Chapter 52

The mercenaries joined the Sun Warriors who had already begun their battle with the bandits. Harvald, swinging his sword, saw the mercenaries behind him.

“I knew you’d come, of course my fellow Solarists would come to help! Praise be to Lou!” Harvald, whose face was covered in blood, exclaimed. He struck down his shield which had the symbol of the sun on the throat of the fallen bandit.

“For the sun!”

The Sun Warriors battled on as they shouted the name of their god. The bandits fell one by one with helpless screech, as all they had to protect themselves against the elite Imperial warriors were rusty weapons and cloth armor, or fur coats, if they were lucky. They were no match for the brave Sun Warriors and the mercenaries.

“Wahhhh!”

The mercenaries ransacked the farm village and dragged the bandits out of their hiding. The loot that the bandits have collected rolled around on the ground behind them.

“This is too easy of a money.”

Bachman spotted a bandit hiding under a bed and stabbed him deep with his spear.

“Keugh.”

The pieced bandit was dragged out of his hiding. Bachman took out his dagger and slit his throat.

“Getting paid to get rid of bandits like these guys? Good for us.”

The mercenary who was with Bachman asked, “Hmph, Bachman, you want some of this? Hah, I haven’t eaten bread this soft in ages,” he said as he bit into the bread that was on the table nearby. Everyone was full of confidence.

“Stop stuffing your mouth, you pig. Everyone else is still fighting.”

Bachman walked out of the house after scolding the mercenary. The battle was nearing its end, and the bandits who were trying to escape were only met with arrows and collapsed to their deaths.

Near the end of the battle, Pahell walked into the farm village.

‘These poor farmers.’

Pahell took a look around the village. The wrecked homes seemed like they were going to take quite some time to rebuild.

“Oh goodness, thank you so much, thank you.”

“I don’t know how we could ever repay you. Thank you, sir.”

The surviving farmers expressed their gratitude. They were the ones who had barely managed to survive. In their eyes, the Sun Warriors and the mercenaries were practically saviors.

Creak.

Pahell stepped into a barn as he drew his sword and held it loosely.

“Ugh.”

Pahell covered his mouth at the stench of blood. What lay in front of him widened his eyes.

Rays of light were streaming through the broken boards, displaying a little girl on the haystack. She could have been ten years old, at most. Her eyes were clouded, and there was a dark cut on her neck. It wasn’t long ago that she was still breathing. Dripping underneath her skirt was the blood of a violated woman.

Creak.

Pahell’s pupils opened up, and his teeth gritted themselves.

‘How could they do this to a child...?’

He swallowed down the rising nausea. He untied his cloak to cover the little girl’s body.

“Oh, Lou, the God of Sun, please erase the pain engraved in the soul of this little girl,” Pahell recited a short prayer before jumping to his feet to rush out of the barn.

“Haha! Run! Just try to run!”

“You run pretty well, my man!”

Outside the barn, the mercenaries were firing their bows, making bets on who would hit the fleeing bandit.

“You dumbass, you can’t even hit that?”

“How about you try? You have a big mouth.”

The mercenaries took turns trying to hit the bandit, who was squirming and twisting ugly to evade death. After narrowly avoiding the arrows, the bandit scrambled up the hill.

“Hah, he’s actually pretty good at dodging these. He might live if he makes it over the hill.”

The mercenaries who had just shot the last arrow at the bandit said with a whistle. The bandit was almost at the top of the hill. He would survive if he managed to get over to the other side.

“Ahh, we missed him. What a lucky bastard.”

The mercenaries didn’t chase after the bandit. Their goal was to defeat them, so they weren’t concerned about killing every last one of them.

“Don’t let him go,” Pahell said as he walked up to the mercenary and snatched the bow away from him.

“Eh? Eh? What do you think you’re doing, Young Master?”

The mercenary who just had his bow taken away shrugged.

Pahell pulled on the bowstring, but the arrow that he fired landed nowhere near the bandit.

‘Dammit.’

He couldn’t erase the image of the dead girl in the barn from his mind. The nausea came back over and over again.

He was furious. He felt a strong hatred toward the bandits who violated and murdered a helpless girl.

‘Blood for blood.’

Revenge was not the doctrine of Solarism. Hatred and rage were not appropriate, but the intense emotion stirred Pahell.

‘But my heart aches. It pains me.’

Pahell frowned. He put his fingers against his lips and whistled.

“Kylios!”

Kylios, who had been pacing about around the village, rushed toward the whistle. He was a clever horse. Though he was a wild horse that had escaped human hands, it was obvious that he was from a good bloodline.

“Young Master?”

