An Expensive Apology
Whether it was smithing or cooking, Johan didn't care what a skill was so long as it was one. Even a decent physique could get a man picked up as a guard or a soldier. Gessen the knight had recruited his men that very way. Dangerous work, certainly — but for a slave, it was also a chance to earn merit and win his freedom.
But would a village like this even have someone like that?
He found it hard to believe a village this small owned a slave with any real talent. Slaves with genuinely valuable skills fetched high prices; they'd never be sold off to a backwater like this.
"What kind of man is he?"
"A former traveling merchant, milord. He's wandered half the continent, so he's remarkably well-read. Whatever you care to ask, he'll have an answer."
"!"
Johan was surprised by how good the offer actually was. A slave with that kind of breadth of experience would certainly be useful to him. And yet—
Why are they willing to hand him over?
If the man were truly useful, they would never put him on the table. Johan posed the question with careful casualness.
"He's of no use to the village, then?"
"Of course he's useful! But to atone for the wrong we've done you, milord, anything less would be an insult."
A lie. The truth was that a well-traveled slave was next to useless in a village like this.
The knowledge a village needed was which herbs grew where and what they could be used for, when the rains would come, when the snow would fall — not what that city beyond the mountains is famous for, what lies across that sea. That sort of knowledge did nothing but fill the village's young men with restless longing for the world outside.
"He's not ill-tempered or rebellious, is he?"
"No, milord! Absolutely not."
From the way he talks, the man really is useless to them. But it was a tempting offer all the same. Useful or not, Johan was at a stage where having someone at his side worked in his favor.
Having anyone trailing behind me looks good, no matter who it is.
No matter how convincingly Johan proved his noble birth through his weapons, his bearing, his accent, there was one thing he couldn't hide: the state of his purse.
Among landless wandering knights there were prosperous ones who commanded dozens of followers, and penniless ones who couldn't even afford a full harness and traveled alone. Which one people treated with more respect was obvious.
If you wanted to be received as a knight, you had to look the part. To traveling merchants and commoners, Johan's current appearance sufficed — but anything above that station would be a harder sell.
"Fine. I'll look at him first and decide."
As Johan moved to go out, the flustered mercenaries moved to stop him.
"Milord, be careful. It could be a trap."
"He's right. You can't expect honor from villagers like these."
The veterans worried about an ambush. Men from villages like this would do anything if pushed — honor meant nothing when their property was at stake. They'd just as soon kill the mercenaries and bury them in a ditch. And if Johan insisted on walking out there alone—
But Johan was untroubled.
"If it comes to that, I'll cut my way out. No need to worry."
It sounded absurd on its face, and yet Johan's confidence made the mercenaries believe it for a moment. That knight, they thought, really might carve through a dozen-odd villagers and walk away clean.
All his limbs are intact.
That alone earned the man high marks in Johan's book. He wore a worn, threadbare cloth tunic, and around his neck hung the brass collar that marked him a slave — a hardened band stamped with his name, his crime, and his master, soldered shut without a single seam, impossible to remove without tools.
"Lord Atanka, you've come!"
"I have, Goidun. As it happens, the honorable knight here has agreed to take you off our hands."
"...Pardon?"
The slave, Goidun, was caught off guard. He was supposed to follow a knight he'd never seen before?
Was this a good thing or a bad thing?
Not that it was his decision to make.
Not rotting away in this dung-heap of a village is a plus, at least.
A slave's life followed his master's. A slave in some rural hole would spend his days plowing fields and shoveling manure until he dropped dead. But a noble's slave, with a little luck, could live in comfort most freemen would envy.
And a knight, technically, sat on the lowest rung of the nobility. Better still, the knight before him cut a fairly convincing figure. He was clearly no destitute wanderer scraping by without a single piece of proper equipment.
The problem was—
If a lout like me tags along after a knight, won't I end up dead?
