Chapter 7
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 7
Chapter Title: The Barbarian's Patron (1)
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The decision to head to the Empire stirred up no small ripple within the tribe.
But it was the chieftain's command.
And the unwavering resolve of the next chieftain and his wife was something no one could break.
Baba the Elder spent the entire night chasing Gorgon around, smacking his back.
"You stupid bear! Do you have a brain in that thick skull of yours or not?!"
Smack!
"Ow! Elder, that hurts!"
"It's supposed to hurt! Sending a pregnant woman all the way to the Empire? To that den of stiff-necked bastards, no less?"
The Elder's nagging continued nonstop as they packed their belongings.
"Tch, hmph! A child of the Winter Claw Tribe ought to be born amid the snowflakes! If it comes into the world on the Empire's tepid soil, the kid'll turn out weak as a reed!"
For all her grumbling, the Elder kept stuffing dried herbs and talismans into the bundles.
It might have looked like resentment toward the Empire on the surface, but I knew better.
I could hear the faint tremble mixed into her voice.
Fear.
And deep regret.
After my wedding with Kara, the Elder had let slip a story in her cups.
"I've delivered countless babes in my lifetime... but I failed just once."
The massive ice shard embedded in Baba the Elder's heart.
It was Kara's mother, Plina.
It had been a difficult birth.
The Elder had clung on for days and nights, but in the end, she couldn't save the mother.
That horrific trauma was making her hands shake now.
It was tormenting her.
'I have to be the one to deliver Kara's child with these hands... What if something goes wrong on those Empire dogs' land?'
But her own body was far too old to follow along.
The Elder paused in her packing and muttered as if to herself.
"...If only I'd been ten years younger, I'd have gone and learned those Empire quacks' medicine. If only my skills weren't so lacking..."
Moisture gathered at the corners of her trailing-off eyes.
That was when it happened.
Kara, who had been packing, quietly approached and wrapped the Elder in a tight embrace from behind.
"Elder."
"......Let go. We have packing to do."
"Don't worry. It's not like I'm leaving forever."
Kara nuzzled the Elder's shoulder and whispered.
"I'll come back every break. I'll make sure our baby gets delivered by your hands. Okay?"
"......Hmph. The Empire doctors will probably do better anyway."
"No. Your hands are the warmest. Mom would have said the same."
At those words, the Elder stiffened for a moment before stroking Kara's back with her rough hands.
"......Yeah. You have to. Come back having given birth healthy."
The Elder turned her head to hide her tears and stepped out of the tent, but she couldn't hide the shaking of her shoulders.
That night, I received a summons from Gorgon.
The spot was a snowy hill overlooking the tribe.
Instead of his mammoth-bone throne, Gorgon sat perched on a snow-covered rock, looking not like the chieftain but like one man—a father and a senior warrior.
"You're here."
"Yes, Father."
I stood shoulder to shoulder with Gorgon.
A cold night wind blew, but heat radiated from his massive back.
He stared silently at the Empire's skies for a long while before speaking.
"Barg. At the Empire's academy, you won't be learning just swordsmanship or magic."
"I know."
"You'll learn how to govern territories and nations—what they call 'politics.'"
Gorgon gave a wry smile.
"Of course, the knowledge they teach under sunny skies will differ from our Norheim survival laws forged in the frostwinds. It might make your body lazy. Might even turn you into a big-headed coward."
"Don't worry. My axe won't rust."
"Yeah, I figured as much from you."
Gorgon clapped my shoulder.
Then his expression turned serious again as he asked.
"Barg. Do you remember the day we first met?"
"Yes. I haven't forgotten a single moment."
How could I?
The day he thrashed in a bear trap, still radiating murderous intent.
The massive back that first reached out a hand to me.
Gorgon laughed heartily.
"Right. That scrawny little pup caught in a bear trap, clutching a bear's head and snarling at me—it feels like yesterday."
He gazed at me with eyes misty with sentiment.
"And now you've grown so tall you're about to become a father yourself. Time flies."
"......"
"But remember this. It'll be your strongest weapon when you one day lead this tribe—and Norheim."
"......"
"The Croatina Empire has known peace for the last century. Which means it's rotting from the inside. Stagnant water always festers."
Gorgon's eyes gleamed sharply.
The eyes of a leader who read the continent's currents.
"You never know when or where the schism will erupt. The seeds of chaos are crouching, waiting."
"Winter is coming."
"Yes. Before the true winter arrives, we must read the flow. For our tribe's survival."
Gorgon extended his rough hand.
I gripped it tight.
Calluses rough and hard as iron.
Hands like medals earned from a lifetime guarding the tribe.
Hands I was coming to resemble.
"I'll keep it in mind, Father. I'll carve it into my bones and return."
"Good. I believe in you, my son."
That night, the stars over the snowfields shone especially bright.
As if blessing our future—or warning of it.
And from the next day on, we faced a new enemy.
Not snowfield trolls.
Not frost bears.
It was a beast called "paperwork."
"Argh! What's all this?!"
Kara tore at her hair and screamed.
Before our eyes towered a mountain of parchments densely filled with the Empire's common tongue.
Entrance application.
Identity guarantee form.
Tuition aid request.
Dormitory admission form...
"Barg, do we really have to fill these out? Can't we just go and stamp them?"
"No. The Empire folk stake their lives on scraps of paper like these."
I scowled at the parchments.
