I. Where the Frost Lingers (2)
I. Where the Frost Lingers (2)
Sir Volfen's funeral was carried out swiftly.
The wound had festered for months and left him bedridden, and everyone in the household had long sensed that Sir Volfen's end was near.
Sir Volfen must have foreseen his own death as well, for he had chosen his coffin months before he took to his bed.
"Holy saints and angels of heaven, come forth to meet him. Receive this faithful soul, that he may lead a holy life even in the highest heaven..."
Father Martin, who served as both the territory's priest and scribe, raised his voice with solemnity.
Lady Bellaf, Sir Volfen's widow, sobbed even louder.
Father Martin's funeral mass ended, and the maplewood coffin was carried away.
The coffin Sir Volfen had personally chosen was, to put it kindly, neat; to put it unkindly, crude.
Unlike other nobles, who decorated their coffins with inset jewels or covered them in gold leaf, Sir Volfen's coffin bore only a plain white cross.
Had his piety deepened when he sensed his final hour?
Keldric could not know.
Sir Volfen's coffin was buried in the churchyard behind the local church.
House Bellaf was not a family of particularly long history, yet every past head of House Bellaf had been buried in this place.
A grave was dug, and the coffin was lowered into it.
Presently, soil began to cover it.
There must have been glorious days when Sir Volfen rode onto battlefields in his once-powerful body, distinguished himself through valor, and led cavalry charges worthy of a knight.
All of it had now come to nothing.
The body that had once boasted such muscle had withered pitifully after a single stray arrow, only to meet its fate beneath the frozen soil of the North.
As Keldric watched the coffin disappear beneath the earth, he felt a strange mix of emotions.
'Please... fulfill my long-cherished wish...'
The words that suddenly came to mind were Sir Volfen's final request to Keldric just before his death.
Fulfill his long-cherished wish. Something he himself had been unable to achieve.
'What the hell is it?'
Keldric was bewildered.
For better or worse, Sir Volfen was the man who had been Keldric's father in this life. If possible, Keldric wanted to honor his last wish.
But that got him nowhere. The wish was meaningless if he did not know what it meant.
Why had Sir Volfen spoken such words at the final moment?
Even if he had a long-cherished wish, there were Hilmer and Fritz to fulfill it.
'Why me, of all people?'
He had no way to know. Sir Volfen, the only person who could have answered him, was dead.
'I am... sorry. Keldric, my son...'
Had it weighed on his mind that he had treated this son differently from the other two, or had guilt pressed upon his heart at the hour of death?
Or had he seen something in Keldric?
Why, after refusing to give Keldric so much as a single sword his entire life, had he left him a knight's full set of arms and armor?
'...I don't know.'
Having turned over Sir Volfen's final moments in his mind for a while, Keldric soon steeled himself not to cling to the past.
Before he knew it, Sir Volfen's coffin was wholly covered with earth.
In years to come, people would know Sir Volfen had once lived only from the humble headstone soon to be raised above him.
Keldric quietly raised his head and looked up at the sky.
The needle-sharp mountain peaks brushed the edge of his vision.
The frigid north wind flowed over the peaks and split cleanly apart.
The wind divided into two streams.
One of those currents seemed to have grown ever so slightly smaller.
Keldric watched in silence for a while, then turned away.
The people who had stood around Sir Volfen's grave also seemed on the verge of departing.
Lady Bellaf left the churchyard while covering her swollen eyes. The others followed her.
And then Keldric saw it.
The twisted face of Fritz, the second brother, as he followed behind Lady Bellaf and the eldest brother, Hilmer.
For once, Keldric felt a cold shiver and trembled.
A bad feeling came over him.
Even then, the cold wind continued to blow over the mountain range as always.
Keldric sensed within it the wind of change.
Sir Volfen's funeral was over.
☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩
"These are the goods you may take with you."
Hilmer, now the new head of House Bellaf, handed Keldric a piece of parchment.
