Black Rose Caravan, Part 2
“Oddly enough, I heard they donate part of their earnings to charity after each caravan run. Maybe that’s why the church is on good terms with them.”
“That’s surprising. I’ve seen plenty of merchants who’d squeeze out one more coin if they could, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a caravan company giving away the money they worked so hard to earn.”
“Rumor has it the caravan master is a devout believer. To be honest, that sounds like the sort of thing you’d know better than I would.”
Dunstan’s voice trailed off as he looked at Lawrence’s clothes.
“What could I possibly know about church affairs? I’m just a mercenary wandering the world. If anyone would know, it’d be the priest living in that village.”
“Fair enough. Even clergy have no idea what tomorrow will bring. It’s better to be doing something than sitting around doing nothing. Ah, don’t get me wrong—I didn’t mean that in a bad way.”
“I understand. Everyone’s struggling to make a living.”
Who wasn’t?
Most people in this world didn’t even have the luxury of putting food on the table without counting every last coin.
“Still, a Silver Plate must pay fairly well, doesn’t it?”
“Hmm… not as much as you’d think. Unless you’ve got children to support. Most of what I earn goes to my family in Mistra. Even with my belt pulled tight, there’s never much left over.”
“Really? I heard Silver Plates make roughly three or four times what Bronze Plates do….”
“You know the first thing but not the second. High-tier requests do pay more, but they also cost a lot more to complete.”
You didn’t often hear that side of it.
Lawrence pricked up his ears at the Silver Plate mercenary’s words.
“Think about it. The pay is higher, yes, but high-tier requests also come with far greater risk than ordinary ones. Naturally, you can’t skimp on equipment. But gear isn’t something you buy once and forget about. It needs maintenance, sharpening, repairs…. And equipment isn’t the only expense, either.”
Dunstan continued in a voice weighted with resignation.
“You need potions to treat injuries. You need supplies for the request itself. You can’t afford to be stingy when it comes to information, either. Once you start adding everything up, there isn’t just one or two ways for money to vanish. The payout might be better, but by the time the request is done and the money’s in your pocket, it doesn’t feel all that different.”
“That’s a rather deflating story.”
“Which is why a lot of Silver Plate mercenaries take ordinary requests, even if the pay is a little lower. As you can see, I’m getting on in years, so I’d rather avoid the kind of work that really wears me down.”
It was a realistic story.
There was a lonely note in Dunstan’s voice, one that quietly laid bare the hardships of mercenary life.
“So high-tier requests aren’t all that appealing.”
“That changes if you’re aiming for the top. If you can make it to Gold Plate, everything changes.”
“Gold Plate mercenaries…. Come to think of it, I’ve seen Silver Plates from time to time, but I’ve never even heard a rumor about a Gold Plate.”
“That can’t be helped. There are only a few Gold Plates in the kingdom. The guild knows the exact number, of course. As far as I know, it probably doesn’t even break into double digits. The only one with any real name among ordinary mercenaries is probably the Silent Seer, and even then he’s more of a legend than a person most people have actually met.”
Silent Seer.
Lawrence tucked the name of the Gold Plate mercenary away in a corner of his mind.
“Once you reach Gold Plate, the guild starts paying a stipend. I’ve also heard they won’t take just any request anymore—they only accept designated requests introduced by the guild. Well, I’m not a Gold Plate myself, so I don’t know the details.”
Then what kind of treatment did Platinum Plates receive?
The pinnacle of mercenary life, a place Lawrence had yet to see, still felt impossibly far away.
* * *
The Black Rose caravan had prepared a separate wagon for them.
It was relatively light on cargo.
They could even lie down and use the baggage as a pillow.
A musty-smelling blanket had been provided as well.
In every respect, the caravan was taking care of the three men serving as the leaders.
The driver was a caravan employee from the Black Rose caravan company.
His name was Marcus, the same man Bastille had called when the leaders were being selected.
There was only one request: one of the three had to remain in the wagon at all times and keep watch over the cargo, so that all of them would never be away at once.
Thanks to that, the escort request had become an easy journey by comparison.
Meals were brought when it was time, and the wagon kept moving on its own.
With two leaders as well, there was practically nothing for them to do directly.
