TFM 233

 Varkas lifted his head and let out a thunderous command.

“Lay down your weapons and surrender quietly, and your lives will be spared!”

A heavy silence pressed down on the battlefield for a moment.

The soldiers, glancing at one another, soon began lowering their weapons one by one.

The dull clang of swords and spears striking the ground spread outward from him like ripples. Behind the ramparts, screams and the sharp clash of metal still rang out, but among the soldiers filling the courtyard, no fighting spirit could be found any longer.

Varkas swept a sharp gaze over his surroundings, then pulled his sword from the man’s shoulder.

A low groan escaped through the man’s lips as he stubbornly endured the pain.

Varkas brought the blood-drenched tip of his blade to the man’s nape and gestured to the soldiers with his chin.

“Tie him up.”

The moment his order fell, soldiers of the imperial army rushed forward in a swarm, roughly subdued the man, and wound ropes tightly around his crushed wrist.

Once the binding was finally done, Varkas slid his sword back into his belt and added in an icy tone,

“This man will be brought before the imperial court and charged with treason. Keep him alive.”

Then, just as he turned sharply to assess the battle situation in the rear, a hoarse laugh, as though scraped up from deep within the throat, caught him by the ankle.

Varkas paused and looked back, his brow furrowing as he asked,

“…What is so amusing?”

“Ah, if I offended you, I apologize. I simply found Your Grace’s loyalty toward the imperial family so admirable that I could not possibly hold back my laughter.”

The man’s massive shoulders, encased in a breastplate, shook as he spoke languidly.

“It feels as though I am looking at a well-trained watchdog. It seems the rumors that the priests of Osiria trained the heir of the grand duke quite thoroughly were not empty after all.”

In an instant, the air around them froze sharply.

One eastern warrior, enraged, pressed the shaft of his spear down against the man’s shoulder and raised his voice.

“How dare a criminal like you run his mouth so carelessly!”

Fresh blood surged from the wound, but the man paid it no mind.

His eyes flashing, he looked straight up at Varkas and continued his provocation.

“Where did you throw away your pride as a warrior? Your ancestors fought the empire to the very end. The Great King of Siorkan, who once made the entire continent of Roviden tremble in fear, even dealt a fatal wound to the hero Wigru in his final battle. And yet a descendant of such a great warrior now calls himself a servant of House Guirta… Your ancestors must be weeping tears of blood in the afterlife.”

“…I wondered what you were trying to say.”

Varkas, who had been looking down at the man in silence, let a faint sneer spread across his lips.

He bent his upper body toward the man and answered softly,

“There is nothing quite so hollow as the eloquence of a defeated man.”

The man’s shoulders stiffened faintly. Because of the helmet, Varkas could not properly see his expression, but it was not difficult to guess that the smile had vanished from his face.

“Shall I ask you a question as well? How does it feel to have lost everything to the hands of that ‘well-trained watchdog’ you mocked?”

“……”

“Your ambition has been trampled under my feet. Heimdall has been destroyed, and before long, your body will vanish as dew upon the execution ground. And the name Bjorn Blodar Heimdall will be recorded in history as that of a defeated commander who met a miserable end after a reckless rebellion.”

Varkas seized the man by the jaw and asked in a low voice,

“Tell me. How does it feel to have fallen all the way to the bottom?”

“…Absolutely filthy.”

The man spat the words through clenched teeth. His cold breath escaped through the visor and blew over Varkas’s face.

“But I will spare you a detailed explanation of just how filthy it feels. Your Grace will soon taste this sensation for yourself.”

Varkas’s eyes narrowed.

At that moment, a strange chill ran down his spine.

Instinctively realizing that the man was not bluffing, Varkas kicked him in the abdomen with his boot.

With a dull impact, the man’s body was knocked sideways. Perhaps the chin strap had snapped from the blow, because his helmet shifted upward.

Varkas seized it and tore it off in one motion. Then he roughly grabbed the thick platinum-blond hair matted with blood and dragged the man’s head up.

