Authors: Hasekura Isuna
After passing many quiet hours this way, Holo finally stirred herself awake just past noon. She rubbed her eyes, her face still clearly bearing the marks of whatever she had slept against.
She hauled herself up to the driver’s seat and gulped some water
from a water-skin, a blank expression on her face. Happily, she did not seem hungover. Had she been, Lawrence might have had
to stop the wagon—otherwise, she might wind up vomiting in the wagon bed, an outcome that didn’t bear thinking about.
“’Tis good weather today,” said Holo.
"It is."
The two exchanged lazy pleasantries, then both yawned hugely.
The road that they were on was one of the major northbound trade routes, so they encountered many other travelers while following it. Among them were merchants flying flags of countries so far away that Lawrence only knew of them from import receipts. Holo saw the flags and seemed to think they were simply advertising the merchant’s home country, but generally the small flags were displayed so that merchants from the same nation could identify a fellow countryman should he pass. Generally such encounters would give way to exchanges of news from the old country. Arriving in a foreign land, where the language, food, and dress were all different, could lead even a constantly traveling merchant to homesickness.
Lawrence explained this to Holo, who then gazed at the small flags of passing merchants, deep in thought.
Holo had left her homeland hundreds of years ago, and her desire to speak to someone from her birthplace was stronger than any traveling merchant’s homesickness.
“Ah, well, I’ll be back soon enough, eh?” she declared with a smile, but there was a touch of loneliness in it.
It seemed to Lawrence that he should have some response to this, but none came to mind, and as he drove the horse along the road, the afternoon sun made the thought hazy in his mind.
There was nothing finer than warm sunlight in the cool season.
But the stillness was soon shattered.
Just as Lawrence and Holo started to doze off in the driver’s seat, Holo spoke abruptly.
"Hey."
“...Mm?”
"T here is a group of people.”
“What’d you say?” Lawrence asked as he scrambled to grab the reins, his sleepiness gone in an instant. He narrowed his eyes and looked ahead into the distance.
Despite the slight undulations in the road, the generally flat terrain offered a good view ahead.
But Lawrence saw nothing. He looked to Holo, who now stood, staring forward intently.
“They are certainly there. I wonder what happened.”
“Are they carrying weapons?”
There were only a few ways to explain a group of people on a trade road. Lawrence hoped for a large caravan of merchants, a column of pilgrims all visiting the same destination, or a member of the nobility visiting a foreign country.
Hut there were other, less-pleasant possibilities.
They could be bandits, rogues, hungry soldiers returning home, or mercenaries. Encountering returning soldiers or mercenaries might mean giving up everything he owned—if he was lucky.
His life could well be forfeit.
What would happen to his female companion went without saying.
“I...do not see any weapons. They don’t seem to be annoying soldiers, at any rate.”
"You’ve encountered soldiers?” asked Lawrence, slightly surprised.
“They had long, sharp spears, which made them quite a bother.
Though they couldn’t keep up with my wits,” Holo said so proudly that Lawrence didn’t venture to ask what had happened to the unlucky mercenaries.
“There’s...no one about, yes?” Holo looked around quickly, then pulled her hood back, and exposed her wolf ears.
Her pointed ears were the same brown as her tail, and like her tail, they expressed her mood so effectively that they were a good way to tell when she was (for example) lying.
Those same ears pricked forward intently.
Holo’s attitude was every inch the wolf searching out its prey.
Lawrence had encountered such a wolf once before.
It had been a dark, windy night. Lawrence had been following a road across a plain, and by the time he heard the first howl, he was already within the wolves’ territory. Baying sounded from every direction, when he realized he was surrounded, and the horse that pulled his wagon was half-mad with fear.
Just then, Lawrence caught sight of a single wolf.
Its posture was fearless as it had looked straight at Lawrence, its ears so keenly fixed upon him that he was sure it could hear him breathe. He had
known that forcing his way free from the wolves’ snare would be impossible, so he immediately took out a leather bag and, making sure the wolf could see, dumped all the meat, bread, and other provisions he had onto the ground. Then he urged his horse onward, the wolf watching him all the while.
He could feel the beast’s gaze on his back for some time, but eventually the howls seemed to cluster around the food he had dropped, and he escaped unscathed.
Lawrence would never forget that wolf. And at this moment, Holo looked just like it.
“Hmm...seems there’s some kind of to-do,” said Holo, bringing Lawrence out of his reverie; he shook his head to clear it.
“Is there a market I’ve forgotten about?” said Lawrence. Road side meetings to exchange information and advance trade were not unheard of.
“I wonder. It doesn’t smell of a fight. That’s for sure.”
Holo pulled her hood back over her head and sat down.
Lawrence was preoccupied with driving the cart as she regarded him with an expression that said, “So what shall we do?”
The merchant was deep in thought as he visualized a map of the area.
