He Who Forgot (4)
“I’m talking about teaching you the sword.”
“Suddenly out of nowhere?”
“When your master speaks, you keep silent and listen.”
One day, while I was training under Helmet Knight, he ran his gloved fingers over the hilt of his blade and said, “It feels as though I’m telling you the story of my entire life. How strange.”
“Your whole life?”
“Do you know how long I’ve been using the sword? Almost three hundred years. When I told you I’d pass on the essence of those three hundred years, I was half-joking, but…”
“But?”
“But once I started, I found out I could do it. Watching you learn gives me a peculiar feeling. When I see you swing your blade the way I used to swing mine…” Helmet Knight laughed. “It’s like looking at my old self. I thought I’d forgotten and that I’d never recall it again, yet it all surfaces when I watch you.”
Who he had been, how he had lived, and what kind of sword he had wielded all reflected through Najin.
“You damned brat.” Helmet Knight clicked his tongue. “You make me greedy. With you, I can’t ignore my regrets. Honestly, you’re a cursed little brat.”
“You’re asking me to teach you spearplay? Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Seeing Najin on one knee, the Azure Spear blinked in surprise. Clearly flustered, he opened and closed his mouth several times. “You said your name was Najin. My journal notes that you and I have met twice. Did the past me ever tell you I would ‘teach you the spear’?”
“No. He said nothing of the sort.”
“Then why?”
“Does one need a reason to seek instruction?” Najin smiled as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “Besides, you said the spear art must not be allowed to be forgotten. The fate of an entire kingdom’s history rests on it…” Najin continued, “After hearing that, I simply thought it would be a shame. As you said, it’s too precious a spear art to let vanish.”
“Have you ever seen me wield the spear?”
“Isn’t it part of your daily routine? You spend nearly ten hours a day working with the spear, so how could I not see it?”
“That’s why you’re asking me to teach you?”
Najin nodded.
The Azure Spear did not look pleased. If anything, he looked troubled. “I’m grateful, but… I doubt I can teach anyone anything. How would I teach something I can’t remember?”
“That part is fine.” Najin flashed a confident grin.
Seeing him copy her expression, Merlin muttered, “So smug!” under her breath.
“I’m the sort who learns well even when no one’s trying to teach me. Give me the foundation, and I’ll grasp mastery, and I sometimes figure things out without even that much.”
What kind of nonsense was that? The Azure Spear gave him a disbelieving look and began his daily routine. It did not take long for him to understand what Najin meant.
The moment he saw the trajectory traced by the lance in Najin’s hands, he could not help but understand. “How… how are you doing that?” Eyes wide and jaw dropped, he stared.
Seeing him gape, Najin twirled the lance shaft and smiled. “I told you, didn’t I? I’m a quick study.”
Among swordsmen was a well-known maxim: A swordsman speaks with his sword.
Bards liked to embellish that saying into something like, “First-rate swordsmen need no words; by crossing blades, they can read each other’s hearts.”
To Najin, that was nonsense. How could you know without speaking? You’d need to be a telepath masquerading as a swordsman, and he had no idea whether such magic even existed.
– It doesn’t. And if it did, I’d want to learn it.
The Archmage said it didn’t exist, so it didn’t. In any case, while he thought the idea of reading hearts through swords was nonsense, he did not deny the phrase itself.
Even if not the heart, there were things you could show your opponent through your blade—on a grand scale through swordsmanship, and on a small scale through ingrained habits.
For instance, by using a particular style, you declared, “I learned this sword and am so-and-so’s disciple,” and by your footwork and the way you gripped the hilt, you revealed how you’d lived.
A veteran of countless battlefields swung with concise, short, efficiency-focused movements; someone who had trained in treacherous, snow-covered mountains valued footwork and adjusted each cut with the terrain.
In that way, a sword bore the marks of its wielder’s life, and that truth wasn’t limited to swordsmen. Whether it be spear or bow, it applied to any warrior who had long mastered a single weapon.
Najin was watching such a warrior: the Azure Spear, knight of Londinel.
They said he had already been a Transcendent before Londinel fell three hundred years prior, meaning he had to be over four hundred years old. In other words, a warrior who had swung his spear for at least four centuries stood before him.
The spearhead wrapped the air around itself and produced a chilling sound.
Eyes wide, Najin etched every movement into his pupils.
“Even if I forget every day…” The Azure Spear had said that the habits carved into his body and the motions he repeated each day were never forgotten. Of course, he no longer knew the meaning behind each motion or the principles contained within them.
That was where Najin focused—from the unconscious movements the Azure Spear displayed, he tried to extract the core principles. He strove to read the history of Londinel contained in that spear tip. Sharp as his eyes were, it wasn’t easy. After all, the Azure Spear was a Transcendent.
Reading the movements of a Transcendent was extremely difficult. No matter how many times he watched, following the motion was a struggle, let alone discerning the underlying principles.