So Lawrence simply watched the two men work from the back.
Among all the escort requests he had taken so far, this one had been the easiest.
At first, he had never imagined that an unexpected promotion to leader would end up working in his favor like this.
Lawrence spent all the time he had left devoting himself to magical practice.
Shadow and Fire. Water.
He had used the first two so often that changing their shape wasn’t especially difficult, but Water was a little different.
For one thing, water created by Water was heavy, and changing its form never quite went the way he wanted.
In the Witch’s Forest, Laurzara had said that training magic by altering its form went beyond the normal bounds. And yet it still worked because the magic Lawrence used was ancient magic.
Shadow and Fire were ancient forms of magic learned through the Spirit World.
That was why training them had been comparatively easy.
Water, by contrast, was a spell he had learned from a spellbook.
Lurizisa had once said that magic whose true essence had not been understood was nothing more than an empty shell.
He had come to understand why interpreting a spellbook mattered so much.
Even basic magic was no trivial thing when it came to the mystery inside it.
To reach a deeper understanding, there was nothing for it but to read, and read again.
So he reread Water until he knew it backward and forward, then reinterpreted it.
He focused his shape-shifting training on Water as much as possible, too.
When his head started to ache from using Water, he read the spellbook.
When reading the spellbook made his body feel better, he practiced Water again.
Before he knew it, a full week had passed since he’d begun concentrating on Water.
“Oh?”
Dunstan, watching his practice, let out an admiring sound.
The droplet-shaped Water spell stretched out and changed into a long stream.
It had become something close to a thin line.
Once Lawrence stabilized the shape, he moved on to the next step.
First a square. Then a triangle. Finally a circle.
A bead of sweat rolled down Lawrence’s forehead.
This was on another level entirely from simply suspending water in the air.
Every time he changed its shape, sparks crackled in front of his eyes.
It wasn’t the same as the pain of overusing magic.
It felt more like someone was gripping his ankle and refusing to let go.
His mind was already far beyond the horizon, racing ahead, yet his actual steps had barely crossed half the distance.
Don’t rush.
Just climb the stairs at my own pace.
After finishing the shape change, Lawrence poured the Water into an empty bottle.
“Hah…”
The change was difficult, that was true.
But practice never lied.
He had already filled more than ten bottles like this.
Water was important for travel in every possible way.
Lawrence was selling the bottles he made with Water to the caravan.
It was, to be honest, not very efficient.
In several hours, he could barely fill two bottles.
For all the effort it took, the money he got back was only a few coppers.
But money wasn’t what mattered.
Lawrence was, quite literally, drawing water out of empty air.
What could be more magical than that?
“Even seeing it with my own eyes, I can hardly believe it. I haven’t seen many mages, but you’re the first one I’ve ever seen, Lord Lawrence.”
Marcus, taking the bottles, spoke up.
“Have you seen other mages before?”
“Of course. Our Black Rose caravan goes wherever there’s money to be made. The frozen north, where the cold lies in wait. The Sultaniya Kingdom, where you can feel the heat of the sand. And naturally, the Magic Tower is no exception.”
At the mention of the Magic Tower, Lawrence’s eyes brightened.
“Then you’ve seen what kind of magic a mage from the tower uses.”
“I did see it, yes, but….”
Marcus let his voice drift off.
“I only got to see it once.”
“Only once?”
“Yes. The mages from the tower didn’t seem keen on showing their magic. Well, how should I put it? He got rather angry and said magic wasn’t some sort of spectacle for people to gawp at.”
He scratched the back of his head, looking embarrassed.
“So I’ve never seen anyone use magic so often in front of other people before, like you do, Lord Lawrence.”
“I used to be that way too. I can’t say I don’t understand the mage’s feelings.”
Lawrence had hidden the fact that he was a mage at first as well.
Part of that had been caution—he wasn’t skilled enough to protect himself yet—but part of it was simply that he didn’t want to show magic to others.
Magic was the exclusive domain of mages.
It was, so to speak, a power only the chosen could wield.
He couldn’t deny that he felt a certain pride, something like a sense of privilege.
Of course, that wasn’t the only reason.
“You too, Lord Lawrence?”
