"

"... Why was she doing that? Why on earth?"

Even Got, sharp-eyed as he was, had not been able to tell from Charles's outward appearance that she was a noble, let alone a girl.

That must have been how full of venom the girl's eyes were.

"They say her nanny cried and screamed and made a huge fuss. So when you go there, keep your head down as if you were dead."

"... Got it, boss."

After hearing Got's dispirited reply, Vlad scratched his head and thought of Marta, Charles's nanny.

She was the woman who had shielded Charles rather than herself even when she had been pierced by an arrow.

Though he had done it unknowingly, what Got had done was plainly an act of insulting a noble, so her anger would likely not be easily soothed.

"Should I hit you a few more times?"

"... Should you?"

Just as Vlad was looking at Got's back and wondering whether wounds of this degree would be enough to calm her anger, the murmuring voices of soldiers began to come from outside.

"What? Did something happen?"

"Mind your own business."

"No, it looks like everyone's running in."

At Got's gesture with his chin, shrugging as if to tell him to look over there, Vlad stuck his head out the window.

Sure enough, just as Got had said, guards were running into city hall.

Some came hurrying on horseback, some came running in a panic.

But if all of them had one thing in common, it was that they all wore expressions of great alarm.

"What is it?"

At this hour, every guard should have been patrolling the city.

The fact that such men were flocking to city hall meant that an incident had occurred that had to be reported urgently.

"Hey."

"Yes? Y-Yes, Lord Vlad!"

The guard who had been running down the corridor recognized Vlad and hurriedly saluted.

"What happened?"

"That is, well!"

He was utterly out of breath, but his face looked as if this was actually fortunate.

After all, the only knight in this city who could move was Vlad.

"Right now, up the river, against the current, a suspicious ship is approaching!"

"A suspicious ship?"

Though he said suspicious ship with his mouth, the guard's arms were spread wide.

"It is huge?"

"Yes, sir!"

A very large suspicious ship coming up the river against the current.

Before the panting guard, knight and squire began looking at each other.

* * *

What the hell is that!

I have never seen a ship like that in my life!

Soara's guards were using their spear shafts to push back the people beginning to crowd toward the docks.

However, there was nothing they could do about the back-alley group that was already inside.

"Boss!"

"... What is that?"

The back-alley boss Captain Hoover was watching the ship coming up against the river's current from the highest point of his building.

Even for him, a man who had drifted across the sea for decades, it was a sight that left his mouth hanging open.

"How did that get all the way up here?"

Hoover, with all his experience, could tell.

A ship of that size should never be able to sail up a river.

Soara's river was wide, but its waters were shallow, so with a ship that large, the bottom of the vessel would touch the riverbed.

Considering that the two ships said to have been captured during the recent Nassau expedition were still anchored out at sea, the sight before his eyes should have been absolutely impossible.

"Waterwheels?"

Yet as he watched that ship gradually reveal its majesty, Hoover could only gape.

There was a type of ship there that even the old captain, who had sailed the seas for so long, had never seen before.

"We are not suspicious people! Lower your spears!"

Contrary to the words of the man shouting at the top of his lungs from the deck, the ship that had appeared before the people was, to anyone's eyes, a suspicious ship.

An unidentified ship that was moving even though its sails were furled.

On both sides of that strange ship, waterwheels were still tirelessly pushing through the current.

"Bring us the lord of the humans, Joseph Bayezid! We have come to this Soara to answer his letter!"

The voice of a man small in build but sturdy-looking rang all across Soara's docks.

A rough voice, as if a horn had been fixed to his throat, began to echo across the docks of Soara.

"If Joseph Bayezid is not here! Then bring us Vlad, knight of the humans!"

Vlad, who had only just arrived at the docks, widened his eyes when the man he had never seen before in his life called for him.

"What the hell. Is that someone you know, boss?"

"That... doesn't look human."

At Got's question, Vlad narrowed his eyes and looked into the distance, and soon he began to see a flag fluttering atop the ship.

On that flag was engraved a shape entirely different from any crest he had seen until now.

"We come from the dwarf liberation front!"

A pattern like a hammer striking down on an anvil.

It was the flag that signified the dwarf liberation front Nidavellir.