“…I am so sorry.”
“You aren’t the one who has to apologize,” Ori responded, untroubled by what stoked Unen’s guilty conscience and led her to shrink into herself beside him. Mouru’s hands hung limply from Ori’s shoulders.
Asking for Mouru’s opinion had resulted in Ori agreeing to carry him on his back till the next town.
“Thanks, Ori. A friend who helps you in your time of need is a friend indeed.”
“I wish you’d let me think that about you sometime,” Ori grumbled, hiking Mouru’s slipping body further up his back.
Now entrusted with leading the horse, Irena giggled as she watched the two men argue. “You can say whatever you want, but when it comes down to it, you’re great at looking after others, Ori. Do you have a younger brother or sister?”
“Ah, no—”
“He has one younger sister,” Mouru answered over Ori’s hesitance, amused. He raised his voice to a falsetto and teased, “Isn’t that right, big brother?”
“Shut your trap,” Ori snarled and violently shook him.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, owwww! That hurts! Be gentler with my poor, weak, and injured body…”
Ori halted in his tracks at almost the same time Mouru abruptly stopped talking. Irena handed Unen the reins and lined up next to Ori.
Four men were standing in the thicket down the sunset-dyed road in front of them.
“…Do you recognize them?” Mouru asked softly.
Ori nodded ever so slightly. “They’re the highwaymen knockoffs we encountered on the way to the capital.”
“Looks like they’ve hired some local thugs to join in the fun.”
Overhearing them, Irena openly frowned. “That pretty boy still hasn’t given up yet?”
“Nah, this is most likely what you call ‘trying to settle the score,’” Unen supplied. The other three tiredly groaned in understanding.
Unen could practically see the four men who helped save her from the river spreading the tale around town as a good bar story. No doubt the other three were imagining the same scene.
But was it possible for these petty highwaymen to learn that the spiteful group that’d given them hell was only made of four, two of which were girls, and the mage was out of commission, and decide to not set an ambush for them? Of course not.
The man with the most garish beard of the four squared his shoulders and dropped a provoking line just like Unen thought he would, “Yo, I’ve been waiting for you to crawl back here.”
“Yer not gonna say ya forgot our mugs, are ya?”
“We were on the brink of death thanks to you!”
“Darn, you didn’t die,” Mouru quipped.
The entire group of highwaymen sharply inhaled, their faces all turning a magnificent shade of scarlet.
“You bastard!”
“I’ll beat the living daylights outta ya!”
Ori’s sigh shook the bloodlust permeating the air. “Don’t taunt them when you can’t do anything to help out.”
“I’ll try not to next time,” Mouru vaguely promised.
Irena tossed a wry grin at their awkwardly positioned conversation beside her and took a half step forward. At the same time, Ori laid Mouru on top of the bags on the horse’s back.
“Back up a little,” Ori said to Unen.
Leaving the horse to her, Ori drew his sword. In front of him, Irena was already in position with her unsheathed sword.
Unen did as she was told and carefully backed up a good distance with the horse so as to not hinder her guards. Mouru moaned with the horse’s every step, his head and limbs limply bouncing on top of the luggage.
Unen couldn’t restrain her sigh at the sorry state of the “master mage with incredible powers”.
“I think you should work out more, Mouru,” Unen remarked despite the situation, using the same line Irena always lectured her with.
Mouru’s composed voice came from the right side of the horse where his head dangled. “Don’t have to. I’ve got Ori for that.”
Feeling like she could just imagine Mouru’s arrogant gaze from his tone of voice gave Unen the urge to yank on the feet drooping in front of her.
Down the road, Irena and Ori were battling two enemies each.
One of the men snuck behind Irena, only to be hit with a surprise blow when she expertly spun around in a circle, slicing as if she had been waiting for him. He dropped his sword as blood gushed from his arm. The other man, who had looked down on her for being a woman, rushed to attack, but it was already too late for him. He had to defend from Irena’s forward counterattack and found himself in a stalemate.
Meanwhile, Ori’s opponents were using the full advantage of their numbers. Ori had his hands full just evading the constant lunges and beating off the attacks assailing him from multiple directions.
Feeling high on what he perceived to be an overwhelming advantage, the man on the right pushed off his right foot to lunge at Ori, thrusting his sword forward. Ori promptly spun on his foot, taking a few steps outward to the right, letting the thrust pierce through empty air to his left. Now the other opponent on the left couldn’t attack because his ally was in the way.
Without pausing, Ori hoisted his sword up with both hands and sliced through the shoulder of the man in front of him faster than his ally could circle around.
Shrieks pierced the air.
“You know how Ori often says, ‘knowledge is power. And great, unnecessary power draws equally great disaster to it’? That’s like a precept in our village, but there’s actually more to it,” Mouru said to Unen in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.
“There’s more?”
“Yes, more.” He paused for a moment to formally think over his words, and leveled his tone, “‘And those with great power must take an equal level of responsibility,’ or so it goes.”
Hereh’s nostalgic voice rushed back to Unen.
“Responsibility of equal level comes to those with power. I will fulfill my job as a doctor.”
“I mustn’t run away from this disaster. Even if it means…losing our peaceful life.”
Hereh said that when he left the forest where he lived in hiding, and brought Unen out with him.
The shrill sound of steel grazing steel brought Unen back to reality.
The third scream of the evening shook the mad red skies.
“So when we heard Hereh had raised you, we were both annoyed at how it’d complicate things. But we were a little happy at the same time.”
Mouru’s voice ever so slightly tickled her ears.
Not sure how to respond, she silently turned her eyes on the road ahead.
Ori’s sword flashed in the dusk and sent the last thug’s sword flying. The four highwaymen scuttled away, leaving curses and threats behind them.
The first star of the evening peacefully twinkled in the eastern sky that was tinged dark-blue.