Mom Became an Adventurer
On the merchant-caravan escort, Red Sword was quiet, for them. They still tried to make their bodies look bigger than they were, and the fierce looks never left their faces, but they did not curse at anyone, and they did not pick fights.
Thinking on it afterward, that had probably been because of the mage party. He had never heard the story in any detail, and still it was easy enough to guess that they had tangled with that party more than once and come off the worse for it. Most likely they simply had not wanted to be noticed.
But a fight, it seemed, brought out what they really were. Not one of them was an exception. Curses clung to every mouth and would not come loose, thicker and fouler than anything a sharp-tongued old woman might spit.
Lizzie stared, eyes round, at Red Sword and at the bandits. Her life had hardly been a gentle one, and yet she always used soft words. It was not something she had learned. It was simply her nature. She seemed more startled by the way Red Sword spoke than by the bandits themselves.
Dorothy was on her feet on the driver's seat, bolt upright. The child was not looking at Red Sword. She was looking at the bandits, and she did not seem afraid. All she had already lived through was probably the reason.
A bitterness rose in him. Nothing good could come of a child growing used to sights like this.
Dorothy, fists clenched tight, turned to Juhwan.
"Dad! Bandits. The bandits are here. They're bad people. We have to smash them!"
He had no answer for that. He would have to tell the child a gentler story than the one the world kept handing her.
Red Sword charged, and a moment later the clash of weapons rang out, harsh and loud.
While they held the bandits, Juhwan checked the ground around them for anyone else. No one was hiding. Seven seemed to be all of them.
Even among the people he had seen so far, the seven were thin. Skin clung to bone, and their eyes were shot with blood. If the word haunted was meant for anything, it was for a look like that. They felt less like bandits than like refugees drifting from place to place.
They had been attacked, plainly enough, and yet what came first was not anger. It was bewilderment.
Red Sword was fighting better than he had expected. They were a little short on strength, but they had more craft than the bandits did.
Well, a weak party was still a party of adventurers. Rank 5, not Rank 6. They must have met work like this often enough in the life. The bandits outnumbered them by more than two to one, and even so it was Red Sword who had the better of the fight.
Pressed back by the women, the bandits looked at one another as if they could not understand it. The man who seemed to be their leader shouted.
"If we give ground here, all that's left is dying! Don't go easy just because they're women! If they get hurt, it can't be helped. Keep on like this and we're the ones who die. Push!"
"Aaaaaah!"
All at once the men roared and started swinging. It was not proper martial skill. It was only wild flailing.
Even a wild swing was still an iron weapon, and that made it dangerous enough. Thin as they were, the men fought with a strange knack for striking where it mattered.
Men of this age did nearly everything with their own hands. Farming, the axe, simple carpentry, and even catching the beasts of the fields and butchering them. He had heard that in some villages, when bandits came, people took up pickaxes and fought. They knew no martial art. They knew how to fight by instinct.
As time went on, Red Sword was pushed back little by little. They were fighting well enough in their own way, but numbers and strength were against them, and there was no helping that. With the strength they had, the longer the fight dragged, the worse it would be for them.
Sensing their moment, several of the men broke away to the side and circled around behind Red Sword.
Leave this any longer and someone gets hurt.
Juhwan ran for the bandits closing the ring. He did not think he would even need the axe. Wind seemed to gather around his body. He felt light.
In an instant he was behind the men, and he brought his fist down on the head of the bandit directly in front of him. The wind must have been helping. The swing was smoother than it used to be, sure as a skate gliding over ice. There was a dull thud, and the man pitched forward.
The one beside him got out a startled uh and started to turn. In that same moment Juhwan's fist cut the air again. It caught the turning cheek, and the man dropped without so much as a scream, knocked cold by the shock.
One more. His fist flew, and another bandit folded like a pigeon struck by shot.
Three of them were down in a breath. The band that had been pressing Red Sword suddenly threw their weapons aside, and the remaining four flung themselves flat on the ground.
"Forgive us, my lord."
"Please spare us."
"We were so hungry our eyes turned over in our heads. Please forgive us."
"My lord."
Behind the prostrate men, the earth had been dug out in a single line. It had not happened on its own. If the cart and the wagon had gone on as they were, there would certainly have been an accident.
Surely not.
Even they would not have... It was too foolish a thing, and still, just in case, Juhwan asked.
"Who dug the earth back there?"
The bandits flattened themselves further. They shook. From their bellies came an endless growl, one empty rumble after another. The man who seemed to be the leader pressed his forehead to the ground and answered in a weeping voice.
"W-we dug it, sir. Please forgive us."
"Please forgive us."
"My lord!"
"Spare us."
At that, even the curses slid back down Red Sword's throats. They no longer seemed to feel like fighting, or even like getting any angrier.
Somehow the strength went out of the moment. What were these men? Juhwan put another question to the ones sniveling on the ground.
"I'm not going to kill you, so stop crying. You dug the ground. Why did you jump out first?"
