"Haah!"
—Whoosh, clack! Whirr.
"Hoo-ff, hoo-ff."
—Whssh, clack!
"Huff, huff, huff."
Hans's bared torso was slick with sweat.
—Spin, spin.
The iron rod in his hand spun and came to rest on the ground, and with that the morning warm-up was finished. An hour or so of violent exercise was a little much to be calling a warm-up.
"I ought to do a bit more."
Hearing that, the boy answered in a tone that said he found the idea absurd.
"You call that exercise? Are you going off to war again?"
"It's only training if you move until you drop from exhaustion. This idle body of mine won't do as it's told."
The boy picked up a practice iron sword.
"I'll loosen that idle body up for you myself."
—Whoosh, whoosh.
When he swung the practice sword, the sound of it cutting the air was menacing.
"Huff, huff, huff."
"Hoo-ff, hoo-ff. That was a good bout."
Slump.
The boy lay spread-eagled in the inn's back yard.
'An ignorant orc with nothing but stamina.'
But the boy acknowledged it. On the battlefields he had known, the decisive factor in any contest was 'stamina.' The conditions of victory include many things: the soldiers' morale, their training, their equipment. But in a mass engagement of many against many rather than one against one, in the end, if your stamina runs out you die, and if you have stamina left and hold on, you win.
How many self-styled heroes there had been who leapt into the middle of a battlefield, ranged about for ten minutes with dazzling swordwork, and then died of exhausted stamina. It was a dog's death.
The well in the back yard was cold. He threw cold water over his heated body and wiped the sweat off. Steam rose gently from Hans's upper body.
The boy poured out a shower of envelopes of every kind.
"What's this?"
"Congratulations on your debut in society."
Hans picked up one envelope and brought it in front of his eyes.
"Invitations?"
"The nobles' leisure and their political activity both. They hold parties in rotation the whole year round."
"Is this that thing I've only ever heard about — where they eat and drink and shit, over and over?"
The boy looked at him blankly for a while, then said.
"Do you really think that?"
"Am I not supposed to think that?"
The boy sat down on the sofa opposite him. And he began a lecture to the bumpkin on the life of nobles.
"If you're going to think, think properly. Doesn't it strike you as a lazy judgment to say that nobles, educated from childhood at great expense, do nothing but indulge in luxury and pleasure?"
"Hm. Now that you say it, it does."
"A party is a gathering that binds together allies of one mind, and it is also a floor for exchanging information about hostile factions."
"Oho."
"In this capital, how many noble houses rise in a year, and how many fall and get pushed out to some country corner?"
"So it's some sort of war over interests?"
—Nod.
"A road is laid with the state's money. Whose domain will it pass through? Can I twist the route so that it runs through mine?"
"I see."
"Slaughter doesn't only happen on a battlefield where spears and blades fly. To a noble, a party is a battlefield with the rise and fall of a house staked on it."
"Be that as it may......."
Hans looked at the heaped invitations with a troubled expression.
"I've no interest in society whatsoever. And I haven't the nerve to refuse an invitation either."
The boy put on an arrogant expression and said.
"Shall I teach you a move?"
"Please do."
Hans lay flat.
"Accept the invitation of the highest-ranking noble. Do that and the hangers-on drop away by themselves."
"Oho. That's simple, is it not?"
Hans nodded. As it happened there were several nobles suitable for the purpose. He had made no particular appointment, but he expected to meet them at least once before leaving the capital.
"Then I needn't worry about it."
Hans stood and said to the boy.
"Burn the lot."
"......."
***
"A baron, you say?"
"Yes. He was not an ordinary returning soldier."
"Nnngh."
The mercenary commander took his head in both hands.
"Even now, if we were to apologize and compensate......."
Gripping his head in anguish, the commander said loudly.
"Yes, an apology. That much I can do as often as you like. But the compensation? And if he's a noble lord besides, it won't end at ten or twenty gold, will it."
"B-but......."
"What's our cash position?"
"One hundred and twenty gold carried over from last year, with fifty-five in first-half profit, for a total of a hundred and seventy-five."
"How much did you say next year's branch expansion would take?"
"One confirmed and one unconfirmed, at a hundred and ten each, so two hundred and twenty."
It was tight. The crisis had come at the very moment when the branch expansion plan that would lift the Redstone Mercenary Company was being realized step by step.
Rational judgment said apologize and compensate. But to be told that five years of hard work, the development plan he had pushed ambitiously since taking the commander's post, would be delayed — it broke something in his chest.
"Have those bastards been brought in?"
"Ah, Hammer and Saxon were arrested and brought in, but......."
"But?"
"One is blind in an eye and has lost two fingers. The other has a permanent disability in his right ankle."
"Made cripples of them. Hoo."
The culprits whose misconduct had brought on this situation were, in effect, already punished. Punishing them further would only lower the company's morale.
"And the Oslon Caravan has notified us that it will postpone next year's first-half renewal."
"Uh......."
"It is presumed they saw a problem from their side as well."
"Did they say they were contracting with another company?"
"That does not appear to be it, but two guesses are possible."
—Nod.
The commander nodded for him to go on.
"The first is that it is a gesture of censure over an escort mercenary's misconduct. The second is that they may be building an in-house security force."
"If it's the second, that's serious."
"Yes. If this is the tide of the times, then it is the moment for a fundamental countermeasure."
Lately, led by the great caravans, the trend was toward building up in-house security, because discharged soldiers coming onto the market one after another had made manpower easy to come by. It was truly a case of one thing falling on top of what had already fallen.
"Squad B has all been put on standby, and Captain Acheson's pay for a year has been impounded on a charge of command responsibility."
An A-rank mercenary's base pay for a year comes to little more than one gold. With success payments and bonuses on commissions collected as well, it runs to five or six.