The mercenaries couldn’t understand what Pahell was trying to achieve. He dug his heels into the sides of the horse and gripped the reins.

‘I’m not letting him get away. I’ll kill him myself.’

Pahell rode across the village on his horse.

“Pahell?”

Urich saw Pahell and Kylios galloping behind him.

“Urich! We’re not letting that one get away, hop on!”

Pahell shouted as he stopped Kylios for a moment. Urich shrugged and jumped on the horse.

“Whatever the employer says.”

Kylios rushed up the hill with two men on his back. The fleeing bandit was right in front of them in the blink of an eye. Kylios, after galloping with all his power, exhaled loudly.

“Urich, grab him!”

Pahell exclaimed as he drove the horse right beside the bandit. Urich jumped off the horse, collapsing on top of the bandit.

Thud!

Urich pinned the bandit on the ground with his massive body. The bandit struggled and retaliated in a futile attempt to free himself.

“Stop squirming, you bastard.”

Crunch.

Urich twisted the bandit’s arm as if it were a child’s.

“U-ugh!!!”

The bandit trembled with a scream.

Thump.

Urich grabbed the bandit by the hair and threw him on the ground. His hair ripped out with pieces of his scalp still attached to the roots.

Schring!

Pahell drew his sword as he dismounted the horse and put it against the fallen bandit’s throat.

“S-sir, please spare me, just this once! I won’t ever steal again. Please, spare my life! Remember the mercy of the Sun God!”

The bandit begged on his stomach with his broken arm. Urich carefully observed Pahell from the back.

‘You’re shaking, Pahell.’

Pahell’s lips and hands were indeed trembling. He had never committed a murder before.

“If it’s too hard for you, do you want me to do it? I’ve killed a ton of people already, so this means nothing to me.”

The bandit was terrified at Urich’s words, and he turned toward Urich to beg even harder.

“Sir! Sir! Sir Warrior!”

The bandit wet his pants. His face was covered with a mix of tears, snot, and blood; it wasn’t the most flattering look.

Pahell gazed into Urich’s eyes before shaking his head. He raised his sword of determination.

Schluck—.

Pahell’s sword pieced the heart of the bandit. The sensation of taking a man’s life and the blade plunging into the flesh was softer than expected. All sorts of images flashed before his eyes: the shining sun, the dead girl in the barn, the cold blade. The spouting blood splattered on Pahell’s cheeks.

“Ugh.”

The bandit convulsed to his death. Pahell fell to the ground, unable to pull the blade out of the bandit’s chest. The vomit that he had been holding in all came out.

“Ugh, hugh.”

Pahell shrugged his shoulders violently on the ground. He groaned as he grasped the dirt underneath him. He shrugged off the rage that was piled up inside him. Only emptiness remained in its place, and it wasn’t something that could be filled. There was no going back. Pahell had murdered a man with his own hands.

‘I am the man about to become king.’

How could such a man keep his hands free from blood? He would eventually have to get his uncle’s blood on his hands, and that future was not distant at all.

‘This is only practice. It’s nothing.’

The tears didn’t stop flowing out of his eyes. Urich put his hand on Pahell’s head.

“Don’t worry about it, Pahell. Bedding a woman and killing is the rite of passage of becoming a man,” Urich smiled.

“My heart still aches, Urich. It feels like it’s been pierced. I thought it would go away after I killed this man, but it’s not going anywhere,” Pahell said as he clasped his chest.

“It’s only like that the first time. The more you kill, the more it will desensitize you; just like how your skin becomes calloused.”

Pahell looked back at Urich. His words felt cold.

“...I’ll have to do a confessional when we get to the city.”

Pahell got up weakly. He wanted to meet a priest and get rid of this guilt.

“Don’t act like a little girl, Pahell. How many people do you think died because of you? For you? Don’t give me that look—the look as if you’d lost everything—just because you had to kill one person with your own hands. You’re a rich royalty—you can be more brash. So, keep killing people with your orders and head pointing and I’ll do all the killings for you, as long as you pay me.”

Pahell lifted his head. Urich was waiting for Pahell to get up, with his hands stretched out. He was still smiling.

Pahell laughed along. It was a messy laugh since the lump in his throat still hadn’t cleared.

“Let’s head back, Urich. Don’t tell anyone I cried, though.”

Pahell grabbed Urich’s hand and got up. As soon as they got back to the mercenaries, Urich told everyone how Pahell killed a man and bawled like a baby right after. That was the talk of their dinner that day.

* * *

The mercenaries and the Sun Warriors traveled together for two more days.

