With the knight's party gone their strength had dropped sharply, but even so the band of travelers carried on with the journey. A band of travelers is, after all, a thing with not one ounce of cohesion, held together by nothing but a shared direction.
And just when you thought 'about here is where they would come out,' the bandit pack appeared.
"Halt."
The routes travelers move along are well known, and this was already a 'road that is not a road.' The unpoliced stretches, far from any city or village, are well known too. Some travelers even prepare a toll in advance, hand over a suitable amount and pass through.
"Nobody move!"
It was all so natural, as though it had always been this way, that there was not even any tension to it.
'Tsss. Careless of me.'
A man cannot hold tension for twenty-four hours. That is why, on a battlefield, tension is maintained by the method called 'rotation.' Hans let the strength go out of his body.
'It isn't as though I'm these people's guard. Nothing to be done.'
He shrugged and did as the others did, adapting himself to the world.
The people did as they were told. Twenty-six of them stopped moving. A few who had been on the road with him a long while looked at Hans with expectation in their faces.
But he pretended not to see. It was dangerous and it was a nuisance. If anyone else took the lead he was willing to lend a hand. But there was no reason to stake his life every time for people who had no will to save themselves.
'It isn't as if I have some duty to save the world.'
The boy looked at him as though he had guessed what was inside him.
"Exactly half! We'll take half. Hand over half of what you have."
They were generous, in their way. The calculation seemed to be to avoid anyone dying on their account. A man robbed of half his money will not die. He will work himself half to death again and make it up.
A dozen or so bandits lined the people up and stripped them of their valuables.
Hans spoke to the one holding out a hand in front of him.
"I'm a discharged soldier. One cart, so let's settle at one silver."
He tried invoking the caravan toll custom he had picked up somewhere.
The bandit collecting looked over at his boss with confusion on his face.
"Eh? Um, Boss! What do we do?"
The big man came tramping over and stood in front of Hans.
"A discharged soldier? What's that? Something you eat? Did you think we'd go 'oh my, is that so' and be grateful? Eh?"
The big man, whose face was itself a threat, pushed his teeth toward Hans and menaced him.
"So negotiations have broken down? Then there's nothing for it."
Hans shrugged and bent down as though drawing out money. Then he snapped his waist back hard and drove his head into the boss's face.
—CRACK.
"Uk."
He spun the staggering boss by the back of the neck and leveled a dagger under his jaw. The blade went a little way into his throat, and blood ran down in drops. The boy quickly drew the longsword from the boss's belt and held the bandits off.
Fear colored the boss's eyes. A life on the road is the same thing whether you are a powerless traveler or a bandit. He let out a groan at the fear of death and the pain of the cut.
"Uuugh......."
Hans spoke in a low voice, but at a volume the bandits could hear perfectly well.
"I'm not even asking for thanks. Only that you not dismiss me like that."
"Ungh. S-spare me."
Hans menaced him and drew the dagger a little way across his neck. It was only a scratch, but the cruelty of the act came to him with tremendous naturalness. People were beginning to get confused about which of them was the bad one.
"And why should I? Give me a reason I should."
"I'll pay a ransom."
"......!"
Hans's face became that of a man who had been struck. The boy, holding the bandits in check with the boss's longsword, turned to look at him. Their expressions began a wordless conversation.
'That's good, isn't it?'
'Not bad, is it?'
'Collect it.'
—Nod, nod.
A dozen or so bandits lined up in good order. And in turn they paid their boss's ransom into the felt hat the boy held out. The hat soon grew fat.
—Chink.
The boy set the money on the cart and bound the boss's hands.
"The ransom's paid. Let me go."
"Do I look like a fool? I'll release you once I've put two days between us and your pack."
The boss's manner changed all at once.
"I don't believe you. What guarantee is there you won't hand me to the watch?"
When the boss twisted and struggled, Hans rummaged about and drew his dagger.
"If you can't believe it either way, then just die now."
"I believe you."
The boss stopped struggling, and both his eyes were full of trust.
As promised, two days later they let him go. Having released him, they sent the band of travelers ahead and then, conspicuously, camped a whole day.
The bandit pack rejoined their boss at a distance and prowled around for a while, then vanished. However hungry a wolf pack may be, it cannot hunt a lion. That was the providence of nature.
"How much did we take?"
"Ninety-seven silver and two hundred and eighty-seven coins. So roughly one gold."
Hans stroked his jaw and smacked his lips.
"When money's tight, robbing bandits might not be a bad line."
"When money's tight, and a bandit who happens to look easy catches your eye."
At the boy's words, delivered as though he found the whole idea pathetic, Hans shut his mouth.
As time passed the boy grew healthier still, until his round cheeks gave off an air of good breeding. The dead look in his eyes came back to life and his face brightened, and he looked like a lively boy of sixteen.
Hans had brightened a good deal as well and made jokes readily now, as though some room had opened up in him, but his bed was still not an easy place.
Perhaps because of his outburst in front of Gerald not long before, the nights of nightmares came on again.
Beginning with the memory of arriving at the front as a boy soldier, shaking with cold and fear, everything connected with the battlefield was a nightmare to him. Soldiers dying day after day, veteran and newcomer alike; dying instantly in horrific shapes, or clinging to life so stubbornly that they suffered all night before dying. In the end they all died. The god of death was more equal than any other god.
The sense of original sin at having survived that hell on earth alone endlessly generated monsters in his dreams and gnawed at him.
"Commoner or noble, blood is the same red. Spill enough of it and you die. What is this about noble blood?"
The dying hundred-commander's words were vivid in his head.
The season had turned fully to autumn. Near the capital the roads were well kept, and it was a peaceful journey in which they met a patrol now and then.
With the sun blazing, the cloudburst was that much more out of nowhere.
