Page 4 of Spice & Wolf IV

  “We’ll be fine if we go to the tavern. It’s not as though this town sees no travelers at all.”

  “Hm. Let us hurry, then.”

  “I’ve only just woken—oh, fine. Fine!” Lawrence shrugged at the glare he caught from Holo, then noticed something as he got to his feet. “What’s that?”

  A single, shadowy figure moved across the dim, deserted town square.

  As he narrowed his eyes, Lawrence realized it was Evan the miller.

  “Oh?”

  “—!” Lawrence very nearly cried out in surprise as Holo appeared at his feet. “Don’t just appear like that!”

  “My, but you are a skittish one. Never mind that—what did you see?”

  Anyone would be frightened if someone appeared before them without so much as the slightest hint of rustling clothing, but Law­rence was not up to quarreling over every one of Holo’s japes. “Noth­ing important,” he said. “I just wondered where he was heading.”

  “Seems he’s bound for the church.”

  Millers had to be more honest than any other profession.

  Back in Ruvinheigen, Norah the shepherdess was probably attending Church services just as assiduously as ever, even though that same Church imposed difficult constraints upon her work.

  Evan might go to services just as often.

  “Quite suspicious,” said Holo.

  “We’re the suspicious ones.”

  As Lawrence and Holo bantered, Evan knocked lightly on the church’s door. His knocking had a strange rhythm to it, as though it were a secret sign to communicate his identity.

  There was a furtive quality to his movements, which only seemed strange until Lawrence recalled Evan’s vocation.

  And it did not seem that the Church was well regarded in this village, either.

  Lawrence turned away from the window with a sigh of faint disappointment when Holo tugged at his sleeve.

  “What?”

  In response to his question, Holo merely pointed her finger out the window.

  Assuming she was pointing at the church, Lawrence looked back out the window at the building.

  He was surprised by what he saw there.

  “Oh ho, so that’s how it is,” murmured an amused Holo as her tail swished as though sweeping the floor.

  Lawrence was mesmerized for a moment by what he saw, but he soon returned to himself and closed the window.

  Holo immediately looked up at him, annoyed.

  “Only the gods may spy on others’ lives,” he said.

  “...Hmph.” Holo said nothing further, only glancing in dis­pleasure at the now-closed window.

  When Evan had knocked at the church door, it had of course been Elsa who answered.

  As soon as she emerged, Evan had gathered her up in a tight embrace, as though she was something very precious.

  Given Elsa’s manner as she leaned in to Evan, it was hard to dismiss the embrace as a mere greeting between friends.

  “Are you not interested, then?” Holo asked.

  “Perhaps if they were secretly talking of business, I would be.”

  “They may well be. My keen wolf ears could listen in—what say you?”

  Holo narrowed her eyes and grinned a lopsided grin that showed a single fang.

  “To think you’d be interested in such nonsense,” said Lawrence with a long-suffering sigh.

  Holo narrowed her eyes even further. “What’s wrong with being interested?” she growled.

  “Well, it’s certainly nothing to be complimented on.”

  Pressing one’s ears against the wall for hours at a time to over­hear someone’s business secrets was no vice—indeed, it was the paragon of mercantile cunning. But eavesdropping on lovers—it was the height of boorishness.

  “Hmph. ’Tis not as though I am motivated by vulgar curiosity,” asserted Holo, folding her arms. She cocked her head and closed her eyes, as though trying to remember something.

  Lawrence was genuinely interested to hear what besides curi­osity could possibly be her motivation.

  She stood that way for a while, and then she finally spoke. “If I absolutely must give a reason, I suppose it would be to study.”

  “Study?” It was such an ordinary response that Lawrence couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

  What would Holo possibly need to study?

  Did she have designs to swindle the monarch of some kingdom?

  He briefly considered demanding tax exceptions from this hypothetical king should her plan succeed before shaking his head to clear it of the ridiculous notion. He reached for the water jug to have a drink, and Holo continued.

  “Indeed, study. To see how you and I must look to other people.”