“It was good to share the road with you, Urich’s Brotherhood! And Pahell, may the Sun God remember your righteous heart!” Harvald said as they arrived at the city. The Sun Warriors bought their new horses and left the city that very day.

“What a boring bunch of guys, leaving without even going to the red-light district,” the mercenaries said among themselves. They were quite excited at the scene of the city they hadn’t seen in a while.

The city they were visiting this time was a small one, so the entry of the entire squad wasn’t granted. The mercenaries set up their camp just outside the city gates.

In the camp, the heads of the mercenaries and Phillion gathered to go over their schedule.

“We’ll soon enter the emperor’s domain. When we get in, Duke Harmatti won’t be able to touch us. We’ll reveal our identity and request the protection of the Imperial army,” Phillion said as he opened the parchment map. The emperor’s domain was land that was ruled by the emperor himself. Their security was so good that it was rare to see a band of bandits.

“Hah, so we’re getting to the emperor’s domain soon. Now, this is the real empire.”

The mercenaries who had been there before spoke up. Their excitement was visible.

The civilized land was split into three domains: The emperor’s domain, the empire’s domain, and the vassalage kingdoms. The emperor’s domain, as the name suggests, was the center world of the empire, which the emperor directly looked after. The empire’s domains were provinces ruled by the imperial nobility, and the vassalage kingdoms were seven lands that were annexed by the empire during the Great Unification War fifty years ago.

All of these lands were collectively referred to as the Imperial territory, with only a few barbarian lands still remaining in the southern and northern outskirts.

‘We, Porcana, is also one of the seven kingdoms.’

The thing that set Porcana apart was that it was a coastal kingdom. Porcana was the kingdom that occupied most of the eastern coastline. When one thought of Porcana, one thought of the sea.

“Is our job finished once we get into the emperor’s domain?”

“Not exactly. The emperor’s domain is safe, but the danger can still linger around. Even if we get through the domain and get to the capital, we can only pay your rewards after Prince Varca successfully claims the throne. It would be best if you could be his private army until then.”

Phillion said cautiously as he looked around the faces of the mercenaries. There were still three months left until Pahell officially became an adult, and they were planning on staying in the capital until then.

‘How did I end up caring about what these mercenaries think... I guess I brought it unto myself...’

Phillion waited for the mercenaries to respond. They had followed the prince all the way here for the reward that had been promised to them by the future king. Even though Porcana was a mere vassalage kingdom, it was a kingdom, regardless. If Pahell became king, then he would gladly pay enough in rewards to completely change the lives of the mercenaries.

‘Still, the prince and the mercenaries grew quite close over the journey, especially with the mercenary leader Urich.’

It was difficult to trust the mercenaries who were so easily swayed by money, but Urich, their leader, was a trustworthy man.

“You’re covering our expenses, right? The mercenaries shouldn’t have any problems with it, then.”

Urich said as he looked at the other mercenaries, who nodded in agreement. They had all jumped in on this job with the hopes of turning their lives around. It wasn’t a light commitment.

“Good, we’ll leave after we replenish our supplies. Next time we do that will be inside the emperor’s domain!”

Phillion tried to point toward their direction with his right hand, then switched to his left. He still forgot that he had lost most of the fingers in his right hand every now and then. He showed a bitter grin.

The mercenaries scattered after checking their schedule. Urich was about to do the same and enter the kingdom, but Phillion followed him.

“Mercenary Leader Urich.”

“Huh? What? Do you need something?”

Urich looked back at Phillion. He wanted to find a forge since the blades of his axes were dulled, and the hilts were shaky from going through so many impacts.

“Please look after the prince,” Phillion said as he slightly tilted his head.

“Hey, Mister, what’s up? Did I do something wrong?” Urich said as he patted on his back.

“The prince thinks special of you. You were the first person his age that he had met who didn’t treat him with absolute respect—like a brother.”

Urich tilted his head and chuckled.

“That’s an issue. I don’t consider weak men like Pahell as my brothers. To me, brothers are men who can stand shoulder to shoulder with me as warriors, of course.”

“So, that’s all it is... I see that your thoughts are different from the prince’s,” Phillion said with a frown. Pahell’s heart had been trampled.

Urich caressed his sun pendant and looked at Phillion’s face.

“Yup, he’s not my brother. He’s not worthy of that title.”

Urich’s eyes chased his pendant. He remembered the moment of his baptism. In the civilized world, there were as many different ways of living as there were people.

“...but I do think of him as a friend—the first friend that I ever made in civilization; a friend who’s quite high-maintenance. So, don’t worry, Sir Phillion.”

Phillion finally smiled.

“Thank you, Urich.”