TYMKM 09

Chapter 09

The prince’s mouth stiffened, and his hand trembled slightly.

Cold eyes glinted ominously through the narrow slit of his helmet.

…When the hell is this bastard going to stop growing?

His disgusting cousin had grown another handspan since the last time the prince had seen him.

That aspect of the man was often a particular sore spot for the Pig Prince.

Rather than crane his neck to look up at Pharoa’s face, the prince merely raised his eyes.

Refusing to lift his head was the last scrap of pride he could preserve.

“Jama.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Duke Pharoa looked down at the prince with cold eyes and called for his squire.

“Ask the Lord of Salt Castle to lend us one horse.”

The man twisted his broad shoulders, stepped past the prince, and walked into the sunlight.

“I have some pig hunting to do. I don’t want to hear any more oinking.”

As always, the man was already fully armed.

To accept the challenge, the only preparation left was to saddle a horse.

A thunderous trumpet blast pierced the courtyard in front of Salt Castle.

The sound reverberated through people’s ears three times before carrying over the castle walls, stopping people in their tracks.

Those who became curious at the alarm, which seemed to insist that there was still something left to see, began turning back.

A rematch? A rematch?

What was going on?

At first, the people were confused.

They were unsure whether they had heard correctly.

Then they saw a handler raise an ash-gray flag high into the sky, and certainty settled over them.

A massive horse was embroidered on the flag, rearing up on its hind legs.

It was the banner of Duke Pharoa’s Iron Steed.

“A rematch! A rematch!”

Now certain, the people confidently shouted together.

Their returning footsteps grew heavier and more purposeful.

The roar of the crowd was joined by the sound of countless feet pounding against the ground.

The arena became even more chaotic, both inside and out.

As though responding to the crowd’s heated anticipation, the great brass trumpet once again blared out its proclamation.

Buu, buu, buuu—.

The news was officially announced through the herald.

“Final match! An exhibition match! An exhibition match is about to begin!”

It was an announcement that an unplanned match would be held.

“It isn’t over yet?”

“Looks like it isn’t. They say there’s one more match.”

Lanram reacted with delight to Sera’s bewildered question.

As luck would have it, she had stopped right in the middle of the spectator stands.

While moving among the people who had wanted to leave, she had managed to claim one of the seats they left behind.

Her newly acquired seat offered an extraordinarily vivid view of the center of the arena, and Lanram’s anticipation grew.

Her heart began to pound at the thought that she would be able to watch the fierce exchange of lances with her own eyes.

Who is fighting whom?

Since the match had been arranged so suddenly, she believed something special must be about to happen.

And indeed, it was not long before the protagonists of the match appeared.

“Garding Knight, Xylus Aecov!”

It was that man again.

The cheers were nothing like before, and Xylus himself did not wave this time.

Only some of the women who still admired whatever lay beneath his helmet continued to scream out of habit.

Then a new figure appeared from the opposite side.

For the first time announcing his name, the herald gave his voice additional force.

“And answering the challenge… Iron Steed, Nyx Pharoa!”

A fresh roar erupted for the new arrival.

Some shouted enthusiastically because they recognized him.

Others knew nothing about him but simply joined in with the excitement around them.

Lanram was in the latter group.

“Pharoa! Pharoa!”

“Pharoa! Pharoa!”

It was clearly an unexpected appearance.

The crowd had merely wanted a rematch, whoever the participants might be.

Now, however, they were shouting one man’s name almost exclusively.

Curious about his identity, Lanram asked:

“Sera, do you know who that knight is?”

Although Sera had never actually seen him in person, she knew the verses of songs about him.

He was fairly famous.

“Nyx Pharoa. Iron Horse Nyx Pharoa. Hero of the Holy War. Guardian of Richfield.”

He certainly had many nicknames.

Of those, the only words Lanram understood were Holy War.

That was what the people of Bigland called the war in which they had driven the heathen forces out of Richfield.

So, in Lanram’s eyes, the man looked like a villain.

The knight wore coal-black armor that looked as though it might leave soot on anything it touched.

There was nothing else.

His horse wore no cloth covering its hindquarters, and the man himself did not even wear an ordinary cloak.

