* * *

Four boats traveled down the river the young heroes had passed along only a short while before.

Each carried four or five men, all heavily armed. A few wore helmets, though most had taken theirs off. Shields hung from the gunwales, and spears and other polearms lay neatly gathered to one side.

With this many men so well armed, they hardly seemed likely to get themselves killed wherever they went.

But one man, and one man alone, wore no armor at all. His excessively fat body seemed to have consumed a needless quantity of expensive fabric, none of which suited him. It was Guttorm, the second young lord.

Though the soldiers were doing the rowing, he sat there panting as if he had exerted himself. He was irritable, too.

"Can't you go any faster? Can't you even row properly? I'm dying of the heat."

The weather was cool. The soldiers weren't sweating even as they rowed in their armor; he was the only one perspiring.

Guttorm's urging forced them to work harder than necessary, and thanks to that, they finally began to sweat as well.

Having pushed through the mist since morning, they reached the landing Valeri's party had used around noon.

The soldiers shipped their oars and brought the boats alongside. They climbed onto the landing, secured the boats with ropes, then hauled Guttorm up after them.

It was quite a production, with a knight pushing from behind while two men clasped his hands and pulled from the front.

After finally making it onto the landing, Guttorm braced his hands on his knees and wobbled for a moment before looking around. Beggars lay sprawled here and there.

"Clear those things out. Have the sense to do it without being told. Must I give orders for every little thing?"

The soldiers approached the beggars and told them to get lost. Those who seemed out of their minds and already half dead were dragged away and dumped at a distance.

"Where's the warehouse keeper?" Guttorm asked.

Two knights went to look around nearby, but no one fitting that description was to be seen.

Guttorm therefore concluded that no one had properly taken control here since the Ballsack Opener's death. Opening the warehouses revealed nothing inside, either.

There were only a few scattered pieces of cargo that looked useless or long abandoned.

"It seems we needn't have bothered coming..."

So it seemed. On the surface.

Someone with a keen eye might have found the excessive quiet strange, but Guttorm had no such field experience.

"Quarter five soldiers in each warehouse. You two, sirs, will remain here and oversee them. I shall stay at an inn."

In other words, he would take two knights as his guards and lodge at the inn. The others didn't seem to find anything particularly odd about this.

Taking control of a place meant coming into conflict with whatever force already held it. But with no such force here, there was nothing to do but sit tight and guard the place.

Four knights and twenty soldiers, all properly equipped for battle. Who would dare attack them?

They would while away the tedious hours, gradually reduce their numbers, and return once Duke Sven sent an administrator. That was all they had to do.

In a way, it was like a bear doing the tricks while its handler pocketed the money. Valeri had done the hard work, and Guttorm would reap the rewards.

"He can try all he likes. What can a bastard ever accomplish...?"

Guttorm muttered to himself as he toyed with his nipple.

And so Guttorm took lodgings at an inn some distance from the warehouses. He had the knights throw everyone out, then stayed there alone without even paying to reserve the place.

Then came the hours before dawn.

Guttorm's snores sounded as though heaven and earth were being torn apart. They almost made evicting the guests seem merciful.

One of the knights who had accompanied him as a guard woke him.

"Young lord. Young lord."

"Hrrraaagh! Gah! Gah! Hm? What, what is it?"

"The warehouses are on fire."

"... Then shouldn't you put it out?"

"They seem to be having trouble containing it. There have already been considerable casualties."

"... How many?"

"Two knights and ten soldiers are reported to have died in their sleep. The soldiers came to tell us. The fire is visible even from here now."

"Two knights are dead?"

Guttorm was instantly wide awake.

It took at least ten years to train a knight. At least.

Warhorses, weapons, and armor were expensive, but they were actually far cheaper than the worth of a single knight.

Where could one find a man who could ride, wield weapons, and possessed both courage and loyalty? Such a man could be hired, perhaps, but loyalty was difficult to expect in the bargain.

Money wasn't the issue. Time was. Losing a knight from a family that had served the ducal house for generations was like having a limb cut off.

This was no longer merely a matter of taking control of the landing.

Guttorm heaved his massive body upright and got out of bed. The bed creaked as though it might break.

The moment he left the inn, an acrid smell of burning struck his nose. A fiery glow shone in the distance, with black smoke billowing into the sky.

