Lawrence guessed as much, but even so, he swallowed and said this.
“They can’t flee?”
After hesitating briefly, Holo nodded.
“The hare has not given up yet. Those who inherit the name of Myuri must remain at any rate.”
Luward was severely wounded, and even putting that aside, there were many others injured as well. Should they leave the town in such circumstances, hounded until they reached a proper town, next time the result would be a bloodbath.
It was better to fight facing one’s foe than to die from wounds to the back as a person fled.
Such an emotional appeal was not necessarily correct, but no doubt remaining was also a rational decision.
“Are you… all right with this?”
He thought it an unfair way to say it. Even so, as Hilde pursued his own dream, he was acting out of concern for the northlands. The Myuri Mercenary Company, having endured for so many centuries, had finally been able to pass the message it had inherited from Myuri down to Holo. Surely they could not so lightly abandon Hilde’s dream or a mercenary company with such a long, uninterrupted history that might well collapse?
Remaining behind in town, Lawrence could paint no pretty picture of what would happen when they lost, even without being a pessimist.
“’Tis not all right. Of course it is not all right.”
Holo seemed to suffer as she said this. Even though he knew what her answer would be, he still made her say it.
Even though Lawrence wanted to stop, even though he wanted to ask for forgiveness, he went on the attack with his last resort.
“Then, shouldn’t we stay here with them? Why don’t we try our best and see? If they were in our shoes, the Myuri Mercenary Company surely wouldn’t abandon us and run because the circumstances were unfavorable. They did inherit the name of your pack mate from your homeland, after all.”
Holo’s face twisted as if Lawrence’s words weighed heavily upon her chest; the last sentence finally made tears spill from her eyes.
However, what was there was not sadness. It was anger.
“But what can we do by remaining here? Stick around until the bitter end and flee when all is truly lost? I am not infallible. There are things that cannot be salvaged if one is taken by surprise. Once the hare is finally slain, are you confident we could abandon the rest and run then? Surely we could not? I, too, could only push as far as it would go in such an event. But that would be dying in vain. ’Tis not something we ought to do, knowing what the result shall be.”
Though he might have sarcastically called Holo’s torrent of words wise, that was a perfect description for them.
Holo had a point. And a second point, and a third.
What could Lawrence help with if he stayed? What role could a mere injured traveling merchant play when an army commanded by a great trading company invaded?
“Come, you – surely you at least understand that there is no role here for you to play?”
He could not fight with his injured leg. If it became a siege, just lodging would mean he was only eating up precious food reserves; Of course, he would be unable to have a voice if there were negotiations; all he could do was cheer for victory.
It was the same if he stayed or went. However, though he could provide his allies with no proper aid if he remained in town, when they lost, the victors would most certainly judge him a good and proper member of the enemy.
Though sometimes a previous king whose throne had been usurped was merely exiled, a former king plotting to usurp the throne was always fated to be slain.
Hilde had plotted rebellion. To fight in this town meant to be seen as rebel conspirators beyond all doubt.
If this was to be the Debau Company’s first step in subduing the northlands, the slaughter of those opposing it would surely be a mandatory ritual for the sake of the distant future. Those who know they are going to be killed often put up fierce resistance; yet in many instances, such actions sometimes ultimately reduced the total number of people who died in conflict.
The logical conclusion was that it was better Lawrence did not remain.
Holo looked straight at Lawrence as she spoke.
“Were you not going to open a store? Did you not tell me to think of a name for that store? I have decided. Not just the name of your store, but that we will live pleasantly in your store as well… Will you break that promise?”
He did not think this the underhanded thought of a woman concerned only with herself.
He knew all too well how much it made Holo suffer to walk away from this.
Perhaps the fever was why Holo’s body felt so very cold.
But he thought that perhaps it symbolized something.
“I truly would enjoy it… Living idly with you would be truly a delight… Surely you understand, do you not? After the clamor of town festivals, the fear of being left behind alone when everyone goes back to their normal lives? I want a home. I really do not want to know what is happening to Yoitsu anymore. I know that. I know what is happening to it… I did not want to return to Yoitsu so that I could be alone. That was why I was truly happy you comforted me in Lesko. When I thought, I am not alone, I was truly happy…”
Holo let her words trail off with a sniff of her nose at the end.
The playfulness she had shown when she returned from Kieschen with the forbidden book, flying at Lawrence, was no prank.
Holo really had missed him. She really did need him.
Looking back, they had had arguments and made up after many times over; it was not that she had taken his hand when his life was in danger once or twice, but rather, they had escaped many crises together when Lawrence thought they were done for.
If someone asked Holo what the most important thing in the world was to her, Holo could answer without hesitation. She already had. She had many times over.
Even so, Lawrence could not embrace Holo’s shoulders.
“Th-that doesn’t mean…”
As Lawrence tried to speak, Holo stopped him with a cold voice. “Do not make me say it.”
As the ambiance put a complete stop to Lawrence’s words, Holo lifted her face.
