By the way, in reading books about medieval Europe, it seems that wedding traditions back then were rather violent. For example… whoops, if I say anything more I might spoil the surprise!
And now having written this much, I find I’ve filled my pages.
This is going to be a pivotal year for the series.
Let us meet again in the next volume!
– Isuna Hasekura
Prologue
Farewells were too brief. Lawrence’s feelings on the matter came from experience.
No matter how anguished the moment, the actual act of farewell was over in but an instant. Like drawing the arrow of a bow, there was greater peril in gradually prolonging it out of fear. Hold your breath and go. Everyone knows how it will end.
That said, this was not so clear that Lawrence could make himself understand it. Besides, that was likely the logic of a merchant living a traveler’s life – it was always someone bidding you farewell.
Lawrence thought of such things as he slipped past the town wall inspectors, giving them a regretful wave before bidding farewell to Col and the others as they headed down the road. It occurred to him that it was quite a rarity for him to be seeing others off.
Or perhaps it was the expression worn by Holo right beside him as she waved her small hand toward Col, having seen so much travel herself. Even though there was a faint smile on her face, she seemed somehow resigned.
He realized this was the face of one who had seen humans off again and again and was entirely sick of it. A moment later, Holo stopped waving, and with a small “Mm” sound she stretched her arms to the sky.
“Now then, perhaps some wine.”
Holo spoke to no one in particular. She did this enough when she was giving Lawrence the cold shoulder, but also when she was simply feeling lonely.
There was a practical reason for entrusting Col to Le Roi the book merchant and having both of them travel with Elsa. And since he had a very practical reason, the wisewolf could only come to the logical conclusion and prepare to see Col off.
It had been Lawrence’s duty to teach Col practical things: where to send a letter if he wanted to get in touch, whom to ask for help should be find himself troubled, and so on, but Holo had been the one who conversed with him.
When the time came to replace Col’s tattered, falling-apart sandals, Holo painstakingly selected the shoes they had bought for him. She made full use of her powers as a wolf, sniffing the leather to determine its quality. The craftsman had been dumbfounded.
They had slept together the night before, too. Or perhaps not so much together, as he had slept embracing her tightly as though she were a stuffed doll. Holo’s body temperature ran hot like that of a child, and she even had a fluffy tail; Col had always seemed a bit fond of that. He’d been covered in sweat when waking up the next morning. Perhaps he had dreamed of being eaten by Holo.
In the middle of their journey, they had traveled with others for trivial reasons and had separated for reasons no less trivial. Col was yet another.
It was just that his still-small body hid an ambition within it that would make many adults laugh.
That was why Lawrence could understand him wanting to be with them to confirm Holo’s homeland was safe; he could also understand wanting to help them if push came to shove. But Lawrence believed those on a journey must faithfully walk forward toward their own objectives. It was one of the few things Lawrence could say with real pride.
When one traveled alone on a deserted trade route, they felt like they were alone in the world. However, as they crossed others on the road, one felt the world becoming a wider, more complex, more changing place.
Furthermore, the purpose of one’s journey was precious indeed.
The complexities of the world became reasons to have traveling companions so as not to stray from one’s path, or perhaps, to continue to stay together with someone they were soon to part with.
Lawrence and Holo’s journey, too, had a single objective.
That was the nature of a journey – that and also that someday surely it would end.
Chapter 1
The air was dry and cold, but the sun’s rays were warm as they poured down. Put another way, it was weather for having a blanket to snuggle into.
Furthermore, the cradle sway of a wagon was surely the best lullaby of all.
And still, Lawrence sighed with cheer – for he could not simply pull a blanket over himself and nod off.
The deer-hide gloves he had made were very warm; the knitted wool blanket over his lap was bulky but light. The well-fed horse cheerfully flicked its pale tail about; the road was very pretty and made for easy progress. Under normal circumstances one could hardly complain about such a journey, but unfortunately he did not travel alone.
He was traveling together with a partner from a village called Pasloe, far to the south of where his wagon now advanced. Worshiped by villagers for centuries as a god who governed whether a harvest was poor or bountiful, her true form was a giant wolf that could swallow a man whole. Her fur was the color of flax, long like an aristocrat’s, very soft; her thin body was all one might call the fly in the ointment.
And where was Holo at this moment? Atop the wagon’s cargo, wrapped in a blanket, sleeping without a care. He heard pff and khh, sounds straddling the line between the sounds of sleeping and of snoring.
As she would firmly deny that she snored, they must have been the sounds of sleeping. Quite.
Lawrence had been edging toward parting ways with her here in the town of Lenos, before reaching Yoitsu, but had somehow managed to evade that possibility.
