“That’s right. You take the herring, and with it seek your next donation.”
“Wha—?” Col’s look of surprise was so profound it seemed it would never fade.
And why wouldn’t he be surprised?
How could someone who’s already received one fish use it to ask for another one?
But it could be done.
And easily.
“You take the herring. It’s better if you have a friend, and younger than you. You take him along and knock on a door. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ you say. ‘You live devoutly by the teachings of God. Look, sir—I have a single herring. But I cannot possibly eat it. Please look, sir—look at my companion. Today is his birthday. If you could spare us some kindness, and give me alms enough to make this herring into a pie for him to eat. Just enough for that, sir—please.’”
Solicitousness was the specialty of the merchant.
Lawrence made a good performance of it as Col gulped and watched.
“Listen to this speech. Who could refuse? The key is asking for just enough money for herring pie. Nobody is going to light their stove for you, but if it’s money, they’ll certainly spare some.”
“Ah, er, so you mean any amount—”
“Yes. You take one herring from house to house, and some of those people are going to tell you that one herring isn’t possibly enough, so you’ll get more. Then once you’ve made the rounds through town, whoosh.”
Col looked so dazed that one could have hung a sign that said DAZED on him and collected coins for the performance.
He seemed to be tasting the shock of having his entire world turned upside down.
There were amazing people in the world who could imagine truly inconceivable things.
“I won’t go so far as to say, ‘Hunger knows no law,’ but depending on how you think about it, there’s no harm in giving alms to a poor wandering scholar, and giving even a small amount of money makes the giver feel good about themselves, so nobody loses. If you have extra money or food, you can even give some to your accomplice. So what do you think? Did you learn anything?”
What made Holo’s sleeping face so attractive was that her normally guarded wisewolf mien was innocent, guileless.
However, that was usually irrelevant.
Col’s face was so naive in the face of the shock that, while he wasn’t as fetching as Holo, he definitely did have his own charm.
“Ignorance is a sin.” Lawrence patted the back of Col’s head, at which Col sighed and nodded.
“I’ve heard the saying ‘Know thyself.’”
“Well, that’s true, but the important thing is—,” began Lawrence but then looked behind him at the sound of hooves.
Perhaps there had been men on horses riding on the boat that had been held up at the checkpoint.
They were approaching at high speed—but whether they were horses or simply giant loads of fur, it was difficult to tell.
One horse. Two. Then three.
Seven in total.
How many men among them would be able to realize the profits they’d been anticipating?
Even if they knew something, it would be difficult to turn that into profit.
The important thing was—
“The important thing is to think of something nobody else is thinking of. ‘Ignorance is a sin’ is not about knowledge—it’s about wisdom.”
Col opened his eyes and gritted his teeth.
The hand that held the strap of the bag over his shoulder trembled a bit.
He looked up. “Thank you very much, master.”
Truly, only the gods profit in the end.
It was quite pleasant traveling with Col.
The boy kept silent, though, on the matter of what Holo had said to him earlier.
He was clad in Holo’s hooded cloak.
Holo had long since left her scent on the boy.
It would be difficult to reverse that.
“Hey, I can see it up ahead!”
“Hmm? …Oh, indeed. Looks like it’s turned into quite a mess.”
On the gently downward-sloping plain, the view ahead was free from obstacles.
There was still a good distance to walk, but nonetheless the main details were apparent.
True to Ragusa’s words, a large ship was diagonally blocking the river, and behind it was a tangle of vessels caught in the obstruction.
The boat that was stopped near the riverbank might have been Ragusa’s.
There were many men on horseback as well, the majority of whom were surely the messengers of noblemen, bearing urgent news.
Many other people milled around, but it was difficult to tell what they were doing.
“It seems kind of like a festival,” said Col, dazed, and Lawrence gave the boy’s profile a casual glance.
Maybe it was because the boy was looking far off into the distance, but somehow he seemed lonely, as though he were longing for his homeland.
Lawrence, too, had left his tiny home village and its stifling gray air but still sometimes thought fondly of it.
The boy’s eyes seemed moist, but the sun was fairly low in the sky, so it might simply have been from the color-tinged light that reflected in them.
“Where were you born?” Lawrence asked without thinking.
“Huh?”
“If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine, too.” Even Lawrence, when asked where he was from, would put on airs and name the town closest to the hamlet where he was born.
Of course, half of the reason he did so was because nobody would recognize the name of his village anyway.
“U-um, it’s a place called Pinu,” said Col nervously; Lawrence had indeed never heard of it.
“Sorry, I don’t know it. Where is it? The east?”
From Col’s accent, Lawrence guessed he might also be from the deep southeast.
It was a country of hot seas and limestone.
Of course, Lawrence had only heard stories of it.
“No, the north. Actually, it’s not so very far from here…”
“Oh?”
