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## Prologue: Death of an Old Soldier

Taiwan edition. Reposted from Light Novel Kingdom.

1. The Soul in Crisis

East of the island of Britain, sail from London for about three days across the North Sea, where the wind is strong and the waves run high, and two islands come into view. One is large and one is small. They are named Soren Island and Little Soren Island, and together they are called the Soren Islands. The town stands beside the only harbor on Soren Island, and the city bears the same name as the island itself: it is called the city of Soren.

The Elwin family founded a town upon this desolate island and brought the harbor into flourishing prosperity, and so their name rang throughout the North. All trade upon the North Sea came under the Elwin family's control. Looking back now, the turning point in that family's great change of fortune may well have begun with the death of a certain aged old soldier.

It happened in October of the year 1190.

One morning, when snow lay everywhere and the cold made it feel as though winter were about to arrive, I left the mansion at first light in the company of the maid Yasmina Beaumont, meaning to carry a cup of warm mead to the night-watch guard, Edwin Shure, and warm him.

But Edwin was not standing at his post before the mansion's front gate. He lay face-down upon the black reefs of Little Soren Island. Edwin liked his drink; sometimes he would drain a gallon of ale even while on night watch, so at first I thought he had merely collapsed there drunk. Only when I went up to him and reached out to shake him awake did I find that his body was already cold enough to……

## Chapter One: From the East

2. Word Has It They Came from Jerusalem

On a Friday in November I took a boat from Little Soren Island, where I lived, across to the harbor on Soren Island. I knew that the merchants I was acquainted with, once they had finished the great fair at Provins in the province of Champagne, would stop briefly in the city of Soren.

The weather was a stretch of cloudless blue, yet the wind that day blew hard and the air was cold. I kept one hand pressed to my woolen shawl so the wind would not carry it off, and looked about to see whether anyone I knew was nearby. As I had expected, the harbor was lively indeed. Within Soren Harbor five piers ran out toward the open sea. Ships lay alongside every one of them, packed so tight that one could only marvel that the sixth pier should happen to be under repair just then.

The porters paid the cold wind blowing over them no mind at all. Bare to the waist, they hurried great timbers, oak casks, and locked wooden chests that two grown men could barely lift, and every other sort of cargo. Their rough shouts were full of high spirits, and heat seemed to steam endlessly from their rain-sweated bodies. The more impatient merchants spread a blanket straight on the ground, threw their voices open, and bawled, "All of this just came in fresh!" as they cried their wares. Their stalls were heaped with silk gloves, embroidered caps, wine, and goods of every kind. They say that on Soren, where no grapes are grown, wine always fetches a good price.

I have lived on this island since the day I was born. And yet I feel that I, alone……

## Chapter Two: The Knight and the Mercenary

8. A Hero Falls

The bell for Lauds (a little past seven in the morning) reached my ears.

I stepped out of the mansion to see what the weather was, and an east wind brushed my cheek. Against that shivering cold, an ill foreboding rose in me that something bad was about to happen. A great mass of sullen cloud covered the sky.

After I had taken my usual breakfast of bread with vegetable soup, Yasmina spoke to me.

"Lady Amina, something strange has happened."

Yasmina was the youngest of all the servants, a girl whose spirit did not sink because of failure.

The faint freckles on her face were a little conspicuous, yet her looks were very sweet, and her expressions were so lively that she always left people with a feeling of happiness.

Important work could not readily be entrusted to her, but her company warmed the heart. This morning she tilted her small head and said just that to me.

"What is it?"

"Well—the lord still has not gotten up."

To Yasmina, such a thing could hardly have seemed important. Father did usually rise early, yet there were times when he was simply worn out. The morning after a great banquet, for instance, the bell announcing the end of Mass (around ten past nine in the morning) had sometimes already rung, and Father still had not come out of his chamber.

That was what I thought at first. But when I thought of this morning's……

## Chapter Three: The Mourning

19. Before the Bell for Prime Has Rung

Until last year I still had not grasped the rites a funeral required, yet now I carried out Father's vigil without a hitch. The chief reason, of course, was that I had already attended Edwin Shure's vigil.

The funeral hall was filled with the murmur of prayer. Anger, vengeance, and feelings of that kind could find no place there at all. I first sprinkled holy water over Father's body with a brush, then knelt on the stone floor and began to pray. To keep the place from growing too cold, many torches and bonfires had been set about. The shadow stretching out from my feet took the shape of someone praying with both hands raised. Only my elder brother and I were there, and the monk who conducted the rite.

By custom, a woman's weeping is needed at a funeral to see the dead on their way, so I too was obliged to cry aloud. Yet tonight's rite was uncommonly quiet.

It is said that monks once prayed through the night for the dead. I had the feeling Adam would do the same.

But I had to seize what time I had and leave the chapel. Not because I had promised to meet Farouk. In truth I wanted nothing more than to bid Father a quiet farewell tonight. If a woman draws too much attention at a funeral, she leaves a bad impression instead. That the monastery was willing to let me into the chapel to complete the full course of prayers was already a considerable courtesy. I could not press the favor any further.

I used the last of my chance to look once more upon Father's face in death.……

## Chapter Four: The Bell of the Storm

22. A Rumor Is Only a Rumor

I woke after dozing a little in the villa on Soren Island.