  Lawrence’s fingers bumped clumsily into the jug, tipping it over. He tried to recover it and failed.

  “Listen, you. Would you not agree that one needs an outside perspective in order to truly understand a situation? Are you lis­tening to me?”

  Lawrence knew Holo was chuckling under her breath, and even without turning around, he could guess the expression that she wore.

  Fortunately, there had not been much water in the jug, so it was hardly a disaster—though the teasing he now endured was disas­ter enough.

  “So that is how I look to others when I’m with you...,” said Holo, mulling it over, her voice serious.

  Lawrence shut his ears in an effort to stop himself from react­ing further and began to wipe up the water he had spilled.

  He didn’t know what he should be angry about.

  He didn’t even know why he was so irritated.

  Perhaps it was the fact that he had been so obviously flustered.

  Holo giggled. “Well, at least I know we’re certainly a match for them.”

  Lawrence couldn’t guess what sort of trap he might fall into if he was to respond to this.

  He put the jug in its place after finishing what little was left with a gulp.

  He wished the water had been strong wine.

  “Now then,” Holo said shortly.

  Lawrence knew that if he ignored her, it would only bring down her ire.

  If it came to a fight, he would certainly lose.

  He sighed and turned to Holo, defeated.

  “I’m hungry,” she said with a smile.

  She was always a step—or two—ahead of him.

  Chapter 2

  “Hah, that’s the way to drink!”

  Surrounded by a happy tumult in the tavern, Holo—dressed now in her town-girl clothing—set her large rustic mug down on the table.

  A saintly beard of white foam rimmed her lips, and she kept her hand on the mug’s handle as if to say, “Another round!”

  One after another, the amused patrons of the bar added to Holo’s mug from the contents of their own, and soon hers was fil led again.

  Though no one knew who the two mysterious travelers arriv­ing in their town so suddenly were, the pair were generous in treating the tavern’s patrons to liquor and drank full well themselves—their conduct would be well received in any village.

  One of the pair was a beautiful lass to boot. They could hardly fail to impress.

  “Come now! You can’t call yourself a man if you’d lose to your pretty companion!”

  Holo’s hearty drinking ensured that Lawrence would be urged to drink as well, but unlike Holo, he had come for information.

  He could not afford to let himself be jollied into drinking him­self into a stupor.

  He drank just enough not to spoil the festive mood, eating the food that was brought out and gradually making small talk with the villagers.

  “Ah, this is fine ale indeed. Is there some secret to its brewing?”

  “Ha-ha-ha, right there is! It’s Iima Ranel, the mistress of this tavern. She’s famous around here—her arms are as strong as three men, and she has the appetite of five!”

  “Don’t tell the travelers such lies! Aye, here you are, fried garlic mutton.”

  The woman in quest
ion, Iima, lightly knocked the edge of a wooden plate against the man’s head, then efficiently laid the food out on the table.

  With her curly red hair tied back and her sleeves rolled up to expose her powerful-looking arms, a glance at Iima’s robust build made it easy to understand why some said she had the strength of three men.

  The man’s reply, though, did nothing to answer Lawrence’s question. “Ouch, damn you! And here I was about to sing your praises!”

  “So what you said just now wasn’t praise? You got what you deserved, then!”

  Everyone at the table laughed. A different man continued the topic at hand. “The mistress here used to travel with a brewing jug over her shoulder!”

  “Ha-ha, surely not,” said Lawrence.

  “Ha! No one believes the tale when they first hear it. But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  Iima, who was by now serving the drunken patrons of another table, turned around at the question. “It surely is,” she answered. Once she finished serving the other table, she returned to the one at which Lawrence sat. “I was younger and prettier then. I was born west of here in a town along the coast. But it’s the fate of such towns to be swept away by the sea, and one day a huge ship pulled into port, and soon the town was swallowed into the waves.” Lawrence soon realized that she was talking about pirates. “Then I got mixed up with the crowd as it rushed away, and at some point, I noticed I was carrying a brewing jug and a sack of barley,” recalled Iima, her face wistful as she looked off into the distance. She wore a little smile, but it must have been hard at the time.

