Spice & Wolf Omnibus

by Isuna Hasekura

  No doubt Millike, child of man and spirit, who even now held sway over that town to protect the burial site of his beloved wife, who had departed long before him, had a thought or two in regards to Holo.

  Nonetheless, the two did apparently have a few things in common. From time to time, Holo would send off some alcohol to him and he would send some to her, back and forth.

  And so, what Lawrence had requested was cast in the furnace that had been lit once more in Svolnel.

  It was the same furnace where the first gold coins bearing the Debau Company’s symbol of the sun were minted, and the day that furnace was lit was the day Lawrence and Holo had sworn to go as far as they might together.

  No doubt a first-rate craftsman had been hired to do the work.

  As neither Lawrence nor Holo had wanted to look at it before it was complete, they had no idea what the final product looked like at all.

  So the sign that would hang over the bathhouse’s front entrance would truly be revealed for the first time this day.

  “Mr. Lawrence! Miss Holo!”

  Moizi raised his voice first, his great frame and vigor undiminished by the years.

  Luward Myuri was a tad taller and his physique quite a bit sterner after six years, perhaps looking so radiant because of the backdrop, but to Lawrence’s eyes, he looked like he was at pains to drag a smile onto his face.

  “It’s been a while.”

  Luward spoke calmly and put out his hand.

  Lawrence gripped his hand, shaking it vigorously.

  And then, Luward knelt before Holo on one knee, suddenly coming to a halt.

  This was no doubt his display of the highest respect to Holo, comrade of Myuri, the symbol of their banner and the wolf of Yoitsu from whom he had inherited his name as captain of a mercenary company of people of Yoitsu.

  But Holo did not like this kind of thing.

  Luward, still halted on one knee, respectfully took Holo’s hand and put his lips to the back of it.

  “A fine male you have become.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  The Myuri family line had passed a message down for Holo’s sake.

  No doubt Holo was grateful beyond words; no doubt Luward, current head of the house, could not be more proud.

  “But you have become even more beautiful. Truly, among women, you are–”

  Right around there, Holo put her index finger to Luward’s lips.

  “…?”

  “Kufu.”

  Holo smiled and tilted her head slightly, her gaze shifting from Luward’s questioning look to the horse-drawn wagon behind him.

  “The luggage is over there?”

  “Ah yes. Hey!”

  With that, Luward completely regained his captain’s demeanor. No doubt the men who had followed Luward in his father’s stead no longer called him “Young One.”

  “I was more worried about this than any other cargo escort job we’ve ever had.”

  The scars on his face had increased, making his smile feel more striking.

  No doubt he would slip past death many times more as the years would pass, growing into a mercenary sharper and more forceful than even Moizi.

  “Should we put it up right now?”

  “No, we’ll do it once people come, right?”

  Holo’s words were directed toward Lawrence.

  “I think that’s best. They’ve come all this way.”

  “Understood. Moizi and I have it here, so go ahead and unveil it.”

  It was a large, round metallic sign that a single adult could just barely get his arms around.

  Some people simply had the name of their establishment for the design on their signs; others used symbols that carried some kind of drama or that simply stood out.

  Lawrence had put the name of his establishment on the sign.

  “It came out nicely?”

  As Lawrence asked, Luward carried it over together with Moizi with ease, making a leer as he spoke.

  “It made me tremble.”

  “Can we use that line as a testimonial?”

  Luward first made an easygoing laugh at Lawrence’s words. “How about ‘’Tis the finest bathhouse of the age, where even the hardy Myuri Mercenary Company feels at home’?”

  “Oh, everyone has arrived!”

  Lawrence suddenly grew tense at Moizi’s words.

  He could see a group coming from a grove of trees toward the top of the hill.

  Eve was first, followed by Norah and Elsa and more. There seemed to indeed be five people.

  In the end, he would still never understand Holo’s true intent.

  But beside him, Holo was in an exuberant mood; it seemed that Holo really had not brought this about because he had made her angry.

  If that was so, what in the world was this?

  No, best not to question, Lawrence decided.

  Either way, there was no more felicitous day than this.

  To Lawrence, there was only a single thing that he could think of that would be more so.

  “Ah, that’s right.” It was while she held Lawrence’s hand in the middle of heading to the entrance to the grounds to meet their guests.

  “Mm?”

  “There is something I forgot to ask.”

  “What?”

  Was there something she had forgotten to have prepared for the day’s feast?

  He thought it must be something like that.

  “Aye. The name.”

  “Hm?” Lawrence replied, then continued. “We decided on a name, didn’t we? Er, well, certainly if you want to change it, it can still be changed… But didn’t you like it? Spice and…”

  He would have continued, but Holo’s gaze alone brought Lawrence’s lips to a halt.

  It was not because she was angry. She was not sad, either. Nor was she beside herself. It was that even though her smiling face was so soft, it bore a look of seemingly unfathomable happiness, as if merely looking at him was enough to stir her heart very deeply.

  And so she spoke. “’Tis not that.”

  “That?”

