Ch#231
Gares clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms.
Looking back, it had been a bad omen from the start when the man—who usually never showed displeasure at any injustice—had expressed such visceral repulsion toward becoming that bastard girl’s knight.
At the time, Gares had simply assumed the man was revolted by the idea of serving the daughter of the woman who had driven his own mother to her death. But perhaps he had sensed it even then.
The intuition that, one day, that girl would become an existence that would shake his very foundation…
Unable to contain his fury, Gares slammed his fist against the windowsill.
If it weren’t for the oath he made to his mother, that wretch would have turned his back on him long ago.
Gares recalled the moment Bernadette had ensnared him with the blood covenant.
In 그 moment, he had clearly perceived the fact that Varkas’s fate was bound to his own and Aila’s.
He didn’t know how such a thing was possible. Perhaps, as the priests had incessantly claimed, sinister magical power really did flow through the blood of the Khan people.
From a very young age, he had noticed his mother possessed a strange power.
She would occasionally display an intuition bordering on precognition and acted as if she could see straight into people’s hearts.
Perhaps Mother had foreseen a future where Varkas would betray them.
That might be why she bound him with the Khan’s sorcery. If the Grand Duke of Shikan were to side with Senevier, that witch, his and Aila’s positions would be jeopardized…
‘But in the end, that bastard trampled over the covenant.’
He glared out the window with bloodshot eyes.
The countless lights covering the mountainside were now gradually closing the perimeter, pressing toward the fortress gates.
Gares held his breath instinctively as he watched the army, which he thought would stop at a reasonable distance, march straight for the gates. Simultaneously, the echo of a horn signaling an enemy raid rang out.
“Haha, it seems the Imperial Union Army has decided to abandon His Highness the Crown Prince.”
A Northerner who had approached behind him let out a low laugh.
Gares shot the man an infuriated look. However, he stiffened when he discovered the intense murderous intent dwelling in the man’s eyes.
The man grabbed Gares by the collar with a vein-ridged hand, pulling him forward as he growled.
“The leadership believes you still have use as a hostage, but looking at that sight out there, I’m beginning to doubt that judgment.”
“You insolent fool! Let go of me this instant… !”
“I’ll have to drag you to the front of the gates. If those bastards don’t back off quietly, I’ll take your head and hang it on the ramparts.”
Gares felt the blood in his entire body turn to ice.
The man brutally dragged him toward the door. Just then, a sharp scream rang out from outside, accompanied by the sound of something shattering.
The man, who had been dragging him like a dog, whipped his head around and bellowed.
“What is it!”
No answer came from outside.
The Northerner stared intensely at the door, which was now as silent as if the previous commotion had been a lie. He shoved Gares into a corner and stomped toward the door with heavy steps.
“I asked what happened… !”
Clack. The man’s voice cut off abruptly as he flung the door open.
Gares stared blankly at something that tumbled onto the floor with a thud.
It took several seconds for him to realize it was the man’s severed forearm.
The man, looking down at his own hand with a dazed expression just like Gares, clutched the elbow where blood was geysering out and let out a monstrous shriek. But his scream didn’t last long. A longsword pierced straight through his chest.
The Northerner, struggling to draw his own sword with his remaining arm even as his heart was skewered, soon collapsed.
Watching the scene as if frozen, Gares slowly lifted his head. A tall man drenched in blood was looking down at him quietly with pale, glowing blue eyes.
Only after meeting those silver-blue eyes did Gares recognize the intruder’s identity.
“V-Varkas…”
The man gave no answer.
With an expressionless face, Varkas flicked the blood off his sword and sheathed the blade, giving a sharp nod toward the door.
“Come outside.”
He then turned away without a second thought. Seeing this, Gares scrambled to his feet. As his reasoning, which had been paralyzed by the sudden turn of events, returned, a spasmodic sense of relief swept through his body.
He cried out in an agitated voice.
“Did you come to rescue me yourself? All the way here?”
“…”
“Haha, you crazy bastard! I knew it. There’s no way you’d abandon me!”
Bursting into a convulsive laugh, Gares snatched his coat from the wall. He threw it over his shoulders and was about to step over the corpse sprawled across the threshold when the sight of the blood-splattered hallway entered his vision.
Gares barely managed to swallow the bile rising in his throat. Corpses with severed necks or chests filled the dim corridor where the embers of torchlight flickered.
He had rolled around battlefields for years and seen enough corpses to be sick of them, but he had never seen a sight quite this gruesome.
He muttered in a horrified tone.
“Just… how many men did you bring with you?”
“…”
“By the way, where are the other knights and what are they doing? Why aren’t they escorting me to safety immediately… !”
He consciously raised his voice to hide the fact that he was momentarily cowed by the hellish scenery, but an ice-cold hand grabbed his collar and slammed him against the wall.
Gasp. Gares inhaled sharply and looked up at him with startled eyes.
The man, his face heavily stained with blood, leaned in close and spoke in a whisper.
“Do my words sound like a joke to you?”
“W-what is this…”
“I clearly instructed the Imperial Army to fall back and leave the suppression of the rebels to the Northern Alliance.”
Gares shut his mouth with a flinch at the ominous voice.
Varkas’s tone became as sharp as a well-honed blade.
“If you’re going to ignore everything I say and do the exact opposite, then why on earth do you keep me as your confidant?”
A growling breath spilled over Gares’s forehead.
Leaning his head in even closer, Varkas hissed fiercely.
“If you don’t need me, say so. I don’t want to waste any more effort either.”
Gares looked up at those eyes, glowing with a fierce light, with a face pale with terror.
The man, gripping his neck even tighter, barked even more harshly.
“Say it. Say you don’t need me, that you don’t want my protection anymore.”
In that moment, Gares realized this man was trying to escape the covenant that bound him.
He struggled to move his bloodless lips.
“I… I need you.”
The man’s piercing blue eyes darkened for a moment, as if a shadow had fallen over them. Gares looked straight into those eyes and added in a cracked voice.
“I… I was wrong. Brother…”
As he uttered the title he used to use as a child, the grip constricting his neck loosened.
Gares clutched his throat with one hand and let out a dry cough. Varkas, looking down at him with dry eyes, finally turned away.
“Follow me.”
Gares, who had been catching his breath while leaning against the wall, forced himself up. He followed him, his weakened legs moving stiffly, when he spotted a soldier’s corpse hanging over the stair railing.
Nausea surged to the back of his throat. The soldier only had his lower half remaining.
“I believe you can use this.”
Gares, whose eyes were subconsciously rolling around looking for the soldier’s upper body, flinched and stiffened his shoulders. Varkas had approached him again and was holding out a blood-soaked sword.
“This is…”
“The quality doesn’t look great, but it’s the best we have for now.”
Gares took it with trembling hands. The worn hilt, likely belonging to the dead soldier, didn’t have a single common metal decoration.
He looked at Varkas with eyes full of anxiety.
“…Are the other men waiting downstairs?”
Varkas, stepping onto the blood-slicked stairs, looked back at him over his shoulder and said.
“I am the only one here to escort Your Highness.”
Gares stiffened as if he had been struck by lightning. The man, facing forward again, added nonchalantly as he descended the stairs.
“I will do my best to protect Your Highness, but I cannot guarantee that we will make it out of here safely.”
Gares looked around at the dozens of corpses strewn across the stairs and hallway with a face of utter consternation.
They were all heavily armed in iron plate. As he realized what that fact implied, his spine became damp with cold sweat.
“It’s going to be a mess outside, so steel yourself.”
Varkas added in a low voice, looking up at him as he stood frozen awkwardly on the stairs.
“It’s going to be a very long night.”
