Chapter 08
“So when that Garding Knight used the mountain horse as an excuse, you must have thought, ‘Aha, this is my chance.’”
The Jerolly Crown Prince must have been holding quite a grudge over being refused.
The man snorted as though the prince’s petty intentions were painfully obvious.
Hearing that, Chironéia blamed himself.
“Then it really was because of me. If only I had handled the situation more wisely….”
“It isn’t your fault, Chairo.”
“Maybe I could have turned the horse sooner and avoided it.”
“I said it wasn’t your fault.”
“In the end, I was the one who gave him an excuse, Commander.”
Because Chironéia kept digging himself deeper into self-reproach, Duke Pharoa finally snapped in irritation.
He was just and honorable, but he was not a particularly gentle man.
“Fuck, listen to me. How many times do I have to reassure you before you get it through that tiny little ear of yours?”
Then he struck the back of Chironéia’s head with his armored fist.
He pointed toward the outside of the tent and spoke as though the entire situation had become an enormous nuisance.
“Lewis, go back and tell them.”
“Yes, Commander. What should I tell them?”
“All Iron Steed knights are withdrawing.”
Several of the knights objected to their commander’s decision.
Kanne’s voice was the loudest and most dissatisfied of all.
But in the end, no one dared defy his decision.
To give up the competition merely because they had been deprived of their own mounts could, at first glance, make them seem as though they had been frightened into retreat.
Yet anyone who had ever heard the name Iron Steed knew the truth.
They had not withdrawn because they were afraid of losing.
“All the Iron Steed knights withdrew?”
“Then how many matches are left?”
The spectators, who had been waiting impatiently for the competition to resume, became restless and began whispering among themselves when they heard the news.
A total of five Iron Steed knights, including Chironéia and Kanne, disappeared from the tournament bracket.
Most of them had been top championship contenders who had defeated numerous formidable competitors to make it this far.
Just when the exciting competition should have been reaching its climax, people had been killed and injured—and now the very stars of the tournament had withdrawn.
The number of remaining matches dropped from six to two.
In effect, the tournament would have to proceed with virtually no semifinals at all.
The disappointment of those who learned that the schedule had been reduced so drastically was immense.
It was not merely a matter of being disappointed that there would be fewer matches.
It was something that left both the participating knights and the people watching them feeling empty.
Even if someone climbed to the top of a tournament bracket with huge chunks of it missing, who would truly recognize that man as a hero?
After all the commotion, a chilly atmosphere swept through the arena, which had become as deserted as the spectator stands.
The competition resumed without anyone genuinely cheering for the participants.
The knights who had lost their opponents advanced one step closer to victory with bewildered expressions.
The man waiting for the winner among them in the next round was Xylus.
After Chironéia, the Garding Knight had fought only one more match.
And he won that match as well, reaching the final in an instant.
For those who had expected a thrilling, nail-biting duel between evenly matched opponents, the result was painfully anticlimactic.
Some people fell silent in disappointment.
Others booed and even threw stones.
It seemed as though everything was Xylus’s fault.
The fact that he had caused the uproar by stabbing the mountain horse in the neck.
The fact that the special horse had consequently been banned from the competition.
And ultimately, the circumstances that had caused all the leading championship contenders to withdraw.
Every arrow of blame was aimed at him.
Most of those arrows were fired by men.
The men had no romantic illusions about the young and beautiful face of the Garding Knight.
Amid the boiling public outrage, Xylus did not know what to do.
He must have been terribly ashamed, because he could not even bring himself to remove his helmet.
“Your Highness, my victory was not honorable.”
The man’s face was flushed as he stood before the lord and the princess.
Under ordinary circumstances, he should have been standing there proudly receiving the sparkling glass rose and prize money.
Instead, he dropped tremblingly to his knees.
“For Your Highness to place the glass rose in my hand now would be to imprison me in a humiliation I could never overcome.”
The Garding Knight said that he could not accept such a shameful and hollow victory.
