Wandering Mercenary (1)

Sunlight came shattering down through the broad green leaves of the dense broadleaf canopy. Kalen raised a hand to shade his eyes.

“It’s hot, sir.”

The Silbern River had grown a vast forest across the Eilwin Canyon, and all that transpiration left the air thick with humidity. Even I found the sweat-soaked leather clinging to my skin unbearable, and that alone told him how bad it was. Enough to drive even a deathless man to his knees.

Should I thank grand Nature for it, or curse Eladin for the half-hearted blessing she’d left me? I swept the pointless musing out of my head.

“We’ll dismount and walk. This is no path for Pormel.”

Pormel’s sheer bulk was holding up the march. At this rate we’d be slower than on foot, so I told it to follow behind at its own pace.

“I can’t even hear the water.”

Nothing reached us but the rustle of countless leaves in the wind. At least there was a breeze to take the edge off the heat, though even that blew warm.

Kalen wasn’t letting on how much he was struggling, but he couldn’t hide the wobble of a man about to keel over.

At this rate Kalen’s going to end up half-dried through.

I went to a nearby boulder and pressed a hand to its surface. After repeating it on two or three more, I pointed to the northeast.

“The river’s that way.”

“How can you tell?”

“The moss grows toward it.”

The rocks to the northeast carried more moss than those to the southwest; the closer the riverbank, the thicker it grew. Common sense.

With no other landmark to go by, Kalen followed quietly at my back. As we pushed through the thick undergrowth, he suddenly spoke up.

“Um — is Pormel really going to be able to keep up? How’s it supposed to know where we even are…”

“No need to worry about that.”

Where Pormel was and what it was doing surfaced in my mind of its own accord. It was an instinctive thing, hard to put into words for Kalen, but Pormel could most likely sense me the same way.

Maybe it was the downpour a few days back, but the smell of wet earth hung especially thick. How long did we walk that soaked dirt path?

Then, all at once, the curtain of broadleaf trees that had walled off our view drew back.

“So bright.”

Kalen came out behind me, wincing at the glare. He wasn’t wrong. The tributary of the Silbern River blazed a fierce silver, living up to the name it carried.

“Let’s rest here a while.”

As the largest city in Slonhar, Pirberk had no shortage of roads linking it to the towns nearby, and the route along the Silbern basin was one of them. Originally, with Pormel in tow, I’d meant to keep off the main roads. But things had shifted a little now, hadn’t they? For Kalen’s sake, sick as he was, I meant to reach the basin road as fast as I could.

“Aren’t you going to wash, sir knight?”

Kalen had already stripped off his tunic and coat, folded them neatly aside, and slipped down into the water. I watched him a moment, then shook my head.

“There’s no need.”

“Who ever washes only when there’s a need? Come on, sir knight, get in.”

The Silbern River, a symbol of plenty and prosperity. This was only a tributary of it, but watching the water drink in all that sunlight, I felt cooler just for the sight of it.

Truth be told, it wasn’t that I had no wish to wash. It wasn’t as though I didn’t sweat, after all.

“No.”

“Aw, come on.”

Arms folded, I scratched at the hard leather between the iron plates with a gauntleted hand. There was no real reason to it, just my way of showing I was in a bind.

“Is it because of the helm?”

He’d struck the mark. My fixation on the helm was bad enough that even Kalen, who’d known me only a short while, had picked up on it. Still, there was a sound reason for it.

“Haah… fine. But turn around. Don’t you dare look back until I say it’s all right.”

I weighed clinging to the helm against the plain worth of a wash, and in the end I had no choice but to get into the water.

“…Whoa, are all knights’ bodies just… like that?”

“Don’t talk nonsense. Turn around.”

The cold water against my skin cleared my head. I washed in the waist-deep shallows, then slowly lifted off the helm I’d worn so long.

My face showed dimly in the rippling water. I hadn’t looked on it in years, and it felt unfamiliar all over again; my washing hands only moved the busier for it.

‘Roan. Forgive me. You’ll have to keep a helm on from now on.’

‘Is that what matters right now?’

‘But it’s such a waste, is it not. To think a face this fine must stay hidden your whole life through.’

No matter how busily I worked my hands, no matter how many ripples I sent spreading across the water, there was no shutting out the voice raking at my ears.

The memory was one I’d never wanted to call up, one I should never have let surface at all. I hated that I still remembered her voice.

For fear that moment would rise up again, that happy time I could never live in. For fear the emptiness she’d left would only cut the deeper for it.

That was why I never took off the helm. Because to look at my own face was to see Eladin dying all over again.

And so I hurried the helm back on.

‘Roan. Remember me.’

“All done washing, sir?”

“Yeah.”

Kalen climbed out of the stream onto the bank, looking faintly disappointed.

“Put the helm on without drying off and you’ll get mold, you know.”

“If you wanted a look that badly, you should’ve snuck a peek.”