“For a mage, magic is a weapon. To put it bluntly, let’s say there’s a mercenary who makes his living with a sword. What would happen if that mercenary kept showing his sword to everyone?”
“Well… I’m not a mercenary, so I’m not sure.”
“That was a poor example. Then let me use business as an example instead. In the case of the Black Rose caravan right now, you’re buying boar tusk remnants cheaply in Frang Village and planning to sell them in Mistra.”
“That’s right.”
That was exactly the escort request they were on, headed for Mistra.
“But then other traders find out. Buy cheap, sell high. Naturally, competition would follow, wouldn’t it?”
“So you mean… other mercenaries would learn magic by watching it?”
“That’s a bit of a leap. Magic isn’t something you can learn just because you want to. What I mean is that anything becomes familiar if you know too much about it. I used business as an example, but magic is the same. Once the eye gets used to something, even the strongest weapon starts to reveal its weaknesses.”
Marcus’s eyes went round.
“Magic has weaknesses too?”
“That’s just the way of saying it. A mage is still human, after all. If someone learns your little habits or your gestures, that can end up creating a real opening in a crisis.”
There was no harm in being careful.
So long as mages had flesh and bone like anyone else, being stabbed by a sword would kill them just the same.
“Come to think of it, I suppose it makes sense that the tower mage was wary of us. I’ve heard that even famous knight orders only let a select few people watch their swordsmanship practice.”
“What kind of magic was it, then?”
“Nothing all that impressive. He brought a washbasin over from a distance without using his hands. Though even that didn’t seem easy for him—he looked like he was straining.”
He had brought an object over without touching it.
Lawrence had a pretty good guess.
It was telekinesis, the same spell Lurizisa had used in the magic shop.
He felt disappointed.
Telekinesis was a basic spell.
If he had been exhausted after using nothing more than a basic spell once, that meant the mage Marcus had seen had been absurdly weak.
“Is that so? What a shame.”
Still, that didn’t mean all the mages at the tower were at that level, did it?
Lawrence shook his head, as if trying to dispel the faint unease that had crept in.
* * *
How many days had passed since they took the escort request?
The Black Rose caravan encountered a herd of Horn Boars.
The group had been spotted by an advance guard from the caravan.
By the time Lawrence arrived after hearing the news, the matter was already over.
Where the caravan guards and mercenaries had gone into action, only the cold corpses of Horn Boars remained, scattered across the ground.
“Clean work.”
“Easy there, you lot. I didn’t even get a look at a single boar head.”
Somehow, there were more people than monsters.
The reason the mercenaries had been so eager was simple.
Horn Boars were money, plain and simple, once you killed them.
And since they were traveling with the caravan, processing the remains was easy, too.
The more you caught, the more bonus pay you got, so it made perfect sense that their enthusiasm had kicked in.
At this rate, there wasn’t even a role for magic to play.
When Lawrence returned to the wagon and mentioned it with that sort of nuance, Dunstan agreed.
“I wish every escort request were like this.”
“You think so too, Dunstan?”
“I do. Even taking the caravan’s size into account, there are far too many escorts here. The guards are more skilled than the mercenaries. They’re well trained and used to moving as a unit. I don’t know how they’d fare fighting one-on-one, but in a group, they might actually be stronger than the mercenaries gathered here.”
“That strong? A caravan’s escort guards?”
It was hard to believe.
No matter how competent the escort guards were, comparing them to mercenaries who had walked through countless battlefields was absurd.
“Not really. We may be the experts when it comes to fighting monsters, but fighting people is a different story.”
“That almost sounds like you’re saying bandits are targeting the caravan.”
“I’m only assuming the worst-case scenario. Right now, the caravan’s cargo is only Horn Boar remnants and ore, but still, having this many people on escort duty is strange. It’s like using a slaughtering knife to kill a chicken.”
Lawrence rested his chin on his hand.
The caravan never did anything that would leave it at a loss.
If they had hired such expensive escorts, there had to be a reason.
In other words, didn’t that mean the moment they safely reached Mistra, a profit was guaranteed?
“…….”
If that was the case….
Lawrence’s eyes drifted toward the cargo loaded in the wagon.
They had been told that one of them must stay behind and keep watch over the goods.
Maybe the cargo in this wagon wasn’t just Horn Boar remains after all.