Spice & Wolf Omnibus

by Isuna Hasekura

  “It says, ‘It’s been a while.’”

  As she spoke, she cried, her shoulders shaking, and smiled.

  She smiled, sobbed, wiped her tears away, and cried again.

  Luward gently put his hands on Holo’s shoulders, seemingly looking at Lawrence for the first time. It seemed that besides being a fine leader for a mercenary company, he was a fine gentleman as well.

  He knew full well who should be crying and against whom.

  Lawrence embraced Holo, and Holo cried even more in Lawrence’s arms.

  “Our Great Guardian Wolf, we have finally fulfilled our promise to you.”

  Luward spoke softly.

  If the world contained the threads of many tales, the one concerning the Myuri Mercenary Company was now reaching its end.

  Chapter 2

  Luward had rented a room for them that was very fine even by this inn’s high standards.

  That meant evicting the strategist from that room, but while his eyes widened at the captain’s unusually strict command, his body seemed to react on its own regardless of what he thought.

  Even though Lawrence had sought help carrying the luggage, he had not made Luward say, “It’s a matter of life and death.”

  It seemed that Luward was a fine captain, undoubtedly worthy of bearing the name of Myuri.

  All Lawrence could do was to say that to Holo to try and comfort her.

  “Leave me be for a while.”

  Holo spoke curtly as she sniffed a tear away. In their travels thus far, such words had always triggered further strife that unnerved Lawrence even more. However, this time he was not unnerved whatsoever.

  After all, she had been clinging to him and sobbing just moments earlier. She had relied on him in her moment of pain, and so long as the wave had passed, she need not stay at his side more than necessary. Holo could think and act on her own, after all; if she was putting her memories in order, all the better.

  Lawrence wiped away moisture from the corner of Holo’s eye with his thumb, and rather than giving her words of consolation, he told her where the water pitcher was.

  “Don’t go drinking wine now.”

  After all, if she split off and drank wine tonight, the results would be anything but joyful.

  Holo’s face, red from tears, formed into an awkward smile as she said, “Fool.”

  “I’ll let you know if I’m leaving the inn.”

  Remembering things in Lenos, he hesitated a fair bit before giving Holo’s body a light hug and standing up. Until Lawrence left the room, Holo stayed sitting right at the corner of the bed, watching him.

  When Lawrence closed the door, he sighed, but not because he was concerned about Holo.

  While the sad, smug message Myuri had left behind had come to its final conclusion, the tale of those living in the here and now still very much continued.

  “Have a minute?”

  Luward, at a stair landing a short distance from the room, pulled his back off the wall as he spoke.

  When Lawrence nodded, he added, “Let’s use my room,” and went downstairs.

  “As you like.”

  Though leader of a mercenary company where people killed and were killed, buying and selling prisoners in turn, he held the door open for Lawrence. Such odd jobs were properly the job of the youngster who was waiting at the side of the room. That is why the youngster was surprised twice over, once for his job being stolen and once that the captain was doing the job himself.

  “It’s all right, there’s no need to be nervous.”

  Luward whispered something to the youngster before heading into the room.

  And when he was passing by Lawrence, he showed Lawrence the palm of his hand.

  “I’m still shaking, too.”

  Those at the vanguard of battle surely could do absolutely nothing to avoid others seeing their hands shake. To go out of his way to show this to Lawrence meant he was showing as much respect as he possibly could.

  To put it properly, respect toward Holo and to Lawrence, who had brought Holo.

  “I haven’t gotten your name yet.”

  Luward encouraged Lawrence to sit in a chair, seating himself as he spoke.

  “Lawrence. Kraft Lawrence.”

  “Kraft Lawrence. A fine name. From the Polan region?”

  From his shrewd speaking style, one would think he was much older than he looked. Lowering one’s guard around such a man seemed very dangerous indeed.

  “No, Rowen.”

  Luward nodded at that. Unsurprisingly, as a mercenary who had been to many battlefields, he knew the names of regions better than most traveling merchants.

  “A Rowen merchant you say… so, you’re in violation of orders by being in this city, are you not?”

  So he knew the name of the Rowen Trade Guild. Moreover, he knew what kind of place the town of Lesko was in relation to the guild. The display of an unusual level of knowledge about the Rowen Trade Guild was both pleasing and frightening.

  “That’s right, so I’m no one at all here.”

  Lawrence noticed that Luward made a small sigh of relief when he spoke those words. As he tried to grasp its meaning, there was a knock on the door; the youngster from earlier entered. His hands carried a tray with wine jugs and rustic earthenware cups on it.

  “Well, let’s have a toast. If you’re afraid of poison, I can drink both cups myself.”

  It was not a funny joke, but Lawrence laughed appropriately all the same, for when he approached to pick up his cup, he could tell that Luward was nervous.

  Luward laughed as well, as if to hide a bit of embarrassment.

  “To chance meetings and checkered fates.”

  As he spoke, Luward raised his cup to his lips.

  Lawrence similarly brought his cup to his own lips and realized the wine was exceptional.

  When he gazed down at his cup, at a loss for words, Luward looked like a satisfied host.

