A Dog with Two Heads
Lizzie had been bright with happiness, and then, all at once, her face went sad. Because of that, he decided not to go to the guild today. Work could be found tomorrow, or the day after. What mattered now was that Lizzie's heart was hurting.
He had a fair idea of the cause.
He had sent Oz along with her, but Juhwan still loafed after Lizzie at a distance. It was not that he was particularly uneasy. Following her simply put his mind at ease.
Once, because he had looked away, Lizzie had suffered more than once. There was that, and in any case he had nothing of his own that needed doing at the market. If so, wasn't it better to follow his wife from far enough off, and do it with an easy heart?
He stood where she had stood and took up, one by one, the things she might have been looking at. He had no interest in women's wares, and yet doing it was oddly amusing. He bought a few things he thought she would like, and a few ornaments that seemed to suit her, and closed Dorothy's hands around whatever the child wanted.
The market was selling skewers of meat he could not properly name. Some were threaded with vegetables, and some were nothing but meat. They were not sold from a single stall. People had dragged small carts in from all over, and there were many of them. At one cart the weapon-shop owner's wife was the one selling. In the end he decided that whatever they ate, it was unlikely to do them any great harm. They lived in the same village. Surely no one would sell a thing that killed you if you ate it.
The moment Dorothy saw meat, she seemed to want every bit of it. Each time they passed a cart she tried to buy a skewer, and even with meat in both hands she wanted something new.
Wandering on like that, he realized Lizzie had stopped at the sight of a woman. He saw that woman turn her face from Lizzie as well.
Their faces were not very much alike. But the people Lizzie knew were few, and he guessed the woman was her mother, or an older sister. Had it not been family, she would not have been struck so hard. She had been refused by her own blood. That much he understood.
Even so, he thought she would not want him to know, and so he pretended he had seen nothing.
If she cried, her heart might ease. Lizzie did not cry. She only bit down hard on her lip and wore a look of pain.
To think that woman might stay in Lizzie's heart until the market was over made him ache for no good reason. It made him angry.
It was around then that the inn boy came running in search of Juhwan.
The guild was looking for him in a hurry, the boy said. A small coin was clutched in the child's hand. He seemed to have been paid handsomely for the errand.
Thinking the timing was just as well, Juhwan went to the guild, and an unexpected request was waiting.
"So you're telling me to hunt a magical beast?"
At Juhwan's words the Guild Master laughed, awkwardly.
"No, no, that's not it. I'd have no reason to demand a thing like that of a man who's never even hunted a magical beast."
The Guild Master scratched at his head, the crown of it beginning to gleam.
"Just helping out would be enough. Look — if it gets dangerous, you can simply come back. Honestly, I don't push people this way if I can help it, but this time it's come on fast."
When he had heard the story out, it seemed a magical beast had appeared in a village near the border. The trouble was that the beast ate people. Several had already been eaten, by the sound of it.
"Does that happen often?"
"No. It's extremely rare. Magical beasts hurt people now and then, but one coming all the way down into a village to eat them — that hardly ever happens. That's why it's urgent. People keep dying."
The Guild Master raked hard at his head.
Ordinarily they would have put out a call for a magical-beast hunter and sent one, but there had been only a single man who could leave at once. He was a seasoned hunter, yet one man would have trouble facing that beast.
They needed someone else besides, and magical-beast hunters were exceedingly rare in themselves. Even if one were found and given the work, it was plain the search would take a very long time.
In that span the beast might move on to another village, and so the request, it seemed, had found its way to Juhwan.
"I'll swear to it. If it's you, Mr. Juhwan, you can manage well enough. Trust me. I don't sit as Guild Master just for show."
A moment ago he had said that merely assisting would do, that if it looked dangerous Juhwan should simply come back — and now, by quiet degrees, it had turned into telling him to hunt the beast.
But he had meant to look into magical-beast hunting anyway. This might be a good chance.
The pay was good, besides. One magical beast at most, and he was only an assistant in name, yet the fee was seven thousand two hundred rina — thirty gold coins. Urgency had added a little to the sum, granted, but even so the price was high.
He looked into Lizzie's face to see whether she would be all right, and she hesitated, then asked the Guild Master.
"If it's dangerous... he really can just come back?"
"Of course."
"We wouldn't be made to pay a fine, or anything..."
"Not in the least. Don't worry. And even if you simply come back, I'll still give you one gold coin. Call it a retainer."
The Guild Master grinned wide on that vicious face of his. He looked like a crooked moneylender.
Surely I don't look like that when I smile.
What nagged at him, faintly, was the knowledge that the Guild Master's face was like his own. The features were cut differently, and yet they belonged to the same family of faces — dog, cat, bear, however one cared to class them.
Lizzie gave a small tug at the hem of Juhwan's clothes. She looked up into his eyes and nodded, over and over. Whether it was the high price, or the thought that they might help while people were dying, a little strength had come back into her eyes. He was glad of it.
"And this magical beast — what sort of thing is it?"
When Juhwan asked, the Guild Master answered with his eyes slipped a little aside.
"...They say it's a dog with two heads."
"Do you know anything about it?"
"...I'm sorry."
The Guild Master lowered his head.
Asked why, he said that magical beasts were little known to begin with, and a two-headed dog was rarer still — a thing hardly ever seen. So all anyone knew was that it was a fierce and frightening beast.
