Chapter 72 - The Dragon with a Cold Heart (2)

"This time, it'll take a month."

With those words, Vlad pulled over a small chair, leaned against the wall, and began tending to his sword.

The unadorned sword gleaming in the candlelight was, as always, putting the boy's heart at ease.

"Hmm. Being busy is a good thing."

Zemina, who had answered Vlad halfheartedly, was sitting on the bed, holding the flag in her arms as she sewed.

Beside the crests embroidered by a noble lady, another crest was being stitched in by the red-haired girl.

"You're doing well these days, Vlad."

Zemina, who had been concentrating every nerve on her sewing so it would not look shameful beside the crests already there, suddenly lifted her head as if something had occurred to her and looked at Vlad before her.

"Your mother would have been happy if she could have seen this."

Vlad looked at the girl, who had abruptly brought up his mother, with a subtle expression.

Zemina would sometimes fluster Vlad with conversations that came out of nowhere like this.

"... Why are you bringing that up all of a sudden?"

"I don't know, I just suddenly remembered."

Now that more than ten years had passed, there were few people left who remembered Vlad's mother, but Zemina was one of those very few.

One of the truly few people with whom he could speak of memories no one else remembered.

"I don't remember my mother, but I remember yours."

"... You do?"

Traces like scars were buried in the words the girl let slip so casually.

Vlad's mother had let go of her son through death, but Zemina's mother had not.

Like countless children of the back alleys, Zemina was an abandoned child.

"I don't really remember my mother either."

There were some wounds one could not tend to by oneself.

Having found those traces in Zemina's words, Vlad merely answered indifferently, as if it were nothing.

Because that was one of the few considerations he could offer the girl.

"Done."

Whether she had properly heard Vlad's troubled words or not, Zemina brushed off her hands, stood up, and proudly fluttered the white flag.

"It doesn't stand out too much, right? The countess's work was just too good."

The white flag by which the boy proved himself.

And upon it, a new crest the red-haired girl had embroidered for him.

"... You won't notice from far away."

The crest of San Rosino glittered in the candlelight.

Just as Vlad had pretended not to care out of consideration for Zemina, Zemina too was acting as usual out of consideration for Vlad, who was going somewhere dangerous.

She had never seen a dragon herself, but it was surely a dangerous being.

Otherwise, there would have been no reason for the experienced old knight in the next room to be making such thorough preparations.

"You'll be back in winter, then."

"Probably. Autumn passes quickly, after all."

"Then take this too."

Vlad looked puzzled at the piece of cloth Zemina casually tossed onto the bedside.

"What's this?"

"It's a handkerchief."

Looking down at the handkerchief as white as the flag, Vlad let out a hollow laugh.

It seemed she had been worrying about that all this time.

"Did you have nothing else to do?"

"I made it for you because it was pitiful watching you carry around a handkerchief you couldn't even use."

At Zemina's words, Vlad picked up the handkerchief and examined it closely.

As Zemina had said, Alicia's handkerchief was made of splendid silk, so it had not been made for actual use.

"It's pure cotton. It'll be good for all sorts of things."

Looking at the traces of Zemina having done the best she could, Vlad quietly held the handkerchief in his hand.

Zemina left after telling him to be careful on his way.

Left alone in the room, Vlad carefully folded the handkerchief with Zemina's name on it and tucked it into his chest.

"... If you made it to be used, why did you embroider your name on it?"

It seemed Zemina's handkerchief, which would sleep alongside Alicia's, was not fated to serve the purpose the girl intended.

Because Vlad had pushed it deep into his breastplate so it would not come loose easily.

* * *

The party moved north along a snowy field where white plains stretched on endlessly.

After more than a week of advancing, they finally reached the northernmost end of Bayezid County and were about half a day's distance from their destination, Berenheim Fortress.

There, where they would be blocking the barbarians' southward movement and scouting Lindwurm, the knights Rutiger had deployed in advance would be waiting for the party.

"I distinctly asked for just you."

"..."

"But I distinctly asked to be given one, and he gave me three. What do you suppose that means?"

"... Perhaps he was being considerate of his elder brother?"

Rutiger firmly shook his head at Vlad's uncertain answer.

"There is no doubt that bastard Joseph has some kind of complaint against me. You think so too, don't you?"

Seeing Rutiger speak with such conviction, Vlad could only shrug.

There was no way Joseph had done it on purpose, but looking at the two men glaring at each other behind them, it was a situation that could invite such a misunderstanding.

A warrior of the barbarians and an old knight of Bayezid.

If handled well, they would certainly be of great use, but for now, the sight of the two men, who could not possibly mix, only gave Rutiger a headache.

"We haven't even arrived yet, and I'm already drained. From now on, you manage those two."

"I'm not in any position to do that."

It was a refusal with its own reasons, but Vlad had no choice but to nod when he saw Rutiger, whose eyes had grown as shadowed as Joseph's.

