Wandering and Beasts
Joseph wrestled with the thought. Wouldn't it be better to just leave the village as I am?
His magic orbs were still far from enough to protect him. If he left and ran into bandits out there, there was no telling what would happen. He might manage if they came at him one at a time — but those bastards weren't about to do him any such favor.
Yet as the days dragged on, the situation showed no sign of resolving itself.
"You'll need to go outside the village and bring back more meat."
"Excuse me?"
If anything, the burden on Joseph only grew heavier. As the villagers grew more reluctant to venture out, their demands on him piled higher and higher. At this rate, he might end up responsible for most of the village's meat and firewood.
"By myself, you mean?"
"That's right."
"I don't think that's going to be possible."
"What? You're telling me you can't even do that much?"
After Joseph refused a few times, the Village Chief exploded. Apparently the shock of Joseph not obeying him was more than he could take.
All that time he spent wringing me dry…
In the Chief's eyes, Joseph saw the old nightmare staring back at him. The life he'd lived as the man's slave felt as though it were about to come crashing down on him all over again.
"…I'll do what I can."
The Chief looked ready to throw him out on the spot if he refused any further, so Joseph answered that way for now. He wanted to leave the village when he could freely cast Fire — but the world around him showed no interest in waiting.
I need to hurry the preparations.
From that day on, Joseph began preparing to leave in earnest. He didn't sweep the entire area around the village the way he used to. He checked only the paths he usually took and the spot where that unidentified man had been hiding. After that, he ranged through the mountains hunting small game. Half of it he handed over to the Chief. The other half he smoked. Some of the smoked meat he passed to a villager with skilled hands, asking the man to make him a new shield.
Metal fittings were hard to come by in a place like this, so nothing could be added. Instead, the new shield was made thicker than the old one, and large enough to cover his entire upper body. It was quite heavy, but Joseph had no need to swing a weapon, so that hardly mattered.
"Was he always that strong?"
"Figured I ought to start building it up."
The villagers stared at Joseph with the enormous shield slung across his back, puzzled — then decided he was simply Valiant Joseph, and accepted it soon enough.
He also went to the Chief and asked for a spear, something he'd been refused before. The Chief, apparently convinced Joseph was working himself to the bone for the village, handed one over without a shred of suspicion.
Joseph didn't know how to use a spear, so he asked Hayra to teach him. Hayra frowned at him, then the corner of his mouth curled up.
"What, you gonna fight the bandits?"
"If I have to."
Hayra snorted once, then put Joseph into spear training with the rest.
"Put your back into the thrust, you idiot. You think it's going to pierce anything if you just jab with your arms?"
Hayra's teaching methods were still as filthy as ever, but thanks to them, Joseph at least learned how a proper thrust was supposed to work.
He also started setting aside a little liquor — the kind that would keep. He'd never drunk much, worried it would interfere with his magic practice. When a man like that started stocking up on alcohol, everyone found it curious.
A massive shield, a spear, and liquor besides. From Joseph the orphan, to Joseph the hunter — and now they called him Joseph, Warrior of Bari Village.
"It's the position that makes the man."
The Chief said it with a straight face, as if it were wisdom. That was a load of complete horseshit if Joseph had ever heard one.
More like a man about to leave his position.
Not a soul suspected Joseph would leave the village. These were people who feared life beyond its borders. In their lives, walking away had never been a choice to begin with. On top of that, they seemed to think Joseph was doing well enough to wield real influence over village affairs — so of course they wouldn't suspect a thing.
Joseph, of course, had no interest whatsoever in playing hero to a slowly withering mountain hamlet. All he had to do was finish preparing quietly, and leave when the time came. That was the plan.
Then, at a village meeting, the trouble started. The conflict between the Chief and Hayra boiled over.
"Six months! It's been six months and nothing has been resolved! The man we sent out with a letter still hasn't come back. It's time we went out there and killed those bastards ourselves!"
"Rush this and you'll ruin everything. It isn't time yet."
"I'm not the one being impatient — you're just scared, Father! If we keep going like this, the village dies either way!"
"What would a brat who doesn't even know what it's like out there know about any of this? You think I can't see you itching to play the hero?"
Up to that point, it would have been no different from any other meeting. But this time, Hayra had no intention of backing down.
"Then I'll go myself. Look! These men have gathered to follow me and hunt the bandits!"
"What?"
At Hayra's words, several of the village youths filed in behind him — the ones who trained with him every day.
"You… you little…!"
Then the Chief's supporters gathered at his side. At this rate, the village wasn't going to fall to bandits. It was going to tear itself apart from the inside.
"Um…"
"Yes?"
And the people who had joined neither the Chief nor Hayra drifted over to Joseph.
What the hell…?
They looked at him with expectant eyes.
"What will you do, then?"
They weren't asking the conservative Village Chief, and they weren't asking reckless Hayra. They were asking Valiant Warrior Joseph for his opinion.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
They weren't even supporting him, not really. They were people who couldn't choose for themselves, dumping the choice on Joseph instead. But for him, that was poison. The Village Chief held the power here. Hayra was the one who would inherit it. The mere fact that they had asked Joseph — not those two — was proof that power in the village was already splitting apart.
Joseph had no desire whatsoever to claim a seat of his own. Naturally, none of them had any way of knowing that.
I'm fucked.
Joseph turned his head and looked at the Chief and Hayra. The Chief's face was dark with fury. Hayra snorted as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Either way, both of them were looking at him like a traitor.
Joseph took a moment to read the room, then shoved the people standing behind him away.
"I don't know."