The despair in his voice made his sorrow painfully apparent.
The princess, who could no longer crown him with glory, was similarly distressed.
This jousting tournament had been held to celebrate and publicize her wedding.
Yet at an event intended to enhance her dignity, she had lost even the authority to properly select and congratulate a champion.
It felt as though her wedding itself had suddenly been ruined along with the tournament, making it difficult for her to maintain face before her husband, the Lord of Salt Castle.
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
The princess held the glass rose that had been made for the winner and turned toward her younger brother with a troubled expression.
The prince was equally humiliated, his fists trembling.
Two distinguished guests of comparable rank should have been seated on either side of the royal couple.
Instead, the prince occupied one chair, while the other remained empty.
That seat actually belonged to Nyx Pharoa.
He had declined the place of honor rightfully given to him and was instead sitting curled up inside that unpleasant tent.
The Pig Prince glared toward the distant tent where Duke Pharoa was staying.
The man was surely sitting inside, watching with satisfaction as the festival he had ruined gradually lost its energy and withered away.
Just imagining that hateful, disgusting face made the prince’s blood boil.
How dare he humiliate me like this?
Everything had been going so well when he had combined a personal grudge with a convenient opportunity to take the mountain horses.
But when events refused to proceed according to his wishes, the prince gritted his teeth.
“Your Highness, I have not yet had the opportunity to compete against a sufficient number of knights.”
Xylus spoke to the prince, who was turning over schemes in his mind, eager for revenge.
The Garding Knight appeared to have made a very serious decision.
“Please grant me the honor of crossing lances with Duke Pharoa, the man who leads the Iron Steed.”
“You and the duke?”
The prince’s ears immediately perked up, while the princess looked at Xylus with admiration.
“If I can stand against the man praised as the greatest warrior beneath the moon, I will be able to wash away this disgrace.”
The Garding Knight’s voice grew stronger with every word.
The prince wanted to believe him.
He immediately sprang to his feet as though he were about to leap down from the VIP seating area himself.
“Very well. I shall arrange an opportunity for a duel right now. Bring Duke Pharoa here. No, that esteemed man would never come simply because I summoned him. I’ll go myself.”
The prince hurried away as though trying to escape the endless uproar.
He wanted to silence those dissatisfied mouths by any means necessary.
As he passed Xylus, he even leaned over and whispered.
“Don’t approach this half-heartedly. Come at him intending to win.”
The Pig Prince wore a dazzling doublet embroidered with pink pigs and adorned with golden buttons shaped like pig snouts.
The pink pig, a symbol of the Jerolly royal family, was regarded as an auspicious animal in Bigland.
But the Iron Steed hated pigs.
“Take up your lance, Nyx. That way, you can at least feel that all that heavy iron armor you wear from morning to night serves some purpose.”
The prince spoke with a grin in front of the tent.
Even though Nyx showed no fear or reverence toward him and had not even considered stepping outside the shade, the prince did not seem offended.
The only thing on his mind was finding some way to drag Nyx into the public eye and make fun of him.
“Isn’t that why you’ve been sitting around in this tent all this time? Because, deep down, you wanted to participate in the tournament yourself?”
The man in black iron armor remained silent, suppressing the urge to respond to the provocation.
The Iron Steed knights bowed their heads to the Crown Prince who had suddenly arrived, but they seemed even more concerned with watching the reaction of the man they served.
“By the way, your former fiancée has also come to grace us with her presence.”
The prince said it with an especially malicious tone, as though he had been saving that remark for precisely this moment.
He swaggered into the tent, proudly swinging his billowing sleeves, and stopped in front of the chest on which Duke Pharoa was seated.
“Think of this as an opportunity to win some points with her. You never know, do you? You returned home in glory after distinguishing yourself in the war. If you show her a magnificent performance this time, perhaps Abigail might change her mind and….”
Duke Pharoa rose from his seat before the prince could finish speaking.
That was all.
The man had a peculiar talent for cutting off another person’s words simply by standing up.
