11
During the celebration, traffic between the sword-slave island and the mainland was copious and frequent. Priscilla thought she had heard that for that reason, the drawbridge that was the one means of connection between the two would be left down for the duration. So when she noticed that it was raised, she began to have questions. And then when she, Jorah, and Balleroy rushed back to Serena…
“Looks like your guess was dead-on, Ms. Wife,” Balleroy said. He stood beside her, taking in the sight. They had come back, wondering if something terrible had happened, to discover a scene of chaos. Just not the chaos of spectators shouting and cheering at the death matches.
“G-gracious… Are those sword slaves outside the arena…?” Jorah asked. It was taking him a moment to catch up with the situation, but his succinct summary was accurate enough. As the now-pale-faced man had observed, the sword slaves had spilled over out of the arena into the audience seating, and they were now menacing the formerly relaxed patrons with their weapons. The fact that those who had attempted to oppose them were already lying in pools of blood made clear that this wasn’t a game and wasn’t part of the show. No, this had to be—
“A sword-slave rebellion, eh?” Priscilla said.
“What?” Jorah gasped.
But the only answer to his question was an enraged voice shouting, “Where is High Countess Serena Delacroix?!”
A group of obviously brutal men were working their way through the seats, acting very much in charge. Evidently, they were looking for Priscilla and Jorah’s host. It seemed unlikely that they were rash enough to kill her on sight, but—
“Stop hiding and come out here! Otherwise, we’ll kill everyone in this damn stadium!”
Priscilla corrected herself—she doubted they were that short-tempered, but they were more short-tempered than she had imagined. They didn’t seem smart enough not to actually carry out their threat. Priscilla smiled, thinking about how this would go.
“Priscilla, g-get behind me,” Jorah said, mustering what little fortitude he possessed when he stepped in front of the young girl. (What did Jorah make of his wife’s expression at that moment?) It was enough to earn her husband a raise of the eyebrow from her. Even Balleroy, despite the clear and present threat to his mistress, had time for an impressed “Huh!”
However, Jorah’s movement also attracted the aggressive men’s attention.
“What’s this? Hey, you lot, won’t do you any good bein’ up there. If you think you can get away—”
“I myself am the woman you seek—Serena Delacroix,” Priscilla announced, interrupting the man and causing her companions to look at her with considerable shock.
“Hngh?!” choked Jorah.
“Well, now!” observed Balleroy.
Priscilla’s voice echoed through the tense arena, naturally drawing the attention of both the ruffians and the captive spectators—among them, the real Serena Delacroix. Her eyes widened slightly, but she seemed to grasp Priscilla’s intention. Of course she did. Serena was no mean operator herself. However…
“She still doesn’t approach my abilities, of course,” Priscilla muttered to herself.
“You, kid? You’re High Countess Delacroix?” a man in a black outfit asked, sidling up to her. His hair was done in a strange fashion, long on the right side of his head and totally shaved on the left. At his hip, he carried a sword with a curved blade, and it was obvious that he knew what to do with it.
The man looked Priscilla up and down, unmistakably skeptical. “What I heard was that High Countess Delacroix was a real piece of work of a woman, so bad they call her the Scorching Lady. Little girl like you, you look like you could barely warm a cold room, let alone scorch anybo—”
“That nickname was most likely invented by commoners who witnessed my fiery-red hair. In any case, I care not what the chattering masses call me. You may observe me with your own eyes.”
“ ” The man didn’t respond.
“What do you think? Do I look like some young fool playing at being a high countess? Or like someone who needs the validation of some common nickname when I am already a member of the nobility of the Volakian Empire?” Although the man loomed over her, Priscilla held her head high and looked him square in the eye as she spoke.
The man stiffened. He must have taken the young woman for what she first looked like: a little girl who would fly away if he so much as blew on her. But in Priscilla’s expression, he saw not a trace of fear, not a hint of any weakness of spirit. If this man was a sword slave, then he must have stared death in the face many times on this island. And yet Priscilla’s audacity was enough to cow him.
“I’m sorry, High Countess. You’re going to have to come with us. Our leader wants to meet you.” The man was trying to be polite—at least, as best as a commoner like him could manage. But he had accepted Priscilla’s claim to the title of high countess. He glanced at his companions and prepared to lead her off. Priscilla didn’t intend to fight him.
That, however, left Jorah, who was still trying to assert his now-unhelpful manliness. “H-hold, you! If you’re going to take her, then take me as well!”
