A Weapon Made to Fit
The Guild Master's absence might well have been on account of this merchant caravan's request.
At first, hearing that a job had come in for the Red Sword party, Juhwan had thought little of it. Once he listened properly, though, what had found its way back to him was not an escort assignment at all, but work for a healing mage.
Put like that, only a fool would fail to understand.
This could not have been a request that simply arrived for Red Sword. Whether they had gone out drumming up business because the pay was high, or whether some other reason was at work, it was almost certainly a job they had rushed to find and bring back because of him.
But they really are fast.
He had not even been here ten days, and already they had turned something like this up. The man had not looked especially capable, yet the master of this branch and his clerks might be considerably better at their work than they appeared.
As the adults' talk stretched on, Dorothy began wandering the office again. A child's feelings turned quickly, and having Oz seemed to make it even more so. People said animals were good for a child's emotional development; watching Dorothy, he thought it was probably true.
Checking on her with his eyes now and then, Juhwan gave his attention to the guild clerk.
Chatterbox launched into a detailed account of where the merchant caravan was. They were on the move, about a day and a half from here.
They would not be joining at some appointed village. Juhwan and the Red Sword party would have to catch up along the caravan's route.
Even hearing the names, neither he nor Lizzie knew the places.
Chatterbox glanced at Juhwan and nodded.
"The Red Sword party knows the lay of the land around here, so you can set your mind at ease. Just follow along closely."
He looked at Red Sword's leader.
"Speed matters this time. Once you've caught the caravan it won't matter, but the meeting point mustn't get too far off. What will you do?"
Karin nodded.
"We'll rent one horse and a cart."
Chatterbox smiled, pleased.
"Good thinking. I know you haven't got any money, but the request fee is generous this time. Money is meant to be spent when it needs spending."
Karin's face flushed a little. She looked ashamed. That chatterbox of a clerk truly had no sense of tact.
"And eat properly this time. Even if it's nothing but herb gruel, you need two meals a day. Go around on a single meal like before and start staggering from weakness, and the Adventurer's Guild catches the blame. Me especially. I'm the one who recommended you."
When he said it with a bright laugh, Karin's head dropped even lower.
"I'm sorry."
"Ah, it's fine. Don't worry about me. There's no need to apologize. I get cursed at all the time. If it isn't from this side, it's from that side. That's what being a guild clerk is. So I'm all right—but I worry about you. Eat well on this one."
"Yes."
The members of Red Sword answered as one.
No tact, but perhaps a decent man. Juhwan glanced at the party. How little could they be earning, that even as adventurers they managed only one meal a day?
I have to be careful never to fall into a situation like that and let my family go hungry.
Truly, if Lizzie and Dorothy ate once a day and staggered about, he would cry. The mere thought was so wretched and sad that tears threatened. A few actually welled up.
Red Sword, however, seemed to take it differently. Karin raised her brows and shoved her face toward him, her features twisting until deep lines creased her whole forehead.
"What! Just because you're some mage who's doing all right, you think we're a joke? You're pitying us? Laughing at us on the inside?"
She had probably meant to grab him by the collar. Had he been only a little shorter, she would have.
But a small person seizing a giant taller than herself was not only difficult; it looked ridiculous. Knowing that, she seemed to be forcing herself to hold back. Her clenched fist trembled in the empty air.
A sigh escaped him of its own accord. The situation was so pathetic that it simply came out. That, too, seemed to scrape against her temper. Her eyes stretched until the whites showed.
Juhwan opened his mouth to say that wasn't it, and Lizzie spread her arms and stepped between them.
"Juhwan isn't that kind of person. He doesn't laugh at people. Don't judge someone by nothing but your own thoughts."
Her back was against his stomach. She was trembling finely. He could not feel it through her clothes, but he could see it plain, right in front of him.
Even woman to woman, fighting a stranger was probably a first for her. Lizzie was not that sort of person. She was meek, a woman who avoided crossing others if she could help it. She had likely never raised her voice at anyone.
And yet, for me.
Hair and hands quivered, and if he looked closely her whole body was shaking. She seemed terribly tense—exactly like a newly hatched chick shivering before a cobra.
Even so, she was trying to fight for him. This was probably the greatest courage of her life.
Cute.
Thank you. He was moved. This time he really thought he might cry.
Karin, angrier than before, twisted her mouth and shouted.
"What does a woman who only hides behind a man and gets protected know! You've never even held a sword once!"
"Y-you don't h-have to be able to f-fight."
Ah. She had bitten her tongue. Her feelings had run so high that the words tangled. Lizzie stopped, then drew a breath and tried again.
"I don't know how to fight, but I'm helping in other ways instead! You don't have to know how to fight to be of use, do you?"
This was growing awkward. He had missed his chance to step in.
Lizzie was fighting for his sake, but in truth he was not angry at all, nor paying Karin's words any mind.
