Episode 2 The Black Count's Fortress - Part 3

"Linda."

 Remus whispered, looking around as if frightened.

"We're gonna get killed.

"I don't know."

 Linda said back to the jerk. But she soon regretted it and added.

"If I'm to be killed, it will be after I've been sent to the capital of Mongol to face the Grand Duke's justice. Be brave, Remus, and stand tall. We are the last two members of the royal family of Paro."

 The ceiling was high, and the walls and ceiling were all of cold yellowish stone. The windows for light were high, so that when they entered the fort, even in the daytime, they were enveloped in a cool, dim, and chilly darkness.

"It's musty."

 Linda wrinkled her nose and muttered as she walked down the long corridor, urged on from behind by the Black Knights who had dismounted from the horse.

"I smell a spell. I don't want to live in a fortress on the frontier."

 Guin replied with a snarl, showing his approval.

"We don't join the Frontier Guard by choice."

 One of the black knights who was walking right next to Linda said, listening carefully.

"It is the three-year ordeal that every strong young man of Mongol secretly dreads. Only when they return from the frontier do the young men of Mongol come of age. But there are different kinds of frontier fortresses, and those who can afford it are sent to the fortress of Tarfo, a day and a half from the capital of Torus, and to the fortress of Aim, along the Red Road, where the chief work is to inspect the cargo of the merchants who come and go on trade, and to collect their bribes. The less fortunate are sent to the forts of Staphorus and Alvon, where they are constantly terrorized by the Shemites and too close to the warding of the demons."

"What are you talking so lightly about there!"

 The captain, who had come back from the front, raised his whip and tapped the knight on the shoulder, and the knight fell silent and concentrated on walking down the stone corridor in step with his neighbour.

 The corridor was long and seemed to Linda and the others to be endless - it was dark and chilly, and the sound of footsteps and talk echoed badly. On both walls were carved statues of gods whose faces were so worn that they could hardly be recognized, as if they had been there since prehistoric times, and there were no faces coming out of the doors that might have been hidden between the statues.

 When night falls, walking down this corridor or hiding in the vasja bushes in the Rude Forest will be no different in its horror, Linda thought, shaking her shoulders.

 And they turned a corner, and went up a flight of stone steps, and turned another corner. When they turned the corner again, they suddenly found themselves in a huge hall lined with regular stone pillars, as if it were an uninhabited castle.

 Between the stone pillars, men and women who looked like errand boys were loitering. The group walked past them. In front of the back of the house, there was a raised area.

 There were several large chairs and a table in the corner, separated by a narrow stone pillar. But of course, they were not placed facing inward so that friends could sit around them, but in front of a row of chairs with their backs to the wall, a high table was placed on which were wine jars, stone cups, and platters made of stone. For this reason, the whole atmosphere seemed to be like a judgment hall. The table, the chairs, and everything else were made of stone, and the chairs were covered with fluffy furs on which a large man was draped, as if he were buried in the furs.

"We're back."

 The captain, who had brought the troop to a standstill in front of the inner room, stepped forward, took off his headgear with a tassel and held it to his right breast.

"We have captured three prisoners in the Forest of Ludes."

"Those two children, as twins in Paro's example--"

 There was a reply from the chair, in a slow, grave tone.

"Who is that odd-looking person to the left anyway?"

 As she listened to the captain, with his helmet on his chest, recounting the story of how he had found the big man with the leopard's head in the burnt-out part of the forest, Linda watched the man on the chair with secret interest.

 The stone chairs lined up in a row, with the largest, throne-like chair in the center at the top, and two chairs on each side, gradually lowering in height. However, except for the one in the center, these chairs, which seemed to belong to the family or to be used by the main vassals during meals or formal audiences, were now empty. The furs on the backs of the chairs were the main faces of the people waiting.

 The tall man who sat alone in the center of the room, so to speak, with those chairs at his side, leaning forward with his elbows on the stone table, however, his age and even his face were not clear. For, like the knights who stood before him, he wore black armour with a silver crest on his breast, black boots, black gloves, a long black cloak, and his face was also covered with a black helmet.

