Editing Tales of Leo Attiel:Volume1 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 2===


Rather than a soldier, this was a bandit. 

''No way'', Leo thought for an instant. This territory had only just been torn away by Allion and because of that, immediately after being awarded the entire region, General Claude had been busy running around to subjugate it. This land lay deep within the mountains, so there were plenty of bandits and thieves, but Claude had fed them the taste of sword and bullet until they could taste no more. Leo had heard any number of those tales of bravery in the Anglatt house.

Meeting a bandit here in the area of the Anglatt stronghold shouldn’t be… he gazed as though mesmerised at the man on horseback.

“Is your tongue not working, boy?” the man suddenly hurled at him. “I’m looking for someone. A noble lord by the name of Leo Attiel. I’ve been left with the important task of immediately bringing him back to the Anglatt manor, so do you happen to know anything about him, boy?”

“M-Me. I’m Leo Attiel,” Leo answered him. Although he could have pretended not to know, he was overwhelmed by the wild energy flowing from the man. Whereupon –

“Oh, that right? I’ve been rude. I’m here now, so there’s nothing to worry about. Come on,” the man beamed with joy as he jumped down from his horse. His bandit-like features were completely transformed by his friendly smile.

Caught up in it, Leo got up and, with the man’s help, scrambled into the saddle. The man himself once more got his feet in the stirrups, and Leo ended up clinging to him by the waist.

“Well then, off we go.”

It was hard to believe from his appearance, but he really was a soldier in the employ of the Anglatt House. He seemed to be familiar with their surroundings, and handled the reins to guide his horse without any hesitation.

They continued in silence for a while. It was only when they could hear the murmur of the river that the man unexpectedly started speaking.

“You’ve got guts. The locals would find it unbelievable for a child to go to spend a night alone in the mountains at this time of year.”

“It’s not like I wanted to do it.”

“Oh? But when I found you, you seemed relatively calm.”

“I figured that instead of wandering about without knowing where I was going, there was a better chance of people coming to rescue me without getting lost if I didn’t move.”

“I see. Just what you’d expect from a son of Atall’s ruling family. …Is what I wish I could say, but the way I see it, it was a little different. You were looking up at the sky, smiling like a monk who had finally reached their holy land after a journey of martyrdom. Were you intending to die?”

Leo kept silent. After a while, the bandit-like man changed his question.

“For me, no matter how old I get or how many battlefields I’ve been on, death is just scary. How about you, aren’t you afraid to die?”

“I’m not afraid.”

Their surroundings had gotten darker. Because of the trees crowded around them, the evening light could not filter through. To their right, the sound of the river was growing louder. 

The man gave a small snort.

“Those words would be heartening on a battlefield, but here, you’re in the middle of the mountains of a foreign country. If a prince of Atall gets eaten by a wild beast after being left to freeze to death, a great many people will grieve.”

“Who’d grieve if I died,” atop the horse, Leo let out a small chuckle. “I have an older brother. And… a younger brother.” 

When he said “younger brother”, Leo stopped smiling for a moment, but he quickly gave another chortle. “So neither my parents nor the people who want the princely house to continue would be sad if it’s just me who dies. Even my family name, Attiel, is meaningless to me. The same way that if I die as a person, it would be meaningless to other people.”

At that moment, the horse stood bolt upright. The man had suddenly pulled the reins in tight. Since he had also wrenched his waist aside, Leo’s hands instantly fell away from it, and he fell from the horse’s back. He couldn’t even speak from the pain. He wondered if bandits really had appeared this time and the man was getting ready to fight them, but –

“Then die.”

While Leo was groaning, the man took aim at him.

“I pushed my way into the mountain to come help a young lord of the Attiel House. It wasn’t for some boy without a family name who would even throw away his own life. Who’d go risking their lives for a boy like that? If you want to die, then just go wherever and die.”

“What did you say?” 

It was as though fire had come crashing onto Leo’s head. He might be a hostage, but there was no reason for him to be treated that way. He forgot the pain in his back and glared at the man with eyes that were slightly misty with tears.
Just then, the man kicked his horse’s flank and took off at a gallop.

“W-Wait.”

Leo ran after the horse’s vanishing rump. The heat that was like a fire in his head continued to produce, one after another, emotions so violent that he himself couldn’t understand them.

“Die, you say? I’m a prince of Atall. I don’t remember having to take orders from you. Get back here!”

“You’re the one who said that names don’t have any meaning. And same for me, I’m not in a position where I need to take orders from a corpse who threw away his own life.”

Leo chased after him, repeatedly telling him to wait. Occasionally, the man would stop his horse.

“And why are you chasing after me? Are you planning on cutting down the insolent?” or “Hey-ho, a corpse is opening its mouth wide and running after me,” he would say, laughing all the while.

Each time, Leo’s face flushed bright red as, struggling and gasping for breath, he sped up and tried to reach the horse’s backside.

