Spice & Wolf Omnibus

by Isuna Hasekura

  The merchants had evidently caught wind of it.

  The bottom of the Debau Company’s signboard listed the names of lords, influential even in the northlands region, which had granted their approval. No doubt other territories would see the circulation of the new currency as something they, too, should accept.

  Once that process began, it would be exceedingly difficult for other lords to resist. When all those around them, making use of good coinage, were living amid a large economic sphere, it was unfathomable to remain outside, alone and poor, unable to buy or sell the merchandise they wished to.

  It was not much different than being besieged by soldiers surrounding the walls.

  Furthermore, as circulation of the coinage issued by the Debau Company bound more places together, the nominal holders of those territories would cease to be the true masters of the land.

  No matter the ruler, it was exceedingly difficult to wield power while penniless. Once the masses understood the pastures were greener on the other side of the mountain, they invariably went. If one used force of arms to stop this, that plight would create strife in all directions. And the opponent would be numerous persons of influence linked by money to the Debau Company and one another.

  Hitherto, kings had largely been cut from the same cloth. This was a product of ties by marriage. But people changed their spots easily over differences in coinage. Many strategic marriages were in vain, ending in bloody conflicts in no small number of cases. From this perspective as well, the Debau Company’s plan was perfect for these lands, with their rulers scattered all about.

  The topography made mounting one’s horse and grappling with those who bore arms fraught with peril. Even tying them down by marriage was difficult.

  However, with coinage as an intermediary, neither steep mountains, nor deep forests, nor the piles of snow that fell each year held much relevance. This land was the ideal place to link together with coinage.

  In the past, the Ruvik Alliance had used warships in its possession to smash the militaries of kingdoms that interfered with its trading.

  Merchants acclaimed this as the start of a new era, but this was the old era’s way of fighting nonetheless.

  The Debau Company was using its own coinage to bind the economic activity of the nobility and, furthermore, to acquire enormous profits from the issuing of that coinage.

  This was completely different than sending soldiers into neighboring realms to profit from crude plunder.

  Furthermore, people around the world would be grateful that the distribution of currency would not be entrusted to incompetent rulers vigorously pursuing power for themselves; the burden would instead be borne by merchants heavily skilled in administration. Whereas rulers could only cope with famine by plundering provisions from their neighbors, merchants could resolve it with money: low taxes, smooth trading, no overbearing authority.

  Kings received advice from merchants attending their royal courts, but whether they acted on that advice was anyone’s guess. A foolish king could survive despite himself, but a foolish merchant could not. This was powerful evidence of trustworthiness to the masses.

  For the first time in history, the Debau Company would rise to the same level as kings, without resorting to the sword.

  “It’s a new era!”

  That is what Luward shouted, raising his wine cup, as Lawrence finished his explanation. There might have been a hint of regret in his shout.

  What made Lawrence think that was that Luward Myuri truly looked like someone who had lived in the same era as Holo.

  “Money is a powerful force in any world, but it was never able to resolve everything. And yet the Debau Company has accomplished all this with money alone. We haven’t swung our swords even once, and yet all the lords are bowing down before them!”

  “Certainly, I have not once heard of a case like this.” Moizi spoke with a languid, uninspired sigh.

  “This is what will bring many of our comrades to tears. We will lose much of our purpose for existing. We’ve become paid paper puppets. If we can at least earn something in spite of this…” Luward spoke, irritatingly smashing his bagful of gold onto the table hard enough to nearly smash it. “Who can complain about this?!”

  After the huge uproar in town from the raising of the billboard in the square, Luward had barely returned to the inn when a messenger claiming to be from the Debau Company summoned him. When he returned in the evening, he bore such a conflicted visage that not a single member of the mercenary company dared raise his voice.

  He had money with him.

  However, this was not a reward granted after a battle; rather, it was for the paper puppet role that they had not been informed of.

  Mercenaries held their banners, risking their lives for the group. Lawrence needed no effort to recall Fran, the young silversmith and crusading priest, in search of an angel for her own reasons.

  To them, the other members were both coworkers and family, comrades alongside which they would willingly march into hell itself. And yet, they were obtaining more money by being used to check the advances of others than they ever had risking their lives.

  Was this not something to celebrate?

  Moreover, the Debau Company had altered the foundation of old-style sword-and-shield warfare. By hiring knights and mercenaries in numbers sufficient to make victory nearly a foregone conclusion, could they not avoid such troublesome things and settle conflicts through money alone? A simple, childlike ideal, and yet it had become reality.

  Certainly, the end of war would please many. However, change always left some people behind. When the Village of Pasloe no longer had to struggle for wheat, Holo lost her reason for being. No matter how lonely, painful, how often she cried, it was what it was. Even among the mercenary company there were those who were disappointed. Like a good commander, Luward bathed them in enough wine to make their eyes spin.

  However, the decision whether to stay in the town or leave was surely a critical juncture for the future of the company.

  “Moizi and I weren’t looking straight at the problem, I suppose.” Luward spoke self-effacingly. “I’m glad you were here, Mr. Lawrence. I did not think the power of money was as tremendous as this.”

