The Two-Silver-Coin Escort
The shout tore through the caravan like a scream. "Wolves! Shadow wolves! Left side of the forest!" Horses reared, front hooves slashing at empty air while the porters dove beneath the wagons. Kyle leaped down from the cargo bed and counted. Three. Two more in the shadows of the bushes. Five.
Shadow wolves lived up to their name. A head taller than ordinary wolves, they moved without sound, like living darkness. Five of them was enough to make even a caravan guarded by ten escorts abandon their goods and run. This caravan had only one escort. Kyle.
"E-escort! What are you doing? Run, you fool! You can't fight those!" Dorte the merchant leader screamed from atop the wagon.
It was the first time an employer had ordered him to flee. Kyle nearly smiled.
His worn iron sword slipped from its sheath. The lead wolf sprang. Fangs flashed in the moonlight, but the next instant the creature fell in two clean pieces through the air. Kyle was already two steps aside. The second. The neck. The third. The heart. He hadn't even needed to swing quickly. A shadow wolf's leap was fast, but it traveled in a straight line. And a straight line was simply a path you stood in front of. It was the easiest lesson his master had ever taught.
The last two hesitated. Even magic beasts had brains. Brains enough to calculate how five had become two in the space of a few heartbeats. The pair tucked their tails and melted into the darkness.
Kyle flicked the blood from his blade and dragged the carcasses off the road. For a long moment the entire procession remained silent.
"...What the hell just happened?"
"Did he cut them? He did cut them, right? I couldn't even see it."
"Had to be luck. The wolves ran straight into his sword. Yeah?"
At the word luck, the others looked ready to nod. It was easier that way. Kyle saw no reason to correct them. Everyone slept better if they believed it was luck.
Only Dorte stayed atop the wagon, staring down at him for a long time. It was a merchant's gaze. The look of a man recalculating the value of his purchase.
By dusk the caravan stopped at a roadside village to refill their water. The place looked wrong. The fence had been hastily repaired, and one barn had collapsed roof and all. The women at the well ran over at the sight of them, their first question blunt.
"How many escorts you got?"
"Why?"
"Six days ago a horned boar came through. Wrecked the barn like that and dragged off two cows... Fourth time this year the magic beasts have come down from the mountain. Chief went to town to hire mercenaries, but they're charging a fortune."
Dorte clicked his tongue. Kyle glanced at the ruined barn, then walked over while filling his canteen. It took him half an hour to reset the posts. The villagers watched open-mouthed as he held the beam on his shoulder and drove nails with one hand.
No one had asked him to help. It was simply habit from his apprentice days: when his body was idle, it looked for work. As they left, the women pressed dried fruit into his hands. Kyle refused twice before accepting.
"Never seen an escort like that one," Dorte muttered when Kyle returned to the wagon. "Sword types hate getting their hands dirty more than anything."
"Hands get dirty anyway. Dirt's better than blood."
That night at camp, two extra pieces of meat appeared in Kyle's bowl.
"Boss told me to give them to you," the boy carrying the ladle said with a grin. His name was Pin. Thirteen. Orphaned and raised by the caravan, he volunteered information no one had asked for.
"Where are you going, Mister Kyle?"
"South."
"Where in the south?"
"I'll tell you when it's decided."
"You haven't decided? Then stay with us. Boss says escorts like you can't be bought even with gold coins. Oh, that was supposed to be a secret."
The daily wage for an escort you couldn't buy with gold was two silver coins. Kyle chewed his meat and considered the difference. It didn't offend him. Market price remained market price until someone noticed the gap. What puzzled him wasn't the discrepancy but the treatment. Extra meat. Roasted chestnuts. Invitations to drink. The math didn't add up. Spending this much on a two-silver man was a loss. And merchants did not run losing businesses. So the answer was simple.
They felt guilty for underpaying him and were trying to keep him sweet. Or it was an advance to ensure he fought harder next time. Once he framed it that way, the knot in his chest eased. Favors couldn't be calculated, but advance payments could. Taking only what could be calculated brought no trouble. That was what ten years had taught him. Nothing was ever given without calculation. And if it seemed otherwise, it was a trap.
"Kyle! Come have a drink!" The porters waved from across the fire. Liquor was making the rounds. Kyle paused. For ten years he had only heard banquets from outside closed doors. A summons from inside had always meant the cups were empty or the carriage should be brought forward.
"What are you waiting for? Get over here. We owe you our lives today. It'd be rude if you don't drink."
He took the cup. Cheap firewine burned its way down. It was a strange night. No one demanded he refill their cups. They only kept filling his.
"So Kyle, you're from the north, right? Where'd you learn to swing a sword like that?"
"From a wandering swordsman."
It wasn't a lie. His master had wandered, and he had been a swordsman.
"That explains it! Your style's nothing like the proper knights. Those bastards only care about looking pretty. No real skill."
"Don't speak ill of knights. Someone might hear."
"Who cares? This is the south! The ones shaking in their boots at the northern Grand Duke's daughter are all northerners anyway!"
The group roared with laughter. Kyle didn't laugh, but he emptied his cup. Stories of the Grand Duke's daughter had followed him across the border. The resignation scandal had become tavern fodder. In the rumors the escort grew bolder with every telling, the Grand Duke's daughter more venomous. In one version he had split a banquet table in two with his sword. Kyle offered no corrections. The faster a rumor swelled, the sooner it would pop.