Heads still bowed, the men glanced at one another. Again it was the leader who answered.
"W-we thought only one wagon would come. But two of them did.... If something went wrong, there'd be an accident. There's a child, and there are women. If a wagon turned over, it'd be dangerous."
He was rather at a loss for words. Were they idiots?
A great wealthy merchant meets great bandits, and a small party of travelers meets a small, poor band of idiot bandits. The balance seemed about right. Even so, something about it refused to sit cleanly.
Juhwan let out a sigh and spoke to them.
"Listen. Banditry doesn't suit you, so give it up."
They seemed to understand that he meant to let them live. The bandits flopped down flat and answered in weeping voices.
"We couldn't help it, my lord. We went on living as ordinary farmers, but the taxes climb every year, and the rain won't come right, so the harvest shrinks by the day."
"We scraped along with just enough to put something in our mouths, and last year we couldn't pay the poll tax."
"They took my wife over the poll tax, the rich bastard in the village, and I ran for it. The children will all be working that house like slaves."
"Thinking of my little ones, of my wife, I never even managed one proper robbery."
"There was nowhere we could go."
"We tried joining a bandit crew, but we couldn't bear it and came back out."
"Spare us, my lord."
"Before I die, I want to see my family's faces one time. Please spare me."
They made a strange hitching sound, uh-hungh, and cried where they lay. Perhaps the sight of it moved her. Karin of Red Sword opened her mouth.
"Then join the Adventurer's Guild."
"But the poll tax."
"It's all right. Join the guild and they'll wait about a year. Earn the poll tax in that time."
"I-is that really true?"
"If you still can't pay by the time the year's up, then there's nothing to be done."
"Thank you kindly."
The bandits bowed until their heads struck the ground. Then one of them, watching Red Sword out of the corner of his eye, asked:
"But we're bandits. The moment a bandit gets caught, isn't it death?"
"That's if there's a bounty on you. The guild won't take people like that either, but you lot don't have any bounty, do you? We'll look the other way on this, so just go to the guild."
"Thank you. Thank you."
That was the end of the bandit business.
When they were told to put the ground back as it had been, the bandits answered as if there had never been any question. By the time Juhwan and Karin left the place, the crew was already filling the earth in.
The wagon rattled on. A glance back showed several of the bandits bobbing their heads toward the wagon and the cart.
Lizzie, seated beside him on the driver's box, muttered all at once.
"The poll tax is really frightening."
Come to think of it, he still did not know how much it was.
"How much, then?"
"Twelve rina. One silver coin a year. Once you turn sixteen, you have to pay it every year from then on."
To Juhwan as he was now, it was not so great a sum. But if he thought of the day Lizzie had first gone to an inn, it would be a considerable amount for an ordinary commoner. And the poll tax would be owed for every member of a family, wouldn't it. It would certainly be a burden.
Lizzie sighed.
"A lot of people become slaves because they can't pay the poll tax. They aren't branded, though."
"You fail to pay a tax once, and you're a slave forever?"
"Not quite. Someone who became a slave for failing the poll tax can have their status restored, if they can pay the tax and the interest again. But a slave can't own money of their own, so in the end it comes to the same thing."
He was silent. Because of the poll tax, people sold their children. They sold their wives. And if they still could not pay, they ran.
"Among women, some live like slaves because of the poll tax. That's what that bandit meant. Even so, it's better than being a true slave, so a lot of them choose it."
Lizzie smiled, faintly.
His chest grew tight. He and Lizzie would be all right. Even if something happened and they could no longer live as they did, they could run, and they could survive somehow.
But Dorothy? The child who would be born after her? And the children of those children? Thinking of the future waiting for them in a world like this left him at a loss.
Juhwan cast his gaze far out. Where the blue of the sky met the earth, the light stung his eyes.
After several quiet days on the road, they arrived at last at the adventurer village. The formalities of a completed request were already behind them, so there was nothing that needed doing at the guild. A few days of proper rest, he thought, would do no harm.
Karin, though, said it would be best to take an herb request tomorrow.
"The order got a little turned around. Normally you start with an herb request. That's the most basic thing."
Not every adventurer, she said, fought or handled weapons. Many spent their time gathering herbs, or put whatever skill they had to some other kind of work.
Even so, Karin explained, almost everyone learned herb gathering first, once they joined.
"You're a healing mage, Juhwan, so it's different for you. But you ought to know at least the herbs that bring a fever down, or the ones you put on a wound. An adventurer never knows when they'll be hurt or sick."
"Of course there are people who compound herbs and sell them. We ought to stop by there later, too."
"But an adventurer truly never knows what might happen, or where. You have to know the basics."
Marie and Jessie had slipped in to back Karin up. Karin glanced at Dorothy and Lizzie with a slightly apologetic air.
"You may be a little tired, but the merchant-caravan request ate up too much time. There's still so much I need to teach you, and there isn't enough time...."
Then there was nothing to be done.
