Oskalt (4)

…No.

Come to think of it, there might be no need to kill the ghoul at all. The thing was still down where it had fallen, smashing everything within reach of its hands. Killing it meant accepting a certain amount of risk, and there was no way around that. Set against that, the gain to be had was negligible. Its ankle was broken already, wasn’t it? Following us any further was out of the question.

I settled on resuming the march at once, just as we were. I climbed onto Pormel and made for Kalen, who was some distance off. He heard me out and nodded.

“Understood. But do you remember which way Oskalt lies, sir knight?”

“…For now we keep straight on in the direction we came. Getting clear of the forest comes first.”

There were almost no stars to be seen. The great leaves of the old trees blanketed the sky. Whether the species simply grew that way, or whether even these old trees had turned into ghouls, their roots were dead and their leaves grew thick regardless.

We soon started off again from a spot well clear of where the troll ghoul lay. Pormel kept an easy pace, yawning as though tired, smacking its lips.

“Shame about the baggage we left behind.”
“If you think you can cut through that wave of them single-handed, I won’t stop you.”
“It’s just a manner of speaking. I wrung the best of everything out of the church for that lot.”

Even in a darkness where everything around us showed only in vague outline, Pormel somehow ran on, swerving this way and that around every obstacle the ground put in its way.

How much time had passed?

By the time the outlines of the old trees streaming past like wind had begun to bore me.

The strength drained little by little out of Kalen’s arms where they gripped my waist. I looked back with a start and found him with his mouth open, fallen fast asleep. I used his robe to lash him firmly to my waist. Through the thin sound of the wind I could hear him snoring.

“…”

Pormel cut a sidelong glance at Kalen, as if in protest. I could feel exactly how sleepy it was. It would end up running the whole night without a moment’s rest, so however much it protested, I was in no position to say a word against it.

“We’ll rest properly once we’re out.”

— Krk.

Pormel muttered something. Sadly, I could not make out what.

Half a day had passed since we came out of the primeval forest. From one gentle hill onward the ground climbed steadily, and before I knew it we had come up high enough that a look back showed the road we had traveled lying far below.

Proof that we were on the right road. Oskalt was a city set on very high ground, after all.

“It’s a bit chilly.”
“Why not put on more layers.”
“And what clothes have I got to put on… ah.”

Kalen fished out the robe he had lashed in among the baggage. In the end he threw the second one on over the thick one and looked thoroughly satisfied with himself. The result was like a ghoul grown plump on a long feed.

“We’ve only come a few days north and the air’s changed completely.”
“The height has a hand in it too. Oskalt is a city on a plateau as well.”
“How big is Oskalt? If it’s anything like Pirberk, I don’t think we’ll find him easily this time either.”
“As I remember it, not so large a place. It was built as a fortress city on the assumption of a siege in the first place.”
“A fortress city? It’s the middle of the domain — is there ever going to be a siege here?”

I looked at Kalen for a moment. Our meeting in the manor at Brus came back to me. Just as I had changed, a great deal about him had changed too. And calling to mind what has changed calls up, too, what has not. The clear gaze of a man meeting the world for the first time was still there in him.

“Man’s enemies aren’t only men. How large do you suppose Erbern is?”
“Well, I couldn’t say. How large is it?”
“About half of Slonhar.”
“That small?”
“It could hardly be otherwise. The whole of Erbern’s plateau is as good as a battlefield, so there’s no room to widen the domain.”
“War, you say… beasts, is it? What sort of beast?”
“Undead.”

Erbern’s plateau was one of the great habitats of the undead. Whether they had flocked in from all over the empire or risen on the plateau of their own accord, nobody knows. Only that every stretch of Erbern that could be called plateau was packed thick with them.

“Around Oskalt, at least, they seem to have cleared it out. It’s the one city in Erbern with a trade road open.”

“…It’s as bad as that? Aren’t we going to run into them on the way ourselves?”

“I can’t speak for the other cities, but Oskalt will be safe. Otherwise, how would the coachman who carried Pindel have got there so early?”

Erbern’s plateau was a damp place in every season. I drew a deep breath and filled my lungs with the moisture-laden air. It smelled of dank water and iron mixed together.

“Undead… there’s something unsettling about that.”
“No different from any other beast. A ghoul is a kind of undead, for one.”
“Weren’t those ghouls unsettling, though?”

“…I can’t claim otherwise.”

Undead.

Those who die and yet cannot die.

For an ordinary man like Kalen, finding them unsettling was only natural. But I felt it a little differently.

What is death? The terminus of a life, and its full stop. The undead are those who wander forever through an unending story with no destination. How tedious a thing is a story with no ending?

Death is the only key that can strike off the shackle called life. And so death is a blessing. And undeath is a curse.

“Strictly speaking, I must be undead myself. I come back to life in situations where I ought to die.”

