V. O, Glory of the Tournament! (1)
V. O, Glory of the Tournament! (1)
To reach Bogenberg, they had to keep moving southwest.
Keldric had no compass, but according to what he had heard from Ludovico, he only had to follow the Ronaun River, which stretched from the southwestern mountains all the way to the North Sea.
Traveling with a compass and map was not a luxury, but simply a waste.
For people of this age, rough, rule-of-thumb directions were generally sufficient—pass through a certain village, circle around a certain landmark, follow a certain road, and you would roughly reach your destination.
There were also methods of inferring the cardinal directions from the positions of the sun and stars, but even half the ignorant peasants couldn't make use of them.
It was more common instead to simply identify a river or mountain range stretching in a particular direction and follow it.
"The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. If the sun is out, you can guess your direction with just a wooden stick."
"Do you use the North Star at night?"
"Y-yes. The North Star always hangs in the northern sky."
At least Alisa knew how to find the cardinal directions using the sun and stars.
Thanks to that, Keldric was able to travel without straying far from the route he had heard about from Sir Herman and Ludovico.
"Have you ever been to Bogenberg?"
"I went once when I was young. It's a less cold place than here."
"It doesn't seem that cold now either."
"...People from the North are mostly resistant to the cold."
Beyond that, thanks to Alisa having visited Bogenberg long ago, he was able to glean various pieces of information.
"Bogenberg is fertile territory. Broad plains stretch to the south, so food is abundant, and to the north, rugged ridges make the supply of leather quite smooth as well."
"Does the Ronaun River make it famous for salmon?"
"Some salmon are caught, but the catch is mostly trout and perch."
In that manner, Keldric and Alisa rode hard for two full days.
They encountered various traveling merchants heading toward Bellam, but there was no reason to join merchants whose path went in the opposite direction.
The merchants, for their part, broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of wandering knights who were as good as ferocious bandits, and passed by with care.
Thanks to that, Alisa, traveling with Keldric, felt no small degree of security.
'This is a bit better now.'
Until then, Alisa had only traveled alongside rough, stinking mercenaries, or hitched rides on wagons by sticking with passing merchants.
The uneducated mercenaries occasionally spouted crude and vulgar remarks, and the merchants approached her with overbearing eagerness, trying somehow to reap a crumb of benefit from a wizard. Even fending them off one by one had been work.
On top of that, now her feet no longer blistered from excessive walking.
She didn't have to ride in a wagon that jolted several times worse than riding a horse.
Coming from fallen nobility, Alisa was accustomed to riding, and she found it more comfortable to ride a horse on her own anyway.
What pleased her most was the absence of the reeking mercenaries.
Alisa twisted a lock of blonde hair that had fallen around her shoulder around her fingers, stealing glances at Keldric riding beside her.
The mercenaries had reeked with the stench of sweat-soaked clothes and the sour smell of ingrained grime.
And, in truth, wandering knights who led lives much the same as mercenaries were little different.
It was correct to regard Keldric as a wandering knight as well, but he was slightly different.
When night came and he finished his meal, he always brushed his teeth with salt, and he wiped his body down with water boiled with melted snow and added herbs.
He didn't boil a large quantity due to the expense, but that alone was enough to eliminate odors.
Alisa, whose nose was sensitive for reasons she couldn't speak of, was thus able to travel more comfortably than before.
It finally felt like a journey worthy of the name.
"Oh. A signpost."
After they had ridden for a long while like that, a fork in the road appeared before they knew it. Keldric and Alisa, still mounted, studied the signpost intently.
The road winding away to the left led to a place called Maurthal.
The direction Keldric and Alisa had to go was the right-hand road, the one pointing toward a place called Salzfluss.
"Salzfluss... The name is quite straightforward. 'Salt' (Salz) and 'River' (Fluss), is it?"
"Y-yes. It's a village famous for mining rock salt."
Manufacturing salt, and especially mining rock salt, was a task too arduous to do alone.
Naturally it was a major collective task for the village community, requiring the entire village's people to throw themselves into extracting the rock salt.
Salzfluss was a village that had long supplied salt to Bellam and its vicinity.
Keldric, too, had a dim recollection of the name. Joseph had mainly procured salt from Bellam and sold it in Carlton village.
