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The Prince’s Virtue (5)
Hansen hurried up with his steps. Winter was coming; the sun had set far earlier. He had been wandering, camping on the plains. That was by no means what Hansen wanted to do now. At first, the atmosphere wasn’t too bad. It was still a short while ago that he had heard that some villages in the central region had been turned into ruins overnight.
According to the rumors Hansen heard, it was doubtful whether these massacres were perpetrated by anything human. “Eh, let’s not think about it too much.”
Just remembering the rumors made chills run down Hansen’s spine.
It seemed as if some horror would pop up from any one of the boulder piles around him.
Hansen tried to comfort himself. The eastern part of the kingdom was far from the western lands. However, Hansen couldn’t get rid of the horrible thoughts that filled his mind. He tightened his body and hurried his steps. The darker it became, the swifter was his pace.
And what was his reward for such diligence?
“It’s a village!”
Hansen cheered as he saw the lights in the distance. His body, which now felt exhausted from walking all day, was rejuvenated by a newfound vitality. He headed for the lights, almost at a run.
“Stop!”
The village elders greeted him with crude, wooden spears at the entrance of their homestead. Hansen, showing no signs of embarrassment, slowed his pace and showed his good intentions.
“I am not a suspicious person, but a merchant who wanders the world and sells his wares.”
The women who saw the trinkets and curious items hanging from Hansen’s backpack immediately began to covet them. However, the elders were still pointing their spears at the stranger with caution-filled faces.
Hansen sighed. It wasn’t the first time he experienced it, and he knew exactly what to do in this case.
“The emperor is a motherfucker. Burgundy is rotting shit.”
After cursing, Hansen moved aside a spear an old man was pointing at him.
“I’m not an imperial.”
“Yeah, that’s right. These empire blokes will rather die than curse the emperor.”
Hansen gave an internal laugh of relief.
Considering the fact that Leonberg had suffered a great deal from imperial spies, the elders’ actions were surely understandable. However, apart from granting him his current safety, Hansen wondered if he would have gotten away with such a childish masterpiece were he a real spy.
Of course, there was more than one way in which the villagers rooted out spies.
“As you can see, I am a native of the kingdom.”
Hansen bared his heart as he spoke with the elders in a good-natured manner.
“You are a lucky young man! I don’t know how different our village’s people are, but I know there are some who shoot any man coming from that direction. All the young men in our village have, of course, run off to go fight the Empire’s blokes.”
“We would have gone too, if only they had received us. However, they didn’t accept me because of my age.”
“Hah, you can always correct that error,” Hansen mused, and the elders all burst out laughing.
“Don’t say that. How old are you? By the way, I think times like these are good for a businessman like yourself.”
“I am still young,” said Hansen. “And when you’re young, you would not yet know what terror is.”
“We’re jumping awake at night here. Even the young ones are too scared to sleep.”
While the old folk chatted politely away, a woman approached Hansen.
“If you want a place to rest, there is a place to stay in town.
“Would you like a meal? Perhaps some warm wine? Our village gets half the water than others, so our stores are quite few.”
Hansen saw that the woman glanced at his backpack, showing a keen interest in its contents. He then followed her and headed right into the village.
He didn’t know how a woman in such a remote place could offer such luxurious meals, and she was yet to lay it before him. Perhaps, Hansen thought, she would give him a bowl of rice and force him to pay for the extras.
However, before Hansen had even started unpacking the contents of his backpack, before his warm wine, something happened.
‘Dang Dang Dang!’
The loud ringing of a bell echoed through the settlement, and the quiet rural village quickly became noisy. The women who had been sitting in the room with him jumped up and headed outside. Hansen followed them as if possessed by the sudden chaotic atmosphere.
Hansen decided he should rather not have followed them. If he hadn’t, he would not have seen a scene so fierce that it burned itself into his dreams. Signal fires were blazing everywhere, and a strange, reddish light was cast upon the village fence.
“What, a wolf?”
“Not a wolf! There was one day when all the wolf activity dried up in this neighborhood! And when has there ever in this world been a wolf that shines so brightly!” one of the old men shouted.
“Then what is that!” Hansen pointed his finger at the fence.
An eerie red light was everywhere, and at a rough estimate, Hansen reckoned there were at least a hundred enemies.
“I’m damned if I know!” the old man shouted. “But I’m sure we’ll find out soon.”
The elder beckoned at a group of women who had gathered in one place.
“Start the fire! If we’re lucky, they’ll see it in other towns!”
The women gave small nods and started lighting the great bonfire in the middle of the village.
‘Hwarruk!’
In an instant, flames flooded over the firewood. The flames were so fierce that Hansen wondered whether they would spread, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was the unknown beings surrounding the village.