  Lawrence made but a tiny smile as he gazed into his clear wine.

  Until the last half year, he never drank wine without putting in a mountain of ginger or even charcoal to mask the unpleasant taste. Thinking about this, he found his current position to be quite mysterious; now he was able to realize that just as his drinking had changed, so too had his thinking.

  “I thought I knew a thing or two about money. However, those who I have met on my travels have taught me that there is still much about it I have yet to learn.”

  Norah and Eve had risked their lives for money, but in completely different ways and meanings. Col and Elsa had taught him that there were things money brought that people could not live without.

  And Holo had taught Lawrence how to make use of money.

  Thinking back on it now, Lawrence was sure that if he had been alone he would have never bought something like a store no matter how much time passed. Having stingily pulled his purse strings taut, someday some illness or accident might befall him, his purse still closed.

  He had not noticed the Debau Company’s scheme by his own power alone.

  “Naturally, never in my dreams did I think someone like the Debau Company could make it into a reality. That’s in spite of meeting someone like Holo here.”

  However much a wisewolf she was, she did not know everything, and even accepting the logic, that did not mean that it made sense. Holo, seemingly rather left behind by the conversation as much as Luward, tactlessly buried her face in her wine.

  However, she seemed to understand that the mercenaries were in circumstances not so different from her own. When Luward toasted “the good old days,” she made a pained smile and raised her cup as well.

  “This might very well be the new way of the world.�
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  So spoke Moizi, who no doubt thought charging together with swords raised were the good old days, shrugging his narrow shoulders casually in spite of the cramped confines of Luward’s office.

  “When I was young, it was the duty of lords and the noble-born knights around them to go to new lands. At some point, the noblemen ceased to be knights and left the bounds of their kings. Mercenaries were hired with money in increasing numbers and frequency, and their employers were no longer the kings of various lands, but rather the distinguished and wealthy noblemen and great merchants that emerged in large cities. Do you know who in the world are at the front of the line, descending upon the new lands across the sea?”

  Moizi looked at Lawrence.

  Lawrence, rather uncomfortably, could but answer, “Merchants, yes?”

  Actually, Lawrence had read a book written by a merchant who had toured the world.

  Building a ship, assembling a skilled crew – expenses for a voyage all required raising money to invest.

  It was not the kind of job you could leave to ruffians. No matter where, regardless of circumstances, one had to employ people who loved calculating profit and loss so much, it seemed like they had some kind of disease.

  And probably more than all others, merchants full of curiosity and vitality believed that they would discover great profit where none had gone before.

  If there was one group in the world that had not lost its adventuring spirit, it was surely merchants.

  “My father liked to say, ‘Don’t choose your employers, and don’t have others choose your money.’”

  “It’s the reverse now. If we try to name our price now, we’ll never be able to make a living.”

  Luward nodded as Moizi spoke.

  Not surprisingly, they were holding this conversation while the two young aides were absent.

  “Mr. Lawrence, I’m not sure you’re aware of it, but right now, competition for mercenary work is fierce. The world’s filled with ordinary blacksmiths and other stout craftsmen who train themselves, carrying weapons they know how to use better than anyone, who work away from home as mercenaries. They were the first ‘Free Lancers.’ They’re less picky about who they work for than we are. Their goal’s simply to earn money, not to fight for the tradition and dignity of their banner.”

  Luward narrowed his eyes as he made a disappointed laugh.

  Lawrence was not on the side left behind by change as he was. He could not find the words. So he changed the subject.

  “Anyway, now that the possibility of war in this town has abated for now, will you be headed to Yoit… to the Tolkien region?”

  Their original plan had been to deploy here, but with that plan having evaporated, Lawrence wanted their guidance as he headed to Yoitsu, taking Holo with him. After all, the purchase of the store in this town was not yet complete, nor did the other party expect full payment immediately.

  He would need to go along the trade route once, collecting balances owed and trading favors with people and organizations at a number of markets.

  “Ah, there is that… we’d really meant to ride the winning horse, but… the horse turned out to be a different one than we bargained for. If we stayed, we’d probably find work. However, that would mean changing in a definitive way. That is why I think we should go south, searching for remnants of the old era.”

  Luward was being sentimental, perhaps because he was deep in his cups.

  Moizi, more advanced in years, maintained his composure.

  “We can always dissolve after we are certain whether this change becomes a heavy trend throughout the world or a miracle limited only to here.”

  This, too, was crucial.

  “Though we do intend to visit our homeland. When we make profit, some members have family they want to spend some of that money on.”

  “So could we go with you?”

  As Lawrence asked, Moizi made a conflicted face.

  When Holo noticed he was in a quandary, she promptly poked him in the ribs with her elbow.

  “Well, even if we had a reason not to bring you, our ancestors would never forgive us.”

  He spoke with a serious look with just a slight amount of pain in his voice.

