A Wolf Named Karamap
Dice gambling was, of course, a pastime beloved by everyone from children to the elderly, slaves to nobles. Yet it was a game a touch too lowborn for nobles to openly admit enjoying. What the aristocracy publicly savored were intellectual, refined diversions like chess — not dice.
And yet this knight was showing his interest quite brazenly. Which meant...
This gentleman is serious about dice gambling!
Goidan's mood brightened at once. He had been anxious about whether he could get along with this unfamiliar new master, but it seemed they might actually hit it off. A knight who loved gambling — where else would he find a master so perfectly suited to him?
Not that it was anything to boast of, but Goidan was an expert at dice. He knew which gambling dens in which cities had favorable odds, where to find unlicensed underground tables, and which rolls came up in which situations as though he'd memorized them by heart.
Johan, however, exceeded Goidan's expectations. The moment the gambling talk wound down, Johan moved on to smuggling.
"How did you handle the smuggling?"
"Pardon?"
"I'm curious how you moved the gold. Tell me the method. You must have been fairly confident to attempt it at all."
"I bribed the guards and hid it inside crates being brought into the city..."
"Textbook. So why were you caught?"
"The guard betrayed me. He seems to have lost his nerve..."
Smuggling was far too grave a crime for the handful of coins a guard might pocket. The moment you were caught, it wasn't just your neck on the block — your family's came with it.
"Hmm. Bribing guards doesn't strike me as a very good method. They betray easily, and what happens if a different man inspects the cargo? It's over."
Goods entering a city were bound to be inspected rigorously. Bribing one or two men was far too risky a gamble.
"What about a method that's less likely to get caught... say, smuggling inside the bellies of animals? Hire shepherds and swineherds and hide the gold in the stomachs of sheep and pigs. What do you think of that?"
"...!"
Goidan was startled by Johan's words in two ways. First, that a lord was proposing smuggling methods to him at all — and second, that the method was actually plausible. Plausible enough that he wondered why he'd never thought of it himself.
That really is a brilliant idea!
Nobody ever questioned a shepherd or swineherd driving his beasts into the city.
"What do you think?"
"It's... it's a truly excellent method."
"Good. Glad to hear it holds water."
Johan offered the encouragement with an easy nod. He had asked with an eye toward future profits, but the conversation proved beneficial to them both. Above all, it left Goidan with a genuine fondness for this peculiar new master.
Birds of a feather, as they say, know each other on sight.
Sharp-eyed from his years as a traveling peddler, Goidan sensed immediately that his new master was quite different from the knights he had dreaded. The man might even suit him well.
He had no idea what blood-soaked battlefields lay ahead, but a master you could actually talk to was a better master than any. Goidan swore his loyalty with his heart set on making his fortune under this knight.
The road to Marcel was smooth, and the mercenaries moved a little faster than usual. It wasn't just the nearby bandits or the schedule. It was what had happened in the village of Lutzbeck — there was no telling whether the villagers, having had their change of heart, might come chasing after them.
"O God who dwells in the heavens, I pray unto Thee..."
"Since when have you been such a devout believer?"
"Just hear me out. ...I pray that that bastard Gamson ran ahead to Marcel and got himself caught."
"Heh. In that case, I suppose I ought to offer a prayer myself. It's been a while."
In this era, religion was inseparable from daily life, whether or not one truly believed.
"If you're done praying, let's get camp set up."
"Ah, my muscles are starting to stiffen up. Could do with a proper bath once we reach the city."
"Hold on. Is that... wolf howling?"
"What? There are no wolves around here. Where's it coming from?"
The mercenaries were thrown into confusion. There were no wolves in this region. Of course, it was hardly unusual for monsters or great beasts to drift into new territory, but still...
"Damn. That'll make standing watch a nervous business."
"Let's agree that anyone killed by a wolf counts as an idiot."
Johan, who had been sitting and listening to their chatter, froze. The howling sounded strangely familiar.
He rose and walked out toward the edge of the camp. The mercenaries asked in bewilderment:
"Where are you going, my lord?"
"Just checking on something."
Johan approached the forest with a single longsword at his hip, and shouted.
"Come out!"
For a moment, the mercenaries thought Johan had lost his mind. If he hadn't been a knight, someone would have blurted out are you insane? on the spot.
But Johan was not mad. An enormous wolf had indeed appeared before him. It was so massive that the mercenaries at first assumed it wasn't a wolf at all.
"Wh-what is that? A monster?"
The mercenaries scrambled for their weapons — then stopped mid-motion. The wolf was bobbing its head before Johan, fawning and whimpering affectionately. Like one of the dogs shepherds kept.
"Wait... I think it belongs to that knight?"
"Ha. Impressive fellow. Tamed a beast like that."
"And you're not even a Wolf Beastfolk. Remarkable. Are you from the north, my lord?"
"Wolves? Wouldn't that make you from the east?"
"No. Northerners handle them too."
...?
Listening to the mercenaries bickering behind him, Johan was at a loss.
They weren't nearly as astonished as he'd expected — despite him showing up with a wolf, an enormous one at that.
Only then did Johan realize it. He had been thinking with knowledge that was far too outdated.
Come to think of it, this world has monsters and magic. Of course there'd be people who kept giant wolves as companions...
