Spice & Wolf Omnibus

by Isuna Hasekura

  As he thought, Holo’s going to laugh at me again, and tried to get his nicely inverted body up, he found himself barely able to lift hand or foot.

  It was around then when he finally realized.

  “… Holo?”

  She had not come to rescue him. She had not come to laugh at him.

  Holo had been on top of Lawrence the whole time, head buried in his chest, unmoving.

  Holo had leaped right into him, bowling him over.

  “…”

  She wordlessly pressed her face against Lawrence, both arms wrapped around Lawrence’s back, squeezing with all her might.

  As if she truly was at the limits of her strength, from time to time she took a breather, changed the positions of her hands and her body a little, and embraced him with all her strength once more. As the snow fell down with a rustling sound, Holo admirably swept the snow away with her dexterous tail.

  Once Lawrence took the entire situation in, he stopped trying to rise, relaxing into the snow. His head rather deeply in as he had fallen into it with some force, with walls of snow filling his vision before suddenly coming to a halt. Of course, the snow covered both ears, limiting the sounds he could hear to very little. The only sounds he heard were those made by him and Holo.

  He was unable to see up to the sky, with evergreens, filled to the brim with snow, acting as a chilly barrier. With that, Lawrence finally understood the true reason why Holo had hidden the forbidden book in the middle of the mountains. She had wanted to bring Lawrence this far out, to a place hidden from not only Luward and Moizi and Hilde, but from the high-flying Luis’s line of sight as well.

  As Holo rested atop Lawrence’s chest, he put his arms around her back and lightly stroked her. He felt she had become a little thinner. As he stroked Holo’s back, Holo made a raspy, painful-sounding voice as her small body shuddered. The claws on the hands around his own back dug in enough to hurt.

  He had not been the only one happy to be reunited. He had not been the only one who felt the last few days were torture. Lawrence gave a light laugh.

  “So you were the one putting on an act,” he said.

  Those were the words Luward had used. As Lawrence laughed, Holo’s claws dug into his back more strongly, no doubt partly in a show of protest.

  “Ow, ow! Well, I’m sure you’d have been appalled if you knew how I’d been faring.”

  As Lawrence spoke, Holo paused for a while, as if doubting his words, before pulling back her claws a little. Lawrence made a relieved smile as he recalled something similar that had happened during the affair in Pazzio’s underground aqueducts. Awfully glad I didn’t say anything, he thought with some relief.

  In return, knowing he should make full use of his good fortune, Lawrence said this.

  “Welcome back.”

  Holo’s face shot up from his chest.

  And as she looked at Lawrence, her face lost all composure.

  Lawrence was flustered no more. This time, with Holo on the verge of tears, he embraced her body once more, shifting his body around to position his feet to stand. Holo shot him a look of protest, but Lawrence replied with a strained smile, “If we’re too slow someone’s going to come looking for us.”

  No doubt Holo’s vanity could not have taken that.

  As her lips made a pout, she pressed her face against Lawrence’s breast to wipe away the tears that had seeped out, and after a final embrace, she hopped right up.

  “Somehow, I feel like I’ve been ridden like a horse.”

  Once he had been pinned to the ground by a giant wolf claw, too.

  But this time Holo did not bare her fangs at him, but instead, she moved a little aside and extended a hand to Lawrence to help him get up.

  “… Why does the one holding the reins end up on the bottom?”

  He took them as words of gratitude, but did not ask back, So, which of us wears a rope around their neck? Instead, once Lawrence had gotten up, he wiped a lingering tear from the corner of Holo’s eye with a finger. Even as Holo turned her face with a sour look, her ears and tail seemed pleased.

  Furthermore, now that he had wiped her right eye, her left eye regarded him.

  Lawrence sighed and carefully wiped the tears from her left eye.

  Chapter 9

  “So, this is the forbidden book.”

  The book was within the luggage Holo had carried from Kieschen.

  It was marvelously bound in leather, with that alone giving it an overwhelming, overbearing feeling.

  “The contents?”

  “Who knows… but according to that portly book merchant…”

  Holo, speaking as she changed clothes, exhaled a sharp “phew” as she poked her heard out of her shirt. “… ’Tis authentic.”

  “I-I see…”

  When he opened it, the ink bore the particular fragrance of knowledge.

  But Lawrence was of course unable to read the characters written within. Apparently, the contents had been written in the words of a desert kingdom to make them more difficult to read. It was all strangely thin and curvy. Lawrence did not even know if these were actual characters.

  “It’s good you managed to get it, though.”

  As Lawrence spoke, Holo’s hand, in the middle of pulling her long hair out from under her shirt, stopped as she suddenly made a sullen look.

  “… There was an argument?”

  As it was not an inexpensive book, something between her and Le Roi could well have taken place.

  Lawrence thought that as he asked his question. Holo brushed her hair back and seemed annoyed as she spoke. “Something like that.”

  “I-is that so…?”

  It was written loud and clear on Holo’s face that something she truly disliked had happened when she drew near at Lawrence’s mild-mannered expression of concern.

  “Surely you comprehend how great a chore it is to shake off Col?”

