“They might forget. But if what you’ve told me is true, Leonis won’t. He pays the Calx Cross protection money. Do you think they’ll just leave you alone?”
“Ah… On that subject, Captain, couldn’t we bring Leonis under our protection here? I’d like to go and collect his fees.”
Gene had no choice but to hit Luke on the back of the head again. It was not that Luke did not understand such an obvious situation and insisted out of ignorance. He wanted to stop writing the script. If he could manage that, any reason would serve.
“I’ve just had a good idea. You repay the advance to Leonis and set me free. Then I’ll write a new manuscript and sell it to you. You can stage it and make six thousand Serapion…”
“Am I an impresario? Do you really think what you’re saying makes sense?”
Tahyang, who had listened throughout, smiled faintly.
“You seem afraid of Leonis pressing for a manuscript, but not of the ShadowHawk.”
Glancing at Gene, Luke spoke.
“To be honest, Captain, you don’t seem very frightening. You seem rather kind. Enough that I’d like to put you in my next script…”
Gene was raising the book in his hand again when Rosa’s voice reached them.
“I think you’re right.”
Gene looked at her with a bewildered expression. Sitting by the fire, Rosa continued.
“A ShadowHawk who only hits the backs of heads with books. That’s kind, isn’t it?”
Luke brightened.
“The young lady’s right. When the ShadowHawk came to find me at the café, I thought he’d draw his sword at once and slice my belly open. I didn’t know the reason then, but if he’d come to find me, it meant he was angry about something, didn’t it? Surely he hadn’t come to give me a prize.”
Rosa stared expressionlessly at Luke before speaking.
“Why are you suddenly being so polite? Did you eat something bad?”
While they spoke, Gene considered whether to be angry, then found himself smiling wryly. It was hardly a judgment he liked, but this was the first time Rosa had expressed any definite opinion of him. The change did not feel so bad.
“It’s true I’ve been generous to you. But there’s a reason. I made a promise to a certain noblewoman.”
At Gene’s words, Luke’s eyes widened.
“What? A noblewoman? A lover?”
“That’s why you keep getting hit on the back of the head. All you need to know is that a generous benefactor took far more thought for you than you deserve. You’re only a book thief. Without that lady’s request, I’d have turned you upside down, shaken all forty-seven books out of you, and thrown you into prison instead of collecting late fees.”
“Ah… Then… I’m sorry. I misjudged you. I withdraw what I said earlier. The ShadowHawk is still the ShadowHawk, now as ever.”
“I’m most grateful for the retraction.”
Gene began to answer, then suddenly frowned and asked, “Now as ever? When have you seen me before?”
“No, I mean the old ShadowHawk. Not you, Captain.”
“There’ve been plenty of those.”
“Not men like that. The real ShadowHawk. He disappeared after fighting General Nikephoros thirty years ago.”
Gene’s expression changed. Slowly, he repeated, “He fought General Nikephoros? The ShadowHawk?”
He remembered the last attack by Nikephoros’s men. They had told him he was no match for the ShadowHawk of thirty years ago. They had also called that man the “real” one. At the time, Gene had not known why they had brought it up. If Luke was right, General Nikephoros had fought the “real” ShadowHawk thirty years earlier, and had spoken of it as though passing it on to Gene today. Why?
The general was not old enough to be senile. Even if his mind had grown strange, it was suspicious for his subordinates to think the same way. Gene turned to Luke.
“Do you know anything about the ShadowHawk from thirty years ago?”
Luke answered with a bright smile.
“You’ll find it difficult to locate anyone who knows back-alley legends better than I do.”
Luke said he had collected such stories to write his plays. They appeared in neither books nor official records, so he had no choice but to seek out people from that time, one by one, and write down what they told him. He was an enthusiastic recorder. He had a good memory too.
