Norbelgard (1)

When the talk had more or less run its course, Leonid Balzenov got up from his seat.

“Let us have a meal, then.”

He left the room, and Madam Balzenov disappeared after him. Only once they had gone did Lilian speak.

“Roan.”
“What is it?”
“Remember? The sandwiches here were good.”

That was a hard thing to answer. In the end I said nothing, and she went right on talking to me anyway.

“Especially the ham. It was thick, and even so the seasoning was just right.”

“…”

Was it because we had not had one proper conversation since coming to Siltrein? She must have wanted to talk to me as badly as I had worried about her. To keep ignoring her words might well mean ignoring her heart along with them.

“It’s good that you liked them.”
“Mm. I want to eat them again.”

Ivan had been listening to us, and now he spoke.

“Shall I have something prepared, so you can have a bite before the meal?”
“Really? Is that all right?”
“Of course. Sandwiches are no trouble at all; we can put out as many as you like.”

Ivan’s words made her genuinely happy. Perhaps she really had just wanted a sandwich, and nothing more.

“I’d like a lot of ham in them.”
“Understood.”

She followed Ivan out, and for no reason at all a hollow laugh escaped me.

Winter came to Erbern, a place damp in every season.

Winter is dry. And Lilian was Erbern-born. Her skin must have been prickling; she kept sweeping a hand down over her face as though washing it.

“I don’t like it.”
“What do you mean?”
“A world with no fog. Turns out I don’t like it, is what I mean.”

Where the one who had chattered wide-eyed at the clear moon had gone, I could not say. In the space of a day she had turned to complaints.

“You had better get used to it. Winter comes every year.”

We spent a day in the Balzenovs’ well-appointed manor.

The chilly morning street was as deserted as it had been the day before. White breath broke and scattered.

“You’ll have got the gist of the talk yesterday, sitting there beside us.”

Lilian let out a long breath and squatted down at the roadside. She rubbed a finger over the ground, the way you might while watching an ant or something.

“Mm.”

We were breaking out of the Erbern that had been shut in, going out into the world. She was not showing it, but her feelings had to be as unsettled as they had been the day she came up out of the underground of Oskalt.

“Where are we going?”
“North. To Norbelgard.”

Erbern already lay well toward the top of the west, and further up from there began the true country of the north. Norbelgard, the city of fire and iron, stood at the threshold of the boundary dividing west from north, and it was the next destination Leonid Balzenov had put to us.

“If we go there won’t it just get colder? Why do we keep going north?”
“There are a number of reasons.”

Lilian lifted her head.

“Norbelgard is the only city the Balzenovs have got a letter through to safely since Oskalt fell. Now that the fog has lifted they will trade with other cities too, but they already have a place they are in contact with, and if we head for Norbelgard mixed in among the goods, there is less chance of anyone getting onto our tail than with any other city.”

There are wagons already going back and forth, so all we have to do is ride along with them. By the time Rodrik comes back to Siltrein, wagons will be running to the other domains as well, and it will be hard for him to pin Norbelgard down as our destination.

“And I meant to head north from the start anyway.”
“Why?”
“There are those on our own side there, are there not?”

The north is a region where the Ecclesia church holds comparatively little influence. Where Ecclesia is thin on the ground, other churches are that much thicker.

The main church of Talios, and the church of Selbien.

The main church of Talios is firmly on our own side, and the church of Selbien a provisional ally.

Selbien too being a body I had some connection with.

“This is war. It’s not like it was a hundred years ago.”

The church of Lucseon were the fugitives and I was the pursuer. That was why a contest of one man against a whole body could come off at all, however impossible it was for me to die.

But Ecclesia is not the church of Lucseon, which was treated as a gloomy pack of heretics. It is openly pulling the nobility and the imperial house over to its side. And what is building up a force, if not preparing to fight?

“Odds are it’ll come to all-out war with them.”

If the other side grows bigger, we grow bigger too. The first stage was to drive Ecclesia out of the north with the main church of Talios at the center. The second objective was to come south out of the north and strike Ecclesia’s main church in the central lands.

“For that we have to reach the main church of Talios first.”

“…Do you think one church can take on an empire?”

“I don’t know.”

I lifted my helm. The morning chill my breath had not driven out came surging in.

“…But it will have to be done.”

If they really set about catching us, then whatever becomes of me, Lilian will certainly die. By the time there is any sign of the imperial army turning to their side, it is already too late. We have to move now.

If I am not to lose her all over again.

I could hear ropes being lashed tight, and a horse came into view, snorting. The wagons bound out of Siltrein for Norbelgard were only finishing their preparations once the sun had gone down.

Two wagons, and three or four of a party up on horseback.

The cargo was grain and meat bound for Norbelgard, and the riders were the mercenaries escorting it. They had stayed behind in Siltrein rather than ride out with Tairen Beloa, so there was no danger of word leaking out.

“Roan.”

I could hear a torch burning. Inside the wagon, Lilian sat among the heaped grain with the robe I had given her some time back pulled over her.

“Come closer.”

I brought the torch around in front of her; the tip of her nose and her cheeks had gone red. Then I cleared away some of the heap and sat down beside her.