“Come, you – do you not yet understand that one must give up certain things?” Holo’s words hurt Lawrence as much as if she had thrust them right into his wound. “And you have, to gain me. And you will, to gain what comes ahead. You are naive, are you not?”
“… Naive?”
As Lawrence echoed her word, Holo spoke in a pained voice as if she was doing something bad.
“Did you mean to carry on our journey forever? You have sympathy. I, too, understand how you cannot have witnessed that and not become so angry you cannot forgive it. But what is that within you that you cannot compromise, I wonder? Is that what you truly must protect? If that is so, why did you take my hand all of those times? You…”
Holo, both sad and angry, bit down her shaking tongue.
“Am I not your princess?”
Lawrence was dumbfounded. While dumbfounded, he stared back at Holo intently.
So far as he could think, for Holo to call herself a princess was sarcasm toward Lawrence of the highest order.
He could not comprehend his own foolishness. Why had he not realized such a thing? How many times had he ignored Holo saying, “Let’s end this journey,” gripping her hand whether she liked it or not? There were times when Holo had truly pulled away, not wanting to be a millstone around Lawrence’s neck. There were times when Holo said, “Let’s split up before splitting up becomes too hard.” Why had Lawrence flown over, gripping her hand whether she liked it or not, and swatted all Holo’s concerns away?
Holo was afraid. She was afraid of taking Lawrence’s hand. She had lost all she had ever obtained, so learning that the merciless advance of time wiped all away, as if turning it to dust, she knew better than anyone how there existed no fairy tale where one lived happily ever after.
The crux was whether one had the determination to ta
ke responsibility or not.
Gaining someone precious and protecting that someone were two completely different things. Lawrence could see that clearly now.
Lawrence looked at Holo.
Even in his dreams, Lawrence never thought he would misunderstand something so thoroughly. Perhaps he had mistaken himself for a hero in a fairy tale. In a heroic legend, one cast away anything and everything without a thought about the future to obtain one’s beloved, the end.
But reality was different. The story continued onward, too.
Gaining one’s beloved came with a responsibility.
And yet he had never realized such a thing. He had been all too childish.
“I wish to live a quiet life with you…” she said.
Thinking back to when he had decided to set up a small store, running a modest business, he felt a pain in his chest. Even so, he had been spending each day living a very different life without complaint.
He might have been happy. He might have been very happy.
But Lawrence had never stopped scorning the merchant without ambition, the very sight of the man who had given up many things for a quiet life, who was unable to fly off because he embraced that which he protected.
It is said that one grows when one journeys. Lawrence had held the conceit that he had grown sufficiently, that he knew enough about the world. That had been a complete presumption on his part.
To choose Holo, to understand that choice and to make an incalculable compromise, would probably make an adult out of him. Surely that was not a bad thing. If simply imagining life with Holo made it hard to breathe, surely it could not be a bad thing.
Lawrence had taken Holo’s hand. He had taken her hand many times over. Holo had always trusted Lawrence. She had pretended to not see all of her concerns and doubts in order to come with Lawrence.
Through traveling with Holo, Lawrence had truly come to understand what it meant to be with someone else.
Lawrence reached out to Holo. Holo tensely watched his hand. When Lawrence’s hand touched Holo’s cheek, Holo gently closed her eyes.
Lawrence drew Holo to him, putting his other arm around her back.
As a merchant, seeing Hilde’s dream had lit a fire in his heart. His righteous indignation at the Debau Company’s foul plot via the Hugo Mercenary Company had lit a fire in his body.
But no longer could the raging flames consume him and turn him to ash.
This was what having someone precious meant.
If, as Holo had said, this was fate, it was not so bad.
As Lawrence listened to his own thoughts, his arm that embraced Holo squeezed strongly once more as he called her name.
“Holo.”
As he did so, Holo’s ears twitched and moved, and she raised her face.
This was not happiness. If one had to describe it, this was acknowledging the sin was both of theirs to bear. Coconspirators were bound together much like this. For her part, Holo was a wolf that had spent centuries in a wheat field out of obligation, never being thanked once. Leaving Hilde and the Myuri Mercenary Company and running could not possibly be easy for her.
Lawrence pulled back and took Holo’s hand.
Holo looked at her hand intertwined with Lawrence’s and nodded.
That moment, Lawrence’s journey came to an end.
“Ugh…”
That might not have been the cause, but Lawrence felt dizzy and put his back to the wall once again.
Holo hastily moved to support him. His physical strength had indeed not returned whatsoever.
“I-I’m all right…”
“Fool. Here, grab on.”
Holo lent Lawrence her hand. This was probably how they would live from here on.
How could anyone be dissatisfied with that?
That moment, as Lawrence grabbed onto Holo and stepped forward…
Thud, thud, thud. There was a sound of someone pounding on the door downstairs. This was still early in a peaceful morning. Such a powerful echo seemed an ill omen.
And after one more pound of the door, apparently someone who had drawn the short straw and was standing watch without sleep opened the door. After a brief argument, there was a sound of heavy footsteps.