 What was more surprising was that, unlike the knights, the face wrapped in the headgear had a mask of black cloth hanging from the lower half of the headgear, so that there was not a single place on the body of this black-clad man where his skin was exposed to the outside air. Linda's immediate impression of a middle-aged man was based on his gravely voice and the way he spoke, so there was nothing in his appearance that should have given away the man's true face or identity.

"Therefore, I have brought this monster back to you to ask for your wise counsel and treatment."

 As Linda gazed at the black man with fascinated eyes, the captain concluded his explanation, gave a curt bark, and took a few steps back.

 He made a gesture as if to ask the lord to give him an order, but the lord did not open his mouth.

 A black-gloved hand slid across the table and picked up the stone cup. Linda rolled her eyes, expecting him to drop the mask, but he reconsidered, set the cup down, and thumped the table.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before."

 He opened his mouth.

"Third Captain, that leopard man wears the armor of the guardians of Fort Staphorus, is there a reason for that?"

"Perhaps it was even taken from the Fifth Platoon."

"I see."

 His black-gloved hands clapped irritably.

"Then have him take it, and see if the leopard head is a true half-beast, half-man, or merely wearing a leopard mask.

"Yes, sir."

 Linda feared that Guin would forget that he was in the enemy's camp and start rampaging. But the leopard man restrained himself. He quickly obeyed the order, and when the hands of the knights fell on his body, he only made a gruff ... noise and let them take away his cloak and armor in silence.

 Not long after, Guin stood arrogantly in front of the Lord of Staphorus with his arms raised behind his back, wearing only the leather girdle that had been left behind in the leather leggings when the twins first met.

 But the Lord's other command did not go so well - the leopard's head, masked or not, lay on his shoulders as if it had been there from birth and could not be lifted at any cost.

 One of the knights drew his dagger as if he had made up his mind, and Linda put her fist to her mouth and screamed. But..,

"No, wait."

 The lord of the castle stopped it.

"All right, this guy's a Leopard. Don't try to hurt him. I'll think about it later... but I've never heard of such a thing existing as a flesh and blood human being. I'll let him have another look around the basement.

 By the way, are these twins Palo's pearls?"

 Her face, half covered by a mask and half by a helmet, moved slightly and slowly turned towards him. Linda shivered somewhat, and felt Remus's encouraging hand clench her arm.

"I am the Earl of Vernon, who holds Fort Staphorus from His Highness Vlad the Impaler of Mongol."

 The black man said his name slowly. Immediately, Linda was screaming reflexively.

"Vernon! 'The Black Count of Mongol'!"

 He then screamed in disgust and tried to retreat from the man in front of him, and was roughly chastised by the Black Knights.

 The black-clad man laughed. His laughter was hoarse and muffled, as if the wind was whistling in the palisades.

"Does the name of the Black Count of Mongol, ravaged by the Black Death, flutter far away to Paro in the Middle Plains?"

 He said slowly and smiled again.

"There is nothing to be afraid of, which is why I have wrapped myself up like this, out of sight and out of mind. Lord Vlad still thought me unworthy to roam the halls of his court, and so he sent me away as lord of a garrison in the westernmost part of such a frontier. Well, it must have been the Grand Duke's wish that I should not be lonely in the company of the demons that roam just across the Kesu River and live so close to them.

 Would you like to take a look at the rumored Black Count for the sake of conversation? But he's not human, he's only barely human. That monster next to you is much more human than I am."

 Then the Black Count lifted his hand and tried to take off his helmet.

 Linda and Remus fought back an involuntary shudder, but this time there was no way to push them back. This time there was no way to push them back, for the knights, too, were sniffling and retching. The Black Count put his hand down again, laughing like a muffled wind.

"Don't worry about it."

 He said.

"I never let any part of my skin come into contact with the open air because the disease that has taken hold of me spreads through the air. Therefore, I know these knights will not get it even if they live in the same fort as me and guard this place. By the way, twins--"

 He stood up. His movements were sluggish and painful, but when he finished standing up with his hands on the table, he was unusually tall.