The man in black looked like he was noticing Jorah for the first time. Perhaps he was; Jorah had spent the entire conversation saying nothing and trying to shrink into himself. “Didn’t hear anything about you being here with your dad…,” the man said.
“I am not her father. I am her husband!”
“Her husband?” The man looked more skeptical than ever, glancing back and forth between Priscilla and Jorah. Chances were he was less shocked by the difference in their ages than the difference in the force of their personalities.
However, it would be all manner of trouble for Priscilla if Jorah was to be cut down here and now, so she said, “It is true—that man there is my husband. He cannot be my father, for my father was burned to death before my very eyes. More than reason enough to call me the Scorching Lady, I should think, quite apart from my hair.”
“Point taken. But if that story’s true, then your husband—”
“Bring him. Otherwise, he’ll simply shout and struggle and make life difficult for you. He’ll be much more pliant if he’s with me. And if you strike him down now— Well, you wouldn’t want me coming after you later, would you?”
Priscilla, of course, wasn’t the type to piously follow her dear departed husband into death; she was not compelled by such romantic notions. But the men were already convinced that Priscilla was very much the picture of the Volakian nobility.
And then something happened to rob them of what little composure they had left. Piercing the uneasy silence that had fallen over the arena when Priscilla had drawn the men’s attention, one of the ruffians looked down into the coliseum and exclaimed, “Hey! Is that the Hornet?”
Everyone turned and looked into the ring to discover that the death matches, interrupted by the outbreak of rebellion, had resumed. Not the officially scheduled ones, but a real, true fight to the death, one that had started of its own accord.
“Though with a skill difference like that, it’s more like an execution,” Priscilla remarked.
One of the two sword slaves who had entered the ring was more than six feet tall, her missing arms replaced with two massive, crushing blades. It was obvious at a glance that she’d produced a mountain of corpses in her time, shed rivers of blood—she must be the one who had evoked such fear when the voice had said her name.
She was facing a one-armed swordsman who, sadly, possessed no obvious advantages. His skill level was clearly nowhere near the Hornet’s, and it seemed as if at any moment—no, even at this very moment—he would be taking a critical blow.
“ ” The one-armed man grunted and went flying with a spray of blood. His body struck the ground and rolled along, winding up by a ditch at one edge of the stadium that was used for disposing of blood and bodies after a fight. The Hornet strode up to him and kicked him with her long legs, sending him, still alive, down into the pit.
“Guess he turned down the Hornet’s invitation. What an idiot.” The man with the curved saber sighed as he witnessed the spectacle of the woman’s overwhelming strength. Perhaps the sword slave who’d just been cut down was an acquaintance of his. The man appeared to be some foolish fellow who had refused to join the rebels, although Priscilla couldn’t see the advantage of turning them down at this moment.
“To assert one’s will requires a certain degree of power. From that perspective, perhaps it was only natural that man should have died. You there, did you come here just to stand around looking stupid?”
“Awfully chatty, aren’t ya, High Countess? Think we won’t lay a hand on you? That why your mouth’s so big?”
“Do you truly believe that, you cur?”
“…Ahem…”
“Am I understanding it correctly that you think my high-and-mighty attitude springs from the conviction that you won’t lay a hand on me?”
The man saw something in Priscilla’s gaze that caused him to swallow whatever he had been about to say. He jerked his chin at his companions, and they led her and Jorah away.
“What about me, Ms. Wife?” Balleroy asked, making to follow them, but Priscilla stopped him with a word.
“Surely, you don’t expect me to claim that you’re my husband, too. There would be no job for you to do even if you did follow us. Be a good boy and wait—bide your time until your moment arrives.”
Even a fighter of Balleroy’s caliber couldn’t prevail against all the sword slaves here. Making a last stand against a hundred grizzled warriors would serve no purpose; that was clear enough. But Balleroy was young and inexperienced—and a bit impetuous.
“That’s easy for you to say, Ms. Wife, but I’ve got my pride to— Hngh?!”
“Cram it, dumbass!”
Balleroy was just taking the wrapping off his spear when he was struck in the back of the head with a bottle by Miles, who had snuck up behind him at some point. The impromptu weapon made a nasty thump, and Balleroy’s eyes rolled back in his head as he collapsed. Miles gave him a kick. “They’re going to start thinking we’re all morons like you! And what good will that do us, huh?!”
“Who’re you?” one of the men asked.