Even a goblin's cave beat the grave. Goidun's first instinct was fear — what if he followed this knight only to die screaming in some ditch? Knights were madmen who went looking for places to die, weren't they?
"Goidun. You there. What do you think you're doing? Greet him."
"Ah — yes! My deepest thanks, milord! To think you'd rate someone like me so highly! I can't imagine what a man like me ever did to catch your eye, but I swear I'll give you my very best. I don't know the first thing about handling weapons and my arms are weak, but if you command it, anything at all—"
Goidun, mid-deliberation, scrambled through a greeting at the headman's bark — while quietly working in the fact that he was physically weak. If the knight wasn't satisfied with that and declined to take him, so much the better; it only meant he was the sort who lived rough, and Goidun lost nothing either way.
Atanka's face soured.
The situation calls for insisting the man is sturdy, and he's telling the knight he's frail.
"Turn your neck."
Goidun turned his head, exposing the inscription on the collar.
Literate knights weren't unheard of, but they were about as rare as a stupid orc. Most knights preferred to hire someone to read for them — people of rank considered it beneath their dignity to read anything themselves.
He doesn't seem like a church or monastic order knight, though...
"Smuggling gold?"
"Y-yes, milord. I'm deeply sorry. I've repented of it, truly—"
"How did you survive the sentence?"
Johan asked with genuine curiosity. This world's law was far harsher than Earth's. Commit a crime without rank or connections, and you were best off assuming a death sentence.
Prison? Feeding a criminal while he sat in a cell was a rare indulgence — unless he was a hostage of noble blood, of course.
And smuggling was usually a hanging offense. Bringing goods into a city without paying the tolls was a capital crime among capital crimes.
"I had some savings put away."
So he'd paid his way out with bribes — bought his neck back one coin at a time. Johan nodded with interest.
"You had money, and you still went into smuggling? Why?"
"The devil got hold of me, milord."
"None of that. Tell me the truth."
"I... needed money badly..."
"M-milord knight, I'm sure the man repents of it even now!"
Atanka, misunderstanding where the questions were going, leapt in to make excuses on the slave's behalf. A knight would want an obedient, loyal slave — not some traveling merchant caught running contraband.
"We've also prepared equipment fit for your use, milord. Please accept it, and forgive us."
"...!"
Johan was mildly surprised. A village like this had weapons fit for a knight?
But they were unexpectedly decent. The longsword was well balanced, and the estoc — shaped like a sharpened skewer — would punch through gaps beautifully. Even the small crossbow worked fine.
The armor, by contrast, was a disaster. One look told you exactly how a knight without money dressed: a mismatched patchwork of whatever could be scavenged. No chainmail, however battered, could justify wearing this. The moment he put it on, he'd be treated accordingly.
I'll take the weapons and put that armor and those clothes on Goidun instead.
Clunk.
Something caught in Johan's hand as he rummaged — a small, round lump of metal. He drew it out on instinct and flipped the lid open, and something familiar stared back at him.
A broken pocket watch.
"...?!"
Johan was stunned. Not only had he never seen a wind-up timepiece in this world — no one here would ever have imagined one existed. Even dwarven engineers would struggle to craft something this intricate. Broken or not, his instincts screamed at him what it must be worth.
This is a gold-coin item!
And it had been sitting in a village like this. That the villagers, unable to read a clock, hadn't recognized its value made sense — that it existed here at all was the miracle.
Where did something like this wash up from? A relic of the Ancient Empire?
Examining it closely, he caught faint engraving marks. Ancient Imperial script, no doubt about it — though it was broken and scraped over, nearly illegible.
Johan tossed the pocket watch up and caught it, then glanced at Atanka's face. Atanka was staring blankly, wondering what the knight was doing.
He clearly had no idea what it was.
Johan schooled his expression. Too much surprise might give them the wrong idea. He tucked away the weapons and the watch, and spoke.
"Very well. Since he claims to repent, I'll extend him my mercy."
