When she spoke, it seemed to be mostly to herself. “I’m a wisewolf after all. Between my words and wisdom, I often get my own way, but that lot seems to have gotten rather crafty as well. I’d like to get out of this forest straightaway... and even I can’t do anything about the weather,” Holo murmured, looking up.
Klass nodded and looked over at Aryes beside him. He squeezed her hand slightly. “Do you mean the... the deer?”
Holo’s eyes widened slightly at the words, and she nodded. “You saw it, did you?”
“Yes. When I was fetching water and also just a moment ago. It was staring right at me, not moving at all.”
Holo scratched her cheek and furrowed her brow.
Her tail flicked in displeasure.
“They’re a cunning lot. I’ve no idea what they might do. There’s not much use in telling you to be on your guard, but I suppose it’s better than being suddenly ambushed in ignorance, eh?”
Aryes shrank back at the quiet words, looking at Klass.
If he also faltered at Holo’s lack of confidence, then who would protect Aryes?
He braced himself on his heels and forced a smile. “It’ll be all right. A wolf’s stronger than a deer.”
Klass wasn’t sure whether his smile had been convincing enough, but Holo burst out laughing, so it must have gone over well.
She mussed his hair, which made him feel a bit awkward in front of Aryes but also pleased.
“Human cubs surely do grow quickly.” Holo looked at Aryes as she spoke.
Klass wondered why Aryes, while Aryes herself neither nodded nor shook her head.
She only looked back at Holo with an expression of endurance.
“Ah, well, ’twill work out somehow. The rain’s a calamity for more than us.” Holo responded to Aryes’s look with a triumphant smile, gazing up overhead.
The umbrella of the forest canopy seemed to be nearly at its limit.
Drops of water fell down now like leaks in a leak-riddled hut.
“Well, shall we be off?” said Holo, and began walking.
Contrary to the tone of her voice, Klass saw uncertainty in her steps.
Huff, huff, huff.
After taking three breaths, he would swallow to hide his fatigue.
Then three more breaths, then swallow again—over and over.
The wine was an encumbrance and had been long since discarded. Half of the water he’d gone to such lengths to fetch was also left.
The rain had started to pour down on the forest in earnest, with Aryes removing her robe—it had been tangling up in her legs—and draping it over her head.
The lingering sense of fun in their last conversation was nowhere to be found now.
From her expression, Klass gathered that she’d be willing even to toss aside the robe if only to lighten her burden a bit.
The number of times she’d tripped and fallen to her knees was too many to count on both hands.
Aryes was working very hard.
But a certain clinging tendency had begun to tinge her efforts, and Klass was too close to his own limit to feel it as anything other than an extra burden.
“Keep at it,” he said as she took his arm more than his hand, speaking not so much for encouragement as prayer.
He didn’t think her tendency to trip was due only to exhaustion.
No doubt the blisters on her feet had long since burst.
The pouring rain was only intensifying, making it seem as though they were walking through a shallow river.
Small streams were everywhere, and every small hollow was rimmed with green and filled with brown water.
He desperately wanted to get to the town and sit in front of a warm hearth with a bowl of porridge.
With each step, thoughts of escaping their pursuers or protecting Aryes ran out of his ears.
The forest seemed to never end, and with the dense foliage and the cloud-choked sky overhead, it was a dim and gloomy place.
He couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying than trying to traverse the forest at night in this rain. Holo had told him that come what may, she would be with them but had given him no hint of a clear resolution.
“Miss Holo!” he finally cried when they reached a small clearing.
“...” From her wordless over-the-shoulder glance and breathing, he could tell she was tired.
“I just...” Can’t walk anymore, he thought—but he didn’t have to finish the sentence. He looked at Holo and held up Aryes, who seemed to be on the verge of sitting herself.
Holo was a spirit who’d lived for centuries and had sounded full of confidence when she’d said that if worse came to worst, she’d be able to do something.
Hadn’t that time now come?
He accused her with his eyes, and she looked evenly back at him, then pushing her rain-soaked bangs aside, turned her gaze upward.
“I am sorry.”
“Huh?” For a moment, he thought she said, “I am stopping,” but Holo said it again.
“I am sorry.”
“Wh-what for?” asked Klass, standing there, barely managing to support Ayres.
“I may not be able to save you.”
“Wha—?” he started to say, then was cut off.
It wasn’t because Aryes was nearly collapsing; nor was it because of the way Holo bitterly chewed her lip.
It was because an intense chill had shot up his body, up from the ground through his feet, lancing through his spine.
Even over the sound of the pouring rain, he heard a strange noise.
It overflowed the torrential downpour—glub, it went, shlukk.
It might have been the sound of his own rising terror.
Noticing the sound in her exhaustion, Aryes twisted around to see, whereupon he could hear her breath catch.
Klass was too scared to turn and look.
He couldn’t turn, but holding still while not looking was even more horrifying.
When he finally did, he saw what existed there.