If he was from the north and wanted to study Church law, he might have been related to immigrants from the south.
There were many who had abandoned their households to seek new lands in the north.
But most of those had been unable to accustom themselves to the new place, and things had been difficult.
“Are you familiar with the Roef River that flows into the Roam?”
Lawrence nodded.
“It’s toward the headwaters there—up in the mountains. Winters are cold, I suppose. But when the snow falls, it’s very pretty.”
Lawrence was a bit surprised.
He remembered the story about Holo that was in the book he’d borrowed from Rigolo. It said that she’d come out of the mountains of Roef.
But when it came to people wandering about this region, ones from the south were surely rare.
The Roef River was quite long—the population of its basin was certainly the greater figure.
“If you’re moving slowly, it’s two weeks from here. If things really don’t work out, I was thinking I might go back home,” said Col, embarrassed. Lawrence, of course, did not smile.
It required an unbelievable amount of determination to leave one’s village.
Whether one shook off the village’s control and left or enjoyed its ardent support, one couldn’t very well just waltz back in without having achieved the goal.
Yet wanting to return home was an emotion that everyone felt at one point or another.
“So did you immigrate to Pinu, then?”
“Immigrate?”
“What I mean is, did you migrate there from the south?”
Col gaped for a moment, then shook his head. “N-no, but there’s story that the village’s original location sank into the bottom of a lake created in a landslide.”
“Oh no, I just mean that not many people from the northlands study Church law.”
Col’s eyes
twinkled at the words, and he smiled with a touch of self-consciousness. “My master—er, I mean, Professor Rient—used to say such things, as well. ‘If only more people from the pagan lands would open their eyes to the Church’s teachings,’ he would say.”
Lawrence wondered why Col’s bashful smile seemed so self-conscious.
“No doubt. Did any missionaries come to your town?”
If they had been moderate missionaries, it would be by God’s grace. Most fought with sword in hand, engaging in plunder and murder under the auspices of “reform.”
But if that had been the case, Col would have learned to loathe the Church and would never have thought to study Church law.
“No missionaries came to Pinu,” he said, and again his gaze was fixed in the distance.
His profile was somehow terribly unsuited to his true age.
“They came to a village two mountains away—a place smaller than Pinu, with many hunters skilled in trapping owl and fox. One day men came there from out of the south and built a church.”
It seemed unlikely that Col would then explain that the villagers had thankfully listened to the missionaries’ sermons and opened their eyes to God.
The reason was obvious.
“But,” said Lawrence, “each village had its own god; those who rebelled against the Church were—”
Surprised, Col looked at Lawrence.
That was more than enough.
“I guess you’d have to say I’m an enemy of the Church now. Can you explain what happened?” asked Lawrence.
Still stunned, Col seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but unable to form the words, he closed his mouth.
He looked down, casting his gaze this way and that, before looking back up at Lawrence.
“Truly?”
It was obvious Col was unused to doubting other people.
If he stayed this softhearted, much suffering awaited him.
And yet for all that, it was part of the boy’s charm.
“Yes, in God’s name I swear.”
Col’s wincing face was so charming that Lawrence couldn’t help patting the boy’s head.
“…The headmen of all the villages in our region hadn’t assembled in 220 years, I heard,” began Col. “They met for many days, discussing whether to bow to the Church or to fight back. As I remember it, the mood wasn’t one of agreeing to hold a discussion with the Church, I don’t think. The news that reached us across the mountains every day was only about who had been executed. But eventually winter came, and the leader of the Church fell ill, and we were saved when he left the mountain, muttering that he didn’t want to die in a pagan land like this. Of course, if it had come to a fight, we knew the mountains and there were more of us, so we would have won.”
If that had been the real intent, they would have done so when the Church started taking violent action.
The reason they hadn’t was because they all understood what would happen if reinforcements arrived.
It wasn’t as though no information ever entered the mountain villages from the outside world.
“But after the Church leader became ill and had to simply withdraw, I began thinking.”
As soon as he said it, Lawrence understood.
Col was a bright lad.
Instead of thinking about his personal beliefs, he chose to take the most logical path to defend his village.
He realized the absurd power that came with wearing the robes of a high-ranking priest, the power to begin and end the exchange of human lives at will.
He would study Church law and eat into its power structures.
That was how Col intended to protect his village.
“And no one opposed your decision?”
Even Holo would become emotional, talking of her homeland.
Col wiped his tears with the edge of his hood, clasped in balled-up hands. “The headman…and the elder woman…supported me.”
“I see. They must have believed that you could do it.”
Col nodded, then stopped to wipe his tears on his shoulder before walking again. “They secretly lent me some money, too…so I have to find a way to get back in school.”
His greatest motivation was perhaps the need for money.
He who fought for the sake of something else was always stronger than he who fought for himself.
Lawrence was not, however, so prosperous that he could afford to become Col’s patron.
