"Ever heard of a totem?"

He had said it was a tool used for spells.

"You told me about them."

Encrid answered from a seat in the middle of the tent. The low stool had no back, but it wasn't particularly uncomfortable. Before him, Rem had become a shamanism teacher for the day.

"Right. From now on, Captain, you're a human totem. You eat, sleep, and play right here."

He spoke with all the solemnity of a stern teacher.

Quick on the uptake, Encrid soon grasped the situation. It seemed he would have to do as Rem said. Naturally, several experiments had led to this.

It had happened just a little earlier. Having stepped in to mediate, Rem had abruptly said,

["Go outside. Come on."]

Encrid obeyed. He left the tent, and when he was about three paces away, Rem spoke from the entrance, one foot across the threshold. He waved him off with the back of his hand.

["Shoo. Farther away."]

Encrid did as he was told.

Dunbachel came out of the tent and sat off to one side, watching with a hand clamped over her nose. Luagarne followed Encrid.

"They seem to believe you're warding off the curse," she said between repeated drinks of water.

"No chance."

It had to be a coincidence. He had joked about awakening divine power, but how could that possibly happen? He had never even dabbled in spells. There was no need to look back over his life. Wielding his sword had kept him busy enough.

Even now, he desperately wanted to revisit the ideas he had been pondering. The twins had attacked with very distinctive tempos. One threw his spear in single time, with precisely timed breaths, while the other used half time. Watching them had given him all sorts of ideas.

'What if I mixed the tempos?'

His thoughts returned to what Oara had shown him. Her swordsmanship was faithful to the fundamentals, and tempo was one of those fundamentals. There was ordinary single time; the counter that intercepted it; half time, which divided single time; and double time, which fitted two movements into one tempo. A tempo could also be described as a single breath.

Ragna sometimes fitted three or even four movements into a single breath. Should he call those triple and quadruple time? The names didn't matter.

Oara had done the same. She had divided her tempos and used single time as well. And she had done the reverse: slower, longer-lasting sword strikes. She lengthened the breath itself, stretching out the tempo. What should he call that? If he had to name it, slow time would do.

Rather than divide it, she extended it. By working her feet and body into the movement, she made the sword's path continue endlessly. Against the balrog fragment, Oara had demonstrated that uninterrupted swordsmanship. Her sword never stopped. It flowed on and on. It had been deeply impressive.

After Oara, others passed through his thoughts. Ragna swung his sword to deliver a single heavy blow. He played tactical games and deceived his opponent to achieve it, but the purpose always came down to one thing: landing that strike, whether with sword or shield.

The King of the East made good use of broken movements. Even as they stopped and started, his spearhead darted in at strange angles, tearing through the space between them. It was irregular, a method in which it was difficult to find any pattern.

Think again. Ponder again. Work it out, then work it out some more. Reproduce it with the body. Correct the discrepancies. Bring down the sword. Repeat.

As he walked, his hands imitating sword strokes, Luagarne turned her large eyes to watch him.

'Mad about training.'

Some people called Encrid that. Luagarne agreed.

Training, then more training. Encrid never tired of it, even cutting into his sleep to do it. Now was no different. His head was full of swordsmanship. Spells or no spells, what was he supposed to do about the ideas coming to him right now? Besides, this was great fun.

His thoughts continued. What if he divided his tempos over and over, like splitting up a breath? Swordsmanship like that did exist. In the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique.

'I thought it was utter bullshit.'

The Valen Mercenary Sword Technique's Mix Your Breaths at Will. It was a method for changing tempos however one pleased, a technique that played with breathing and rhythm. How was that possible? By becoming proficient in every basic technique.

Was it an easy road? No. It was hard. A difficult road. Yet he smiled, because for Encrid, it was an immensely enjoyable one.

Now that he thought about it, no sword art insisted on mastering the fundamentals quite as much as the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique. It nagged even more than Luagarne. He hadn't actually heard it with his ears, but he might as well have.

When learning the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique, he had read something like a manual of its secrets. There had been a reminder about fundamentals at least once on every page.

"Get your stance right first. You cannot deceive an opponent without knowing the basics."

"If you cannot swing with proper form, you cannot cut even a piece of straw."

"Build your body so that you can assume a proper stance."

"Stance first."

"Concentrate on your sword stance. Start there."