Eldans, drawn over by the commotion, looked the beast up and down and asked:
"Is this wolf yours, sir knight? Why did you have it follow from so far behind? What if you had lost it on the way..."
"I didn't want to cause unnecessary alarm."
"Hahaha! Oh, sir knight. These men are seasoned mercenaries who've seen it all. A single tamed wolf isn't going to frighten them."
Eldans burst out laughing, and the mercenaries nodded along with easy smiles. They weren't greenhorns who would startle at a tamed wolf. It wasn't even the first time they'd seen a man keep one.
Though it really is enormous. What has it been eating?
The mercenaries tried not to show it, but they flinched as the black wolf drew near. It was an instinctive reaction.
"It should be fine out here, but I'd recommend a collar when we enter the city. Let's see now..."
Eldans produced a collar meant for beasts. Johan stared hard at the black wolf.
Put that thing on him and he'll raise hell.
Would a beast of that size quietly tolerate a collar?
Astonishingly, the black wolf stayed perfectly still. The collar, engraved with Johan's name, was fastened around the wolf's neck. With nothing more than that one band of leather, the black wolf already had the look of a proper house-trained animal.
"What's his name?"
"Name? Er... Karamap."
"Karamap! You named him after Sir Karamap? Haha."
"......"
Because I ate the bastard.
Johan reflected, yet again, that he had no talent for naming things. Of all the names he could have chosen — Karamap, really?
But Eldans seemed satisfied, and nodded along. It was common practice to give horses and beasts the names of famous nobles or knights — a way of wishing to receive that person's aura of fortune.
Karamap was a famous knight of the Empire. More than name enough to borrow. And yet...
Sir Karamap is famous as the Emperor's right hand, though.
The people of the Catalia Peninsula, south of the Empire and beyond the mountains, were none too fond of the Holy Empire's Emperor. The man drooled at every opportunity about how the cities of the Catalia Peninsula are my territory too! — hardly someone to like.
If Johan turned out to be a knight of an Imperial faction house, bringing him along to the peninsula would invite nothing but trouble.
"Master Johan. Do you, by chance, admire Sir Karamap?"
Eldans decided to probe, ever so delicately. He assumed the nobleman wouldn't see through his fishing — but Johan was a man who had spent years eating cold glances in his own fief, and caught on at once.
What is this? Something to do with Karamap? Ah. I see. The Emperor...
Admires Karamap → must be a knight of an Imperial faction house!
Johan clicked his tongue inwardly. To be led by the nose over such a detail. An experienced peddler was never to be underestimated.
"No. Not particularly."
"Is that so? But — surely, such a renowned man... oh, forgive me, I don't mean to say you aren't renowned yourself, Master Johan."
"I don't doubt Sir Karamap's skill. But the man has no honor left."
Johan already had his excuse ready. The Emperor's butcher had traveled far and wide on his grisly errands, and had made enemies by the score. The banner he had raised in crushing civil wars and rebellions was soaked in blue blood.
"Ah, I thought the very same."
Eldans hurried to agree. But his ears were twitching pleasantly upright. The suspicion had been dispelled.
Grrr.
The new Karamap gave a contented rumble and nudged Johan's leg. Something suddenly occurred to Johan, and he asked the wolf:
"...If you followed me here, did you happen to see those two bastards who fled the village?"
The wolf nodded.
"You saw them? Why didn't you catch... no. Never mind. I can hardly expect that of you."
From the wolf's perspective, it must have been hard to tell whether two fleeing humans were fair game to eat — all the more so since they'd been riding on Johan's word.
"Do you know where they went?"
The wolf turned its head and pointed its muzzle toward Marcel. Johan smiled thinly.
Marcel was a beautiful city dating back to the days of the Ancient Empire. To Johan, who had spent a lifetime in this rural backwater, the sight of Marcel could not help but strike him like a bolt. Without his past-life memories, he would have gawked like any country bumpkin.
Extraordinary!
The prosperity of the city was spectacle enough, but it was something else that left Johan marveling: the technology of the Ancient Empire.
The Ancient Empire resembled Rome of Earth, but its engineering was on another plane entirely. Plate armor that seemed to live and breathe, masterwork blades that could shear through anything, highways that had endured for over a thousand years... it was small wonder there were mercenaries who made their living doing nothing but rifling through Ancient Empire ruins.
What was more, he learned that in Marcel one could draw clean water anywhere, and that bathhouses dotted the city without ever draining the supply — a water system so perfect it approached flawlessness. The people of this city weren't remarkable. The system built in the days of the Ancient Empire was simply still turning, hale and whole, to this day. Even with a river running alongside it, the way aqueducts branched out through every quarter of the city like veins — and the fact that anyone could still maintain them — was truly a mystery.
And here I expected it to be far filthier and reeking...
Before his admiration had even faded, good news arrived.
A guard who had met them at the city gate spotted Eldans and hailed him.
"Ah, Master Eldans! Just in time."
"What is it, Pso?"
"One of the mercenaries you hired came by babbling incoherently, so we've locked him up for now. Is he one of the men you sent? If so, you'll need to come verify it quickly..."
Eldans turned around. The mercenaries, whose faces had already been glowing with the joy of reaching the city, erupted in cheers at this unexpected blessing.
"Let's go beat the living hell out of that son of a bitch!"