Chapter 70 - If You Keep Taking One Step at a Time (2)

Life is an endless series of choices.

A moment comes that no one can take in your place, one you must endure alone.

"I can't follow an order that shitty."

And only when that moment of choice arrives do people realize what they truly are.

Because that is the moment when they can cast off the shell that has surrounded them until then.

Beneath the night sky where the full moon hung, the dwarves sobbed, unable to bring themselves to board the ferry before them.

Their gaunt faces and ruined beards showed the hardship of their lives.

"This isn't right."

A knight of enormous build.

The knight, sword drawn, stepped forward and shielded the terrified dwarves with his own body.

"Do you mean to disobey an order, Jorge?"

"You are not my lord, Sigmund."

The knight of enormous build.

Jorge.

He glared fiercely at the man before him and spoke.

"I swore loyalty to Count Gaidar, and you are not him."

"The order I brought bears my father's seal."

Sigmund roughly waved the order in front of Jorge.

The seal of the Gaidar Family gleaming beneath the moonlight was truth, with not a trace of forgery.

"..."

Whatever the true intent contained within the order might have been, the procedure and justification Sigmund held were perfect.

A knight who did not obey him would be disobeying an order, and that meant betraying the oath of a knight.

"I am a person. I can't follow an order like that."

"..."

And Jorge made his choice.

He would spit out the knight's oath together with that false order.

At those words, the knights began to move.

Those who agreed with Jorge went to his side.

Those who wished to obey their lord's command, even if it was false, went to Sigmund's side.

As their gazes brushed past one another, the knights bit their lips.

Godin looked at Jorge with hesitation in his heart, but his senior only nodded with the same blunt expression as always.

"Do what you want to do."

"... I'm sorry."

"Go."

At a crossroads of choice where no one could say who was right or wrong, Godin took a step forward.

Toward glory and honor.

And toward a world where he could shine even brighter.

Godin was a knight.

※※※※

"Come in."

At the voice from inside, Vlad took one deep breath and opened the door to the mayor's office.

Afternoon sunlight shone brightly through the window where the curtains had been thrown wide open.

There sat the man with dark shadows under his eyes, his back to that sunlight, and his knights.

"I heard you summoned me."

"I did."

Joseph straightened his back where he sat and looked at Vlad as he came in through the open door.

The boy, whom he was seeing for the first time since giving him the order of confinement, looked somewhat more serious than he had when he defied him.

"I hear you've been busy."

"... A little."

Seeing Vlad mumble his answer, Joseph gave a faint smile.

Sometimes the boy rushed in like fire, yet in cases like this he held his place heavily, so there was truly no getting a read on him.

"The city is full of rumors about you. About the pitch-black horse as well."

A hint of mischief flickered for a moment in Joseph's smile as he looked at the boy.

"Was it Lady Zemina?"

"..."

"If Baroness Alicia hears of this, she will beat her breast in grief. Are you still keeping her handkerchief safe?"

When Zemina came up, Vlad had no choice but to smile awkwardly.

To be honest, he had not even imagined things would grow this big.

Someone might have used the title as a joke, but the name Lady Zemina was certainly drifting through Soara along with the reputation the boy had built up.

"I'm sorry."

"What is there to be sorry to me for? Just take care that sparks don't fly my way later."

Joseph nodded as he looked at the boy slowly moving forward toward the goal of becoming a knight.

Now the worth of the boy's name had risen so high that it could prove not only his own honor, but someone else's as well.

So he had to tell him here.

Because he could not let him run wild like a naked little savage forever.

"The reason I called you today is to give you something."

"...?"

At Joseph's suddenly serious tone, Vlad lifted his head.

"That day, in the village in the Barony of Uthman, you defied my order and saved the children. Is that correct?"

"... It is."

As the matter from back then came from Joseph's mouth once more, Vlad's posture grew cautious.

But Joseph had no intention of bringing up something already over in order to frighten the boy.

Vlad had already paid the price of his sin through confinement.

"What will you do if something like that happens again? Will you disobey my order this time as well?"

Looking at Joseph, who had suddenly asked him again about that day, Vlad was briefly flustered.

He hurriedly turned his eyes and looked around at the other knights nearby, but all of them merely wore subtle expressions, and no one offered him any particular advice.

Because Joseph's question now was something only Vlad himself had to think about, answer, and bear.

"The children were dying."

Vlad bit his lip and answered Joseph's question.

Even if he was punished again, there was nothing he could do about it.

He was a person who had sworn to offer Joseph his faith, so he could not tell a lie before him.

"If you are asking whether I would do the same thing, then yes."

Though his movements were hesitant, his eyes did not waver, and Joseph nodded as he looked at Vlad.

As expected, he would make the same choice.

Vlad's answer made Joseph feel bitter, but it also made him smile.

Because it was for this side of him that he had chosen the boy.

"Honor is a light that shines upon others, but conscience is a light that shines upon oneself."

Joseph slowly rose from his seat and spoke to the boy.

Though his body was slight, the presence flowing from him naturally drew all eyes to him.

"And it is also a compass that shows you the road when you have lost the place you must go."

With that answer just now, Joseph had clearly grasped the boy, and the boy, too, must have learned who he himself was.

