The One Who Guides Wind and Flame (12)

Another two years passed.

In short, three years had passed since I began living with the nomadic Barm tribe.

The children grew up strong and healthy, getting bigger by the day.

Personally, their growth was so fast that I almost found it frustrating.

I mean, I had already felt lonely because even Win, a half-elf, grew too quickly, but Juyal, Tseren, and Shuro were growing at more than twice that rate.

Really, I thought it would be fine if they took things a little more slowly.

Well, unlike Win, they weren't my adopted children, but rather my disciples and students, so I ought to have been happy that they were growing so quickly. But still.

...In any event, of the three, Juyal was already sixteen, an age at which he was considered old enough to stand on his own.

That was why he made his decision.

It all began with the deaths of the Barm elders.

Of course, it went without saying that neither I nor Juyal had killed them.

They had simply reached the end of their allotted time and gone peacefully to sleep, one after another.

I had never gotten along with the elders, but they had probably been thinking about the Barm in their own way.

After losing a conflict and falling into dire straits before coming here, they and I had never seen eye to eye and had constantly clashed. Yet after watching three peaceful years pass, what had they felt as they went to sleep?

I suddenly wondered if they might have deliberately acted that way to make me take Tseren's side.

Or perhaps, by showing the other Barm their stubborn attachment to biased opinions, they had served as an outlet for the tribe's feelings toward me and Juyal.

The Barm did not build graves. They simply dug deep holes and buried their dead in the grasslands.

In doing so, they returned their flesh and souls to the grasslands.

Even if beasts dug up and devoured the bodies, or the corpses became monsters under the influence of magic, they apparently accepted that as the bodies becoming part of the grasslands again.

It was a value system very different from that of the people in the central part of the continent.

As I watched them being laid to rest, I felt a little lonely, despite how poorly we had gotten along.

But the one who took the elders' deaths more heavily than I did was, yes, Juyal.

Because to Juyal, the elders had been the people who openly and directly condemned him.

Over the past three years, Juyal had been accepted by the Barm to a considerable degree.

Tseren said nothing, while Shuro had grown attached to Juyal.

The young Barm who worked alongside him had even begun speaking to Juyal casually.

That was precisely why Juyal was afraid that, with the elders gone, the Barm would simply forgive him.

Thus, he said,

"Eisa, my master in swordsmanship. I challenge you to a duel to avenge the humiliation of three years ago!"

He chose the path of letting me punish him.

Without realizing that this was his own weakness.

Juyal and I faced each other with weapons in hand.

We stood in the middle of the grasslands, away from the Barm settlement.

I agonized a little—no, quite a lot—over whether to accept the duel.

Juyal's purpose was obvious, and I didn't want that kind of ending.

But in the end, after much deliberation, I accepted his challenge.

...Because admonishing and guiding a disciple when he errs is the duty of a master.

It had only been three years, but I had taught Juyal how to use a sword.

Not spirit arts or archery, but Yosogi Style.

To me, Yosogi Style, Kaeha's swordsmanship, was something precious, on par with smithing and already akin to a way of life.

Therefore, I couldn't be halfhearted in what I taught Juyal, its disciple.

So he and I pointed our weapons at each other.

However, though this was a duel, the weapon in my hand wasn't a magic sword. It was a knife—yes, a knife made by sharpening a Granwolf's fang.

Juyal showed a faintly dissatisfied expression at that, but there was nothing to be done.

If I used the magic sword, I could cut through Juyal's sword with a single swing and end the duel.

Before I could accept his feelings or even tell him my answer.

The combination of Kaeha's swordsmanship and that magic sword was simply too perfect, making it unusable in a duel with Juyal.

Still, this knife, though made from a sharpened Granwolf fang, was not something to underestimate.

It could easily tear through the tough hides of monsters, and it was sharp enough to cut even a poorly honed sword.

Besides, I could reproduce a Yosogi Style blow with nothing but my bare hands and a knife-hand strike, so there was no reason I couldn't do the same with a knife.

Juyal's sword had also been forged by me, so even this knife wouldn't cut through it easily. And while the difference in reach between a sword and a knife was substantial, that was a perfectly reasonable handicap.

