The Fox Where the Tiger Is Absent
Thanks to that, Eldans had been able to talk Gowan around. If it weren't for his usual conduct, the situation might have raised suspicions.
"So where did the information leak from? Did you buy something expensive?"
"No... no, sir. Just common goods. Of course, I could sell them for a fair price if I took them somewhere else, but..."
Barley and wheat bought from villages in the upper south. These were goods he had meant to sell or trade in Lutzbeck village — he'd received word that barley and wheat were fetching high prices there right now.
Along with animal hides from villages in the lower south. He'd had the luck to procure a well-tanned bear pelt from a hunter. It had cost a good deal of money, but as a gift worthy of presenting to the noble who looked after the guild, it wasn't money regretted.
"That's all of it?"
"Yes..."
"Doesn't seem like enough to raid someone over. Nothing else, then? Any other reason you came this way?"
"I did have a few letters to deliver to the guild branch in the southern city, but..."
"What kind of letters?"
"Well, I wouldn't know the contents, would I."
Tampering with sealed letters was the sort of thing that could stain a merchant guild's honor.
"Besides, they were hardly important letters. If they had been important, would I have entrusted them to someone like me?"
With Count Zarfen's territory growing unstable and signs stirring everywhere that fief wars would soon break out, Eldans had planned to make this peddling run his last and rest for a while afterward.
An experienced merchant did not cut his ties the moment war looked likely. He told everything to the villages that had ever fallen on hard times and done one final round of trade first. A merchant who vanished without a word was never trusted again. The relationships he'd built with each village could, at times, matter more than his own life.
The letters are all delivered by now, so it's too late regardless. And there's no way to know.
Johan looked at Eldans, who seemed terribly anxious about this grudge from some unknown source.
"Well, what's done is done. I'll help you."
"Wha—?!"
"Helping people in danger is a knight's duty, no?"
"...Th-thank you, Sir Johan!"
Eldans was flustered by Johan's words, yet overjoyed. Gowan and the mercenaries wore expressions of disbelief. From where they stood, helping a man without charging a single coin made no sense at all.
With this, I can get acquainted with the guild easily enough.
If he entered the city while helping Eldans, the Kettana Merchant Guild would vouch for Johan's identity and lend him aid of its own accord. A guild didn't simply send away those who helped one of its members — and if that someone happened to be a knight with real skill?
The guild would court his favor all the more eagerly.
Whatever Johan chose to do here, it was wise to stay close to factions with real power. Going it alone had its limits in this world.
"I'll take these men with us."
"Their legs are broken. How are we supposed to take them?"
"Ah..."
Gowan's face flushed with faint embarrassment. He'd blurted out that they were taking the prisoners, no question, since it was Johan they were speaking to — but on second thought, it simply wasn't feasible.
"But they're your spoils, aren't they, sir?"
"They're my spoils, so it's my responsibility. Just leave them and go."
"No! Please, no!"
The two mercenaries screamed. Their legs were broken — what were they supposed to do out here? It was open plain, but there was forest nearby.
"Show mercy, Sir Knight! We'll never do such a thing again!"
"Mercy? You mean kill you?"
Johan gripped his mace. Compared to being torn apart alive by beasts, a clean death might have been a mercy indeed.
"No... that's not what I meant..."
"Shut up! Unless you want to die right here."
Gowan's mercenaries herded the raiders along with brutal efficiency. If Johan hadn't been there, they'd have gone straight to summary execution. No mercenary band forgave men who attacked first and then crawled and begged.
"We'll split the rest of the spoils into coin once we reach the city."
"R-really, sir?"
"I didn't fight alone, after all."
What was simply the natural thing to do became an act of generosity and magnanimity the moment a man of high station did it. At Johan's words, the mercenaries' faces lit up. It was a bonus none of them had expected.
He's a better sort than I thought, isn't he?
That knight we saw before was a damn prickly bastard...
"Gowan."
"Kahn. Something the matter?"
"That new recruit is even worse than I figured."
"That bad, is it?"
Gowan frowned. Kahn had known him a long time, and he didn't dismiss the man's words lightly.
"Feels like the kind who'll cause real trouble if we leave him be. I'd like to be rid of him."
"Hmm... it's awkward right now. Eldans wouldn't like it, and we're short-handed as it is."
"You didn't see him during the fight? Battle breaks out and he runs off, then slinks back all sneaky-like."
"I saw it. But even if he's to be punished, it should happen in the city. Do it before the job's done and we're the ones who lose face. Better to keep an eye on him until we head back, then deal with him."
"Damn it. Fine, we'll do it that way. Where do we find men like that... Next time, bring someone with actual experience, will you? I don't care how cheap they are."
"Understood."
Fortunately, no further fighting broke out after that, and two days later the party reached Lutzbeck.
"There it is — Lutzbeck!"
Much better than the Eitz fief.
