Chapter 20

Chapter 20.

Time was flowing toward midnight. Clear, tranquil moonlight forced its way down through the dense leaves, scattering faint silver spots across the forest floor. In the pitch-black darkness, the outlines of everything were blurred, and each time the wind swept through the forest, the branches struck one another with a sound like the joints of the dead.

Rian moved soundlessly through that darkness.

There was not a trace of hesitation in his movements as he pushed through trees, rocks, and thickets. His steps were astonishingly light, and even when he trod on rotten fallen leaves, he did not make a single crumbling sound. The way he held his center of gravity and tilted his body according to the rise and fall of the terrain was completely different from before. A fundamentally different kind of balance from when he held a spear now ruled his entire body.

‘This way.’

A clear certainty flashed through his mind.

It was not Rian’s own thought. It was a clear, efficient instinct, as though someone who had long since moved through this forest like it was his own home were whispering in his ear. Elias’s experience, carved deep into his body, was drawing an invisible path through the darkness.

Rian gave himself fully to that instinctive pull. He reduced thought to a minimum and sharpened only his senses. The subtle vibrations of the ground transmitted through the soles of his feet, the flow of air brushing his cheeks, even the cries of beasts heard in the distance. Every piece of information was being completed into a single map inside his mind.

A steep mountain ridge blocked the way ahead. He lowered himself without hesitation. Then, like a starving wolf, he began climbing on all fours, gripping rock and dirt. The oak longbow and leather quiver on his back merely swayed as one with his movements, never catching on a branch or striking a rock to make a sound. The movements of a man who had carried a bow over mountains for decades were being reproduced exactly.

How long had he climbed? He felt the direction of the wind brushing his cheek shift subtly. It was a flow of wind different from what had been blowing until now, a current that had struck a massive obstacle and was flowing back.

‘A place where the wind is blocked. It’s beyond there.’

Elias’s senses whispered. Rian wrung out the last of his strength and pulled himself onto a massive rock ledge. Then his movements stopped as if it had been a lie.

A breathtaking sight unfolded before his eyes.

Far below, in the gently spreading basin, the imperial army’s camp crouched like a massive beast. Dying campfires were embedded here and there in the darkness, and among them, the black shadows of patrolmen flickered like ghosts. The sight of hundreds of tents clustered together radiated an overwhelming pressure all by itself.

Rian immediately lowered his body. His body reacted before thought, sliding behind the nearest rock. With even his breathing suppressed, he swept his gaze thoroughly over the surroundings like a bird of prey.

The place where he had settled was halfway up the cliff, somewhere human feet rarely reached. Short shrubs and strangely shaped rocks naturally concealed his body, forming a natural hiding place. The wind was blowing from behind him toward the camp, so there was no concern that his scent or sound would carry.

At the center of the camp, a tent caught his eye, conspicuously larger than the others and guarded by more sentries. It had to be Haken’s command tent.

‘The distance is...... about one hundred fifty meters.’

The distance he had roughly measured by eye converted into an exact number inside his mind. It was a distance that barely fell within the effective range of the oak longbow in his hand. The strength and direction of the wind, the arrow’s drop, everything was calculated in an instant.

‘From here...... it’s possible.’

This was a perfect sniping position, the sort Elias might have found only after searching for days on end if he had still been alive. An optimal place, even with an escape route secured. Elias’s lifelong experience was whispering to Rian’s mind in a voice full of certainty.

Rian carefully set down the bow from his back. His careful touch, making sure the bowstring did not scrape against stone, was like that of a man handling a lover who had been with him his entire life. He hid his body completely behind the rock and did not move at all, his gaze fixed only on the camp.

Now he was no longer a hunter. He was part of the cold rock, waiting until the prey bared its neck of its own accord.

***

The eastern sky began to turn gray. The cold dawn air that had dug into his body all night made even his joints ache with chill. But Rian’s crouched posture, like a rock, did not waver in the slightest. His eyes, without even the faintest fatigue from the night, shone clear and cold as ice.

He took a piece of hard, dry jerky from inside his clothes. Very slowly, so it would make no sound, he chewed and swallowed it with his molars. In every part of the process, softening it with saliva and forcing it down, he allowed only the minimum movement. It was a mechanical act for survival, to replenish energy and maintain body heat.

The camp below was slowly waking from sleep. Soldiers crawled sluggishly out of their tents and loosened their stiff bodies, while cooking smoke rose here and there. The sounds of weapons being maintained and voices asking how the night had gone became a murmur that drifted faintly on the wind.