I met Juyal's incoming blow without dodging or blocking it, instead swinging my knife to knock it aside.

He probably hadn't expected to lose a clash against a knife.

As he began to lose his balance, I swung my knife again and again, launching attack after attack.

Juyal barely blocked the first blow, then the second, but my unrelenting attacks gradually drove him into a corner.

...Yes, this was about right.

He had grown remarkably well over the past three years, but unfortunately, he was still at least another ten or twenty years short of the training needed to trade blows with me, someone who had been wielding the sword of Yosogi Style for more than fifty years.

Therefore, if Juyal wanted to draw out my full strength, he had no choice but to rely on his special ability—the divine art of Ignition.

Juyal's eyes flew wide, and a flower of flame blossomed in midair.

I dodged instinctively, but Juyal used that opening to regain his balance, and the sword he swung grazed my cheek.

A few drops of fresh blood danced through the air.

But Juyal's attacks did not stop.

Slash, slash, flame.

Slash, flame, slash, flame, and then a thrust.

He wove swordplay and Ignition together, continuing his attacks without pause.

Yes, this was it.

This was what I had wanted to teach Juyal.

He had once been capable only of sending out flames, limited to monotonous attacks, but now he was launching truly complex and varied assaults.

In just three years, Juyal had splendidly mastered what I had wanted to teach him.

Probably at this very moment.

...But he was still too green.

Perhaps because he had focused more on the sword than on Ignition over the past three years, or perhaps because he feared burning me, his Ignition attacks were just a fraction of a second slower than his sword strikes.

As a result, his varied attacks never became a truly seamless combination, and my knife slipped into the gap between sword and flame.

My knife stopped dead at Juyal's throat.

Our gazes met, but he showed no sign of using Ignition again.

We remained there, staring at each other, as time passed slowly.

Eventually, the strength drained from Juyal's body, and his sword fell to the ground.

"Why, why won't you just stab me...?"

The words that escaped him came in a choked voice, as though he were crying.

He had pointed his sword at me because he wanted me to punish him, and now he was asking why I wouldn't kill him.

Juyal pleaded with me.

He wasn't shedding tears, but to me, he looked as though he were crying.

So I smiled.

"Juyal, you idiot... A master's duty is to admonish a disciple when he is about to make a mistake. And when a disciple who has made a mistake truly regrets it, the master forgives him."

With that, I sheathed my knife.

For example, Azvald, my smithing master, would admonish me and forgive me.

If it were Kaeha, he would have carried the burden of my sin with me.

...But what about Kaushman?

I don't know, but he would have admonished me, and if I refused to listen, he surely would have come at me with his fists.

Though I would have beaten him in return.

So I would do the same.

In this duel, I had admonished Juyal when he was about to make a mistake, and I forgave his sin.

And then, yes, I would share the burden of the sin that troubled him.

If a disciple were truly beyond help, cutting him down might also be a master's duty, but Juyal was nothing like that.

"You're my disciple, after all. I'll forgive you, and I'll apologize to the Barm as well. ...So, Juyal, you should return to the Daria tribe now."

As I said that, I looked toward the Barm settlement and saw Tseren and Shuro coming toward us, leading horses laden with baggage.

I hadn't instructed them to do this.

Tseren, who had learned from the wind spirit what was happening in the duel, had probably made the decision together with Shuro.

In other words, that was their answer to Juyal's guilt.

"Actually, I was planning to take you with me on my journey after two more years had passed, Tseren had become fully independent, and the Barm had safely rebuilt themselves. But... you're impatient and too earnest."

If I made him abandon his homeland, he would regret it forever.

He would wonder whether he had simply run away.

He would wonder whether there was something more he could have done for the Barm and the Daria.

Then, before he had a chance to regret it, it would surely be better to let him do everything in his power.

Tseren arrived, nodded, and handed Juyal the reins to a horse.

Shuro hugged Juyal, shedding tears as he bade him a reluctant farewell.

Whether Juyal would be able to live as he wished after returning to the Daria, I didn't know.

I could only pray to the wind blowing across the grasslands that it would be so, and trust in the strength of the boy who had once been my disciple.

In the three years—a far too short time for me—a single fledgling took flight from its nest.