The difference between me and the undead is not so great. The undead are corpses raised once, and I am a corpse that is raised again and again. A corpse whose shackle will never be struck off, however many times it tries to die.

“…Do you hate that?”

I had got my hands on eternal life, the wish of all mankind. To say I hated it would be a lie, and to say that I therefore liked it would be a lie just the same.

“Well. What’s there to like about it?”

Kalen bit his lower lip as though thinking it over. Then he gave a faint smile.

“Sir knight, I’m happy right now. I’m glad to be alive, glad I get to have this moment. Are you unhappy right now, sir knight?”

Happiness is a relative concept. There are countless people in the world, and each of them holds a standard of happiness entirely their own. Defining happiness is therefore impossible.

Am I unhappy right now? Does this moment fall short of the measure of happiness I hold?

This much at least was clear.

“…No. I’m not unhappy.”

“Then that means you’re happy right now, sir knight.”
“Perhaps I am.”
“If you had died long ago, sir knight, you’d never have been able to feel this happiness. Not now, and not afterward, and not beyond that either.”

Kalen bored into the weak points of what I said with a terrible persistence. He dug into me, and with a few words brought down centuries of contemplation.

“You feel pain because you’re alive. That’s no different from being able to be happy because you’re alive. Pain and happiness are both only other names for the process of taking in the world.”

Happiness is relative. Then are life and death absolute? Kalen was saying they were not, that undeath was no curse.

Not dying is agony. But because I do not die, I can laugh, and weep, and remember. Undeath is a curse and a blessing both.

“Perhaps there’s no need to pity the undead as a matter of course.”

I laughed. Kalen heard me and laughed as well.

All of them things the dead cannot do.

Oskalt, the fortress city where the living and the dead coexist. Unlike other cities, its gates stood shut fast.

“…Something’s off about the feel of this place.”

Men were posted permanently on the walls of dressed stone and on the timber watchtowers too, every one of them watching the land around them. There was none of the ease and idleness ordinary guards show.

“A fortress city is like this by nature. It was built as a base of war, and it is in fact at war.”

A war not with men but with the undead. A war that will never end short of plowing Erbern under.

The guards have no choice but to burn through an enormous amount of nervous energy, and they tire that much faster for it. Deep fatigue had built up in the faces of the soldiers standing watch.

“What do we do?”

The tight-shut gate looked to have no gap for so much as an ant to slip through. In fact the answer was simple.

“Follow me.”

Sometimes going at a thing head-on is the right answer. This was one of those times.

As two figures came in close to the wall, the soldier on watch hurriedly leveled a crossbow down at us. I met the glinting bolt-head with a flat look.

“State who you are and what you want!”
“Roan Belgard, free knight. I’ve come looking for gold coins with no owner.”

The soldier disappeared behind the wall. Kalen took the chance to whisper.

“What’s the gold coins business supposed to mean?”
“It’s cant among free knights. It means: is there any work worth settling while I stop a few days in the city.”

The line I had added was not simply a matter of striking a pose. It raised my credibility, since using the free knights’ cant backed up my identity to a certain degree.

“They didn’t throw us straight out, at least. How did you know it would go this way?”
“You can tell by looking.”

Most cities welcome free knights, and Oskalt would be no different. The work a free knight takes on is the ‘bothersome’ sort, the kind that is awkward to dispose of and that nobody wants to dirty their own hands with. The less leisure a city has to attend to its own troubles, the more of that work piles up. Oskalt, locked in a life-and-death struggle with the undead all day long, would have no end of it, and settling it is exactly what a free knight is for.

A free knight causes problems only by not being around, never by being around.

While Kalen and I were talking idly, the soldier who had vanished leaned back out.

“Do you carry something solid that can prove you’re a free knight?”

Oskalt evidently ranked among the more thorough sort of city. No wonder, given how much riff-raff will put on a half-decent suit of armor and pass themselves off as free knights.

“A paladin’s token from an imperially recognized church. I don’t belong to the church, but it vouches for who I am.”
“A church… Talios, then. Very well. We’ll open the gate, so stand back.”

I had drawn out the paladin’s token given to me on leaving Pirberk. Unlike the apostle’s token I received fifty years ago, this was the sort of thing the church issues to any knight whose standing it vouches for.

In the soldier’s eyes I would look like some lunatic who had turned down a full paladin’s place in the church to call himself a free knight, the trade of fallen nobles. In broad outline, that was not a wrong thing to say either.

Pulleys turned somewhere, and soon the gates of Oskalt swung slowly open with a ponderous noise. Kalen and I passed through the small opening at a pace neither slow nor fast.

“Sir free knight, out of the Talios church — welcome to Oskalt.”

Once they had let us inside the wall there was no reason left to shut us out, and the soldiers turned friendly. While Kalen exchanged greetings with them, I pressed on all the faster.

Pindel Morein. At the end of a pursuit long or short depending on how you counted it, the substance of the whole thing was right in front of me.