Atanka's face lit up. Somehow, it was over.
"The man is filthy and half-ruined, though. Have him washed and dressed. Not in armor, perhaps — but he should at least be presentable enough that I'm not ashamed to be seen with him."
"Yes, milord. At once."
Throwing in a decently clean shirt and a pair of trousers was no great burden. But Johan didn't stop there. The pocket watch had been a windfall, but he had planned to squeeze them from the start.
"Two horses as well."
"...Pardon?"
"What I rode here on was a fine animal. Worth four or five imperial gold coins, at least. This slave, on the other hand — even at his very best, I'd say he doesn't clear a dozen-odd silver."
"Th-that is, two entire horses—"
"I doubt there's not a decent horse to be found in a village this size. No excuses. Two horses I won't be ashamed to be seen riding. See to it."
Judging by the village's scale, Johan could roughly estimate what wealth it held. No well-trained warhorses like knights rode, perhaps — but a sturdy packhorse or two, or a quick-footed hunting mount, were well within the realm of possibility.
They'd fetch less than a proper warhorse, sure, but they were valuable property all the same. And to surrender two of them? The loss would cut deep.
He'd opened his mouth to shave off a little silver, and ended up paying through the nose for it instead.
Ugh...
Why not just ambush him?
For one fleeting moment, Atanka actually thought it. Soothe the knight, lull him into carelessness, and then simply strike—
Johan looked straight at him with those dark, unreadable eyes. They might as well have said, I know exactly what you're thinking.
Atanka felt his stomach drop through the floor. His hands and feet trembled; his heart hammered in his chest. This pressure was on an entirely different plane from what he'd felt facing the wanderers his watchmen had subdued.
"I'd like your firm answer here and now."
"...It shall be done."
Atanka was a man weathered by years of hard dealing — yet before the green young knight, he could do nothing but bow his head without a word of protest.
It was instinctive fear.
"Feels like an arrow's going to come flying out of the treeline any second."
"Hey. Stop looking back."
Leaving Lutzbeck behind, the mercenaries couldn't shake the prickling feeling between their shoulder blades. They could practically hear the thoughts behind the glares of the villagers watching them go.
Drop dead on the road, why don't you!
"Honestly, I didn't think they'd hand him over so meekly."
"We got lucky. They looked scared half out of their wits... Lord Eldans, will you be all right? We can simply never come back this way, but for you, it could be inconvenient in all sorts of ways."
"I'll manage. I doubt I'll have business this way for a long while anyway."
The situation in the empire's south was growing more chaotic by the day. The guild was reluctant to send its merchants anywhere lords and mercenaries were locked in bitter contention.
Once this trip wrapped up, Eldans figured he'd stay in the city for a stretch and help with guild affairs.
Introducing one solid knight to the guild is worth far more than any of these routes.
Meanwhile, Johan was deep in conversation with Goidun. Johan was working to size the man up — and Goidun, for his part, was working just as hard to size Johan up.
Though it was Goidun whose life quite literally depended on the effort.
"So. Why did you smuggle?"
"Well, I was, ah... seduced by certain... temptations..."
"Hmm. Goidun. We'll be traveling together in every capacity from now on, so you'd best learn about me early. When I ask a question, answer it plainly. Don't waste effort on cleverness."
"...I fell into gambling, and my debts grew rather large..."
"Ah. So that was it. What kind of gambling?"
"Dice, milord..."
Goidun broke off mid-sentence, puzzled. Johan wasn't showing much anger. A knight, by custom, ought to have flown into a rage or delivered a stern lecture at the news that his slave had gambled his way into smuggling—
"Hmm. And what game did you play most?"
"You, er... threw three dice, and you bet on the sum of the pips, milord."
"Was that game popular?"
"Popular enough that you had to slip the house a bribe just to get into a game...?"
Only then did Goidun realize: this young knight was genuinely interested in his story.
Wait... no. Really?!