Editing Rakuin no Monshou:Volume12 Chapter1 (section)

=== Part 4 ===

During Gil Mephius’ stay, a succession of incidents occurred in Idoro.

In each of them, people lost their lives. Nothing about them raised any particular suspicions, however. They included a drunkards’ brawl, a cheating husband stabbed to death by his wife after he was found out, or business talks that turned sour before ending in mutual killing. Although you couldn’t go so far as to call them everyday occurrences, these kinds of cases were by no means uncommon, and it was simply coincidence that they all happened around the same time.

Such trivial matters naturally did not reach Gil Mephius’ ears.

''Second… third…''

Which meant, of course, that each time an event occurred, each time a body was discovered, Orba had no awareness of the whispering voice that seemed to be tallying them.

It was a sort of ‘shadow’ that prowled through Idoro at night. Merging with the darkness, it wandered through every nook and cranny of the fortified city. And it unfailingly caught the ‘scent’ of every incident that was on the verge of unfolding.

When, not long ago, a group of new mercenaries, who had recently arrived in Idoro, got into a quarrel with a more experienced group in a bar along one of the back alleys, the ‘shadow’ had softly crept in. And it had smoothly slid up to a wife who was thoroughly fed up with her carpenter husband that went out fooling around every night.

The shadow had started whispering. It was the very faintest of murmurs, that only those involved in the incident were able to hear.

When the long-serving mercenary approached a newbie with a wine cup in one hand, the voice that said – ''He’ll kill me if he sees an opening'' – had sounded like the voice of his own mind.  When the wife had half-resigned herself to her husband having affairs, it had whispered – ''It’s about time to teach him a lesson. Right now, he’s entranced with a younger woman. Sooner or later, he’ll take all the money in the house and run off, leaving me behind''.

The second they heard the voice of ‘their awareness’, they felt their emotions well up like fire within them.

What was left behind afterwards was a corpse.

And the mercenary, the wife, and every other person who became an assailant could only look down in a daze at their blood-covered victims.

Each and every time, the ‘shadow’ whispered its count and left without a trace, wandering back into Idoro’s night, in search of the next ‘scent’.

One night, when the crown prince’s flagship, Dhum, was weighing anchor at Idoro’s air carrier departure point. The cages had been loaded into the ship’s hold, and the dragons had all lain down their heads and were sleeping peacefully.

Hou Ran had thus finished her work, and was now staying the night in the same place as the dragons to help them feel reassured in this unfamiliar environment. She was lying at the centre of the hold, wrapped up in a single piece of cloth.

There was nobody else there. Several soldiers were on watch outboard, but none of them noticed the dark shadow crawling beneath their feet.

Once on board the ship, the shadow unhesitatingly made straight for its destination: the hold were the dragons’ cages were lined up. The ‘shadow’ turned its formless gaze towards the centre of the room, where Hou Ran lay stretched out. In the starlight that shone through the window, her hair seemed to shine with a strangely pale lustre.

The ‘shadow’ whispered something. Although Ran’s eyelids fluttered and quivered for a second, her sleep remained undisturbed. A few of the slumbering dragons in the cages on either side of her had a similar faint reaction, but they too continued to sleep peacefully.

The next day, the morning brought uproar in one area of Idoro. Preparations for departure were almost complete when a corpse was found in an air carrier which was scheduled to fly before noon that day.

A woman’s corpse.

It went without saying that Orba received a report about it. He rushed over there.

“Ran…”

When he called out, the woman he had known since their time with Tarkas’ Gladiator Troupe turned around.

“What happened?”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” she shook her head.

The reason Orba had asked her was because he found it surprising to see her among the onlookers.

The body belonged to a young slave woman who helped take care of those who worked at the port. Her aggressor had already been arrested by the guards; he was the second son of the harbour master. Even though he was her master, he had long held wicked thoughts towards her. Having summoned her to the ship in the middle of the night with orders about a job to do, he had forced her down but, because she had struggled violently, he had instinctively struck her.

Ran irritably paced around the cabin in which the incident had occurred.

“What’s wrong?”

“It stinks.”

“Stinks?”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know. Where did it come from… where did it go… A nasty stench.”

Orba, naturally, did not have any understanding of the ‘stench’. He had not been informed of anything concerning the succession of incidents in Idoro, and even if he had, it was doubtful whether he would have connected them to the affair that had occurred onboard the ship.

After all, Orba was in a hurry.

They had finally received an answer from Ende. A military officer living in Safia, who had long been part of Eric’s faction, was concerned about the way Prince Gil was being made to wait at the border. Overriding the high officials who were dragging their feet, he made the judgement call to accept the prince’s request to be allowed into the country.

“It was Lord Eric himself who issued the appeal for reinforcements to Mephius. There is no need to wait for his reply,” by the time he had convinced the higher-ups, a messenger had already been sent to Idoro.

After meeting with him, Orba had hurriedly finished preparations for departure. Having Ran move the dragons was part of them.

From times immemorial, sailors on ships sailing the sea or sky had loathed incidents involving women, and it was an ominous event that had occurred the previous night. Orba, however, had laughed at the frightened men, and the ships had risen into the sky at the scheduled time.

After crossing the river east of Idoro, it would take half a day to reach the border fortress. However, they could not proceed to Dairan as they were, and would need to leave the Dhum at the riverside fortress. The aforementioned military officer had apologetically explained that this was the last-minute compromise they had managed to hammer out to have the reinforcements be allowed to pass.

“They said that without direct confirmation from Lord Eric, we cannot allow ships from another country to freely fly our skies.”

“It’s fine. Then could you have some of your own ships readied for us?”

Orba had a good impression of the officer, who must have been about twenty years older than he was and who handled things well. Ende was a country with a very old history, and the long years had brought stagnation which, like rickets<ref>Rickets is a childhood condition caused by serious vitamin D deficiency, which leads to the bones weakening and softening, and which in turn results in slowed growth and stunted skeletal development. Nowadays, it is perfectly treatable, but back when it wasn’t, it could leave people deformed for life.</ref>, had warped the personality of its nobles. Eric, however, was young and had been raised, sword and armour wet with blood, in a rough region far from the centre of Ende. Yet only very few people would already have felt the influence of this new mood.

Leaving a few men to guard the Dhum, Orba transferred to Endean ships to travel north. If speed was the priority, it would have been best to split the soldiers up and have them ride in small and medium-sized ships. As was to be expected though, such a large variety of boats was not what had been prepared; instead, there were two large ships.

Air travel was convenient, but it had taken them about five days to reach the final relay-base before Dairan. By that time, the sun had already set; it was only a short distance from there to Dairan, but it was not advisable to fly by night.

They decided to stay overnight at the base.



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===References and Translation Notes===
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| Back to [[Rakuin no Monshou:Volume12_Prologue|Prologue]]
| Return to [[Rakuin no Monshou|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Rakuin_no_Monshou:Volume12_Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
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