  A man at Lawrence’s table thrust out a mug. “Here, one for you, too, Iima.”

  “Ah, my thanks. Anyway, a girl on her own wouldn’t have a prayer of finding work in some strange town, and there’d been rumors of pirates striking towns three mountains away. So I just used the river water there along with my brewing jug and barley, and I started brewing ale. And who would be the ones to drink that brew but a passing duke and his men come from afar to check on the resistance against the pirates.” Iima was interrupted by applause. She took the opportunity to finish her ale in a single, great gulp.

  “Ah, in truth, I’ve never been so embarrassed as I was that day! And to have the duke discover that this young girl with the tan­gled hair and dirty face had been brewing ale in the forest—why, when I asked him about it later, he told me he’d thought I was a dryad! I suppose he had an eye for such things.”

  Again applause rose, this time from elsewhere. Lawrence looked and it appeared that Holo had won another drinking contest.

  “But then, wouldn’t you know it—the duke said my ale was delicious! He said that as the town they were heading to had been sacked by pirates, he and his men would be unable to get decent drink there, so he asked me to travel with his company and brew for them!

  “Indeed, the ambitious young maiden, Iima Ranel, thought things were finally going her way.

  “But alas! The duke already had a beautiful consort!

  “Ah, ’tis well, I thought—my beauty would be wasted on such a homely nobleman, anyway. Though I had hoped for a black marten fur coat.”

  “So you became his personal brewer, then?” asked Lawrence—but no sooner had he asked the question than he realized that couldn’t possibly have been the case.

  If she’d been the personal brewer to a nobleman, she would hardly deign to run a tavern in the village of Tereo.

  “Ha-ha, no, that would be impossible. At the time, I did not know the ways of the world, so it was surely my dream—but no. But as thanks for traveling with the duke and his men, I was able to dine in his absurdly large mansion, and I was given special permission to sell ale under the duke’s name, and that was boon enough.

  “So that’s where the story of the rare ale-selling maiden begins—call it ‘The Brewer Maid’s Tale.’” Iima pounded the table once with her fist, giving everyone sit­ting around it a start.

  “So that is how I came to wander the land, brewing and selling, selling and brewing—many things happened, but for the most part, the road was easy. But then I made a single mistake—”

  “Aye, Iima visited Tereo, and tragedy followed!” someone called out with perfect dramatic timing.

  It seemed to Lawrence that Iima’s tale was probably told to every traveler that passed through the village.

  “I never drank the ale I brewed, you see,” continued Iima, “for I wanted to sell every drop. I’d never had a proper taste myself, but when I came to this village, I tried it for the first time, fell in love with it, and in my drunken state, stumbled right into the arms of my honorable husband!”

  Lawrence laughed as he imagined the rueful grin that had to be on said husband’s face at this moment as he toiled in the tavern’s kitchen. As for the rest of the audience, they feigned tears.

  “And so I became the tavern keeper’s wife. But this village is a good one—do take your time and enjoy yourselves,” finished Iima with a pleasant grin, then left the table.

  Lawrence watched her go, a guileless smile on his face.

  “Ah, but this is a fine tavern. I doubt you’ll find its equal even in Endima,” he said.

  Endima, capital of the kingdom of Ploania, was the largest city in the northern region of the kingdom—larger even than the Church city of Ruvinheigen.

  Saying something couldn’t be found even in Endima was a common way to extol the virtues of the smaller towns and vil­lages of Ploania.

  “Aye, right you are! You may be but a traveling peddler, friend, but you’ve got an eye for quality.”

  Everyone liked to hear his or her hometown praised.

  The men around the table all grinned and drank from their mugs in unison.

  Now’s my chance, Lawrence thought.

  “Indeed!” he said. “And the ale’s fine, too. Truly this village must enjoy God’s blessings,” he continued, casually slipping the statement into the flow of conversation.