The two of them could find nowhere to shelter and had no choice but to take the whole of it, for no short time.
"It's been a while since rain this refresh— eh, heh, hatchoo!"
On a battlefield a cloudburst was a welcome thing that cooled a hot body, but a cloudburst on the road home was not. From that night Hans began to run a fever.
"Oh, no. Me, with a cold and the aches. What is this."
The fact that the young boy was perfectly fine while he himself had caught cold left him dispirited.
Deflated, he found a village and laid himself down at an inn. The boy went asking after a priest of the Necro Order nearby.
Having examined the symptoms, the priest spoke in a somewhat deflating tone.
"It's only a cold. You're young; rest a little and you'll be fine."
He hurt enough to bring tears, but the priest wrote out his prescription with a look that said it was nothing much, said he was busy, and vanished.
"Eh, busy, busy."
He thought he also caught the man muttering, under his breath, 'A grown man, over nothing at all.'
He asked the inn's server to see to the priest's prescription and drank down the decoction of herbs. The boy changed the wet cloth on his forehead with his usual face, as though it were nothing at all.
"Nngh. It seems things really do come about as you say them. Cough, cough."
Hans laughed, remembering what he had said to the boy the day the mercenary tormented him. The boy did not laugh. In the way he laid a hand on the forehead to gauge the fever and changed the cloth on time, a little worry seemed to show through.
All through his sickbed Hans was plagued by nightmares. When he woke from one he would sometimes write down what he remembered. He let himself hope that the fragments of dream would gather into a single story.
The boy went about looking at the kingdom's culture.
In ancient times, it is said, the two kingdoms were one. When a great famine robbed the kingdom's administration of its power, the king's half-brother went south, restored the administration and took power, and so they became the two countries of today. The boy recalled what he had learned from books and nodded.
Having been through the war's horrors in his own body, he experienced and took in the cultural inheritance of both countries for himself.
'Men who will never go to war dreamed of their own appetites in the safe rear and drove soldiers to the front.'
In the past they had been one country. They were family briefly parted, neighbors and kin. And even so, the soldiers drove blades into one another's hearts, and with hatred piled upon hatred cut open the bellies of living prisoners.
Only after grasping that grim reality was the boy able to turn the direction of the anger he had aimed at himself.
'Only those with strength can wield power and make the rules.'
He had found the road he must walk in the end, but the fact that his actual circumstances put it far out of reach was bitter.
The boy was becoming an adult early.
There was a girl watching him with an impish glint in her eye. The daughter of the innkeeper's household, the server who had been brewing the medicine these last few days.
"Hey. Is your master still not up?"
"Well. Still about the same, I think."
"How is it your face is like that? As if you had no feelings."
"......?"
The boy looked at the girl blankly.
"That little-old-man look. Doesn't your master usually say something about it?"
"Brother Hans never says that."
—Whip.
The girl suddenly pulled off the boy's hat. He looked at her blankly. There was no malice in her face. She saw the slave brand on his forehead and went on.
"But you're a slave. Are you allowed to call your master 'brother'?"
"We're not that kind of relationship."
"Then what kind are you?"
The girl handed back the hat as she asked.
The boy was stopped for words. The war's horrors and defeat, captivity and death, and the understanding with Hans that had begun and taken shape at that crossroads. It was not a story that could be explained in a few words. And he rather wondered whether there was any need to explain it.
Taking in the complication on his face, the girl said.
"Well, what would I do with the answer anyway. In any case — hey! Chin up."
She patted his shoulder in comfort. The boy's face went blank at the absurdity of it, and then turned mischievous.
"Looks to me like you're the one who needs the chin up."
"What are you talking about?"
"Who were those boys dragging you into the alley yesterday?"
—Snatch.
The startled girl grabbed the boy by the collar and shoved him against the wall.
At that tremendous force the boy rolled his big eyes this way and that, at a loss. The girl glanced around once and then, with what she took for a frightening face, said.
"You saw? Don't tell anyone. Really, don't. All right?"
—Nod, nod.
She let go of his collar, sat down, and let out a loooong sigh.
"Hoo."
The boy smoothed the front of his shirt where she had grabbed it, and offered comfort.
"Life's hard, isn't it?"
"It isn't easy......."
"Chin up."
Without a word the girl gestured for him to go. The boy took a few steps, then came back and sat down beside her.
"It's best not to get tangled up with nobles if you can help it. And if you've been marked, it's best not to be seen. But if you can't manage that......."
The girl brightened.
"If I can't?"
The boy let a pause run, then turned his head and looked at her.
"There are two roads. Become someone the noble needs. Or become someone the noble's enemy needs."
"......."
"You're clever, so you'll be able to find a way, at least."
It was a beautiful scene: a satisfactory trade being struck between a girl with shining eyes digging for more of this and that, and a boy angling for various conveniences in connection with nursing Hans.
Hans got up off his sickbed. Having been ill, his face was considerably more at ease.
The boy looked at him with worry in his eyes.
"Are you all right? Shouldn't you rest a bit longer?"
"A few days' rest and I'm light again. Let's move."
In the yard Hans bent at the waist and straightened, rolled his shoulders and loosened himself up. Meanwhile the boy fed the donkey and loaded the cart.
The capital was not far now.
How far had they walked from the inn? Hans turned at the sound of someone behind them and his eyes went wide.
The inn's pretty server ran up to the boy, kissed him, turned and disappeared. The powerful aftertaste of this rather shocking scene stirred one particular feeling in Hans.
"Nicely done, wasn't it?"
"......."
"I'm envious. You're more of an operator than you look."
"Hyah!"
Without a word the boy brought the reins down and hurried them along.
From that day on, the boy was treated as a full-fledged adult.