The Rainy Season (2)
Preparing for the journey to the holy site took less time than Lawrence had expected.
Ignatius had handled most of the necessary arrangements for him. From the moment he heard that Lawrence intended to seek out the holy site, he seemed to have set the wheels in motion for the pilgrimage at once.
After some thought, Lawrence decided not to bring his spear. No matter how he dressed it up, he wasn’t skilled enough with it, and with the time he’d be spending in the swamp, it would only be one more thing to maintain and carry.
Thanks to that, it was three days later before he finally set out for the holy site.
“Thank you for all your help in so many ways, Chief Priest.”
If he had ten mouths, it still wouldn’t be enough to express his gratitude. He had arrived out of nowhere, imposed on them, and then received help on top of help; Lawrence had no choice but to bow deeply.
“Compared with the hardships of a brother walking such a difficult road, this is nothing. I pray that, at the end of this pilgrimage, you may find the Goddess’s will for you.”
Ignatius called Irene, who had been waiting behind him.
“Please present that item to Brother Lawrence.”
“Yes. I’ve been waiting for this, Chief Priest.”
She carefully extended the item she had been holding out to Lawrence.
“This is…?”
The thing Ignatius had prepared was a robe.
Not the pure white kind common in the church, but a dark robe interwoven with black and gray.
“It’s a vestment that may be worn by ordained priests. I had asked for it at St. Sophia Temple, but delivery from the Holy See was delayed, so I wasn’t able to give it to you sooner.”
“You prepared this for me?”
“Yes. It should be a great help to you on the road ahead.”
Aside from its many folds, it wasn’t all that different from an ordinary robe.
And yet the weight in both his hands was so slight it might as well have been nonexistent.
“It bears a miracle from High Priest Benedict. It stands up to heat and cold, and it’s far sturdier and more durable than an ordinary robe. It’s even somewhat water-resistant, so I’m certain it will serve you well in the rough life of a mercenary.”
That seemed to be true.
Rainwater slid down the folds and soaked the corridor floor, yet the vestment itself refused to let moisture sink in easily, even as droplets splashed across it.
“I can’t thank you enough, Chief Priest.”
“I would prefer you offered that thanks not to me, but to the Goddess. All of this is the result of Brother Lawrence’s own efforts. The Goddess watches over all with love and mercy.”
Ignatius wore a gentle smile.
It was the kind of expression that suggested he knew very well how much effort the boy had made until now.
“I hope you continue to spread the Goddess’s will far and wide.”
The words he could say in return were few.
“May the Goddess’s blessing be with you.”
“And may the Goddess’s blessing go with you as well, brother.”
After the farewells were done, Lawrence left Saint Dominic Monastery behind.
* * *
Lawrence met up with Neil in Remington Village.
At the mercenary guild, where they had agreed to meet, Neil was drinking cold water.
“No alcohol today?”
“It’s too early for a victory toast.”
Lawrence took a seat across from him. A few simple snacks sat on the table to stave off hunger, and beneath the chair were the two of them’s neatly packed bags.
“Your robe’s changed.”
“Can you tell? This is called a vestment. It’s the formal robe worn by ordained priests in the church.”
The words spilled out of him like water from a broken dam. He had been itching to brag to someone, and the moment had finally come.
“Ordained priest? Then does that mean you’ve got the same standing as the priest at the monastery?”
“Hmm… I don’t think so. I didn’t go through the proper course, and I’m something of an unusual case.”
An ordained priest? That was nonsense.
He hadn’t even taken the educational course required of an acolyte. Since coming under Saint Dominic Monastery’s care, he had learned many things from Ignatius, but that still wasn’t enough to call his training deep.
The vestment should be understood as a gift for the road ahead, for a boy who would be walking a hard path.
“Listening to you, the church doesn’t seem like such a rigid place.”
“I don’t really know much about the upper ranks. I think today’s outcome was all thanks to Chief Priest Ignatius taking such good care of things.”
The vestment felt even better than he’d expected.
Edith’s robe had been tailored to Lawrence’s frame, so it had at least been easy to move in, but the standard-issue robe he’d received from Saint Dominic Monastery had been nothing of the sort.
Even though he had been given the smallest robe, the sleeves hung far past his hands, and he had to walk with the hem folded up so it wouldn’t drag on the ground.
It was miserable to move in. His feet wouldn’t lift properly, and once the heat began to press down on him, the robe would end up soaked in sweat and leave only a miserable feeling behind.
But this vestment was nothing like that.
