The Pilgrims’ Ordeal (2)

“A-Ah! Sir Izmilla! How could you do that alone! The responsibility is far too heavy for you to bear! If only I could share even a fraction of that burden, it would be my family’s honor—my life’s greatest blessing! Why did you not grant me such an opportunity? Though, I suppose I am somewhat….”

The archivist named Macdogal kept rambling. Even in a situation like this, his words kept spilling out without end.

“Heh. Wow. Look at these knight bastards. In the end the lowest-ranking one got stuck holding the bag, huh?”

The female thief watching burst into snickering laughter.

With thick brown hair, freckles, and a warm-looking face, she was a prisoner sentenced to the Rescue Knights Order’s labor “reform” for theft.

“Watch your tongue, thief. Mock the Order’s honor one more time and I will not forgive you.”

“Yeah? But it’s you guys who are dying right now. If you don’t forgive me, what are you gonna do about it?”

“Sir Macdogal. Admonish her.”

“Understood.”

“Wait. Won’t you give me a chance to apologize?”

As Macdogal approached the wagon where she was confined, the female thief seemed to have second thoughts.

Even as she spoke, the hail made of clotted blood fell harder and harder. While the prisoners hunched inside the barred wagon, thick fog surged over them.

A ghost had been racing through the darkness of night. It had the form of a Kerim mountain goat. Sprinting over mountains and fields, trampling the night itself, the ghost goat had been far faster than it ever had while alive.

Clinging to its back was a young man. His name was Azadine—an Emperor’s Messenger, and someone who had just received an appointment within the Rescue Knights Order.

“Fast is nice, but the wind is too cold!”

Azadine wore a mask and, by habit, lay prone as if burying himself in the Kerim goat’s fur. On cold days, riding a Kerim goat like that—pressing into its coat—had helped him endure the chill.

But with a ghost goat, the cold that seeped in had been bone-deep. Startled, Azadine pulled his hands out of the fur and straightened.

Then the freezing wind assaulted him instead. Winter had ended, yet the cold still lingered, casting its shadow.

“Neither works.”

Azadine clung to the ghost goat’s back, shielding himself from the wind as best he could.

Just then, the ghost goat stopped. From far away, he heard people’s screams, shouted battle-cries, and the clash of weapons.

“Did I find the right place?”

In that instant, the ghost goat he had been riding scattered like smoke. If a mount vanished like that, one would usually crash to the ground—but Azadine twisted in midair and landed lightly.

“Looks like I did.”

Azadine followed the sound of clashing weapons, walking forward cautiously. Under a downpour of blood hail and a blanket of thick fog, undead began to emerge.

It looked as though they had dug up corpses from a nearby village cemetery. Armed only with crude implements—clubs, pickaxes, plows—they charged.

While the Order’s attention was drawn to the undead, red leeches hiding within the blood hail squirmed forward and latched onto people’s bodies. With darkness all around and dense fog on the ground, it was hard to notice their approach.

Someone would be fighting an undead in front of them, then suddenly feel dizzy—only to see a huge leech clinging to their arm or leg.

“Ugh.”

“W-We retreat for now!”

Commander Beljuan shouted.

“What about the prisoners?”

When Izmilla asked, the commander’s expression crumpled.

‘Seriously? In this situation, why are you asking that? Do you want me to say “abandon them” out loud?!’

Beljuan even felt anger at Izmilla, who kept saying the most frustrating things. But he remembered what Bishop Sehnat had casually told him before the pilgrimage.

‘Even if the pilgrimage band is wiped out, Sir Izmilla must return alive.’

She was probably kin to someone lofty. Perhaps even Bishop Sehnat’s daughter.

‘You’ve been spoiled rotten. A ceramite longsword and an azure-steel shield. And dwarf-forged armor, too.’

If she had that kind of background, he could not reveal his anger, no matter how much he felt it.

“Open the jail!”

“Yes! Understood. You mean to open the jail doors. Though the noble correction by the Rescue Knights Order’s exalted ideals and beautiful doctrine has not yet been completed, you are nonetheless granting them freedom in this crisis, trusting the good within them so they may guarantee their own safety—”

“…….”

Macdogal’s words were far too long, but fortunately he was opening the doors as he spoke. The prisoners inside, however, recoiled in terror.

“Eek.”

“Y-You want us out without weapons? Are you telling us to die?”

“If it is a weapon you need—here. I have prepared this.”

Macdogal tossed something onto the wagon floor. It was a dining fork. Not even metal—wooden, so bare fists might have been better.

“You’re calling that a weapon?!”