"But it's winter. Are there herbs?"
Karin grinned.
"There are things you can gather even in winter. It's a little harder, but in a season like this the price goes higher."
That was probably all the more reason Red Sword wanted to gather them.
They agreed to meet tomorrow, and Juhwan went straight to the inn. Crossing the square, he looked toward the guild and saw the innkeeper's son stuck to an adventurer, talking about something.
That kid hasn't changed.
They had stayed only a little while, and yet he felt, strangely, as if he had grown quite used to this village.
After they had eaten at the inn, he gathered up Dorothy, who had begun to nod, and headed for the square. When they turned toward the weapon street, Lizzie understood why and her eyes brightened.
"Th-that's the karambit, isn't it? We're going to get it?"
"Yeah. It ought to be done by now."
When they had ordered the karambit, Lizzie had begrudged the money terribly. Now she seemed to be looking forward to it. Her steps had quickened a little.
The moment the shopkeeper saw Juhwan, he offered no greeting at all and hurried off into the back of the shop in a fluster. Even after Juhwan stepped inside, the man was nowhere to be seen. He must have gone through a door at the rear.
A short while later the shopkeeper came out with a small box.
"It's finished."
His voice was a little excited. He held the box out before Juhwan.
"Well? Is it what you wanted?"
Inside lay four karambits, each a little different in shape.
The basic form was exactly as Juhwan had described. A blade curved like an animal's claw, with a handle slightly longer than the blade itself. A round ring had been worked into the grip so a finger could pass through it. He lifted one and tested the weight. It was light.
"Lizzie, try holding one."
At his word she took up a knife, eyes shining like a child's.
One of the four was a little large. In her hand it felt as if the knife were holding her, and not the other way around. The other three, though, might have been made for her alone. They settled into her grip so naturally that he could see it.
"It's so comfortable."
She moved her hand a few times to be sure, then smiled, glad.
"The sheaths are in here."
The shopkeeper grinned and offered the lid of the box. Turned over, it held four sheaths of leather.
"You seemed to prize lightness, so I made the sheaths from thick leather. What do you think?"
"They're good. I like the knives, and the sheaths. But are you truly all right not taking any money?"
Asked that, the shopkeeper grinned wider.
"It's fine. A thing like this will sell dear from here on. If anything, I feel as if I ought to be paying you. Should you ever need another new weapon, come to my shop without fail. I'll make it with everything I've got."
They came outside to the sound of the shopkeeper's voice. After that they went about looking for a belt that could hold weapons. Once they had bought one that suited Lizzie and set the karambits in it, she looked every inch the woman adventurer out of a picture.
"Juhwan, how do I look?"
She asked it a little shyly.
"You look wonderful, Lizzie. I think I might fall for you all over again."
At that, Lizzie's cheeks went scarlet. She was happy, and so his own heart lightened. He was glad he had had them made.
Unlike little Dorothy, Lizzie knew that she was only nominally one of the party, and only because of Juhwan. It seemed to weigh on her. She wanted, somehow, to be of help.
She already was, whether she believed it or not. Just having her beside him steadied him. It made him think he could do anything. That he would see it through. The mere standing of an adventurer belonging to the guild was already enough, and Lizzie did not know it. She pressed leather and scraped it until the skin beneath her nails split, desperate to contribute something.
If looking the part let her hold even a little more confidence, or if being seen by others as an adventurer made their eyes less of a burden, he hoped it would.
Dorothy, awake again before he had noticed, stared blankly at Lizzie and muttered.
"Mom became an adventurer."
"Hehe. Do I look like one?"
Lizzie laughed, pleased.
Dorothy watched her quietly, then blurted it out.
"Mom, I want one too. That. Dorothy's an adventurer too."
Still held in his arms, she turned her head and looked up at Juhwan.
"Dad, when does Dorothy get one of those?"
He had nothing to say to that.
That evening, while Dorothy slept, Lizzie made the child a belt. There must have been a little cheap leather on hand. Once the belt was done, she cut the leather small into the shape of a karambit and fixed it in place. That was all.
"I hope she likes it. What if she hates it because it's a fake knife?"
Lizzie had been a little worried, it seemed.
But the moment Dorothy woke in the morning and saw the belt laid out with her clothes, that worry flew far away.
"Oz, Oz is a baby, so Oz doesn't have a belt. Poor Oz. But Big Sister Dorothy is an adventurer, so I have a belt and a knife. Babies can't have this. Only adventurers can."
From the instant her eyes opened she was bragging to Oz, and she was still bragging while she ate her meat, and while she washed her face.
Perhaps it had grown a little tiresome. Oz flattened its ears and pretended to sleep.
"Oz, are you sad because you don't have an adventurer belt? Is that why you're sleepy? Should Big Sister Dorothy ask Mom? Should I ask her to make Oz a belt too?"
Dorothy lay down beside the prone Oz and started to chatter. In the end, Oz could not escape her boasting.
Lizzie saw them and giggled.