It wasn't a question of right or wrong. Whichever side Joseph backed, trouble was guaranteed. Better to stay neutral for now, even if it left him looking indecisive.
The ones who'd been ready to follow him stumbled back into a corner, startled. They opened their mouths as if to say something, then shut them again at the hardness in Joseph's face.
"…"
"Tsk."
The Chief said nothing at Joseph's answer. Hayra clicked his tongue and spat a curse.
They really can't just leave a man alone, can they.
The Chief and Hayra went right back to arguing. But unlike before, Joseph caught them glancing his way now and then, watching for his reaction. The villagers who'd been pushed aside looked as though they were waiting for him to open his mouth as well.
This is not good…
The more they did it, the more tightly Joseph kept his mouth shut. In the end, the meeting adjourned with nothing decided. He could feel, though, that the atmosphere in the room had shifted from what it used to be.
The way things were twisting itself into knots made Joseph's head ache. All he'd wanted was to learn a little magic and leave for somewhere worth living. Now it wasn't just the world outside the village that had become dangerous. The village itself was turning into a threat.
What if I just took a seat myself?
He shook his head at once. Suppose he shoved Hayra aside. Suppose he shoved the Chief aside. Then what? Unlike those two, Joseph was alone. A hunter who walked the mountains by himself. There wasn't a single person in the village he could call his own. And even if it all went perfectly, he'd be nothing more than a petty authority on a mountainside. In the worst case, he'd be executed for rebellion.
I'm not betting my life on a Village Chief's chair.
Maybe he was overthinking it. Joseph had no interest in power — but that fact wouldn't matter to them in the slightest. The problem was that the situation had already become one in which Joseph could take power.
He pictured the Chief's face, and Hayra's. Neither expression had been friendly.
Joseph started packing at once. It would be best to leave the village the moment the sun came up.
A little early, but it can't be helped.
He was grateful he'd finished preparing ahead of time. The new shield was solid and heavy. The spearhead had been honed sharp. He'd packed enough preserved food, drinking water, and liquor.
Joseph dumped his pack in front of the house and lay down on the bed. The mattress was straw stuffed into cloth, and it smelled a bit — but it was warm, and it was soft.
So this is the end of this place, too.
For all its faults, it was the house he'd been born in and lived in. The thought of leaving it so suddenly sat strangely in his chest. Joseph tossed and turned until dawn, unable to sleep.
When the first light came, he stood in the backyard and looked for a long moment at his parents' graves. Then he took up his pack and left the village just like that.
Joseph went up the mountain every day. Until evening came, nobody thought it strange that he was nowhere to be seen.
Joseph — the village orphan, the hunter, the valiant warrior — was gone from Bari Village.
"Spare me! I'll give you everything — just please, let me live!"
A wet shunk.
"Hhkk—"
The man who'd been beaten half to death with clubs flailed at empty air, then went slack the instant the blade punched through him.
"Well? Anything?"
"Nothing. Some food. A few coins."
"That's it? Nothing else?"
"I said there's nothing!"
"Fucking hell. There aren't even going to be any more travelers coming through."
Spring was winding down, and summer was on its way — the season when wars between lords burned hottest. Under ordinary circumstances, the Darf Mercenary Corps would have been drawing an employer's pay and earning their keep as fighting men. Instead, they were still here, hiding along the highway near Bari Village, surviving by stripping travelers of whatever they had.
"Fuck… that stupid commander. Had to go and take a job in autumn, and now look at this mess."
The autumn before, they had taken a contract from a lord in another region and gone to war. The commander had figured one good payday would see them through the winter without a care. Instead, the commander's head left his shoulders in a single stroke of a Knight's longsword.
The mercenary corps had scattered. Fewer than ten men had survived. The ones here now had fled into the mountains more or less by accident and found each other again. Then the cold had set in. Before they could find new work, they had to live through the winter.
That was when they discovered the little village halfway up the mountain. At first they'd meant to raid it outright — but one idiot, scouting the place, had been spotted by a villager. After that the village's defenses had hardened, and you could see the bastards standing guard, wound tight as tripwire. It was a small village, but there were still more grown men in it than there were of them. If they went all out, men who made their living by the blade weren't about to lose — but there was no reason to take the risk. Get killed by some blind lucky spear and it was a dead loss.
So they had settled along the nearby highway and decided to spend the winter as bandits. Unlucky travelers. The man who'd come out of the village carrying a letter. Even a priest who'd been on his way to visit. They hit everyone they saw and stripped them of food and valuables.
It wasn't unusual. Mercenaries turned bandit the moment the work dried up. This was an age when villagers whose harvests had failed turned to robbery, when shameless knights murdered passing travelers and stripped them of their valuables. Nobody called it a problem — except the ones who died.
Of course, there had been a calculation in it as well: cut Bari Village off from the outside world. Sever every connection, and they'd crawl out on their own, like beasts from a den.
The one thing they hadn't counted on was that Bari Village had far more patience than they'd given it credit for.
"Shouldn't we just give up and leave at this point?"
A man with a goat-like beard said it as he emptied the corpse's pockets.
"Yeah. We've waited six months and they never came out. Rumors must've spread too far — nobody even passes through anymore."
A mean-faced man with a square jaw agreed.
"…Yeah. Linger too long and a Knight might show up. We move tomorrow."
The one who had the look of a remnant captain nodded. The mercenary corps — no, the bandit gang — grinned as they started packing their things. A few of them, though, flinched at the word Knight.
And not far from them, crouched in the brush with his body pressed to the ground, was a man.
My luck is genuinely, utterly shit!
It was Joseph, who had fled the dangers of the village only to walk straight into this.