“Of course. In the correctional facility, it is provided only at mealtime and then collected again, for even these may serve as sufficient deadly instruments. Thus, even if it is a tool for violence among prisoners steeped in wickedness, if you have a heart that seeks correction and a yearning for virtue, it will surely become a great instrument of fate that destroys evil and will wield immense power. Trust and follow. And in the name of the Triune Archangel, may there be mercy upon you. Ah—here it comes. It comes! O, merciful angels! Look upon us! Heavenly flames burn evil and cut through darkness to shine the light—”

“Aaagh! Damn Rescue Knights!”

As Macdogal grew excited, singing a hymn, the prisoners poured out of the jail and ran in fury. But undead—hounds—chased after them.

“This!”

Izmilla tried to save the prisoners, but Macdogal stopped her.

“Stop, Sir Izmilla! They are bait. It makes no sense for you to risk yourself for bait!”

“But their target is me—”

“If you leave here even a moment sooner, they become safer. If you cling here trying to save them, you will die together.”

“Ah….”

Hearing that, Izmilla finally sheathed her sword. But she looked unwilling in her heart.

“Conserve your strength, Sir Izmilla.”

“Then retreat!”

In the end, the pilgrimage band abandoned the jail wagons and climbed a high hillside road.

After that, the Holy Knights had fled each time they met the enemy’s assault, throwing prisoners and peasants as bait.

But they were being driven higher and higher into the uplands. Retreating upward was rational—fog pooled below—but it was exactly what the attackers had expected.

“Commander. This cannot continue.”

Izmilla spoke, unable to bear the frustration.

“Damn it! I know that! What do you want me to do?!”

“We should settle it here with the enemy. We cannot keep running forever.”

“Nonsense! Even looking at how they are attacking us now, these bastards are at least—”

The commander could not finish.

-Thunk!

A thrown spear of tremendous power—a massive iron bolt like something fired from a ballista—struck Beljuan in the torso and skewered him like a spit. A man of Hospitaller-Paladin rank died instantly without a sound.

“C-Commander!”

“It’s dangerous, Sir Izmilla!”

Macdogal restrained Izmilla as she tried to move. At that moment, another spear flew over her head.

-Kang!

It struck a granite boulder and threw sparks, like lightning seen from far away.

Everyone was terrified by that immense force—everyone except Izmilla herself, the one who had just been threatened by it.

“The enemy’s fire is far too powerful. To show your head is no different from suicide. The Order’s law forbids suicide, so please be wise—”

“You wicked bastards!”

Izmilla shoved Macdogal aside and drew her ceramite longsword—and flames rose from the blade. Holy fire, heavenly flames said to burn evil and enact justice, had taken residence in her sword.

An age of darkness where the forces of evil stirred. That blaze might have looked like a sacred guidepost all by itself, but—

“Are you insane?”

The female thief sprang out and smashed Izmilla’s head into the ground.

-Swhoosh!

Another spear shot toward her and barely missed.

“You trying to beg them to shoot you? Put it out. The fire!”

“But—”

“Hey! Little brother!”

“Yeah, sis.”

“That way!”

“Got it.”

The female thief’s younger brother—the hulking man—picked up a spear that had been embedded in a wall.

In his hand was a long rod he had somehow acquired. He tied a rope to it, hooked the spearhead into a knot, then twisted his whole body as if to store up force.

“Hah!”

When the giant threw, the spear cut through the fog.

-Thunk!

“Gyaaaagh!”

From far away came a grotesque scream.

“Good. If we can hear it, it’s probably not a full-on ghost. Then we can kill it.”

Saying that, the female thief rummaged through the body of the commander who had just died, taking his longsword and his purse.

“What are you doing?”

“We need weapons.”

“No, but why the purse?”

“Obviously to deliver the inheritance to his family, right?”

“Huh? B-But…”

The justification sounded plausible, but a woman arrested for theft would never do that. Still, Izmilla had no way to argue.

“Nice. This is a pretty good blade.”

The female thief handed the big sword to her brother and took a hand axe and a dagger for herself.

“Hey, princess!”

“…Yes?”

“Answering like that means you’re aware you’re a princess, huh.”

“That is not it. I am merely a trainee knight.”

“Quit the crap. We’ll help you, so no matter what happens, you pardon us and pay us.”

“…What?”

“Even among the prisoners, there are some pretty capable ones, you know? Get their cooperation.”

Of course, she and her brother would profit too—helping the knights first meant they’d receive the biggest reward. But the female thief left that part unsaid.

“That is not for me to decide. The commander—”

“That commander’s dead, so you’re the highest one left, aren’t you?”

“No. I am only an Errant. Besides me, there are senior knights—”

As Izmilla spoke, she looked around. Just moments ago, other holy knights had been with them—but now, they were scattered and nowhere to be seen.

“…Huh?”

“Right. So where are these ‘senior knights’?”

“S-Seniors! Where are you?!”

There was no answer. All the holy knights had already left her and Macdogal behind—dead or fled. In truth, even before this ambush, whenever they had drifted a little away from the pilgrimage band, they had slipped away into the night and run.