"Cup's empty. Another?"
"No. I have watch tonight."
"We rotate watches."
"I'll take it. Two wolves got away alive."
As he rose, Pin trotted after him.
"Mister, can I stand watch with you? I'm good with my eyes."
"Go to sleep. You're still growing."
"Tch. ...Oh, wait. Here, Mister."
The boy pulled something crumpled from his pocket. A few roasted chestnuts wrapped in paper.
"Bought them when we passed the village. You can have them. Two pieces of meat doesn't feel like enough for saving our lives."
Kyle stood motionless, chestnuts in hand.
"...Don't you like them?"
"I do."
"Then why the face?"
"It's nothing. Thank you. I'll eat them well."
After the boy disappeared toward the wagons, Kyle sat on a rock away from the fire and peeled the chestnuts. They had gone cold, but they were sweet.
He had come to like roasted chestnuts by accident. In the first winter of his apprenticeship a kitchen maid had shared the leftovers with the apprentices. It was the first sweetness he had ever tasted. After that, whenever he saw someone who seemed in need of something sweet, he would remember them.
That person behind the greenhouse was probably doing fine. She was engaged now. She would no longer have days when she needed something sweet. Once she became crown princess, every sweet in the empire would be hers. She would not remember cheap things like these, roasted chestnuts wrapped in paper and left on the snow.
It was only right. It had to be that way.
Kyle placed the last chestnut in his mouth and stood. The night watch passed quietly until dawn. The surviving wolves never returned. Somehow that worried him more.
Shadow wolves were tenacious. When their packmates died they always brought the rest to take revenge. That was why his master had told him to stay alert for three full days after killing any. Their failure to appear meant something more urgent than vengeance had arisen. Such as running away.
The next day the caravan turned onto the canyon road, a shortcut south. Dorte called Kyle up to the driver's seat and motioned for him to sit.
"Hey, two-silver-coins. Yesterday's work was worth more. I'm raising it to five."
"The contract was for two."
"Take it. And while we're talking, why not sign on as a regular escort for the whole caravan? I'll pay you a yearly wage. Room and board included."
"I'll consider it."
"Consider it? Where's a wanderer like you going to find a spot this good?"
Kyle gave no answer. A spot this good. Ten years ago someone had said the same thing. Where else would an orphan find a place in the Grand Duke's annex? Remembering how that position had ended, he knew the wiser course was to look for the exit before accepting any good offer.
"But you don't know this, do you? Those wolves yesterday don't belong on this road."
Kyle's eyes narrowed.
"Shadow wolves are cold-dwelling beasts. You see them near the northern border, not this far south. I've traveled this route twenty years and never seen them before."
"...Any other rumors lately? Magic beasts appearing on the roads?"
"Plenty. That's all anyone's talking about on the southern highways. Creatures that should stay in the mountains keep crawling onto the roads. Ghost bears tearing up fields, rock turtles blocking bridges."
Dorte spat.
"Wild animals come down to villages when there's nothing to eat in the mountains. Same for magic beasts. But this isn't a famine year. So what does that tell you?"
It wasn't that there was nothing to eat. It was that they could no longer remain in the mountains. Something was driving them out from above.
Instead of answering, Kyle looked up at the canyon rim. That was when he saw it.
The caravan stopped as one. Drivers hauled on reins, swallowing curses. The forest at the canyon mouth was lying down. Not fallen—lying down. Dozens of ancient trees, all bent in the same direction, neat as hair combed flat. The broken ends were neither cut nor snapped. They were crushed. As though something enormous had passed through, trampling the forest like grass.
The tracks continued into the canyon. And along the edge of those tracks lay the shadow wolves. Eight. No, nine. All dead. Not torn, not slashed, but crushed exactly like the trees. In the exact direction they had fled, in the exact posture they had run. The two that had survived the night before were surely among them. The reason they had not come seeking revenge was lying there.
"What the hell... Landslide?"
"Does a landslide run uphill?"
While the porters muttered, Kyle approached one of the fallen trees and laid his hand on the shattered end. Then he went still.
There was a smell. Neither burning nor rotting. The scent of metal and ash mixed together. A smell he had encountered in only one place in his life.
The Gray Boundary. The northernmost edge. The smell of the land where he had last stood with his master—
Why was it here, in a southern canyon?
His master's voice crossed twelve years.
Ten-year-old Kyle had stood at the edge of that ashen land and asked, Master, what is this smell?
His master had answered after a long silence. It is the smell of the world suffering. Then, placing a hand on his young disciple's head in a manner unlike him, he had added in a low voice: If the day comes when you smell this outside the North, think first of running. Not of drawing your sword. Understand?
At the time he had not understood what it meant for his all-powerful master to teach him to run. Only after his master failed to return a year later did he begin to grasp it.
Kyle slowly withdrew his hand.
"Leader. Turn the caravan around."
"What? Going around will add three days!"
"Choose between three days late or everyone dead."
Dorte opened his mouth to snap a reply but stopped. He had seen Kyle's face. The two-silver-coin escort, the man who had not even blinked before five shadow wolves, was gripping his sword hilt with real strength for the first time.