Spice & Wolf V

by Hasekura Isuna

  Spice & Wolf

  V

  Written By: Hasekura Isuna

  Illustrated By: Ayakura Jyuu

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  It was a quiet journey.

  There was no conversation—only the clattering of the wagon.

  They woke, they rattled around in the wagon, they ate—only that.

  Kraft Lawrence sat in the driver’s seat, gripping the reins. It was his seventh year as a traveling merchant since setting out at the age of eighteen.

  Loneliness was the constant companion of the traveling merchant, and he'd often found himself talking to his cart horse. There had been a time when these episodes were frequent. These last few days his quiet travels had continued, and he’d spoken no words worthy of the term.

  Yet if asked if he was lonely, Lawrence’s reply would have been negative, which was unmistakably thanks to his companion, who sat next to him in the driver’s box.

  Though she now had a blanket wrapped around herself so thor­oughly that it was hard to tell if she was a boy or a girl, the beauty of her features would turn any head, and her long, chestnut-brown hair, fine enough to be the pride of any nobleman’s daughter, easily holding the attention of male passersby.

  If she stayed quiet and polite, surely she could have entered the grandest of functions without so much as a hint of shame—yet there was a reason things were not so simple for Lawrence’s companion.

  After all, she had the beast ears and tail that marked her as an evildoer.

  His companion’s name was Holo.

  Her true form was that of a giant wolf so great it could swallow a human in one bite. She was the wolf-god of the harvest, who dwelled within the wheat.

  “…..”

  For a moment, Lawrence wondered if Holo had said something, but perhaps she had simply opened her eyes. Her reasons for doing so were generally obvious.

  She had shifted her tail a moment ago, so next it would be her ears. With a deerskin-gloved hand, Lawrence took hold of Holo’s hood, pulling it slightly up off her head.

  Through his gloved hand, he could feel her shift her wolf ears beneath the hood to a new, more comfortable position. The twitching motion continued for a moment, then stopped. After a period of minute adjustments, she seemed to be satisfied. This called to mind for Lawrence a fastidious noblewoman carefully arranging a flower in a vase until it was just so. Holo sighed softly, then nuzzled her hooded, blanketed head lightly against Lawrence.

  Perhaps it was her way of expressing her thanks.

  Lawrence returned his gaze to the road, and the quiet journey continued.

  They no longer failed to understand each other.

  Even without words, their travels were no longer lonely.

  Chapter 1

  It had been a week since the incidents in the village of Tereo, where they'd very nearly been executed as criminals.

  Lawrence and Holo now made for Lenos, a town where tales of Holo’s exploits in the distant past were said to still exist.

  Lenos was a largish town for the northlands known for its lumber and furs.

  It received its share of visitors, so Lawrence and Holo passed many other merchants who came and went on the road to the town. Lawrence himself had visited it many times in the past, though this time he did not come for business.

  He instead sought information about the ancient home of his companion.

  Thus his wagon bed held none of the trade goods that usually filled it.

  Lawrence had originally planned to sell some of the mountains of cookies the villagers of Tereo had given him as thanks, but they had all been eaten by the wolf who now slept next to him. If there was something tasty to eat, she would devour as much of it as was there, becoming angry when there was no more to be had.

  She ate, drank, and slept a truly stunning amount.

  Lawrence had to admit, though, that between the cold and the boredom, he would fall asleep, too, if he didn’t have to hold the reins. In any case, her ability to sleep all night after drowsing all day was impressive. More than once he wondered if she was waking in the wee hours to sneak off and howl at the moon.

  They had journeyed thus uneventfully for a week before the rain came.

  Holo somehow contrived to predict the bad weather’s arrival two days in advance, so perhaps it was that memory or perhaps it was the falling rain...Either way, she stirred beneath the blanket and gave Lawrence a wordless, resentful glare.

  Lawrence turned away. No matter how accusatory her gaze, it was not as if he could do anything about the rain.

  It had been falling steadily since midday—not in big drops but rather in thin, misty sheets—which was nice enough as far as that went, but given the cold, it was hardly different from being sprin­kled with ice shavings.

  Lawrence’s hands had immediately gone numb, and just as he was beginning to ponder the possibility of hiding himself beneath the wagon bed, some god evidently noticed his good behavior.

  Holo, too, noticed and popped her head out from underneath the blanket.

  She yawned hugely. “...At this rate, it looks like we’ll make it through without being frozen.”

  “That’s easy for you to say bundled up in that blanket while I shiver away here, reins in hand.”

  “Hmph. ’Tis my cold heart. It needs must be kept warm,” she said with a grin.

  Lawrence found himself unable to be angry.

  Ahead of them on the road stood their destination, a dark shadow that loomed in the otherwise pale white scenery.

  “There ’tis. Like a piece of burnt rice floating in stew,” said Holo, her empty stomach making a ridiculous growling noise. Evidently, even this displeased wisewolf had not expected her stomach to growl at such an inopportune moment. After a stunned moment, she smiled sweetly, having forgotten her teasing entirely.

