Chapter 65 - Covered in Ashes (8)
Once Ernest and the others had made their way a good distance into the forest, he began scanning the ground, searching for signs of game.
"First, we need to find a promising trail."
"Oh, nice. It's finally my time to shine."
At Ernest's words, Robert stepped up confidently.
He'd been useless when it came to pitching tents and cooking, but thanks to all the mock battle training with Ernest—which had often been a pain—he knew exactly what kind of "promising trail" Ernest meant.
It wasn't an obvious path, but rather one that, due to subtle ups and downs or natural obstacles, animals would naturally follow.
"We need to look for animal trails, not paths people use."
"What kind of animals?" Marie asked.
"I usually go for rabbits," said Ernest.
"Rabbits? That's way too small! We should be hunting at least a deer!"
"Says the guy who couldn't even catch a squirrel. Besides, rabbits are bigger than you think."
Robert had pictured a hunt for a majestic, antlered deer. But to hear they should settle for something like a rabbit?
Of course, in winter, male deer shed their antlers, so it was impossible to catch an antlered deer at this time of year—but there's no way Robert would know something like that.
"There might be fur on tree bark or fallen branches on the ground. Animals rub up against things, or their fur gets snagged as they go by. But the best clue is droppings. If you find droppings, that means you're in the right spot. Once we find a confirmed location, we set up traps."
"…This isn't the kind of hunting I was hoping for."
"Then what did you imagine? That we'd be reloading guns and chasing deer through the forest before shooting them down?"
"Exactly!"
"Can you reload a powder gun while running?"
"…No."
"And do you even know how fast deer are?"
"…No."
"Yeah, I figured as much."
"..."
With nothing left to say, Robert just kicked at the snow, scattering it around for no reason.
"Marie."
"..."
Leaving Robert alone, Ernest called out to Marie.
For some reason, Marie, who was uncharacteristically quiet, looked up and met Ernest's eyes.
Ernest narrowed his gaze, sensing something odd about Marie.
Up until mealtime, she had seemed normal.
But ever since they left the tent for the hunt, her demeanor had changed completely.
She seemed tense.
But Ernest wasn't so clueless that he'd mistake the source of her tension for nerves about the hunt.
Marie was on edge, just like during Mock Battle Training.
No, she was even sharper than that.
Despite all that tension, there was also something strangely composed about her.
Composed... Or maybe it was something slightly different.
'Why?'
Ernest noticed—barely, but enough—that Marie seemed to be relieved by something.
Her confused surroundings and situation had previously left her frozen.
She had always been tense, anxious, her trembling eyes desperately seeking out Ernest.
But now, for some reason Ernest couldn't quite figure out, Marie was razor-sharp yet, at the same time, deeply relieved, as if she had shaken off her anxiety.
Before long, Ernest realized that Marie's tension was coming from heightened vigilance toward her surroundings.
What did Father say to her before we left the tent?
Ernest wanted to ask Marie that, but he exercised patience and remained silent.
There's no need to drag everything out into the open and know all the details.
More importantly, this change in Marie is surely a positive one for her.
"If you see anything—animal tracks, fur, droppings, anything at all—let me know. But don't mess up the area and scare the animals away like Robert does."
"Okay."
"..."
Marie gave Ernest a short reply, while Robert, his lips jutting out, looked sullen.
When Ernest started moving again, Robert and Marie fell in behind him.
Marie stared fixedly at Ernest's back as he walked ahead, then glanced at Robert, scanning their surroundings once more with a wary look.
With her gloved hand, she touched her stomach. Feeling the thin Balt Battery pressed flat against her belly, Marie pressed her lips together resolutely.
I have to protect him.
With the Balt Battery in her possession, Marie now felt confident she could take on a male bear fattened up for winter and come out on top.
Of course, the battery's capacity was so small that, in a real fight, it would probably be drained before she could kill a bear—but with a bit of luck, she might actually bring one down.
Not that there were any such dangerous beasts in this forest anyway.