Rian’s gaze passed indifferently over that entire morning scene. His eyes held only the largest tent in the center. Around it, heavily armed soldiers who seemed to number twice as many as anywhere else stood guard, encircling it like an iron fortress. Their flashing helmets and spearheads reflected the morning sunlight.

‘Haken the Slaughterer.’

He recalled the contents of the parchment Kairon had handed him. A man with a beastlike impression. The ringleader who had slaughtered countless compatriots. Rian pulled the straightest and sharpest arrow from his quiver. After checking the state of the feathers and the sharpness of the arrowhead with his fingertips, he quietly placed it on the ground beside his knee.

So he could shoot immediately, without missing even the briefest instant, whenever that instant came.

Time flowed by with the slowness of torture. The sun rose above the forest and crawled toward the middle of the sky. The sunlight beating down on his back bit painfully into his flesh, but Rian did not change his posture. Even when sweat ran down and stung the corners of his eyes, he did not blink once.

‘Patience. The first condition of the hunt.’

This, too, was wisdom Elias had mastered through blood and sweat over the course of his life. Haste was the hunter’s greatest enemy, and the perfect opportunity would always come only at the end of the most dreadful wait.

The sentries around the tent moved to change shifts. For one fleeting instant, their formation loosened, and the guard near the entrance of the tent thinned. Rian’s heart reacted subtly, and the muscles of his entire body tensed. But he still did not move.

‘Not yet. A more perfect moment will come.’

Elias’s instinct suppressed his impulse. That level of opening was not enough. He had to aim for the moment the target himself revealed his most defenseless state. Rian let out another long, slow breath and pushed himself back into the endless time of waiting.

***

It was nearing noon. The sun floated directly overhead, pouring down blazing light. It was the hour when the camp’s noise was at its liveliest.

That was when it happened.

The thick flap of the tent he had chosen as his target was roughly pulled aside.

In that instant, all of Rian’s nerves concentrated on that place, sharp as the tip of a needle.

A massive man strode out of the tent. A bushy beard, a deeply gouged scar on his forehead, and beastlike eyes scanning his surroundings. His appearance matched exactly with the description of Haken the Slaughterer from the parchment.

Most importantly, there was no helmet on his head. Shaking his sweat-soaked hair roughly, he stretched as if he were a bear released from a cage. At that enormous movement, the sentries guarding the area unconsciously took three or four steps back.

That was the moment. A fleeting space formed between Haken and the sentries.

‘Now.’

Rian’s body moved without leaving him time to think.

The motion of picking up the arrow he had placed beside his knee and setting it to the string was completed in a single instant, at a speed impossible to follow with the eye.

Slide.

Aside from the faint sound of dry leather brushing, there was no noise. There was no hesitation or unnecessary movement in the entire process of raising the bow, fixing his shoulder, and drawing the string. It was like a dance his body remembered after repeating it tens of thousands of times.

The tautly drawn bowstring pressed firmly against his cheek. It was a perfect stance, as though taken straight from a manual, created by decades of grueling training.

The world narrowed.

Rian’s vision was filled with only one thing: the thick, unprotected nape of Haken’s neck one hundred fifty meters away. The noise of the camp, the sound of the wind blowing from behind him, even the chirping of birds. Every sound in the world vanished.

Only the sound of his own heart ringing in his ears and the sensation of the bowstring stretched taut as though it might burst at any moment made up all of reality.

Rian stopped breathing. He squeezed out even the last drop of air in his lungs, stilling every faint tremor in his body.

‘Elias. This is your final arrow.’

It was the very instant when the strength was about to slip out of the fingers holding the string.

***

Crunch.

It came from directly behind him.

A small but clear sound broke the silence, like someone had stepped hard on a dry branch and crushed it.

A chill, as though every hair on his body had stood on end, shot like lightning down his spine.

Rian’s body froze where it was. All the killing intent and focus that had been condensed toward Haken shattered to pieces.

He had not sensed any human presence at all. Not in the flow of the wind, not in the waves of sound, not in any sign whatsoever. Even the beastlike senses Elias had left behind had been silent.

At that moment, a cold, sharp sensation touched the nape of his neck.

It was a cold, well-honed blade. 

Rian could not move at all with the bow in his hand. He instinctively knew that if he moved even slightly, the sharp metal would sever his carotid artery.

Along with hot breath against his ear, a low, hoarse voice dug in like a whisper from hell.

“What is a rat bastard doing here?” 

Rian’s eyes shook violently. At the edge of his vision, Haken’s figure shimmered, still unaware of anything as he gave some order to his subordinate.

The blade touching his neck dug very slightly into his skin.

With a stinging pain, a single drop of hot blood slowly flowed down his neck.