Only an idiot would fail to see that these things haven’t visited the village with a good purpose in mind. The only feelings contained in the eerie light were murder and hostility. And Hansen was sure the owners of those bloody eyes would attack them long before the fire incinerated the village.
“Do everything that you’ve practiced!”
“We would have done this against the imperials in any case!”
Villagers threw carts over the entrances and against the walls of the village and lit them on fire. In an instant, the settlement was aflame.
“Don’t be scared, everyone!”
“Whatever they are, if they get stabbed by a spear, they will bleed and die!”
The elders encouraged their people in loud voices.
Women encouraged one another with sharp voices as they glared at the fence, clutching spears and pieces of iron.
Hansen stared at it all blankly.
Wherever he looked, he failed to see one young man. It seemed that all the soldiers had marched off to fight the Empire, and this was what they left behind. Hansen looked over the fence again and soon realized that whatever this was, the weak elders would not be able to stop it. A village in the central region would soon be wiped out.
“The damned royal family,” Hansen cursed softly. This was all because of them. What was their cause for war? Independence or whatever, and now the lives of these elders and the joy they could have experienced in the remainder of their lives would be taken from them.
Had it not been for the royal family’s useless war, this village would not have been left without young men for so long. Some say that the queen died trying to protect the citizens of the capital, but Hansen did not believe this. There was no way that a queen would give her life for the lowly commoners. It was evident that she died while trying to escape and that they are now trying to glorify her death.
And even if the rumors of her deed were true, nothing was great about it. It was fair that the royal family also suffered death along with the peasants who are shoveling dung for them.
Hansen had always looked at those innocents who died in war as pitiful figures — the problem was, he was about to become one of them.
“You have to flee! Even if you pretend not to see, they outnumber you more than two to one. What are old men and women going to do against that?”
One woman shook her head at Hansen’s words.
“I have children. One is barely able to walk yet, and the other has barely been weaned. How long do you think they’ll last if I run away with them now?”
The elders affirmed the woman’s choice.
“The plains surround us, I don’t know what this is, but I don’t think they’re slower than humans.”
“You think fleeing is a breeze? You want me to run away from the village where I have lived my entire life?”
Hansen started to step away. He was an outsider; there was no reason for him to die here. He had to flee right away through the first gap he saw.
‘Sksh’ While Hansen retreated, he made eye contact with several villagers. None of them seemed to blame him; they merely pretended not to see his flight.
“It is hard for you. I wish you hadn’t come to our village at such a bad time.”
“If you have spare time later, please bury our bodies. We do not want an outsider to be murdered in our village. Your dreams are fierce.”
Some of the old men openly told Hansen that he was not responsible for the current misfortune.
“Why fight? You will all die here today.”
“What else can we do?! We’re all old, and there are mothers and babies that should live!”
Hansen clenched his teeth. It wasn’t without guilt that he thought he had to leave right away. He definitely thought so.
“Fuck it!”
When Hansen came to his senses, he found himself clutching a crude wooden spear along with the villagers.
“Why didn’t you go?” one of them asked him.
“Don’t say any more about it. I don’t understand it either.”
“This’ll be different from our old battles?” one old man asked.
“I’m reassured because we’ve been having one long success run,” another elder laughed, touching Hansen’s shoulder. “Let’s hold on a little,” he urged Hansen, “Since the beacon is lit, the lord’s soldiers will come running. If we hold on until then-”
“Oh, stop lying about the world! Why do you wait for the lord’s soldiers to come? Is it because you don’t know what these nobles are like? No matter how many people like us die, they will never open their eyes! The soldiers will come? We will all be dead and scorched when they arrive!”
Hansen started screaming wildly, no longer able to contain the emotions he had suppressed within himself. The women and elders remained stubborn and ready to fight; some muttered that if the sturdy Hansen escaped, he could at least go follow his fierce dreams.
Hansel somehow forced courage into his heart.
‘The damned royal family. Damn nobles,’ he cursed within his mind. If it wasn’t for the war, this village would not have been defenseless. If there had been a good defense here, Hansel wouldn’t have had to grip a spear within a rank of villagers.
As he continued to swear at the royal family, Hansel’s fear subsided a bit.
“Even if I die, I shall do so unconditionally!” Hansel screamed with rat-tailed courage.
“Ahhhh!”
However, the semblance of courage Hansel had mustered disappeared without a trace as he heard the things outside cry out.
‘Quzzak!’
Even before the roar died down, the rough barriers the villagers had erected still ended up getting smashed apart. Flaming pieces of wood flew through the air, and sparks scattered in all directions. Through the storm of flames, the owners of those eerie red eyes appeared. They had distorted, long-snouted mouths and bizarre bodies covered with brittle hair; somehow, neither humans nor beasts.
They were about a yard long and three feet high.
‘Graaarr’ a dog-headed monster, growled as it revealed yellow teeth. Hansen froze where he stood, so vicious was the sight.
