Lawrence was deep in thought as he watched Liebert head into town to make the purchase – there was no point in the lot of them filing into Lamtra.
“I hope everything goes well,” said Norah, no doubt referring to Liebert’s task.
So far, everything they did was perfectly legitimate, so there was little to worry about, but pointing that out seemed excessive.
“Indeed,” replied Lawrence.
There was a reason he used his best merchant smile when he said this.
Norah was simply making small talk.
But in Lawrence’s heart, misgiving mingled with regret.
He worried that Norah didn’t truly understand the consequences that awaited them were they to fail. The shepherdess before him was the one who would be in the most danger when they moved the gold.
The gold would be hidden in the stomachs of her sheep when they passed the checkpoints. If one of the sheep should happen to cough up any of that gold, the shepherd responsible would face immediate punishment.
In contrast to that, if Liebert and Lawrence were to keep silent, they might be able make it through the checkpoint.
There was a huge difference in their risks. He wondered if Norah understood that.
Lawrence looked on as Norah tended to her flock as at any other time, petting Enek when he returned to her side after performing this or that task. The merchant felt he needed to ascertain Norah’s awareness of her peril.
It simply did not seem as though she grasped the difference between what could happen to her compared to what the people around her might face.
If so, taking advantage of her ignorance was not far from fraud. Lawrence considered this and concluded that his conscience was most definitely somewhere near the pit of his stomach.
Were Norah to learn that she would be made to take the fall if caught, she might refuse to cooperate, turning a cold shoulder to them. That had to be avoided. Thus, Lawrence kept silent.
“Now that I think of it…” Norah piped up, jolting Lawrence out of his reverie.
However, when he lifted his head, he saw that she was not speaking to him.
Norah looked at Holo, who had plucked a single stalk of tall grass and was now wandering about aimlessly.
“Miss… Holo, I mean…” Norah hesitated after saying Holo’s name, perhaps needing to muster up more courage to speak.
Lawrence had noticed Norah trying to engage her female companion several times, but Holo’s curtness made her hesitate.
In his mind, he encouraged her, but he was genuinely surprised at the words that next came out of her mouth.
“Do… Do you know a lot about wolves?”
Lawrence was shocked for a moment, but Holo – ever the canny Wisewolf – did not alter her expression a bit. She finally tilted her head curiously at Norah.
“Um, I mean… I just, last night you noticed the wolves so quickly, so I…”
She trailed off there, perhaps because she wondered if Holo also had experience as a shepherd. Were that the case, it would be like one white crow finding another – one rare shepherdess meeting another would make for lively conversation.
If so, Holo’s unapproachable attitude left few opportunities to speak up.
“What? I simply noticed them, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see…”
“I mean, the men are generally useless, after all,” said Holo with a mischievous smile, glancing at Lawrence, who gave a small shrug in reply. “Don’t you think?” she finished.
“Um, I, I don’t…”
“Hmph. So you think you can count on that?” prodded Holo, pointing sharply. Norah followed where Holo indicated–
–only to meet Lawrence’s eyes.
In that moment, Norah looked genuinely awkward as she averted her eyes. Holo asked her again, and Norah glanced apologetically at Lawrence as she whispered something to Holo, who had drawn near the shepherdess.
Given the cheeky wolf’s smile, it had to be that kind of answer.
Lawrence watched and realized the conversation was about to turn farcical.
He waved his hand back and forth as if to admit defeat, while Holo and Norah laughed.
“In the first place, ’tis not strange to ask if someone like me, traveling alone with a man, knows a lot about wolves!”
Going by looks alone, Norah appeared to be the older of the two girls, but as soon as Holo spoke, she took the upper hand. She put one hand on her hip and held up the index finger of the other looking for all the world like a theologian giving a lecture.
“You see, the answer is completely self-evident! Because–”
Because? Norah leaned forward as if to say.
“Because! Come nighttime, a wolf will always appear – tempted by this helpless, adorable rabbit. Surely you’ll agree that a rabbit who is devoured by a wolf every night could not fail to know something about wolves!”
Norah looked blank for a moment but soon understood what Holo meant. Her face turned beet red as she searched back and forth between Holo and Lawrence; then, embarrassed, she looked at her feet.
Holo giggled. “Ah, ’twas a lovely reaction. But no – my first answer is the one to remember,” she said delightedly, at which Norah blushed to her ears and averted her gaze as she seemed to remember something.
It then sounded like she raised her voice in a quiet “Oh.”
“In truth, it’s my companion that’s more like a rabbit. If I left him on his own, he’d likely die of loneliness.”
Holo whispered into Norah’s ear, but her voice was loud enough to reach Lawrence quite distinctly. He gave Holo a bitter smile, but it was Norah’s credulous nodding that hurt the most.
As if he really seemed that way.
“But, in any case, I just happened to notice the wolves last night.”
In truth, it was not an obvious conclusion, but Norah had been sufficiently confused by Holo at this point that she seemed to accept it. She put her hands to her cheeks (the blush was now subsiding) and nodded.
Then taking a deep breath, she spoke, her nervousness evidently dispelled.
