Spice & Wolf Omnibus

by Isuna Hasekura

  Lawrence nodded his understanding, impressed at the different ways of thinking.

  And then, as they continued to move, the full scene came into view.

  It seemed that the people quarreling at the dock were a soldier carrying a long pike and a young boy.

  It was the boy who was shouting.

  He was breathing hard, and the breath came out of his mouth in great white puffs. “But the seal of the duke is right here!”

  His boyish voice might or might not have deepened yet.

  For that to even be in question, he was young, indeed.

  He looked to be perhaps twelve or thirteen. His unkempt grayish hair topped a face grimy with something – mud, perhaps – but filthy in any case. He was skinny enough that if he were to bump into the delicate Holo, it would be hard to know who’d fall over, and the tattered clothes he wore looked likely to fall apart the next time he sneezed.

  His ankles were thin, and he was shod in chilly sandals whose extreme wear was obvious at a glance. If it had been a bearded old man looking like this, the boy would have looked like the sort of hermit that collected the admiring gazes of pious types.

  The boy held a sheet of old paper in his right hand, glaring at the guard as he gasped for breath.

  “What is the matter?” asked Holo, annoyed that her midday nap had been disturbed.

  “I don’t know. Wait – shouldn’t you have been able to hear what they were shouting about?”

  Holo yawned. “Not even I can hear such things while napping.”

  “True enough. You can’t even hear your own snoring.”

  Holo immediately stomped mercilessly on Lawrence’s foot.

  His objection was cut off by the soldier, who had been quiet until now, shouting back at the boy. “It’s a fake, I tell you! If you don’t get yourself hence, we’ve got other ideas!”

  The soldier shifted the pike he held.

  Ragusa’s boat slowed still further, coming to a stop alongside the vessel that had been ahead of them, which had itself stopped just short of the dock.

  Said boat’s master appeared to know Ragusa, and after exchanging friendly greetings, they seemed to bow their heads a bit and have a discreet conversation.

  “Who’s that? The Lennon master’s apprentice?”

  Ragusa gestured with his chin to the master of a vessel that was already moored. The boatman’s hair was graying, and he seemed older than Ragusa and his friend.

  “If he were, he wouldn’t be aboard ship with such a worried face.”

  “Mm, true. Oh, could it be…?”

  As the two boatmen made light conversation, the boy on the dock trembled out of rage or cold and looked at the piece of paper he held.

  He then looked back up, as if unwilling to give up, but bit his lip at the spear tip that was pointed at him.

  He took a step back, then another, finally coming up to the edge of the dock.

  “Mind yourself, lad,” said the guard. “Now then, moving on to the toll…”

  At the guard’s words, the boatmen that had been watching the scene now each tended to their business.

  To a man, they were unimpressed, as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

  When Lawrence saw the red seal that had been impressed upon the paper the boy held, he understood what had happened.

  The boy had been cheated by a dishonest merchant.

  “He’s been swindled.”

  “Hmm?”

  The gray-haired boatman took his craft out, and another boat entered in its place, with Ragusa moving his own craft neatly alongside it.

  Lawrence matched the swaying of the boat as he spoke into Holo’s ear. “It happens sometimes. Forged tax exemption documents or fake demands of payment from a local lord. On a larger scale, tax collection authorization documents for this river have probably been caught.”

  “Hmm.”

  In most cases, such documents were probably sold at an amount far removed for how much they purported to bring in, but nonetheless, many buyers seemed to think they were real.

  “I feel a bit sorry for him,” said Holo.

  On the river, a line of boats was forming, all heading for the checkpoint.

  The guards at the checkpoint were busily scrambling to catch up with their duties after having been interrupted; behind them, the boy was now entirely forgotten.

  Just as Holo said, his figure invited sympathy, but while Lawrence could understand the boy’s position when he stopped to think about it, this was what happened when one let one’s self be cheated.

