Editing Tales of Leo Attiel:Volume3 Chapter5 (section)

===Part 3===


Having lost its leader, the group fled with shouts of “Withdraw!” while still being pursued from behind by the archers.
 
Sunset was near when white-robed nomads appeared over the ground which had been stained dark red. They were the ones who had drawn the bows. There were only five of them, but that had been sufficient to throw Bahāt into confusion. Leading the rest of the group was the young clan head, Hāles.

“That was magnificent,” Hāles cried out, his face still flushed with excitement. “I can't believe you're this much of an expert with the sword. To be honest, I thought it was touch-and-go whether you'd survive, even if you did manage to kill Bahāt.”

Just before leaving the Moon Ring Stones, Kuon had approached them with a suggestion:

“You don't know where Bahāt is? That guy wants to attack us, so if we leave now, without any guards, he'll definitely show up in front of us.”

Hāles Halia was astounded. Kuon was saying that he was going to lure Bahāt out by defencelessly going out in the open. And right now, at that.

“Gather a few people you can trust. The enemy will be confused if arrows are shot from behind them. I'll use that opening to kill Bahāt,” Kuon volunteered.

Sarah's expression turned surprised, perhaps deliberately so.

“I see. If we bring too many people, it will simply end with Lord Hāles becoming known for having attacked a kinsman. It has to be carried out by outsiders to the very end. Kuon, what's gotten into you? Since when were you infected with His Highness' intelligence?”

“Ridiculous,” Hāles turned the suggestion down flat. “Even if we're covering you, how far do you think you'll get, drawing their attention all by yourself. With all due respect, a child like yourself...”

“He isn't a child, clan leader,” Sarah said about the boy that she was usually the first to make fun of. “He's a renowned warrior in  the country of Atall. And as for me, I won't fall that easily at enemy hands. So won't you leave this to us?”

A man who looked like a child was saying that he would take down Bahāt, and a girl who seemed like a farmer's daughter was asking a warrior to “leave it to us”. The young clan head blinked in bewilderement.

“Why? Why would you do something like this? We've only just met. What benefit is there for you in risking your lives to take Bahāt's?”

“We only said we wanted to leave here at once. We're not doing this for you. You could actually that we're using your situation to get rid of a guy who's getting in the way of our journey.”

Hāles' astonishment did not abate. Still, even though he was usually a simple man, he was still a warrior nomad who gave his body over to blood frenzy whenever war broke out. In these wild plains, he had been reared on the milk of battles and hunting. He had fought both humans and packs of wolves that had come to seize the nomads' livestock.

“If you're going to go that far, I'll provide a few people. But we cannot be seen. Until we get close enough to shoot arrows, even if you get caught or if one of you gets killed, we will pretend to have nothing to do with it. Are you really alright with that?”

The two others nodded.

And thus, still half-doubting this plan – or, rather, despite being seventy or eighty percent sure that it would fail – Hāles chose four companions who were close to him in age, and with whom he had forged especially solid bonds, and together they had stealthily followed behind Kuon and Sarah, bows in hand.

The result was that Bahāt's corpse was now lying at Hāles' feet. This was a man whose conduct had been awful, and who had risked dividing the clan. Yet even though Hāles had hated him enough to want to kill him with his own hands, he had still been a kinsman. For a moment, Hāles was almost carried away by the desire to offer his uncle a proper burial, but he soon revised that thought.

To the very end, they had to stick to the story that Bahāt had been killed by the ones he had intended to attack. What happened to his corpse was something that was best left to the ravenous hunger of the wolf god, Roh Gas, who ruled as he pleased over the plains. In short, and to use Bahāt's own threatening words, it would be left to chance whether he would be “ torn apart by the fangs of wolves, pecked to pieces by birds of prey, or gobbled up by armoured spiders.”

“I would love to invite you to my tent as heroes, but...”

“The sentiment is sufficient. If the honoured clan leader was to shower hospitality to 'outsiders' right after Bahāt's death, unfortunate rumors would be sure to spring up.”

Hāles gazed at the pair in considerable wonder. When he looked carefully, he felt that the boy called Kuon had something about him that made him far closer to them, the nomads who roamed the plains as the wind dictated, than to those who lived in stone cities.

“Where will you go?”

“South,” Kuon answered laconically. Hāles thought about it for a moment.

“I see. You're from the people of the mountain lands that received Tei Tahra's protection?” No sooner had he said so than he frowned. “No, they almost never leave the mountains. And besides, you don't have a tattoo on your forehead, either.”

Kuon remained as silent as ever, and simply allowed the question to be carried away by the wind.



Although Hāles had given up on offering them a heroes' reception, he still provided Kuon and Sarah with seven riders to act as guards and guides. Since these had brought plenty of equipment and provisions for camping, the two travellers were far more comfortable and relaxed than they had been before then on their journey.

