Honorary Mess Officer of the Knight Order (1)
The next morning, the moment daylight broke, Iseria and I made for the manor attached to the knight order's garrison. More precisely, we had been summoned.
"That mess officer bastard... He managed our order's food for ten years, and I never saw it coming. It wasn't only the flour you left behind, Jinwoo. He helped himself to a great deal. Once we added the cooks' and ration clerks' testimony, the charges only grew. Vegetables, flour, seasonings—he skimmed a portion of everything under his care."
"I-is that so?"
"It is. Still, we caught him thanks to you. As commander of the knight order, you have my thanks. I'm grateful. But... why are you frozen so stiff? Relax. I said relax."
"Y-yes! Thank you..."
Duke Kailan, commander of the Silbaerin Knights and lord of this territory, was putting on a show of easy humor. Probably because I was frozen half to death.
I wanted to take it easy too. Did he think I enjoyed being uncomfortable? When he had stopped by the shop for a bowl of banquet noodles, I hadn't noticed, but the man's presence was no joke. A border duke who held the frontier, I supposed.
He wasn't dressed in the lavish garments nobles usually favored, but in the padded layer meant to go under armor, so he could arm himself and ride out at any moment. A gambeson, was that the word? I was fairly sure it was. Even so, it was an exceptionally refined gambeson, worthy of a duke and a knight-commander. If what the common soldiers wore was like a scratchy field jacket handed down through ten years of the Korean army, Kailan's had the crisp snap of a career officer's fleece. Standing there in that getup with a menacing sword at his hip, there was simply no relaxing around him.
The office was the same story. Was that taxidermy a bear? It was only the head, and still that huge. How big had the rest of the beast been?
While I was rolling my eyes all over the room, Duke Kailan spoke.
"Well, you'll grow used to it in time. That mage beside you, though... It's been decades since I last saw one. An elf. I don't know what bond you share, but it's remarkable."
"Hnh—how did you know? Human?!"
"Hey, hey. Watch your tone! Your tone!"
"Hahaha! It's quite all right. I can tell an elf isn't speaking from malice."
"The hell did you just—you old—mmph!!"
Even with her robe pulled low, Iseria had been found out as an elf, and she bristled. I hadn't really expected her to speak politely, but she had at least shown Arthur a minimum of courtesy. Why was she like this with Kailan, who stood even higher? She had clearly been startled at having her identity stated outright.
Just before her tongue could cause a real disaster, I clamped a hand over her mouth. I leaned in against her pointed ear and murmured, low enough that only she could hear.
"Hey. I'm begging you. Please just stay quiet. Don't talk."
"Mmmph—hnn!"
Whether she understood or not, she fussed against my palm—then suddenly shuddered, her ears flushing red.
Figuring the message had landed, I took my hand away. She sucked in a sharp breath and glared at me.
Hm. Sorry about that. Still better than running your mouth at a duke and getting your head lopped off.
The air had gone awkward. I forced my energy back up.
"Ah, ahaha! In any case, I only did what had to be done, Your Grace. I've spent my whole life cooking, so I simply couldn't forgive someone making a game of food."
"Eating matters. All the more in a military organization. Don't sell short what you've done. Once the Monster Wave ends, I'll see you're properly rewarded. But perhaps..."
Duke Kailan built me up and led with the reward. I had no reason to refuse what was being offered. I wouldn't say it aloud, but catching a man who had been diverting rations in wartime struck me as a fairly large matter.
What snagged at me was the sentence he had let trail off. A premonition that something troublesome was coming—and then Duke Kailan spoke.
"You can hardly go back to the shop in the middle of a Monster Wave, can you?"
"No, sir. That's right."
"And sitting in a shelter, chatting with everyone else, must be wearing thin by now?"
"Well... I suppose."
"Then... how about giving it a try?"
"Sorry? Giving what a try?"
"Mess officer."
"Couldn't you have just said no? You went and accepted, and now you look half dead."
"Haa... you're right..."
To get straight to the conclusion, I accepted. Mess officer—more precisely, an honorary mess officer, and only for the duration of the Monster Wave.
An honorary knight, maybe. But an honorary mess officer? It was surely meant as an honorable title granted to an outsider, and yet there was nothing cool about it. I had refused to become an NCO even when my first sergeant hounded me like the lead in some obsessive captivity romance, and I had taken my discharge. I never thought I would end up doing the job after coming to another world.
