They Should Have Known Their Place (1)
Creeeak...!
The inn's old hinges shrieked as the door swung in the hard wind, grinding out that same creak again and again, but no one inside cared how grating the sound became.
"This rotten world! It's finished, I tell you—finished!"
"What am I supposed to do about this month's keep?"
"Heard they're gathering mercenaries and soldiers lately. Think I ought to try the mercenary life?"
It was the ordinary sort of inn, the kind whose real trade was drink. To men drunk and clamoring over one another, it hardly mattered how much the hinges grated. Strange, though: for all the noise, not a smile showed at anyone's mouth. Liquor was what you drank to forget a hard life, and yet they looked no happier for drinking it. Nothing came out of them but grumbling thick with lament.
Given the present, that was only natural.
...Life had grown so bitter that even drink could no longer make them forget it. So of course there was no laughter.
"Looks like the provincial lords finally went and picked a fight with Mordred."
"How old is that news? Those lords' heads have been up on poles for four days."
"Ah. Was it?"
"Go easy on the drink. A memory that bad is a problem, I swear."
"Haha. Forgetting's the happier way, that's all."
"...Someone you knew die in this territory war?"
"Not family, exactly. A friend of mine..."
"Haa. It's that kind of time, isn't it. Don't grieve too hard."
"......"
...The two men tipped their beer back again and said nothing more.
This kind of time. Half a year ago, no one could have imagined it. Who would have guessed that indiscriminate territory wars would break out across the whole of the South?
"...Nobles, every last one of them, seem to have worse heads than commoners like us. However strong they fancy themselves, they're still only deer. What made them think they could bring down an elephant? Tsk, tsk."
When the royal house of Pendragon effectively collapsed, the South slid into an age of chaos. The great noble houses each declared independence, and the provincial lords took that for their chance, banding their strength together to declare war upon the great nobles.
But hadn't someone said you had to know your place?
The houses that made war on the great nobles were scorched to nothing as a matter of course, and word kept drifting in, idle as gossip, of noble families ruined or wiped out root and branch. Through all of it, people came to understand two things anew. One: they were living in an age of war. Two: war was the chief culprit in the wreck of countless ordinary lives.
And little wonder. Most of those here had lost their livelihoods the moment the wars began, and even those who still had work had often gone unpaid of late. Others stood at a fork, choosing whether to become soldiers or mercenaries. It was the old law made plain: the harsher the world grew, the heavier it fell upon the common people.
If it were only that life was hard, a person might still muddle through somehow....
"Did you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"...That the village next to ours vanished overnight."
"Mmm..."
"Way I heard it, the whole village evaporated. The elder, when the story reached him, he said..."
A thin hush slid through the noise.
"...that a demon had appeared."
That a state of things already judged cruel might grow worse still was a horror in itself. War had begun to swallow the whole of the South, and ominous rumors ran that monsters, demons, and the rest of evil's brood were rampant.
But the worst of it was this.
Kikiki.
People's strife, unease, and fear were the very nourishment that fattened the flesh of evil's spawn.
And then—
Creeeak!
"Why is the rain coming down like this, of all times."
"I liked it! It felt cool!"
"It doesn't feel clammy to you?"
"It feels refreshing, though?"
"...What? Am I the only one who finds it muggy?"
...The door of that utterly bleak inn was flung open, and two figures stepped through.
It was as if warm sunlight had suddenly struck bright through the window of a room thick with the damp smell of rain. Cloth hid the lines of their faces and bodies, but the man and the woman were armed in a vitality they could not conceal, and they traded a lively talk as they came. Eyes turned toward them of their own accord—
His gaze cut across the room.
"You need something?"
"......"
"...K-khm! Wh-where were we?"
"Weren't we talking about the baby goat born the day before yesterday!"
"R-right, that's it! Ah, ahaha..."
...Just before those looks could land, they dropped their eyes without meaning to. Instinct had judged that they must not meet that man's gaze. The whole room forced smiles and turned their heads with everything they had, then wondered, all at once, why they were acting this way.
No—what...
Why are we doing this?
Like animals performing tricks before an apex predator, they could only laugh and chatter by force. Enough to drive even the hardship of living out of mind.
And at the sight of them:
"What's this?"
"Everyone looks like they're having fun."
"Every one of them looks awkward, though..."
The knight, who genuinely could not fathom why they were smiling, tilted his head. The maid only wore a smile brimming with good cheer.
Contrary to the moment he made up his mind to leave Vulcan, the preparations for actually leaving took a good long while. Building the apiary had been slow work, but there were also a fair number of facilities he had put up, half without noticing, while scraping together a living, and setting them in order ate its share of days.
About a month.