“Actually, I thought perhaps you were a shepherd, Miss Holo.”
“Oh, because I was quick to notice the wolves?”
“Well, there is that, too,” admitted Norah, pausing to look at her black-furred companion, who was content to pause in his work while his mistress had her chat. “Actually, it was because Enek seems to be very aware of you.”
“Mm, is that so?” Holo – whose nerve was such that she had no trouble exposing her tail when she knew she would not be caught – smiled, totally unperturbed as she folded her arms and regarded Enek. “It’s hard to say in front of a pet dog, but I daresay he’s smitten with me.”
As if he had heard her, Enek looked back to Holo and then struck out once again to tend to the flock of sheep.
His mistress, on the other hand, was struck dumb by Holo’s words.
“Wha-what? Er, you mean, Enek is?”
“My, it’s nothing to be sad about. Any male will get overconfident if spoiled. I’m sure he’s quite important to you, but that only makes him feel secure that he’s gained your affection. There’s no mistake; he’ll go looking for others to frolic with. No matter how delicious the bread, sometimes you want soup.”
Perhaps feeling some sympathy with Holo’s intricate argument, Norah nodded, apparently impressed.
“Put another way, sometimes you have to be cold. It’s a good leash.”
Norah nodded firmly, as if she had been told some deep truth, but then called Enek’s name and crouched down to greet him.
She caught him head-on as he streaked over to her, then looked up to Holo, and smiled.
“If he ever has an affair, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good.”
The wrongly accused Enek barked once, but Norah put her arms around him, and he was soon calm.
“I think I’d like to indulge him as long as I can, though,” said Norah, lightly kissing Enek behind hi
s dangling ears.
Holo looked on, a slight smile playing about her lips.
It was a somewhat bemused smile, inappropriate to the occasion, Lawrence realized, when Holo looked at him.
“Because… whether this job goes well or fails, I’ll be giving up my work as a shepherd,” said Norah quietly as she held Enek in her arms. It was clear that she had a firmly rational grasp of the situation and was prepared to act according to that understanding.
She understood both the position she had been placed in and the likely outcomes.
Lawrence’s concern was unnecessary.
Though Norah might have looked frail, she had survived being cast out of an almshouse and lived through any number of difficulties. She was no pampered noble’s daughter.
At the same time, Lawrence had renewed respect for Holo.
She had discerned Lawrence’s misgivings and, after seizing the conversational initiative from Norah, casually drawn out evidence of how prepared the girl actually was.
That explained Holo’s bemused smile earlier.
The merchant wondered if Holo’s pronouncement that men were generally useless was not necessarily off the mark.
Lawrence covered his eyes in defeat and then sprawled out on the ground to rest.
The autumn landscape was cold with the approaching winter, but the scattered clouds in the sky looked warm.
The smuggling would succeed.
Lawrence muttered encouragement to himself as a sheep meandered over and peered down at him.
After some time, Liebert returned, riding his horse back at a leisurely pace.
When one carries a large amount of money, he will see everyone around him as a thief, but true to his position as a trusted employee of a trading company in a big city, Liebert appeared unperturbed.
He produced a bag of gold grains just large enough to be held in one hand, and after all present had confirmed the bag’s contents, Liebert tucked it into the inside of his jacket, patting it lightly.
“Now all we have to do is make it safely back with this and feed it to the sheep at an opportune time,” he said as if to emphasize that any real problems would be from here on out. “Then once we’ve gotten them through the gates, the sheep will be received as previously discussed. Are we agreed?”
“We are,” said Norah with a nod.
Liebert faced straight ahead. “Then let us go. A golden tomorrow awaits us.”
The small band headed back onto the narrow path between forest and hills.
The next morning, Lawrence opened his eyes as he felt something cold on his face.
Is a sheep licking me again? he wondered, but he saw only the lead-colored sky. Evidently there was going to be a rare autumn rain.
And it was cold. Lawrence lifted his head off the tree root he had been using as a pillow and saw that the fire had gone out. In order to have a small gap between the time Norah went to sleep and everyone awoke, one person had been tasked with having Norah awaken them early to tend the fire. That person was supposed to have been Liebert, but he lay there snoring away, firewood clasped in his arms.
It was so foolish that Lawrence could hardly be angry with him.
“… Mmph.”
Lawrence sat up, apparently awakening Holo, with whom he had shared a blanket.
Without so much as a “good morning,” she shot him a truly withering glare and yanked the blanket away.
“If you’re awake, you don’t need it” seemed to be her logic.
If he argued the point, she would likely become genuinely angry, so although it was a bit early for him, Lawrence forced himself up. He had to toss another log on the campfire. The sheep were all huddled together from the cold, and with no work to do, Enek slept stretched out by the cinders – nestled up to his beloved mistress, of course. Lawrence stood, joints creaking, and tossed a log onto the fire to get it started, glancing wearily at the comfortable-looking Enek.
As the dry wood began to crackle in the fire, Enek yawned contentedly. Lawrence smiled; it reminded him of Holo.
Still, it was cold. It was as if winter had suddenly arrived.