In order not to be swept away by the muddy back alleys, Vlad had set his own standard, and because of that, he had been able to look up at a shining star.

And if that standard were expressed in a single word, it would be conscience.

"You have found your path, so I hope this armor will help you protect your conscience."

With those words, Joseph pulled away the cloth standing beside him.

Armor gleaming in the afternoon sunlight.

Vlad opened his mouth as he looked at the light shining toward him.

"This is..."

"It is armor sent from San Rosino. As they are the group that handles iron armor the most, it is armor in which all sorts of techniques have been incorporated."

When Joseph finished speaking, Vlad looked down at his own leather armor, torn open in places.

Each pitifully torn scar was engraved with the road he had walked until now, but it was armor that could no longer protect the boy.

"Go on."

Lamund, who had been sitting quietly at the reception table until now, jerked his chin at the hesitating Vlad.

He could not go on forever wearing a shattered shell over himself.

Because the being called Vlad had grown too large to be fully contained by the words "a prospect Bayezid had its eye on."

"Yes."

The boy took one step toward the armor bathed in sunlight.

He had done what he wanted to do, and he had done what he had to do.

San Rosino testified to the boy's struggle.

With the knights here as witnesses.

The boy wore the armor given by San Rosino.

On one side of the boy's shining breastplate was engraved a single phrase from that day, witnessed by the holy knights.

The phrase that he was a knight who protected the breath of children.

※※※※

"As expected, in the North, we must pay attention to the Iron Duke and Bayezid's knights. There is talk these days that the knights of House Uthman are making unusual moves, but..."

Inside the office lit by candlelight.

In the place where Gaidar's knights and retainers had gathered, Godin was reviewing the report.

"Tell me."

"Yes."

At Godin's instruction, his adjutant began reciting the list of knights they had investigated so far.

"Schwanden, Mikhail, Vastro, knights of the Iron Duke's House Baranoff..."

"Antalas, Rutiger, Agos, knights of Count Bayezid's house..."

Godin listened intently to the names of the knights reaching his ears.

Having driven out the Romanov Family, Gaidar had now become the conqueror of the West in name and reality, and now their gaze was turned not toward the West, but toward other regions.

"There are no changed names in the Bayezid Family."

"Other than Rutiger, Count Bayezid's son, there are no especially noteworthy figures."

New names were appearing one after another in Baranoff, the Iron Duke's house, but Bayezid had not changed at all from the names reported several years before.

"It seems they failed at generational change."

"... We cannot judge hastily."

At the voice from beside him, Godin shook his head.

The weight carried by the name Bayezid was not something that could be measured by a single report.

Perhaps there were knights who had not revealed their names, as he himself once had.

"Come to think of it, there is a somewhat unusual trend in Bayezid."

"Tell me."

The adjutant, who had hesitated for a moment over whether he should say even this, saw Godin urging him with his eyes and uttered a name not written in the report.

"He is not a knight, but they say there is a boy among Bayezid's squires who is standing out."

"His name?"

The adjutant searched through his mind for a moment and pulled up a name that had sunk there.

"They say it is Vlad. His place of origin is Soara in Bayezid County."

"..."

Hearing the adjutant's words, Godin frowned and looked into the distance.

It was certainly a name he remembered, yet it did not readily come to mind.

"He was the boy who appeared first in the honorable duel at Deirmar...but there were only unbelievable rumors, so I could not confirm it accurately."

There was a reason the adjutant had hesitated to utter Vlad's name.

"They say he emitted aura there...but it is not certain."

"Aura? A squire?"

The other knights listening to the adjutant's report snorted and laughed.

Because judging that the information they had collected was wrong was more credible than believing a rumor that a young brat, not even a knight, had already emitted aura.

"Soara... Vlad..."

But even amid the knights' ridicule, Godin merely closed his eyes quietly and recalled the memories of that day.

When he murmured the name of a city that did not feel unfamiliar, he was able to remember the blond boy he had met on the white plain.

The boy who had sat beside the campfire and looked at him.

In the blue eyes of the boy who had seen aura for the first time in his life, there had been a light like stars.

"... Understood. Everyone, commit the current names to memory."

Godin, Sigmund Count's new Captain.

At his command, Gaidar's knights bowed their heads and left the Captain's office.

"Vlad, was it."

Godin sat in his chair, leaned his head back, and smiled quietly.

He had been a bold one.

If possible, he had wanted to bring him along, but a fate-like bond had separated the two of them.

Though Godin had not imagined that Bayezid's squire who had emitted aura might be the boy he had seen, he merely recalled the faces of the people in his memories.

["Do what you want to do."]

Another person who came to mind together with the boy's name.

Godin quietly thought as he rolled in his mouth the words Jorge had said to him that night.

What would it have been like if he had followed Jorge back then?

"... There is no way I would have."

Godin gave a bitter smile and shook his head.

At the crossroads of choice, Godin had crossed the line toward Sigmund, not Jorge.

The moment he moved his feet and crossed that line, Godin realized who he was.

What he wanted, what he wished to do.

Even what he had to do from then on.

"Is that brat living well?"

In the empty office, the quiet sound of Godin's whistle echoed out.