Men who couldn’t become warriors were thrown out. They were put outside the communal society and made into tools to work like horses. In our village we had this thing called dark arts, which is sort of like magic. The difference is that while magic uses spirit energy, dark arts are from the same tree as what the demons use.
In other words, that’s why we’re persecuted as the Cursed People. Plus the technique used to create the tattoos. People from outside think we have demon blood running through our veins.
But when we’re persecuted like that we’re forced to rely even more on the dark arts. You probably don’t understand this, but if someone hates you, that means they fear you. We couldn’t very well abandon the dark arts; they were our only weapon. Not even if we were isolated, persecuted, or ignored. We had no choice but to go on using dark arts and be feared in order to survive.
And in that shitty environment, the dirtiest jobs were left to the weak. The muck sinks to the bottom. That’s just how it went.
A man who becomes a wall learns particularly nasty dark arts from the wall men before him. And then they fight to protect the village from demons. The men who couldn’t pass the trials were forced to do the most difficult work.
It’s strange to me that they didn’t run away. But at the time, that didn’t occur to me. It was only natural to work for the village. That little area around it was our entire world. Somewhere to run to? No one imagined that.
Anyhow, all I had to do was look down on the wall men like the other men of the village. After all, I would be a hero.
But then one saved my life. A man never forgets a debt. I wanted to meet that wall man again. And there was something about that dark art I caught a glimpse of that attracted me. That power to repel the demons. Despised or whatever it was, it was still strong.
I made the mistake of thinking it was awesome.
At first the wall man avoided me, but when I kept following him around, he started to talk to me little by little.
“You have tattoos, so you don’t need dark arts,” he said, but he never got to the most important point. He only really asked me what kind of trials I had passed and what life in the village was like. Other than that he silently dragged his foot, ate some grass now and then, and walked in circles around the village.
To me, he seemed like a hero. Because he was fighting—and without getting compensated in any way.
One time, I observed a day in the life of the wall man from a bit of a distance.
He mostly just walked. Even if he passed another wall man, they didn’t make eye contact. He walked ’til he was exhausted, sat once in a while, and was up and walking again in no time.
Honestly, it was so boring, I immediately got sick of watching him. But things changed in the evening.
A demon came out of the forest.
He got down low as if he were a demon himself and then crawled toward it. I was pretty far away, but I saw it: a floating ball of fur, about as big as if a kid had curled into a ball. It was drifting toward the village.
The wall man took some wood chips from his breast pocket. They had been shaved from a keeli tree. Then he took a swig of the liquid inside his leather pouch as he chanted something in a mumble.
I learned later that the liquid was poppybat blood. Yep. It’s a prohibited substance. Just a tiny amount erases fear completely. Taking too much makes you high, though. It was the only thing our remote village could trade with the cities. I used to collect it all the time.
Once he drank that, the wall man’s body stopped shaking. Then he screamed—in a beast-like voice, in a beast language. He stuck a keeli chip into the ground. The attacking demon instinctively backed away from the wood. Having repelled the demon, the wood chip burst into flame and burned up. But the wall man provoked the demon and stuck chip after chip into the ground.
It was a barrier.
He hopped around in the grass on all fours, and when the demon approached, he shoved it back with the barrier. At some point, other wall men showed up. The scream must have been to call his partners. Everyone else did the same thing, gradually driving the demon away.
The wall men didn’t kill the demons—because to us they were like gods. They just cautiously, politely asked for them to spare us. The men would fight if one entered the village, but of course, that was only if the wall had been completely killed off.
The wall man I knew ripped a branch off his wooden leg, bit it, and blew fire. A man with no arms drew a design on the ground and used a dark art to launch himself into the air for a body strike.
That kept up until nightfall. Eventually the demon floated up high and seemed to disintegrate into the dark sky.
For a time, the men didn’t move. Then, after a little while, they walked off one by one. They went back to their wall duties without any celebration of or delight in their victory.
I had been watching the whole time—and I cried.
The noises the kids of the village were scared of, the ones they thought were “demon voices,” were the shouts of the wall men. They were only allowed to scream at the demons.
I decided to become a warrior—because becoming a hero sounded good to me. All I had seen was our little corner of the world, but even so, I swore to turn it upside down.
Alas, I don’t think even three years passed before...
Our village was destroyed.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Do excuse me for my sudden intrusion the other day. To reintroduce myself, I’m Sister Kiyori. I heard from Mr. Widgecraft that if I came here I could meet Mr. Igo.”
That lady had come to the pub again, looking out of place in her Sister habit. I never imagined that bastard Widge would send a Sister looking for me. He’s always playing such nasty pranks.
“I believe you’ve met Miss Haru. I’m her friend. That’s how I found out about you. She said you’re a very powerful wizard.”
Oh, Widge’s new chick?
Last time we went into the forest, he said he was bringing a prostitute along, and I thought maybe his lust for women had gotten to his brain. But he shocked me by saying he was bringing her along as fighting power.
And sure enough, she was so strong I thought I might be crazy. She could do practically everything Widge could, so I almost thought she was his daughter. But he said that wasn’t the case.
“I’m still working on her. Apparently she’s fallen for some other guy, but I’m definitely going to steal her away.”
I hate that Haru chick. Her face is tolerable, but she’s dumb as a rock and has a foul mouth. Yet she seems to think that she’s every guy’s taste and is always interfering in our business.
She said, “Phat tats, my dude!” about my tattoos (What does that even mean?), and put her hands all over them. I’ve never had a woman do that before. Who does she think she is?
“Miss Haru told me you can use a powerful barrier, Mr. Igo. As a Sister, I’m learning to use holy barriers. I’d love to learn your technique, if you would teach me. What do you say?”
And who does this girl, that one’s pal, think she is?
There was no way a Sister would be interested in the dark arts in the first place. I figured she was either a fake or trying to trap me. Hilariously, she even brought some cookies she said she baked.
I took a sip of my drink and waved her over. Once she was next to me, I aimed at her pretty face and spat it all over her. “That was the mist-blowing barrier. Remember that and scram.”
The Sister blinked with her wet eyelashes. Then she bobbed her head and turned to go. The cookies or whatever she’d left on the table, I kicked toward her ass.
“Hey, you forgot your brat snacks!”
She bobbed her head again, swept all the crumbs off the floor, and left.
A man I didn’t know sitting nearby made a dumb remark, so I boiled his drink with a dark art.