The next morning, Gene was already gone. According to Ashabel, an early riser, he had left near dawn. When Rosa came downstairs, the men had been whispering together. They fell silent and watched her. They were plainly thinking of yesterday.
Rosa pretended not to notice and looked around the house. She did not intend to go to the library today. It was because of her promise to Gene. For five days, she would do her best to adapt. There was no particular reason she must not leave the House of the Hawk, but the thought of leaving for a reason like yesterday’s wounded her pride.
Rosa had always believed she could endure any harsh surroundings. She was not someone who would run away out of fear of a few dirty men. If she set her mind to it, there was no reason she could not survive in this house too.
Having decided that, she felt she ought to learn what kind of place her new home was. Rosa had been born and raised in a castle surrounded by fir forests. Though she had lived there for twenty years, she had not been close with the people of her home. More precisely, she could not be. So she had adapted to the castle before its people. From the top of the bell tower to the underground storerooms, from the lord’s chapel to the hunting-hawk mews, she knew every corner. It was enormous, but over twenty years, she had come to know it as well as her own body. At twenty, the castle had become too small for Rosa. Because she knew it completely.
Perhaps because of that life, wherever Rosa went she first tried to understand the place rather than its people. Compared with her castle at home, the House of the Hawk was small. She should be able to learn it all in no time. Examining the rooms one by one from the first floor to the third, Rosa then went down into the back yard.
“It’s because the deputy… I mean, the captain’s never used that voice in the House of the Hawk before.”
Ashabel, whom she met in the yard, told her quietly, then looked around to see whether anyone was listening. Rosa had noticed it from the start: Ashabel differed from the other men in this house. He was young, but above all there was a clear difference in his attitude toward Gene. Where the others feared, liked, or revered him, Ashabel treated him as someone to whom he could entrust his life.
“He only uses that voice with enemies.”
With an expression lost in the past, Ashabel kicked at a stone in the yard. Rosa asked, “So everyone was disappointed?”
“Frightened, rather than disappointed. They know the captain’s frightening to the marrow of their bones. They couldn’t help knowing.”
“Do they?”
Rosa sat on the corner of a stone column in the yard. Ashabel seemed to want to talk, and she meant to listen.
“Captain Gene joined this patrol a year and a half ago. Before that, he knew no one in Delphinad. Naturally, he had no connections behind him either. He and Captain Tahyang had only just reached the city. They came into this house looking for somewhere to eat and sleep, as ordinary patrolmen. Back then, it was called the House of Galrak.”
“Galrak?”
There was no one by that name in the House of the Hawk now. Ashabel gave a faint smile.
“Yes. Galrak the Left-handed. I never saw him, but he must have been terrifying. They say he was only a little smaller than Captain Tahyang, as far as size went. His left fist was iron. Anyone he hit died on the spot. That’s why he was Galrak the Left-handed.”
“You weren’t here then?”
“No. I came a little later. Anyway, Galrak wanted absolute obedience from the new recruits. But the two captains were too remarkable for that. Still, Captain Tahyang looks frightening at a glance, doesn’t he? And he had Huka. Captain Gene, though, just looked like an ordinary young nobleman. So Galrak singled him out. He calculated that, if he subdued Gene, Tahyang would bow and come in too. But Captain Gene saw through it at once. That’s how the war began.”
When Galrak’s trusted men mocked Gene as a child, Gene openly provoked Galrak into a fight. At first, he overpowered him with his fists and beat him thoroughly. After that, the harassment stopped by day, but an ugly atmosphere arose in which Gene might be stabbed even in his sleep. That, however, was what Gene wanted. From then on, he was their enemy rather than their plaything.
“Most people would have gone to another organization at that point, but the captain didn’t. Fortunately, Galrak still wasn’t recognized as a patrol captain, so there was no way to drive him out under Ilmoram’s rules. Gene called Galrak ‘a monster beaten by a child.’ Galrak challenged him one-on-one three more times after that, but he couldn’t beat him. His henchmen kept watching for a chance to get the captain too.
“However good he is, there’s nothing he could do if a group swarmed him. But whenever it looked as though a quarrel might break out, he’d turn it straight into a public duel. And, well, he always won. An unbroken run of victories, but he’d fight three times a day, every day. The only reason he got even a little proper sleep was that he shared a room with Captain Tahyang. With Huka keeping his eyes wide open, no one wanted to sneak inside. Maybe that’s why they still live together.”
Ashabel smacked his lips a little, then kicked another stone.
“Easy to say, but it went on for two whole months. Honestly, his whole body must have been covered in wounds. Ugh. If only we’d arrived then and helped.”
“We?”
Ashabel flinched and changed the subject.
“We as in we, of course. Anyway, by holding out for two months, Captain Gene and Captain Tahyang gradually gained a reputation, and the mood changed. They completed the organization’s assignments brilliantly. Above all, they became famous for their speed. Huka’s much faster than he looks. And Captain Gene’s horse is excellent too. Ah, why am I saying it? You only have to watch him ride.
“That’s how they got the nickname. The ShadowHawk’s twin swords. As fast as the two blades the ShadowHawk used. Captain Gene was the right-hand sword, Captain Tahyang the left. In the end, Captain Gene became known as the ShadowHawk himself. Usually that nickname goes to someone who fights efficiently, like a long-sword assassin.
“Around then, the Hand of Ilmoram appointed Captain Gene as the patrol captain. Galrak and his gang had no choice but to leave, didn’t they? They say Galrak was so ashamed that he left Delphinad altogether. About half the men here now saw those fights. Ask them, and they’ll all shake their heads. Once, after being stabbed in the back, he still won a one-on-one fight. They thought he’d become a corpse the next day, but two days later, he was fighting again. They said he didn’t seem human.”
Coming from a sixteen-year-old boy, there might be exaggeration in it. Even so, it was an extraordinary story. Rosa found it difficult to reconcile such a man with the Gene Luke had called kind.
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