  “Ah!”

  Lawrence finally got it.

  “We forced him to go his separate way to begin with, so of course the sight of my face put him in tears. I had to make my escape while that overly serious church girl held him back!”

  Lawrence understood all too well the storm of protest Holo’s arrival to get the forbidden book must have kicked up.

  Col was probably clinging to her the whole time, pleading for her to let him help.

  Had Elsa not stopped him, Holo really might have ended up with Col riding on top of her the whole way back.

  “Well, that’s… really…”

  As Lawrence had not witnessed it himself, all he could do was offer sympathy.

  Holo was well aware of that, so her face was not terribly indignant when she looked the other way. “It certainly is! And after all I’ve done for her, the attitude that serious church lass took with me…”

  Holo, apparently remembering her anger at the time whatever had happened, became worked up all over again.

  There were few girls as fearless as Elsa, and she must have said something to Holo to make her so worked up.

  Holo’s tail swished back and forth as she shook her head. “More importantly, why are you making for such a dangerous town with that hare anyway?”

  To Holo, the entire misadventure must have seemed like one unpleasant event after another.

  She snatched her sash, which she had always let Lawrence wrap around her, from his shoulder, roughly wrapping it around herself. Someone just happening to come along might make a few assumptions about the situation, but it was nothing of the sort. Holo had returned to her wolf form to dig up the book she had buried in the snow like a fox.

  Holo seemed in ill humor as she lobbed her words at Lawrence.

  “I did hear talk of you heading to Svernel, hare in hand, plotting to join the rebels. How many times must my precious Lawrence stick his nose into danger no matter what I say before he is satisfied, I wonder?”

  Had they merely handed over the forbidden book the danger would have been minimal.

  B
ut by taking Hilde to Svernel, the danger was not limited so.

  “About that… it was because Mr. Hilde’s strategy was just too good; that’s all I can really say.”

  Lawrence explained his dealings with Hilde at the inn in Lesko and how, thanks to a single utterance by Hilde, he had tied the mercenaries into knots and how that was linked to their difficult decision.

  Holo, of course, was not amused.

  “But in spite of all that, what kind of idiot heads for enemy territory on purpose?” she said after listening to the whole story.

  He understood what Holo was trying to say.

  Since it was clearer than a cloudless, sunny sky that Hilde’s counterattack was reckless, they should not have lent their support.

  Yet Lawrence and the others had gone along, ending up walking the narrow mountain roads.

  Therefore, Lawrence could only ask Holo this: “Well, should just the two of us run away?”

  That option was a great deal simpler than performing a dramatic reversal scene and heading to Svernel as planned, but it had obvious drawbacks.

  “… I just wanted to say it.”

  Holo seemed unamused as she spoke.

  If Holo was cold-hearted enough to so easily abandon Hilde and the Myuri Mercenary Company, she, too, might sing the praises of this world a little more.

  “But a few things will probably sprout from this, yes?”

  Meaning, there was at least a possibility of cracking open the present circumstances.

  Lawrence made a light nod at her question and closed the book. Holo then stuffed it back into the hemp sack she had carried it in, securing it shut. This was not some cheap thing; the hemp was the same high quality as used to embroider stout ropes. Stored within was every last gold coin Hilde had placed in Holo’s care.

  No doubt a book merchant of Le Roi’s caliber would have immediately pulled out his scales. If the forbidden book proved unnecessary due to the failure of Hilde’s plan, Holo would invariably take it back by force. Therefore, taking the possibility of things turning sour into account, the best move was to sell Hilde’s gratitude. That, more than accepting three hundred gold lumione now, was thinking of far greater potential profits.

  Probably something like that.

  “You saw that stage play, too, didn’t you? The Debau Company seems to be fairly shaken internally. The company’s middle management planned to use the power of the lords to seize control, but apparently it’s really the lords using them. That’s why they’re forced to make a rather stupid decision like this.”

  As Lawrence spoke, Holo stared straight at him, and seeming to carefully weigh his words, she lifted her chin.

  “… It serves them right.”

  “Yeah. But that’s a favorable situation for our side.”

  Holo seemed a bit dissatisfied with Lawrence’s reply.

  “Is that so? All it means is the enemy’s switched from backstabbing merchants to disorganized oafs.”

  “That may be so, but from the beginning the Debau Company planned to use the lords as its puppets while seizing power over the region from them. In other words, we think there’s a high likelihood the traitors within the Debau Company didn’t want the situation as it is now.”

  “So light the fires of rebellion, and sympathizers shall emerge from the rebels and such…?”

  Holo was making a face as rigid as if she was gnawing on bitter rye bread.

  Certainly, it might be a very convenient way of looking at things.

  But since the words were not those of an amateur, but those of Hilde, who had been inside the Debau Company, they carried weight.

  “At the very least, that’s what Hilde thinks. I think it’s an optimistic perspective, too, but some of the traitors must be more fervent than others. It wouldn’t be strange if some thought, If we keep on going like this, the lords will run us into the ground, and so forth.”

  “…”

  Holo surely understood the logic of it, yet she was deeply perturbed.