Onlookers had already gathered to watch the blaze. Guttorm hurried to the scene with his two knights.

Two warehouses were completely engulfed, making any attempt to extinguish them look all but impossible. The flames were spreading to a third.

The soldiers were hard at work carrying water to put out the fire in that warehouse, but even stopping its spread looked difficult.

Their faces were scorched red by the heat. Shielding his own face with his arm, Guttorm circled around toward the landing and reached the scene.

"Young lord, what should we do?"

One of the knights asked. At a time like this, the person in charge had to issue orders—whether to keep fighting the fire or abandon everything and withdraw, for instance.

"..."

But Guttorm was so utterly dazed that he seemed incapable of thought.

Then, suddenly, crossbow bolts came flying from the warehouse that was still relatively intact.

THWUNG! THWUNG-THWUNG-THWUNG!

"Urgh!"

"Ow!"

"What the hell!?"

The soldiers had taken off their armor because of the heat, and they fell beneath the sudden volley. No one died outright, but the unexpected attack threw everyone into considerable confusion.

One knight grabbed Guttorm and bundled him into a boat at the landing. The other charged the enemy, ignoring the multiple bolts already lodged in his body.

"The margrave. They're the Margrave of Dunbria's men."

Someone said it, and Guttorm snapped to his senses. He had known this would happen. They shouldn't have brought so many men!

THWUNG-THWUNG-THWUNG!

Another volley struck the knight just as he nearly reached the enemies hiding in the darkness. More bolts thudded into his body.

Even so, he swung his sword and cut halfway through one man's torso, then seized another by the head and drove his thumb into the man's eye.

"Aaaaaaagh!"

A scream rang out.

Truly, a knight who could fight to his full ability was little different from a monster. But the odds were far too heavily stacked against him.

The spear thrusts that followed brought even that monster to a halt. He held on to one spear and resisted to the very end before finally falling.

"You there! Get in the boats! Quickly!"

The knight who had stayed to guard Guttorm shouted to the soldiers. Some scrambled aboard to save themselves, while others could only writhe on the ground.

The knight leaped back onto the landing to rescue the fallen. As he hoisted the heavy grown men into another boat, Guttorm shoved off with an oar, intent on saving only himself.

So absorbed was the knight in rescuing the soldiers that he realized only belatedly that Guttorm was drifting away in a boat alone.

"Young lord!"

He stood on the landing and called after Guttorm.

"Y-your duty is to guard me, isn't it? I'm safe now, so I hope you find your own way to survive!"

Just then, flames erupted from the boat carrying the soldiers. The Black Hand had loaded peat aboard beforehand, then swum up underwater and set it alight.

The remaining warehouse was beginning to burn as well. The area was as bright as day, and the knight stood alone, staring after the receding Guttorm.

More bolts flew at him. Tearing a plank from somewhere to use as a makeshift shield, he charged the enemy.

He resisted fiercely to the last, but this was not truly a battle. He had been caught in a trap.

These were merely his struggles to escape it, not a fight. Who would be mad enough to face a knight head-on?

As though determined to take at least one of them with him, the knight caught an enemy's spear shaft and pulled its wielder close. Seizing the man, he plunged into the flames. That was the last anyone saw of him.

It was a fighting spirit Guttorm could never have mustered, not even if he died and was born again.

Guttorm rowed hard. But he was unaccustomed to physical exertion, and after only a few strokes he would have to stop to catch his breath, over and over.

He began to regret not letting a few soldiers aboard. No, why had that knight gotten out again to rescue soldiers who were as good as dead anyway?

Guttorm resented his last remaining guard. All the man had needed to do was protect him. Wouldn't the knight have survived that way, too?

Whether fortunately or unfortunately, the fire was so large that its glow reached far into the distance. At least he seemed unlikely to take a wrong turn into the marsh.

Guttorm kept rowing. When it grew too difficult, he threw down the oar with a "Damn it!" Then he gathered his strength and rowed again, only to stop once more from exhaustion.

As his surroundings grew quiet, he began to worry about how he would report this to his father. He was frightened, too. No, this was an ambush by the Margrave of Dunbria. It wasn't his fault. That was how he justified it to himself.

Then he suddenly sensed something moving beneath the water. He wondered if it was a fish, but there was more than one, and a closer look suggested they were quite large.

Above all, the thought that the things swimming around his boat might be monsters gave him a sudden fright.