“I don’t know what trick you are trying to pull, but you are already finished. Thrash all you want now; the result will not change…”

His cold voice cut off abruptly.

The bluish dawn light, gradually growing brighter, had clearly illuminated the man’s face.

The man twisted the corner of his mouth and asked languidly,

“Do you recognize me?”

From Varkas’s stiffened lips came a suppressed voice.

“Roman Tallis…”

“How delightful that you have not forgotten me.”

The strange smile on the man’s lips deepened.

Varkas tightened the fingers gripping his hair and violently wrenched his head back. The color of his hair was different, but there was no doubt. This was the heretic hunter who had once roamed freely through his territory.

Varkas asked in a growl,

“What in the world have you been doing in the east?”

“There is no need to be so angry. Just as you spent years tearing through my domain, I merely stirred up yours a little…”

The man’s shoulders shook faintly as he chuckled.

“I put quite a bit of effort into it, so by now, Kalmor should be in absolute chaos.”

Varkas’s face slowly twisted.

At the sight, a burst of triumphant laughter broke from the man’s mouth.

“Why that expression? Don’t tell me you thought you could turn my territory into a wasteland and your own inner court would remain unharmed. Haha! If you were going to throw ashes over someone else’s long-cherished work, you should have been prepared for your own workplace to be wrecked as well!”

A fist clad in a leather glove struck the man’s face.

The man’s head, still laughing, snapped helplessly to the side.

When Varkas grabbed his hair again as he swayed as though about to collapse, the bloodied face filled his vision once more.

He spat out the blood pooling in his mouth and muttered slowly,

“While you were playing the imperial family’s loyal hound, a feast of blood will be unfolding in the east. Your castle and fortune will be swallowed by flames until nothing but ash remains, and every last member of your household will meet a miserable death. And your woman…”

A strange smile curled at the corners of his mouth, drenched in blood.

“I told them to take special care with that little darling. By now, she is probably having a very stimulating time with the barbarian men. It is my only regret that I cannot be there to join in.”

His frivolous, snickering laughter echoed eerily through the castle courtyard, now reduced to a scene of carnage.

“By now, she must look like a filthy rag— Ghk!”

Blood burst from the man’s mouth.

Only after seeing it did Varkas realize that he had driven a dagger into the man’s throat.

He could faintly hear the soldiers drawing sharp breaths in shock. But Varkas could not feel a single thing.

Gripping the back of the man’s head firmly, Varkas drove the dagger in deeper and slowly moved his arm to the side. The eyes of the man, whose throat had been pierced while he was still alive, clouded with agony.

Staring straight into those black pupils, Varkas moved the blade with unbearable slowness.

The blue steel edge shifted little by little, cutting through taut muscle, blood vessels, and nerves. The man choked and gagged, struggling somehow to breathe through his severed windpipe, until at last the light vanished from his eyes.

Varkas drew the tip of the blade out through the opposite side, then lifted the head as blood poured from it.

The soldiers who had been watching the sight from close by collapsed to the ground and vomited.

Without even glancing at them, Varkas threw the enemy commander’s head before the knights.

“Put it on a pike atop the fortress wall.”

Even the knights, who had grown accustomed to all manner of horrors, seemed so appalled that not one of them readily stepped forward.

While they hesitated, Varkas quickly crossed the castle courtyard, trampling over the mountain of corpses piled beneath his feet.

When he reached the area near the gate, he saw the Wolfram Cavalry reorganizing their ranks.

Varkas walked straight toward them and gave his order in a voice so calm it was chilling.

“Gather every soldier at once. We head for Kalmor immediately.”

Perhaps realizing that something far from ordinary had happened, Daren blew the horn without delay and assembled the eastern warriors.

Varkas roughly seized the reins of Tork, who had been tied near the camp, and stared at the sun beginning to lift its head between the black mountain peaks.

The sharp rays of light pierced his retinas like thorns.

Feeling a strange dizziness, Varkas closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and soon climbed into the saddle.