After ten days of travel, the smooth plains gave way to a terrain of jagged ups and downs. Kuon and the others continued where valleys were nestled among rocky peaks. Or perhaps it was better to say that the rocky peaks besieged the valleys. There, they said goodbye to the nomads: they were afraid that if they penetrated any further into the mountain people's sacred lands, they would be seen as invaders.

Said otherwise, this proved that they were getting closer and closer to Kuon's birthplace. As they did so, he spoke less and less.

On the first evening when they were back to travelling as just the two of them, strong winds whipped themselves into a gale. Despite how the winds slipped through the cracks in the cliffs, by evening of the next day, the pair had riden their horses as far as the mouth of a wide gorge. Continuing through it, the slope on the left side gradually became gentler. Climbing up it to reach the summit that gave into the gorge, would bring them to the foot of the mountains that were Kuon's birthplace.

Sarah gazed at the rugged landscape.

“The horses can't continue any further, can they? Anyway, the sun is already going down. Let's camp here.”

Kuon didn't move, even though he had seemed about to get down from the horse. It was as though he was now about to turn it back around.

“And, what is it?” Sarah raised her eyes. She understood that Kuon's birthplace was close. “You can't possibly be planning to tell me that from here you'll be going alone, so I should turn back? Don't even joke about it. Since I've come this far, I'm continuing forward no matter what happens.”

“...No, you can't.”

“Don't be stupid. I kept up in the mountains in Allion, even when it was the middle of the night.”

“Go back. I'm the one who was being stupid. Nothing good is going to come from going further.”

“What?” Sarah's voice rose higher. “That's right, you really are stupid. You'd have to be an absolute fool to have come all this way and turn back right before your destination.”

“...”
“Don't tell me you're scared?” Sarah was being harsh to raise Kuon's spirit. “Is this the great warrior Kuon? Since you ran away from the mountains, it makes perfect sense that you'd be worried about the people from where you were born turning their bows against you, but I thought that you'd ridden here fully aware of that. It looks like I've overestimated you. It's fine, Kuon. You can wait here, or go back to Lord Hāles' camp. I'm going forward. I'll talk with the mountain people and return to Atall in triumph with reinforcements.”

Kuon didn't answer. Feeling ridiculously irritated, Sarah was on the verge of speaking even more harshly when she noticed that Kuon's entire face was dripping with sweat. He was shaking a little, too.

“Seriously, what's wrong, Kuon? Have you come down with an illness?”

Sarah advanced her horse forward and seemed about to touch Kuon's forehead, but he shook off her hand.

“It's nothing. It's just like you said. It's just... I'm just scared.” Because of how frank Kuon was being, Sarah, for her part, was left speechless.

Kuon was utterly drenched in sweat and trembling frm fear. It was hard to believe this was the same man who had undertaken to act as bait and lure out the savage nomads.

For a while, the two of them remained on horseback without saying anything, but then a strange sound filled the valley. It was like the shrill cries of wild birds, but as it drew closer, it became clear that it was overlapping with human voices. Kuon looked towards, his eyes flying wide open.

Rocks stretched out before them along the valley's path. At some points, they were piled up to an unnatural height. You only had to see them to realise that they had been placed there by human hands. The stones had been stacked up like walls to slow the escape of prey when hunters where chasing after them.

“Run, Sarah!” Kuon shouted as he grabbed the horse's reins.

“What's the matter now...”

“Ashinaga... armoured spiders are coming!”

Just as he cried out, a strange creature came rushing down the slopes. Sarah saw it too.

What made it spider-like were its six gnarled and spindly legs, which would be longer than Kuon or Sarah's full height if it stretched them out straight. Above those legs was a dusky black carapace that certainly looked solid and hard. That part of it looked less like a spider and more like a beetle.

Armoured spiders were fierce carnivores. They were simple creatures that did not act in swarms, but they were extremely aggressive by nature. Once they spotted prey – a human, for example – they would mercilessly leap towards it and seize it with the sharp, curved claws at the end of their legs, then devour it from the head down. Moreover, their fangs were known to contain poison, and simply having their skin grazed was enough to cause violent pain to their victims. That pain would soon disappear however. And that was because their nerves would rapidly become paralysed.

Kuon and Sarah turned their horses around to leave there at once.

The armoured spider must have originally fled that way as it was being chased by hunters but, perhaps because its appetite took over once it saw Kuon and Sarah, it started narrowing the distance between them, its legs squirming at a speed faster than the eye could see.