“Moving by day is hard, apparently. The winter wolves spot you.”

With Lilian along, an attack by beasts would be no trouble, but even so there was no moving up a departure time already fixed.

“…Mm.”

A weight settled onto my shoulder. Lilian had laid her head there, and her hair spilled down.

“Roan.”
“Yes.”
“Will Siltrein be all right?”
“Are you worried the undead will come in?”
“No. I’m going to leave the skeleton knights here. So they protect people even without me.”
“Then what are you worried about?”

The torch wavered at Lilian’s breath.

“Rodrik, who’s going to rule this place.”

The light that lit the inside of the wagon rippled in time with her breathing.

“And the people who are afraid of him.”

The good give their hearts away easily.

And it was a world where giving your heart away easily meant being wounded just as easily.

Lilian was without doubt a good person.

“That’s meddling.”

“…A pointless thought after all, I suppose.”

I felt her gaze through her hair.

“Your eyes are strange no matter how often I look at them. Did it hurt when they split crosswise?”
“It hurt.”
“How much?”

“…Enough to kill off every last one of the church of Lucseon over a hundred years.”

I laid my own robe over her while she stared at me. Up in the north a cold that flayed the flesh would be waiting to greet us, a cold this one could not begin to compare with.

“Better sleep while you can. It’s a fair way to Norbelgard.”

Lilian gathered the robe up like a blanket and closed her eyes.

The next day.

The wagons had finished a night’s travel, reached the appointed spot, and were pitching tents and unloading part of the stores. The idea was to leave resting points along the way, so that the parties following on later could move with ease. Between the mountains in the distance the sun was only now coming up.

“…It’s cold.”

Lilian came out looking disheveled and gave a long yawn. She wandered over and gave me a playful smack, then whipped her hand back inside the robe; the armor must have been colder than she expected.

“Ugh, my hand’s freezing.”

“…”

“When are we supposed to get there?”
“Three more days yet. We’re getting into proper winter wolf country.”
“So we keep traveling only at night?”
“Presumably. The horses have to rest too.”

In any case, travel through the day and the horses still have to sleep at night. Moving only at night made no real difference to the hours we actually spent traveling, but Lilian seemed to think otherwise, and she narrowed her eyes.

“We can’t move by day even with me here?”
“Do you want to get there quickly?”
“Of course. I want to see what another city looks like.”
“Weren’t Siltrein and Esmartin other cities?”
“Those were all pretty much the same. This one’s a whole different region, is what I mean.”

Worked up like that, she talked like a child waiting for a present.

“Well. I doubt it’s as grand a place as you’re expecting.”
“What sort of city is it?”
“At the least, you’ll be hard put to find anywhere better off than Siltrein.”
“It’s really that bad?”
“Partly that Siltrein was well off, and partly that the land we’re bound for is the north, which you could count on one hand for barrenness.”

The barren, harsh land of the north.

And the fierce, hardy people who put down roots in such a place.

“I don’t know about strange cities, but it probably has more strange people than anywhere in the world.”

Whether the north breeds oddities, or whether every oddity in the world has been herded up into it, I could not say. The land was no ordinary place; that much was certain. Take the church of Talios, which would be mortally offended to be ranked anything but first among churches for oddity. Did its root not lie at the very center of the north?

“Think of it as a place packed with the sort of paladins you saw at Oskalt.”

“…I don’t particularly want to go anymore.”

“They weren’t bad people, were they?”
“They weren’t bad, but they were strange. Being bad and not particularly wanting to get close to someone are different things.”

That drew a helpless laugh out of me, and she launched into a heated argument about how strange the paladins she had seen back then had been, and on top of that how much stranger a person I must be, to have them treat me with such punctilious courtesy. She only went quiet after demanding to know whether I now understood how remarkable she was for being my friend in spite of all that.

When I turned my head blankly, the sun was on the point of going down.

“…At least the journey won’t be dull.”

“What was that?”
“I said nothing.”

Eladin liked to chatter too, but I do not think it ever ran from morning to evening. She used to catch hold of me and eagerly teach me the language of flowers. For the briefest moment Eladin’s face overlapped the sight of Lilian, and then it scattered.

“We’ll be setting off again before long, so we had better get ready.”

Lilian drank a mouthful of water drawn from the stream nearby and climbed into the wagon. When I got up after her, she had already settled herself in a corner.

“Are you going to sleep straight away?”
“Mm. I’m going to sleep. Wake me if you need me.”
“I will.”

After Lilian pulled the robe over herself.

A cool moon hung high in the sky, as though it were drawing away from the ground.

Only when night had come down in full did I begin to hear the wheels slowly turning. Mixed in with it now and then were hoofbeats close alongside and the voices of the mercenaries chatting.

That too only for a while, and about the time it seemed to be going quiet.

From the front of the wagon came the coachman’s voice.

“I think you had better come out for a moment.”
“What is it?”

The wind stirred. Through the cloth wrapped round the wagon, the scene beyond showed itself. I could not make out much, but outside was unmistakably steeped in a blue light.

“This is…”

It was a beast.

And a beast that had been drawn to us even with Lilian there.