The mercenary commander spoke with a face that looked as though depression had settled on it.
"Hoo. Is there really no way?"
"......."
It might not quite be a crisis, but it was the feeling of walking steadily forward and dropping into a pit in an instant, which made it all the more galling and infuriating. The commander took his head in his hands. Standing before him, the desk man tried to head off the worst of it.
The commander was a man who had taken a failing company in hand five years ago by sheer force of personality and dragged it this far. He was also the benefactor who had recognized the desk man's own ability and given him an exceptional promotion along with high pay. An S-rank mercenary who had taken his hands off field work, he was also a man of action who still had confidence in his own strength.
'I have to keep the commander from running wild.'
"There are still two days left. For now I'll gather more information."
"Yes. Do that."
"......."
***
"Hans Gale Zimmer is hereby invested as baron."
The investiture, conducted in abbreviated form, concluded with that same young official at the Administration Office reading out the patent of title on another's behalf.
"Congratulations. Now, at the lord's keep of the fief where you reside......."
Having explained the schedule from here, he went on to the result Hans had been waiting for.
"The review of Sir Tomius's service record passed yesterday."
The official did not say how exceptional this was, or that the king had shown unusually deep interest in it. That was a story there was no need for. The satisfaction of having protected a comrade's honor was written across the whole of Hans's face.
"Thank you."
Hans bowed his head and gave his thanks with his whole heart in it. The young official bowed his head in return.
Having finished the burdensome paperwork, Hans left the Administration Office. He thought his journey in the capital was finally over. No. There was still something left.
"I want to sell a barony and buy a knighthood."
Along with rapid social change, trade in noble titles had become fairly common of late, and it was usually brokered by merchants in the city center. Removing a monocle from his eye, the jeweler spoke politely.
"First, please sit here."
—Nod.
"May I see the patent of title?"
"Here it is."
"Today's date, I see. And a barony for a single generation."
"That's right."
"Please wait a moment."
"Very well."
Returning a short while later, the merchant turned the pages of a ledger as he spoke.
"There is someone here willing to add money on top of a knighthood and exchange it for a barony. How would that suit?"
"That's fine."
"Understood. I'll begin the verification."
The jeweler called a clerk, had the title's serial number copied out and verified with the Administration Office, and while awaiting the result instructed him to summon the other party to the trade. A clean transaction was concluded with unexpected speed. He had probably taken a large sum as a brokerage fee.
"Go well, then."
"You have done a great deal for me."
The official who greeted Hans warmly when he returned to the Administration Office notarized the transfer of a title whose ink was not yet dry, and saw him off with a pained expression. Three hundred gold coins. That was the price of exchanging a barony for a knighthood.
***
"Three hundred gold?"
In the great hall, dark with the moonlight hidden behind cloud and even the candles out, only the shadow of the man seated on the throne and the silhouette of the figure standing before him showed faintly.
"Your servant is overwhelmed."
"Not at all. The value is better than I thought."
At the unexpected news the king fell briefly into thought.
"Mmm...... a knighthood at a hundred gold, a barony at four hundred. Then what does a viscounty trade at?"
"So far as is known, precedent for traded titles exists up to the rank of baron, and there has been no trade above that. And......."
"Hm...... and?"
"Trade was confined to single-generation titles without a domain."
The king leaned his bent body back and fingered his beard with an expression that said, 'This looks as though it could be a business.'
"It's a question of money. With money enough, a countship or a marquisate would trade as well. Well, no matter."
"Ahem. Hem."
The Lord Chamberlain cleared his throat repeatedly and turned an embarrassed face away.
"Has the investigation made any progress?"
The playfulness went out of the king's face as he asked it, and the Lord Chamberlain answered.
"Yes, Your Majesty. The conscripts sent north over the past five years number some thirty-two thousand in all, of whom some twenty-three thousand died and some nine thousand came back alive."
"......."
"Of these, among the roughly five thousand discharged soldiers of the capital and the crown lands, four hundred have been investigated, and the investigation of the remainder is scheduled to conclude within the month."
"And?"
The king pushed his body forward as he asked.
"Some ten suspicious cases have emerged, of which three have yielded evidence of the killing of our own men, and protective measures have been taken for fifteen persons."
"One tenth! Such a result from investigating one tenth!"
The king clenched his fist and let out a small cry.
The result of sustaining for four years a local war with the clear limits of a limited war was the rise of the margraves and the great nobles, and the ruin of the state's finances.
The primary beneficiaries of the economic effects of opening supply routes and developing frontier cities were likewise the margraves and the great nobles tied to the huge caravans, and they had now slipped the king's control and gone so far as to finish dividing the annexed territory among themselves.
At this rate even the survival of royal authority could be in danger.
"Is there anything difficult, anything getting in the way?"
"We are taking every care with security, but as the number of people involved is large and it takes time, there are many difficulties in that part."
"Hm. A plan?"
At the anxious question the Lord Chamberlain answered as though he had been waiting for it.
"If we do this...... we hold a victory commemoration."
"A victory commemoration?"
"Yes. A victory party was held for the nobles, but there has been no event for commoners and discharged soldiers. Therefore......."
"Use the event as a pretext to gather the soldiers and carry out the investigation?"
"Yes......."
"Do it. Scrape together whatever money is left and spend it."
"As you command."
"And......."
"......."
"Those soldiers left out of the honors...... give them titles. Those are worth money, aren't they? Tell them to sell them or do as they like with them."
"Ah...... yes. It shall be carried out as you say."
Grant titles in place of rewards, save money, and mass-produce low single-generation nobles. The king smiled the smile of a man whose plan had come together.
Just then moonlight passing through the stained glass of the reception room lit the great hall, and the shadows of that light hid the two men's silhouettes. It was a night in which conspiracy grew thick and fast.