I. Where the Frost Lingers (13)
I. Where the Frost Lingers (13)
The moment Joseph heard the sudden shout and the sounds that suggested a physical struggle, his instincts screamed at him.
'Those goddamn mercenary bastards!'
The mercenaries he'd promised to pay handsomely had botched the job and caused this disaster.
At this rate, the first plan—to quietly deal with Hilmer and slip away—was as good as dead in the water.
So Joseph pinned his hopes on the second plan.
Deploy the six elite cavalrymen he'd obtained from Baron Gofrit!
Joseph had already slipped out of the manor house to summon them.
Summoning the horsemen was part of it, but more than anything, mercenaries had loose lips and couldn't be trusted.
The mercenaries who had failed to infiltrate might very well have spilled everything about Joseph by now.
With the mercenaries having ruined the operation, Joseph couldn't remain in the manor house.
The dim-witted second son of House Bellaf, whom he had planned to manipulate as he pleased? Joseph couldn't care less what happened to a fool like that.
Once he summoned the cavalrymen, everything would be resolved. That was what Joseph believed.
"Huh?"
That was what he believed—until he spotted a man swinging a torch through the snow-blown darkness the moment he left the manor house.
Tracing a large circle with a torch was the prearranged signal he had agreed upon with the mercenaries.
It was the signal to summon the cavalrymen waiting nearby so they could finish things cleanly if the job went smoothly or Hilmer escaped.
As far as Joseph could tell, things were not going smoothly at all. He hadn't seen so much as Hilmer's shadow fleeing.
If so, just who was swinging that torch to summon the horsemen?
Joseph's gaze fixed on the figure whirling the torch.
The figure was enormous, and the torchlight glinted off equipment fit for a knight.
The moment he saw it, Joseph knew by instinct.
'W-what the hell?'
Something was wrong, deeply and irredeemably wrong.
Joseph could only stare blankly as the six cavalrymen charged in from afar and clashed with the enormous knight.
To begin with, Joseph had left the manor house to summon the horsemen.
Yet the cavalrymen had arrived before he even called them, and an unidentified knight had eagerly thrown himself at them.
By the time the enormous knight had killed two cavalrymen, Joseph was already sprinting frantically toward the village.
He could not even dream of escaping into the forest. Entering the forest in the dead of night under a driving snowstorm was suicide.
Was he supposed to trust those cavalrymen and stay where he was?
As far as Joseph could tell, that was absolutely not a good choice.
By any reasonable standard, the knight had little chance of winning. Joseph's instincts told him to run anyway.
"Hah, haaah...!"
After stumbling down to the village, Joseph found himself with nowhere to go, shivering in the biting cold wind.
Having visited Carlton Village many times as a peddler, he recognized plenty of faces.
But his dealings with the villagers had never gone beyond buying and selling goods.
'Damn it all!'
If I'd known this would happen, I'd have gouged them a little less on the prices!
Of course, the option of not gouging them on prices at all was never on the table.
Being a crooked peddler was his true calling.
The snow-laced wind grew fiercer still, leaving Joseph shuddering from head to toe.
'Where was he supposed to go?'
Joseph's mind raced despite the cold. Whatever happened, he first wanted to get as far from the manor house as possible.
In the end, Joseph hurried to a small house at the edge of the village. It was the house farthest from the manor house.
Joseph reached the home of Batis, Carlton Village's charcoal burner, after forcing his way through the cutting wind.
"Batis! Hey, Batis...!"
Reaching Batis's front door, Joseph cautiously called his name.
No answer came.
Joseph didn't know it, but Batis wasn't asleep. He was wide awake.
Batis was simply far too quick on the uptake.
Batis had been sound asleep until the distant sound of galloping horses reached his ears.
Looking through the window toward the manor house, he saw the lights of torches and tallow candles moving chaotically. He thought he could hear horses neighing and men shouting as well.
Those were the sounds of Keldric fighting the cavalrymen.
Batis naturally had no way of knowing that, but he knew something serious was happening outside.
Joseph's sudden arrival in the middle of it all only made matters more suspicious.
"Batis! Please, open the door!"
Joseph's urgent voice carried the telltale desperation of a man who'd done something wrong.
So Batis quietly slid the bolt into place.
Even if it turned out to be a misunderstanding, it would be enough to insist later that he had been asleep.
"Batis! Damn it all!"
The tightly shut door never opened. Joseph cursed and looked around frantically.
After sundown, Carlton Village was engulfed in a blizzard and cold sharp enough to tear off a limb. Visibility was poor.
Where the Frost Lingers.
Joseph was learning the truth of that peculiar epithet the hard way.
After glancing around with his lips already turning blue, Joseph finally spotted a place that held a little warmth.
'Over there...'
It was a shed-like place where the charcoal burner Batis gathered and stored charcoal.
