by Y. R. Shin
“But there is no war without sacrifices.”
“There is one with less.”
“Even if it ends with a single death, if that death is my brother’s, it doesn’t make a difference to me now.”
“But you said your older brother already died. If things go wrong, your younger brother will die and so will you. Your parents would prefer to lose one less child than more. If you keep this up, your family will definitely face its doom.”
“I’m not here relying on luck.”
“Even if you do get ordained, military laws rule over all personal opinions. You don’t need me to explain in plain words to understand what that…”
“I understand, sir.”
Jacalrin glanced at Reuyen’s unwavering stance. That kind of blind drive tickled his senses for some reason. A verified identity according to written records, and yet an uncertain one.
But according to his intuition, she didn’t seem like an enemy. “You should be careful, in many ways.”
It was a simple warning. He was Jacalrin Endo of House Chesa. Serious, heavy topics were not his specialty. He soon changed the expression on his face, scrunched up his lips, then grabbed Reuyen’s waist tightly with his fingers.
Reuyen’s eyebrows angled up furiously at the sudden invasion of his hand.
“You should lose some weight, though,” Jacalrin said.
“Don’t you dare lay your hands on me…”
“Come again?”
“…Sir. Oh, the admired young knight of House Chesa.”
Jacalrin chuckled and shook his head. “Oh, well…” He shamelessly rested his chin on her shoulder. “I lost. I, Jacalrin Endo Chesa, owe this woman a life,” he shouted lazily.
With his surrender, the evaluation came to an end. Groans resounded around the training ground once more.
Reuyen finally untied the wrist she was holding on to and dismounted. A large hand suddenly appeared in her sight. She let out a short moan at the gushing pain from her feet when they touched the ground. The hand belonged to Jacalrin, who had dismounted after her. Reuyen blinked at the suddenly offered hand, then took it.
“It’ll be too late later, even if you cry because you’re scared and want to run away.”
Hand in hand with a knight on a battlefield. Its firmness reminded her of the hand of an old comrade. A tender chuckle escaped with her breath.
Applause accompanied by stunned sighs resounded across the grounds, repeatedly quieting down like it would stop, then continuing again.
But Sidan was at a loss, unable to be proud of his sister or simply praise her.
“Hey, Sidan, seems like you know that woman. Who is she?” asked a soldier.
The awestruck soldiers’ attention focused on Sidan.
No way.
He’d grown up under the shadows of his so-called genius sister and admired her. Reuyen was indeed admirable. But this was way beyond common expectations. Was she that great? That’s not my sister. Chills went down his spine. Now that he thought of it, he’d never seen his sister’s limit. There was no one in their small village who could match her.
Reuyen’s fatigued eyes glanced at Sidan, standing among the soldiers. Unable to handle the overwhelming sensation, Sidan stumbled backwards.
On one side of the fence, Evinbur, who had witnessed everything beside Paseid, opened his prudent mouth. “I do not intend to speak like a schemer, sir, but…”
“Speak, Sir Haldroff.”
“I would advise you to keep that woman close by and watch her for a little while, sir. This dying old man’s intuition says there’s something suspicious going on, sir.”
Paseid fixed his eyes on the woman with neither denial nor acceptance. Helping the stumbling Reuyen walk, Jacalrin noticed Paseid’s eyes and raised his head.
“Teread,” said Paseid, “find the soldier who was responsible for supplying horses by the order of His Majesty and bring him to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Teread, who could not keep his gaze off Reuyen, left with Paseid’s orders. Evinbur bowed his head at Paseid. “Then I’ll be off to chide the soldiers in shock, sir.”
The evaluation of qualification was over. Now that the soldiers in the camp had witnessed it, it was impossible to revoke the result. Evinbur nodded in respect and left. Paseid tightened his fists, his eyes still fixed on Reuyen.
Something was going wrong in the rules he had abided by for nearly twenty-nine years.
Right after the end of the evaluation, Jacalrin helped Reuyen to one of the tents. She looked at her feet revealing their red flesh through the burst, nay, mangled blisters, and clicked her tongue.
It was an ugly sight because the young army doctor, aghast, did not bandage the wounds so they could breathe; moreover, the mashed-up herbs applied on them still smelled horrible.
She carefully looked over her body, trembling from her muscles having worked too hard. The tops of her unpracticed feet were all skinned from straining stunts; there was not a single spot that wasn’t red. Her calf muscles were trembling like birds in a storm. Reuyen knew that even small wounds should be dealt with great care on the battlefield, so she was determined to stay still until the wounds scabbed and healed.
As Jacalrin said, this body was far too pathetic.
The queen of the past had been completely fine after marching for a full day or fighting enemy knights for days and nights. Her current body was not that different in size from Swan’s, and yet, it was nauseous from fighting only two knights.
At least she could say that she made it through.
She could barely remember combatting a knight in her former life, but the memories left deep inside her mind and the reflexes ingrained in her soul were still quite useful. She looked at the light armor, leather army boots, battle coat, and brassard with a red wolf embroidered on it lying at the entrance of the tent.