Simply put, with the Balt Battery, Marie was now the strongest presence in these woods.
Even Haires, if he went up against the current Marie, would have no choice but to turn tail and run.
Receiving that thin Balt Battery from Haires made Marie aware of her own power.
The girl who not long ago had been dying of cold and hunger, with not even a single Deck left to her name, in a snow-covered alley of Grimman—she recalled that she was a weapon of slaughter, painstakingly forged by the Imperial Military Academy.
And from Haires's order for her to protect Ernest, Marie was finally able to think of herself as something more—not a helpless, useless vagrant draining House Krieger's resources, but someone with worth and purpose.
Marie Fiders is a soldier tasked with the grave duty of protecting Ernest Krieger, the sole heir of House Krieger, under the order of the family's master, Haires Krieger.
I'm not just a dead weight getting in the way.
With her cheeks flushed red, Marie bit her lip lightly.
I'm protecting Ernest.
And Robert, too.
That thought was, in truth, the smallest and most trivial thing.
However, to Marie, it felt like a shift as momentous as the heavens and the earth turning upside down.
And this small yet enormous change would work exactly as Haires intended, alleviating Marie's extreme dependency on Ernest.
Though as a side effect, Marie would come to see Ernest as someone she herself needed to protect.
If everything was handled carefully, Marie—the Baltracher—could even be brought to lay down her life for his son.
From Haires's perspective, there was nothing to lose.
Haires hadn't originally planned to act so hastily.
But when Ernest began teaching Marie with such enthusiasm, sweeping away the fog of ignorance and despair that had settled over her, and when Marie slowly but steadily started to grow and feel a sense of accomplishment, Haires changed his mind.
Haires knew this type of dependency all too well.
He hadn't wanted to—but the war had forced him to learn.
As she studied, Marie began to feel that sense of accomplishment.
Though it was something small, she performed her share admirably—unlike Robert, who was useless at setting up tents or cooking, she made herself truly helpful.
Then, on top of that, she became aware of her own strength, and even received a direct order to protect the very Ernest she used to depend upon.
Now, Marie was no longer the powerless girl who could survive only by clinging unilaterally to Ernest.
She herself realized this, too.
Of course, in reality, everything was still under Haires's control, and Marie was, as ever, just a powerless girl.
But that didn't really matter.
After all, there was no way for Marie to know that.
What Haires did wasn't done for Marie's sake—but even so, Marie felt as though she'd been saved.
And that, surely, qualifies as salvation.
Of course, if Marie ever strayed even a little, Haires was fully prepared to completely break her, making her volunteer to become Ernest's slave—or otherwise remove her from Ernest's life entirely.
For Haires, the only thing that mattered was his son.
Whether people fell into ruin or died—it was none of his concern.
The hunt made no real progress.
At least, that's how Robert saw it.
"This isn't what I was hoping for…"
"That's enough. If you keep whining like that, I'll send you home."
Ernest, on the other hand, seemed quite content—he had found rabbit droppings and managed to set traps in promising spots.
Despite his complaints, Robert was actually quite skilled at making traps—thanks to Ernest.
All of Ernest's fellow officer cadets knew how to disarm traps, and some even knew how to make them.
Thanks to this damn hunter, they'd had no choice but to learn just to keep up.
Nowadays, even other cadets besides Ernest had started setting traps during Mock Battle Training.
There were so many traps scattered through the forest that no one could remember where they'd put them all, so many were left behind.
Occasionally, when they went to the forest for a Mock Battle, they'd find an animal caught in one.
More often, it would be unsuspecting senior students who got snared in forgotten traps, letting out terrified screams.
"Looks like we didn't catch anything today, either," said Haires.
"We'll probably catch something by tomorrow," Ernest replied.
Haires spent his time at the camp in a leisurely fashion.
He left the hunting entirely to the children, only gathering firewood, tending the fire and campground, and watching over the horses.