"May I look it over?"
"Do as you please."
Keldric read through the parchment Hilmer had handed him.
This was possible because he had long since learned his letters from Father Martin in childhood.
The saying that knights could not read was half true and half false.
Long ago, a superstition had circulated that if the mind grew sharp the body grew weak, and so knights did not learn letters.
Now, however, the situation had somewhat changed.
Plenty of knights still could not read, but here and there were some who could manage at least one book.
It was a transitional age. And Keldric was among those who could read.
Anyone who could read was counted among the intellectuals.
Fritz was the only illiterate member of House Bellaf, having devoted himself solely to martial training and physical conditioning since childhood.
'For all that, he's weaker than me, though.'
Keldric pushed these idle thoughts into a corner of his mind.
The inheritance list on the parchment included everything Sir Volfen had named in his will.
Which was to say, nothing had been added, either.
For Hilmer, who had succeeded to the house, the mere fact that he had to give away a costly warhorse and various arms and armor to Keldric for free must have galled him. Keldric therefore felt no dissatisfaction on that front.
In particular, even Keldric himself could scarcely gauge how expensive a sturdy, well-trained warhorse would be.
'Horse tack, chain mail, surcoat, a sword...'
The parchment also listed enough equipment for Keldric to become a fully equipped knight.
Keldric nodded with a satisfied expression.
"This should do nicely."
"Do you want anything else? We may be half-brothers, but you are still my younger brother."
Keldric gazed at Hilmer with a mildly surprised look.
Hilmer still wore an impassive expression, but unlike before, he subtly avoided Keldric's gaze.
They were hardly close enough to call themselves family.
Keldric figured Hilmer was squirming because he was doing something so unlike himself.
"I'm fine. The funeral could not have been cheap, so preserve the family's coffers."
"Ahem... I could not skimp on the funeral of our father."
"Wasn't most of that the cost of the coffin? It wasn't made from any wood that grows around here. You must have ordered it from the city."
"..."
Hilmer apparently had nothing to say to that. He closed his mouth and gave Keldric a dead-eyed look.
To craft a coffin from high-grade timber that did not even grow in these parts, and then to transport it, had cost a fair sum.
'The old man sure went out in style.'
Even at the very end, Sir Volfen had departed while showing off at least a little noble wealth.
That was knightly, in both a good and a bad sense.
"In any case, those items are already ready. Nothing needed fixing."
"Ah, yes."
"And... if you wish, the family will provide you with a squire. Is there anyone you would like to take with you?"
"...A squire?"
"Why, were you not planning to leave this house? As Father said."
"..."
"Did you think I would not know? I can see no warmth for this house in your eyes—Father must have noticed as well. If there is no affection, is it not only natural to depart?"
No, there had never been any of that warmth to begin with.
Keldric swallowed the words that had risen to his throat and cast his gaze downward.
It meant he had nothing to say.
The look in Hilmer's eyes as he watched Keldric suddenly grew heavy.
"Keldric, I will be honest. There was a time when I feared you might threaten my position, so I was excessively wary of you. That remained true until quite recently... even a few days before Father's funeral."
"..."
"But Father's funeral also made me realize that was no reason to sever the bond between us as brothers."
Keldric listened silently to Hilmer's words.
"What I mean is that you may come to me whenever you need help, whether you need people or money."
"Brother."
"You have gone and made me say something embarrassing at my age."
Keldric had stood out for his serious composure since childhood.
Even when he fell and scraped his knee, he did not burst into tears like other children his age. He handled it calmly.
To put it kindly, that was mature; to put it unkindly, it resembled a little old man.
There was something bizarre about a child who did not behave like one.
Keldric raised his head from where he had sat with his gaze lowered. His deep-blue eyes had gone still.
"Is this because you have become the head of the house?"
"..."
"To be honest, when you suddenly start acting this way... it leaves me a little confused."
