“Hahah. No hard feelings, ya?” Menel slapped them on the shoulders annoyingly as a joke. The two of them knocked away Menel’s hands simultaneously with grumpy looks on their faces, causing Gus to burst out laughing.
They hadn’t caught a thing.
“It was bad luck.”
“Mm.”
They both looked in too much of a bad mood for that to be true.
Incidentally, I wasn’t sure about Ghelreis, but Reystov’s hobby was fishing.
In his spare time, I often saw him with his line in the water, but he’d pretty much never split any catches with me, so I had a reasonable idea of his skill level.
“I mean,” I started, “it’s not like everyone’s expecting you to be great at fishing just because you’re a strong warrior—”
“It was bad luck.”
“Uh…”
“You hear me? Bad luck.”
“Y-Yeah, ahaha, terrible,” I said awkwardly, deciding not to push it.
I’d known him to put some seasonal flowers into the empty wicker basket that should have held the fish and give it to Anna or someone, saying it was a flower offering to the gods. Personally, I thought that was pretty nice and romantic, so I really didn’t see a problem with him never catching anything, but from his perspective he probably wanted to get better at it.
“Right, should be ready to start now,” Menel said.
The way to eat an animal that was roasted whole like this was to cut off parts with a knife as they finished cooking. We also had holy bread, so our evening meal was something like sandwiches, filled with sauteed vegetables and the roasted venison we’d carved off. We’d left the extra meat to smoke so we could keep it for tomorrow onwards.
“Okay, let’s eat.” I said grace to the good gods as usual and tucked in.
“Sir Meneldor, I must ask, where and how did you kill this deer?”
“I was walking along animal trails, keeping quiet and hidden, and just bumped right into it.”
Al seemed surprised. “Right into it?!”
“Ya. Didn’t have time to think about anything, so I just fired on reflex, and it was like the arrow was sucked right into the sweet spot.”
“That is most fortunate.” Gus ran his fingers through his ghostly beard as he nodded.
“The blessings of the fae god were with you.”
“Not with us, though.”
“Mm.”
“How about you just own up and admit you suck at fishing? You’ll feel a lot better.”
“J-Just bad luck.”
“Give it up!”
Not wanting to get involved, all I could do was sit back and laugh awkwardly.
I used a knife to scrape some rock salt into the bread stuffed full of venison and sauteed wild vegetables and took a large bite. The sandwich was absolutely delicious, oozing with hot meat juices. And the atmosphere was lively and cheerful.
For some reason, I remembered the time when Blood and Mary were still around. My chest tightened a little with a helpless feeling of nostalgia.
After our meal was over and everyone had returned to their rooms, I wandered outside on my own. Under the starry sky, I sat in front of Mary and Blood’s graves and spoke to them inside my heart about all kinds of things.
I’m back, I said. You not being here makes me uneasy, but I’m doing okay. Imade both friends and allies.
I filled them in on all kinds of things: what I’d done since I’d been gone, the people I’d met, the things I’d gained.
I remember your last words. I promise I’ll continue to abide by them. I’ll see you again.
I looked behind me. Gus was there. He hesitated for a while, choosing his words as he floated in place in the air. “How I wish I could go with you and help you along,” he muttered in a pained voice. “It hurts me that I’m powerless when it’s most crucial.”
I shook my head and smiled at him. “Just those words are enough. Don’t worry, Gus. Just wait here, with Blood and Mary.”
“Mm. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Yeah.”
“And when you next come back, make sure you bring your wife with you.”
“E-Enough already!”
And so my short homecoming came to an end, and my journey to slay the dragon began.
Chapter 1
Autumn was in full swing. It was that time of year where every day was slightly colder than the last. With the wind in its sail and a sky of thin cloud above, our boat seemed to glide across the gently rolling surface of the lake. To the north, I could see the splendor of the mountain range surrounded by cloud.
Those were the Rust Mountains.
“So we just have to go down this branch of the river to the west?”
“If the map is correct. If there are signs that the landscape’s changed, we’ll turn back for now.” I nodded to Menel, who was looking back at us from the foredeck. He started calling to the elementals again.
We were sailing our boat across the lake in order to circle around to the west side of the Rust Mountains.
Menel looked very natural calling to the fairies and summoning the wind to steer the boat. Elementalists and sorcerers who reached the point of being able to read and control the wind were always in demand by the coast, where ships came and went, and would never struggle for food or somewhere to sleep. Menel had probably lived off jobs like that at one point in the past.
“This rope, you do this.”
“Right!”
Toward the stern, Reystov was teaching Al about ropework and how to manage the sail. Not only did Reystov have many years of experience as an adventurer, he also had a good memory and more hobbies than most. On this kind of journey, he was as consistently useful as Menel. Al didn’t have that kind of experience, but through training with Menel and me and going on this journey, he was quickly developing the qualities of an adventurer, even if he wasn’t yet very polished.
“Alright, so, about where we’re going. Ghelreis, do you have any idea what we can expect?”
The scar-faced dwarf of few words shook his head. “I’m afraid I know of nothing after the Great Collapse.”
Gus and my parents had been bound to the city, so they also didn’t know about anything beyond its boundaries. From here on, we would be heading into a
“dark region”—territory not marked on any map, where no one had set foot.
“Except,” Ghelreis said quietly, “before the Great Collapse, there was a forest of elves to the west of the Iron Country. It was called Lothdor.”
“Lothdor… the land of flowers?”
“You understand Elvish, then?”
“Gus schooled me in it, so yes, I know the basics.”
Gus didn’t know much about the very minor languages like the one the giants used, so I was a little patchy on those, but otherwise, I knew how to use quite a few languages. Elvish especially had little linguistic change because its speakers lived long lives. Because it hadn’t changed much from the Elvish Gus knew two hundred years ago, it was one of the languages I was particularly good at.
“Lothdor… I’ve heard of it before,” Menel said from the foredeck as he looked out over the luxuriant forest along the shore. Then, he started reciting softly in Elvish. “Slip past the Iron Country, where the dwarves live in caves /
Cross the radiant Rainbow Bridge, and arrive yourself in Lothdor / On silver harps and golden flutes the Remmirath play and sing.”
It was a flowery Elvish song.
“That is?”
“A song about a journey. Passed down in my old home.”
“A nostalgic song. Yes, and quite correct.”