  “He’ll learn something from this,” said Lawrence.

  Holo’s gaze moved from the boy to Lawrence accusingly.

  “You think me unfeeling, do you?” he asked.

  “As I recall, when your own avarice caused you to stumble, you walked all over the city, desperate for aid.”

  Lawrence couldn’t help but be vexed by the comment, yet his merchant ethics were completely opposed to giving the boy so much as a single copper piece. “Perhaps, but I was still the one doing the walking.”

  “Honestly.”

  “I’m not so cold as to turn away someone asking for help. But trying to save someone who isn’t trying to save himself, well – it’s no way to be a merchant. If you’re going to do that, you may as well change into priests’ robes and head for the nearest church.”

  Holo seemed to be thinking something over, as in spite of Lawrence’s words, she seemed to think the boy was still quite pitiful.

  Having worked thanklessly for centuries to ensure a village’s good harvest, Holo possessed a strong sense of duty in spite of herself.

  It was probably in her nature to want to help those who needed aid.

  But it was also a reality that once one started doing so much, there would be no end to it. The world was overflowing with people and their sorrows, but gods were too few.

  Lawrence adjusted the blanket around them. “So if he’ll stand up on his own, or else…”

  Holo may have been kindhearted, but she was not ignorant of the ways of the world.

  Feeling a reluctant sympathy for the boy, Lawrence looked in his direction, and in that moment found himself disbelieving not his eyes, but his ears.

  “Master!” echoed a high voice.

  The people in the area were all well used to hearing the loud conversations of the marketplace, and as a result, they could easily tell at whom the voice was directed.

  The boy got to his feet and dashed straight across the dock, heedless of the guard’s orders.

  He was heading, of course, in the same direction that his voice was directed.

  To Lawrence.

  “Master! It’s me! It’s me!” came the words from the boy’s mouth.

  “Wh… wha–?”

  “Oh, I’m so glad to see you! I had nothing to eat and was in a real jam! I must thank the gods for this good fortune!”

  There was not a speck of happiness in the boy’s face; his features were desperate.

  Lawrence looked back at him, stunned, frantically searching his supposedly keen merchant’s memory for the boy’s face.

  But all he could conclude was that he’d never known a boy that called him master, unless he was one of the children he had taught to earn their bread while on his travels.

  That’s when the realization hit him.

  This was a desperate gamble by the boy to save his own life.

  Lawrence had figured it out, but the guard figured it out a moment sooner and sent the boy tumbling down with the butt of his pike, forcing him to the ground as though planning to sew him to it. “You runt!”

  The checkpoint was the symbol of whoever held power.

  Any successful fraud there would undo that authority.

  If things went poorly, the boy could easily be thrown into the river to drown.

  Yet those light blue eyes were fixed evenly on Lawrence.

  Lawrence found himself momentarily transfixed by the imploring gaze – “If I fail here I’
ll surely die,” the boy seemed to say – when he was jolted from his reverie by a sharp elbow to the ribs from Holo. Holo was looking neither at Lawrence nor at the boy but rather off in a random direction. However, her profile spoke very clearly: “Don’t forget what you just said.”

  The boy had stood up on his own and called for help.

  “You’ve got some nerve, sullying the name of Duke Diejin!” yelled the guard.

  The line of boats waiting to get through this checkpoint and on to the next one grew longer.

  As the guards were the ones who had to take the blame for any hindrances in traffic, their store of patience with the boy – who was doing nothing but causing trouble for them – had surely reached its end.

  Holding the boy against the ground with his pike, the guard pulled back his foot as if to aim a kick to the boy’s rib cage, but in that moment–

  “Wait, please!” cried Lawrence, just as the foot came up.

  The impact could not be stopped. “Ungh,” croaked the boy, froglike.

  “It’s true – I do know the boy!”

