A Frog Does Not Fight Like a Snake
Winter was slipping toward its end before anyone had quite noticed. On the branches sliding past, the sharp winter buds had swollen until they hung plump and large.
The merchant caravan, they said, was already well past the midpoint of its journey. Wagons had begun to peel away as they reached their destinations.
Yesterday one company had broken from the column, their city near enough to finish the road alone. Within a few days, he heard, several more wagons would drop out as well.
Perhaps that was why the mood had grown a little unsettled. The gaps left by the departed wagons had not fully closed, so the spaces between trading houses had widened, and the column crept on in a loose chain.
Since joining the caravan, Juhwan had learned that the smaller houses linked their escorts—neighboring groups, or houses that already knew one another.
When you reckoned the intervals of the night watch and the number of guards required, the arrangement was said to be a considerable gain. It cut both the cost and the labor of escort work by a great deal, so unless a house was as large as the Miller Trading Company, most of the column traveled in twos and threes.
Even with some wagons gone, the length of the procession hardly changed. When night came again, the long line halted on a gentle rise.
It was the same day as yesterday, and the day before that. Fires were lit, and here and there people set about the evening meal.
Unlike those of the Miller Trading Company, some escorts of the other merchant wagons had to feed themselves. They ate dried meat, or the hard bread they had brought along.
Even inside the same caravan, treatment varied wildly—what a man ate, and what he was paid. As Red Sword had said, Juhwan had been very lucky.
In a world without electricity and with little in the way of amusement, people rose just before sunrise and went to bed early once night fell. Those in the caravan were no different. After the meal, most of them made ready to sleep.
Some adventurers carried tents. Others rolled a single blanket and wore it on their backs, and those ones claimed a place before the fire and wound the blanket around themselves like a sleeping bag.
Dorothy had fallen asleep early inside the wagon. Lizzie sat before the fire, talking quietly with the women of Red Sword.
Over the past few days she had grown fairly close to the party. It had started after Juhwan saved Marie.
Lizzie was yielding by nature. He had worried she would not get along with Red Sword, who looked rather fierce, but their temperaments seemed to fit better than he had expected. Now and then she and the Red Sword women leaned together and laughed in low voices, as if trading secrets.
When the women were among themselves, Juhwan kept his distance if he could. He had not wanted his presence to turn the air awkward, and it seemed he had been right.
The quiet, ordinary stretch of time broke at the sound of pounding hooves.
Somewhere earth was being kicked up, and then a scream burst from the front of the column. The line was long. He could not see.
"Raid! Bandits!"
The cry came from far off. After that, voices here and there caught it and shouted it on.
The women of Red Sword seized their swords at once and rose. Escorts spread around the wagons, watching every direction.
Gordon, chief of the escort, and the servants checked the horses tied to the wagons. A few ran toward the rear to look over the carts.
Leonard, the master, took a bow and a quiver down from the wagon. Juhwan had already thought him no ordinary merchant, but the bow was unexpected. If the man used a weapon at all, he had assumed it would be a sword.
Juhwan took the bow and arrows from the wagon as well. He could have used fire, but against men at a distance a bow would be better. Even if he missed, it would help keep the bandits from closing in.
Lizzie went inside. He had her bar the door from within, then climbed onto the roof.
No one came at this part of the line. Screams rose only far ahead, and time passed in a tight, frustrated ignorance, with no clear sense of what was happening.
Up front, the escorts seemed to have held the bandits off. For a while the sounds of fighting went on. Then hoofbeats faded, and the noise died.
Gordon ran toward the head of the column. One servant followed him.
Most of the Miller servants assigned to the wagons seemed to know their way around a weapon. The man running at Gordon's heels had a sword in his hand.
A short while later Gordon came back.
"The bandits fled. Between twenty and twenty-five of them, they say. Not many, but there seems to have been a mage. A wind mage, from the look of it. The force behind their blows was tremendous."
"Might be a mage of some rank. This is going to be a headache. Which house was hit?"
Leonard had spoken low. Gordon answered again.
"A house that sells spices. They say some of the goods in the wagon were taken. Casualties: two servants off the merchant wagon, and five escorts. Two are badly wounded. The rest have light injuries."
Beyond the dark it was quiet. There was still no sign of anyone coming back.
Leonard nodded, then stared into the empty air. Gordon spoke once more.
"They're calling for a healing mage up front. What should we do?"
Juhwan jumped down from the wagon to go, and Leonard raised a hand to stop him.
"Wait until we're sure it's safe. Not now."
If they waited, the badly wounded would die. Juhwan hesitated. With his skill, the treatment would not take long. The time Gordon had spent going and coming would have been enough. But if the bandits struck this place in the short while he was gone…
He could not move from where he stood.
A human life mattered, of course. What life was not precious? But everyone had lives that were dearer still, and to Juhwan, Lizzie and Dorothy were dearer than anyone else in the world.
Hours passed, and the bandits did not come again.
The night watch was normally two. After the raid, everyone kept watch on every side.
Only when the next day was nearly dawn did Juhwan go to the wounded. Jessie of Red Sword went with him.
Of the two who had been badly hurt, one was already dead. His waist had been cut half through. Even if Juhwan had come earlier, he probably could not have saved him.
The other had taken a wound in the shoulder. The blade had bitten deep enough to show bone. He had lost so much blood that he was half gone, and when his eyelid was lifted the pupil did not move.
Juhwan moved to treat him. The master of the trading house stopped him.
"Leave that one. He's already finished. See to the other wounded."
