Silver Antlers

High overhead a flag fluttered, the color of the blood the victims had spilled hundreds of years ago. Below it the plaza was packed with men and women, young and old. There were tasty snacks for sale and games worth playing, and children in snow wolf and snow elk masks were no rare sight either.

Of it all, the target game was what caught Pai’s eye. Man-shaped boards had been set out in a range of sizes, sliding back and forth crosswise. Motion magic, perhaps? Whatever it was, they moved at a fair clip.

Her steps slowed, and Keith came to a halt in front of the booth.

“Do you like games?”

He was already handing money to the stallkeeper and taking back a basket of darts as he asked. Delighted, Pai stepped up beside him.

“I love them. Setting records, taking prize money, and winning.”

Bundle together the things she named and you had a bet. Whenever mercenaries got together, betting of every kind was how they passed the time. And Pai knew that Keith’s own appetite for winning was anything but small.

She put it to Keith, who was glaring at the target in concentration.

“And your goal?”

“First place.”

— Fwiiish. Thock!

The dart flew with force and lodged in the board’s solar plexus.

“Two points!”

The stallkeeper cried out.

A hit to the head took the top score, three points. Ten darts to a person. Land three points with all ten for a total of thirty, and you could pick one of the big stuffed toys.

— Fwip. Thock!

“Three points!”

— Fwheee. Thock!

“Three points again!”

Keith’s showing was not bad, so the confidence with which he had handed the money over first had been earned.

“Twenty-five in total! Ah, so close! The current leader stands at twenty-eight!”

Keith looked a little disappointed; he must have fallen short of the score he had hoped for. For second place he carried off a stuffed puppy with a ribbon tied at its neck, about the size Reni had been a month ago.

“Ahem.”

Clearing his throat, Keith worked the toy between his hands and began.

“Miss P—”

— Thock!

“Three points!”

— Thock-thock-thock-thock-thock!

“Three-three-three! Three again! Threeeee!”

“…”

Mouth clamped shut, Pai sent the darts flying without a moment’s pause, and the sharp pins struck the head of the board and struck it again.

— Thock… Crrrack!

“Waaagh!”

— Whump…

The board, with all ten darts in it, even went over backward. At some point she had bound her hair up high and tight; she gave it a light shake and dusted off her hands.

“Oh yeah, first place!”

Keith gaped. So did the stallkeeper, and the children watching from the side, and their parents besides.

Pai stretched out her index finger and pointed at a toy set on the platform at the back.

“I’ll take that one for my prize.”

The toy was a great silver snow elk. Its head and body were the same size, which made it a plump, cute rendition of the animal, but the antlers, the snow elk’s emblem, had come out splendidly. Set against her prize, which filled her arms, Keith’s looked shabby, and he hurriedly hid the stuffed puppy behind his back.

“Hello, cutie.”

Pai stroked the snow elk toy’s head and then held it out to Keith.

She added nothing else by way of explanation, and yet Keith felt he knew what it was she meant to tell him. And why she had picked out the snow elk from among all the other cute animal toys.

“Go on, hurry.”

He hesitated, his feelings tangled, and Pai bobbed the toy up and down and put on a voice.

“I am a cute baby snow elk!”

“…”

“Hurry up and stroke my antlers!”

In the end Keith let out a low laugh and rubbed the toy’s antlers. The short fur was soft.

“Ooh, I’m glad!”

“…Are you glad?”

“Mm. I’m not washing my antlers today. Yahoo!”

“And Miss Pai. Is Miss Pai glad too?”

“Me?”

At the question turned back on her, Pai drew her mouth into a fine curve and answered.

“Of course I am.”

“Because you beat me?”

“Heh heh. No, it’s because you laughed.”

“…”

“The jester’s pulled off another one today!”

She laughed easily, tucked the enormous toy under her arm, and moved off toward the next booth.

A brisk whistling rode the curve of Keith’s ear and flowed inside. He gripped the place near his heart.