It didn’t simply stand.
It existed; it endured.
Like a great tree. Like a rocky crag. Like a mountain.
“... Ah..His knees trembled, his breath stopped, and as Aryes clung to him, he clung to her.
The notion that this was pathetic or unmanly did not so much as occur to him.
There at the end of his gaze, so huge it could easily trample an ox, so tall he had to look up to see it, was a great stag.
He couldn’t understand what it said.
Only that its voice was like thunder echoing through the mouth of a cave and more than enough to strip Klass of reason.
The animal was so rugged and cragged it was hard to think of it as a deer, and its eyes were two black moons.
The great horns that sprouted from its head seemed like they could rake the very sky.
Klass fell down on his backside but didn’t immediately notice.
The deer had no fangs in its mouth, but great millstones of teeth, which ground together as it spoke with a sound like they could crush any boulder.
If Klass’s head were caught between them, it would be smashed in an instant.
As he stared up, stunned, this was all he could think about.
“A good journey—”
Klass came to his senses with a start when a hand was laid on his shoulder.
“—is one in which you’re blessed with a good companion.”
He looked up to see Holo’s fearless profile with her tail waving bravely.
The great stag’s gaze fell on Holo, and it brought its face closer to her, threateningly.
A great gust from its nostrils blew the raindrops away, and in an instant, the rain stopped.
Klass realized that they were surrounded by deer, all of whom watched.
He got the feeling that if he was to somehow give the wrong answer, he’d be trampled to death or chewed to pieces.
And yet Holo did not flinch; she grinned invincibly.
“—... —.”
A gru
mbling murmured around them—whatever Holo had said seemed to have been taken as a provocation by the great stag.
“—... —.” The stag ground its teeth noisily, and Klass scrambled back, still sitting on the ground.
Holo looked back at him and spoke quickly. “Seems this lot doesn’t like me overmuch.” She cocked her and grinned ruefully. “My coming along has complicated things.”
“Wrooooooooaaaa!”
It happened the moment a great howl from the stag caused the earth to tremble; Klass could barely believe such a sound came from a living thing.
“They say parting always comes suddenly. ’Twas a lovely journey. The two of you should hurry off and run—”
Holo’s apologetic smile seared itself into Klass’s memory.
How much time would he need in order to understand what happened next?
Just as the stag closed what should’ve been yet a good distance, Holo’s small body was flung into the air. She simply flew, and the great stag turned its vast body with unbelievable agility and followed her.
Her body mowed through the trees’ branches, flying absurdly.
Ahead of her was a steep slope, which led down into perhaps a stream.
The great stag leaped into the air, the slope mattering to it not at all.
In no time at all it had jumped down to the bottom of the descent and out of sight; immediately thereafter, the ground literally shook. Just when Klass understood that the stag had hit bottom, the terrible loud grinding sound of its millstone teeth echoed through the air.
Klass didn’t know whether he was crying or not.
All he knew was that he was terrified and that he didn’t want to think about what was happening.
The grinding sound continued, but eventually silence fell.
The deer surrounding Klass and Aryes did not move.
Then there was another terrible howl.
“Aaaaauuuah!” Klass cried out and started to dash away.
She’d claimed to be two centuries their elder, chased away a pack of wolves, teased Klass and outargued the stubborn Aryes, given them bread and taught them about money—and in an instant, Holo’s small but trustworthy form had disappeared.
That was more than enough to make Klass forget everything and run—run down the path where water flowed like a river.
Or at least such thoughts filled his head, but when he actually rose and started to run, he pitched forward and tripped, clinging to his staff as he tried to get back up.
He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die crushed between those teeth.
His knees buckled and his courage failed, and he plunged face-first into the muddy water.
He didn’t want to die.
Terror made him raise his head out of the water, and he looked back.
And the sight that greeted him—
Like a cursed steed out of his worst nightmare, the great stag rose slowly up the slope toward a small, curled-up ball of white.
Even smeared with mud, she looked like nothing less than a sheep—for it was Aryes.
“Ar... yes...” Klass tried to raise his hoarse voice but could not.
He prayed for her to run, to stand and run, but Aryes’s feet did not suddenly sprout wings.
Had she lost consciousness? Or had she yet again failed to comprehend the situation and was simply staring in wonderment?
If it was wonderment, so be it—so long as she wasn’t weeping in terror, so be it.
But somehow, a moment later, his face distorted pathetically.
Aryes had looked back, her face terrified.
“Wrrooooaaaa!”
The great stag bellowed a third time.
Its body was so big that it was only partially hidden past the slope.
Its roar seemed to be in anger.
Now—only now—they could still make it.
If she stood and ran, she could make it to Klass in ten strides.
Klass called out in his heart, but Aryes did not so much as stand; rage and urgency filled him.
But no, he realized.
That rage and urgency was directed at himself—at he who could not go and save her.
The great stag seemed to be calling something out.
Klass covered his ears and gritted his teeth.
