Holo had to have been resigned to that from the start; surely she had experienced it a number of times. In all honesty, for Holo to be this much at a loss even so made Lawrence think, as a man, he was proud to have come this far in his life.
His gaze fell to Holo’s hand; he slowly shifted his gaze to Holo once more. Holo continued to stare at Lawrence, sobbing and sniffling all the while, having wholly cast aside her vanity as the self-proclaimed wisewolf.
Lawrence took her hand.
Holo was still crying.
This wisewolf knew from the start what Lawrence would say.
“Then, it’s fine if you don’t decide.”
Lawrence spoke while bringing Holo’s small body into both of his arms.
“You knew from the beginning that we should hand the book over to Hilde, didn’t you?”
Lawrence felt largely the same way that Holo did.
The pros and cons were quite clear, all the more so when the conditions were so clear.
Even so, Lawrence had tried to somehow win one against Holo. He was bad at giving in – a common trait among merchants.
And Holo must have anticipated what Lawrence would say in the end.
That was how she wanted it.
She must have been ashamed at how she was weeping, capable only of waiting for the words she desired.
However, if the most precious person to him in the whole world was waiting for her own words, Lawrence would proudly deliver the words she was waiting for.
“I will follow what is profitable for me and hand the forbidden book to Hilde. You objected. You objected for a variety of reasons. I’ll take responsibility. I’m not sure how I’ll take responsibility yet, but I’ll take it. I will take it. Is there any deceit in my words?”
Holo weakly shook her head side to side.
“Sorry,” she said in apology several times.
“It’s settled, then. I’ll hand the forbidden book to Hilde. Lift up your face and look at me.”
Lawrence grasped Holo’s slender shoulders, pushing her away a short distance to the point it was a little rough.
Holo was still crying.
One would not think she was a wisewolf at all. But really, she wasn’t.
The name wisewolf was Holo’s false form that was worshiped by the villagers of Yoitsu.
“We’ve managed this far. We’ll manage this time, too.”
Even logic like this was something Holo required to endure the loneliness nipping at her heels.
“So, don’t cry anymore.”
Lawrence forcefully wiped Holo’s eyes with the nub of his finger.
As he did so, tears fell again where Lawrence’s finger had pressed. He wiped those away, too.
“If you cry too much, you’ll give me odd ideas again.”
He lightly slapped her cheek and laughed. Holo laughed as if coughing from a joke that was just too awful, then, on cue, cried again just a little.
However, he had said all he had wanted to say.
Holo wiped her face with her own hand, wiping further with her sleeve in rough motions. There was no more for Lawrence to do. Finally, Lawrence offered his hand to Holo.
“Let’s go back to the inn.”
Holo took his hand and nodded firmly.
The next day, Lawrence awoke before Holo.
Even now, Holo’s face looked like she had cried herself to sleep; her breaths seemed labored as she slept. As she usually slept curled up like a beast, the fact that her face was poking out from the futon was yet another reminder that things were not normal.
Lawrence had been by her side ever since the night before.
To Holo, Lawrence would die in but a very short time. Even if she had been overwhelmed by her feelings in that moment, the fact that the words had come out of her own mouth had frightened her.
Lawrence was not the one who would see her off.
He thought that as he remembered seeing Col off from Lenos.
The face Holo made while watching him go was a very tired one. As she desperately tried to do so with a smile, the fact that whomever one saw off did not return exhausted her under the surface.
It would be nice if at least one person you saw off returned.
She looked too exhausted even to entertain such absurd impossibilities.
Even if there were countless great men who could perform miraculous resuscitations, there were none who could defy the passage of time.
Holo was always the one to watch others go. She always had been and always would be.
Lawrence stroked Holo’s cheek and got down from the bed. He opened the wooden shutters a crack; it was once again cold but rather bright. It was lively outside; there was not a shred of any sense of the Debau Company being internally split in two or of a war breaking out in the air at all.
Tragedy always came suddenly; then all was revealed.
All Lawrence could do was to keep his feet moving at all costs, even within the raging storm.
Moving forward was all he could do for Holo.
Losing battles were always depressing stories; by that measure, Holo’s life had been one prolonged losing battle against fate and providence.
Lawrence tidied himself and left the room.
He thought it a little cold, but as if to show he would soon return, he left his coat behind.
“Business with the young master, you say?”
When Lawrence went to Moizi’s room on the third floor, it was apparent Moizi drank in his own room as well. The sleepy-looking Moizi slowly exited the room, along with a fierce whiff of alcohol.
“Yes. I have a bit to discuss.”
“Mm… if he is not in his room… and he’s not. Pardon me for a moment.”
Opening the door, Moizi urged Lawrence inside; in short order, Moizi came back into the room with a water jug in his hand.
And even though he was in front of the desk, he poured the water down atop his own head, shaking his head like a dog.
“Whew! My goodness. I don’t want to get any older if that’s all it takes to get me drunk.”
“It seems to have been quite the celebration.”