It was much thinner than a robe, and the heat itself seemed somehow softened, as if a layer had been peeled away. Across the back, it even bore the holy stole embroidered with the cross that served as one of the church’s symbols.
And if it truly carried the miracle of High Priest Benedict, then surely it held some mystery Lawrence couldn’t hope to understand.
What better gift could there be at this moment, with the Lost Sanctuary ahead of him?
That was why the smile on Lawrence’s face refused to fade.
“Still, has something happened? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the guild this busy.”
Even in the middle of the day, the guild was packed beyond belief.
Mercenaries who could read were hurrying back and forth in front of the request board, and the line at the reception desk was filled with people searching for worthwhile work.
“During the rainy season, the amount of work for mercenaries shoots up compared with the dry season. The creatures that had been hunkered down to avoid the heat come crawling out into their territory. Same story whether you’re talking about people or monsters.”
Neil said this while munching on peanuts as though they were the most ordinary thing in the world.
“Bugbear extermination is at its highest around now too. Same reason plenty of mercenaries from outside come here in the first place. And since we help cut down the number of bugbears that have multiplied, there’s no reason to turn them away without good cause.”
“So that’s why there are so many faces I’ve never seen before. A guild overflowing with energy in broad daylight feels a little strange.”
“Hmph. This is what’s normal. Any village needs people if it’s going to run at all. If you want to survive the dry season, you’ve got to make your money while you can.”
Come to think of it, the receptionist had said something similar before.
The swamp in the dry season was the off-season.
The swamp in the rainy season was peak season.
Then there would surely be mercenaries here aiming to hunt eletigators as well.
If it hadn’t been for the matter of the holy site, wouldn’t Lawrence have been joining an eletigator hunt too?
“Is there anything I should know before we set out for the swamp?”
“Plenty. The place you’re going is a bugbear den. It’s deep in the swamp, and the villagers never go near it. It’s a dangerous place through and through.”
That made sense, given the bugbear’s strength.
Against that crushing blow, mercenaries were helpless.
At the very least, there had to be someone who could take the front of it head-on before they could even hope to bring one down.
“The road there is trouble too. The rainy-season swamp is full of invisible dangers. If you go in unprepared even though you know that much, nine times out of ten you’ll collapse before you’re halfway there.”
Neil held up three fingers.
“There are three especially dangerous things to worry about: the heat, the water, and the wild animals.”
“That’s more or less the same as the dry season.”
“Not even close, so listen properly.”
The answer came back cold.
Lawrence, sobered by the lack of humor in Neil’s expression, listened more closely.
“This heat isn’t the same kind of heat either. The heat of the dry season dries people out until they’re shriveled. The heat of the rainy season is the kind that makes people restless and irritable.”
In other words, it wasn’t merely hot; it tormented a person both inside and out.
“Irritation and unease gnaw away at a person’s composure. Once your head stops working properly, the chance of making a bad judgment rises at any moment. And don’t think you’re the only one suffering from it. Everyone beside you is in the same state.”
“That’s… dangerous.”
“Discomfort only breeds more discomfort. It’s bad enough if it happens to one person, but imagine dozens of people all rubbing shoulders in it. It’d be stranger if something didn’t go wrong.”
Lawrence agreed in silence.
Moving as a group was not always an advantage. The fact that there were many instead of one could just as easily become a noose around your neck.
Especially for a boy who had preferred to travel alone, this was a truth he had only recently come to understand.
“At least it’s a blessing in misfortune that it’s just the two of us.”
“So it’s only you and me? No other mercenaries?”
Neil was asking whether Lawrence had not arranged to meet at the guild because he wanted to hire more mercenaries.
“I don’t plan to. This is a pilgrimage, after all. A pilgrimage is something a pilgrim undertakes alone as a rule. Traveling with you is already unusual enough.”
“Hmm… I see. Might be better that way. The more people you bring, the more baggage you’ve got to carry.”
Not only was he lacking the money to hire that many mercenaries, but gathering a party he couldn’t even trust would be even more dangerous.
“You already know how dangerous water can be.”
“I think Isolde told me once. In the swamp, the thing you need to watch out for most isn’t the bugbears. It’s the water.”
“The rain that falls in the rainy season is what we call the water of life. No one likes the dry season, when everything withers away, but plenty of people love the rainy season, when new shoots begin to sprout. But that doesn’t make the water any less dangerous.”
Neil looked at the rain pouring down outside.
“The swamp in the dry season and the swamp in the rainy season are completely different places. It’s only been a week since the rains began, but I want you to think of every landscape you know as having changed.”
“That much? Still, the places close to the village should be fine, shouldn’t they?”