  “I wish my father and grandfather could have been here, though.”

  After looking at the table for a while, seemingly searching for the words, Luward raised his face and these were the words he spoke.

  “Even now I can’t believe it. Far likelier you’re some swindler playing an elaborate trick on me.”

  There was a smile on his face, but he was genuinely bewildered.

  Lawrence thought to move the conversation forward somewhat more gently.

  “I expected you might think as much.”

  Luward nodded at his frank reply. And after making an even larger nod, he cleared his throat.

  “When one battles from morning till night, sometimes one treads on the boundary between this world and the next.”

  Lawrence did not think this some idle tale. Even Lawrence, an unbeliever, had seen the faces of long-dead fellow traders beside his wagon when rain fell on moonless nights.

  “Whether by God or Death, many times something tells us when Doom lies just ahead. I’m aware such stories are especially numerous in our group. But many think that rather than God extending his hand to us, it is something… else. In other words…”

  He sighed, wavering as to whether to say it or not as he gazed at the table.

  Taking a deep breath, he seemed to decide that he should say it after all.

  “In other words, that it has something to do with our banner.”

  Sewn onto the crimson banner on the wall was a wolf, howling toward the sky.

  Many mercenary companies used animals as emblems. The wolf was popular, representing both power and knowledge.

  Having been saved from a number of desperate situations by what he could only think was some force beyond human agency was surely why he did not recoil at the sight of Holo’s wolf ears.

  “I think it must be so. Or could it possibly be her doing…?”

  “Holo, you mean?”

  Luward stiffened a bit at Lawrence’s reply.

  “… Is it really all right to just call her that?”

  From the way Lu
ward glanced up at the ceiling, he did not seem to be joking.

  “Being called a god and worshiped as such doesn’t really agree with her.”

  As Lawrence spoke, Luward raised an eyebrow, looking somewhat conflicted, and made a slow sigh. He chuckled a toothbaring chuckle; then, he put his hand to his forehead and shook his head. “Maybe I have some of that blood running through me. I still hate being called captain.”

  Though certain it was meant as a mild joke, Lawrence’s face stiffened a little at the talk of blood.

  “Yeah, some of the men believe our ancestors were wolves, but my father and grandfather firmly denied it, to the point of anger even.”

  “Anger?”

  “Yeah. Apparently our ancestor who founded the group met a certain wolf, and as they aided each other, they created a group. The wolf ’s name – was Myuri.”

  So that was indeed it.

  Lawrence nodded as Luward continued to speak.

  “But one side was aided much more than the other, it seems. Thus we came to pay a great deal of reverence toward wolves. That’s why… yes. Our blankets must always be of the pelts of the fox or the deer, even though it adds to our expenses.”

  Luward made a seemingly deliberate shrug of his shoulders, only grudgingly accepting what was beyond his power to control in managing the company.

  So the story was true. Lawrence had thought it might be something like that the first time he had heard of it.

  “But it was easy to believe it was a made-up story to build a company around, like plenty of other legends.”

  Luward spoke while flicking the edge of his cup, slowly tilting it around.

  “I’ve heard that as a matter of fact, people living a life of battle never knowing when it’ll end rely on those stories to get them through the day more than anything else. I thought it was something like that, too.”

  The Rowen Trade Guild, which Lawrence belonged to, had its own founding myths, something providing a firm foundation everyone could stand on no matter from which people they hailed from or where, no matter what town or village they were born in.

  “And to think… it’s true.”

  Luward took in a deep breath and exhaled.

  With an exhausted-looking smile, he raised his downcast gaze and looked at Lawrence.

  “There are many tales passed down to me from generation to generation. Prominent even among them is that of Wisewolf Holo. That should we ever encounter her, we must convey the message engraved upon the claw.”

  Lawrence looked up at the ceiling a bit, lost in thought.

  There had not been any special meaning to it, but it was necessary to lay the groundwork.

  “She’d been in a village far from here for centuries. But she forgot the way home and was unable to return. So I am seeing her there.”

  “Seeing her there?” Luward’s manner of asking seemed to hold some deeper meaning.

  He wondered what this was all about, but he noticed the strained smile mixed with Luward’s words.

  He had, after all, seen when Holo clung to him as she cried her eyes out.

  “I am guiding her there.”

  Luward cheerfully bared his teeth as Lawrence rephrased. “This is what makes the world interesting. You don’t know what’s going to happen or who you’re going to meet. But that’s why there’s always something to worry about.”

  He turned his sharp eyes upon Lawrence. His gaze was animated with greater amity than before, while brimming with resolute will that would not yield come what may.

  Turning rapidly, the focus of Luward’s thinking shifted from fantastic tales to blunt realities and what could be done about them. The words made Lawrence’s body grow tense.

  “Let me ask you frankly. Did you come here to destroy the Debau Company?”

  Lawrence had thought about the possibility when he had first heard of the existence of the Myuri Mercenary Company and again when he and Holo had arrived at the town of Lesko.