  Lawrence spontaneously raised his head, looking all around the area.

  Holo giggled and smiled. “Honestly,” she said with a sigh. “So you really had not noticed? I was beginning to think you simply pretended not to…”

  Lawrence was utterly confused.

  What was Holo talking about?

  While this was going on, the party of guests reached the top of the hill.

  Unexpectedly, the first one up the hill was Weiz the money changer, but apparently Enek the dog had been chasing him; he had probably made a pass at Norah or something.

  But the sight of them did not really enter Lawrence’s head.

  Inside his head, he felt like something incredible was about to be born.

  Yes.

  So strongly, like something, something completely new, was about to be born, here and now!

  “It can’t be–” As Lawrence raised his voice in a near shout, he became too overwhelmed to say any more.

  He was in no condition to greet their guests; everyone around them paid attention to Lawrence’s odd state.

  Holo grinned. “To the very end, you never actually asked why I invited them to a banquet,” she said. She narrowed her eyes – because of the dazzling brightness, or perhaps to hold back tears. “Obviously I wish to brag!”

  And then, she lifted her chin and stood up on her toes, heedless of her surroundings.

  There was no way he could decide something like that with all these people watching…!

  He did not know if what reached his ears after were cries of acclaim or exasperated sighs.

  But as Lawrence embraced Holo, he could say with certainty that he was the happiest man in the world.

  Such was the memorable opening of a legendary bathhouse said to be a place of many smiles and much happiness…

  … Spice and Wolf.

  THE END

  Traveling Merchant and Gray Knight

&n
bsp; It was a strange thing, but without any particular reason for it, a house unlived in seemed to become decrepit with incredible force.

  The doors cracked, the floorboards swelled, the roof fell to pieces.

  Though the roof that had protected pitiable travelers from the rain had been robust while people lived here, it was now unreliable even before a light drizzle.

  Perhaps because the building had been built on a firm foundation of stone, the weight-bearing pillars at the building’s four corners still bore the vestiges of belonging to a house. Right now he seemed as if he pressed his body against them as he sheltered himself from the rain.

  As that was the state of affairs, he placed the cargo-laden horse-drawn wagon, and the horse pulling it, beside the supporting pillar on the other side, and the supporting pillar for the ridge beside it, respectively.

  As Lawrence sat with his back against the wall and lit a fire, he took a good look through the dilapidated roof at the heavy clouds on the other side.

  “What, the fire is not ready yet?”

  So spoke a small girl as she came over along the wall, splashing water off her robe all the while.

  Under the dirty stone building, she looked like a devout nun on a pilgrimage to see the remains of an ancient saint.

  However, as she went to Lawrence’s side, stripping off her robe and shaking about, he beheld something very odd. Namely, though her long chestnut hair had a noblesse-like beauty to it, enshrined upon her head were the ears of a beast, and below her slender hips, which seemed a trifle too thin for a teenage girl, hung a beast’s tail.

  Lawrence, who had traveled alone as a merchant for some seven years, now traveled with Holo, a centuries-old incarnation of a giant wolf sometimes known as a wisewolf.

  “Is that what you should say while you’re wringing water out of a robe right beside someone starting a fire?”

  The first step was to take grass stalks that had been pulverized and cleaned with water, then dried to make them come apart, and light them with sparks from repeatedly striking flints together. Next came using that to ignite straw, using that to make wood burn.

  The somewhat ominous look Holo made when she put her wrung-out robe back on was just as Lawrence finally got the fire transferred to the bundle of straw in his hand.

  “I believe ’tis easier to light that fire with the heat of your anger.”

  Sarcasm aside, it did not seem she was interested in a real argument with Lawrence.

  As her words fell on deaf ears, Holo put her hand over her head beside the fire.

  Lawrence began burning wood chips he had shaved with a dagger, feeding kindling into the fire bit by bit, resulting in a fine campfire shortly thereafter.

  “It really was just in the nick of time, though.”

  Lawrence picked out a branch from among his kindling, speaking as he pruned it with his dagger.

  “Aye, thanks to a foolish merchant being unable to say no, we piled up too much heavy freight and ran late. We almost ended up having to sleep under the rain.”

  Holo spoke while spreading out some oiled leather and sprawling herself over it.

  At the town they had visited several days earlier, he had been unable to say no when a traveling merchant he knew asked him to carry salt-pickled herring on his wagon. Thanks to the weight, the wagon had only been able to make gradual progress on the road, and rain began to fall midway.

  But there was no mistake that far more than that, she simply found the strong smell of pickled herring on the roof rack hard to stomach. Perhaps it was due to all the lazy napping, but Holo’s overly sensitive nose was not accustomed to any scent on the roof rack besides that of the hair of her own tail.

  “We are profiting from it, though, after a fashion.”

  With the sharp, shaved branches, he skewered from mouth to tail a number of pickled herring from the cargo, standing them around the fire.

  The contract with the shipper permitted them to eat up to ten fish.