“Oh?” the man laughed as he once again halted his horse. “Best not to move. Those bushes to the left just rustled. A bloodthirsty beast with gleaming claws and fangs is aiming for you.”

With a sharp intake of breath, Leo stopped moving. Just as the man had said, the bushes to the left were making rustling noises as they shook. Although he thought that it must be the wind, he couldn’t be sure of it.

The man on horseback drew his sword.

“Nameless boy, want me to act as your backup?”

“Don’t need it,” Leo slowly moved forward while being vigilant of the what was on the left. “G-Give me your sword. I’ll get rid of it myself.”

“You’re a strange boy: didn’t you just say that your life had no value to you? Anyway, I won’t let you use my weapon. Be sure to die like a man.”

The man returned the sword to his waist and once more urged his horse into a canter. Leo was thrown into panic. He was afraid of drawing the beast’s attention by running, but it was even more terrifying to remain where he was. And so, he broke into a run. In other words, at that point, he realised something.

“Wait, waitwaiiit!” he shouted.

For all that it looked like he was burning with anger as he chased after the man, the truth was that Leo was utterly terrified of finding himself alone in this darkness. He looked up at the sky in which the sun was just about to set. In the end, dreaming about dying had been no more than nonsense that he could afford to think because he had been lying comfortably somewhere safe.

Leo hurried. At some point, he had started crying. He wasn’t calling out for the man to wait anymore. He couldn’t talk as he was desperately trying to breathe. The man’s back was gradually getting further and further away. Soon, his figure, which already barely looked human, would be swallowed up by the darkness. The sound of the horse’s hooves was also becoming distant. Leo put all the strength he could into his hands and feet. Right then, a line of red appeared on the other side of the darkness. Illuminated by the light, the figure of the man on horseback once more came into sight. Leo exerted the last of his strength and ran. 

They were at the foot of the mountain. The man had already halted his horse, and Leo sank to his knees, looking as though he was clinging to its rump.

He realised what that burning red light was: fires lit by a group of people. Soldiers and servants employed by the Anglatt House, and also as many as a hundred people from the castle town and the surroundings who had probably all been roped in, were milling about at the foot of the mountain, with fires blazing. As soon as one of them noticed the horse, he came hurrying up to it.

“Lord Claude!”

“Whoa,” the man on horseback answered their call and waved his hand.

Leo suddenly had a new reason for gasping.

“The Atallese prince his here,” the man said loudly, pointing to Leo.

The people gathered around in a rumble of voices.

“General, you have only just returned yet we’ve already had to bother you.”

“What’re you saying? We’re the ones’ who’ve troubled you. My sons seem to have gone hunting and caught prey today. How about grilling their catch on the fire and eating it with everyone? Right? Walter, Jack?”

When the man suddenly raised his voice, those gathered together by one side of a fire gave a start. Walter, who had been hidden among the people there, took a step forward.

“I-I’m sorry, Father,” he said quickly, “Although we did go hunting… we couldn’t catch anything.” 

“I heard from the servants that you went home real triumphantly considering you were empty-handed.”

“No, that was… er, to save face…”

“Fine. They’ll be some suitable snack if we rummage around the castle. It would be a disgrace to the Anglatt House if there was nothing. Although, there are a lot of people here, huh…”

When the man said that, everyone burst out laughing. 

Leo looked up in amazement at his smiling face. The man that he had for a time seen as a bandit had been hailed as “Lord Claude”. Needless to say, he could only be Claude Anglatt: the lord of this territory, the one Leo had been entrusted to, and, of course, Walter, Jack and Florrie’s father.

Claude jumped nimbly from his horse. He grasped Leo’s shoulder in his large hand and stooped forward towards Leo, who could not break free.

“You said that you’d thrown away your family name,” he started to whisper, while pretending to be tying his boot straps. “However you look at it, every human’s name and family name is a gift they received from others at birth. People are free to keep it or abandon it, but it’s still too soon for you. You don’t yet possess power greater than the family name ‘Attiel’.” 

He continued in a rush, “Originally, I didn’t have a name. Well, no, I did have one, but nobody knew it, so it’s the same thing. So I made a name for myself and proved my own existence. Compared to that, even if you abandon the name ‘Attiel’, it’s kind of a waste to let you die in obscurity. Until you’ve amassed power equal to it, why don’t you mentally lean on it for a while?”

After said that, he immediately stood straight, turned down a subaltern who was going to take his horse by the bit, and personally walked his mount away. People promptly came up to Leo and wrapped him up in a blanket. It was so warm that he felt like crying.

Led towards it, Leo also walked towards the line of lit fires. He felt that every step took him further away from the early evening sky that he had looked up at from the grass. Further from that moment in which his body and mind had seemed to fuse. Yet it was also for that very reason that Leo Attiel now took shelter by the fire, where the wind from the plain would not chill him.