The cause was obvious to Lawrence, looking at the weather, but as they would be arriving in Ruvinheigen at midday the next day, he had wanted it to hold until then.
But the sky seemed unlikely to wait. Lawrence sniffed bitterly. Rain would likely fall by the afternoon, surely by evening.
The trees were thick enough in the forest that the group could probably take shelter under them, but with the sheep along, that was hardly an option. The forest was an ominous one, too. Lawrence was not terrified of it, but neither was he eager to spend the night there. Using the edge of the trees as a rain shelter would be quite close enough.
Lawrence thought it over as he gazed into the growing campfire, and then something suddenly loomed over his back.
He didn’t have time to turn around before a familiar face appeared directly beside him.
It was Holo with the texture of the tree root she had slept on still imprinted on her face.
“’Tis warmer over here.”
Lawrence was not so humble as to take those words purely at face value.
Holo wrapped the blanket around Lawrence’s back and deliberately huddled under it with him again. Stealing the blanket away was all well and good, but perhaps she had decided that was excessive. Hunger and cold were every traveler’s companions, after all.
But as Holo had said nothing to apologize, Lawrence said nothing by way of forgiveness.
He stirred up the embers with a stick, then tossed it into the fire.
“Oh, that’s right,” he said casually. “Didn’t you say you could predict the weather?”
“Surely. It will rain just past midday today,” she replied sleepily.
“Anyone could tell that, looking at this sky,” teased Lawrence.
Instead of scowling, Holo bumped her head against his shoulder lightly.
“Wish we could take fast horses and make it to town before the rain. Anyway, what say you to some potato soup? It’s been warming by the fire.”
“I’ve no complaints. Also–”
“Your tail grooming, right?” said Lawrence, lowering his voice still further.
Holo sighed and nodded. “I want to return to the inn as soon as we can. Though…”
Her face was melancholy as she looked up at the sky.
A chill wind blew through her bangs, and she narrowed her eyes as though it had touched her long eyelashes.
“A rain is coming, though I haven’t wished it so.”
It was then that Lawrence remembered. When he had met Holo, she’d been the harvest god of a bountiful area. Farmers hated a chilly rain during the harvest months of autumn, so though she was far from the wheat fields now, such weather was not something she could welcome.
Though Holo herself hardly had good memories of the wheat fields, owing to the many things that had happened there, she had still been the god of the harvest.
It didn’t take a harvest god to find the cold rain distasteful. In the worse case, the rain might turn to sleet.
Lawrence got cold just thinking about it, and he briskly tossed another log onto the fire.
There was a bit more time before everybody woke up.
Yet he still hadn’t realized something.
Holo never said anything meaningless.
Chapter Six
White breath trailed behind them as they walked. The exhalations warmed their cheeks momentarily, but with every breath, they soon turned to a painful chill.
The darkening sky had finally lost its patience, and just after midday, a thin drizzle began to fall as if shaved from some giant block of ice. Thus, Lawrence’s face was so cold he wondered if it had actually frozen, but whenever a bit of air found its way into his clothes, it was just pleasantly cool.
They ran – the people, the horses, the sheep, and the dog.
There were eyes on them, many of them. There were presences, too.
But no matter how watchful the group was, not a single howl was heard nor a single clump of fur seen, and eventually the weather and the hard effort robbed them of their ability to worry about wolves.
It was as if something had aimed for that gap.
By the time Holo noticed this, they were already surrounded by the wolves.
“Enek!”
Norah’s voice echoed, and Enek sprinted to the rear of the flock in a blur of black fur and white breath, driving on a lagging lamb.
The lamb sprinted desperately but was unable to distinguish between dog and wolf, and a wolf’s howls echoed as if to mock it.
The situation was clear. The cry had come from a wolf atop the rocky hills to the right as it tried to collect the sheep. In contrast, little howling could be heard from the forest on the left side – what could be heard were footfalls and panting.
On the far side of the ferns and undergrowth beneath the trees, Lawrence and the others ran side by side. Lawrence and Holo sat astride their horse; likewise, Liebert rode his. Norah’s bangs were plastered to her forehead from the sleet and sweat as she used both Enek and her staff to control the sheep.
When it came to the wolves – well, if they were surrounded, that would be the end. Wolves hunted very carefully, making sure none in their pack was injured in the process. There would be no plan to use a single wolf as bait, nor would a single member make a heroic attack on its own. Wolves were cautious to the end and always conducted themselves with cunning.
Thus, if the group could put themselves in a position to kill just one wolf as the pack tried to tighten the noose, they could free themselves from any further harassment.
Lawrence listened to Holo’s hasty explanation and saw that Norah moved to do just that.
A single wolf was visible in brief flashes, trying to get ahead and cut off their route, but it would be instantly diverted by either Enek being sent out ahead or Lawrence himself plunging ahead.
When the wolves moved to slowly close the loop, the sheep would be made to dash in some wild direction, breaking the line. For a shepherd, sheep are not poor children to be protected, but a shield – a weapon to be wielded like any other.
It was not Lawrence’s or Liebert’s time to act. Liebert was fully engaged holding his reins in one hand and keeping the gold within his jacket secure with the other.
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