The Hunter of Hawk and Wolf

The Eastern Labyrinth Forest

Running silent and swift, Sevha stopped beside a tree. His breath came out in a white cloud that lingered a moment before fading into the sunset-stained sky.

Then he saw the Right Wing Fortress. Smoke rose from it, thinner and hazier than his own breath.

He could hear no sounds of battle.

Smoke from a silent fortress meant it had fallen. The smoke still rising meant it had not been long.

They had held out for a long time.

He was proud of them, the fortress soldiers who had endured so long against such numbers. And that they could not hold out longer and that the most of them were likely dead was a torment to him.

The most of them dead. But perhaps…

He pushed the thought away and looked back. Marina and the Hunters stood there, their faces as stoic as his own.

“I'm going into the fortress,” he said.

Marina answered him. “You know it’s fallen. Why do you insist on going in?”

“It’ll be easier later if we know their numbers and their movements.”

“Is that really why?”

“What other reason would there be?”

She hesitated. Then she sighed as if there were no choice in it.

“Understood. Then I will go with you.”

“You'll be in the way.”

“Sevha…!”

“That's an order.”

He silenced her and walked into the forest. Marina and the Hunters followed.

They came to a deep stream. Sevha took off his armor and put his feet in the water. 

Splashing himself with the cold water, he asked, “The poison?”

Marina tossed him a small waterskin. He fastened the skin and a single knife to his waist and turned downstream.

“Marina. When I return, block the waterway.”

“…Understood. Please be careful.”

He walked alone down the stream.

The water deepened and became a small pond. He submerged himself in the pond and saw an opening, just large enough for a man.

He entered the hole and swam through the narrow tunnel. When he reached the end, he looked up.

The roof of a well.

I still don’t know where this well will lead.

He raised his head slowly above the water and listened.

“Disgusting. It's disgusting.”

A man's dark voice. An Imperial soldier. The sound of a spear cast aside.

“Why didn't those bastards surrender?”

The voice drew closer. The soldier peered into the well.

“I didn't want to kill so many of—“

Sevha reached up and took the soldier's face in his hand and pulled. The soldier fell into the well, dragged under the water.

At the bottom of the well, he drove the knife into the man's neck. The life went out of the soldier's eyes.

Sevha studied his clothes. The man wore no leather armor. He was dressed in little more than rags.

Sevha climbed out of the well. As he was about to look around, he saw a group of soldiers walking toward him. Their clothes were as shoddy as the dead man's.

He did not panic. He picked up the spear the dead soldier had dropped.

Boldly, he called out to them. “Trying to use the well? Forget it.”

He showed them the inside of the well. They saw the blood in the water and cursed in annoyance.

“Shit! I'm dead tired and now we can't even get a damn drink!”

“Dragged all the way out here for this misery!”

He listened to them complain and he understood why their gear was so poor.

They’re conscripts.

Judging by the lack of uniformity in their dress, he figured it would be easy to move among them.

He grew bolder, tapping one of the soldiers on the shoulder.

“Just wait,” he said. “When the higher-ups get thirsty, they'll send a man in to drag the corpse out. Don't forget to cover it after.”

The soldiers just laughed. They couldn’t have even dreamed that he was the enemy. 

Sevha left them and walked into the courtyard, coming to a dazed stop.

The place he remembered was gone. What remained was only devastation and death. Imperial soldiers gathered the bodies of the Anse and burned them.

Any survivors…?

He scanned the yard for them. A shout rang out.

“Country bumpkin filth!”

He looked and saw the man called Goldas, fuming before a charred warehouse.

The crest on the cape… That must be the infamous Goldas.

Sevha had never seen him before, but he knew him well. A pig of a man who would chew his own flesh if he grew hungry enough.

The County of Dulka was a poor place, notable only for the travelers who stopped there on the Great Road.

Goldas inherited his title ten years ago, and he wanted to make of his ordinary land a place of extraordinary wealth. So he gave sanctuary to wanted men.

The liquor they made and the beds they offered, he sold all manner of vice to the travelers on the road.

After ten years, the Dulka Castle Town was the most frequented pleasure district on the Great Road.

The damn pig looks and acts exactly like the rumors.

As if to prove it, Goldas began shrieking, his face filled with greed. “Did they even know how much was in this warehouse? And they had it all burn!”

Imperial soldiers dragged a charred corpse from the burned warehouse.

“Commander. This seems to be the Fortress Commander who burned the—” 

“Out of my way!”

Goldas began hacking at the charred corpse with his sword.

Sevha saw it and he understood. The identity of the corpse and the reason for the fire.

The Fortress Commander had burned with the warehouse. With the toll money.