“At most, three places.”
“Three?”
“Everything except the three places I mentioned is inaccessible. If you force your way in, you might get through, but at that point you’d better be prepared to accept the risk of injury.”
“……”
What in the world had happened over the course of just one week?
He had been warned that the rainy-season swamp was dangerous, but now he realized it was more frightening than he had imagined.
“Every road we used to walk in on has turned into a river.”
“If the roads have become rivers, then it must really have poured.”
“It’s not like a river with water simply running off it. The water isn’t especially deep, but a boat is still essential. You load your baggage onto it so it won’t get wet, then the two of us push the boat along with our own hands.”
That reminded him of something he’d heard before.
The absurd notion that you had to push the boat yourself instead of rowing it after getting on board.
“But why are the rivers dangerous? If I understand you right, wouldn’t it just be a matter of pushing the boat through and getting out?”
“Because that leads straight into the third danger.”
“The wild animals, you mean.”
Neil nodded.
“Think about it. Both hands are tied up with the boat. Even if the water isn’t deep, more than half your body is still in the river. And since it’s muddy water, you can’t even tell what’s moving around in it. Then a snake as thick as your forearm bites your belly. Bloodsucking insects latch on and drink your blood. Once other wild animals start gathering at the scent of blood, you may as well consider yourself dead already.”
Perhaps because Neil described it so vividly, Lawrence had no trouble imagining the scene.
If something like that happened while crossing a river, there would be no fighting, much less any way to escape.
A sturdy suit of armor meant nothing in water.
Bugs were the sort of creatures that would find any tiny opening and bore inside without hesitation.
If they were the kind that lived underwater, then they’d likely go wild as though they had finally found a world of their own.
Even the boy’s strongest point, magic, would be of little use.
He couldn’t use something like Shadow Spear against tiny insects, and it made no sense to aim at an enemy he couldn’t even see.
That narrowed his options naturally to just Fire Tail.
But how was he supposed to use Fire Tail once his body was already submerged in water?
There was no good answer.
The best thing was simply not ending up in such a situation in the first place.
In other words, he had to avoid entering the river at all.
But he had heard that in the rainy season the swamp was already overflowing into rivers in many places.
If someone asked whether that was actually possible, Lawrence had no answer.
“You understand now. The master of the swamp isn’t the bugbear, and it isn’t people either. It’s the wild animals that have lived there for thousands and hundreds of years, surviving in that land itself.”
Only then did he understand why the old woman had laughed at him that night.
The ones best suited to rule the swamp were those creatures that had evolved to adapt to its brutal environment.
“Still, don’t worry too much. I’m with you, so you won’t end up in the kind of danger you’re imagining.”
“I’m counting on you, Neil. This is my first time going deep into the swamp too.”
All the preparations he could make were finished.
Now it was time to go out and meet the world head-on.
* * *
He had less luggage than he expected.
Only one extra bag on top of the one he usually carried when going out on requests.
Even that had been stuffed full of lamael, so it wasn’t heavy enough to complain about.
“Is this really enough? It looks no different from any other day.”
“This is why mercenaries… what, you think bringing more would be better? Food spoils, and anything that gets soaked in rain will just turn into dead weight. Since this is a good opportunity, take it to heart. Before you set out, the first thing is to lighten your load.”
Neil pointed toward the cart and horses stored away in the depot as he spoke.
“You can’t ride horses or use carts in the rainy-season swamp. About the only people who can manage that are the ones from Ulvanie, and even they only ride their horses through the mud. So what exactly were you planning to do, hauling a mountain of luggage in both hands?”
“But the round trip takes two months, doesn’t it? I don’t think this food will even last one month.”
“Exactly why you shouldn’t be packing food. You should be thinking about how to procure it in the swamp.”
“In the swamp… isn’t that difficult?”
He didn’t know about other places. In an ordinary forest or grassland, there were plenty of wild animals, and fruit or roots that could be eaten in a pinch. But the swamp was different. At the very least, the water itself was practically poison, causing stomach pain and diarrhea, and most of the creatures they’d encounter on the road were magical beasts or jaguars. Bugs and snakes were just as likely to be venomous, so eating them carelessly could lead to poisoning.
In other words, there was no way to secure food there.
“That’s why you need a guide. Don’t worry. There are only a few people in our village who know the swamp better than I do.”
Pride colored Neil’s voice.
He might speak a little roughly, but his knowledge of the swamp was real.
Lawrence had not been relieved for no reason when Neil was the one who had stepped forward as their guide.
At his confident attitude, the boy silently picked up his bag.