  Lenos was a large port town built alongside the broad, slow Roam River, which meant that if they could see the town, the river should likewise be visible. At the moment, though, it was blurred from sight by the falling mist. Had it been clear, they would no doubt have seen the many boats that plied the river’s surface.

  Upon entering the town, it was clear that there were many boats tied up at their moorings in addition to the constant traffic on the river. Holo’s beloved food stalls were abundant as was strong liquor.

  If the coming winter’s snow was going to delay their progress, they would at least make certain to enjoy their time here.

  Lawrence did have one worry, though.

  “There's something I should say, just to make sure you under­stand.”

  “Mm?”

  "I know you visited this place long ago, but you may have forgotten, so I’ll say it again: Lenos is a town of lumber and fur.”

  “Quite.”

  It was admittedly rather late to be bringing this up, but the treatment he could reasonably give her still depended on whether or not he’d made this point clear.

  "Will you be angry if some of those furs are wolf pelts?”

  Holo’s expression was maddeningly ambiguous as she pulled at her collar, unwrapping the fox fur muffler that she wore.

  It was a gift from Amati, the youth who had courted her in the town of Kumersun.

  There was nothing inherently wrong about her wearing it, and the muffler was admittedly very useful in the cold weather, so

  Lawrence had kept silent. Seeing it now, however, made him shift uncomfortably.

  No doubt aware of this, Holo wore the muffler in an especially warm-looking fashion, but she now removed it and pointed the fox’s head at Law
rence. “I’ve eaten mice, me, and been eaten by wolves!” she squeaked, her voice changing in a mockery of what he supposed was a fox.

  Lawrence sighed.

  He was up against Holo the Wisewolf.

  “Hmph,” Holo continued. “There is the hunter, and the hunted. And besides, you humans do far worse things. Do you not even buy and sell your fellow man?”

  “This is true. The slave trade is both necessary and very prof­itable.”

  “Just as you can accept that as the custom of your world, we can be calm toward those who are hunted. And besides, what if the position was switched?” Holo narrowed her red-brown eyes.

  Lawrence thought back to the exchange he’d had with Holo not long after they’d met—when she’d said that a wolf’s cleverness came from devouring humans.

  Even Lawrence felt that if a traveler strayed into wolf territory and failed to escape, the blame lay with the traveler. It was one thing to fear wolves, but actually hating them for this was a mistake, he felt.

  This much was obvious to Lawrence.

  “Still, I suppose seeing one’s fellows hunted before one’s very eyes is hardly an easy thing,” said Holo.

  Lawrence nodded his understanding.

  Holo continued. “And you were nice enough to get flustered when I was hunted by another man,” she said coyly, her mood now totally different from the state she had been in a few moments ago.

  “Ah, yes, I certainly did,” said Lawrence perfunctorily, returning his gaze to the cart horse ahead of him.

  “Whence this uncaring affect?”

  “Well...,” began Lawrence, his eyes fixed steadily ahead. “It's embarrassing.”

  It is a wholly embarrassing admission, Lawrence thought to himself.

  But to the wolf who sat beside him, such morsels were a delicacy, so it could hardly be helped.

  Holo laughed hard enough that in the cold air, the white fog of her exhalations blurred her face. “Embarrassing, eh?”

  “Entirely.”

  Conversation tended to naturally die down in the cold monotony of the long journey. Though knowing each others’ dispositions as well as they did meant wordless exchanges could set Lawrence’s mind at ease, they were still no substitute for real conversation like this. The two laughed at each other. The cart horse flicked its tail, as if to say, “Enough!” which only triggered another wave of laughter from its passengers.

  Holo rewrapped the fox fur muffler around her neck as she giggled while Lawrence turned his gaze back to the panorama of Lenos that now came into focus.

  It might have been twice the size of the pagan town of Kumersum. Surrounded by walls constructed perhaps a century earlier, the houses within the walls had long since filled the enclosed area. With no more room to build outward, buildings instead became more concentrated—and taller, always taller.

  The scene spread out now before Lawrence made it look for a moment as though the town had finally overflowed its own walls.

  Dozens of tents flanked the road on both sides as they made their way to Lenos through the misting rain.

  "Is this what they call a gate-front town, then?” asked Holo.

  “That sort of thing happens around churches, yes, especially when the church has been plopped in the middle of the wilderness somewhere. It would be strange, though, to be constantly setting up shop outside the town walls.”

  For a town to prosper, it had to collect taxes, and to collect those taxes, it had to make people pass through its gates.

  Of course, there were cramped towns that held their markets outside of the town, but even those were enclosed by temporary fences.

  “Hmm. It hardly seems as though these people are engaging in trade.”

  Just as Holo said this, they drew closer to the tents and could see that the people beneath them wore traveling clothes and were busy cooking or chatting. And though they all wore traveling garments, the styles were from far and wide. Some seemed to be from even farther north than here while others were from the west or the south. At quick count, there seemed to be around twenty tents, each sheltering perhaps three or four people.