“Well, as you’d expect, he was an extremely strong man. They say he was in his late twenties when he appeared and about forty when he vanished. For more than ten years, he literally ruled Delphinad’s back alleys. While he was alive, people didn’t casually speak the name ShadowHawk the way they do now. Calling him a god of gambling houses began only after he disappeared. In his own day, people feared that merely saying his name might bring his hand down on their throats. That wasn’t respect or acknowledgment. It was something beyond them: fear. Apparently, his rule wasn’t as kind as yours, Captain.”
Gene wrinkled his nose.
“Sorry for being kind. Go on.”
“I’ll tell you a few of the first ShadowHawk’s legendary fights. There was one mansion with perhaps eighty people living in it, counting the family, servants, and all the rest. Between the time he went in and the moment he came out, not one survived. What’s astonishing is that the neighbors didn’t even realize such a fight had taken place that night.
“You shouldn’t call it a fight. It was a massacre, a very merciless work. He killed not only men, but every woman and child as well. People who later entered the mansion said they had seen hell itself.”
Rosa and Tahyang were listening with interest beside them. When Gene motioned with his chin for him to continue, Luke went on.
“Once, he was surrounded in the back alleys and fought for three hours without resting. It’s impossible to count how many he killed. It must have been a large organization, but it was destroyed in a single night. There was no one left. They say it took the ShadowHawk less time to kill one man than to drink a cup of water. Count it that way, and he killed more than five hundred in three hours.”
Breaking off, Luke rubbed his neck as though it had grown cold and grinned.
“To be honest, I don’t know how much to believe. People’s memories may have exaggerated it. Still, there’s no doubt that his hand was swift and cruel. Many say they couldn’t even see his hand as his long sword pierced flesh. He was also famous for killing with the least possible movement, without waste.”
Gene suddenly frowned. Wasn’t that a judgment he himself had heard often?
“What organization did he belong to?”
“He had none. He was like a wolf among a pack of dogs. Apparently, he needed no one else’s help. But to go more than ten years without being assassinated, he must have been exceptionally cautious too. He must have lived constantly on guard. Then again, he was an assassin himself, they say.”
The word assassin caught like a thorn. Luke did not miss the way Gene’s eyes sharpened. His own expression grew tense too.
“General Nikephoros was very young then, not even twenty, I think. But he was already an outstanding swordsman among the nobles. There’s that tournament His Majesty holds each year, isn’t there? Apparently, Nikephoros was the first to win it in his teens. Naturally, people praised him enormously. While he was enjoying it, he heard about the ShadowHawk. Winning a tournament of mere gentlemen was nothing, they said. The foremost fighter in Delphinad was the ShadowHawk.
“In youthful passion, the general challenged him to a fight. The ShadowHawk rejected him out of hand.”
“Why refuse?”
“I said he was an assassin, didn’t I? He never fought unless commissioned. And when he accepted a commission, he always killed his target by whatever means he chose. He didn’t hesitate to make base surprise attacks. Talk of a fair duel must have sounded like a child’s babbling to someone like that.”
The more Gene heard, the more concrete the impression became. He bit his lip uneasily. Watching him, Tahyang spoke.
“Assassins don’t like stepping into the sunlight.”
Luke nodded.
“Of course, that’s true as well. He was so fearless he didn’t even need an organization. He’d scarcely defer to noble authority. They say he mocked him openly.”
Gene asked, “Was the general angry at being rejected that way?”
“It would have been better if it had ended there, wouldn’t it? But General Nikephoros was just as fearless. Or perhaps he was young. In any case, he declared publicly that he’d fight the ShadowHawk by any means. Then he offered an heirloom of his family as a prize. If the ShadowHawk defeated him, he’d hand it over.
“But it was a renowned sword. Called Ganax.”
Luke picked up a half-burned stick, turned it over, and wrote “Ganax” on the ground.
“It means ‘fire’ in Ipnish. Ah, now I think of it, here I am explaining all this to someone who even knows Elvish.”
There were no subordinates around now, so Gene merely gestured for him to continue.