Nobles placed great importance on family, especially children who carried their blood.
Even a bastard who carried a noble's blood would at least be brought into the manor and given a basic education.
Much less Keldric, who was no bastard but a legitimate son.
To go a step further, he was the child born of Sir Volfen's first wife. Had things proceeded as they naturally should, he would have been the firstborn son.
The reason Keldric was the third son despite his mother being the first wife was that the first wife had been unable to conceive a child for a long time.
House Bellaf was a hereditary noble house.
When such a house failed to produce an heir, Sir Volfen took a second wife with his first wife's consent. Hilmer and Fritz were the two sons born to that second wife first.
For those reasons, Keldric had unexpectedly ended up the lowest-ranking third son despite being the legitimate son of the first wife.
'What a wretched fate.'
Keldric clicked his tongue inwardly. What a goddamn mess of a family tree.
That was also why Hilmer had been so wary of Keldric.
His position as the third son was ambiguous, but setting that aside, Hilmer and Fritz had weaker claims than Keldric in terms of legitimacy.
But now, keeping up such wariness was meaningless.
For Sir Volfen had already designated Hilmer as his heir before he died.
In other words, Keldric was essentially asking, 'Now that you have nothing left to fear, aren't you only acting generous because it costs you nothing?' There was nothing unreasonable about that.
Hilmer understood the perfectly reasonable implication behind Keldric's words. He cleared his throat before answering.
"Ahem... there is no need to be surprised. As your brother and a member of the same family, I am only saying I will do what I should."
"In that case, I am all the more resolved not to take a squire."
"May I ask why? It is common for siblings from noble families to leave home and establish cadet branches. If you leave the estate bearing our family name, you will be setting out as a knight. Father taught you swordsmanship himself."
"..."
"...If a knight travels without even a squire, it could bring shame upon his house. Others may look down on our family."
Even as he spoke, Hilmer realized the flaw in his words: Keldric was leaving the house anyway.
From Keldric's perspective, there was absolutely no reason to be persuaded by the worry about shaming a house he was going to leave.
'What riches would I ever gain by owing those people a debt?'
For his part, Keldric had distrusted his eldest brother since childhood because of the cunning side Hilmer had shown.
Fortunately, Keldric happened to have a suitable reason to give him.
"Father's will does not include any servant of the household among the house's property that I may take."
"..."
Indeed, when Keldric answered thus, Hilmer, too, was at a loss for words.
Hilmer stared hard at Keldric for a moment, then presently nodded with a slightly sullen air.
"Very well. Leave home without a squire. Appearances matter for a noble, but exemplary conduct can more than make up for them."
Others might look down on him a little, but the Keldric Hilmer knew would give them no reason to fault him as a knight.
Thinking that, the worry that had been gnawing at Hilmer's heart eased somewhat.
"I will have every item in the ledger ready before supper."
"Yes, brother. Thank you."
"Good."
Right after Hilmer nodded, an awkward silence descended.
Keldric had said all that he wanted to Hilmer, and Hilmer, for his part, had accommodated Keldric's wishes to the fullest possible extent.
There was no reason to continue the conversation.
"...Do you have anything else to say?"
At Hilmer's careful question, Keldric twitched his fingers and stared quietly at Hilmer.
If there was something Keldric wanted to say to Hilmer, it would have been, 'Brother, may I just slap you once across the face before I go?'
Of course, he could not actually do that.
"Thank you for everything."
"There is no need. I am well aware that I have done nothing for you until now."
"Then that is enough."
"..."
But surely it was fine to get under Hilmer's skin this much.
Leaving behind Hilmer, who was at a loss for words, Keldric walked silently out of the study.
'So, about a fortnight left.'
The blizzards still raged across the North. Keldric would have to wait for them to end before leaving.
He had to finish preparing before the blizzards ended.
He estimated that the blizzards would last another fortnight.
After fifteen nights had passed, Keldric would leave the territory.