The salt mainly supplied to Bellam was sometimes brought in across the sea route to the northwest, but the rock salt of Salzfluss accounted for no small portion either.
Moreover, since Salzfluss rock salt was said to be sold even in Bogenberg, a little distance away, the name Salzfluss salt was quite famous.
"We can stop at Salzfluss and then head for Tierdorf. After that, there are a couple of small villages."
"It seems there isn't much left."
"Yes. If we just keep on for three or four more days, we should arrive."
They were in the midst of a journey expected to take six days to reach Bogenberg.
Since they had ridden for two full days so far, if they just kept on for three or four more days, matters would proceed according to plan.
How long had it been since they turned their horses' heads to the right at the fork?
Around the time the sun hung on the white, snow-covered edge of the horizon, a village tucked alongside a bend in the Ronaun River came dimly into view.
Keldric gazed steadily at the village, which was, as always, fortified with a palisade.
Even from a distance, a briny smell seemed to waft toward them.
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Salzfluss was a village that sustained its livelihood solely through salt mining—extracting rock salt and selling it off.
Because the very soil was saline, agriculture could not develop there.
Consequently, a market for buying and selling salt was held periodically, and traveling merchants, for whom hauling salt back from coastal villages was a burden, gathered in a bustling crowd.
What that boiled down to was that Salzfluss was itself a large village.
Keldric and Alisa rode slowly through Salzfluss's main street.
For a village, the road was well maintained; it looked as though the high road running all the way from Bellam had not yet been greatly broken up. That road continued all the way into the heart of the village.
Every house had a fence solidly woven from twigs, and one could spot wooden houses with bits of limestone paste daubed into the cracks here and there.
'They live better than I thought.'
Thanks to that, Keldric's eyes were entertained by the unfamiliar scenery.
The solid-looking houses were houses indeed, but the thick, earthy saltiness peculiar to rock salt wafted richly. Today happened to be the market day for selling salt.
Salzfluss wasn't as large a place as Yalta, which they had passed through earlier, but in exchange it was a little more substantial and well-appointed.
The faces of the inhabitants held a bit more vitality, and with no shortage of salt, the livelihoods of those who bought and sold it were comfortably provided for.
When people reach a level where they just manage to earn a decent living, they tend to fill in their own deficiencies; and when even those wants are adequately met and there is surplus left over, they invariably turn their eyes to those around them.
That was how the people of Salzfluss were.
Even in the midst of busily selling salt, they raised their hats to Keldric, who rode upon Boreas, with smiling faces.
"Honorable lord knight! Care to be offered some salt?"
"Much obliged."
"Lord knight! Please try some of this too!"
Thanks to that, Keldric secured a few handfuls of free salt.
Another knight might have grown angry, but once Keldric accepted the salt, the people around him smiled and handed over other things as well.
Keldric, who had gladly taken all of it, murmured as if talking to himself.
"This really is a fine place."
"It is. The people are pleasant to see."
Salt was a precious thing to a traveler.
The price was no laughing matter if you paid money for it, yet to go without carrying it was impossible, for salt's presence was essential to survival and a long journey.
When they put it into his pouches for free, a handful at a time, a smile bloomed on Keldric's lips in turn.
He occasionally saw children playing with pieces of rock salt carved into strange shapes.
From the villagers' perspective, even that was all money, but it likely meant they had enough leeway to turn a blind eye to how much the children played with.
"Good fellow."
Keldric stopped one passing villager and handed him two Obol silver coins.
The man's face, suddenly in possession of free money, brightened instantly.
"Ah, yes! Lord knight! You called for me?"
"Is there a decent inn here? One where I would lack for nothing in lodging."
"Is this your first time in our village? If so, there is an inn named Enya's Bell. To me, it's nigh like paradise itself; I imagine you would find it quite to your liking as well, lord knight."
Keldric turned his head in the direction the man pointed, and indeed.
In the distance, at the very center of the village, a brightly lit inn caught Keldric's eye. The boisterous noise spilling from inside the place never ceased.
"I see. Thank you."
"Not at all. Rest well."
Keldric, having received the deeply considerate well-wish, smiled softly.
Strange lands and strange people. When they smiled, it was then that the true charm of a journey emerged.
"Could you look after my horse? And my companion's as well."
"You could count on that. I shall tend them with the utmost devotion."