Back on Earth, middle and high school boys had sometimes rushed him as if testing their nerve. A day-old puppy that does not know to fear the tiger—and Karin charging him looked exactly like that.
He was sorry for her, but no adult truly loses his temper at a child. Perhaps, just as she claimed, he did look down on Red Sword somewhere inside. To him she was only a childish girl who picked quarrels anywhere and threw herself at people.
After trading a few more words with Lizzie, Karin, unable to master her temper, raised her fist.
"Stop."
With the word, his thick arm shot forward. He caught her wrist lightly where it hung in the air. Thick for a woman, it looked as thin as a child's once it was in his hand.
She strained to pull free. It did not budge.
Impossible.
He muttered it inwardly. However she struggled, she would not escape his grip.
Not because she was a woman. He might have been imagining it, but since coming to this world his strength had grown greater still. It was less that his own power had increased than that other things, and other people, felt lighter and weaker than before.
He had always been decent in a fight. Man or woman, beating the Juhwan of now—stronger than he had been—with bare hands would be hard.
"That's enough. I don't mean to meddle in an argument, but any further than this won't do."
"…You! You!"
Karin twisted her lips.
Only then did the other members of Red Sword step in, restrain her, and bow their heads to Juhwan and Lizzie.
"We're sorry."
"I'm sorry."
Chatterbox shouted at the adventurers who had been watching to get back to their work.
Then he turned a slightly cold face on Karin.
"You of Red Sword are here on guide duty. Don't act on your feelings. This is plainly work."
"I'm sorry."
"We're sorry."
The other two bowed again and again. Karin bit her lip and lowered her head a little. Standing slightly askew toward Juhwan and Lizzie, she opened her mouth.
"…I'm sorry."
"…I-I'm sorry too, for shouting."
Lizzie offered the small apology, and in the slightly awkward quiet Chatterbox's explanation went on.
A little apart, Dorothy was standing. When Juhwan held out his arms she came pattering over, clung to him, and asked in a small voice.
"Did you make up?"
"…Yeah."
"Good."
She laughed—eheh—and patted his head. Then Lizzie's, where she stood in front of him.
Still stiff all over, Lizzie leaned a little against him and let out a small breath. If she was going to be that tense, she needn't have fought at all. Being shielded by the frail Lizzie and by Dorothy felt strangely unfamiliar, and his mood turned odd.
Karin's wrist caught his eye. A red mark remained where he had gripped it, lightly as he thought. He would have to be more careful about his strength from now on.
After that they left the guild and made for the market alleys, Red Sword with them. The awkwardness was enough to kill him. Everyone seemed to feel it. Not one of them spoke.
There were, however, a great many things that had to be bought at once.
The terms with the merchant caravan included two meals a day, but the food was often tasteless or wretched. Sometimes, they were told, the promised meals never appeared at all, so the least of preparations had to be made. And there was a child along as well.
Besides food, the list ran long: spare clothes, gloves, a hat, boots, of course, and a water bottle, towels, rope—far more than one or two things.
The wagon already held a fair amount, but what adventurers had to carry for themselves was another matter.
While a gloomy mood drifted back and forth among them, only Dorothy grew happy. The moment the child returned to the market she darted this way and that like a fish finding water, eyes sparkling.
"Let's go to the weapon street this time. Even if you don't buy anything right away, it's important to go often and get your eye in. Try to buy in a rush when you actually need something, and you won't be able to choose."
Marie of Red Sword showed her sword.
"And on the weapon street there are people who'll maintain them for you. You ought to care for a weapon yourself whenever you have the time, but now and then it needs a professional too. Otherwise you can't use it long, and you end up throwing it away."
Like the food street, the weapon street ran off the square. On the food street many sellers laid their goods out along the road, but here such stalls showed only here and there, thinly scattered.
Customers who looked like adventurers stood about the street and the shops. Silence had not exactly fallen, and yet the whole street felt quiet.
Dorothy grew well-behaved too. Children are sensitive to the mood around them. Juhwan held her and walked the street slowly.
She must have been tired. Her head began to nod. Lizzie, walking beside them, patted the child's bottom a few times, and soon Dorothy rested her head against his chest and slept.
From somewhere in a shop came the ring of iron being struck.
From another direction came a steady scraping, as if steel were being ground.
He turned and saw an older man seated in a recessed corner between shops, whetting a blade. That would be the one who maintained weapons.
The man sat on a contraption whose wheel turned when he worked a treadle. Each time his foot came down, a round whetstone spun with the wheel before him and ground the knife.
Whether he had no shop, or had come out to work on purpose, he sat with only a few belongings breaking the cold wind, quietly putting an edge on the blade.
Marie went over and held out her sword.
"Hello. I'd like you to take this today."
The man set his work aside, accepted the sword, and glanced at the others. Looking at the blades at Karin and Jessie's waists, he said:
"I've told you before, but you can't go on like this. If you're adventurers, spend money on your weapons. Don't begrudge it."