"What must come before fancy technique? Think. Yes, that's right. Your stance."

Remove all the talk of basic stances and foot placement, and the manual would have been a little thinner. But that was how important it was. Most readers ignored those passages. Skipped them. Dismissed them as useless rambling.

Encrid hadn't done that. He couldn't have. Those had been days when he needed to grasp even a straw and swing it. So that was what he had done. To learn the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique, he had refined his stance and followed the instructions.

It had been a truly admirable attitude. Enough that, if Valen came back and saw him, he would have said, "Now here's a bastard worthy of being called my pupil."

Of course, if they had met back then, he would have asked, "You think you can make a living by the sword with that pitiful talent?"

In any case, there was a saying: mix in the truth if you want to deceive someone. The Valen Mercenary Sword Technique was faithful to it. Hone the fundamentals, then use them to employ all manner of deception. That was illusion swordsmanship. That was the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique.

Lost in those thoughts, he had wandered quite far from the tent.

"Come back now!"

Rem called from the distance. Encrid turned and headed back.

Here and there, eyes watched him. Some were hollow; others simply stared without thought. The fine day's sunlight was dazzling. Encrid sought out patches of shade, walking alongside a large tent.

This would probably prove pointless. Some other factor must have been involved. Why would his mere presence dispel a curse?

As he approached, he found Rem's face expressionless. He had grown quite serious.

"Go. Over there."

The playfulness had left his voice. The woman who appeared to be the boy's mother sat on her knees. Hira the shaman kept bringing her tobacco stick to her mouth. Puff after puff of smoke obscured her face.

Encrid did as Rem said. After he had gone back and forth three times, Rem muttered,

"Fuck. Is this even possible?"

But he soon nodded.

The situation was too much like that directionally challenged bastard to sit around pondering how it worked. Things were going to dog shit; this was no time to quibble. Setting the reason aside, Rem decided to install a human totem, and Encrid had to agree.

Looking around, he saw quite a few sick people. More than twenty. He considered them. Should he bring a healer here? No, a shaman, in these parts? In any case, becoming a human totem was several times easier than finding a shaman and threatening them with a blade to the throat.

After Rem's experiments came Hira's. Encrid touched those afflicted by the curse and tried sitting still. They reached their conclusion: he would become a human totem in the center of the tent.

A chair appeared to replace the low stool. His very own chair. A soft cushion was laid on it, and the herbs that gave off acrid smoke were replaced with ones said to grow only in the West, which released a delicate fragrance.

An earthenware vessel made of fired ochre clay was brought over from the chieftain's tent. A fire was lit at the bottom, and its residual heat slowly burned the herbs. Four holes pierced the top. Wisps of smoke from the burning herbs rose through them.

"Ah, that smells good," Dunbachel said.

Encrid breathed deeply of the fragrance that drove away her sour, foul body odor. She was right. It smelled good. Enough to make him want to scold her on the spot.

"Go wash."

"Oh, why?"

"Now."

"In my village, they say washing too often brings bad luck."

"They say that in a Beastman village?"

Luagarne knew Beastman customs well. They didn't enjoy washing, but she also knew they didn't lightly claim things brought bad luck. Dunbachel said no more. Strictly speaking, she hadn't lived in a village for very long. She had been driven out as a child.

"Shall I wash her?"

The boy's mother approached. Somewhere along the way, she had become something of a follower. Encrid was just a little wary of her. Her attitude had flipped in an instant, and her temperament seemed to have changed with it.

No, come to think of it, westerners tended to be like this. Passionate, uninhibited, and largely without pretense. The middle-aged man who had just come after hearing that Encrid had blocked the curse had been the same.

["My thanks. You have my thanks."]

Encrid had simply nodded, not even knowing who he was.

The boy's mother looked at Dunbachel. Encrid read her eyes. Would this one listen if she told her? And if she didn't? The mother's hand slipped inside her clothes. She looked thoughtful as she quietly gripped her karambit.

"Hey. Wash. Don't make this awkward."

Encrid kicked Dunbachel in the rear and sent her out. Apart from that, he had little to do.

Mostly, he watched Hira as she looked over the recovering patients, occasionally biting out words with force.

"Protect this land."

She murmured the words while ceaselessly tending the sick.