Upon reaching the front of the inn, Keldric dismounted from Boreas, pressed a few silver coins into the hand of the stable hand, and entrusted him with even Alisa's horse.
Alisa followed behind him with a slightly sheepish expression, trotting along.
"I could have gotten off my own horse..."
"Sometimes, I like to do this sort of thing."
It was a virtue for a knight to show generosity to his subordinates.
Most knights, not knowing the proper measure, indulged in shocking luxury and waste, but Keldric liked to show generosity in small matters like these.
Serving an enormously sumptuous meal might please for a single moment, but steadily dispensing goodwill was worth double that and more.
On top of that, Keldric was in a good mood just then.
Perhaps he had been affected by the lively, bustling atmosphere of the village.
"Let's head inside."
"Y-yes."
Keldric and Alisa stepped into the inn, and indeed.
The inn named 'Enya's Bell' was the cleanest and most pleasant inn Keldric had ever visited.
Alisa, who had entered the inn behind him, was also looking around the place, her eyes round as saucers.
"Clean. That fellow recommended a good place."
"I-it is. How can it be like this..."
Even the dust commonly seen in the corners of inns was hard to find. Nor was there the foul smell of the hodgepodge stew that travelers throw together and boil indiscriminately.
From the start, this was an inn that didn't even handle food that barely deserved the name.
'It won't be obscenely expensive, will it?'
At the unexpected level of cleanliness, Keldric was suddenly struck with the worry that the inn would be outrageously expensive.
The inn was certainly clean and pleasant, but not so much that he would pay a pile of coin just to stop for a single night.
A knight turning tail after hearing the price was a poor look, but even that had its limits.
At the absolute most, five Grasen silver coins per person.
Keldric had no intention of paying above that.
"I'd like to take two rooms. How much would that be?"
"Including meals, eight Grasen silver coins, lord knight."
Eight Grasen silver coins. Divided, that came to four per person.
That was a fairly reasonable price.
Just as Keldric was nodding in satisfaction and about to take out his money, the innkeeper glanced around carefully and whispered in a small voice.
"Er, lord knight. What would you say if I, perhaps, lowered the price to six coins?"
"...Do you have some business for me?"
Keldric smelled something shady about the innkeeper.
It was the particular face of a man troubled and confronted by a rather awkward situation.
"It's nothing else... If it's not too great an imposition, out of a hope that you might perhaps have a word with the other lord knight lodging here..."
"There's another knight staying here?"
"Y-yes. There is one lord knight who's bound for Bogenberg."
If he was bound for Bogenberg, he had the same destination as Keldric.
What that meant, in other words, was that this knight, too, would have business at the tournament to be held in Bogenberg.
Keldric's curiosity was piqued.
The only knights he had met up to now were Sir Werner and Sir Herman, and the wider his network, the better.
"I'll meet him. Where is he?"
"He should be on the second floor. I'll escort you up."
"Do so. Alisa, you go on up to your room first."
After sending Alisa ahead to her room, Keldric climbed the stairs, guided by the innkeeper.
A boisterous noise and a heavy smell of alcohol seemed to tickle Keldric's five senses already.
Arriving in front of a certain door, the innkeeper swallowed nervously, his expression tense.
He took a brief deep breath, then presently knocked on the door with politeness.
"Lord knight. There is someone who wishes to see you."
No word granting entry could be heard. Keldric had the faint impression he heard a shrill giggle.
'Did I mishear?'
He hadn't misheard. Keldric pressed the innkeeper, who was dithering after receiving no reply.
"Try opening the door."
"B-but..."
"I'll explain things nicely, so just open the door."
In the end, the innkeeper opened the door.
The first things Keldric faced were a sudden blast of alcohol fumes and the sound of a woman laughing merrily.
"Hahaha! And so I... Mm?"
And, one man laughing heartily, sandwiched among three or four women.
He was a man with a slightly greasy impression. The sort of face and smile, Keldric thought, one might get if you split a stick of butter in two with a knife.
He stared intently at Keldric, who had appeared out of nowhere, then presently grinned widely and raised his wine cup.
"Oh! Another honorable knight has revealed himself here!"
Wine, money, and women.
Excluding a fief, the three things a knight loved most.
The greasy-looking knight before his eyes was a man faithful to all three—more knightly than anyone.
'Guys like this are entering the tournament too?'
Keldric already felt dizzy.