"But the magical-beast hunter who went out to the site ahead of you probably knows. They say he's been at this work a very long time. I heard Leonard of the Miller Trading Company, in the city of Moderni, put out the call and sent him."
The hunter who had gone first was, he said, a comrade of Leonard's.
"Leonard's the one who recommended I send you, too. He said it himself. If it's Mr. Juhwan, he could carve that beast clean to pieces."
The Guild Master laughed, fluttering Leonard's letter in the air.
"Expenses beyond the reward, the guild will cover. We'll prepare the food for the road on this side as well."
"All right. I'll give it a try."
"Good decision."
The Guild Master's face broke wide with pleasure. At once he bellowed toward the back.
"Get word to Moderni, and hurry. From our side, the Dorothy and Oz party is going. Hey — you, go quick and fetch what we'll need for the hunt. You, you're on the food. Basic provisions, quail eggs, gingerbread — oh, and buy an extra hunk of ham while you're at it."
The guild staff took their orders and went scurrying.
Departure was set for about two hours later.
That left Juhwan and Lizzie with a great deal of their own to prepare. They hurried back to the inn, sorted their luggage, bought what they lacked, and loaded it onto the wagon.
Dorothy grew excited only afterward. She played at the hunt with Oz for the magical beast, brandishing a tree branch.
Around the time Lizzie had hung all the laundry inside the wagon, someone came from the guild.
"The provisions are ready."
It was still winter, and yet beads of sweat were rolling down the guild staffer's brow. They had hurried hard, by the look of it.
Besides the food, the cart the staffer had brought held hay for the horses. Loading it into the wagon, he saw there was a rather fine wine as well. In one way and another, a good deal of care seemed to have been taken.
With the simple map they had received from the Guild Master, they left the village.
They had been told that even driving the wagon without a rest, it would take two days from here.
It was not a village pressed against the border, but it was close enough that raiders from the enemy kingdom of Tyrone sometimes came. The Guild Master had charged them, again and again, to turn straight back if they happened to see any trace of raiders.
Had it not been winter, he would not have gone. But raids were almost unknown at a time like this. A city might be another matter. Go raiding in winter, and there was hardly a village rich in food to be found. For those who raided and those who suffered it alike, winter was nothing but misery.
Unlike other journeys, there was no easy air inside the wagon. People were dying, and Lizzie's heart seemed hurried as well.
They drove, rested a little, and drove again.
When night came they stopped the wagon in a suitable place and built a campfire.
He took out the bow he had not used in some time and nocked an arrow. As when he wrapped wind about his body, he set mana into the shaft.
The feeling was different from wrapping wind around himself. The wind's mana, sunk into his body, could be used without his having to think of it. The sensation was close to swinging a fist. He did not have to resolve to do it this way or that. It simply happened as he wished.
Putting mana into an object was another matter. It was like winding countless threads of mana about the arrow, threads so fine they could not be seen. It felt like drawing the strings that moved a puppet.
He drew a deep breath and stared into the dark.
A little high. Toward the sky. And after that, sharply down to the ground.
Having decided in advance how he would steer the arrow, he breathed quietly once more.
He called up the bandit chief's arrows, the ones he had seen while escorting the merchant caravan. That man's arrows had flown for their marks as exactly as guided missiles.
Thinking of the way those arrows moved, Juhwan quietly let the string go.
The arrow leapt away with a hard twang and climbed at once for the sky. Too high. It was not the height he had pictured.
But the arrow moved as he had intended. It flew in a straight line, not a curve.
Right after that he bent it downward. It was as if someone had seized it in empty air and turned it. The arrow broke its path almost at a right angle and flew for the ground.
That did it.
He had tried the same thing several times before, and it had not gone well then. This time, though there was error in the height and in the angle of the turn, the arrow had moved as he meant it to. The wind mana had grown that much more familiar to his body.
Once more.
Juhwan nocked another arrow. This time it came a little closer to the mark he had set. Good. Once more.
That evening he went on shooting for a long while.
Whether the magical beast came down into the village or shut itself up in the mountains, if this was a hunt, the way of approaching it was already fixed.
Traps, and the bow.
A hunter does not gamble with danger when he hunts. He draws the beast's strength down until the thing is as safe as it can be made, and only then does he take it. He gives every caution, spends every care, and removes the risk. If a hunt is so dangerous that a man must stake his life on it, then the hunt itself is wrong. Gus had taught him so.
…
It would not fade. What he had learned from Gus kept dragging the man back into his thoughts.
Juhwan closed his eyes for a moment. He did not regret killing Gus. Within himself, it had been right. He would not allow anyone, or anything, to put his family in danger. That would hold from now on as well.
Only, whenever he thought of Gus, he felt a small ache of pity. The more useful the man's teachings proved — the more he understood, ah, so this is why he taught it — the more he realized how much care Gus had poured into teaching him. Each time, his heart grew a little sorrier.
Juhwan shook the feeling off and pushed Gus's face aside. This was not the time to remember him. He emptied his mind again and drew the bow.
By the time he had shot nearly all the arrows he had set out, a fair confidence had taken hold. He thought he was beginning, just a little, to feel how wind mana ought to be handled.
Because they had set out late, two nights were not enough. Only after one night more on the road did Juhwan arrive at the village he had been bound for.