One section of the shed wall looked weak.
Joseph dashed toward it. Then he kicked the wall with all his might.
Crack—!
In a snowy climate, wooden walls inevitably ended up like this if they weren't repaired regularly.
Joseph scrambled through the hole in the wall and crawled into the shed.
He planned to wait there until the blizzard died down, then ride away on the donkey that had pulled his cart once things quieted.
Setting aside the feasibility of that method, it was the only way Joseph could survive.
☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩
Keldric exhaled plumes of white breath as he searched every corner of the village.
He searched the narrow lanes between fences where village mongrels often wandered, then checked the hunting hut on the outskirts used by the woodcutters.
But he found neither a trace of Joseph's passage nor so much as a glimpse of him.
Unless Joseph had grown wings, he couldn't have vanished completely from Carlton Village.
But waking every villager and making them join the search wouldn't look good either.
There might be villagers already awake from hearing the commotion.
Being awake was one thing; making them trudge through the snow in the dead of night was another.
If they searched while exposed to the freezing wind, some would end up with frostbite.
The villagers would resent it too.
None of that would be good for the estate.
Keldric might be leaving soon, but he didn't want to take a massive shit on the estate's administration before he went.
"Damn..."
After searching the village for quite some time, Keldric stopped to think.
Where the hell had this wretched peddler hidden himself?
'He wouldn't have gone into the forest.'
Joseph was an utterly ordinary peddler who prized money and his own life above all else.
Starting this mess had been idiotic enough, but Joseph wasn't stupid enough to enter the forest on a blizzard-swept night.
At least, Keldric thought so.
That left only the village, and Keldric had already searched it from end to end.
In that case, where in the world had he hidden?
'Could one of the villagers be hiding him?'
Keldric pictured a scenario where Joseph had concealed himself with the help of a villager he usually traded with.
Though Carlton was a quiet, remote village, House Bellaf regularly admitted peddlers to keep the local economy moving.
Some villagers bought and processed the raw materials those peddlers brought, then made money by selling the finished goods to other villagers or to another peddler.
Joseph profited as the middleman in those transactions.
Naturally, only a limited number of villagers were close to him.
'Malcolm was at the manor house armory, and Lint the butcher was away in the neighboring village.'
After ruling out several others who were absent or otherwise impossible under the circumstances, Keldric narrowed the candidates to three.
First was Rotai, the owner of The Singing Parrotbill, Carlton Village's only inn.
Though it was closer to a tavern than an inn in practice, Rotai was nonetheless one of the people Joseph dealt with frequently.
They were also often seen drinking together, just the two of them.
But Rotai was a man blindly loyal to Baron Yaven and House Bellaf.
When the tax on liquor and the like had been reduced, he'd shown a devotion that bordered on fanatical.
A man like that didn't seem likely to go along with Joseph's plan to strike at House Bellaf.
Second was Otto, the miller.
Otto sold barley to Rotai for brewing beer and traded ground grain with Joseph.
In fact, no one in the village traded with Joseph more actively.
But he wasn't at all fond of Joseph.
After the previous miller, Dietrich, was punished for embezzling grain, Joseph kept urging Otto to siphon off grain as well.
Otto was not a likely person to side with Joseph either.
Last was Batis, the charcoal burner.
The moment Keldric thought of Batis, his intuition tugged hard at him.
The first two men he'd thought of were either loyal to House Bellaf or on poor terms with Joseph.
Batis, who fit neither description, managed a couple of sheds where charcoal was stored.
In a cold northern village, charcoal was practically a lifeline. Naturally, House Bellaf had to pay particular attention to it.
But two large sheds were too much for Batis to manage alone, and there had been several complaints about how the charcoal was stored.
There was no chance the sharp-witted Batis would hide Joseph himself. But if Joseph was nowhere else in the village...
Keldric turned on his heel and headed for Batis's house.
The commotion from the manor house had subsided by then, and several villagers cautiously poked their heads outside.
They peered out to assess the situation, then hurriedly shut their doors whenever their eyes met Keldric's.
Splattered all over with blood and walking with the sword he'd just used to cut a man down slung over his shoulder, Keldric looked exactly like a robber knight.
As Keldric made his way toward Batis's house, he heard a horse galloping from the direction of the manor.
'Could it be that bastard who ran off earlier?'
Just in case, Keldric glared toward the sound.
But the rider was the manor's stable hand.
"Morris, Peter! Get up, right now!"
He rode around waking Morris and Peter, House Bellaf's soldiers. It appeared to be on Hilmer's orders.
After watching Morris and Peter being hauled out half-asleep, Keldric continued on his way.
Batis's house stood near the edge of the village. Keldric knew the location well because he trained nearby every day.
Thump! Thump!
"Batis. Are you awake?"