"Is it all right to go straight in?"
"It's fine, sir. The headman knows me, and plenty of the villagers do too."
The Eitz fief — where a knight of sorts lived and ruled in person — was the unusual case; most nobles did not reside on their lands. When the time came, they simply sent an agent to collect the taxes.
In such places, the villages ran themselves. A headman chosen from among the well-off serfs handled affairs large and small, managing the village after his own fashion. And while that management might look laughable through a modern man's eyes, the mark of a good peddler was precisely the ability to get along with such headmen. Have a falling-out with one, and everything became a headache.
"Any of you been here before?"
"I have. They brew a decent beer here."
Kahn answered, and Johan smiled.
"Now that sounds like my kind of place. Anything else worth knowing?"
"You'd best pass on whatever food the inn serves. Ask at the brewery instead — old Kol. For a single copper he'll bring you something respectable to eat along with the beer."
"I'll remember that. Thanks."
With that, Johan entered the village. He could feel the villagers tense up at the sight of the mercenaries and the unfamiliar air about the group. Murmured voices drifted through the air.
"—Who's that? A knight?"
"—Traveling with mercenaries... must be a war brewing somewhere nearby..."
"—He's still young."
They seemed to think they were whispering out of earshot, but he heard every word. Johan merely shrugged and stabled his horse in the paddock. When he stepped into the inn, the owner came scurrying out at once.
"Welcome, welcome!"
The innkeeper back in the Eitz fief had been an unfriendly sort. Or rather, more precisely, he was rarely there at all — off earning his living at some other trade, returning to the inn only when a traveler showed up to collect his coin. He could hardly help being brusque when he had nothing at stake either way.
Here in Lutzbeck, though, travelers came through often enough that the inn was a fairly respectable establishment. The innkeeper showed not a flicker of surprise at the sight of an outlander.
"A knight, I take it, sir?"
"Johan, of House Eitz. Tell me — do knights pass through here often?"
"Now and again, yes. Even a knight needs a bed to sleep in, doesn't he."
A wealthy, powerful noble might have borrowed the headman's house or requisitioned one to his liking, but a wandering knight had no choice but to lodge at an inn.
"We had several through last year. Knights on their way to a tournament. Might you be interested in the tournament yourself, sir?"
"No. I'm just passing through."
So saying, Johan handed over half a silver imperial coin. More than enough for lodging.
"If you'd care for a meal, then..."
"I'm fine for food."
At Johan's words, disappointment washed over the innkeeper's face. He'd been hoping to squeeze another coin or two out of the man.
Once inside his room, Johan threw himself onto the bed. It wasn't particularly soft, but it would do. He realized he hadn't truly let his guard down once since fleeing the fief.
Door's barred... I can finally rest properly, for once.
Plans for tomorrow could wait until he woke up. Johan closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
"He's really that skilled, this knight?"
"That's what I'm telling you."
At Eldans's words, Atanka, the headman of Lutzbeck, wore an expression of open skepticism.
"I've never laid eyes on a wandering knight who wasn't a mess. The ones who came last year were utter trash too. Men with no house to their name, strutting about so arrogant... You know what became of them?"
"They got beaten and run off, did they?"
"That they did. We meant to just tolerate them, but they went far past the line."
A true noble might have held his tongue out of fear of consequences, but a wandering knight with no house behind him was neither noble nor anything else — just a mercenary calling himself a knight.
And when men like that acted as though the world owed them something — hand over the headman's house, offer food and drink for free, bring us women — the villagers' patience had run its course.
In the Eitz fief, the entire garrison had amounted to a few slaves, a handful of servants, and some family retainers, but Lutzbeck was different. The village was large enough to keep a militia of its own, and if the hot-blooded young men, hardened by years in the fields, truly set their minds to it and swarmed, some undertrained wandering sellsword would only stammer and take his beating.
"This one is different, though. He's from a proper knightly house, you see. And besides that, there's his skill."
It was no surprise for a knight from a knightly house to be strong, but for someone as young as Johan to already be this complete was another matter entirely. Only talent paired with brutal training could produce that, Eldans thought.
"Oh? Then why does such a man wander about alone?"
Noble blood, even a second or third son's, rarely traveled without company. A servant or two in tow was the least of it — even those mercenaries who styled themselves knights had brought their underlings along, playing at being retinue.
"There'll be circumstances with his house, of course."
An obscure house, or a fallen one. Eldans put it delicately, and the headman understood at once. Even with the knight absent, there was no need to go picking at a noble's flaws.
Where there is no tiger, the fox is king — and in lands where no noble ruled in person, the headman's authority swelled accordingly. Men like Atanka lived rather comfortably on that fact.
But that was only true within the walls of the village. The moment the noble's appointed steward arrived, the headman had to grovel as though offering up his very liver. Atanka knew his place well enough. To be headman of a village this size, one needed a certain political sense.