Thanks to this, there was always a blazing campfire next to Haires's horse and Drek, so the horses didn't have to shiver in the cold.
"If it's this hard to catch anything, how do hunters even make a living?"
"You shouldn't expect to catch something grand in the winter. And it's not like hunters have to survive on hunting alone, right?"
"That's true."
Except for the times when they wandered the forest on hunts, they spent most of their time chatting inside the tent.
At first, the tent felt cramped, but after just one night's sleep, they had adapted, and it felt spacious enough.
Marie, being a girl, might have felt uncomfortable sharing a tent with three men.
But Marie showed a surprising lack of complaints. And the boys, in turn, held no unpleasant feelings towards this small, scrawny little girl.
***
"There's something."
"What?"
On the third day, they finally tasted success.
The children went out to check the traps—or more accurately, Ernest spotted a swaying tree branch in the distance and bolted toward it.
The footsteps coming closer made the animal trapped in the snare struggle even harder, but the wickedly well-made trap Ernest had set was not so easily undone.
"It's a rabbit."
Ernest spoke with a smile.
Robert, who had followed a bit late, saw the rabbit caught in the trap and his face lit up with excitement.
"Wow! Rabb…."
But Robert flinched and instinctively stepped back.
"Why—why does it look like this…!"
The rabbit wasn't the cute, fluffy little creature Robert had expected.
Anyone could see it was big and tough.
Its eyes glared an icy blue, and it looked like it might lunge at them any second and tear out someone's throat.
The rabbits Robert knew were the small, adorable ones people raised as pets, or something you'd expect for their meat or fur.
"What do you mean?"
Regardless of what Robert was saying, Ernest had already drawn his dagger and was approaching the rabbit. The large, fierce-looking rabbit thrashed and kicked wildly in the trap. For Robert, it was as if he were trapped in a nightmare.
"Ah, Robert, do you want to do the killing?"
"No way!"
"What's wrong?"
"No, seriously, why does it look so scary? This isn't like any rabbit I know."
"Oh, you mean those little burrow rabbits? But this is hunting. We have to kill it anyway, so if we caught a big one, that's something to be happy about."
"No! It's disgusting! It's scary!"
"So, it's only okay to kill the small, cute ones?"
"…Now that you mention it, you're right. This is better."
"So do you want to be the one to kill it?"
"…No."
As Robert shook his head and edged away, Ernest let out a deep sigh.
"Marie. Do you want to try?"
"Can I?"
"As much as you want."
"Okay. I'll try."
Ernest offered it to Marie as well, and she didn't refuse.
"Here, I'll hold it for you."
"Okay."
Ernest grabbed onto the snare and pulled, dragging the struggling rabbit closer as it tried desperately to escape.
The rabbit made its final stand, lunging at Ernest and frantically hitting him with its front paws, but it didn't hurt at all.
With his foot, Ernest pinned the snare to the ground to keep it steady, then grabbed the rabbit's body with his left hand and clutched its ears tightly in his right, lifting it up.
The moment its sensitive ears were caught, the rabbit froze, paralyzed by pain.
"When you kill it, it's best to twist its neck. If that's too hard, you can stab it with a dagger or shoot it with a gun, but then there's a lot of blood. That's how you do it when you need to drain the blood, but we don't need to worry about that right now."
"Okay."
"Do you want to try?"
"Okay."
Marie accepted the rabbit's ears from Ernest without hesitation. She tried her best to twist the rabbit's neck and kill it, just as Ernest showed her.
"It's not working very well…"
"It takes strength, but there's a trick to it, too. You'll get the hang of it with practice."
"Ugh… Seriously, please, just kill it quickly…"
Marie struggled so much with her tiny hands, trying to twist the rabbit's neck, that Robert couldn't bear to watch and turned his head, begging her to just end it quickly.
The rabbit probably wanted to die soon, too, and be released from its pain.
Ernest patiently waited for Marie to finish it herself, and finally, with a long, painful last breath, the rabbit was freed from this hell.