It tickled unbearably.

The morning of the Victory Festival’s second day dawned. The sky was higher and clearer than the day before. Good weather for hunting.

Giving his attire and his sword and his bow a final check before departure, Keith glanced at the snow elk toy standing all alone on the console table. It looked out of place against the elegant, beautiful console, but a smile came to him without his meaning it to.

Isn’t that enough?

“I’ll be back.”

He stroked the toy’s silver antlers and left the castle.

Past the encampment where the women and children and the traders were gathered, he took his place at the starting point, and only then did his heart begin to pound. Like seawater warming slowly under a blazing sun, his heart had been coming up to heat since the day before; one day of that, and now it felt hot enough to leap out of his mouth.

“Hoo…”

He drew a deep breath, and at the departure call that announced the start of the hunting contest he led his team into the forest.

“Woof-woof! Woof!”

“Target sighted, one o’clock ahead!”

“Woof! Woof!”

“Neeeiiigh…!”

Well-trained hounds bayed on the scent of a beast, hooves clattered, the thick, heavy blast of horns rolled over both, and all of it ran together in a rush.

“This way, this way!”

“Your Grace! At three o’clock…”

“Woof-woof! Grrrr… Woof!”

“One deer, heading for ten o’clock…”

To speak frankly, this Victory Festival weighed on him. It weighed on him even though Bishe had stuck close at his side for a good two months and more, schooling him and smoothing the way. To expand the scale of the thing and attempt what had never been tried before, he had met a number of times with the leaders of every class, and their response had come back colder than he expected. That, he supposed, was why he had grown all the more impatient.

I have to do well.

I have to see it through.

The aides who were fond of him insisted the Victory Festival was a chance to prove himself, but Keith knew better: a chance and a crisis were the same moment, seen from two different sides. If a crisis could be turned into a chance, then a thing you had taken for a chance could just as easily turn back into a crisis and strike you from behind.

“Woof-woof! Woof!”

“A beast’s blood trail…!”

And so he badly wanted to meet the silver snow elk. He had longed for it so desperately that it came to him even in his dreams. In them he chased the creature again and again, lost it, and was left behind. He would wake soaked in sweat and console himself that dreams are the opposite of reality, but the unease did not go away so easily.

Might the dream be some kind of revelation, too?

If it is God’s way of telling me I am not enough…

“Moving into a deeper sector!”

It was Pai who put that boundless unease to sleep. His own personal jester, whose dart-throwing was nearly a match for her knot-tying, had driven the sticky darkness out of his heart with one crude, ugly stuffed toy.

No… It isn’t the toy.

In fact, he knew it too. What filled him up with laughter wasn’t the toy itself but the thought she’d put into it. And he understood now that her step had slowed at the target-game booth not out of any interest in the game itself, but because she had seen the snow elk toy hung up as a prize.

A tenderness with a high hit rate, an unhurried manner that treated him kindly, jokes that never trespassed on courtesy… Even while driving his horse and running down beasts, Keith could not stop thinking about Pai.

And then he realized it.

‘Then you’ll have to prod gently, won’t you? So that I don’t get hurt?’

The fact that he liked her.

“Huh—! O-over there…!”

While she bound his wrists in that gentle, unyielding way of hers, he had wished the time would never end. He had wanted to touch her soft skin. And to gather her into his arms until they were full of her.

“Your Grace! At ten o’clock…!”

“Woof-woof! Woof, woof-woof-woof!”

“It’s the s-silver snow elk…!”

A cold wind carrying the scent of a beast that had lived a thousand years clawed at his cheek. Standing tall between the densely packed trees, the snow elk was flaunting its silver antlers with magnificent, commanding pride.

The spirit-beast’s irises were white, the same as the whites of its eyes.

“…”

He gripped the reins hard. A different motive from before set him moving.

“Hyah…!”

He wanted to see Pai’s face break into a wide smile.