Worry sat on me like a mountain, and my chest felt packed with lead. The reason I had accepted anyway, knowing full well I would wilt like this, was pity.
I didn't need the business to thrive. What I had wanted was a quiet restaurant, run together with my regulars. But I was a cook, after a fashion, and it hurt to watch soldiers struggling to protect the city eat something you could barely even call food. Maybe it was kinship. I had served once as an ordinary soldier, choking down tasteless mess-hall slop.
Should I just feed every last one of them? I could stuff them so full they couldn't even open their mouths.
I had the means, too. Not only Mana Market, but the knowledge and technique I had honed in a modern world where culinary science was far advanced. Truthfully, that was the more precious ability. What good were ingredients if you didn't know how to handle them?
I had the motive. I had the ability. The situation had lined up. Since I had decided to do it, I might as well do it properly.
I pulled myself together and headed for the kitchen.
I had poked into every corner yesterday, but the moment the place became my responsibility, the way I looked at it changed. Not just the quantity of food, but the cooks' skill, the headcount shifting with the battle roster, the rations set aside for pushing meals out—even at a glance, there was a great deal to watch. Fortunately, a good part of it had already been solved. I talked with the soldiers in the kitchen and found that only the mess officer had been worthless. The men under him were all capable.
A knight's work kept him close to combat, and a single misstep could cost him his life. The Middle Ages, though, were not a world where knights were in special danger and commoners were safe. Everyone died just as easily. In that sense a knight actually received techniques and gear to protect himself, and a reasonably steady wage besides, which let him claim a secure post—the medieval iron rice bowl. These cooks had chosen, half against their will, to become competent, so they could survive a long time inside that iron rice bowl. They were not combat troops, which made them all the easier to replace.
"This morning's distribution is complete. Lunch will go out as combat rations, and we'll begin preparing dinner once that's been issued."
"What did you make for breakfast?"
"Um... that thing you saw yesterday..."
"Gyaaah."
Yesterday's nightmare came rushing back, and I screamed. From what I had seen, they handled knives well and their tools well. So why did they only ever produce that?
"We learned the techniques, but we don't have any recipes. Everything we know is only what the last mess officer taught us..."
Hearing the cook's dejected explanation, I understood a little. Even on modern Earth, home recipes were shared easily enough, but a restaurant's secret recipes almost never were. Those belonged to the chefs as their own property. If that held true in an age of advanced communications, how much more so in the Middle Ages? The culinary world had always been closed and hierarchical, and once you stacked a medieval synergy on top of that, laying hands on a proper recipe was like plucking a star out of the sky.
"The lunch combat rations are... hardtack?"
"Yes, sir. Hardtack, dried jerky, and salt."
Combat rations were things already made and simply sent out, so I didn't need to worry about them. That left only dinner.
Unlike before, when the stores of a ducal knight order had been suspiciously short, the food warehouse had been set right by cleaning out the mess officer's private hoard.
"Headcount for dinner?"
"We're planning on six hundred servings."
Breakfast service was over and it was still morning, but if I chose a menu that took too many hands, we would be glued to the kitchen and unable to look at anything else. This was not peacetime. I couldn't afford work that inefficient, with that poor a return.
It has to hold up in bulk, so stir-fries are out. Breads that take forever are out, too.
I could dump in whatever ingredients we had, scrub the lot with spice and salt, and it would be edible enough. But hadn't I taken this honorary post knowing perfectly well I would end up exhausted? I had a chef's pride. I would never feed them something careless and tasteless.
My head was full of that worry when a smell stabbed my nose—sharp, and utterly out of place. A fierce scent that snapped the chain of my thoughts. On instinct I looked around for the source. It was coming from none other than the bag on my shoulder.
"Ugh, shit."
I opened it, and the reek of every spice imaginable came roaring out. Iseria and the cooks beside me all winced.
The lids on a few jars I had bought the other day must have cracked open. Powders scattered freely through the bag, each one showing off as if to shout, I'm the strongest!!
Bulk food... spices... bread?
This is just curry.
Halfway through sorting the bottles, I jerked my head up.
A flavor and aroma that medieval soldiers had absolutely—no matter what, not even something similar, not in the slightest, without exception—never tasted. A dish that this age's preservation and distribution could never produce. A one-tap free win that only I, holding Mana Market, could pull off.
"Everyone. Bring out every last ingredient allotted for today."
Tonight's menu was curry stew and flatbread.