“Few people remember these days, but Ganax was a very famous sword then. It was originally the sword of King Yobel of Proanbilia. Proanbilia is a kingdom at the northern end, and Yobel… You probably know all this too.”
“No. I don’t. Go on with the history.”
Then Rosa spoke.
“Not the northern end. The northwest.”
Luke smiled.
“Oh, you know it? Ah, you told me not to be formal. Anyway, Yobel was a king famous for border disputes with the elves. It sounds foolish, perhaps, but he fought so persistently that in the end even the elves acknowledged him as a warrior. They say he fought for about thirty years.
“I don’t know how Yobel’s sword came all the way to Delphinad, but apparently it did. Perhaps the story was embroidered to give a famous sword a suitable master. I’ll set that aside. The ShadowHawk accepted the challenge. He was a swordsman too, and the famous blade tempted him. Swords bearing Ganax’s history were rarely two-handed weapons. It was light enough to wield easily with one hand, which seems to have suited the ShadowHawk, since his specialty was the long sword.”
“So they fought?”
“Yes. A public duel. They say the crowd was enormous. That’s why so many people actually saw the ShadowHawk. And the outcome… He won in the blink of an eye. Ordinarily he didn’t let a defeated opponent live, but perhaps he did so to obtain Ganax. He didn’t kill the general.
“The general had Ganax brought there and handed it over on the spot. A very clean resolution. Of course, he wouldn’t have dared if his father had still been alive. But he’d inherited the family early, so he did as he pleased, whatever anyone said. Then, the day after the public duel, the ShadowHawk vanished.”
“Vanished? Was that the last of him?”
“Yes. That was the last. He never appeared again. Right after winning a contest that held all Delphinad’s attention, he disappeared as though he had melted into the air. Think how dramatic it was, to turn him afterward into the god of the back alleys. That’s how gods are born.”
Rosa shook her head.
“Being dramatic isn’t the point. Didn’t the general assassinate him?”
“Wouldn’t people of the time have guessed that too? But we’re talking about the ShadowHawk. A man who hadn’t shown a single opening in more than ten years. There were vague rumors that he took Ganax and went to see Yobel, and so on, but they died away. In the end, no one knew whether he had disappeared or died. His legend ended there.
“But it left such a powerful impression that secondary creations began.”
Gene asked, “Secondary creations?”
“Why pretend you don’t know? You’re a product of those secondary creations too, Captain.”
In the end, Gene struck Luke on the back of the head again. This time, it seemed to hurt a little. Rubbing his head, Luke stuck out his lips. Gene spoke.
“Think before you open your mouth. I don’t believe there are many people I’ve hit as often as you. By the way, did the ShadowHawk leave a name?”
Luke immediately looked triumphant again.
“Garon Vendigate. From the surname, I’d say he came from the north.”
Still holding the stick, Luke wrote the name on the ground. Rosa took up the explanation.
“It means ‘the blessed right arm.’ I think he came from Proanbilia, or Gwynedd…”
Looking at Rosa with interest, Luke nodded.
“That might explain his interest in Ganax a little too. A sword from home?”
Tahyang asked, “What happened to Ganax?”
“Oh, friend. Ganax disappeared with him, of course. Do you suppose he went and returned just the sword?”
As the fire began to die, Rosa stood to fetch wood. Tahyang poured another cup each for Luke and himself, and they drank together. Luke made a noisy declaration that it was a drink swearing friendship. Tahyang merely smiled without much to say.
Ever since asking about the ShadowHawk’s name, Gene had remained deep in thought. He had believed that acquiring the name only two months after arriving in Delphinad was pure chance. He had never thought deeply about where it came from. For the first time, doubt arose within him. Perhaps it had not been chance. Often, an unforeseen necessity hid within what appeared accidental. Its seed might begin in a tiny place, a very small resemblance.
Could the first ShadowHawk be someone Gene knew well?
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