“Ha-ha. How embarrassing. I do have the excuse that one knows not when one will perish, so one must drink to the fullest.”
So enjoy every drink as if it is one’s last.
Certainly that was an excuse anywhere on earth for warding off admonitions against heavy drinking.
“Now, then, the young master.”
When he combed his hand back along his head, his silver hair stuck up like needles.
Such vigor at his age – no doubt, when he was younger, he had truly been a wolf or a bear of a mercenary.
“Yes. Do you know where he might be?”
“He’s probably with Rebonato… Ah, that’s the name of the head of the Hugo Mercenary Company. I think he’s probably there, but… the young master and other heads of companies travel in different circles than the membership. I don’t know what liquor he was invited to drink or where he got himself drunk.”
As befitted a frank, forthright mercenary, he left it at that. Besides, it seemed those that managed groups indeed traveled in their own special circles.
“As it seems you are in a hurry, I can get the youngster moving, but…”
Moizi’s words silenced Lawrence for several seconds.
Sensing his hesitation, Moizi slipped out of words suited to a man of battle and into others. “Perhaps I can be of assistance?” This was the old, practical strategist managing a mercenary company. Normally, for Moizi to send for the head of the company, there had to be a rather good reason.
“Of course, it’s no problem at all. I am merely a little concerned that he will feel responsible for being drunk and asleep at a critical time if I speak of this to you first.”
Perhaps it was too harsh a thing to say to Moizi, who seemed to still have liquor left in him.
That concern flew out the window in an instant.
“I’ll send the youngster running
. It won’t be long.”
Moizi strode past Lawrence into the corridor.
He yelled “Messenger!” in a great voice that seemingly threatened to bring the whole building down.
Blessed by an omniscient and omnipotent God, lords ruled their lands by divine right, and knights swore fealty to those lords. It was God that determined what the lord, his earthly representative, did and desired for his lands. And so, at times, even forests that had stood unmolested until now and vast steppes across the land suddenly cried out as they became charred, barren wastes.
The fate of this town was in the grasp of the Debau Company, a lord without a face.
A faction holding contrary views, having launched an internal rebellion and succeeded, was an exceedingly serious matter to those mercenaries entrusting their very lives to the company.
“My word.” Luward had wobbled back to the inn, pulled along by the hands of two youngsters, as if a pair of younger brothers were pulling their beloved older brother along. He washed and wiped his face with a hand towel and lifted up his face. “How certain is this information?”
Like the cog of a waterwheel, the direction Luward’s troop would advance shifted depending on the information they obtained. At that moment, they so feared being led astray by a mistaken report.
Lawrence and Holo might skirt by with moderate damage, but for Luward and his men, their fates quite literally depended on it.
“Does the name Hilde Schnau ring a bell?”
As Lawrence spoke, Luward looked at Moizi.
Moizi replied in his place. “The treasurer of the Debau Company. He is said to be the owner’s right-hand man.”
“If Holo’s ears are correct, he is, as he claimed to be, this Hilde Schnau.”
No lies slipped past Holo’s ears; there was no lack of such legends concerning ancient beings such as Holo. Luward stared at the towel he had wiped his face with, giving it a look as sharp as a drawn and bloody blade.
“One of my comrades has heard talk of dealings with the Debau Company going bad, that some kind of internal conflict seemed to be taking place,” said Luward.
One of the youngsters moved to sensibly take the towel away, but Luward wiped his face once more and tilted his head.
“Issuing the new currency is vital business. And no doubt the profit’s enough to make your head spin. So, we joked that they’re done using us so they’re not giving us the time of day anymore, but…”
“It seems the owner and most of his faction have already been confined within the company.”
Lawrence’s words did not change Luward or Moizi’s expressions one bit. No doubt he would have elicited more of a reaction if he had told them the daily price of bread had fallen.
“They got greedy.”
Luward saw right through it in an instant.
“Fools. Wearing a bear’s hide doesn’t make you a bear. They think they can behave like the lords of the south just because they made a lot of money? These are the northlands, forsaken by even the Church. They don’t see they’ve confused the ends and the means. Thinking that all you have to do is attack and the war ends just like that is why the lords here are mocked as bumpkins.”
On the map spread across the wall, there were a number of narrow-looking, slender roads that cut between the mountains. If it were the plains of Ploania to the south, such narrow roads would not even appear on a map.
However, these were the main thoroughfares of the northlands; they were vital but tenuous lifelines that connected the hollows of the mountains to a portion of the deep forests that had been cut open.
Such roads could lead to a unit on the advance passing through very constrained places along the way; for their part, merchants were fearful of their lines of communication with one another being cut off.
“And? Is that all that the treasurer had to say to you, Mr. Lawrence?”
Surely Luward was thinking of other comrades who he should inform of these matters, and also, where the flames of war would spring should they erupt.
As Luward silently stared at the map stretched over the wall, Moizi asked in his place.
“No. He seeks cooperation to regain internal control of the Debau Company.”
Luward turned toward him. “Cooperation.”
In war, who was friend and who was foe was a matter of life and death.