“Nobody, nobody. I’m not interested in fighting with you,” Miles said, tossing the bottle aside and showing every sign of compliance. “You said you’ve got the high countess? Fine, take the girl and her husband and get going. We’re not here to cause any trouble.”
The men looked at each other, but they were no longer stupid enough to take what Miles said quite at face value. They checked to make sure Balleroy was really unconscious before they resumed leading Priscilla away. Just before they left the spectator seating area, Priscilla caught a glimpse of Serena. The high countess’s lips moved, silently saying, Sorry. And thanks. Priscilla didn’t respond but followed the men out with appropriate majesty.
“Pri—ahem, Serena, what are you planning?” Jorah whispered.
“So you’re at least smart enough to realize I had a plan. If I hadn’t identified myself as I did, we would likely have spent this entire rebellion without ever seeing the face of their leader. And that would be no fun.”
Jorah was all but struck dumb. “N-no fun?”
Priscilla didn’t know what all-powerful answer her husband had been expecting, but her mind was not to be changed. It was unclear what this “leader” wanted with Serena, but if she had been stuck in the spectator seating, Priscilla would have lost her chance to discover what was going on here. It would have been no different from curling up into a ball at the foot of the stage.
“And that is the last thing I want,” she said.
“ ” Jorah met this with a tense silence.
“Relax. It doesn’t matter what position we find ourselves in—for this world bends itself to suit me,” Priscilla said. Jorah’s only response to his wife’s rather bold philosophy was to stare in wonderment, although his shoulders slumped a little. It was not a particularly inspiring reaction, but Priscilla didn’t have time to take him to task over it.
“We’re here,” one of the men said. After a few minutes of walking, they had arrived at a room with a remarkably heavy door, through which they were now led. Priscilla, who had been making a mental map of the island as they went, estimated that this room must be at the highest point on the sword slaves’ island—in other words, it probably belonged to whoever ran the place. That would explain the lavish furnishings and expensive carpet, which otherwise would have seemed out of place on an island of captive gladiators.
It might also explain the blood on the carpet, and the corpse of a portly man who lay there like a gutted pig.
“I-is that…?” Jorah began.
“The master of the island, I presume… The one formerly in charge of entertainments here. The slaves he was putting on display rose up in revolt. It shouldn’t take more than half a brain to figure out who they would slaughter first.”
The man had brought it on himself by failing to sufficiently gauge the danger despite the hatred he had earned. Then again, perhaps the sword slaves had proven even smarter than the man’s sense of danger…
Priscilla’s thoughts were interrupted by a man who came trotting up with an ingratiating grin on his face, stepping over the corpse of the former master of the island. “Well! A pleasure to finally lay eyes on you, High Countess. I’m sorry to greet you like…well, like this. I would have liked to meet you in a cleaner room.” The overall impression he gave was one of slimness; he was something of a pretty boy.
Unlike the unmistakably rough and ready ruffians, this young man didn’t look like he belonged on the sword-slave island—but Priscilla knew at a glance that he must be the leader of the rebellion.
“It’s you, isn’t it? The host of this banquet,” she said.
“Banquet? Ooh, I like that word. I love lively get-togethers—that’s why I didn’t hate life on this island, you know. Even if some parts of it were difficult to endure.” The pretty boy smiled but cast a contemptuous glance down at the corpse on the floor. It was enough to tell Priscilla how he had survived on the island: not by wielding a weapon, but by wielding his body. Of course the master of the island had died. That was a foregone conclusion.
“And what is it you lot want, then? You decided to kidnap me—ahem, the high countess. I assume you saw that leading somewhere.”
“Ah, they don’t call you the victor of a hundred battles for nothing… Although I must say, you seem a little young to have been in so many fights. Oh well, it makes things easy. High Countess Serena Delacroix, the famed Scorching Lady… You are one of the most prominent nobles in the empire.”
“One of? Don’t be a fool. There is no replacement for me. To even compare me with those other villains is a mark of disrespect.”
“Sere—!” Jorah almost choked on the name, but he managed to shake his head vigorously. Priscilla furrowed her brow at him but only leaned into her performance as Serena. From the way the young man had begun, it was fairly obvious what he was planning.
He wanted to use the high countess as a hostage.
“And you hope to negotiate with the empire for something. What?”
“It’s very simple. The sword-slave island is to be given independence, and all the slaves are to be freed. I want to get out of this puddle, High Countess Delacroix.” The pretty boy chuckled darkly, even as his proclamation made the entire empire his enemy.
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