The deer that had surrounded Klass and Aryes all along began to close in.
As if to drive them out of the forest.
Or possibly to trap them within it forever.
“Aryes!” He finally found his voice and called out for what he was sure was the last time.
Atop the slope, the great stag reared up as though to trample the mountain flat.
Aryes realized this and looked back for a moment—back again at Klass.
She slowly reached out to him.
“Klass...”
He heard her call his name like a whisper, like a murmur, and then—
Despite the distance, which at a glance seemed much too great for it to do so, the great stag’s forelegs raised, poised to fall where Aryes lay. The huge legs were tangled in grass and covered in mud that dripped with a horrible sound like the drool of some god of death.
Aryes looked at Klass.
“Aryes!”
He didn’t think. He just ran.
He didn’t know if he was running or flying; Aryes was the only thing he could see. He leaped toward her to embrace her, then—having no idea how he was doing it—picked her up and ran back, away from the stag.
The next moment, Klass dared not open his eyes at the tremendous shock that followed the fall of the great stag’s hooves, which scattered everything.
The fact that Aryes was in his arms and not under those hooves Klass could only consider a miracle.
Holding her, he staggered and ran forward, and just when he’d bought them a bit of distance, he collapsed.
Klass hastily got up when Aryes, shivering and mouth clenched shut, clasped her hands and began to pray.
As she prayed, Klass realized her forehead was pressed against his chest.
He reflexively held her soft shoulders and felt himself filled with new strength.
He had to protect her.
Because she was so—
Her shoulders were so soft.
“It’ll be all right,” he said, and took a deep breath.
At this distance, Klass could get a clear view of the stag’s bristly coat, each hair of which seemed thick enough to be made of rope. It was still a moderate distance away, and he could only look at the great stag as it directed its glare at him.
It ground its teeth and shook its head.
A true hero could cleave a boulder with a fist and with just a sword could fell a dragon, but all Klass had in hand was the stick he used as a staff, which he’d somehow managed to hold on to. And yet there had to be something he could do. If he was ready to let Aryes escape alone, there had to be something.
Courage was not something one simply had. Like oil from a rapeseed, it had to be forced out under pressure—Klass finally understood this.
“Aryes, can you stand?”
Trembling in his arms, Aryes looked up, and displaying her surprisingly stubborn side, she bit her lip and nodded.
“Right, then stay behind me.”
She did not ask why, only looking deeply worried as she said nothing.
Getting up quietly so as not to provoke the stag, she moved behind Klass.
“When I stand up, run.”
“Wha—? B-but—”
“It’ll be all right. I know the story of the hero who defeated the giant.”
It wasn’t a lie.
There was a story of a hero who’d killed a giant whose head reached the sky, whose arms were as long as rivers, and whose feet were so gigantic they filled lakes.
Compared with that, this was just a big deer. Hardly anything at all really.
Hardly anything at all.
“I’ll aim for the eyes. Those big eyes. If he can’t see, he can’t follow us. It’ll
be all right. That thing’s eyes are so huge, I can’t miss.”
As he said it, Klass tried to move his cheeks and lips.
He wasn’t sure if he’d managed to smile.
Nonetheless, Aryes seemed as though she were about to say something, then thought better of it, stopped, and slowly nodded—so he must’ve smiled, he decided.
“Right, here we go.”
He thrust his staff into the ground and took a deep breath.
Aryes put her hands on his back, and it felt like she was filling him with strength.
Perhaps sensing his aim, the great stag shook its head and slowly lowered its body.
That terrible pressure.
The hero from the story wouldn’t be afraid of this.
“Let’s see the sea together,” he said, then stood and ran.
The huge stag’s eyes were so high he couldn’t imagine his stick could reach them.
But there had to be some chance.
Just as Holo had done, there would be a moment when its head drew near.
The great stag raised its hoof, and it felt like the very air itself was drawn back.
Klass, undaunted, jumped aside.
The deer was, after all, just a deer.
Bringing its raised hoof down, it sent mud splattering next to Klass.
“Damn you—!” Klass swung his staff in a wide arc, and the deer pulled its leg back with surprising swiftness.
While he tottered and stumbled forward, Klass did not panic. He instead saw that the stag was afraid of him, and it filled his heart with cold steel.
This time it did not raise its hooves, but thrust them forward as though kicking away gravel.
But perhaps its vast body was a liability—Klass easily avoided this.
It was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to be afraid of at all.
It was just a big deer.
Swinging his staff with all his might, he grazed its leg several times.
Unbelievably, he was holding his own against the huge stag.
From the great gap of its mouth, the stag exhaled clouds of white breath. Klass was bobbing and weaving to avoid it, so the stag might well have been getting tired. Perhaps its body was too large.
Klass was tired, too. he’d long since lost feeling in his hands from gripping the staff so tightly, and his arms’ muscles were so tight that it was hard to tell where they ended and the staff began.
He faced the stag square on, close enough to reach it if he was to leap forward.