Paseid, the man appointed to the position of the commander-in-chief of Rarke, was a man of action. Within half a day since the conclusion of the evaluation, he’d sent some knight and ordained her a knight-in-training. It was surprising that the brassard he’d sent to symbolize the ordination was of the duke’s red wolf, not the royal family’s white wolf. But she was glad about this, for it did not come with any pressure.
Ordination on the basis of contribution in war required the king’s approval. There was a direct road from the Gerad border to the capital, but it would take a month at the very least for them to arrive at the capital, submit it as an administrative task, receive the king’s seal, and come back to the border.
So, he’d ordained her a knight-in-training of the Noble House Brionake, not the royal family of Rarke. In truth, it didn’t matter which house she belonged to, for all she wanted were the rights that came with the ordination, not the ordination itself.
“You—!” came her brother’s voice. Reuyen nonchalantly looked up as at Sidan stomped into the tent. “You went to our commander?!”
“Sir Chesa has approved it, so stay in the main camp’s rear echelon to your heart’s content,” she heedlessly mumbled, ignoring Sidan’s heavy breaths. Given that he came after her like this, it seemed as though Jacalrin had properly carried out her favor to him.
She had, in fact, cast away her hope to get Sidan out of the army a long time ago. Instead, she’d decided to reposition him in the rear echelon of the main camp, which was given the utmost priority during an endless war like this. In order to do that, she needed the authority to give orders, or the right to request it. So, she’d gladly participated in the evaluation. And she’d earned it.
Sidan huffed and puffed, glaring at Reuyen like he wanted to eat her alive, then fell silent upon discovering the red wolf brassard lying at the entrance.
“And you—you—what the hell was that? When did you learn all that and—!”
“Oh, come on, are you just now realizing how great your sister is? Please.”
“What are you going to do now? Once you’re ordained, until this war ends, you�
�re the one who’s going to have to—”
“It’s not yours to worry about.”
“How can I not?!”
Reuyen suddenly turned her head. “Then why did you trample all over our parents’ concern for you with your pigheadedness and start this mess!” she reprimanded with a thundering voice. Sidan read the fury lying underneath it and froze instinctively.
A short silence fell between the two siblings. After a while, the frowning Reuyen let go of her anger and added, “Just take care of yourself.”
“You—you—you made all that commotion to get knighted…!”
“Why don’t you thank your dear sister for extending that life of yours that you don’t know how to appreciate?”
“Stop talking like that!”
Reuyen clamped her mouth shut at the nauseating sensation overcoming her innards. This young brother of hers. She wondered if all younger siblings were this hard to control.
She’d had a lot of younger siblings in her former life as well, but the only one she’d had any interest in was Peijak.
But Peijak had been smart and strong. On top of that, he had been loyal enough to his sister that he obeyed anything she said, so she really did not need to take that great a care of him. The Detua brother she was fond of in this life, Eivan, had been mature and generous as an older brother should be. It had been in his nature to be kind and merciful, so they had rarely had a disagreement too. Sidan had also listened to her pretty well before Eivan’s death.
So, she had not once encountered any difficulties in engaging with her siblings.
But now she came to this at last because she couldn’t control a brother younger by only two years. No, at this point, the pigheadedness of the men in the Detua family must have been genetic. Eivan had run out and gotten himself killed despite everyone trying to stop him; Jess had planted his roots in his hometown even though he was advised to move away; and Sidan was acting foolishly stubborn in spite of his lack of ability to take care of himself.
Sidan glared at her for a while, but soon changed the expression on his face when the drums calling the soldiers started to ring outside the tent.
“Don’t you have to go?” Reuyen asked.
“What are you going to do now?”
No clue.
Reuyen grabbed her shaking wrist tight. She had come all the way back here and stepped in the swamp herself, so, what now?
“Who knows what will happen from now on. Brionake might, though.” She was talking almost to herself. She snickered, listening to her voice ringing in her ears like someone else’s.
Somewhere deep down in her heart, rage as red and viscous as liquefied metal was boiling. The justification of saving Sidan could not be the target of that rage. The one standing in front of it was herself.
Battlefield.
It was not a place for her now that she had become a mere commoner. But the phrase it can’t be helped justified everything. Memories entangled, her sight went dark, and her heart beat with anxiety, excitement, or whatever this was.
When the sound of the drums began to reach its climax, Sidan let out a big grunt and went out.
Reuyen lazily lay down on the floor like a cat with her belly up to the sky and looked up at the low ceiling of the tent. The pain would go away soon. Once the wounds healed after a couple days of rest, she’d be fine like nothing had happened.
Chapter Thirteen
The evaluation ended as Camp Anf’s morning event. The soldiers dispersed to train, their individual excitement held in their chests, and the knights returned to their duties. So did Paseid.
Before the afternoon training began, the tent’s guards grew nervous at the appearance of a knight from the capital and held their breaths.
“This is a letter from House Laperovahan.”
A man wearing a purple coat over a white wolf brassard, the symbol of his belonging to the palace, handed a letter to Paseid. Paseid spoke a few short formal phrases about a personal matter, not an official one, and excused the man.