“As a practical matter, this means only handing over an object we obtained in Lenos that will further his plan, but…”
“Mmm.”
The aged, bearded soldier tugged at his chin, while Luward folded his arms and lifted his own chin.
“Mr. Lawrence, you came across some kind of treasure on some adventure?”
“It was somewhat related to a business deal – a forbidden book, which contains techniques for mine excavation.”
The expressions of the two mercenaries did not change from this, either. It seemed their faces betrayed less the more important the information that was before them.
They truly believed that no matter how unnatural it might feel, the moment one lost discipline is the moment one failed.
“Holo and I wanted the forbidden book to occupy the bookshelf of some dilettante in the south for all time, so we cooperated with a book merchant. Right now, that book merchant is headed to the town of Kieschen, far to the south, with an acquaintance of ours.”
“Kieschen. That’s nearly a week’s travel, even with a fast horse.”
Moizi nodded to confirm what Luward seemingly said to himself.
“Last night, the luggage of our acquaintance, one which ought to be with the book merchant far from here, was tossed right before our eyes. It seems they took it so that they could speak to us. The request for cooperation from Mr. Hilde was on top of that.”
“Among our comrades, that method for requesting cooperation is respectfully referred to as ‘extortion,’” said Luward.
“Yes. However, Mr. Hilde seems to have arranged it to demonstrate that he is determined, to the death if need be.”
Knowing Holo’s true form, Luward said with a nod, “I see,” and then raised his face.
“Then, this Hilde is…”
“Not human.”
He could trust Luward. When Lawrence nodded briefly, Luward’s lack of expression did not falter. After a pause, all he muttered was, “I – I see…”
“And so, we have agreed to cooperate with Mr. Hilde.”
As Lawrence declared it was so, Luward’s gaze did not climb or any such thing. Instead, he gazed at a bare spot on top of the table, as if putting a plan in order in his head.
“Or rather, only to hand the forbidden book over. Tonight we will inform him as much.”
“What are his chances of victory?” Luward asked straightforwardly.
It was refreshingly pragmatic.
“He has a chance. That is as far as I will go.”
The larger the affair, the more difficult it was to stop the flames of avarice once they had been set ablaze.
Now that the company had begun issuing its own currency and facing off against the landowners by itself, he did not know how much they could resist, regardless of how influential they were within the company.
After all, this was a matter of profit.
Speaking of dreams would of course be seen as trying to spoil things with small-minded logic.
If one was dealing with men with swords on their hips, they would rebuke with a simple Silence! and have their faithful subordinates slice a person into ribbons as a matter of course.
“In other words, you are telling us to run, Mr. Lawrence?”
As the waterwheel turned the cog, the pestle would soon fall.
Luward had no doubt worked out in his own head that something similar was coming here.
Lawrence nodded.
“I am. If Mr. Hilde fails to persuade them, I think we shall be endangered ourselves. I am nimble, and I have someone who will protect me. However, you… require time when altering the route of your advance.”
> The word retreat was the word most associated with dishonor among mercenaries.
“Mmm. Certainly, changing the route of one’s advance takes time. But retreat takes even more time.” Luward grinned and laughed. “We’re a hardheaded, stubborn bunch, after all.”
Lawrence meant to carefully pick his words; Luward seemed especially fond of them.
“Altering the course of your advance, eh…?” Luward repeated to himself with a small smile. “I’ve seen what happens when you try to drench a blaze with cold water. Have you seen a refinery, Mr. Lawrence?”
When asked, Lawrence replied that he had not.
Of course, he had seen a number of factories with furnaces within towns, but what Luward was referring to was a huge furnace made by gouging out the slope of a hill.
“You have five or six people working, using bellows to pump air into a furnace taller than a siege engine. The coal makes a sound like the breath of a demon as it burns. If you toss water onto it, you don’t put the fire out; rather, the flames swell up like an explosion.”
It seemed that with anything, the results could be reversed if the situation was extreme enough.
“I’m sure they’re painfully aware of what they’ll need to do to realize their ambitions. Right now, they’re all hot and excited. I credit the courage of someone who’d dare pour water over them. But the cost of failure is high.”
Luward looked up at the ceiling and said, “Boom,” before continuing. “Understood. Mr. Lawrence, thank you. I won’t make you have to convince me. After all, I was planning to leave the town behind anyway. This just speeds things up a bit. There’s still plenty of booze left in this world that I haven’t gotten to drink, after all. This is no time to dawdle around.”
He sounded like Holo when he said that. Perhaps being born close to Yoitsu was responsible for his love of drink.
Luward firmly gripped Lawrence’s hand. “I’ll leave a few good men behind. When it’s time to run, use them. We’ll be waiting on the road that goes to Yoitsu. From there, we know plenty of paths leading east.”
So even now, he intended to lead them to Yoitsu.
Mercenaries had a strong sense of duty.
“So, we’d better move quickly and quietly. We’ll get our baggage together while they’re too worried about internal problems to look outside. Moizi, what’s our food situation?”
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