Thanks to Gorgon's foresight—perhaps his stubborn worry about the state of things—Kara and I had learned the Empire tongue from the Elder since childhood, so reading was no issue. But the contents? Those were the problem.
Especially the biggest headache: "identity guarantee."
For a barbarian couple like us to enter an academy full of Empire nobles' children, we needed a guarantee from a verifiable Empire noble.
"The Northguard Grand Duke said he'd back us, but..."
No way that haughty duke would trek all the way out here to stamp them himself.
So his proxy would come instead.
"I wonder who it'll be."
I rummaged through my knowledge of the original story, but drew a blank.
In the original, Kara had been dragged off more or less as a hostage, with Kairun calling the shots—no messy procedures like this.
The variable I'd introduced was spawning the unpredictable.
"Good thing we learned our letters. Otherwise, I'd be blowing my nose on these rags."
I grumbled as I gripped the quill tighter.
Just then, Gorgon's booming voice rang from outside the tent.
"Son-in-law! Daughter! Got your packs ready?"
Gorgon strode in, chuckling heartily.
He took one look at our pained faces and grinned.
"Don't sweat it. The fellow coming today has been shuttling with Norheim delegations since before Kara was born."
"Someone you know?"
"Know him? Of course. Haven't seen him since he inherited his title back home, but the man handled business like a pro."
Gorgon narrowed his eyes, lost in old memories.
"Mumbles a bit, but what he says is solid. Trustworthy. I admit, at first I didn't buy the guy yapping away with that stutter."
"He stutters...?"
A stutterer?
And yet full of substance?
Gorgon's contradictory description gave me no clue.
Was there a character like that in the original?
I racked my brain, but nothing surfaced.
A short while later.
A watchman's horn blared from the tribe's entrance.
Signal of a guest's arrival.
Kara, Gorgon, and I headed to the gate.
In the distance, a luxurious carriage rattled through the blizzard.
A custom job with sled runners instead of wheels for the snowfields.
And emblazoned on the carriage door was a vivid crest.
Blue feathers fluttering in the wind.
"......Huh?"
I froze at the sight.
Memories from my past life flashed like lightning.
'Blue feathers... That's the Eisen Baron's crest!'
Eisen Baron.
A fairly major figure in the original novel Snowflower Path of the Illegitimate Son.
Every time the male lead Kairun shit the bed—
No, caused a scandal—he quietly paid the settlements, controlled the press, and handled the cleanup. The ultimate "high-stress administrator."
Cool-headed, competent, a perfectionist who wouldn't bleed if stabbed.
That was the Eisen Baron I knew.
In the original, he'd been quite favorable toward Kara too.
The only sane one: showing up quietly to apologize after Kairun's rampages, slipping her medicine and necessities on the sly.
No wonder the comments exploded every time he appeared.
"Dump the turd Kairun and go for the Mercedes Eisen!"
"Baron Eisen, please take Kara as a concubine at least ㅠㅠ"
A sub-male-lead prospect with fervent reader support.
Of course, he stuck to his "loyal retainer" role to the end.
His one flaw? An age gap with Kara like father and daughter. But with the venom aimed at Kairun back then, that hardly counted as a weakness.
'Wait, Eisen Baron? The 'stuttering guy' Father mentioned?'
I was baffled.
The original's Eisen Baron was an eloquent speaker—no stutter in his setup.
As I tilted my head at the discrepancy, the carriage halted.
I swallowed dryly and muttered to myself.
"Eisen Baron... He's coming all the way out here personally?"
Would it really be that cold-blooded figure from my memories?
Creak.
The carriage door swung open.
But no sleek, icy administrator appeared as I'd expected.
Instead...
"......?"
A massive furball tumbled out.
Bear pelts, fox furs, mink coats—easily ten layers—forming a round lump.
Impossible to tell if it was man or snowman as it wobbled down into the snow.
The only hint of humanity: glasses glinting from beneath a fur hat.
Even those were fogged white from the temperature shock.
'That's... the Eisen Baron?'
As I gaped, a chattering sound came from within the furball.
Teeth clacking together.
"B-B-B... B-Barg... y-young... m-master...?"
He seemed to be trying to look at me—or at least attempting it desperately—as he forced his mouth open.
"I-I... I-I'm... E-E-Ei... Eisen... B-Ba... Baron..."
Severe stutter.
Gorgon barked a laugh and clapped him on the back.
"See? Told you he stutters."
"......"
I stared blankly.
The original's pinnacle of intellect.
The image of the cool Eisen Baron shattered.
"N-No... I-It's c-c-cold... m-my... m-mouth... w-won't... un-unfreeze... G-Gor... gon..."
The Eisen Baron pleaded with a face on the verge of tears.
Only then did it dawn on me.
'Oh, he doesn't actually stutter...'
He just hated the cold like crazy.
Come to think of it, in the original novel, the Eisen Baron always holed up in his office.
A cozy, roaring-fireplace office—so his cold weakness never came up.
I'd uncovered the high-stress administrator's fatal flaw.
I stifled a hollow laugh at the sight of the Empire's top bureaucrat shivering.
The truth behind the "stuttering guy" Gorgon knew cleared up the misunderstanding.
"Come inside first. At least have some warm tea laced with deer antler."
"Th-tha... th-thank you... I-I'm... s-saved..."
The Eisen Baron waddled penguin-like toward the tent, leaning on me for support.
Turning the world's Eisen Baron into a penguin.
Norheim's cold was impartial, after all.