But he might be able to give the boy some small aid.
By teaching him how to make a bit of money and how to avoid traps, Lawrence might be able to bring a bit of color to the boy’s journey.
“I can’t really help you out with your money problems right now, but…”
Col sniffled. “Oh! N-no, that’s not—”
“But about that copper coin. If you can find enough of an answer to convince Ragusa, then there might be a reward in it for you.”
The reason Lawrence didn’t stipulate the answer was because there was no way of knowing what that was without asking the Jean Company. But while that was impossible, they might infer enough of the truth to convince Ragusa.
There’d be no sin in expecting a reward for such a thing.
One had to reward anyone who helped pluck a thorn from his finger.
“Of course, the most helpful effect it will have is taking away the nervousness of the journey,” said Lawrence with a smile, lightly patting Col’s head.
While by Holo’s standards, Lawrence was always being too serious, compared to this boy, he was practically mellow.
“Still, just a moment ago you said it looked like a festival—did you mean it looked like Pinu’s festivals? Are they like that?” asked Lawrence, pointing at the grounded vessel now that the details of the scene had come into view.
A small mountain of wreckage from the ships had been collected on the riverbank, and beside it, several men were lighting fires and drying their clothes.
But that was certainly not the main event—the main event was the rope that extended from underneath the grounded vessel and the men on the shore that were pulling on it.
They were a mix of ages and appearances, with their only commonality being that their journey downriver had been interrupted by this calamity.
A few of the greediest were shouldering their cargoes and heading downriver, but most set them aside and put their backs into pulling on the rope.
Even a long-mantled knight on horseback was joining in the effort, so spirits were high. A few men were on the ship’s deck with poles, keeping it from tipping over or being washed away—they raised their voices in chorus along with the rest.
Col watched the scene, entranced, then at length looked back at Lawrence. “This is more fun than that!”
Lawrence held back the words that came upon seeing Col’s expression.
It was hard to imagine a more suitable apprentice should he choose to take one—and not just because Holo had said so.
Once Lawrence’s journey with Holo came to an end, the cold, hard, lonely road of the traveling merchant still awaited him. And even if Col was no substitute for Holo, the lad could certainly sit in the driver’s box beside Lawrence.
But Col had his own goals and did not exist only for Lawrence’s convenience.
Which was why Lawrence forced himself not to ask, “Will you be my apprentice?” (though it took considerable effort).
Lawrence grumbled quietly to the gods that Col’s goal was not becoming a merchant.
“I suppose we’d best help them out, then. Pulling on that rope will warm us against the chill.”
“Yes, sir!”
Just as Lawrence and Col began to walk, Ragusa waved his pole with a smile and raised his voice, his boat slipping lightly down the river.
There was a huge difference between watching from afar and actually pulling on the rope.
The peaty ground sloshed around when stepped on, and without gloves, the rope and the cold air mercilessly wore away at the skin of the
hands.
On top of that, because the rope was attached to a section of the ship that was below the waterline, the people pulling would heave back against the unyielding resistance, only to have it give way in sudden spurts.
Whereupon everyone would naturally fall over, and soon they were all covered in mud.
Lawrence and the other merchants and travelers started out enthusiastically, but as soon as the hardship became apparent, they began to visibly lose their vigor.
No matter how hard they pulled, the only things that surfaced were fragments of the ruined ship, so morale—like the vessel—was low.
And the boatmen, who had stripped naked in the freezing weather to dive underwater and attach the rope to the ship, were blue-lipped and white-faced with the cold.
After lighting a fire, a traveling actress and a seamstress—encouraged by Holo and Ragusa—jumped into the river, but the water was so cold that no amount of willpower could overcome it. When they dragged themselves back onto the bank, they looked terrible.
Finally, unable to watch any further, an older boatman called out. Perhaps boatmen were too stubborn themselves to admit that it was impossible. His distorted face was painful to see.
A wave of surrender was emanating from Lawrence and the rest. Merchants were quick to pull out of a game once they saw there was no profit in it.
The boatmen, who lived their lives on the river, seemed to have every intention of using sheer willpower to raise the ship, but as one and then another let go of the rope and doubled over in exhaustion, they seemed to understand that it was impossible. They held a conference around a middle-aged member of their profession and soon came to a decision.
Both Lenos and Kerube were distant, and the sun would soon be setting.
If the boatmen made their passengers wait any longer, they would unavoidably leave a bad impression.
Without further ado, the rope hauling was ended.
Lawrence did not neglect his own fitness, but he rarely had the need to do such labor. His body felt leaden, and the palms of his hands burned as though scorched. His swollen left cheek was cold enough that it no longer felt painful.
“Are you all right?” Lawrence asked.
Col had quickly pulled away from the tug-of-war. Perhaps because of the festive atmosphere around him, he’d done his best, carried away by the mood and putting all his strength into the task.