Chapter55. The First Person Who Comes to Mind
2023.10.25.
Blair swung the wooden plank a beat too late, but the man caught it effortlessly and flung it away. The force of it sent Blair, who had been gripping the plank, tumbling backward.
"Ugh..."
The man seized Blair's ankle as she tried to scramble away.
"I didn't untie your limbs so you could do something this adorable. Cute, though—even the look of terror on your face."
"Let go!"
Blair struggled desperately, but she was no match for the man's grip.
Pinning Blair down with both legs, the man pulled a small glass vial from his coat.
"Stay still and I'll treat you nicely. Be a good girl, okay?"
As she screamed and flailed about, desperately grasping at straws, her hand caught hold of something. Blair swung it with all her might.
"Aagh!"
A sharp splinter of wood raked across the man's eye.
"My... my eye!"
The small glass vial the man had been holding slipped from his grasp and rolled away.
Seeing the blood dripping down, Blair's body began to tremble violently.
But there was no time to sit here. This was her chance to escape.
Blair summoned superhuman strength, shoved the man off, and fled out of the ruined house.
"Don't you run!"
Staggering, the man chased after Blair and emerged from the ruins. Before him lay a lake, and beside it stretched a dense forest.
In that brief moment, Blair had vanished.
"Tch, fuck..."
The man muttered a curse and looked around. He had to catch Blair again and set the stage before Wesley arrived here.
'She wouldn't have headed toward the lake with no ferry boat around.'
Just as the man glanced toward the lake, a rustling sound came from the forest. The man sprinted in the direction of the noise.
As the man's footsteps gradually faded, the breath she had been holding in burst out from right beneath where he had been standing.
"Hah..."
Hidden under a large tree root at the base of a small cliff leading down to the lake—right below where the man had stood—was Blair.
Blair released the hand that had been clamping her mouth shut. Her entire body shook, and she felt suffocated.
'Get a grip. You can't collapse here.'
Blair forced her trembling body upright. Then she ran in the opposite direction from the man.
* * *
In the ruined house where the two had disappeared, only drops of red blood remained.
Herdin, who discovered it, approached and touched the blood with his gloved hand. It was still wet. His eyes turned icy cold.
He quickly scanned the ruined house.
As with any place long untouched by human hands, it was thick with dust. And on top of that dust were two sets of footprints.
One belonged to the man, and the other was a small, high-heeled shoe.
Maids wore low shoes for ease of work. Therefore, high heels belonged to noblewomen and ladies.
Herdin spread his hand to gauge the size of the remaining shoe print.
The shoe owner's foot was petite. Similar in size to what he had seen when he grabbed Blair's ankle at the bed.
At the starting point of those footprints were marks where dust had been heavily swept, bloodstains, and beside them, a sharp splinter of wood smeared with blood.
If the attacker was the man, he could have easily subdued this small-framed woman barehanded without such a crude weapon.
In other words, the one who used the wooden plank as a weapon was likely the woman.
'The attack landed, allowing the woman to escape, and the man chased after her...'
Herdin's expression hardened by the moment as he reconstructed the scene.
Wesley, standing beside him, was momentarily flustered by a development that diverged from his plan, but soon spoke up casually.
"I definitely thought I heard something... Must have been the wind—"
Before he could finish, Herdin grabbed Wesley by the collar and slammed him against the wall.
At that, the knights of House Baldwin standing behind Wesley drew their swords in unison.
"What is the meaning of this!"
In response, the knights of Delmark also drew their swords. The atmosphere, which had been like walking on thin ice all along, escalated to the brink of conflict.
But Herdin, who had created the situation, seemed unconcerned.
"It was you, wasn't it?"
His voice carried the chill of the dark forest. In Herdin's eyes as he asked were certainty and vivid murderous intent.
Daunted by that presence, Wesley flinched for a moment, but immediately shouted back with feigned calm.
"W-What are you talking about? Me?"
"When a person survives countless near-death experiences on the battlefield, they develop a certain intuition."
When you roll through a place where it's hard to tell friend from foe, you learn to distinguish between them instinctively, before thought even kicks in.
The battlefield is a place where if you hesitate to judge before aiming your sword, a blade is already at your throat.
"My intuition tells me you're the enemy."
"..."
"Can you swear to your innocence?"