  Spending time with Holo through tears, laughter, disillusionment, anger, and haste, one could forget that Holo was a being some called a god, and others, a spirit. As the Myuri mercenaries were centered around what one might call a creation myth, refusing the great task of bringing Holo to her precious homeland would call into doubt the company’s reason for being.

  Lawrence apologized in earnest as Holo made a sigh beside him.

  “I suppose we’ll be off in four, maybe five days. How many days depends on what’s going on and whether there are any large developments, which certainly could happen, but…”

  As Luward spoke, he opened a shutter and peered outside.

  Even as the sun set, the town was not calming down today; on the contrary, the uproar seemed to only grow larger as night fell.

  Tonight there were fires burning all over the place, as if the fire ordinances had been relaxed.

  It was so cold it seemed snow would fall at any moment, but even now people were pulling chairs and tables outside, drinking wine, and dancing all about.

  Surely a great many of those who were excited did not understand the meaning of the Debau Company’s issuing a new currency. However, there was reason for them to be pleased. For a single town to issue its own currency showed that it stood head and shoulders above the other towns of the region. Put another way, the town in which they lived had just grown in stature.

  Those who had come to this town from the unremarkable great steppes of the northlands that surrounded them, their boat rocked by uncertainty and hope, they simply could not help but be jubilant.

  “I doubt there’ll be anything bigger than this that will happen. The Debau Company’s plan is no doubt running smoothly, like chasing a rabbit down a rabbit hole. As long as the rabbit hole doesn’t lead to a strange place, which shouldn’t happen, because a rabbit hole’s just a rabbit hole.”

  Luward spoke as if one might be hiding somewhere as he drank his wine. He might have been envious of those people who did not even notice there was a rabbit hunt.

  Lawrence himself was, if anything, on the envied side.

  Though he’d originally come to this town intending to oppose the Debau Company, the greatness of what they were accomplishing had made him proud as a fellow merchant – humans were certainly a fickle lot.

  However, what Debau was doing was simply of that level.

  No doubt they were having a great celebration at company headquarters that very moment.

  “Well, let’s say it’s a turning point of the era and leave it at that. We mercenaries have always lived in the gaps of history after all.”

  As Luward spoke in a self-effacing tone, Moizi raised his cup a bit.

  “And it seems we are not the only ones who think so,” he said, shifting his gaze down the window once more.

  “That’s the kid from Rebonet, isn’t it?”

  “Ha-ha. Their captain is a devoted lover of wine, too, after all.”

  Be it out of a simple love of parties or that the turning point of the age simply demanded the drinking of wine, the young man pounded on the door without restraint, calling for Luward from the other side.

  “I can’t say no to that. Well, the rest of you have fun here.”

  So Luward said, adding that Moizi should enjoy himself like the others downstairs, energetically handing him the whole lot of the gold coins from the money bag he brought from the Debau Company.

  Lawrence had seen that many lumione gold pieces during the uproar in Kerube, but seeing them handled so casually was a first.

  He realized that indeed they were mercenaries and he was a merchant.

  “Well, I’d best be off.”

  Luward seemed to be shaking his head as he wrapped his coat around himself and left, but there was happiness on h
is face as well. He was much younger than Lawrence, after all. No doubt his blood ran too hot to keep his chagrin at being fooled by the Debau Company off his face.

  “Now, to enjoy myself, as requested…… And what about the two of you?”

  Moizi counted the various gold coins Luward had handed him, returning over half of them to the bag before he stood. From his tone of voice, he conveyed that they need not remain for his sake.

  “We’ll return to our rooms. Doubtless everyone will get quite carried away in the middle of this uproar.”

  “Heh-heh-heh. A wise decision. The taste of wine should be properly enjoyed at leisure. They’d just as well drink mud water right now. Indeed, quite a lot of it.”

  Moizi shrugged his shoulders and laughed as he took a few more gold coins out.

  Even from the second floor, they could hear the commotion on the first.

  Just how they were drinking was easy to guess.

  “Besides, now that I’ve paid the deposit for that store, my head hurts from the money I’ll have to raise. This is no time to spend a couple of days drunk.”

  As Lawrence spoke, Moizi’s eyes widened with some surprise.

  “Oh, truly, you have?”

  “Yes, with both feet.”

  “… Ha-ha. How fortuitous. A once-in-a-lifetime purchase for a young man.”

  Moizi slapped his forehead just like Luward did. It had probably been Moizi’s habit to begin with. It seemed that if people lived together long enough, they began to resemble a husband and wife.

  Lawrence glanced sideways at Holo as he thought about that.

  When she cocked her head with a questioning look, Lawrence merely smiled casually, saying nothing.

  “Fortuitous, indeed. I didn’t think you’d actually buy it. And at the most opportune time, as well.”

  The town was in an uproar. Prices for everything shot up during festivities. No doubt, had Lawrence not paid the deposit at that very moment in time that building would now either be already sold or much higher in price.

  “Yes. I’m grateful to God.”

  As Lawrence spoke, Moizi looked between Lawrence and Holo, somewhat surprised. He was probably wondering if it was all right to say such a thing in front of Holo.