Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 3 Read online

  Prologue: Voices of a Lost Country

  In stark contrast to the fervor of battle that raged outside, the room was filled with a cold tension. The room was large, but made only of rough stone.

  It was customary, in this place where the council of war met, to have no frivolous ornaments. There was a large, round table in the center of the room, surrounded by about twenty chairs. There was a stand for candles, and on the wall, a banner boasting a crest—this alone made of colorful threads. It was the only decoration permitted in the room, meant to stoke the lust for battle. But now... now it weighed heavily on the chamber.

  A single official, three female warriors, and three knights were in the council room.

  They seemed so few against the largeness of the space. And so the frozen silence was heavier to them, taunted them the more. No one had told them not to speak, but they sat listening to the sounds that came clearly from outside.

  Swords ringing off each other. Shouting voices. The stomp of soldiers’ boots. And all of them together—the sound of battle. A deep rumble like thunder could be heard from time to time, perhaps a battering ram. The noise was faint, but unmistakably growing closer. Close enough that it could be heard in the council room, situated deep within the castle.

  Someone looked up and called out, “His Majesty!” It must have been the familiar approaching footsteps.

  A second later, the thick door to the room was flung open, and those gathered sighed to see the heroic figure who stood there.

  “Your Royal Majesty!”

  The man who approached the table, all eyes watching him, was middle-aged, wearing a set of intricately worked armor and a deep crimson mantle. He was in the prime of his life both physically and mentally, but he radiated something more than simple maturity. He was both a warrior and a king. The way he walked revealed as much.

  “You must pardon me. I was delayed preparing for the field.” He took the helmet he held under his arm and set it on the table, and then the man—the king—looked at each person in the council room. “Is all well here?” he asked, holding up a hand to forestall those who would have fallen prostrate before him.

  Everyone nodded. But the fact that the king himself was here in this place, deep in the castle, asking that question—it meant all too clearly that things had already gotten very bad. An avalanche of enemy soldiers might pour into the room at any moment.

  “Veronika, you understand what’s going on?”

  The woman he had spoken to gave a half-nod. This young woman was more than a lady of the court. For some reason, she was wearing the plain garments of a government official, nothing like what members of the royal family wore, but her symmetrical face and red hair, among other things, gave her a clear resemblance to the king. It was obvious at a glance that they were related.

  “Sire. The Scanlan barbarians have perpetrated a despicable surprise attack against the capital, and—”

  “The enemy is already a stone’s throw away,” the king said, speaking over the girl—the princess. It was a simple fact, but the weight of it was immense. “This is no time to hold back our strength. I will go with the army.”

  Consternation broke out in the council chamber. The declaration was tragic: if the king himself was going to wield a sword and fight, it was as good as saying that all was lost.

  But a faint glimmer of hope remained on the faces of those gathered for the council of war. Garett Wolfenden, the king of this nation, was a living legend. He was of the royal family, born to power. He had used that power, and his family’s wealth, to secure peace, and no one would have blamed him if he had gone on to live a life of indolence. But Garrett was not content to do such a thing; he saw himself as a man of arms before he was a king, and he trained as such.

  Even while the prior king was still on the throne, Garrett had dealt proactively with border disputes and unrest on the frontiers, and he was among the many soldiers who had seen battle on the front lines. Thus he had sharpened his innate talent against the whetstone of experience and gained a reputation as a royal who was also a superlative person. His fame spread to the surrounding nations, and it became known far and wide that Wolfenden was a prince-at-arms.

  He took the throne, married, and had a child. His life was settled: he was a fine husband and father, and a good king who governed wisely. But he never forgot that he was a warrior, and many of the king’s servants had witnessed him at practice, swinging his sword in the garden as dawn broke.

  “Father!” Veronika said forcefully. “Then I shall accompany you! Uncle, bring my armor and sword!”

  Veronika Wolfenden. Like father, like daughter, the servants were fond of whispering with rueful smiles. His blood very much ran in her veins. In hopes of growing even a little closer to the father she adored, Veronika had learned how to fight despite being a woman, and at about the age of twelve she was already skilled enough to take on the average soldier in a fair fight. Her mother had died when Veronika was young, leaving Garrett her only family and the person she loved most in the world. She was more than just his blood; in her ardent pursuit of the martial arts, she was the daughter of Garrett Wolfenden in all that she said and did.

  The king’s retainers adored this outgoing princess almost as much as the king himself did.

  Now, Garrett asked quietly, “Veronika, how old are you?”

  Thrown off by the unexpected question, she answered, “Huh? I... I’m fifteen. More than old enough to join my first battle!”

  A small smile flitted over Garrett’s face as he looked at the wall of the room—the wall where the national banner hung.

  “Clail, Troutman. Take care of my daughter. Pick several men from the royal guard.”

  “Your Majesty...?”

  As they realized the import of these words, the faces of the two knights, as well as Veronika, paled.

  “F-Father! I’m confident in my abilities! There’s no one in this castle who can best me aside from you. Be it with spear or sword, no one can—”

  “No. This is not your battlefield. Today, you must run.”