  Before Lawrence could ask her what she really thought, Holo said this.

  “So what, call back the owner they have bared their fangs at once already? And if called back, would he forgive them?”

  Certainly, that was a sensible reaction.

  But merchants were shockingly greedy, thick faced, and black-hearted. These trends were exacerbated in merchants of exceptional skill. Famous merchants were specialists at throwing their weight around, but Lawrence had heard they were just fine with rubbing their cheek against the ground right in front of others.

  In practice, such things usually did not obtain any definite results, and if the middle managers did not kill Debau himself because they could still use him, the reverse was equally true. In other words, even if Debau returned to power at the head of the company, Hilde and Debau could never return the company to its former state by themselves.

  “I think… they will. And Mr. Hilde and the others are spurring a counterattack because they think so.”

  For a while, Holo’s eyes watched Lawrence as if he looked like a creepy magician or the like, finally making a sigh. Perhaps she averted her gaze because looking at the forest calmed her heart.

  “You merchants truly are a pack of fools…”

  Tone aside, those words seemed to constitute tentative assent. Besides, this was very good news so far as Holo was concerned.

  Even Holo would want to avoid making the choice to abandon Hilde and the Myuri Mercenary Company if at all possible.

  After all, handing Hilde the forbidden text was with the intent of averting an unprecedented crisis in the northlands. Moreover, had Holo and Lawrence not become involved with the Myuri Mercenary Company, it would not have become wrapped up in such danger.

  With such thoughts in mind, Holo and Lawrence could not just flee by themselves.

  All they could do right now was hope that all would settle down; right now, that was still possible.

  And Holo knew this, of course.

  She did not like it, but she accepted it. Perhaps she had raised the issue because she wanted to rule out their running away on their own, but he made no effort to confirm that.

  Lawrence had something else he wanted to say instead.

  “So if you were an exceptionally skilled merchant who could easily do such shocking things, what would you do?”

  “Mm?”

  Holo looked at him, seemingly taking a bit of time to understand the meaning of his words.

  Though not being simply led by the nose by Holo made him happiest, taking a long, hard look at Holo’s face changing into a bewildered expression was a close second.

  She looked like she was not going to give up even if it took her the next hundred years.

  “… Do you intend to push this onto me? I must say that is very small-minded of you.”

  “I think we stupid males are proud of being good at that.”

  And without laughing, Holo snuggled nicely into Lawrence’s side and said this.

  “Yes, yes. That is so.”

  Holo took Lawrence’s hand, as if asking, Is this all right?

  The smile Lawrence sent back covered his whole face.

  “Hmph.”

  Holo looked the other way with an annoyed expression.

  From there, the two descended the slope and came out onto the road.

  To the right was where Luward and the others were fighting; to the left, the winding road continued all the way to Svernel.

  By now the heavy sleds must have all advanced quite a ways down the road. The marvelous feast of sword and spear was due to come to an end, so those not involved had gone ahead.

  “Incidentally…” With the road curving to the right, Lawrence asked as they walked, “If you arrived at Lesko the day before yesterday, what were you doing between then and coming here?”

  According to Hilde, the bird named Luis knew to tell her that if anything had happened in Lesko, Hilde would be heading toward Svernel.

  Therefore, since the
eyes of a bird in flight surely would have spotted Lawrence and the others right away, a rather large amount of time had passed.

  As he asked, Holo shrugged her shoulders a bit and said this.

  “The town was like a clam that had closed its shell. Even knowing without doubt something had happened to the hare, I had little notion of what exactly that something was. That and someone left the inn without leaving so much as a note.”

  Holo said it with invective, but in that situation, Lawrence would never have left a note.

  If he carelessly left such a thing, he would have no idea what way it might be taken.

  “So you were investigating the circumstances?”

  “Aye. Luis’s comrades had vanished as well. But though Luis did not take human form, he truly has courage and is quite valiant. He said he would not give up and would keep searching. Aye. Enough that ’tis truly wasted on a bird.”

  From Holo, who rarely even remembered other people’s names, this was rather high praise.

  As Lawrence thought as much, he also knew he had best keep his face neutral, but apparently the decision had come too late. Holo noticed and leered at him from the side.

  “… This Luis is so incredible, then?”

  So he said it before it was said for him.

  “Aye. Let us say we had a bit of an adventure.”

  “I see,” Lawrence calmly replied, but Holo seemed to be testing him as she said all this.

  “Making a forced march, running all over day and night, finally arriving at the town and searching for those who were missing and gathering information was not something that could be done alone. Sometimes he urged me on; sometimes I urged him on. Sometimes I led him; sometimes he led me. That is why…”

  Holo made a small pause in her words.

  “… I might have fallen for him just a bit.”

  She turned her face away as she spoke for good measure.

  As Holo spoke such words, she made what seemed to be a constrained smile.

  A man and a woman bound together through hardship was one of the staples of the old ballads.

  It could not be. Could it…?

  If a man and a wolf was fine, why not a wolf and a bird?

  But if he showed even a hint of suspicion about that, it would mean he did not trust Holo.