Only after that much time could the two of them leave Vulcan, and only after spending another four days—
"There really are no villages near Vulcan. We ran without a rest, and only now has a village shown up."
He brushed the wet from his shoulders.
—they had finally arrived.
Lee Han dusted off his hooded cloak of wyvern hide. True to the leather of a high-grade monster, it served well. It even seemed to shed water; it was hardly wet, and though they had run the forest as if sprinting straight across it, not a tear showed.
...Had anyone overheard the two of them, they would likely have grumbled at them to quit talking nonsense. There was a royal capital near Vulcan, yes, but to reach any village other than the capital you had to cross several mountains or take the long way around. Considering that even a horse, ridden from this village to Vulcan, would need more than a week, no one could be blamed for taking his words as a lie.
But.
"Since you carried me on your back, Sir Knight, I think I had an easy time of it. Was I heavy?"
"You were so light it was a problem."
"Hehe."
The two of them spared no thought for how strange they were, and they didn't seem to care who might be listening, either.
"W-will you be ordering?"
Partway through, a cute serving girl whose freckles left an impression came up to Lee Han with a tense face.
Nervous at the visit of outsiders?
He spoke in a tone that was kind, in his fashion, as if to tell her there was no need to be.
"If you've warm tea or milk, we'll take that. Ah—I don't have coin on me just now. Is there any place in this village tied to the guild? They can be billed."
"Th-that's... our village is so small, something like a guild..."
"Is that so? Then ask the innkeeper whether he deals in this sort of thing."
He set it down.
"......!"
What Lee Han produced was honey glowing with a clear, lucid light.
For those who lived in the Royal Capital, honey was something you could get readily enough at a trading house or an eatery, but in a village this far out it was no common sight. It was a costly good, and even if you found honey, the usual thing was to present it to the lord as tribute or sell it dear through a merchant company.
The serving girl knew that much, so she didn't find it strange to pay a bill in honey. What startled her was that she had never seen honey so clear.
I'd believe them if they called it a jewel.
It was beautiful honey. She wondered if it wasn't the sort only nobles or royalty would eat, and just as greed began to stir from the sight alone—
"Aigoo, of course we deal in it!"
The innkeeper hurried over, beaming. He might run an inn in a remote village, but he was a man of trade. There was no way he lacked an eye for goods, and he reached his conclusion at once: honey that precious could fetch a fine price.
"I'd like a room for today. Will a day's worth cover it?"
"Of course! You could stay the whole week if you liked."
"A day is enough. Then we'll call the bargain struck."
"Naturally. ...Rei, what are you doing? Bring the tea already."
"Y-yes, Dad!"
At her father's word the serving girl barely came back to herself and rushed off for the tea. Even so, she couldn't pull her eyes from the honey, and the look of her was thoroughly unworldly. Lee Han saw straight through it, but the thing had already left his hands, so he paid it no mind.
Good thing I brought it.
Of course, it wasn't Tiger-Wolf Bee honey. Put an elixir that precious out in the open, and what would he get for it? Nothing but trouble. Still, it had been drawn from wild rock honey found in the mountains near Vulcan, so it was precious in its own right. Someone might call it a waste to spend the stuff on a single night at an inn, but worth was a relative matter. He had no money just now, and no wish to spend his mind haggling over value.
...Well. He couldn't keep losing on barter like this forever.
I'll just have to find a proper city soon. What else is there to do?
The one who wanted something was the one who had to go looking.
"Sir Knight, why did we stop in this village all of a sudden?"
"Hm?"
"I thought someone like you would sleep out under the sky. That's why I worked so hard making the food, isn't it? So I wondered why we'd stop in a village."
"Ah. You mean that."
"Yes. I was just curious. It's not that I have a complaint, hehe."
A fair question. True enough: they had prepared thoroughly to camp, so it was natural to wonder why they had dropped into a village out of nowhere. Lee Han apologized for having failed to explain, and answered.
"The rain came down so suddenly there wasn't time to say."
"I really don't mind..."
"Even so. If I've gone and decided something on my own, I ought to apologize, shouldn't I?"
"...Hehe. I'll accept the apology."
"Yes. Thank you, miss. And as for why I stopped in the village..."
WHAM!!
"Hey, you! How many rooms you got in here!"
"Damn it, why's the rain dumping like this."
"Where's the rest of them!"
He shrugged.
"I thought we might pick up a little information."
Satisfied that people had turned up who would run their mouths for him, Lee Han gave a shrug. At a glance they were only a band in battered leather armor, but somewhere about them hung the smell of blood—a pack like beasts.
Mercenaries.
They came into the inn, and inwardly he looked forward to it.
They'll start something, won't they?
He felt like making a little pocket money.