Outlaws from the Southeastward
Outlaws from the Southeastward
After dealing with the knights, I decided to slightly revise my assessment of the western kingdoms.
From a neighborhood full of lazy fucks who couldn't even handle orcs properly, to a neighborhood overflowing with human warmth, where seven thick-headed, unskilled but wealthy knights came swarming in to provide me with travel funds to return home. The three escort knights who had been present at my first meeting with the lord ghosted the fuck out of there, which was a damn shame, but I couldn't do much about it.
I was starting to understand why these guys couldn't handle the orcs properly. They were such generous, tree-like, kind-hearted fellows, they must have inevitably felt pity even when facing orcs. Right?
"I never expected to get a horse and earn money this way."
Grinning from ear to ear, I stripped the barding off what was now my warhorse and handed it to the guy standing there with a dumbfounded look. Startled, he staggered heavily but somehow managed to receive it. He was the squire of that bastard named Haksen, who had stood at the very front and committed every possible discourtesy, and he'd been looking like that ever since he heard his master had paid with his horse as ransom.
Whether it was shocking that the knight he served lost to an adventurer, or shocking that a knight paid his ransom with a horse, the air of utter disbelief about the scene before his eyes was unmistakable. Maybe it was both.
But what could he do? A guy who was twice as arrogant as anyone else should at least get robbed of something like this if he's broke. If he didn't like it, he should've brought a disobedient horse; isn't it normal to get it taken if he kept one that follows orders this well? Still, I had a conscience, so I left him the barding.
"The saddle, backpack, and helmet are mine to use, so convey that."
Of course, I was only leaving the barding because it was pointlessly heavy and I didn't need it.
"...Yes, understood."
Before long, the guy staggered out of the stable, his arms full of the heavy barding, a javelin, and a bow that had been attached to the saddle. Shortly after, I heard the sound of him panicking hard and crashing down with something clattering everywhere. He must have tried to dodge people and took a spectacular fall.
"Crappy knight, crappy squire..."
What a ridiculous place.
I stopped shaking my head and was rechecking the tack when I felt a presence behind me and heard a familiar voice.
"That is Sir Haksen's horse, I take it?"
It was the Margrave of Kelbast. Seeing him deliberately maintain a calm demeanor and feign indifference as he looked at the horse, without any particular escort, it seemed he'd already heard the whole story, grabbed the back of his neck, and then come over.
There was no way that composed look was genuine. Knights, of all people, had gotten their asses handed to them by a rootless adventurer, so from the lord's perspective, it must have felt like getting shit smeared on his face, and the atmosphere in the city would be uneasy for a while. Rumors like 'Can knights who got fleeced by a single adventurer really protect us?' would spread rampant.
Even so, the Margrave of Kelbast's acting was perfect. To the point where I could only guess at his psychology, not be certain of it. Since there was no reason to dig into that, I simply nodded as if it were nothing and answered lightly.
"That's right. A fine horse. Follows people well, too."
"I heard you took only pocket change from the others."
Pocket change from the nobles' perspective, anyway. I only took four gold coins per knight.
"I took what was fair. None of them had the capacity to pay more."
At my answer, delivered while deliberately turning my head, the Margrave of Kelbast's mask cracked for a moment. It was a natural reaction, considering his knights were being devalued.
While the existence of aura meant knights' ranks varied wildly, they were nonetheless combat machines far stronger and more advantaged than those who couldn't use aura, so they were by no means a cheap branch of troops. It was just that aura users occupied the medieval supercar position, but the knights themselves were still high-end foreign cars.
That knight bastard Haksen had blabbed that there were at least three stronger than him, and since two of them, including him, were aura users, the Margrave of Kelbast before me could be called an insane rich man with overflowing assets, owning a minimum of six supercars and seven foreign cars, while still commanding numerous troops and running a city.
Honestly, about Kelbast, I'd only heard it was well-supported and wealthy in many ways because it was the barrier against the orcs, but I hadn't known it was this much. However, since the value of his three supercars and seven foreign cars had plummeted to scrap level while I'd just stepped away, no matter how good a person he was, he couldn't help but be irritated.
"...They are hardly that impoverished."
Hard to understand by modern common sense, but it was an entirely natural reaction. In fact, the knight bastards had even raised their voices, insisting they could pay a higher ransom.
"Were they? The west seems more affluent than I thought, then."
The fact that even guys like that had money to spare, they must be living well. At my answer, laden with such blatant intent, the Margrave of Kelbast let out a silent sigh.
He knew, of course, because the bastards had brought it up themselves. I just made them all shut up and took four gold coins from each. At first, Haksen had raged and said he'd pay enough to buy three warhorses, but later he shut his mouth on his own, afraid I'd cut his ransom even further.
