Craftsman (3)
Flurry!
“A repeating crossbow!”
“Watch out!”
At the sight of the quarrels suddenly pouring down on them, the bandits scattered in panic.
It was a speed they could hardly believe, even with their own eyes.
Every time the handle turned, another quarrel shot from the mechanism. One bolt per rotation. No tedious reloading necessary.
Quarrels steadily vanished from the quiver as the device rattled and clicked with a hard, mechanical clatter.
Was this the source of their confidence?
It was, in a word, a repeating crossbow. Lawrence had never seen, nor even heard of, a weapon that could spray quarrels like this.
Even so, the bandits did not give up the pursuit.
For all its rapid fire, the weapon’s accuracy was abysmal. It might keep them at bay, but almost nothing actually got hit.
Even when one did land, it never seemed to be a killing blow.
The crossbow, once prized for power, had been turned into a weapon that valued speed instead.
The number of quarrels the repeating crossbow burned through was no joke. When Yvette saw the quiver running dry, her hands moved at once. She poured the stock of quarrels they had prepared in advance back into it.
Clang!
The handle, spinning with all its force, flew off.
The part linked to the gears snapped clean through.
“The crank!”
“I’ll get it!”
Yvette hurried toward the inside of the carriage.
As soon as the repeating crossbow stopped, the bandits began moving in earnest. Lawrence and the others had bought a little time, but the carriage itself was heavy, and it was far from fast.
Jace tipped something from the sack he had been carrying out onto the road behind the carriage. A few pieces even bounced back into the wagon.
Lawrence picked up the one that had rolled to his feet.
A star?
It was a thing with four spikes jutting out like a chestnut burr. Oddly enough, the “star” in his palm held itself with the spikes pointing upward.
He had no idea what it was called, but its purpose was obvious enough.
The bandits chasing the carriage cried out in pain.
“Agh!”
“What the hell is this?!”
“You country bumpkins don’t even know mairumsoe!”
By the time Jace’s sneer faded, Yvette was back with the handle.
“Here’s the crank!”
“Good.”
Seated once more, Jace attached the handle to the mechanism.
There was a sharp clicking sound as it locked into place.
“Damn it!”
“They’re coming again!”
The bandits who had stepped on the mairumsoe scattered, limping and cursing.
This time, they didn’t bother with another blind barrage of quarrels.
Breaking their will to pursue was enough.
“Sons of bitches!”
Perhaps realizing this wasn’t going to work, the bandits began hurling spears instead.
Most of them fell harmlessly short of the carriage, but a few managed to strike it.
“Eek!”
The wagon lurched.
Unlike Yvette, who had collapsed in her seat, Lawrence calmly tracked the trajectory of the thrown spears.
At this rate, none of them would hit.
They couldn’t even aim properly. Their accuracy was miserable.
Having thrown Shadow Spear so many times himself, Lawrence could tell. The bandits’ shouts and curses were more threatening than their actual attacks.
Still, if they kept throwing like this, one might eventually land, couldn’t it?
When he spotted a spear flying toward the back of the carriage, Lawrence raised his hand.
“Holy Shield.”
Light condensed into a shield before blooming into shape.
The spear that had been dropping toward Yvette struck the Holy Shield and bounced away.
“……”
A groan almost slipped out from between his lips.
Even though the spear had been thrown terribly, the force behind it was no small thing. The Holy Shield itself hadn’t broken, but the impact still seemed to slam through both arms and into his chest.
Yvette’s eyes widened as she stared at the shield.
The girl could not tear her gaze away from that glittering barrier.
Jace was startled too.
That much, though, was nothing special.
People being shocked by magic was nothing new to Lawrence by now.
But the fact that Jace’s hands had stopped on the repeating crossbow was another matter.
“It hit!”
“Now!”
The bandits’ momentum surged back to life.
Watching them sprint up after clearing the mairumsoe, Lawrence lowered the Holy Shield.
“Shadow Spear.”
One shot should be enough.
There was no need to add more power.
These weren’t Eligators or Bugbears.
They were just a band of poorly equipped bandits.
That was how you throw a spear.
Muttering to himself, Lawrence hurled the Shadow Spear.
The spear of shadow launched from the carriage tore through the air with terrifying speed.
The bandits did not even have time to shout a warning.
By the time they halted at the sight of the Shadow Spear, it was already too late.
The shadow spear fell before the first bandit to rush in.
No scream rang out.
It had not hit. More precisely, Lawrence had deliberately not hit him.
It landed just an inch away—barely an inch—leaving a long wound scorched into the ground.
Even so, whether they had been caught in the blast or not, the bandit who had dropped to his knees was now soaked in blood from the legs down.