Lawrence knew he had to get the arms in his wagon bed to I he Church city of Ruvinheigen. He had signed a contract to that effect with a company in Ruvinheigen. If he detoured now, he would have to backtrack along a very roundabout route—the only other roads were so poor as to be passable only on foot. “You don’t smell any blood, do you?” asked Lawrence.
Holo shook her head decisively.
“Let’s go, then. The detour is a bit too far.”
“And even if they should be mercenaries, you have me,” said Holo, pulling out the leather pouch filled with wheat that hung from her neck. A better bodyguard didn’t exist.
Lawrence smiled trustingly as he drove the horse down the road.
"So, to detour around here, take the path of Saint Lyne?”
“No, it’s surely shorter to take the road that crosses the plains to Mitzheim.”
“Anyway, is that talk about the mercenary band true?”
“Buy this cloth, won’t you? I’ll take salt in exchange.”
“Anyone here speak Parcian? I think this guy’s got a problem!” Lawrence and Holo caught snatches of conversation as they reached the throng of people.
Some of the people stopped in the road were recognizable at a glance as merchants. Others were artisans from different lands on pilgrimages to improve their skills.
Some walked; others traveled by wagon or carriage. Some led donkeys loaded with bundles of straw. Conversation was everywhere, and those who didn’t share a common language gesticulated wildly in efforts to make themselves understood.
Getting into a confrontation because of a language barrier is a terrifyingly unforgettable experience—all the more so when you happen to be carrying your entire fortune with you.
Sadly, Lawrence didn’t understand the man, either. He empathized, but there was nothing he could do, and he didn’t know what the precise problem was anyway.
Lawrence glanced at Holo—a sign that she should stay quietly sitting in the driver’s seat—and hopped out of the wagon, hailing a nearby merchant.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“Hm? Oh, a fellow traveler. Have you just arrived?”
“Yes, from Poroson. But what’s going on here? Surely the local earl hasn’t decided to open a market here.”
“Hah! Nay, were that so, we’d all have mats spread on the ground and be trading the day away. In truth, there’s tell of a mercenary band crossing the road to Ruvinheigen. So we’re all stopped here.”
The merchant wore a turban and loose, baggy pants. The man had a heavy mantle wrapped about his neck and large knapsack slung over his back. Judging by his heavy clothes, the merchant frequented the heart of the northlands.
The dust of the road lingered on his snow-burned face. The many wrinkles and the tanned leather pallor of his skin were proof of a long life as a traveling merchant.
“A mercenary band? I know General Rastuille’s group patrols these parts.”
“No, they were flying crimson flags with a hawk device upon them.”
Lawrence knitted his brow. “The Heinzberg Mercenary Band?”
“Oh ho. I see you’ve traveled the northlands. Indeed, they say it’s the Hawks of Heinzberg—I’d sooner run into bandits than them when carrying a full load of goods.”
It was said that the Hawks of Heinzberg were so hungry for wealth that wherever they passed, not so much as a single turnip leaf would be left behind if they thought it could be sold. They had made their name in the northlands, and if they were on the road ahead, trying to pass it would be suicidal.
The Heinzberg mercenaries were reputed to spot their prey faster than a hawk on the wing. They would be upon a lazily traveling merchant in an instant, surely.
However—mercenaries acted purely out of self-interest, and in that sense, they were not far from merchants. Essentially, when they behaved strangely, there was often something similarly unexpected happening in the marketplace.
For example, a sharp jump or drop in the price of goods.
Being a merchant, Lawrence was naturally pessimistic, but pessimism would get him nowhere, he knew—he was already on the road, loaded with goods. All that mattered now was how he would get to Ruvinheigen.
“So it seems taking a long detour is the only course,” said Lawrence.
“Most probably. Apparently there’s a new road to Ruvinheigen that heads off from the road to Kaslata, but it’s been on the unsafe side lately, I hear.”
Lawrence had not been in this region for half a year, so this was the first he had heard of a new road. He seemed to recall that on the northern side of the plains that stretched out, there was an eerie forest that was the source of constant unpleasant rumors.
“Unsafe?” he asked. “Unsafe how?”
“Well, there have always been wolves in the plains, but it’s been especially bad lately, they say There’s a story going around that an entire caravan was taken two weeks ago—and the wolves were summoned by a pagan sorcerer.”
Lawrence then remembered that the unpleasant rumors were mainly of wolves. He realized Holo was probably listening in on this conversation and stole a glance at her. A smile danced around the corners of her mouth.
“How do you get to this new road?”
“Hah, you’re going to go? You’re quite the rash one. Take this road straight, then turn right when it forks. Keep going for quite a while, then it will split again, and you bear left. Though peacefully whiling away two or three days here should be all right. It’d take but five minutes to tell if the mercenaries really are there, but by the time you saw them, it’d be too late. The merchants with fish or meat will have to head to a different city, but I’ll play it safe.”