Leaving Age aside, Lamund was a knight who had worked for Bayezid for a long time, so from Rutiger's position, he could not speak harshly to him, if only out of respect.

"... I'll try my best."

"Thank you."

If that was the reason, Vlad, who could at least get tangled up with him, might have been the better alternative.

Because, as Rutiger saw it, Lamund's attitude toward Vlad clearly had a soft side.

"You somehow managed to crawl out of prison alive."

"You've somehow managed to stay alive all this time too, old man. You smell like dirt just standing next to me."

"Ho ho ho. There is no set order to who goes first."

Just as Rutiger squeezed his eyes shut at the sharp voices of the barbarian and the old knight still ringing out, Vlad raised his hand and stopped the party.

"Wait."

It was working already.

Rutiger nodded with a satisfied expression, thinking he had been right to assign him the task, but Vlad's restraint had come from a direction entirely different from what Rutiger had hoped.

"... I think there's something up ahead."

"Hm?"

Hearing those words, Rutiger looked with tense eyes toward where Vlad's finger was pointing.

The northern snowy field, where only white snow continued without end.

Pointing toward the far distance that could hardly be seen properly, Vlad looked at Rutiger with a stiff expression.

"Lead the way."

During the week they had spent heading north, Vlad had shown his keen senses without fail.

Hearing, sight, smell, and even the subtle sharpness in the air.

Thinking Vlad must have discovered something unusual through those senses again this time, Rutiger did not take his report lightly.

"It made quite a mess."

"..."

And following Vlad's guidance, the party reached the middle of the snowy field and found a horrific scene there.

The corpses of barbarians were scattered everywhere in terrible condition.

The horses and sheep they had brought with them, and even people.

As he saw those that had once been warm lying on the snow, cold and stiff, Age's expression gradually hardened.

"Looks like they came down this far."

Rutiger dismounted and turned over the corpses lying face-down.

A gruesome wound that split the chest.

Looking at that wound, Rutiger frowned at the reality that contradicted his expectations.

"... They were cut."

They certainly looked like people who had fled south after being chased by a rampaging Lindwurm, but the wounds they bore told an entirely different story.

Wounds cut by something sharp, not brutally torn or burst open by something.

Looking at wounds no one but a person could have made, Rutiger looked at Age.

"Are they your tribe?"

"... They are not."

At Rutiger's question, Age quietly shook his head.

The corpses of the barbarians, covered all over in tattoos, looked similar to Age at a glance, but they were not the Budaat Tribe he belonged to.

"They are not my tribe, but we at least knew each other's faces."

It was fortunate that they were not Age's tribe, but that did not mean this was a situation where they could sigh in relief.

The barbarians' southward movement was taking place simultaneously in multiple places, and at the root of it was the being called Lindwurm.

The Budaat Tribe, which had followed that tide, must also be wandering somewhere in this area.

"Northerners would not have done this."

Rutiger nodded at Lamund's words from behind him.

The barbarians and the northerners hated each other, but in any case, they lived shoulder to shoulder, so there was no reason to carry out an extreme massacre like this.

Because both sides knew well that if they did, a long conflict would arise in which blood would have to be washed with blood.

Rutiger's knights at Berenheim Fortress would know that even better.

"Let's move quickly."

Something unusual was happening at the northern border.

Sensing that fact, Rutiger intended to reach Berenheim Fortress quickly and grasp the situation.

"..."

The party hurriedly urged their horses forward.

But atop the pitch-black one, Vlad merely held his chest and frowned.

THUMP.

Vlad, who remembered the heartbeat he had felt when he encountered the Death Worm, could only grip his strangely pounding chest and bite his lip the farther they moved forward.

Amid the urgent situation, only the horse that sensed the boy's discomfort carefully steadied its body and tried to reduce the jolting.

* * *

Berenheim Fortress.

A military installation marking the northernmost border of Bayezid County.

Having reached the place Peter cared about as much as the three cities held by the county, the party merely looked up at the highest point of the fortress with puzzled expressions.

"There are two flags?"

Vlad, the least informed about the situation, asked as he looked at the flags fluttering over Berenheim Fortress.

One flag bore the crest of Bayezid, which he knew well, but the other flag bore a crest of a form he had never seen before.

"Why are those people here..."

But Rutiger and Lamund, who recognized the flag, were also only bewildered, unable to grasp the situation.

Vlad approached Lamund, who was blinking, and carefully tapped his shoulder.

"What flag is it?"

"... It is not a flag of the North."

At the boy's question, Lamund narrowed his brow and clicked his tongue.

"It belongs to the center."

"The center?"

"Yes. The center."

At Lamund's words, saying not the central region but the center, Vlad once again lifted his head and looked at the fluttering flag.

The figure of a fire-breathing dragon.

"It is the emblem of the dragon killer knights, the knight order directly under the Dragonblood Duke."

On the figure of the fire-breathing dragon drawn on the flag, a strange slash was engraved.

It was a slash that depicted the Sword Path of a blade sharply severing the dragon's neck.