Goldas was obviously not a man used to a sword; he tripped and fell on his back.

An Imperial soldier chuckled. Goldas scrambled up and slapped the man across the face.

“Insolent bastard!”

“My apolo—!”

“If you're sorry, then bring me the women you've captured. Now!”

The words spoke of survivors. Sevha turned.

Just then.

“Why are you wet?”

A question came from a man he had never seen before, standing before him. 

Chaynebel.

“Tried to pull the corpse from the well. But I failed, sir,” Sevha explained.

“I see… And you are from?”

“Dulka.”

There was a silence. A few seconds passed.

Chaynebel took off his own cape and threw it to Sevha.

“It must be hard, serving under a pig. Dry yourself.”

In the Empire, a man was what he was born, and slavery was the law of the land. It was a strange thing for a noble to give a conscript the cape from his own back. 

Chaynebel seemed to sense his thoughts and scoffed.

“I despise the incompetent,” he uttered, glancing at Goldas. “You survived the battle, which means you are not incompetent. Thus, I have no reason to despise you.”

It was a kindness… and yet it soured in him. As Sevha wiped the water from his body with the cape, he tried to understand why.

Chaynebel looked at the burning bodies of the Anse soldiers and grimaced.

“In the end,” he continued, “those men who died a dog's death were simply incompetent.”

Immediately, Sevha understood where this sourness came from.

He’s arrogant.

What he had received from the man was kindness. But what the man had given him was pity.

He thinks everyone is beneath him.

In Sevha’s eyes, this man was as disgusting as the pig Goldas.

Just then, Goldas screeched, “Chaynebel!”

Chaynebel clicked his tongue. “That incompetent pig… I should go.”

Sevha returned the cape and bowed his head.

Chaynebel started toward Goldas. Then he stopped and looked back at Sevha.

“However… even among the surviving soldiers, you seem particularly capable. What did you do back home?”

Hiding his tension, Sevha answered, “I was a huntsman.”

“I see… I will remember that.”

As Chaynebel went to Goldas, Sevha slowly turned his back. He returned to his task.

There are survivors. Where…?

He thought it would be easier to find them from a high place, a view of the whole fortress. He entered the tower.

The moment he stepped inside, the stench of blood filled his nose.

The floor and the stairs were covered in bodies. Every man still clutched a weapon in his dead hand. He knew they had fought to the end.

Climbing the stairs, he looked upon the faces of the dead and rubbed his own face.

Through his fingers, his eyes curved with a faint glimmer of pride.

Well done.

Through those same fingers, his mouth turned down in sorrow.

Well… done.

He climbed the tower, gazing on the faces of the fallen one by one, and committed each to memory.

When he came out at the top, the sky was the color of blood. He saw a figure standing at the tower's edge. A person with the hood of their robe pulled up.

The figure sensed him and turned.

The moment their eyes met, he could not draw a breath.

It was a woman whose shape the robe could not hide, her face wrapped tightly in bandages. And her eyes were red. A match for the bloody sky and the stench of the dead.

The woman started when she saw him.

But only for a moment. Her eyes crinkled as if at some private amusement.

She asked, “Have you ever hunted a winged beast?”

Sevha grew tense. Not from the suddenness of her words, but because of her voice. 

Her voice was a kind of enchantment.

His face became the face of a hunter before he knew it.

She saw it and remarked, “It seems you have.”

He hastily let the look fall from his face and spoke with a feigned lightness. “Oh wow, how’d you know I made my living as a huntsman in Dulka, milady?”

She chuckled at his jest.

Contrary to her relaxed manner, Sevha’s mind was in turmoil.

Who in the world is this woman?

In the Empire, the line between men and women was as clear as the line between classes. Only women of high birth were permitted on a battlefield. That was why he had used the term of respect.

But if I'm wrong…

He tightened his grip on the spear. The woman stopped laughing. She beckoned him over.

When he stood beside her, the fallen fortress lay below them, a desolate landscape.

“Be sure to remember this sight.”

He etched the scene into his mind.

The woman's bandaged face was suddenly close to his.

“Because this is the starting point of the Double-headed Dragon's fall. The Empire's fall.”

Sevha looked into her enchanting, ominous, dark red eyes.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

She drew her head back and placed a long index finger to her lips.

“It's a secret.” She chuckled. Then she added, “I can't tell an Imperial soldier who speaks so politely without even knowing who I am.”

He realized she saw through him. He resolved to kill her.

At that instant, she took a step back. She took the hem of her robe in her hands and lifted it like a skirt.

The gesture carried both the grace of a noble lady and the charm of a country girl. Elegant yet full of spirit.

“Teresse.”

She gave her name.

“The only magus on the continent.”

And with it, an outrageous claim.