Under Herdin's cold gaze that seemed convinced of his crime, Wesley swallowed hard.
But he had left no evidence anywhere that he was the mastermind behind this incident. The man he had hired to commit the crime had also disappeared.
In this situation where not a single piece of evidence had surfaced, confessing would be a foolish act.
"This treatment is unjust! I merely—considering the trouble I caused Your Excellency and your wife—wanted to help."
Wesley, protesting, faltered as he met Herdin's unyielding stare. It was a gaze that seemed to see through everything.
The beastly instinct to cower before the strong urged him to avoid those eyes, but he felt he shouldn't.
Wesley endured, meeting that gaze. As if he were truly innocent.
Herdin observed him for a moment, then released Wesley with a cold exhale, practically throwing him aside.
A knight of House Baldwin hurriedly caught the stumbling Wesley.
Herdin stepped toward the Baldwin knights who still had their swords trained on him and spoke.
"Stand down."
Subdued by a single look and a single word, the knights hesitated and backed away.
Stepping outside the ruined house, Herdin looked up at the sky. Through the dense trees, the sunset was slowly spreading.
It was still early spring, so the days were not long. Once the sun set, the mountain temperature would drop rapidly. It would be no exaggeration to say it was nearly like winter.
Suddenly, his wife came to mind.
A foolish woman who lived in a cold room because she feared fire, even though she suffered from a weak bronchi and constant coughing.
"Knight order."
The knights of Delmark assembled at his single word. Herdin mounted his horse again and gave the command.
"Find her. As fast as possible."
The omitted object of his command was self-evident without asking.
* * *
Night fell quickly upon the forest.
Blair pulled her clothes tighter against the cold seeping through the gaps and looked around.
'Where am I?'
Having been dragged here unconscious by the man, she had no memory of the way they came.
She had walked blindly in the opposite direction from him, driven by the single thought of escaping, but the entrance to the forest was nowhere in sight. At some point, she felt like she was going in circles around the same area.
Meanwhile, the darkness of the forest that had slowly settled in pressed down on her frighteningly.
Blair moved her feet briskly to escape the darkness. She was out of breath and her legs ached as if they would crush, but she felt that if she stopped walking, she would be swallowed by the darkness of the forest.
"Hah... Hah..."
Her ragged breaths came out in white puffs. Her body began to shiver.
'Cold...'
As Blair rubbed her slowly freezing body, something caught her eye.
'A cabin?'
Like the ruined house where the man had taken her, it was one of the forest keeper's cabins scattered throughout the woods.
But this cabin also seemed long untouched by human hands, with thick moss covering the roof and walls.
Just then, the cry of a wild beast echoed in the distance.
After a moment's hesitation, Blair stepped inside the cabin.
As expected, there were no signs of people inside the cabin. Only a rusted pot, a broken chair, and the like were scattered about haphazardly.
Blair judged it better to stay inside this cabin than to wander the forest.
It was too cold outside, and her heels were rubbed raw from the high heels she couldn't bring herself to remove, making it hard to walk any further.
'If I wait, someone will come looking for me.'
Surely, by now, they must be looking for me.
Blair searched the cabin for a blanket to wrap herself in. Because she hadn't been wearing a coat when she was kidnapped, she only had on a thin petticoat and a spring dress.
The only meaningful find was a single worn blanket with enough holes to see through. Blair draped it over herself as best she could and sat down in a corner of the cabin, away from the window. At that moment, something pressed under her leg.
"This is..."
What was buried under her leg was a lighter. Judging by the faint sloshing sound, it seemed there was a little oil left.
There was a fireplace in the cabin, broken wooden furniture that could be used as firewood, and most importantly, a lighter in her hand.
But...
'Fire...'
She couldn't light the very fire she needed most. Just the thought of it made her breath catch and her vision blur.
Blair clutched the lighter with hands trembling from the cold.
As if holding something she couldn't even use would somehow make her warm.
In her fading consciousness that flickered like a dying light, a night from the past suddenly came to mind.
A cozy winter night when she had fallen asleep feeling the warmth of a fireplace for the first time in ages, and the face of the man who had silently stayed by her side.
'I can't sleep when the fireplace is lit by myself.'
Blair, recalling that voice without realizing it, gave a self-deprecating smile.
Of all people, the first person to come to mind in this situation had to be him... She laughed at her own pitiful state.