  The one commonality was that they all seemed to be merchants who specialized in this or that commodity. Roughly half of them seemed to be hauling large loads with a few wagons even carrying giant barrels.

  All the merchants’ faces were tinged with dust and travel fatigue, and the occasional flash of irritation showed in their eyes.

  Lawrence wondered if there’d been some kind of a coup in Lenos, but that didn’t make sense given that only some of the people gathered there seemed to be quartered in tents. There were also farmers with donkeys in tow and merchantlike people carrying loads on their backs, all hurrying toward Lenos to get out of the rain or setting out toward any number of other destinations.

  As far as Lawrence could tell, the town seemed more or less as it always had.

  “Some kind of trouble again, perhaps?” mused Holo, emphasizing the “again” and grinning beneath her hood.

  Lawrence glanced at Holo out of the corner of his eye, as if to ask, “And precisely whose fault has that been?” but she simply shot the same look back at him.

  “It may be true that since meeting me you’ve had a few scrapes, but one can hardly claim that they were directly my fault.”

  “I—”

  “I will grant the first one—well, part of that might have been owing to me, but its true cause was your avarice, which was wholly to blame for the next disaster. And our last problem was simple bad luck. Am I wrong?”

  Holo was nothing if not precise.

  Lawrence stroked his beard, which was longer of late, given his reluctance to shave without hot water, but still he did not give in and agree with her. “I suppose I understand what you’re saying...”

  “Mm.”

  But I simply cannot agree. It’s true that you weren’t necessarily there to trigger our troubles, but...”

  Lawrence couldn’t bring himself to agree with Holo’s assessment.

  He wanted to tell her that it was her fault.

  As his grumble trailed off, Holo gave him a look as if she couldn’t even believe they were having the conversation. “I can see all too clearly how you don’t want to agree with me, even though I am hardly the root cause of all these troubles.”

  Lawrence knitted his brows, wondering what trickery she was up to. She noted this and giggled.

  Holo continued. “’Tis because you always use me as the basis for your actions—hence you always feel I’m pulling you this way and that.”

  Lawrence’s left eyebrow twitched involuntarily.

  She was right.

  But admitting it would mean the wolf had gotten the best of him.

  In other words—

  “Heh. Always stubborn,” said Holo, her voice as grating as the chill mist that fell from the sky.

  Her smile was every bit as pure and fickle and cold as though she was about to run away forever.

  He had to catch her.

  In defiance of all reason, Holo’s smile made him want to shout out loud.

  The next moment, her small body would be in his arms.

  It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

  “Mmph.”

  The urge lasted no more than four of the cart horses’ steps.

  Lawrence managed to keep his cool as he guided the wagon into the line for the checkpoint into town.

  The reason for his restraint was simple.

  There was a crowd of people around them.

  As they plied their trade routes, traveling merchants loved to gossip, even about their own ilk. If Lawrence was seen openly flirting with his companion, no doubt the tale would spread.

  Holo looked aside, seeming bored.

  No doubt she was bored.

  Despite the fact that Lawrence had always perceived all women’s smiles to be the same, he could now follow the slightest changes of expression on Holo’s face. In addition to her boredom, there was a flicker of uneas
e.

  He saw this and realized something. There were two basic mo­tivations for his actions.

  One was Holo.

  The other was business.

  Holo feared loneliness even more than Lawrence did. No doubt she was sometimes frightened by the prospect of being weighed against business. In the end, only the gods could know which way the balance would tip in the end—or how close it might be.

  And the end of their journey was not far away.

  Would she venture to cause trouble just when Lawrence had to put on his merchant face, just to test which way he would choose, forcing the issue of whether she was more important than his ledgers balance?

  Not that she was so insignificant as to warrant that kind of worry, Lawrence found himself thinking.

  The wagon inched forward in the slow-moving line, and a great puff of white fog issued from beneath Holo’s hood as she looked at him irritably.

  “Some stew would be nice,” she said.

  No doubt she was talking about dinner. Evidently the time for affirmations had passed.

  "Aye, with this cold. Depending on the price, I’d take a stew with a proper thick flour broth.”

  "Ho, ho! Sometimes the sweet smell of milk surpasses that of the finest wine.”

  Seeing her like this, face half-wrapped in the fox fur muffler as she nodded her delighted agreement, erased the past several days of irritated remarks he’d endured.

  Sometimes it was good to order something full of tasty ingredients. “A stew made with the vegetables of the season would be especially good,” said Lawrence.

  “Vegetables? Do you not understand the flavor of delicious stewed meat floating in the creamy broth?”

  Despite having spent centuries in the wheat fields, Holo's tastes were more aristocratic than any nobles.

  There before the walls of Lenos, Lawrence made one last counter attack. He regretted having indulged her.

  “They say fine foods can be bad for the eye and bad for the tongue.”

  “Oh? And how bad for my heart do you think it was to go so many centuries without so much as a taste?” Holo glared up at him sharply.