  Garrett spoke, and that settled the matter. Veronika was lost for words. Her father, her king, had told her to run. That could only mean he expected to lose this battle.

  But Veronika couldn’t imagine how that could be. Her father would be joining the fight. Her father, the legend, one man who could face down a thousand, would be at the front, and then those barbarians would be dispersed in the blink of an eye. Veronika was convinced of this; she had no doubt.

  “...Princess, this way,” said an elderly knight who attended her.

  “Uncle?!” In shock, Veronika turned to her uncle, the one-eyed knight Hugo Troutman. He was a soldier who, when he was young, had served on the battlefield with her father. Garrett trusted him implicitly. He had lost his eye to an arrow, after which he had been put on the back lines as Veronika’s guardian. Much of the fighting arts on which she prided herself, she had learned from her father—but the rest she had learned from Hugo.

  And now he, too—even he—believed they would lose this fight.

  “I’m counting on you, Troutman,” Garrett said, and then turned away.

  Veronika tried to say something, to call out to her father’s back—but the words wouldn’t come. His shoulders, his back, steadfastly refused to let his daughter follow. She understood this all too clearly, because for as long as she could remember, all she had done was chase after that figure.

  “Father—!”

  “Princess...” The aged knight took Veronika’s hand; all she could do was watch as her father vanished from view.

  ●

  The escape road led them out of the castle, depositing them on a tree-covered mountain
nearby. They were at a diagonal from the castle, able to look down on it. The place admitted no horses, and footing was poor; it was bad terrain for an army, which made it less likely that an enemy would attempt an ambush from this direction. The chances of them accidentally running into a hostile force seemed slim.

  Making it this far was something of a relief. Hugo must have thought as much, because he called a brief rest. Many places along the escape route required them to crawl, so Veronika and the knights protecting her were all tired.

  “Father...!”

  Even so, she tried desperately to find a view of the castle, to see how the battle was going. And indeed, catching glimpses through the trees, she was able to see what had become of her former home.

  Veronika caught her breath, speechless.

  The castle was surrounded by an army far larger than she had expected. The force seemed to grow even as it pressed closer, and of course it had no hesitation about destroying anything within reach.

  They were like a flood. Soldiers crawled over the castle, swallowing it up. The garden her mother had cherished, the grounds where her father had trained, all trampled beneath the soldiers’ feet. Once they withdrew, it seemed likely there would be nothing left. Everything would be crushed.

  The defenders were putting up the fiercest fight they could manage, but the attackers were obviously more powerful. And they were aided by reinforcements after reinforcements. Slowly but surely, they pushed the defensive line back to the castle itself.

  “Father...!”

  A group of soldiers exploded from the ranks of the defenders. It was the royal guard sallying fourth, led by her father the king. All the men of the guard were almost as skilled in combat as Garrett. They stood before the massive army without fear, easily dispatching the enemy foot soldiers.

  “Ah...”

  The Wolfenden forces had been on the brink of collapse, but now they were surging back to life; even at this distance, Veronika could feel it. Their warrior-king, their living legend, was on the front line with his picked troops. His valor and skill were every bit as great as the legends proclaimed.

  He was beyond striking down a foe with every move: each time Garrett swung his spear, two or three heads would fly into the air. True, perhaps the element of surprise gave him some advantage, but in the blink of an eye, he had brought down more than ten enemy soldiers, and then the king and his royal guard were pressing deeper into the opposing ranks.

  His reinvigorated soldiers followed behind him, carving a swath through the army surrounding the castle. The enemy formation was disrupted; as terror and confusion made them attempt to flee from Garrett’s advance, some even fell down, catching their allies as they tumbled. They looked pathetic.

  To think that one man should be so powerful. It was a true miracle. A true legend.

  Garrett Wolfenden had single-handedly turned the tide of battle.

  But then...

  “Oh—!” Veronika couldn’t restrain an exclamation.

  Ruin came first not to Garrett, but to the royal guard holding his flank. They may have been chosen men, but they were still human. However strong the charisma exerted by their leader, their strength could only last so long.

  And Garrett—Garrett was too strong.

  He toppled one enemy after another, without fear, without hesitation, but as a result, he and his guard found themselves too deep behind the enemy line. The royal guard had stretched into a long column with the king at its head, and as it sustained attacks from the side, one guard fell, and then another, until they were surrounded.

  Dozens upon dozens of the enemy pressed in all around them. Spears reached out like the jaws of an animal ready to consume its prey, harassing the isolated Garrett and his guards.

  But Garrett didn’t withdraw. At this point, he couldn’t.

  He continued to fight, shouting encouragement to his troops. But his guards fell one after another. Each one of them killed many of the enemy, but opposing troops would soon fill any void; there seemed to be an endless number of them.

  Death was everywhere. Corpses were piled on top of each other: friend, foe, it didn’t matter. Sometimes the wounded were trampled and killed; there was nowhere to step.