“Next time, I’ll hit.”
He cast another Shadow Spear out beyond the carriage.
They were not idiots badly enough to fail to understand what that warning meant.
“H-Hiiik!”
“A mage!”
The bandits instantly understood the situation and scattered in all directions.
The one with the wounded leg still limped away furiously, scrambling to save his life despite the pain.
Lawrence felt no pity.
These were bandits who had likely killed countless people and stolen their belongings.
Criminals stood on the complete opposite side of the Holy Cross Order’s love and mercy.
If they thought they could take other people’s lives and never have the same fate come for them, that was nothing but arrogance.
Even so, he couldn’t kill them.
He was not traveling alone now.
The clergy of the Order forbade murder. If he killed a man, even a bandit, in front of Morris’s family, who knew Lawrence as a devout pilgrim, the situation could easily turn disastrous.
Still, it was fine.
This could be used, too.
As long as a bandit lived, he remained useful in his own way.
Lawrence did not expect contrition like a silent penitent. What he needed was a rumor, carried on feet rather than words, through the bandit-ridden roads of the region—that there was a dangerous traveler here who must not be touched.
“They won’t be coming after us anymore. You can put that weapon away now.”
“Ah, right. Understood.”
Jace nodded vigorously.
* * *
Had Lawrence’s guess been right?
After that ambush, the bandits never again targeted the carriage.
The road had become noticeably easier thanks to the fact that not a single bandit showed his face, and that hardly needed saying.
As a result, the Morris family’s attitude toward Lawrence also changed.
Yvette, for example, had seen the Holy Shield with her own eyes and truly came to admire Lawrence. Seeing their eldest sister like that, the younger siblings followed suit.
Morris had always been polite, so there was little difference there, but Jace—who had once spoken up loudly against bringing Lawrence along—began to treat him with caution.
He even made sure to address him with the proper honorifics.
It was almost funny, seeing him suddenly switch to formal speech.
Did people really only recognize you after you showed them strength?
Honestly, Lawrence had never made a particularly good impression on people.
As a companion met on the road, though, this distance might not be such a bad thing.
With the bandit attacks fading, monsters took their place.
Now and then an Under Wolf would appear out of curiosity, or goblins would creep close, drawn by the carriage’s cargo. They were driven off without much trouble.
If they came from behind, Jace handled them with the repeating crossbow. If they came from the front, Lawrence drove them off with magic.
Today was no different.
Seated on the driver’s bench, Lawrence was controlling Shadow.
Whenever he had spare time, he always trained his magic like this.
It was a luxury he would never have dreamed of when traveling alone.
After shaping the shadow into the relatively easy form of a mairumsoe, Lawrence withdrew his hand.
“By the way, what business takes you to Rombamel?”
Morris, holding the reins, did not answer right away.
He had been focused on the changing shadow. At last, collecting himself, he gave an embarrassed smile.
“An apprentice I once learned the trade with opened a shop in Rombamel. We had kept in touch from time to time. I’m heading there, shamelessly enough, to lean on him for help.”
“So Albrade has its own troubles after all. I’d heard there were so many artisans there that I thought it would be a good place to make a living.”
“That’s not wrong. Inside the kingdom, people pride themselves on making the best goods around, aside from dwarf craftsmanship. If you see someone wearing work clothes in Albrade, nine times out of ten, you can assume they’re a craftsman.”
There was always a reason behind rumors.
He did not know exactly where Albrade was, but even Lawrence, who was ignorant of most worldly affairs, had heard of it.
“Still, having a lot of craftsmen isn’t necessarily a good thing.”
For a moment, Morris’s tone darkened.
“If you only look at the rumors, you wouldn’t understand. The more people there are in the same line of work, the more rivals there are fighting over jobs.”
“Isn’t that true of any profession? The skilled people get more work, and that means better pay and treatment.”
Mercenaries were no different.
Why else would they divide people by rank and vary requests and compensation accordingly?
There was a reason people chased after the ones above them.
“Treatment according to skill… perhaps Albrade once worked that way, but not anymore. If it still did, neither I nor the other craftsmen would have had any reason to leave.”
His voice sounded astonishingly worn.
“Do you know how many artisans’ guilds there are in Albrade?”
He had no way of knowing. Lawrence shook his head.
“More than a hundred. If you divide them by specialty, the number comes close to three hundred.”
“That many?”
It was an absurd number.
The mercenary guilds were split only into branches; in reality, one guild managed the whole structure, as far as he knew.
There were probably many merchant houses trading under their own names, too.
Still, nearly three hundred guilds in a single city was a number so large he could barely even imagine it.
