Chapter 07
“What if you lose?”
“If I lose….”
Lanram, who had remained silent all this time as though she had no mouth, suddenly asked the question.
The man looked intrigued and continued.
“I’ll give today’s glass rose to you. No matter which of those two wins, I’m going to be the champion anyway.”
The man looked toward the horses returning to their starting positions.
Whether his confidence was justified or merely empty boasting, there was no denying that his attitude was worthy of a champion. He did not seem like a man who was merely putting on airs, either. Somehow, Lanram found herself thinking that he really might be able to do it.
If so, she thought, this was a bet in which she had nothing to lose.
Regardless of the outcome, going on a date with a man from Loudhill seemed like it would be quite an experience.
I could even find out whether what he said about being big and sturdy down there is actually true.
A trumpet blast pulled Lanram out of her lewd imagination.
The match was about to begin its second charge.
The horses stamped their feet as the gleaming lance tips rapidly drew closer.
Xylus extended his arm slightly faster than Chironéia.
Shrill screams erupted from the spectators watching the match.
The accident happened in an instant.
Xylus’s lance struck not Chironéia’s shield or armor, but the mountain horse’s neck.
Whether it had been an accident or intentional, there was no time to determine.
The mountain horse, enraged by the iron tip piercing it, snorted violently and reared up on its hind legs.
Startled, the horse broke away from the designated track and began rampaging wildly in every direction.
The beginning of a full-scale disaster.
The smile vanished completely from Kanne’s face.
As though he had never been making frivolous jokes only moments before, the man suddenly became deadly serious and ran forward.
Kanne was not the only one.
Men came pouring out of the tent as well.
“Chairo!”
The knights shouted Chironéia’s name as they rushed toward him.
The knight seemed to hold on for a moment while desperately gripping the reins, but in the end, he could not endure it and fell from the horse.
Fortunately, he managed to roll his body out of the way of its hooves at the last moment.
Freed from its rider, the horse became even more agitated and tore through the courtyard in front of Salt Castle.
Some people desperately tried to get out of its way, while others ran after it in an attempt to capture it.
The spectators watched in confusion, their constant murmuring swelling into a roar.
At one point, the horse tried to leap over the wooden barricade, causing the people nearby to scream in terror.
Even the spectator area, which they had assumed was safe, was suddenly under threat.
Those standing near the barricade stumbled backward.
Some fell.
Others were trampled.
The scene instantly descended into chaos.
A single horse had thrown hundreds of people into confusion and panic.
They had to wait until the frightened animal calmed down on its own.
By the time the horse finally settled down and planted all four hooves firmly on the ground, several people had already been badly injured, whether by the horse’s hooves or by the heels of people fleeing in panic.
One of the handlers who had been struck by the horse’s hind legs at the height of its frenzy had lost consciousness.
He did not regain his senses, and from a distance it was impossible to tell whether he was alive or dead.
The man was soon carried away on something resembling a stretcher, while the other seriously injured victims were carried off on the backs of the security soldiers.
Perhaps because she had been sitting in an inferior location, Lanram had actually avoided being injured.
She watched the scene without even remembering to breathe.
Only when the mountain horse’s reins were finally secured did she breathe a sigh of relief and rub her chest.
The commotion had finally subsided, but the jousting arena had already been left in ruins.
Once the situation had settled down to some degree, the organizers held an emergency meeting.
At the center of it were, naturally, the lord of Salt Castle, the Pig Princess, and her younger brother, the Crown Prince.
“What did they say?”
After returning from the brief mediation that had lasted about twenty minutes, the man was immediately surrounded by the knights of the Iron Steed.
The man’s name was Lewis.
He was a man with a brown beard that had begun to show streaks of gray.
“First of all, Chironéia has been given a loss by forfeit. His leg is injured, and he is no longer in any condition to continue the tournament.”
Pained sighs spread throughout the tent.
Lewis, who was delivering the news, also looked deeply troubled.
Chironéia, who had more reason than anyone to be bitter about the outcome, remained silent with an angry expression while a compress was strapped to his injured leg.
“Then what about that Garding Knight bastard? Was he disqualified?”