It all had to do with a forbidden script hitherto buried in darkness apparently containing a technique for excavating mines with a higher rate of success. This “mine development” meant shearing off mountaintops, using a great many chemicals for refining, and clear-cutting forests to fuel the required fires. Fouling the water, stripping the mountains, and leaving nothing but wasteland behind, it would be a tragic state of affairs. For Holo, who hailed from Yoitsu, deep in the forests of the northlands, a technique yielding such results was something that must never be permitted to set foot into the world. For Lawrence and Holo to hand it over to a company specializing in mining was nothing short of a nightmare for her.
For that reason, they had sent the script off with Le Roi, the book trader, at the town of Lenos.
Lawrence’s destination was Lesko, a town situated upstream from the west-flowing Roef River.
For many years, the Debau Company that ran it had enjoyed sole control of a large, prominent mining belt and aimed to be the preeminent mineral trader of the age. It was said the Debau Company intended to start a great war in the northlands in pursuit of that objective, conquering the northlands so that it could open even more mines.
As a merchant, since meeting Holo, he had been wrapped up in absurdly large business deals involving thousands or even tens of thousands of trenni silver pieces. He knew how dreadful such things could be; he had experienced firsthand how cheap human life was in the face of such large quantities of coin.
But even so, Lawrence had turned his wagon toward Lesko, for they had heard of a mercenary group quartered there that bore the name of one of Holo’s pack mates from her homeland.
–The name she had sometimes cried out in dreams, not long after Lawrence had first met her.
As they had obtained a map showing the way to Yoitsu, they could have headed there first. Even so, since one never knew when a mercenary group might vanish from the world like so much mist, they set out to meet the mercenaries while their whereabouts were still known.
At any rate, why a mercenary group bearing the name of Holo’s pack mate was associating itself with the Debau Company, supposedly assembling military might from across the northlands, was of particularly great concern. Just thinking about what they might be planning brought up all sorts of things to worry about. If they missed this opportunity, it would not only be more difficult to learn ab
out such important matters, but also what had happened during the centuries Holo spent at Pasloe.
But though they had stopped at a great many places for reasons such as these, this particular stopover came with a little too much tension.
The reason was that ever since Col had left during their preparations to head to Lesko, Holo had spoken very little, barely setting foot out of their room at the inn.
There was the fact that he simply did not know what the right thing to say was.
But another greater reason lay elsewhere.
“Achoo.”
He heard a small sneeze, followed by a moaning voice: “Hnng–”
At times, even while asleep, Holo would notice the approach of her enemies, even if they were veteran soldiers not making the smallest sound. But for the most part, she was nearer to a domesticated dog.
Right now, she shivered, yawning and stretching while curled up in the wool blanket that enveloped her. If she was not moving, she would just fall back asleep, but if she was tossing and turning, it was apparently a sign she was inclined to wake up. After rustling about for a while, she did indeed pop her head out from under the blankets.
“Water.”
As the freshly awoken princess mumbled with a disheveled face, Lawrence the manservant passed her his waterskin.
“Still more of… this scenery for a time, eh…”
He had heard that there was nothing but flat land the whole way, with no difficulties whatsoever. If there was going to be a problem, it was that since the town was at the open entrance to a mountain range, there was a high probability of snowfall. But as there was little snow at this time of year, even if some fell there ought to be no great difficulty.
“Ah… yes.”
The reason Lawrence hesitated a bit as he replied was absolutely not because the answer was uncertain. Nor was it because Holo was right behind the driver’s seat, elbows on the edge of the wagon bed as she leisurely gazed at the scenery, taking the waterskin while he replied.
It was because, when he had turned, Holo’s face bore a blank, unreadable expression.
In truth, Lawrence had not been able to get a read on Holo for the last several days. Was she angry? Was she not angry? It was very hard to tell the difference.
The memory of the harsh blow he had gotten in the town of Lenos was still fresh in his mind. As a man, he regretted deeply that there was nothing he could do here on this back road with not a soul in sight.
However, there was no mistaking that he held Holo dear to him. He did not want to be apart from her for even an instant. And Holo had told him that she felt the same way. Certainly, sometimes she really wound him up. Sometimes his blood rushed to his head. However, that had truly made him happy, enough to wipe out the merchant part of him that did not trust anything until he received a firm answer.
Which was all the more reason why Lawrence could not accept this treatment.
If they both knew they liked each other, why then was she rejecting him?
It was Holo who had first said that if someone were to approach them she would know ahead of time, and with both of them in human form, there was nothing they could not do. They had not even had anything that could be called a quarrel.
Nothing was logically the matter – so what could it be?
And yet Holo had been in a particularly good mood after Lawrence had received his smacking. That he could not understand what that meant whatsoever was rather ominous. Then, Holo seemed to be keeping her distance, never showing any expression worthy of the term, as if she was wearing a mask.
For some reason, he picked up the sullen atmosphere Holo was giving off that very moment as she gazed at the scenery.