  Yet his words hung there like a drop of oil in water.

  “Ah, excuse my rudeness,” he added.

  He’d heard countless tales of other merchants who had mis­spoken while drinking wine in some pagan town.

  Lawrence himself had made such mistakes—and the reaction he now saw was no different from his previous experiences.

  “Ah, no—it’s no fault of yours, traveler,” said one of the men, as if to ease the suddenly tense atmosphere. “There is a big church here, after all.” The others nodded.

  “Ours is a remote village,” another added, “so things are a bit more complicated here. And ’tis true that we owe a great deal to the late Father Franz. But still...”

  “Aye, but still! Come what may, we mustn’t disobey Lord Truyeo.”

  “Lord Truyeo?”

  “Ah, Lord Truyeo is the guardian spirit of this village. He brings us good harvests, helps our children grow up strong and healthy, and keeps evil spirits away. He’s where the name Tereo comes from.”

  “Ah, I see,” Lawrence murmured to himself. This no doubt explained the great snake in the room at Sem’s house.

  He gave vague agreements and looked at Holo, who despite the great clamor that her drinking had been the center of a moment ago, looked back at him.

  The spirit right before his eyes was not one to take lightly, either.

  “A spirit of good harvest, eh? As a traveling merchant, I’ve heard such things. Is this Lord Truyeo a wolf spirit?”

  “A wolf? Ridiculous! As though such a devil’s spirit would guard a village!”

  It was quite a rebuke. Lawrence mused that he might be able to use this to tease Holo later.

  “Ah, so he is—”

  “A snake, merchant! Lord Truyeo is a snake!”

  If one was careless, both poison fangs and wagon bed stow-aways could be equally troublesome, so Lawrence didn’t see much difference between snakes and wolves. But snake spirits were quite common here in the northlands.

  However, the Church held the snake as its sworn enemy. I
t was written in the scriptures that it was a snake that had caused man’s fall.

  “I’ve heard legends of snake spirits,” said Lawrence. “One once descended from the mountains to the sea, and the path left behind it became a great river.”

  “Oh, come now, you can’t put Lord Truyeo beside such things! They say he’s so long that the weather at his head is different from what’s at his tail and that he devours the moon for breakfast and the sun for dinner.”

  “Aye, that’s right!” came a cacophony of voices.

  “And besides, Lord Truyeo is nothing like those old fairy tales. After all, there’s a cave he dug to hibernate in not far outside of the village.”

  “A hole?”

  “Aye. One finds caverns everywhere, but this is one cave that bats and wolves dare not approach. There’s a story of a traveler that once went inside to prove his courage—he never returned. There’s a curse on anyone who enters—it has long been so. Even Father Franz told us never to enter. If you’d like to see it, it’s naught but a short walk from here.”

  Lawrence feigned horror as he shook his head, but he now real­ized why the town’s church went unused.

  As a matter of fact, it was something of a miracle that the church hadn’t been razed to the ground.

  But after Lawrence thought it over for a moment, he realized the reason why the church was still standing.

  The town of Enberch was not so very far away.

  “You passed through Enberch ere arriving here, did you not?” Just as Lawrence wondered how to broach the topic, a villager did it for him.

  “You saw the giant church there, then. A man named Bishop

  Van is in charge there, and every generation of bishop there has been a maddening presence,” continued the villager.

  “Enberch was once much smaller than Tereo, the story goes,” said another. “They, too, were looked over by Lord Truyeo until one day missionaries from the Church came, and the whole vil­lage rolled over and converted without so much as a second thought. A cathedral went up in a flash, more people came, a road was laid, and soon it was a grand town. Then they started making demands of Tereo...”

  “Aye,” continued a third. “And of course, they wanted us to convert as well. But thanks to the efforts of the people here two generations ago, they managed to hold off conversion by letting a church be built. But there’s no comparison between their grand town and our little village. They let us continue our devotion to Truyeo, but in exchange we pay heavy taxes. Ask any of our grandfathers; they’ll complain about it all day.”