That morning an unease hung over Soren.

That the lord had died was already known to everyone.

Among those who lived on Soren Island, how many truly welcomed Adam as the next lord from the bottom of their hearts? Father had always thought long and carefully, and had laid many plans for Soren's future, and he had matched wits with the citizens' self-governing body in a most skillful way, so that the rights he granted and the duties he imposed were held in just proportion. But could Adam keep a balance like that?

Word that the monastery had been robbed spread across the whole island just as quickly. The theft had brought no deaths, and no suspicious person had been found. Even so, several of the most precious treasures had vanished into thin air. I did not know who had put the news about, but I knew that all of it was true. The devout held it a desecration of the house of God. Those who possessed property above a certain measure feared they might become the next target of this thief whose origins no one knew.

The common people did not yet know that the accursed Danes were certain to attack. The guards, though, stood on the watchtowers with faces tighter than usual. Young men answering the levy had gone to the fortress since early morning, and besides soldiers, great numbers of torches and timbers were carried into the fortress. I also heard that Adam had already signed formal contracts with the mercenaries.

As for Tostig Dakeru……

## Chapter Five: The Rite

34. Who, After All, Is the <Running Dog>

The floor was laid with black-and-white tiles, and a red fire burned in the hearth. The walls held more than torches; countless candlesticks had been set out as well, lighting the hall until it seemed bright as day.

On the cloth-covered rectangular tables stood bronze ewers, earthenware cups, and drinking horns. Pewter bowls were filled with pears and apples. Bread baked very hard was used as a trencher, and once it had soaked up the fat of beef and mutton seasoned with spices, it grew a little soft. Most of the sweets—almond pudding, pear tarts, and the like—had already been eaten by the guests.

On the day the accursed Danes were driven off, the burial of Father Laurent was put off by one day as well, and a victory feast for the war just won was held in the mansion on Little Soren Island. The high table stood one step above the ordinary seats. Adam sat there with his back to the wall, and the knights of House Elwin laughed and talked on the long benches to either side. Konrad, a knight of the Holy Roman Empire, and Farouk, a knight of the County of Tripoli, were also permitted to sit among them.

The tables at the ordinary seats were crowded with candlesticks too. The squire Ebu sat in that section, across from Mayor Bonis, representative of the militia. Soldiers who had distinguished themselves in this fight were also allowed to attend the feast. Idelle had been given a still lower place, and sat in the farthest corner with the Saracen Shezed and Emma of the Fonzar.

The servants, Yasmina at their head, were all between the kitchen and the hall……

## Epilogue: Pressing Onward

37. The Broken Keel

The next day came, a rare clear day for November.

Amid hymns and flowers, Laurent Elwin, former lord of the Soren Islands, was formally buried in the monastery's graveyard.

The one who killed the former lord was the assassin-knight Edric Fitzjo.

Nicolas Baga, a knight of the Hospitaller brotherhood of the Hospital of St. Ambrose, saw through the true face of the assassin-knight Edric, who had borrowed the name of my elder brother Farouk and slipped into Soren to kill, and succeeded in killing Edric before the eyes of the new lord, Adam Elwin. Adam praised Nicolas highly and gave him a reward to encourage him.

In essence, that was taken as the end of the affair.

The river mouth southeast of Soren Island may be called a natural harbor, but the western shoreline is all rock, so ordinary ships cannot come near. Even so, a ship floated in those waters. It was a very slender Viking longship, a vessel of the kind peculiar to the Danes.

Ropes running from the ship were made fast upon the nearby reefs. And Hal Emma—no, Freya Rausdottir—stood beside them. Her war-axe and mail had already been carried into the ship. Once the passengers came aboard, she could put to sea. Freya's purple lips still frightened me a little, as ever, but I decided to speak to her all the same.

"Is Tostig not going with you?"

Only after yesterday's uproar had ended did everyone realize, with a start, that Freya……

## Afterword

I am deeply intoxicated by the variety of mystery fiction. Among all its schools, what shocks me most—or rather, what I ought to call it—is the unusual setting. It is like a curveball one cannot get a read on.

In Yasuhiko Nishizawa's *The Man Who Died Seven Times*, the same span of time repeats again and again. In Masaya Yamaguchi's *Death of the Living Dead*, the dead stride about with their heads held high. There is *The Angel's Murder*, watched by angels, and *The Dead Detective* by Shinichi Tsuji, staged in the underworld. In Randall Garrett's *Too Many Magicians*, magic overflows. These books bring in a logic different from the everyday world, and, keeping to that special logic, they build mystery novels. If even that can be done, what cannot? Encouraged by this, around 2001 I began drawing on older materials and writing a long novel.

To write a mystery novel with a special setting, what material should one choose? At the time I chose a world of swords and sorcery, of which I knew a little, and posted it on the internet. Bit by bit I wrote the novel's long "problem" section, offering readers only the parts I had finished. In that way I played a game of deduction with the readers of that time—few in number, yet very important.

The novel that was finished at last was still immature, yet because of that work I became certain of many things. For example, a special setting readily brings out the original charm of the mystery novel: "a contest of wits with the reader." Because rules that ought to be taken into account are added to the riddle one must solve, the points at issue become easier to see clearly.

I was not able, however, to present those readers of that time with a "solution" section. Just……