Then, he worked, and worked without leaving even a short moment to take a look at the letter. Thanks to the supplies Jacalrin’s reinforcements brought, there was no shortage as of now, but he thought of a plan in case one occurred in the future. Before going back to the main camp, he spent half a day discussing predicted variables during the final meeting about the mission. He then patrolled Camp Anf, ordered his men to prepare to go back to the main camp, and had a bit of leisure time at last.
By the time the red twilight sank in the navy-blue hue that swallowed the sun, Paseid returned to his personal tent in the main camp, took Rionac in its white sheath off his belt, and laid it neatly on the table. It was the sword of the founder Belbarote, one that was called the treasure of House Brionake. He gazed at it for a moment, then removed his dusty, sweaty armor.
The dry air in the tent dried his eyes out too. His eyelids heavy with fatigue, he left the tent. It was relatively quiet around his tent because Tabajen had called upon the soldiers to prepare for an ambush like the previous morning.
Through the deserted alleyway, Paseid headed straight to the camp’s washroom and soon stood on his long shadow in front of a large bucket. He scooped the water and drenched his face.
He leaned over the bucket with his hands on the hard rocks securing it in place and slowly blinked a couple times. The fatigue weighing down on his forehead felt as if it had been washed away. His incessant train of thought seemed to slow down.
Tluck, tlock.
He rubbed his face a couple times at the dripping water, shook off the remaining water in his hair, then looked over at the group of tents, from which wafted the simple smells of food and campfire smoke.
A single doubt that he had cast aside crawled back out at the sounds of leather army boots and metal clanging from afar.
The royal guard Evinbur had brought from the main camp had remembered the daughter of the horse dealer living in a town near the border. Not just the appearance of the woman, but the rest of the family as well, including her brother. Crystal clear. But even after Paseid had officially verified this Reuyen Detua’s identity with the royal guard, he still had a dubious hunch. Just as Evinbur had an unpleasant intuition, Paseid had a similar odd feeling in his gut.
Looking back, her complementing her lack of strength with the agility that came with her small figure was more like a habitual reflex, not an inborn talent. Her archery skills were not to be dismissed, either. The result of the battle he’d witnessed was not something he could easily accept.
She was too young to think that her movements were the result of years of training and experience that comes with age. He’d grown up hearing praise for his skills as often as his name in his early twenties, but his skills then were still incomparable to hers.
Though it was an unfair comparison to begin with, frankly; her tricks were something he, a true noble who had trained in the Brionake style and completed the standard process of becoming a knight, could hardly even imitate. That made his heart beat in a different way.
Setting aside his doubts, he’d ordained her a knight-in-training of his house because he thought there wasn’t enough time to request an ordination from the royal family of Rarke. But the woman had reacted like she could not care less. That perplexed him even further. Her skills were not those of someone who would just rot away in the countryside. If she had indeed trained in horseback riding, sword fighting, and archery for a purpose, what could that purpose be? But another paradox tailed after that.
The woman did not have that much training. He could tell from the state of her hands and her body. Then what?
Fatigue rose in his thoughts.
At that moment, a soldier found him and quickly ran over to report. He was the soldier who guarded his tent.
“Sir Chesa is here, sir.”
Paseid scowled as he followed him and entered the tent.
Jacalrin, who had disappeared after showing up only for a brief moment at the end of the short meeti
ng following the evaluation, was indeed sitting in his personal tent. He was tapping his foot on the ground with half his bum on the wooden table, focused on reading something. He startled at Paseid’s sudden entrance and hid whatever it was behind his bum.
Paseid realized what Jacalrin was poring over with his mouth wide open and clamped his lips. The thing in Jacalrin’s hand was the letter the knight from the capital had given him in person.
“Why—why didn’t you say you were here?” Jacalrin sputtered.
“You’re the one who never listens to me telling you to never be off guard.”
Seeing that Jacalrin didn’t know what to do, Paseid didn’t even feel the desire to reprimand him. So, he ignored the young man and put on the black coat he had hung on the chair.
“Did you go for a splash, sir?” After carefully studying him, Jacalrin realized that Paseid didn’t look upset at all. He changed his attitude like the flip of a coin and continued, “It was right here, so I skimmed over it for a sec, and, wow. Has Elhien been talking ill of me behind my back like that, sir?”
“Did you have something to report?”
Jacalrin awkwardly scratched the back of his head at Paseid’s weary question. “Oh, umm. I took care of the Detua soldier, sir.”
“You don’t need to report that to me.”
“I thought you might be curious.”
“Sit,” Paseid ordered, then placed two wooden cups on the table and put tea leaves in them. Then he poured cold water.
Jacalrin frowned. “Cold water doesn’t look that appealing. Should I tell them to bring some boiling water?”
“Are you planning on staying for long?”
“Oh, come on, I just came. You’re already trying to kick me out?”
Despite his complaining, Jacalrin gladly drank the cold water that wasn’t even steeped yet. Paseid, however, sat down and pushed the cup in front of him aside.
“Did you intend it?” he asked.