Compared with Xylus, he was severely lacking in decorative elements.

Even so, the sense of intimidation emanating from him was overwhelming.

His pitch-black, solid appearance formed a stark contrast with the Garding Knight’s brilliant white finery.

“He’s enormous. The horse he’s riding looks like a donkey next to him.”

There was a little exaggeration in Sera’s words, but as she said, he really was enormous.

Even taking into account the space occupied by his armor, he was massive.

His shoulders, covered by pauldrons, were exceptionally broad, while his legs, enclosed in greaves and cuisses, were long and powerful.

His build suddenly reminded Lanram of what Kanne had said about the men of Loudhill having thick, sturdy thighs.

“That duke is the one who should be riding that enormous horse from earlier.”

Lanram agreed with that assessment as well.

A tall knight and an oversized mountain horse seemed as though they would make each other look more reasonably proportioned.

If he looked this enormous from a distance, she wondered how gigantic he would seem up close.

Perhaps because of his fearsome physique, the steel wrapped around his body looked less like armor and more like a weapon.

There was something razor-sharp about the black armor, an impression that suggested she might be cut simply by brushing against him.

Excitement and agitation boiled over from every direction as the match approached.

Amid the blazing atmosphere, Duke Pharoa thought coldly.

His bevor is loose. If I aim for his chin, I could kill him.

If this had been a real battle, that beautiful Garding Knight would have lost his life in an instant.

The duke could avenge his unfortunate subordinate, who had suffered a disappointing loss by decision in his very first jousting match.

All he had to do was put his full strength behind the blunt lance tip and drive it straight through him.

The man possessed both the strength and the excuse necessary to make it possible.

That Garding Knight bastard would pay the price for acting frivolously, putting on and taking off his helmet as though this were some game.

If he wanted to avoid the accusations that would inevitably follow a killing, all he had to claim was that he had been unfamiliar with the height of the strange horse.

But that would be too cruel.

The young man had summoned the courage to challenge him.

Although the screams of women seeing him were almost as irritating to his ears as the Crown Prince’s oinking, he had no intention of killing Xylus.

He merely wanted to embarrass him a little.

That should be enough to restore the pride the Iron Steed knights had lost.

The duke disliked handsome men almost as much as he disliked young women.

No—the emotion was better described as inferiority and jealousy.

At last, the trumpet sounded, and the command to charge was given.

The man gripped the reins with his left hand and kicked the horse’s flank with his right heel.

The unfamiliar warhorse, which he had never ridden before today, charged forward with somewhat unsteady movements.

Crash. Clang. Crack.

The violently thrusting lance tips slammed into each other’s chests.

Xylus’s lance successfully struck the duke’s breastplate, but unfortunately, it failed to break.

The only lance that shattered cleanly was Duke Pharoa’s.

After the two men swept past each other like gusts of wind, the duke clicked his tongue in displeasure.

He had struck only a finger’s width away from his intended target.

It was because his horse had suddenly slowed and hesitated when it encountered his opponent’s horse.

The Iron Steed knights watching from the sidelines also sighed.

Someone complained that, judging from its timid temperament, it was obviously not a fine warhorse.

However, the force of the duke’s impact had been tremendous, and Xylus staggered violently.

He nearly fell from the saddle, but managed to cling to the horse’s neck and hold on.

Am I fighting a person, or a bear?

Xylus wondered in confusion.

The duke did not seem interested in carefully accumulating points.

The only thing he wanted was to knock his opponent from his horse.

That ruthless intention was unmistakable even to the man facing him.

The Garding Knight, who had barely avoided falling, struggled to regain his balance and pulled on the reins.

By then, Duke Pharoa had already turned his horse and was standing on the track at the opposite end.

Xylus could not be certain exactly where the man’s eyes were directed behind his visor, but he had the unsettling feeling that their gazes had met.

There was something eerie about Duke Pharoa’s pitch-black armor, something that made Xylus wonder whether there was even a human being inside it.

Like a spectral knight risen from hell….

Having such a being aim his heart made his spine prickle and his chest turn cold.

He felt like a deer being hunted.