Vol 3 Prologue (1/2)

Prologue

The water bathed in light as it splashed about.

“Orba! You’re not coming? The cold water feels really nice!”

Alice called out to him from the river’s shoal. Her white legs were bare under the cuffs of her trousers as she frolicked about like a child. After all, it was a hot day out. Stretched out on the sh.o.r.e, Orba gave an unenthusiastic reply.

Back then, Alice had also called Orba and his brother over while standing in the river. His older brother Roan, who was not as good at swimming as...o...b.., had eventually been pulled along by Alice and been comically at a loss of what to do in the water.

In the end, nothing changes.

These were the thoughts...o...b.. had as he looked up vacantly. That had been one month before the recurring skirmishes between the two countries, Mephius and Garbera, intensified. Apta Fortress, located close to the village where they lived, got besieged by the Garberan forces and the Mephian army started recruiting soldiers from the neighbouring villages. There were, of course, also those who applied for the army themselves, having given up on the high taxes, but half of them still got recruited against their will.

Orba’s older brother Roan had been one of them. Instead of picking up a sword, his brother was more the type to open a book and teach things to children, but he’d left the village with a smile on his face. It was about two weeks ago that Orba and Alice had watched his back retreating in the distance.

And waiting for Orba was a not so ordinary daily life. An arid wind blew through the barely fertile, steep, rugged, and rocky wastelands surrounding the village. The best way pa.s.s the time in a situation like this was to dive into the river beneath the cliffs and swim around.

“You had a fight again with Doug from the other village, didn’t you?” Alice said, smiling, as she shook off the droplets of water in her hair.

“It wasn’t a fight. It was a duel.”

“Sure, sure - a duel,” Alice said, suppressing a giggle. “How come the two of you can’t get along, though? I met him at the festival last year and he seemed like a polite, good kid, asking me ‘How is...o...b..-kun doing?’ and such.”

“He uses cowardly tactics when he can’t win a duel. He might’ve ensnared you, Alice, but I don’t intend to let myself get careless. This is the same guy that tricked us when he said he saw a wild dragon. Thanks to him, we ended up walking all over the place…”

“It wasn’t us but only you that got tricked, right? We were just forced to come along with you.”

“That’s not true. Wasn’t everybody excited about it? Even Roan-niisan?”

Suddenly, the smile on Alice’s face disappeared. Also holding his tongue, Orba laid his half-risen body back on the ground. The unnatural silence continued for a while until Orba again heard the sound of splas.h.i.+ng water.

At the same time he could hear her humming.

Alice liked to sing. She resembled her father in that, who always sang in a loud voice when drunk. But even so, she rarely ever took up singing in public. He had heard her sing among the rocks just outside of the village once. And one time at the annual festival, the men had invited her from among the women to sing. Back then, Orba had noticed Alice get a bright flush to her cheeks and move away as if trying to escape.

And you’ve got such a nice voice.

He looked up at the clear sky above. Was his brother looking up at the same view?

It had already been two weeks since he left. His brother’s absence from home had become a usual thing, because he’d always been working in the capital, but right now time seemed to be pa.s.sing by very slowly. Especially when he and his mother were having their meals.

To forget his anxiousness and worries, in between his job of looking after the small number of livestock, he never got tired of absorbing himself in reading the books he’d received as presents from his brother. When his eyes moved over the words, Orba turned from a powerless boy from a tiny back country into barbarian king Gape, dragon-slaying hero Clovis, or the adventurer known as Marlow, who had crossed the sea to finally arrive at the world of snow and ice where the Winged Tribe lived.

And when he chased the texts and it became to hard for him to endure the throbbing rush of blood in his body, he would always pick up his wooden sword and wield it so engrossedly until not a single drop of sweat could leave his body anymore.

One day, I’ll go there too!

Blocking the scorching sun with the palm of his hand, Orba hardened that determination for the umpteenth time.

I’ll take up the sword and fight in a war somewhere. I’ll flourish, become a hero, and make mom happy. Then I can wield a sword and fight in my brother’s stead.

He clenched the hand he used to block the sun tightly into a fist and, having read those many stories, imagined carving his own name among those dazzling military records.