“I’m going to die anyway, so why wait?”
“I will put the younger lives before mine!”
The old men bellowed their battle cries as they stepped forward. Hansen felt uncomfortable when he saw their skinny bodies.
‘Kreuk!”
The dog-headed monsters grinned wide and yelped at the old men.
“These guys! None shall pass until I die!” one of the old men roared his oath as he pointed his spear at the foe.
At that very moment, the monsters rushed in. Hansen struggled to grasp what happened next properly.
When he snapped awake, all the elders who had stood in the front rank had been decapitated.
‘Tuk, Degur!’
One of the old men’s head rolled across the ground, eyes wide open.
‘Quazchschplt,’ a monster stepped onto the head, stomped down, and burst it into a pulp.
Hansen was captivated by the scene. He knew he should already have run away, yet he was immersed, deep in thought, as he matched the gazes of the red-eyed monsters, watching as they bit into the elders’ bodies.
For a very short time, Hansen wanted the monsters to become full on the corpses. It was a very fleeting notion.
‘Hagghm,’ the monsters spat out the corpses they had been chewing on, almost at once. Hansen vaguely pondered this change in their behavior. It was clear that the old men’s tough, leathery bodies did not suit the monsters’ tastes. Certainly, their taste for flesh surely felt greater for a plump-skinned woman rather than the tough bodies of the elders.
And as Hansen thought about it, an absurd notion came into his head. Even while he was overwhelmed by fear, something still happened in his mind. If this didn’t happen, Hansen would have already thrown his spear aside and run away.”
“More! Come on, you dog-headed bastards!”
If Hansen hadn’t shouted like a madman, the monsters would not have paid much attention to him. He immediately regretted it after shouting. Why was it necessary for him to step forward and draw the monsters’ attention?
Yet, contrary to such thoughts, Hansen’s mouth still moved.
“If you’re a dog, I’ll throw you some bones and feed you like a dog! Come on, then!”
Hansen wanted to stop yet could only keep shouting.
“Come on! I’ll beat you like a dog!”
At that moment, all the monsters grew quiet.
“Ah, you understand people!”
Hans was sick and tired of those glares which challenged him.
“Oh, you’re very smart, aren’t you?!”
Without even knowing what he was shouting, Hansen kept at it.
“Yes, you better stop talking!”
Would the women standing behind me be able to hold these things off, Hansen thought?
There was no time to find out. One of the monsters stepped forward as it yelped excitedly. It was the smallest of its kind, yet its head was still twice as large as Hansen’s. The monster gave a low growl and approached Hansen without hesitation.
“Oh, ah, ah!” Hansen closed his eyes and thrust forward with his spear.
‘Quzzik!’ There was a discomfiting noise. Hansen carefully opened his eyes.
His gaze ran along his bloody spear, up to where its tip touched the monster’s tough-haired chest. Hansen looked at the spear tip for a bit and then gently raised his head.
Hansen saw the monster’s fierce visage, but something was strange- The monster had bloodshot eyes that bulged from their sockets, and it yelped from its snout, so great was the pain. Then its eyes turned a milky white. Blood splattered from the monster’s mouth. Hansen, after looking at the unfolding scene blankly, hurriedly turned to one of the village women. “Look! Have you seen it? I killed a monster, a monster!”
Hansen talked so much that he forgot about the dire situation and was suddenly filled with a strange sense of danger. The woman’s gaze was focused behind Hansen, not on him.
“Well, no way-” not sure whether the monster was dead, Hansen forced his neck to creak back. Suddenly- the monster gave its chest a few shakes, crouched low, and attacked Hansen.
“Oaah! Ah!” Hansen screamed as the thing then charged into him.
“Save me!” he pleaded, closing his eyes. Hansen lay like that for a while and suddenly opened his eyes when he was sure he didn’t feel the expected pain.
“Huh?” he grunted. A silver-armored knight was looking down at him, with a hanging, bloodied sword. The knight reached out, and Hansen hastily grabbed onto the hand.
‘Chuck!’
With the knight pulling Hansen, he easily lifted himself up. He shoved the heavy body of the monster that lay on him away with little effort.
Only then did Hansen see the deep wound that ran across the monster’s back. The sword had sliced so deep that bones were revealed. Hansen looked at the knight, who was looking at the elders’ corpses scattered through the village.
“If I had come earlier, I would have prevented their deaths,” the knight said in a clear voice that stayed solid despite the horror and then looked at Hansen and the village women again.
‘Cheolkup,’ the knight raised the visor of her helm, and Hansen was fascinated. The woman’s appearance revealed from beneath her helmet was surely the culmination of all beauty; Hansen had never heard of its like.
“You have done well!” Hansen suddenly praised the villagers with a bold face, as if he didn’t care that he had almost died.
“From now on, let us rest assured!”