"You can squeeze the guts out through the chest and out the anus, but that takes a lot of effort, so let's split the belly open and take them out step by step."
"Okay."
"Ugh…!"
"First, we'll skin it. Make a cross-shaped cut here on its back like this."
"I—I can't look!"
"The next part's easy. You just pull it off in one go. Here, grab it and give it a try."
"Hnnngh…!"
"Aaah…!"
"Robert, stop fussing and be quiet."
While Ernest taught Marie how to prepare the rabbit, Robert, his face pale as a sheet, shuffled anxiously from foot to foot, not knowing what to do. It took a long time for Marie, who was not very strong, to finish skinning the rabbit. But splitting open the belly and taking out the guts didn't take nearly as much time.
"You're doing well."
"..."
Marie, who could already prepare other ingredients, quickly got the hang of gutting the rabbit once Ernest showed her how. As she scraped the organs out with hands stained warm with rabbit blood, Marie's tightly pressed lips twitched a little at Ernest's praise.
Growing up in a poor Aeblonian household, Marie was not bothered by animal blood or organs.
Her parents, always ready to abandon her or sell her into slavery, had never given her the precious gift of meat.
Even when the whole family occasionally ate meat, all they threw to Marie was foul-smelling blood and boiled organs.
"Good. Well done. We're going to have this for dinner tonight."
"…Okay!"
When Ernest patted Marie's small shoulder and spoke, she responded with an awkward but bright smile and a burst of energy.
"Robert, you should try it next time, too."
"No way…"
Robert, who had been stealing glances as Marie split open the rabbit's belly and scooped out the organs, looked so pale that it seemed like he might throw up at any moment.
"Why are you taking the organs, too?"
As Ernest gathered up even the organs, Robert protested in disgust.
"We eat the organs, too."
"Ugh! The organs?"
"We'll eat all of it except the organs that you shouldn't eat, like the ones near the bones. With small animals like squirrels, sometimes you just skin them and roast them whole, bones and all." "Arghhhh!"
Just listening horrified Robert. But for Marie, who had never even imagined throwing away any edible part like the organs, it was Robert who seemed strange to her.
"Let's check the other traps before we go. Normally, you should cook the organs right away before they spoil, but since it's cold, it should be fine."
Ernest packed the organs inside the rabbit skin, stuffed both the meat and the skin into a pouch, and fixed it behind his waist. Meanwhile, Marie was rubbing her bloodied hands clean with snow.
"Ugh... I guess I really am just a City Softie who could never be a hunter..."
"Only realizing that now? You Grimman Bumpkin."
"You're a Grimman Bumpkin too! Even more than me! You've only ever been to Grimman, never any other city, you bastard!"
As Robert protested, Ernest picked up the pouch tied to his waist and swung it at him.
"Waaah!"
Robert screamed at the pouch containing the rabbit's corpse, slipped in the snow and fell, then quickly scrambled up and ran away again.
"Heh..."
Ernest turned at the sound of the small laugh and looked at Marie.
She was glaring fiercely at something deep in the woods, wiping her snow-washed hands on her pants with a perfectly serious face.
By the time the children returned to camp, Ernest's pouch held two rabbits, and Robert staggered along with a yellowed face after having thrown up once.
It had been Ernest's insistence that forced Robert to try preparing the next rabbit, but the moment he twisted its neck to kill it, Robert vomited right away.
It turned out, he was more shocked by killing an animal with his own hands than by the blood or the guts.
"Weakling."
"So weak."
"..."
Hearing Ernest mock him, Marie chimed in with a quiet whisper to mock Robert as well. Kids like Marie, who grew up in poverty, never tremble at the thought of killing an animal.
When you're starving, you have to catch and eat bugs if that's all you have.
Bugs aren't even so bad.
She's eaten tree roots, and even ground up raw wood to boil and eat. As long as you can fill your stomach, you have to shove whatever you find into your mouth. Hunger will make you eat anything.