Wasn't there a saying, if they act like shitheads while you're staying still, give them a reason to act like shitheads? I just focused on giving them that reason.
A knight freed after paying a ransom less than the price of a warhorse—even the person keeping him as a knight would scowl, and the man himself would want to bite his own tongue in shame. He'd probably spend quite a while gnashing his teeth at the mockery of being a 'four-gold-coin knight,' even when performing deeds on the battlefield.
"Haah, are you truly just an adventurer?"
Perhaps having grasped my intentions entirely from the exchange, the Margrave of Kelbast threw a hard straight question without hesitation. It was less criticism or hostility, more a sense of sheer disbelief.
Although the knights' impulsive actions were the cause, he was facing someone who could have let the whole matter pass with proper formalities but had instead overturned everything and smeared shit all over it. Yet his calm, composed demeanor clearly wasn't an act. Feeling the tiniest bit guilty, I answered.
"Due to unavoidable circumstances, my life has been rather... wave-tossed."
"Truly a... poetic expression."
Wearing an uncomfortable expression yet nodding in understanding, the Margrave of Kelbast shook his head and changed the subject.
"The reason I sought you out was, in fact, not for that matter, but to inform you of the meeting's outcome."
"That's a relief. The content must have been hard to readily believe. Thank you."
"...I have not yet told you the outcome?"
"If you hadn't believed it, it wouldn't be the lord standing here, but soldiers carrying spears and swords."
When I stated the obvious as if it were obvious, the Margrave of Kelbast let out a hollow laugh and nodded.
"Precisely. Truth be told, we're not the type to just hole up in the city eating and playing, so we concluded that various circumstances align. We have already dispatched a courier."
"A courier?"
"Ah, Kelbast has no wyverns or gates. Just in case of the slimmest possibility, you see."
In the old days, I would have asked how the fuck orc brats could use gates and ride wyverns, but because of Kakula, all I could think was that this was the wisdom of our ancestors.
"Frankly, until now I had considered it a precaution for a highly idiotic possibility, but I'm beginning to think it may have been ancestral wisdom after all. Perhaps they experienced something similar during the great offensive of the past."
What the fuck. I almost jumped, thinking he'd even read my mind.
After that, as I finished my maintenance and left the stable, the Margrave of Kelbast naturally conversed and accompanied me, and only when we reached the garden area near the castle did he casually bring up another topic, as if in passing.
"Even with the fastest communication, it will take fifteen days just for our message to reach Itisel. Including the reply, it will take a month. I would like to send you along as well, but..."
"Since you're using the kingdom's emergency communication channels, you can't have an unidentified foreigner accompany them."
"That doesn't even surprise me anymore. Are all adventurers from Itisel as knowledgeable as you?"
"Thank you for the compliment, but in the end, wherever people live, it's all the same."
There are people like Gaendal's party, and then there are bastards like Dantel, so I didn't think it was exactly a wrong statement. At my answer, he gave a perfunctory nod and continued.
"It's hardly a substitute, but if you wish, I could write a certificate of identity guaranteed under my name."
"...Wouldn't it be more beneficial to keep me somehow until the veracity of my statements is confirmed?"
"Well, an incident like this erupted while I was briefly in a meeting, so I wonder if that would truly be beneficial."
Seeing him chuckle at his own words, he definitely wasn't a normal person. Even if he'd shouted, 'He dared smear shit on my face—seize and kill that wretch immediately!', I'd been prepared to accept it with a 'Fair enough.'
Of course, if that had happened, many other people would have had to receive my axe, sword, and needles instead.
"Though your only identification is an Itisel adventurer's badge, since you came from the Great Grasslands, there's no reason to suspect illegal entry. You won't be perfectly free, but at the very least, you'll have no discomfort passing through the kingdoms to return to Itisel. Or there is also the method of staying here as a guest and waiting for someone from Itisel to come and fetch you."
"In the former case, what do you expect in return?"
"Silence."
Now that was an unexpected answer. Wondering what he meant, I tilted my head and looked at him, and the Margrave of Kelbast smiled faintly and explained.
"After you leave, we do have to save face, no? At this point, it's far too brazen to ask you to return the axe. We just plan to make you a hero."
"......A traveler of unknown identity, inheriting Sir Dubbert's will, punished the negligent guardians of Kelbast to awaken their vigilance, then aimlessly headed east?"
Seeing his reaction, his eyes widening in surprise, I figured it was something similar.
"A desirable talent. Any interest in life in the kingdom?"
"I still have too many waves left to crash against."
Leaving behind the regretful, honeyed words of the Margrave of Kelbast, I chose the certificate of identity.