Ch#216
216
He tried to endure by tightening his grip on the saddle with his thighs, but his body had already reached its limit.
Ultimately, he tumbled headlong onto the cold, snowy field.
“Your Excellency!”
Someone managed to catch his body just as it slid from the horse.
Kneeling on the ground and gasping for breath, Varkas brushed away the hands trying to support him and used his spear as a literal crutch to straighten his leaning frame.
However, his vision twisted in a dizzying blur once more.
Leaning his head against his halberd, Varkas waited for the vertigo to subside and glanced down at his abdomen. It seemed the excessive movement had caused his wound to tear open. Blood was gushing incessantly from the gap in his armor where the blade had struck.
A mounted warrior hurriedly tore his surcoat to plug the wound and shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Bring a mage, immediately!”
Once it became clear he could no longer move, Varkas eventually leaned his back against the snow.
He felt no pain, but the chill and fatigue filling his body were vividly perceptible.
Perhaps this is the final scenery I shall ever behold.
With that thought, he looked up at the sky. The beautiful cobalt light of the late afternoon poured into his retinas.
In that moment, a stinging sensation spread deep within his chest.
It was strange. It was certainly his flank that had been pierced, so why did it feel as if there were a hole in his heart?
After blinking his blurred eyes a few times, Varkas eventually lowered his lids as if exhausted.
A breeze heavily scented with the fragrance of grass softly caressed his face.
Noticing the sweet scent of fruit mingled within it, Varkas immediately changed his direction.
Before long, by a pond stained red with the sunset, he found the girl he had been searching for for hours.
Varkas looked up with a disapproving gaze at the girl sitting on a thick branch about level with his shoulders, swinging her bare feet.
“Are you not past the age for climbing trees?”
Blue eyes, which had been staring at the gently rippling purple lake, flicked toward him.
“I’m not past it yet. You’re allowed to do anything until you’re fifteen.”
He arched an eyebrow as if the claim were absurd. A daughter of a noble house usually learned the conduct of a lady from the age of eight or nine.
He was about to retort but instead let out a sigh and held out a hand.
“It is late. Please come down now.”
The girl looked down at him with a strange light in her eyes before abruptly turning her head away with a pout.
“I can’t.”
He narrowed his eyes.
Under his wordless, pressuring gaze, the girl swung her snow-white feet beneath the hem of her skirt, which she had tucked up to her calves.
“See this? I’m barefoot, so I can’t budge from here.”
“……What happened to your shoes this time?”
“I don’t know. They tumbled down somewhere over there.”
She pointed toward the thick brush beneath the gentle slope leading to the lakeshore.
Swallowing a sigh, Varkas went down and began searching through the bushes. Eventually, he found a pair of velvet shoes about the size of his palm.
After brushing the dust off them and returning to the tree, the girl thrust her foot in his face as if she had been waiting.
“Here.”
He frowned at the way she treated him—a knight and the heir to the Grand Duchy—like a lowly servant, but only for a moment. He took hold of one of her feet and carefully slid it into the shoe.
The girl, whose small toes wiggled incessantly as if tickled, then held out her other foot.
Without a word of complaint, Varkas put the shoe on her remaining foot, straightened his posture, and tilted his head slightly to the side.
“Are you satisfied now?”
“Satisfied? Not yet. Now you have to let me down.”
She reached out both arms toward him with a pert expression.
Varkas stood still, watching her, before letting out a sigh of resignation and lifting the girl’s body up. He intended to set her down on the ground, but her white, soft arms wrapped around his neck.
Varkas stiffened at the unexpected action, but in the next moment, he smelled the strong scent of wine and knitted his brows. He had wondered why she was being particularly whiny; it seemed she had snuck off and drunk stolen alcohol.
He pulled the girl away as she clung to his chest and interrogated her in a stiff voice.
“Where did you get wine from?”
“It’s a secret.”
The girl giggled softly.
That laughter, ringing as clear as a breeze, caused the sharp reprimands hovering in his mouth to vanish instantly.
He gazed at the small face flushed with a rosy glow with a look of unfamiliarity. He couldn’t take his eyes off the girl, who usually looked as if she were dying of misery, now laughing without a care in the world.
“Look, Varkas. The moon is out in the sky.”
She suddenly pointed to the sky, which was turning indigo.
Following her fingertip, he saw a crescent moon hanging on the boundary between red and blue.
The girl looked up at it for a long time as if she had discovered a treasure, murmuring in a dreaming voice.
“In one more year, I’ll be sixteen.”
Blue eyes, appearing as if soaked in water, slowly lowered to meet his.
“You know, when that time comes……”
The voice that trailed on slowly was cut off in an instant.
Varkas stared blankly at the girl’s form as it scattered like a mirage.
A fierce wind blew from somewhere, violently sweeping over his body.
In the next moment, he was standing in the inner courtyard of Raedgo Castle.
Beyond the garden where flowers were in full bloom, he saw her.
In her arms, as she smiled happily bathed in the bright sunlight, she held a small baby boy.
The woman, looking down at the child’s face with the same gaze she had used to look at the moon, suddenly raised her head and saw him.
Varkas.
As he cautiously approached the woman calling his name, she showed him the child’s face as if granting a special grace.
Look at this. Isn’t he beautiful?
The woman spoke triumphantly, as if bragging about a precious treasure, and pressed her rose-colored lips to the child’s clear cheek.
Watching the scene without even blinking, Varkas’s gaze shifted to her embrace.
Jewel-like blue eyes sparkled on a tiny face that looked like a perfect blend of her and him. Over that image, a grey face that had been growing cold inside swaddling clothes flickered past.
Behind those eyelids, closed forever, had there been blue eyes as vivid as these?
He thought dazedly as he reached out to touch the child’s cheek. At that touch, the futile and fleeting vision crumbled like a mirage. The image of her smiling happily also scattered into ash in an instant.
Watching everything that had sparkled melt soundlessly into the wind, Varkas curled his empty hand into a fist.
Soon, everything surrounding him faded to grey and shattered into pieces. A wind blowing from somewhere swept away even the remnants of the illusion.
All that remained for him now was a decaying body and an endless void.
He sank to his knees as if collapsing and stared vacantly at the infinite ruins.
“Are you finally conscious?”
With a low groan, he opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was Daren’s haggard face.
Why was the man who should have been guarding Tarlin by his side?
Frowning, he soon realized he was not in a tent but in a luxuriously decorated bedroom and pushed his upper body up.
Seeing this, Daren looked aghast and pressed down on his shoulders.
“Your wound hasn’t fully healed yet. You must not move.”
Varkas looked down at his own body with a hardened expression. Stark white bandages were wrapped tightly around his bare abdomen.
When he pressed lightly on it, a throbbing sensation accompanied by a sharp pulling feeling was transmitted to him.
He looked up at Daren with a questioning face.
“Why was healing magic not applied?”
“Why wouldn’t it have been? Four high priests clung to you and poured out their holy power.”
The man sat heavily on a chair and spoke with a tired sigh.
“It seems there was demonic poison coated on the blade. The healing magic didn’t take well, so the priests had to spend a full fifteen days devoted to Your Excellency’s treatment.”
Varkas arched an eyebrow.
“Exactly how long was I unconscious?”
“You were out for exactly two weeks and five days.”