– You do realize it’s absurd for someone who’s not a Transcendent even to imitate a Transcendent’s movements, right?
Muttering that, Merlin noheless shook her head. No matter how astonishing something was, see it enough times and you eventually accept it.
“How in the world…?” The Azure Spear was no different. “Well, I’ll be.” When Najin first copied a movement, the Azure Spear had stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed, but after it happened several more times, he too simply resumed swinging the spear.
Najin silently focused on the Azure Spear’s motions. Yes, it was difficult, but did that mean he couldn’t do it? Not necessarily. He had gone through something similar before.
“Aldaran Vasaglia’s Triumph Sword.” After traveling with Helmet Knight for months, Najin eventually succeeded in learning the Triumph Sword. He couldn’t reproduce it perfectly, but in theory, his reconstruction was flawless; even Gerd, a Sword Master with eight stars, had called it “excellent,” leaving no doubt.
With patience, Najin observed the Azure Spear.
As the sun began to set, he finally grasped insight.
“This part right here.” Indicating the very first motion in the Azure Spear’s sequence, Najin assumed a stance. “Could you show it to me slowly once?”
“Of course.” The Azure Spear swung his spear in a deliberately slow arc. The long shaft cut the air with a steady whoosh.
“Ah.” Najin let out a short sigh as though enlightened and immediately mimicked the motion. The movement was similar, yet the sound differed a little.It wasn’t simply because he swung faster. Though his stance was imperfect, and the tip trembled a bit, the force released when the spear moved was unlike the Azure Spear’s.
The Azure Spear’s eyes went wide. “How did you just—?”
“This first movement, sir.” Najin shifted his grip. “The second motion feels like you’re cleaving downward along the flow you drew with the first, doesn’t it?”
“Right. And?”
“Out on the field, you don’t need to separate them, do you? Suppose we link them into a single motion like this. If you put a bit more power here…” Najin swung the weapon. “Doesn’t it come out a touch more natural?”
“Indeed, give me a moment…” The Azure Spear copied Najin’s movement. Unlike the younger man’s wavering stance, his posture was flawless, and he incorporated the theory with enthusiasm.
From one strike to the next, the flow remained unbroken. The instant he swung like that, the Azure Spear felt it in his bones: it was the answer. The moment he thought to swing that way, his body moved of its own accord, as though it were a motion he had repeated countless times.
When the spear swept across, something split. Until then, his blows had only etched thin lines in the sand, but the strike he unleashed this time gouged a furrow so deep that the blowing wind could not easily erase it.
“Oh.” Najin clapped lightly in admiration.
The Azure Spear froze in the finishing pose, eyes wide, the corner of his mouth quivering. “How did you do that?”
“Before I came to find you, I met another knight from Londinel—Sir Kirchhoff. You know him?”
“I do. Londinel’s last knight…”
“I’ve seen Sir Kirchhoff’s sword techniques a few times. Tracing those memories, I realized your spear style resembled his sword style somewhat.”
Kirchhoff’s sword and Azure Spear’s spear—different weapons and motions, yet their roots were alike, and the goals they pursued did not differ greatly, or so Najin felt.
“So I tried pointing out the parts where your spear style and Sir Kirchhoff’s sword style diverged…” Glancing at the deep trench the spear had carved, Najin nodded. “It seems that was the right answer.”
The Azure Spear could not smile back. The surprise of having attained new insight and the sense of accomplishment made it clear that, unlike the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of meaningless yesterdays lost to amnesia, it had become a special day.
His face held countless emotions, none of which could be summed up in a single word, yet there was one feeling that erased all the others. The Azure Spear looked to the sky. Dusk had given way to night over the desert. Then he looked at the hourglass. Only a handful of sand remained.
“Ah,” he groaned. The fulfillment of moments was stained by disappointment, fear, and regret. No matter how great the insight, come morning, he would forget.
When the last handful of sand began to fall, his head drooped.
“Azure Spear,” Najin called out to him.
The Azure Spear raised his head. In front of him, Najin reproduced the very strike he had just shown. Why was he showing that to him? He understood immediately.
It was imperfect and still rough around the edges, but the movement was a definite hint. If the Azure Spear of the next day, bereft of memories, saw that motion, he would be able to unleash the very same strike.
“Ha.” The moment he understood, the Azure Spear laughed. “Well, well, I don’t even know how to put this.” As the last grains slipped through the hourglass—death approaching—the Azure Spear, instead of fearing as usual, burst into laughter. He planted the spear’s butt deep in the sand. “Najin?”
He lost his memories every day. For him, each day was not a continuum but a severed, isolated piece of time, so he was like a mayfly, and the mayfly feared its death and disappearance.
The Azure Spear was no mayfly. He had realized that the present self could pass something on to the self of tomorrow. He would forget, but the days would not be separate, severed days. The “next day” would arrive, of that he was certain.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” The Azure Spear entrusted Najin with a letter addressed to the next day’s self.
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