"I can't promise anything. But he might live."
At that the master drew a small breath.
"Even so, he can't be treated. Your healing magic is paid according to the state of the wound. Something that bad would cost several times what a quick treatment does. We can't spend that kind of money on an escort. If he dies on the road we pay a little extra, but that's cheaper…."
Juhwan could not swear he could save the man either. But it might be possible. With his mana, he would not even need to use much of it to close the wound.
He was not thinking that every person ought to be saved, or that human life was sacred. He had no wish to become an angel, and no wish to pretend. But he was not wicked enough to stand and watch a man die in front of him. It would cost him nothing. He only had to reach out his hand.
He said nothing and began to pour mana into the man. Jessie of Red Sword caught his wrist.
"Don't, Juhwan."
"If you treat the wounded for nothing, without taking pay, what happens to the other healing mages?"
"There are healing mages at the temples as well as the Adventurer's Guild. Guild prices are set with their level, the cost of treatment, and your ability all taken into account. Heal the wounded for free, and the order among healing mages falls apart. The guild takes the blame, too."
Jessie looked away from him and spoke more quietly.
"Every adventurer knows how this goes."
"So that's what guide duty is. Telling us things like this."
Jessie said nothing.
Juhwan looked at the dying man for a moment, then closed his eyes.
Right. This was that kind of world.
He had already learned it from what happened in the Goblin Village. There was a reason people grew so selfish. He only had to remember how things had been when he first arrived.
For a while, blinded by happiness, his heart had gone soft. He had mistaken this world for something warm and human.
He opened his eyes and looked at the master of the house.
"Where are the wounded I'm supposed to treat?"
"Over there."
The man led him to an open patch on the far side of the wagon.
The wounds were neither too shallow nor too deep. What the master wanted was treatment only to the point of closing them. Every treatment had its price, and no one wanted care they could not pay for. The master and the adventurers were the same in that.
Only now did Juhwan learn that the fee for healing magic was split in half—half from the master of the house, half from the adventurer.
He treated them a little better than the man had asked, then went back to the Miller Trading Company.
The sky had brightened without his noticing.
An adventurer's body was their fortune. Jessie had said so not long ago. He was coming to understand how true it was, in more ways than one.
The wagons began to move, and the column crept forward. Juhwan walked over to Karin, leader of Red Sword, who was trudging along in silence. She asked with her eyes what he wanted, and he spoke quietly.
"When the bandits hit earlier, I watched how you moved. Those movements were copied from men, weren't they?"
"…Yeah."
Unlike the brawler she had been, Karin nodded without a fight.
To someone who did not know them, the way Red Sword acted was ridiculous. They snapped at anyone and charged in, and they were laughably weak. They became a joke.
But that was how they stayed alive. They had no other way to live. Until now there might have been help from many people at their backs, help they never knew about. No—there certainly had been. Otherwise, he thought, they could not have lived even this long.
That alone was not enough. To go on living, they had to be able to stand by their own strength. Otherwise they would lose their lives somewhere, as emptily as the man who had died a little while ago.
"A frog and a snake have to fight in completely different ways. If a frog copies a snake, it can never win."
Karin said nothing.
"Karin. A frog must not try to beat a snake the ordinary way."
She was still silent.
"I've felt something since I met you. You don't try to kill the person in front of you. Isn't that right?"
"…Yes."
"If you don't mean to kill, don't charge in. It only looks ridiculous. But if you do get angry at someone and go at them, forget about saving face. Go in meaning to kill them, even if you die doing it."
All he could offer was a very small piece of advice. What mattered, they would have to realize for themselves.
"A sword is too heavy for your arms. A spear or an awl would be better. Stab a man in the eye and even if he doesn't die, he's ruined. If the eyes are too high, aim for the point between his legs. Or the nose, the throat—anywhere he can never recover from, anywhere a hit means he can never strike back. When you fight, it has to be that way. Don't try to beat men with a man's sword."
Karin looked at him, a little startled.
After he said it, Juhwan left her side.
Through the day's travel, the escorts lay down a few at a time in the carts and tried to sleep.
That night another wagon was hit. The same bandits.
Unlike last time, they did not strike in one place. They came from several directions at once—five on a wagon at the front, ten on one at the rear, three or four points attacked that way.
And unlike the day before, arrows flew toward the campfires, from a distance an arrow should never have reached. There was a wind mage. That was certain now. They had no choice but to put the fires out.
Once there were wounded, wolf howls drew closer than they ever had. The wolves had smelled blood and come in.
No one slept, and the night passed.
When day broke they searched for a trail, but the bandits were not nearby. The escorts could not leave the wagons, and so they could not track them far.
Those who were attacked tired faster than those who attacked. As the escorts' fatigue piled up, the situation grew steadily worse.
Several trading houses left the column. They seemed to have decided that staying with the caravan meant being hit.
The next night there was no attack. But no one knew when one might come, and no one could sleep properly.
Juhwan realized it was like a way of hunting. Once a hunter chose his prey, he pursued without rest, driving it until it could not recover, and then he took it. He waited until the prey's strength failed, and then he caught it.
He did not know whether the other side were hunters or something else. They were not ordinary bandits.
He sat beside the wagon with a blanket wrapped around him and closed his eyes. If the enemy came, he would know. Until then he had to rest his body as much as he could. Fall for their trick, and when the time came to fight he would not be able to. Tired as he was, his mind had gone sharp and clear instead. Even so, he had to sleep. Juhwan closed his eyes and forced himself toward it.