Kalen gave a rueful laugh.

“It’s not as though my life means nothing to me either, sir.”

He was such easy company that I’d half forgotten it myself, but our first meeting had begun with me butchering his comrades. He knew what sort of man I was, so what he meant was that he had no wish to stake his life just to steal a glimpse of my face. And in truth, had he turned to look partway through, I would have acted. Well, I wouldn’t have killed him.

“I’m hungry.”

Only when Kalen brought it up did I realize we’d eaten nothing since the evening before.

“Didn’t you bring some food along?”

“I’ve got a bit of preserved rations, but… ah.”

Everything but what we carried on us was lashed to Pormel. I’d never had baggage to begin with, so it hadn’t crossed my mind; Kalen, it seemed, had simply forgotten.

“Well, now…”

Whether to wait here for Pormel, however long it cost us, or strike out for the merchants’ road and ask for help: it wasn’t a call I could make on my own.

“If it’s me you’re worried about, I’m fine. We can’t very well throw the baggage away, so let’s wait here for Pormel.”

Call him a soldier, but he was really no more than a farmer from the city, dragged out and handed a spear. Hard to imagine he’d had any proper training.

The whole reason we’d come down to the stream in the first place was that Kalen was in poor shape, wasn’t it? He needed a proper rest.

“If you feel like you’re coming down with something, say so. Medicine, at least, I can get from a passing merchant on the road any time.”

As I’ve said before, money matters to me more than I’d like to admit. When there’s coin to earn, I earn it and set it by; when there’s need to spend, I spend without stinting. Kalen was essential to catching Pindel, so if only to spare myself the absurd misfortune of losing him to sickness, I meant to spend a certain sum on him.

Before long my once-wet body had dried completely, and by the time the sun began to set there was still no sign of Pormel.

Where in the world is it, and what’s it doing out there?

Pormel, absurdly, was carving a great westward loop back from the point where we’d parted. Eating its way toward us, it seemed, through every manner of wild animal and beast.

I thought of calling it straight to us, but in the end I let it do as it pleased. When else would Pormel get to gorge itself to its heart’s content, if not now?

Damn that lord — if he meant to keep the thing, he could have fed it properly.

Connected as we were in so many ways, Pormel’s hunger carried over to me too. It didn’t seem short of things to eat, thankfully, so I meant to leave it be.

Kalen, by contrast, was not doing well.

“Hey. Can you keep it together?”

“Ngh…”

Kalen was burning up. A fever had taken him; he was in no state to walk, let alone sit up on his own.

In the end, the worst I’d feared had come. Food was no longer the problem.

I have to find medicine. And a road wide enough for wagons won’t be near enough to reach in any short time.

However I turned it over now, there was only one answer.

I’ll carry him. For tonight, at least, I can only hope we come through it in one piece.

It had been a very long time since I’d travelled with anyone, and the upshot was that I’d failed to properly reckon with an ordinary person’s stamina. I’d held a common soldier to a deathless man’s marching pace; no wonder he’d collapsed.

Kalen hovered at death’s door on my back, waking and sinking back into sleep by turns. I’d have liked to gather at least some edible grass before nightfall and boil it down for him, but even the simple cooking gear was strapped to Pormel, so there was nothing to be done.

A plain blunder on my part.

I’d grown far too used to a life of walking with no thought for the body. Failing to allow for a situation like this had plainly been a grave lapse.

There was no need to build a fire and make camp. I walked on in silence, Kalen on my back.

It was only when the sun had gone down and day was breaking once more that I came to a halt.

Because far off, at the foot of a hill, I’d caught sight of figures.

Two wagons, twenty people. Escort mercenaries with them — merchants, then.

Not all twenty were merchants. They ranged in age from small children to the elderly, and their dress was every bit as varied.

So the merchants take coin to escort the parties crossing between cities.

When merchants travelled from one city to the next, they generally hired mercenaries to guard the wagons. That made a merchant’s side the safest place on the road, and it was hardly rare for people to pay for the privilege of walking beside them. The bear does the tricks and the handler keeps the coin. That was merchants for you, ever the sort they’d always been.

Four mercenaries. Approaching won’t be a problem.

Against so few, however badly things turned, I could at least slip away with Kalen on my back.

I started down the hill, one hand raised to show I meant no attack.

One of the mercenaries spotted me and shouted out.

“Halt!”

I stopped without protest. The mercenary who stepped forward drew his sword.

“State your name and business!”

“I’m a free knight. This one here is my squire. I’d like to trade with your merchants.”

A knight. At the word, the mercenary went stiff. Only a noble could ever become a knight, so even a free knight bound to no house was not someone a mere mercenary could afford to talk back to.

Of course, I am no true knight.

Thanks to the armor I’d bought not long ago, presentable enough at least, the mercenary looked half-convinced and half not. I could only hope he’d take me for some ruined, penniless noble.

The mercenary weighed it over a moment, then opened his mouth.