Chapter 14
I hastily piled up a fallen soldier and the furniture in the room to make a defensive barricade.
The smell of iron filings seeped through the loose gap beneath my arm, and the leather creaked whenever I raised it.
Discomfort welled up, but for now, this was the best I could do.
I quickly surveyed the room.
“Noah, get against the right wall! I'll take care of things!”
I hid Noah in the corner farthest from the door.
I stood directly in front of the door.
‘A narrow door. Only one person can enter at a time.’
I thrust my spear at the soldiers outside who were breaking through the barricade and trying to drag me out.
Screams erupted every time I thrust the spear.
But the enemy kept surging in without end, and eventually the barricade collapsed.
“Fuck, you bitch!”
A blade driven by rage.
I angled the hand ax against the blade, which seemed unconcerned with whether it struck a vital spot, as though being injured did not matter.
But there was an obvious difference between the blade swung with its weight behind it and the hand ax that had not.
I safely deflected the blade, but the hand ax was knocked from my hand.
The tip of the sword scraped the threshold and embedded itself in the dirt floor.
I thrust the spear through the opening.
I kept thrusting the spear into the wheezing soldier, who sounded as though his lungs had been pierced, and advanced.
The spear pierced the soldier behind him, and its tip caught on the sternum of yet another man behind him.
Rather than pull out the shaft, I drove it straight into the left doorframe.
The tip of the spear sank deep into the doorframe.
The two impaled corpses became another barricade.
I quickly turned around and gripped the hand ax on the floor and the sword dropped by the soldier, one in each hand.
Sticky blood ran over my tightly clenched hands.
Before I could catch my breath, an angry shout burst from outside the door.
“You crazy bitch!”
“Why aren't you getting in already?! What the hell are you doing up front?!”
With two corpses impaled on the spear blocking the doorway between the two spaces, a bizarre standoff continued.
That brief peace was broken by the sound of hoofbeats.
“There are a whole lot of pathetic fools here. Sir Kyle, you can handle this, can't you?”
“Yes, Marquis Beaufort.”
When the nobleman appeared behind the surrounding soldiers, they opened a path with fear in their eyes.
Following that path, a knight in ornate armor and the marquis dismounted and walked toward us.
‘If I could take that nobleman hostage!’
The thought that flashed through my mind was closer to a last desperate gamble than a ray of hope.
To seize that hope, I had to defeat the knight in front of me.
Unlike Ron.
The knight called Kyle did not let his guard down.
He steadily closed the distance without leaving a single opening.
The longsword in his hand reflected the light ominously.
There were no usable oak barrels or crates nearby.
There was only us, facing each other across a narrow doorway blocked by two corpses.
At last, Kyle stood before the door, looked at the corpses with disgust, and lightly dragged them away with one hand as though they were toys.
The doorway was wide enough for one and a half people, but his presence alone filled it.
A brief standoff.
Then Kyle's sword ended it.
Taking it head-on would have been foolish.
I lowered myself like a beast and lunged inward instead.
Ignoring the metallic shriek of steel tearing through the air, I aimed the ax in my left hand at the arm holding his sword.
The armor around his arm joint—and the gap between its plates.
Just as my ax blade was about to graze that gap, Kyle's hand moved like lightning.
“…!”
His gauntlet caught the ax blade.
A chilling sound of iron crumpling.
When Kyle clenched his hand, the iron crumpled as though it were paper.
Ignoring the pain in my throbbing hand, I immediately threw the ax handle at his eye socket and ducked even lower.
He thrust with both hands, aiming for the back of my knee.
But I saw through his intention.
As iron struck iron, a powerful blow slammed into my abdomen.
My vision spun, and I rolled miserably across the dirt floor.
His kick robbed me of breath.
Though I had barely managed to keep hold of the sword, my body had no strength left in it.
Kyle slowly approached me.
He looked down at me with cold eyes and sighed.
“It is the marquis's order. Stay still, girl.”
He readjusted his grip on the sword.
He did not seem to be planning to kill me.
He seemed intent on cutting me somewhere so that I could no longer resist.
The sword shining in the sunlight slowly descended toward my shoulder, but I could not avoid it.
“Mom… Alex…”
My mother and Alex flashed before my eyes in rapid succession.
“No!”
Noah's voice.
A shadow burst into the corner of my vision.
“Noah?!”
He stepped in front of me, but Kyle's sword did not stop.