  It had been a while since they had had fish, so if he had wanted to go all out, he could put onions, garlic. and butter with them; surround them with tree bark; bury them in soil; and build a fire on top. After a while, he could put the fire out and dig the food up, having nicely cooked a covered “pot” of sweet and salty fish.

  The reason he had not done so this night was that he could foresee that once Holo had tasted such cooking, she would never again be satisfied with fish that had been merely baked.

  Tasty things were poison for the eyes and poison for the tongue. But one could not crave something they knew nothing about.

  “Indeed. Aye, baked. ’Tis a rather tasty-seeming scent.”

  Holo smacked her lips as her tail wagged rapidly.

  As Lawrence made an amazed-looking smile, he tossed wood shavings right into the fire.

  “Since we’re not in the woods, I’m not worried about attracting anything and everything, but I am concerned about mice.”

  Even though he had only just begun cooking, Holo poked a fish with a finger and licked the salt off.

  If he said something like, “I thought it was dogs that liked the taste of salt,” no doubt every hair on her tail would stand up with her flying into a rage.

  “Well, I do not think that will be a problem. Not many people dwell in a place like this. For that matter…”

  With that, Holo merrily licked salt directly off a fish that had not yet been skewered before continuing her words.

  “… What is a building doing here, anyway?”

  Holo looked up at the crumbling ceiling as she spoke, like a child looking at something odd.

  It was not a particularly strange thought, nor could he call it ignorance of the ways of the world. The building suddenly jutted out of the earth amid an empty plain stretching as far as the eye could see. She must have thought it similar to a pimple suddenly popping up from silky, beautiful skin.

  Looking at the building, surely it did not take someone who had spent centuries in a village’s wheat field like Holo to think the same thing.

  Namely, that the building sheltering Lawrence and Holo from the rain had been built atop something that itself stood out.

  “To begin with, how did you know about this place? When you realized rain might fall, you came straight here, did you not?”

  Perhaps having licked enough salt to satisfy her for the time being, Holo took the piece of wood that Lawrence had been whittling right out of his hands as she spoke.

  Just as he wondered what in the world she was doing, she picked out the largest fish left among those that had not yet been impaled on sticks, squeezing its mouth shut.

  She was probably saying, “This one is mine.”

  “That’s because I’ve been here before. At the time I was lost and just stumbled upon it.”

  Holo murmured as she took that in, looking around the area.

  “I wonder, was it already this worn out back then?”

  “No. Buildings pile up damage when people don’t live in them. It’s right about three years since I came here.”

  As the conversation continued, Holo turned to the fish baking from the fire.

  She really could not calm down with food right in front of her.

  “Meaning, there was someone living here at the time?”

  “Yes. A rather eccentric man, too.” As Lawrence spoke, he chuckled as he remembered. But it was not simply a laugh, for a considerable sigh was mixed in as well.

  No doubt the dubious-looking face Holo made toward him was due to her noticing that sigh.

  Lawrence raised his face up and shook his head a little.

  “He built a stone fort in a place like this and lived in it, so of course he was eccentric.”

  “Indeed… Well, that might be the case, but…”

  … What was the cause of that sigh?

  As Holo spoke the unexpected words, she stared straight toward him.

  Lawrence did not notice where she was looking, for he was looking not at her, but squa
rely at the flames of the campfire.

  “It sounds like quite a story.”

  The voice Holo suddenly turned toward him seemed displeased on the surface, but there was a small air of sadness lurking behind her tone.

  “Not really, but…”

  It was not really something Lawrence wanted to talk to other people about.

  That seemed particularly so in Holo’s case.

  Even though it felt like Holo lived to expose that which was hidden, she seemed to read the atmosphere at that point.

  It looked like she might just quietly back off, but her ears drooped as she gave off a desolate look.

  And then she spoke while reaching out for a fish. “You really do not speak much about your past.”

  Surely it was not so much insisting on hearing the story than lodging a small complaint.

  Even so, Lawrence got weak in the knees when he saw Holo in that state.

  As Holo, perhaps unable to resist, bit into the fish, as if purposefully taking off the salt she had gotten on her cheek in the process, Lawrence tentatively prefaced his comments.

  “When tired on a journey, aren’t funny stories better?”

  “Salt never tastes better than when you are tired.”

  In no time at all, she had finished eating half the length of the fish and drank wine from a small keg with a sour look.

  Her behavior, like that of a spoiled little lady, was largely an act, but Lawrence knew she wanted to be indulged with a story.

  No choice, then, he thought with a sigh; he brought the dagger he was using to scrape branches over the fire.

  “This dagger’s taken good care of me here and there.”

  With that, he began.

  “You see the words engraved here?”

  It was a well-made dagger that he would not be ashamed to show any smith in any town whatsoever.

  It had protected Lawrence on numerous occasions and had served as a convenient tool on his various journeys.

  But it really felt like too martial a dagger for a traveling merchant to carry around with him.

  As Holo savored the taste of the fish in her mouth, she snuggled against Lawrence’s body under his arm, squarely peeking out at it like a cat.

  “Ahh, where weally is somewhing?”