Keldric knocked on the door of Batis's house as he called out, but received no answer.
Keldric took off his helmet and knocked again.
"Batis. It's me, Keldric. Are you home?"
No sooner had Keldric given his name than the door rattled open.
Batis stood behind the open door, wearing an awkward expression.
He didn't look half-asleep; he'd clearly been awake for a while. Keldric's expression soured when he realized it.
"If you were awake, why didn't you answer?"
"Ah, well... I'm sorry. Something terrible seemed to be happening at the manor house, and I was so terrified that I..."
"It wasn't anything that serious, so don't panic. There was only a minor incident."
Keldric chose his words carefully.
For the moment, concealing the truth seemed better than telling the villagers what had happened and causing confusion.
Keldric looked Batis over once, then asked another question.
"By the way, have you seen Joseph?"
"You mean Joseph?"
"Yes. The peddler who comes by now and then. He was in the village only a few days ago. You know him well, don't you?"
"Ah, yes! I know him! Of course I do!"
Something about Batis's reaction was suspicious. Keldric's brows drew together slightly.
"So, did you see him? I realize it's strange to ask at this hour."
"Well..."
"If you're worried about the reputation you've built through trading with him, don't. You won't need it anymore."
"Hk...!"
Batis, quick on the uptake, sucked in a sharp breath.
Batis had traded with Joseph for more than five years.
And saying that relationship no longer mattered meant...
"We'll be able to talk things through with the Mormont Trading Company. So, would you tell me where Joseph is now?"
In other words, Joseph had done something serious enough that House Bellaf could ignore any complaint from the trading company.
If so, what wrong had Joseph committed?
Questions swirled through Batis's head, but he knew this wasn't the time to ask them.
Keldric looked downright terrifying.
"Actually, Joseph knocked on my door a little while ago and then left."
"Oh? And then? Did you let him in?"
"Of course I didn't! Even if we'd been doing business for more than five years, how could I go opening the door at an hour like this?"
"Then, do you know where Joseph went after that?"
Batis silently pointed. Keldric followed his finger.
The shed where charcoal was collected and stored was there.
'Just as I thought.'
It was the moment Keldric's intuition proved exactly right.
"After he left my house, I heard a rather loud noise from the shed."
Hearing Batis's whisper, Keldric narrowed his eyes and studied the shed closely.
It was hard to see in the darkness, but one section looked suspicious.
A section of the wall had been crudely covered with hay. Wind and snow were being drawn through it little by little.
Something was fishy.
"Right. Do you have the key?"
"I do. I-I'll open it for you."
"I can go alone. No, that would be better."
"B-but, Master Keldric. This sort of thing should be handled by someone beneath you, like me..."
"Batis."
Batis stopped mid-sentence. The look Keldric gave him was enough to silence him.
"You're quick on the uptake and always pay your taxes, but that doesn't mean I'll overlook you colluding with Joseph to gradually raise the price of charcoal."
"..."
"What? Are you acting this way because you won't be able to jack up prices once Joseph's gone?"
"N-no..."
"Then shut your mouth and hand me the key. Understood?"
"...Yes. Here it is."
Once he had the key, Keldric headed straight for the shed.
He put his helmet back on, pressed himself close to the shed door, and focused on the sounds from within.
Amid the wind and other noises, an irregular, unmistakably human sound reached Keldric's ears.
It was the sound of someone breathing.
Keldric immediately slid the key into the lock. The door opened, and the musty, burnt smell of charcoal billowed out.
Among the half-stacked mounds of charcoal, one pile shifted faintly.
Keldric approached it and spoke in an even voice.
"Joseph."
The charcoal pile gave a faint twitch.
"If I have to say your name one more time, you'd best brace yourself."
This time, the twitch was a little larger. Keldric waited quietly.
By the time he'd counted to ten, the charcoal pile finally collapsed and a soot-blackened figure rose from it.
"M-Master Keldric."
"Joseph."
Joseph's eyes glistened with tears in the dim torchlight.
Keldric looked at him with an impassive expression.
"Come forward."
"I, well..."
"That's once. There won't be a second warning."
"..."
Joseph walked out like a pig being led to the slaughter. He was a sorry sight.
He was so thoroughly coated in soot that he was difficult to make out in the darkness.
Keldric's large hand slowly settled on Joseph's shoulder.
"I have a lot—a whole lot—I want to ask you."
"M-Master Keldric."
"But now isn't the time."
Bam!
It happened in an instant. Keldric's carefully restrained fist slammed into Joseph's solar plexus.
"Guuugh..."
Joseph collapsed with his mouth gaping and drool spilling, his eyes bulging as though they might pop out.
Keldric casually slung Joseph, who could barely breathe, over his shoulder and left the shed.
Now it was time to learn the truth.