Kuon's horse steadily gained speed, but Sarah's fell behind. When she turned to glance back, the creature's torse, gleaming like black armour, was already so close that she had to look up to it. It lifted and waved one of its legs, with its claws sprouting from the bottom of it, casting a dark shadow over Sarah's face.

Turning his horse back round again, Kuon threw himself in the space between them. While the horse was neighing wildly in horror, Kuon had his legs firmly clenched around its flanks and used his sword to drive back the claws that were about to rip into Sarah. The horse and the giant beetle seemed to pass by each other.

Kuon planned to use that moment to cut another of the beast's legs, but instead, his horse's flank was torn through by one of the claws. The animal collapsed sideways, throwing Kuon to the ground.

Unfortunately, the armoured spider seemed more interested in the flesh of humans than of horses. It legs moving frenetically, it scuttled up to Kuon and leaned over him. On either side of his head were nothing but the claws attached to those legs.

Still facing upwards, Kuon swung his sword with the speed of lightning. He cleaved off  the claws of the leg to his right as he rolled to the side. His movements were meant to have him crawl out from beneath the huge body, but he was a second too slow, and the talons from the left leg ripped into the armour on his back. They pinned the partly torn-off strip of armour to the ground. Kuon tried to hurriedly slice through the left leg, but because he was still half rolling to the right, he was unable to put any strength into his blow.

The armoured spider bent its huge body forward a little, its round head looming closer. Blackish and glistening with slimy fluids, it reminded Kuon of the mud balls he used to make as a child. Something heaved into sight from either side of that globular head.

Thousands upon thousands of fine orange hairs were closely packed together. No... every one of them was a razor-sharp fang. From the gaps between them, a viscous liquid oozed and seemed about to trickle down at any moment.

''Poison!''

Kuon forced strength into his limbs. No matter how great a warrior someone might be, if they were bitten by those posionous fangs, that would be the end. He struck his sword repeatedly against the left leg that was pinning him to the ground. But the creature overhead was entirely unperturbed by his blows.

Just as the fangs were before him, a gunshot rang out. Vibrations ran through the huge body and seemed to transmit themselves to Kuon.

The armoured spider shook violently. It's legs flayed up and down wildly and, in the process, the claw pinning Kuon down was luckily pulled away, allowing him to hastily roll away and escape.

Sarah's gun was still smoking as she came rushing up to him. Dismounting from her horse was what had allowed her shot to aim true.

The creature raged violently for a while before finally folding its legs and collapsing where it stood.

“Kuon, are you hurt anywhere?”

“I'm good,” he answered, breathing raggedly.

He had not been hurt, but losing the horses was a serious blow. Just like the armoured spider, Kuon's horse was lying on its side, breathing its last, while Sarah's horse had bolted when its mistress dismounted, fleeing in terror. Sarah shrugged.

“We can only...”

Had she been about to say that they could only go forward?

At that moment, the huge creature which was supposed to already be dead lifted itself up. It could only struggle halfway to its feet, but, faster than Kuon could push Sarah out of the way, it lunged for her ankle.

As Sarah collapsed with a thud, Kuon raised his sword high and struck at the top of the round head. Although he met with a resistance like that of hard rubber, his blow seemed to have been strong enough to be effective, and the armoured spider once more sank to the ground, belching out poisonous fluids as it did so.

“Sarah!”

This time around, it was Kuon who was worried for her, but Sarah, forcing herself to smile, had already started to get to her feet.

“I'm fine. You pushed me out of the way in time.”

“Really? Show me your injury.”

“I said I'm fine. Ah, hey, don't touch my skirt!”

The pair of them were about to start arguing when they both suddenly stopped. They could hear the hoofbeats of horses approaching.

A group of about eight riders appeared from the other side of the valley, avoiding the stone walls as they rode, and occasionally jumping their horses over them. Above their sleeveless clothes, which were dyed a bluish-green, they wore fur pelts. One among them also wore armour. They carried long-handled spears and guns, and although their physique and facial features were similar to those of the nomads of the plains, these people had slightly rounder eyes, and most of them had a red tattoo on their foreheads, painted in blood and in the shape of a dot.

“Who are you to have invaded our hunting grounds?” A man barked, his voice carrying a thick accent.

Without so much as pausing, they rode into a semi-circle surrounding Kuon and Sarah. One of them gazed at the corpse of the armoured spider, then shifted their line of sight and stared intently at Kuon.

“You're...!”

Similarly, Kuon also realised something with astonishment.

Among the men, this was the only one who did not have a tattoo on their forehead. Neither did they have a beard, and they seemed strangely slender next to the other hunters, but it was easy to understand why that was.

This was a woman. Or perhaps it would be better to say a ''former'' woman? Since 'she' had joined the hunters, 'she' must have abandoned the path of living as a woman.

“Aqua,” Kuon spoke 'her' name.



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