Was that a spell too? She applied dull gray salve beneath a patient's eyes, turned them over, and wiped their face and limbs. It looked more like devoted nursing than spellwork.

"You should be able to walk around near the tent."

Hira's attitude had changed too. She, too, treated Encrid courteously.

When he stepped outside, the twins were standing guard before the tent. That was because of Rem's answer when asked what was needed.

["Just prepare a training ground and sparring partners."]

["You're not going to do it yourself?"]

["I'm going to be busy."]

With that, Rem had left.

And so Encrid became a totem. It wasn't particularly boring. Seated, he trained through visualization. Outside, he moved his body. The area directly before the tent had been cleared, leaving ample room to swing a sword.

Nor did he behave awkwardly while adjusting to life among this western tribe. After all those years scraping by as a mercenary, earning his living by the sword, why would he struggle to adapt? In short, Encrid did well.

"Please, eat."

The boy's mother attended him with utter devotion. Yes, this went beyond looking after him. She was serving him.

"Thank you for the meal."

Encrid offered a suitable reply, wet his throat with ground-squirrel fruit, and ate well-roasted lizard meat and the like. Their cooking methods were familiar from his many meals with Rem.

They caught brown-furred rabbits called field rabbits, skinned and gutted them, then crushed the whole carcass to make meat porridge or meatballs. Unlike a noble's table, there was no food to throw away. They ate just enough to avoid going short, but it provided plenty of nourishment. The taste? Everything tasted good too. Their custom of eating animals whole was probably a tradition born of scarce supplies.

About half a day passed. Before evening arrived, a few children began hovering nearby. Encrid watched them as he tended his sword.

'Have they come to look at me?'

Because he was an interesting outsider? They hadn't seemed particularly interested before.

Some of the children did show curiosity. But he wasn't why they had come.

"Is Jiba all right?"

One child called into the tent. The mother came out and looked at her. She wondered where she had seen that face, then recognized one of the girls who had been playing with a dangling rope that morning.

"I told you not to come near here."

"But we heard it's all right now," one of the children said.

Worry showed in their manner, voices, and eyes. They had been hovering nearby because their friend had fallen ill. Children were children: they ran and played, but they worried too. Encrid simply watched. There was no place for him to intervene.

"Even so, stay away."

With her wits restored and her resentment and hatred forgotten, the mother sent the children back. They mustn't linger nearby and risk catching some misfortune.

"Benefactor, if you would like something to nibble on, please have this."

She then gave Encrid a dried plum. He put it in his mouth and chewed. Sweet. Beside him, Luagarne kept drinking water.

The woman gave Luagarne a gift as well: thin insects resembling grasshoppers. She even caught them alive and presented them in a basket woven from woody stems. Luagarne puffed out her cheeks in delight. Come to think of it, perhaps Lua was rather fond of food.

Except for the time spent eating, drinking, and shitting, Encrid swung his sword and devoted himself to training all day. He sensed a change of some kind, which made training more enjoyable than before. The twins occasionally sparred with him. Rem stopped by as he came and went too.

"This is killing me."

"What is?"

Encrid asked, wondering whether something was giving him trouble. A bright moon hung in the night sky. Even without a single torch, every feature of Rem's face was visible.

"Ayul won't even listen."

"What exactly did you do when you left home?"

Rem hesitated, unusually for him, before answering.

"About ten days after we married..."

"After that?"

"I just..."

"Just?"

"Snuck off in the middle of the night."

This bastard was out of his fucking mind. And after that, he'd walked back in on his own two feet with his head held high? Even crawling all the way home and groveling might not have earned him forgiveness.

Encrid gripped the freshly sharpened Aker.

"Put your neck here. Bend over."

He spoke while looking at an outer pole securing the tent. Rem asked,

"What are you planning?"

"To soothe her anger. Cutting off your head and bringing it to her seems quickest."

There didn't seem to be any other way.

Rem snickered. Encrid didn't.

"You weren't joking?"

"I'm serious."

"How about keeping your bullshit out of other people's business?"

Apparently he had teased him too much. Rem's face went stiff, and he turned away.

After that, Encrid rarely saw Rem. He seemed busy. That was how the first day passed. On the second night, Encrid settled down to sleep in the middle of the tent.

At some point, his body rocked.

SLOSH.

With it came the sound of river water moving.