  The guard looked up at Lawrence and hastily moved his foot away from the boy but soon seemed to grasp Lawrence’s true motive. Annoyed, he looked back and forth from Lawrence to the boy, then eventually sighed and withdrew his pike handle from the boy’s back.

  It was obvious that the boy had been acting.

  “Quite softhearted of you,” said the guard’s silent look.

  The boy’s eyes bulged, as though he couldn’t believe his desperate gamble had actually worked, but as soon as he was able to grasp the situation, he got to his feet and awkwardly scrambled into Ragusa’s boat.

  Ragusa was retying his coin purse closed after having paid the toll but had momentarily stopped as he watched the proceedings on the dock. When the boy jumped aboard, he came back to himself.

  Yet it wasn’t until he met Lawrence’s gaze that Ragusa managed to close his gaping mouth.

  “Hey, you’re holding up the line! Move your boat out!”

  The guard may have only wanted to rid himself of a nuisance, but ships were in fact lining up behind them.

  Ragusa turned to Lawrence and gave a little shrug, then boarded the boat himself and took his pole in hand. So long as Lawrence paid the fare, he had no cause for complaint.

  Once the boy reached the boat’s bow where Lawrence and Holo were, he collapsed, either out of exhaustion or sheer shock.

  Holo finally looked at Lawrence.

  Her face still evidenced some irritation.

  “We’ve come this far, so I guess it can’t be helped,” said Lawrence, at which Holo smiled faintly, putting her hand to the boy who had collapsed at her feet, which stuck out from underneath the blanket.

  While she normally appeared fond of teasing and ridiculing others, seeing her kneel and speak quietly to the lad made Holo look every bit the kindhearted nun that her clothes marked her as.

  It may very well have looked nice, but Lawrence did not find it the least bit amusing.

  It wasn’t that he had no confidence in his own code of conduct, but now compared with Holo, he appeared quite heartless.

  Having determined that the boy was uninjured, Holo helped him sit up and brought him to the edge of the boat.

  Lawrence took some water out and handed it over.

  The boy was in Holo’s shadow, and Lawrence could see that his hand still held tight to the certificate.

  Lawrence had to admire his spirit.

  “Here, water,” said Holo, passing it to the boy with a nudge at his shoulder.

  The boy’s eyes had been closed, as though he was unconscious, but they slowly opened, and his gaze flicked back and forth between Holo directly in front of him and Lawrence, who was behind her.

  The moment he saw the boy’s sheepish smile, Lawrence looked aside in spite of himself, remembering how a moment ago he’d been ready to abandon the boy.

  “Thank… you.”

  It was unclear whether the boy was giving thanks for the water or for their kindness in having played along with his desperate act.

  Either way, Lawrence felt a bit self-conscious, unaccustomed as he was to being thanked in a situation free from cold profit and loss calculations.

  The boy must have been thirsty, for he gulped the water down rapidly despite the chilly weather, then cleared his throat and sighed, apparently satisfied.

  From the look of him, it didn’t seem like he’d come from Lenos. There were any number of roads with paths across the river, so the boy was probably from a town north or south along one such road.

  What sort of travel had brought him here?

  From the tattered sandals the boy had on, one thing was clear – it had not been an easy journey.

  “When you’ve calmed yourself, you should sleep. Will this blanket be enough, I wonder?” asked Holo.

  Aside from the blanket she and Lawrence used, they had one extra.

  Holo handed it over, and the boy’s eyes widened in pleasure at this unanticipated kindness. He nodded. “The blessings of God be upon both of… you…”

  The boy wrapped himself in the blanket and fell asleep so rapidly one could nearly hear the thud.

  Given his clothing, it would have been impossible for him to make camp and sleep outside. If things went badly, he could very well have frozen to death.

  Holo watched him worriedly for a while but seemed to relax upon hearing the boy’s slow, regular breathing. Her face was gentle as Lawrence had never seen it, and she softly brushed the boy’s hair from his face before standing.

  “Should I now do the same for you?” she asked, half-teasing, half-embarrassed.