Guttorm raised his oar to poke at one of the unidentified creatures. Just then, something surged out of the water and clambered into the boat in an instant.

"Eeeeeek!"

Guttorm was so startled that he nearly fell into the water. Barely managing to catch the gunwale, he flailed his arms without even knowing what had climbed aboard.

Then a voice spoke with a calm utterly at odds with the situation.

"Please calm yourself, young lord."

Startled and bewildered, Guttorm examined the intruder. What had climbed up from beneath the boat was none other than a person—and there was more than one.

"W-what, wh-wh-what are you! Ghosts? Monsters?"

"We are neither ghosts nor monsters."

Doing his best to calm his pounding heart, Guttorm looked again. They really were human. But they wore masks of some kind, so he couldn't see their faces.

"... Wh-who are you?"

"We are an organization called the Black Hand. You may think of us as Gringen's thieves' guild."

"A thieves' guild? Do you want money?"

"Well, perhaps it is your life we want, young lord."

"... Th-that's taking a joke too far."

Guttorm forced a laugh and treated it as a joke. But when the man merely watched him in silence, his heart sank, even as he told himself it couldn't be true.

He rubbed his nipple furiously, but it did nothing to soothe his anxiety.

"R-ransom. That's right. Let me go first, and I'll, I'll p-pay a ransom."

At the very end, he offered a negotiation that made no sense whatsoever. Let him go first, and he would pay a ransom?

"In truth, we have approached you like this to make one final judgment: whether we stand to gain more by sparing you or simply killing you."

"What? A mere thieves' guild would dare—? N-no, that makes no sense. You're thieves. Surely you want money? I don't understand. Just let me go first. I will pay the ransom without fail."

"This won't do. I'm afraid you will simply have to die."

"H-hey! That's absurd! It makes no sense! How dare you! How dare you kill me!? Such a thing cannot happen!"

Difficult though it might be in such a situation, the right course was to calm himself first and coolly assess how he might survive.

But in a crisis, Guttorm had neither ability nor judgment to cling to. All he had was his status.

"Naturally, I respect your station, young lord. Unfortunately, death treats all men equally. I don't believe that is something you can take up with us."

His manner was exceedingly polite and his voice pleasantly calm, yet his words could not have been colder.

As he spoke, he flicked something through the air. Guttorm felt a sharp sting in the nipple he had been unconsciously fingering. Then something dropped off.

"Aagh! What are you doing!?"

"We need proof, you see. I did promise to answer with results."

The Black Hand man picked up Guttorm's nipple as he spoke.

Guttorm's face twisted as though he were about to cry. He kept looking back and forth between the thing in the man's hand and his own chest.

"Results...? Don't tell me my brother had you—?"

"Since this is the end, I will tell you. The Salt Prince. The bastard of Winslow."

At the word "bastard," Guttorm's face contorted grotesquely. A fleeting sense of defeat crossed his mind, and rage immediately surged up to smother it. He no longer felt any pain in his chest.

"What? Him? He did this to me? That bastard thinks he can have me killed!? I am a legitimate son of a ducal house! Why are you listening to him instead of me!?"

Apparently deciding there was no need for further conversation, the Black Hand men gave no answer. They tossed peat into the boat, set it alight, and slipped back into the water.

In moments, fierce flames rose through the boat. Despite the pain in his chest, Guttorm hurriedly scooped up water to extinguish them, but they only grew stronger.

"Hey! Where are you going!?"

Absurdly enough, the only people who could save him now were the ones who had set his boat on fire. He called desperately after them, but they seemed to be far away already. There was no sign of them.

"Nobles! I'll make you nobles! Come back at once! I'll give you lands and titles!"

It was all useless. At some point, the boat broke apart with a splintering crack, and Guttorm fell into the water.

He tried to hold on to a piece of the wreckage, but his enormous body kept sinking. Until the very end, only his mouth rose above the surface as he shouted something or other, but it was hard to make out his words.

And then, at last, there was silence.

He had been given many chances. He needn't have undertaken this task in the first place. He could have stayed in a warehouse himself and strengthened the watch. He could have waited for his last guard to return. Even at the very end, he might have lived if only he had given the right answer.

It was neither Valeri nor anyone else who had thrown away all those chances. It was Guttorm himself.

Chapter 7 – Inferiority. End.