Someone said that nothing less would satisfy them.
But Lewis shook his head with a grave expression.
The knights erupted into a chorus of condemnation and indignation.
“That makes no sense. How can they do this?”
“He definitely did it on purpose. There’s no doubt it was intentional! Isn’t that right, Chairo?”
Unlike the older men, who were able to maintain a degree of composure, the younger knights were too emotional to contain their anger.
As they took turns adding to the rising outrage, they eventually even grabbed hold of Duke Pharoa and began complaining to him.
“Commander, could you go there yourself and say something to them?”
But before the man could respond, Lewis spoke again.
He still had more to say.
“There is one more piece of bad news for our knights….”
Lewis trailed off with an embarrassed expression.
The man inside the iron armor tilted his chin as if to say, Go ahead. Tell me.
Lewis hesitated for a long moment, his face troubled, before finally revealing the grim news.
“Our mountain horses have been banned from participating in the remaining matches.”
“What?”
“What did you say?”
That was certainly far more shocking than merely learning that Xylus had not lost his opportunity to advance in the tournament.
For the knights of the Iron Steed, whose powerful mountain horses were both their symbol and their pride, the decision felt profoundly unjust.
“What are we supposed to do without our horses?”
“The lord of Salt Castle said he would lend us some spare horses.”
“Spare horses? Are they even warhorses?”
“Why should we be the ones to give up our horses in the first place?”
To a knight, a warhorse was like a second body.
More important than a sword or a shield, it was the horse that moved as naturally as one’s own body.
Even if you were merely running, wearing someone else’s shoes would make you uncomfortable and awkward enough to keep you from performing at your best.
Likewise, if you were deprived of the familiar height and speed of your own horse, you would inevitably be placed at a disadvantage in a match.
“This is basically a foul.”
“What foul? The thing that bastard Xylus did was the foul.”
“To be honest, it really is difficult to thrust upward from below. Ordinary horses are smaller than ours.”
As the knights of the Iron Steed continued arguing over the organizers’ decision, Lewis cut in as though that was exactly the point.
“That was precisely the Garding Knight’s argument. He said that if it had been an ordinary horse, the rider would have been at the appropriate height, and this kind of accident would never have happened.”
“Hah! Just because he’s got a mouth, he sure knows how to run it.”
The knights, suddenly forced to continue the uncertain competition while riding someone else’s horses, grumbled bitterly.
Perhaps their pride had also been wounded by receiving such treatment after traveling all this way.
“Enough with the complaining. If your whining gets outside this tent, people will laugh and say, ‘Is that really all the knights of the Iron Steed are capable of?’”
A relatively old and mature knight who was not participating in the competition scolded them.
But rather than obediently accepting his reprimand, the younger knights seemed only to grow more resentful.
Then Duke Pharoa, who had been listening silently until that point, finally spoke.
“Don’t scold the boys, Lord Gyeong.”
The results of the tournament itself did not matter much to him.
But he could not simply stand by while the pride of those who trusted and followed him was being wounded.
“This is my fault. They’re protesting against me.”
The man immediately brought up something that was not easy to understand.
His gruff voice sounded even colder as it echoed from inside the frigid metal helmet.
“I refused again this time when they asked me to send them some useful breeding stallions.”
The man rose from his seat and took a step into the sunlight.
In the distance, he could see the Pig Princess and the Pig Prince sitting in the VIP section—the royal siblings of the Jerolly royal family.
They had always been greedy children, asking for this and that and demanding whatever caught their fancy.
These days, what the Crown Prince wanted most from him was the mountain horse of Loudhill.
The mountain horse, found nowhere else in Bigland, had long been a symbol of the Pharoa family.
It was also an essential weapon for maintaining the Iron Steed, which was known as the strongest army in Bigland.
In other words, it was a valuable military asset.
Naturally, he had no desire to casually hand over one of the things that set their territory apart from the others and made them proud.
Whenever someone subtly expressed interest in their horses and proposed a trade, Nyx had repeatedly turned them down.
His father had done the same.
His grandfather had done the same.
And his grandfather’s grandfather had done the same.
The royal family was no exception.