  “It’s the privilege of children to be cared for so,” answered Lawrence with a shrug.

  Holo smiled. “From where I stand, you’re still a child.”

  As she spoke, the boat, which until a moment ago had been picking up speed as it floated down the river, slowed. They had largely caught up with the boats ahead of them, and Ragusa had taken an interest in their new passenger. He put his pole down and called out from across the cargo.

  “Quite a handful! Is he all right at least?” Ragusa asked about the boy.

  Holo nodded, and Ragusa stroked his chin thoughtfully, exhaling white breath.

  “I wonder who cheated him. It didn’t happen this year, but come the cold season, a great number of people come from the south, and among them are swindlers aplenty. The year before last, there was a forger so skilled that not just children, but even sharp merchants were being taken in by him. Maybe people became wise to it, because since then, you hardly ever see them. The boy must have run into one of the very last ones.”

  Lawrence carefully removed the document from the boy’s hand, which stuck out from underneath the blanket, then unrolled and read it.

  It was a declaration of right to collect taxes from vessels on the Roam River, issued by Duke Herman Di Diejin.

  In a perfunctorily flowing script that was mostly just hard to read were written directives to that effect, but anyone who had seen the genuine article would know this was a fake.

  And of course, there was the matter of the duke’s signature and seal.

  “Mr. Ragusa, how do you spell Duke Diejin’s name?”

  “Mm, like so…”

  Comparing Ragusa’s answer to the signature, Lawrence found that one of the silent lowercase letters was mistaken.

  “Also the seal is a fake,” added Ragusa. “Copying the true seal is punishable by hanging.”

  Now that was interesting.

  Copying the real seal meant death, but making a similar seal was no crime.

  Ragusa shrugged wearily, and Lawrence carefully refolded the document and slipped it back underneath the blanket.

  “You’ll be paying the extra fare, though, don’t forget,” said Ragusa.

  “Ah, er… yes. Of course.”

  Holo might not like it, but in the end, it was money that shaped the world.

  Chapter Two


  The boy’s name was evidently Tote Col.

  After the boy had taken a short nap, Holo’s stomach started growling, so Lawrence handed out some bread, which Col ate guardedly, like a wild dog.

  But his features weren’t especially disheveled, which made him seem more like an abandoned dog than a strictly wild one.

  “So, how much did you pay for these papers?”

  Col hadn’t bought just one or two forgeries from the merchant on his travels; in his tattered bag, he had a whole book’s worth.

  Eating the fist-sized piece of rye bread in two bites, Col answered shortly, “One trenni… and eight lute.”

  The fact that he mumbled the words so reluctantly had nothing to do with the bread in his mouth.

  Given his appearance, the memory of paying out a full trenni and more must have been desperately frustrating.

  “That’s quite an investment… Was the traveling peddler you bought them from so impressive-looking?”

  It was Ragusa who answered Lawrence’s question. “Hardly. Dressed in rags, he was, and with no right arm.”

  Col looked up and nodded, surprised.

  “He’s famous around here,” said Ragusa. “Walks around selling his papers. I bet he said something like this to you, aye? Look at this stump of mine – I’ve risked this much danger to come by these, but I’m not long for this world. I’m thinking of returning home, so I’ll turn these deeds over to you.”

  Col’s eyes were glazed over – it must have matched what he’d been told nearly word for word.

  Swindlers generally had an apprentice with them, and such lines were passed on from master to apprentice.

  As to the matter of the man’s missing right arm, it suggested he had once been caught by a constable somewhere, and his arm was taken as punishment.

  A thief who stole money forfeited a finger, but a swindler who stole trust – that was an arm. A murderer who took life lost his head. If the crime were especially heinous, hanging was evidently worse than decapitation.

  In any case, the boy slumped and looked down, the ignominy of having been fooled by a swindler whose untrustworthiness was well-known adding insult to injury.