He sighed, then studied Marie's sword closely.
"This…"
He sighed again.
"This was a cheap sword to begin with. Passing a thing like that around and having it maintained one at a time—you're really going to die someday. I'll do it again this time, but buy a sword that's even a little better."
Marie smiled awkwardly and introduced Juhwan and Lizzie.
"They're a new party that just joined the guild. The leader's a mage, but he says he uses weapons too, so please look after them from now on."
The man looked Juhwan over from head to foot, then at the axe at his waist.
"Let me see that."
When Juhwan held the axe out, the man examined it with care and looked up at his face.
"Well maintained. But the recent sharpening isn't much good. Looks like a beginner put the edge on."
Juhwan smiled, awkward. The man meant the part he had sharpened alone in the mountains. It had been his first try, and he had thought it came out fairly well; to an expert it had apparently been wretched.
After studying the axe a while longer, the man went on.
"And it won't last. It looks sound enough on the outside, but before long it'll break. Just a guess, but I think your strength is too much for this axe."
He said that sort of thing happened now and then with especially strong adventurers, then leaned forward and pointed to a shop a little way off.
"Go to that shop. They've got a lot of weapons suited to people who fight with strength. Even an ordinary axe is better bought there. It ought to fit you."
"Most people coming for the first time get a shop recommended by this gentleman. When the guild gets questions about weapons, they send folks to him too. You can trust his eye."
Jessie added it with a smile.
"Thank you. I'll go to that shop. By the way, is there anywhere that sells a small knife shaped like this?"
Juhwan drew a crescent on the ground, a knife with a hole through the handle. It was a weapon called a karambit. In the years when he had done a great deal of fighting, he had seen someone use one. Small, and worn on a finger, it would be comfortable enough for a woman.
At the question the man glanced at Lizzie.
"For that woman, I take it?"
"Yes."
"Hm. I've never seen a weapon like that. Where's it from?"
"…It's used in a region far from here. A weapon from where I used to live."
"I see. You won't find it in the shops around here. But there's a man who'll make one if you order it."
He looked up at Juhwan.
"It'll cost some money. Will you still do it?"
"Yes. She can't practice any martial art, so she can't use an ordinary weapon."
Lizzie, who had been listening in silence, tugged his sleeve and whispered.
"Juhwan, I don't need a weapon like that. If I really need something, I can just use a knife."
Spending money on her account seemed to weigh on her. This, though, was one thing he would not yield. He took her hand.
"Lizzie, an ordinary knife or weapon won't do. You have to use something that matches your size and your ability. A woman who doesn't know how to fight at all, like you, especially can't manage with a normal weapon. You'll be taken down before you can even get into a stance."
"But I'm in charge of managing things."
"You never know when something will happen. I'm not telling you to fight, but you still need a way to protect yourself. If you can hold out for a short time—a truly very short time—I can help. So you need a way to buy that time."
Really, that much was enough. A few dozen seconds before he could reach her. The moment until his hand could get to her from a distance where he could see her. He could use healing magic as well; if she endured only that long, he could manage the rest somehow.
When he said so, Lizzie lowered her head a little, her face caught somewhere between trouble and pleasure.
The man, who had been watching the exchange, turned his gaze on Red Sword.
"I told you the first time, too. Those swords are too big for women. This man's right. Using a weapon that fits your size and your ability matters. Think on it."
Red Sword said nothing.
Juhwan went on ahead with Lizzie to the shop said to sell axes. They sold hammers and the like there as well. He had no need of anything that heavy.
He did use an axe, but if he was honest, fighting bare-handed while he used fire was more comfortable. A man had a style he had always fought with, after all.
Still, I can't fight bare-handed when the other fellow is holding a weapon.
After hearing the prices, he simply bought two ordinary axes. One axe was four rina.
But weapons…
A great hammer that looked impressive was twenty-five rina, and a fairly good sword was forty. Even a cheap sword was seven rina. They were far more expensive than he had thought.
Later, perhaps, when he had money. For now an ordinary axe would do.
Honestly, he thought even the axes were dear. It might be better simply to think of ways to fight with his body.
After that, on Red Sword's advice, he bought oil for maintaining weapons and a box to keep them in.
The shop that made weapons to order sat a good distance from the square.
A middle-aged man ran it with a boy who seemed to be both his son and his apprentice. There were not many weapons on display. He said he made and sold most of them himself.
When Juhwan described the shape of the karambit, the shopkeeper showed a keen interest. He had never seen a knife like it.
"How much would it cost to make?"
"Well, now."
The man thought for a long while, then offered a bargain: if Juhwan would let him make the same thing and sell it from then on, he would forge one as a prototype.
Juhwan negotiated to receive several finished pieces in addition to the prototype. A notion like patent rights was hardly likely to be widespread in this age, and he thought that much would be enough.