A wet, horrible sound of flesh being cut.
“…Huh?”
Something hot poured over my face.
Vivid scarlet blood flowed from Noah's mouth.
“This time… I… will… protect… you… Ugh.”
“Noah, don't talk, please!”
Once again, I heard the sound of a sword being swung.
A red froth of blood gushed from Noah's mouth.
A searing pain flared in my left side.
His body collapsed limply.
He fell over me as though shielding me, unable to finish his final words.
The light vanished from his eyes.
Noah's eyes were still open, but he was no longer looking at me.
Through my blood-red vision, I saw Kyle's sword piercing through both Noah and me at once.
One of my few friends.
The first human to approach me since that day.
The boy who had first found the courage to protect me.
He was growing cold above me.
The smell of blood stung my nose.
“You're lying… You're joking, right? Noah?”
There was no answer.
I could not tell whether the blood was mine or Noah's.
Along with a buzzing in my ears, all the world's sounds receded.
Only the weight pressing me down was real.
The boy's body, which must once have held a fiery warmth, was rapidly growing cold.
Only cold steel connected him and me.
‘This time… I… will… protect… you…’
His final words replayed endlessly in my mind.
As I felt hollow inside, Noah's body rolled away beside me.
Having retrieved his sword, Kyle approached me.
Noah lay pinned beneath his feet.
“You… What the hell are you doing—”
“You're still in one piece.”
The vile knight's hand reached toward me.
I tried to resist, but I could not twitch even one finger.
One piece of cold steel slid beneath both my shoulder blades, while another went beneath my knees.
The pain grew worse as someone else lifted my body into the air against my will.
‘I'm sorry I was such a useless father, Ella.’
My father's sad face came to mind.
His rough hand stroking my head.
‘My daughter, you must return safely, all right? Be sure to listen to your father.’
My mother's warm embrace as she held me before turning to ash.
‘Cough, cough. Sis… Where are you?’
Alex's faint voice as he coughed.
‘…At first, I was drawn to your appearance. Then… because you were the first person to see me as a human being. It hurts when I'm hit. But it hurt even more when you treated me with tears in your eyes.’
The face of young Noah, who had always smiled shyly at me after I treated his wounds.
Everything flashed before me.
Everything I had wanted to protect.
Yet everything I had lost because of my helplessness.
I felt fingers touching my hair.
“Yes, this is the color. It's almost identical. And to think she fought this well in a woman's body without a trace of holy power. Kaelan will find her interesting. You there, hurry and fetch a priest.”
At the marquis's last words, my consciousness began to fade.
As if sinking deep underwater, the sensations of the world released me one by one.
Pain, cold, and sorrow all grew faint.
At the end of that numbness, I saw one face for the last time.
My first death.
A blood-soaked battlefield, and the cruel, beautiful navy-blue eyes that had looked down at me like an insect from above.
After that, everything sank into darkness.
_______
“My lord, what do you intend to do with that woman?”
Marquis Beaufort swirled the expensive ivory wineglass in his hand, lost in thought.
The tent was lavishly decorated with fine carpets and looted treasures, but the groans of wounded soldiers and the stench of blood seeped faintly in from outside.
Today was a very good day.
They had taken the castle more easily than expected and safely thwarted the enemy ambush.
And the spoils were beyond his expectations.
His eyes turned toward the cage in the corner of the tent.
A woman was trapped inside it like a beast.
The priest's power had healed all her wounds, but her clothes were still stained with blood.
“Our great undertaking still needs more swords. I'll send one of them to Sir Kaelan. It will make a very interesting gift.”
Sir Kyle's brow twitched faintly.
“Sir Kaelan? Putting effort into winning over that fickle man is too risky.”
“That's what makes it fun, Kyle. We can't turn the tables with only predictable moves. Sometimes, you need a variable that can leap in an unexpected direction. That woman is one of the key invitations we can use to draw that joker in.”
“… We cannot be certain that his whims will not turn against us.”
The marquis's gaze returned to the woman in the cage.
“Of course, before I send her, I'll enhance her value as a gift. I'll have her beautifully fashioned into a form Kaelan will like. She mustn't be allowed to scratch me.”
“The war isn't over yet. Do you plan to keep bringing her along?”
“No. I'll send her to my secondary residence back home. You will escort her yourself. I'm counting on you for the journey to the kingdom, Sir Kyle.”