  As Lawrence had thought such questions would not be long in coming, he had come prepared with several answers. Depending upon his opponent’s attitude, he had intended to say, with a strong spirit, that if not destroy, they meant to give it a hard time.

  However, here before Luward’s eyes, thoughts of such mischief were driven deep into his chest.

  For it was plain on Luward’s face that there was something that he feared.

  “No. Nor do I think it is possible.”

  Luward, veteran of many fields of battle, nodded without a sound.

  Thinking his words insufficient, Lawrence sipped from his cup and added to them.

  “But we are certainly concerned about Yoitsu.”

  Silence continued for several moments longer. The leader of the mercenary company finally nodded.

  “I see.”

  As he replied curtly, he took a breath deep enough that his shoulders rose.

  That he stayed like that for a time might have been to clear away the tension that had built up in his throat.

  “… Mm, I see…” He sighed as he spoke, awkwardly running a hand through his short-cropped, spiky hair, seemingly without realizing it.

  It was like the worn-out feeling one had when a job was wrapped up.

  Luward had truly been concerned about what Lawrence and Holo would say.

  “If all it took was saying something like ‘Lend us your strength to destroy the Debau Company,’ our journey might have gone a little more smoothly,” said Lawrence.

  They hid Holo’s true nature out of fear for the Church, sometimes dealing with ancient beings that had already melted into life in the towns, sometimes clashing with the realities of those earnestly seeking to survive in the present age.

  To bare one’s fangs, advancing on whatever path one wished, showing no mercy to whoever interferes – such a belligerent advance was a journey with no future.

  “If I can say one thing for the honor of my men…” Luward brushed his short-cropped hair back a bit as he spoke. “For the sake of our company banner, we face even the most desperate battles with all our might. No one runs away, not until the last drop of blood of the battle is shed.”

  He gave those words the resounding crescendo treatment because that was what people needed to hear. People such as the strategist and youngster who might well be eavesdropping on them from the next room over.

  “But that is why orders are such a frightening thing.”

  Luward fixed his eyes upon Lawrence as he spoke.

  In that time and place, there was of course only one possible meaning.

  “So if Holo and I asked for it, the Myuri Mercenary Company would risk their lives fighting for us…”

  “That is correct.”

  Truth and facade, pride and vanity.

  This was the first time that Lawrence thought of the man called Luward as a trading partner.

  “I’m sure Holo has thought along the same lines as well. However, we’ve learned on the course of our journey that there are many things in this world we cannot do – meeting friends from the distant past, for instance.”

  He dared not change it into the form of a question.

  Even so, Luward seemed to understand what Lawrence’s words were getting at and took in a fairly deep breath.

  That breath did not turn into words. He shook his head side to side, saying nothing.

  Luward did not know where Myuri was. Nor, from his face, did he know whether Myuri was even alive.

  “… However, there is something else that I would like to ask here, in Holo’s place.”

  “If Yoitsu is safe?”

  When he had first met Holo, no matter which travelers’ inn he asked in, the name of the place produced but vague memories, making him wonder if it truly existed in this world. Even now, with someone completely unrelated giving an instant answer with a serious face, he wondered.

  It felt strange for dream to turn into reality like this.

  Lawrence did not get here simply by having his wagon pulled by
a horse. He had overcome many obstacles so that he could reach this point, holding hands together with Holo.

  Life made such things possible.

  “As a matter of fact, it is safe.” Luward raised his face as he spoke. “As a matter of fact, it is safe.”

  Perhaps he thought Holo’s ears would hear.

  “It is said even murmurs at a great distance do not escape Holo the Wisewolf.”

  “Barring the worst of circumstances, I think that’s largely correct.”

  Luward’s laugh made him look younger than his proper age. The way he raised his voice without smiling gave him the aura of a beast.

  “But that means you haven’t gone to Yoitsu yet?”

  “That’s right. We obtained a map, but… we decided that before going there, we should meet the Myuri Mercenary Company first.”

  “Mm, I see. People come first. On that point, I’m sorry I only bear the name of Myuri.”

  As Lawrence said in a fluster, “That’s all right,” Luward made a wry smile. “I jest.

  “Yoitsu’s safe. Right now it’s one part of a region called Tolkien. Even within that area, people don’t really go in or out; it’s a closed forest.”

  He wondered if Holo really was listening in the room overhead.

  If she was, she was surely curled up in a ball like a cat, scratching the bedding with her claws.

  “But in the time before we arrived here, we heard plenty of ill rumors about the Debau Company, enough to make us think of hiring someone of your lofty caliber to deploy.”

  The mercenary company captain first interjected that “Just Leward is fine,” in a quiet voice, before continuing. “The Debau Company is trying to conquer the whole of the northlands. The Debau Company is trying to tear up all the northlands for precious metals. The Debau Company is… like that, you mean.”

  “Indeed.”

  Luward nodded, making a small sigh.

  “But when you actually arrived in town, there wasn’t a single trace of war. The town’s full of activity, the merchants are diligently making money, and so forth.”

  As he gazed out of the shutters as he spoke, Lawrence once again replied, “Indeed.”

  “There’s probably few who’ve come to this town who thought otherwise.”