  The essence of the martial arts is being able to use your feet effectively. Without that, one is hardly half the fighter one would otherwise be. And Garrett and the others were obviously flagging.

  Then, Garrett’s spear broke.

  “Father...!” Veronika’s voice was nearly a scream.

  Immediately, Garrett drew his sword and resumed the battle. But his defeat, and that of his army, now looked inevitable.

  The great horde of the enemy killed insatiably. Even Garrett’s sword, forged by a master, soon broke. The king’s movements were growing visibly sluggish. The warrior-king, the living legend—such titles didn’t change the fact that he was just one person.

  Veronika uttered a voiceless scream as, finally, a spear found a chink in Garrett’s armor and pierced him.

  The king could never have been defeated one-on-one. The person who landed the blow was just an ordinary foot soldier. But the sheer violence of numbers would overwhelm even a hero. One master swordsman with a legendary blade could be outdone by a mob with slingshots. It was a truth that the scene before Veronika’s eyes made all too plain.

  That first stab opened a window of opportunity, and ten more spears reached out for the king. Of the guards who should have protected him, there were none left.

  Garrett fell to his knees, and more enemy soldiers took the opportunity to stab him. They surrounded him on all sides, flocked to him like crows to a corpse. He had already stopped moving, but his body refused to fall over, and soldiers continued to stab at him as though they couldn’t be sure he was dead.

  “F-Faaatheerrrrr!” Veronika’s despairing yell couldn’t be heard over the din of the battlefield.

  There were so many of them. So many of them. However strong he was, one man was helpless against such numbers.

  That was something Veronika Wolfenden learned at the age of fifteen, a lesson she was taught without pity and without mercy.

  Chapter One: A Wounded Visitor

  Yukinari felt bright sunlight seeping in past his eyelids. He registered the arrival of morning as he drifted up from the unconsciousness of sleep.

  He didn’t say anything, but blinked twice.

  The sunlight seemed different, somehow, from usual. Perhaps he was imagining it? He had never been awoken by the morning light like this. He had been living in his “sanctuary” for months—maybe the changing seasons gave a new quality to the light.

  “Hm...?” Yukinari sat up and scratched his head.

  He took a deep breath. The air was cold and damp; it was probably still very early in the morning. It was already bright outside, but he had the impression it was a bit earlier than he usually got up. He swallowed the yawn that welled up in him and got out of bed. He looked back toward the window the light was pouring through—and froze.

  A girl was standing there. Ten years old, or maybe a little older—or anyway, so she looked. She was facing away from him, so he couldn’t see her face, but her body made it clear that she was still growing; she gave a distinctly childish impression. She didn’t even appear yet to have secondary sexual characteristics.

  “Ulrike?” Yukinari muttered, furrowing his eyebrows.

  Even from behind, there was no mistaking her. She was the only one in the sanctuary who looked so young. Not to mention, no one else there had the strangely shaped “horns”—like the horns of a stag, or perhaps the branches of a tree—that she did.

  The horns were in odd shapes, but they had a certain symmetry; once you were used to them, they didn’t look bad.

  All that was well and good, but...

  “What are you doing?”

  “Mm? Yukinari, you’re up?”

  The girl Ulrike turned her head, her long, flowing hair following. It was a rich green like a budding leaf. Her hair and
her horns made it clear that the girl was not entirely human, but even so, these were her only unusual features; from the neck down, she looked like a perfectly normal person.

  That only made this situation all the worse.

  “I am absorbing energy from the sunlight,” she said, giving him a quizzical tilt of her cherubic face.

  “Absorbing energy? What, you mean like a plant?”

  “I am a plant.”

  “...Oh yeah.” Yukinari let out a bit of a sigh.

  Ulrike was not human, as she appeared. Or to be more precise, she was no longer human. She had once been a typical village girl, but the human Ulrike had died long ago.

  When she spoke to Yukinari, the words and actions of the “original” Ulrike were placed front and center, but the thoughts behind them belonged to Yggdra. Who was leading and who was following was not always immediately apparent, and Yukinari sometimes wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It was obvious, though, that this girl didn’t always think of things the way a normal person might expect.

  Part of the problem was that the erdgod Yggdra had developed out of a plant, an organism whose way of being was so different from that of a human that the deity used her familiars as intermediaries when attempting to communicate with people. But whatever the outward expression, the thinking behind the familiars’ words and actions was ultimately influenced by Yggdra, which meant Yukinari sometimes found her just tangent to what he would think of as sanity.

  Say, for example, sunbathing, naked as a jaybird, in front of the window.

  “Plants gain energy from light and water. I am myself a part of Yggdra, you will recall. Thus I am here to absorb light.”

  Ulrike explained all this, not showing a hint of embarrassment even though her still-developing, totally naked body was in full view of Yukinari. Across her pale skin ran a web of green lines, much like the veins in a leaf. Perhaps her body ran not with blood, but with chlorophyll-laden sap.

  Whatever the case, it was clear that the plant cells in Ulrike’s body were energized by this act of photosynthesis, of exposing the green veins to the light.