“Craftwork is divided into extremely narrow specialties. And among those, the guild masters of the most influential guilds gather to decide the city’s policies. Collectively, they’re called the Midas Coalition. They’re the real rulers of Albrade Port.”
If that was true, then they were no different from nobles.
After all, governing a domain or a city was the prerogative of the nobility.
“The coalition guild must have immense power.”
“Yes. And that’s exactly why the side effects are severe.”
Morris’s expression tightened.
“No matter how skilled you are, once you fall out of the Midas Coalition’s favor, getting work becomes all but impossible. Even if you want to finish a delivery within the agreed deadline, disruptions in distribution happen all the time. In the end, more and more craftsmen are driven to leave the city every year, unable to endure the coalition’s abuse.”
“……”
He said nothing more after that, but Lawrence understood Morris’s situation.
A person could do anything for the sake of family.
The scarred carriage was a medal bearing the father’s efforts to protect his home.
“Yvette told me. You’ve been on the road for nearly half a year already. Was there really no option but to go to a border city? Honestly, with your character, Morris, I feel like you’d be respected no matter what village you went to.”
“That’s a truly kind thing to say, but the area around Albrade is actually even more dangerous.”
A bitter smile appeared on his face.
“Any craftsman who wants to work in Albrade has to be affiliated with a guild, without exception. Jace and I were both once in one ourselves. If your name is still on the ledger and you set up shop in a nearby village, you’re bound to suffer all manner of nasty trouble.”
“Is that really true? Hard to believe. You’re not even trading in the same city, and yet they still do that if you move elsewhere?”
“Guild collusion is far uglier than you’d imagine. Since they’re all in the same trade, they know exactly how to make life miserable for one another. So most people either pay a fortune and flee across the sea to the Sultaniya Kingdom, or, like me, choose to go far away from the city.”
In other words, Morris’s finances were not in good shape.
“Well, if things get really bad, I’m even thinking of looking into those dog-catchers. It’d be best if we can settle in Rombamel, of course, but you never know what life will do.”
“I pray the Goddess’s blessing stays with you.”
“Haha. Hearing that from a pilgrim like you, Lawrence, does cheer me up.” Morris gave a small laugh. “That’s right. We’ve got to keep going. I have family depending on me. I can’t afford to break down here. Everyone has to live like that, don’t they?”
The strength in his grip on the reins deepened.
Looking a little more encouraged, Morris smiled faintly.
“By the way, what exactly is that dog-catcher you mentioned?”
At Lawrence’s question, he glanced back at the carriage.
“Rombamel is a border city. Beyond the wall lies the Sandefjord Kingdom.”
His voice gradually lowered.
It sank so far that the last words were almost swallowed by the clatter of the horses’ hooves pulling the carriage.
“There are brokers who help people cross the border in secret. Since they take stray dogs across to another country, people call them dog-catchers.”
“What?”
Lawrence’s voice rose before he could stop himself.
Smuggling across the border? He was so shocked by the unexpected admission that he almost lost his composure.
“Shh!”
Morris brought a finger to his lips.
Realizing his mistake, Lawrence lowered his voice.
“That’s far too dangerous.”
“That’s only if things go worst-case. Believe me, I’d rather not reach that point either.”
People did not cross borders because they wanted to. Morris had said it plainly: if it came to protecting his family, he could do anything. That was the resolve he was speaking aloud.
* * *
“We’re almost there!”
At Morris’s call, Lawrence lifted his head.
Far ahead, he could see the towering wall that guarded the city.
It had already been a month since he had climbed aboard the carriage.
Before he knew it, the border city of Rombamel was right before them.
Contrary to the ominous rumors, Rombamel looked like an ordinary city.
A long wall ran along the outer edge, and the checkpoint stood there in plain sight, doing business as usual.
It really did seem to have more energy than any village he had seen so far.
And yet, for all that, the line didn’t seem to move no matter how long they waited.
“The gate’s acting up again today, I see.”
“Tsk. Mark my words, one day it’s going to cause a major accident. They can call in all the workers they want and still not fix it. How are we supposed to live with this hanging over our heads?”
Complaints drifted over from the people waiting their turn.
The gate was the problem?
But the gate Lawrence could see looked perfectly fine.
A moment later, he witnessed something he could hardly believe.
The gatekeeper, who was checking the people entering the city, was calmly accepting money pouches with a perfectly natural expression.
He hadn’t seen wrong.
Even worse, he was pulling aside the people who had handed over money and moving them to the front of the line.
The gate was not the problem.
The money being slipped into the right hands was deciding the order in which people entered the city.