The door in the hallway ahead opened, and Moizi and a middle-aged man emerged from it.
Lawrence had only seen the man with a hood low over his eyes back in Lesko, but as a traveling merchant, he could remember people by a variety of characteristics. From his silhouette, he knew immediately that this was Hilde. Without his hood in the way, his face was covered in long, blond hair. His eyes looked like that of a recluse.
But those eyes had the air of deep intellect within them; Lawrence could discern the resolute will that lay hidden behind that beard.
Lawrence was grateful Hilde had been in the form of a hare all this time. Faced with a man like this, Lawrence would have found himself too overwhelmed to make even a single judgment.
After lightly greeting Lawrence and Holo with his eyes, Moizi ran down the stairs along with a young man.
Hilde walked over slowly, coming to a corner of the hallway and standing before Lawrence and Holo.
“Have you made your decision?”
It was a curt question.
And before Lawrence could reply, he deduced from looking at the way their hands were joined together.
That moment, the corners of his eyes became like those of a good-natured old man.
He would say not a single cross word before two people who were running.
He put a wrinkled, gnarled, large hand on Holo’s shoulder, then touched both of Lawrence’s arms as if giving a blessing.
“May you both be happy.”
Lawrence felt that Hilde was going to add, “… in spite of all this,” at the end, but perhaps that was just his imagination.
At any rate, he was unable to simply accept the words right before him and, instead of thanks, said this.
“Has something happened?”
He half expected to be brushed off with a It has nothing to do with you, does it? However, Hilde gazed squarely at Lawrence and, after closing his eyes once, replied, “Right now, the inn is surrounded by soldiers.”
“Wh–?!”
“The man who administers the town in the name of the town council has been seen riding a horse. It will not be idle chitchat, I am sure.”
He spoke those words without showing a single shred of tension.
This was absolutely not the defiance of someone who had given up; rather, a feat no doubt made possible through a wealth of experiences.
“But surely they will not surround us at all hours of the day. Please flee when there is an opening. Now, then.”
Hilde strode past Lawrence and Holo as if heading to a minor deal for the company. Even with the inn surrounded by soldiers, he was this magnificent. He was made of different stuff than those who went on adventures.
As Lawrence and Holo watched Hilde go, they heard footsteps from downstairs and a voice. The voice was Moizi’s, saying, “Please wait!”
Were they under attack?
A moment later, before Lawrence could move ahead of Holo to shield her–
“Ho.”
Without heeding those standing about him, a man wearing a cloak that reached all the way down to his ankles began to climb the stairs, noticing Hilde as he went. Based on his appearance, he seemed somewhat younger than Hilde, but he was nonetheless of considerable age. His red hair continued down his sideburns to his chin, forming a neatly trimmed beard. From the air about him, one could tell with a single glance that he was a man of authority.
The cloak that he wore was neither fine nor shabby. He looked like a hardy man, but not one who seemed like a poor prospect to do business with. He was the type who would not buy anything spectacular, but who, once one gained his trust, would deal with them over the long term without grumbling about the fine details.
The man gazed straight at Hilde, speaking without any show of emotion.
“I can tell just by looking.”
Having climbed the stairs far enough to come in view of the second floor, he looked toward Lawrence and Holo as well. “You, too.”
For a moment, Lawrence did not understand what he meant, but when he saw Holo’s body stiffen, he muttered, “It can’t be.”
“The sooner we speak the better. I’m borrowing the room there.”
“Mr. Millike!”
Moizi tried to stop him, but the man called Millike brought the veteran mercenary to a halt with a single look.
As he did so, Hilde asked back. “Jean Millike?”
“Indeed. Chairman of the Svernel Merchants’ Council. Also known as…”
Millike grandly topped the stairs, now coming to stand on the same floor as Hilde.
Hilde was not a small man by any means, but Millike was larger. Though not to the same extent as Moizi or Rebonato, he was physically imposing.
“Klaus von Havlish the Third.”
“Wha…?!”
Millike shifted his unamused eyes to the shocked Hilde. “I received a bizarre report before dawn and thought, just perhaps, but for you to truly not know…”
Millike, or perhaps Havlish, stepped past the flank of the speechless Hilde, standing before Lawrence’s eyes.
And he respectfully lowered his gaze to Holo.
“I have heard you have a more valiant form.”
A moment later, Holo slapped Millike’s cheek. Everyone there was surprised, and Holo was no exception. Holo stared at Millike’s cheek as she gripped her right hand with her left, as if she had slapped him by reflex alone.
For Holo, slapping someone’s cheek was not exactly a rare event.
What surprised Lawrence was that Holo looked like she was frightened.
“… A literally rough welcome. But I did not come for pleasant conversation. I shall borrow the room in here. I take it the fireplace is lit?”
Hilde stroked his hair and tugged at his chin as he seemed to regain his senses. “This way,” he said, walking ahead and leading him inside. Holo’s eyes followed Millike after Hilde, but her feet did not.
Lawrence did not really need to ask.
“He’s not human?” These were the northlands, much of them covered by mountain and forest.
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