Lawrence had no idea what he should do.
“So how long will this take?”
This time he was late in his reply because he was so lost in his thoughts.
“Eh? Ah, er, about six days at the most.”
There had been no villages or towns along the way. For Holo, who found the sight of human beings something that made things more bearable, this had been a long road indeed.
With the steppe scenery continuing on and on, he could understand why she would sigh and stick her tongue out in displeasure.
“I wonder if the town will be lively.”
This was a very important matter to Holo. The livelier a town, the tastier its food and wine. The simple foods of a village were little better than rations on the road.
Given his preexisting concerns about the Debau Company, Lawrence had already tried to discover what he could about the town of Lesko, where the company held sway, to find out what kind of town it was.
But the more he tried to investigate, the more walls he slammed into. As there were few people who had gone as far as Lesko, he could not inquire as to the state of the town in any detail.
Even Philon, who ran a general goods store catering to mercenaries and thus made it his business to know which mercenaries were going where, had no grasp of the state of the town to which they were heading. He had heard it was lively, but that was the most he could share. He had spoken to a number of travelers and boatmen who went up and down the river, always getting the same story: It was indeed a large and lively town. When he asked how it was lively, the boatmen replied that unfortunately, their job was to haul cargo, not to check out the state of a town like Lawrence would. Those engaged in trade in Lenos said that they did not have a firm idea of what people in Lesko did.
No doubt the Debau Company saw to it that its daily needs were fulfilled Via trade across the northlands. Furthermore, as precious metals were its main stock in trade, they were not limited either in variety or scale in what they could sell to ordinary merchants off the street.
“Out of sight, out of mind” went the saying; to ordinary townspeople, a town that required a journey of six to seven days by wagon to reach might as well have been at the very ends of the earth.
What stuck in his mind was that of those who had visited Lesko, every single one had praised it.
The mightier and more ruthless the king, the more the fearful townspeople sung their praises.
He felt that in a town set up by the Debau Company, which even sought to purchase the bones of an ancient being such as Holo in its quest to subdue the northlands, truly anything could be happening.
“I’ve heard it’s lively, but… that might mean by northlands standards,” Lawrence answered discreetly.
Perhaps because she did not appreciate the discretion, he heard Holo make a sound like she was raising one eyebrow, seeming dubious as she asked in return, “What do you mean?”
“Going all the way to Lesko puts us completely outside the Ploania region.” He cut his words off there, not because he thought that explained everything, but because he was reaching into the flaxen pouch sitting right behind him. “Look at this.”
He pulled out fourteen coins that had been packed inside the pouch. When bored with time to spare at inns, Holo had taken them out, gazed at them, and played with them, flicking them with her fingers.
“These are the fourteen main coins in circulation that I got from the money changer. This is because political power in the northlands is chopped up and divided all over the place. So, you can’t get by with just one kind.”
From his wallet, he pulled a trenni silver piece, which could be used in pretty much any town, and showed it to Holo.
“With so many coins about, people don’t accept any coins they haven’t seen before, which means a lot of time spent at the money changer’s, which makes it hard to do business. Since it’s hard to do business, there aren’t very many merchants. That means few guests, and it also means little entertainment. People often say more currencies equals more headaches. Even in this batch I traded for, there are a number of coins I don’t recognize. I don’t know exactly what value they should be exchanged for. If it’s so uncertain and troublesome, you’d want to conduct trade somewhere else, yes?”
Holo made a nod as though she under
stood Lawrence’s words.
This was the sort of conversation Lawrence could really get into. Money had no bias, after all, and furthermore was easy to use.
“Well, certainly simpler ’tis better,” Holo said curtly and huddled under her woolen blanket once more.
He had the feeling she had meant something more by that, but poking the thicket might bring out the snake.
Lawrence faced forward again, unconsciously rubbing the cheek that Holo had slapped so many times.
For a while since they left the town of Lenos, things had definitely grown cooler between him and Holo.
It was the fourth day since this state of affairs had taken shape.
Naturally, nothing could be resolved between them if they were not speaking to each other.
It was simply that when one was sick of traveling, it was difficult to care about the small things.
The night of the fourth day, on some kind of cue, her gaze met Lawrence’s, along with a sour look and a long sigh.
She had probably simply thought it was too much trouble staying this stubborn. Or, at the very least, that it was highly unlikely Lawrence would be the first to break the ice.
A wise decision from the wisewolf.
That was why, when it was time for supper, she pulled back a fair bit of her obstinacy and, for the first time in a while, told him, “Hand me more meat!” When Lawrence put plenty on her plate, her ears twitched happily, even as her face remained sullen.
But she seemed to remain a bit conflicted about her compromise.
Around the time that clumsy small talk between them started to dry up, with the occasional sprinkle of snow accompanying the wind, Holo gently broke the ice.
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