So, if all you have to do is twist a rabbit's neck and it becomes precious meat, there's no reason to hesitate. People who know the pain and fear of starvation would lose their minds and kill a hundred rabbits on the spot if they could.
"My stomach feels horrible…"
"You look even worse on the outside."
"I don't think I'll be able to eat dinner…"
"That's lucky. Less competition for food."
"You're awful…"
"No, you're the worst of all."
Robert's whining was nearly on the verge of tears.
However, when the children returned from a successful hunt and Haires showed off his skills by preparing an absolutely amazing dinner, Robert devoured the food so deliciously you'd never know he'd been whining just moments before.
"Wow! Mr. Krieger, you're an incredible cook! This is a hundred times better than anything Ernest or Marie makes! Can you teach me some of your recipes?"
"I don't think you really need to learn from me."
Robert ate with such gusto that he even scraped up every last bit of the rabbit innards he'd been calling disgusting earlier, chattering nonstop to Haires about how delicious everything was.
Marie ate more than usual too.
She worked so hard eating that her once-flat belly now stuck out from fullness.
Even though Ernest had caught the rabbit by setting a trap, it was Marie herself who twisted its neck, skinned it, slit its belly, and cleaned out its insides.
As she ate the rabbit, it felt like not only her stomach but her whole heart was being filled.
"I found deer tracks. If we're lucky, I think we might catch one."
"We'll be heading back in two days."
"As long as I get the chance, two days is plenty."
"How do you plan on catching a deer?"
"It'd be best if one got caught in a trap, but that rarely happens. Usually, you have to lie in wait and shoot it."
"Yes! That's what I was hoping for! We're doing it tomorrow, right?"
"Alright, let's give it a shot tomorrow… hmm, I guess we can try once more until the morning after tomorrow."
Ernest glanced at Haires as he spoke. Since they were planning to leave in two days, spending the morning hunting deer would push back their schedule a lot.
Normally, they wouldn't do that.
But Haires gave a small nod of approval, so it was fine.
"..."
Marie, her stomach bulging from eating so much, stared blankly at the campfire as she listened to Ernest and Robert talk. Watching the flames, it felt like everything was a dream, not reality. Her stomach was full, and she was warm. If she lay down and drifted off right now, no one would come over to beat her awake or click their tongue and call her useless. They would just let her sleep.
Right now, Marie was safe.
And not just being protected one-sidedly; she was a proud member of this group, fulfilling her own role and performing even better than Robert.
Whatever the reality, that's how Marie felt.
Was winter always such a warm season?
Thud.
Her stomach was full, the air was balmy, and her heart felt peaceful. Bundled up in thick clothes, Marie rolled backward like a ball and stretched out on the ground. The layers of clothing were so soft and heavy that it cushioned her, letting her settle in cozily without disturbing her drowsy mood as she rolled.
And soon after, Marie fell soundly asleep Inside the tent, Marie's soft, ragged breathing mingled with the crackling of the campfire, creating a ticklish atmosphere.
"She must be tired," Robert remarked.
"Of course. Unlike you, who are utterly useless, she actually did a lot of work," Ernest retorted.
"Teacher Ernest, your words are getting harsher by the minute," said Student Robert.
"Student Robert, if you have complaints, maybe you should at least do your part before you start talking," replied Ernest.
"Oh, goodness. Thanks to you, I've learned a valuable lesson again today, Teacher. The lesson is: when a student seeks your guidance, respond with contempt and disregard. So, do you know what I mean, Teacher Ernest?"
Useless Robert, pummeled by Ernest's accurate points, sulked in defeat. He decided then and there that, as Teacher Robert, he would get his revenge when the unsociable Student Ernest came asking for help in the future.
"How petty," murmured Ernest.
"Look who's talking," Robert shot back.
The crackle of the fire.
The wind swirling outside the tent.
Marie's breathing.
The boys' quiet banter.
Amidst it all, only Haires sat in silence, quietly gazing at the fire.