After parting from the caravan he had traveled with for a while, Hans pressed on. Behind him came the young couple and their child. He had bought a mule from the caravan to carry the couple's baggage, and with it they kept up easily.
***
The two men talked a great deal.
"What sort of place is Gale Village?"
"In a word, a barren one."
He put more wood on and the fire crackled up. Hans spoke honestly. Since what they were forming was a contract of employment, there was no need to lie and destroy the trust in it.
"Mountain orcs swarm there, and goblins are forever causing trouble."
"Are there many casualties?"
"The village's men are assigned to the home guard. They serve in rotation, and around harvest time each year they go out on a clearing operation. That is when a man gets hurt or killed, if his luck is bad."
—Nod, nod.
"If I settle at home this time, I mean to lead the home guard myself. I can certainly bring the casualties down."
He had seen enough of Hans's strength to trust that.
"Barren as it is, the tax rate is set at the frontier standard. It is three years since I left the village, and the rate then was thirty percent."
Given that the continent's average rate is fifty percent, thirty means a place that has been cleared to some degree but still needs more clearing.
"One thing. That rate applies only to what is cultivated. Herbs dug in spring, hunting in autumn and winter, and fishing on the lake do not fall under it."
"Ohh."
"It amounts to leaving a place to itself but opening it a way to live."
"Then, my lord — on top of the thirty percent tax, how much do we render to you?"
"I mean to take thirty percent."
Rendering sixty in all, with the remaining forty plus gathering herbs, fishing and hunting, the man reckoned a family could live without going hungry.
"If I am recognized as an independent noble, there will likely be a tax exemption."
'Seventy percent for our share is not worth thinking twice about. It is a pity we cannot send Anna to a school, but we could never have managed that holding on in the slums either.'
"I will speak with my wife for a moment."
"Do that. Take until morning and decide slowly."
***
He had been discharged at the end of the burning season, and somewhere along the way autumn had passed and it was the threshold of winter.
Setting out from the northwest, going by way of the capital to his home in the east, the road was the reverse of the journey he had made when conscripted to the front.
'Those were frightening, despairing days.'
What had greeted him, fresh from recruit training and posted to the front, was the cold of deep winter and the bloodshot eyes of the veterans. They had been men of no small bearing in their own right, but against the battlefield's killing intent and the tempered veterans they were sheep before wolves.
'Winter again soon.'
He looked back. The man had the child on his back and his wife was leading the donkey.
Hans dismounted to match their pace. And he pressed on down the road, watching to see that the couple kept up.
—CRASH!
The big man brought his fist down on the table and heaved his huge body up. His head looked near enough to touch the ceiling.
"So what you're telling me is that I stole your sheep."
"Old Chegrup says he bought the sheep from you......."
"So you're calling me a thief, is that it?"
"The sheep he says he bought has my mark burned on its rump."
The man did not back down; he glared at his opponent and said his piece.
"Hah. This son of a bitch has no fear in him at all, answering back. Hey! Don't stop me. I'm burying a body today."
"Hahaha."
"Kekeke. Go easy, the ground's frozen and hard to dig."
The tavern was hot with the shouting and rough movement of drunken men. Then the door opened and a man in a hood came in. A young couple and a child followed after him.
Cold air came in for a moment, and when the door shut the place filled again with heat. The eyes that had turned to the door went back to the quarrel.
"I came this far searching for my sheep. Pay me for it."
—CRASH, CLATTER!
The table went over and the man went over backward with it.
"The sheep gets eaten and you get buried, and that's the end of it."
"Nngh."
The big man hauled him up by the collar. In that instant the man's two hands caught the big man's elbow and pulled, and his head, dragged along with it, detonated against the big man's face.
—CRASH, BANG, BANG!
Sprawled on the floor, the big man clutched his bleeding nose and shouted.
"Ugh. I'll kill you."
The man did not give ground.
"Settling it with fists is exactly what I want."
The man was no pushover. The big man's fist split the air and the man's fist buried itself in his belly. Just as the big man began to give way, one of his companions, who had been sitting and watching, picked up a bottle and came up behind the man.
—Clamp.
The hand raising the bottle was caught in a rough grip thick with callus. On the back of the hand that held his wrist, a great scar like a crawling worm ran up and on inside the sleeve.
"Wh...... what."
Looking back, the big man's companion shuddered at the cold coming off the hooded man and backed away.
—Falter, falter.
The chill coming off him seemed to climb the wrist and freeze the heart, and with that expressionless face it felt as though death's own envoy were looking at him.
—Rattle.
Just then a gust threw the door open and cold wind drove into the room.
Even as the temperature fell, nobody could move. To a crew who threw their shoulders about in a country village, the man's killing intent was a fear they had never experienced.
—THWACK!
—CRASH, BANG!
The big man rolled across the floor and lay spread-eagled.
"Hoo-ff, hoo-ff."
Propped on both knees, half crouched and catching his breath, the man looked up at the hooded figure.
"Ah, thank......"
The moment the man's eyes went wide, the hooded figure pulled the arm he held and stepped around behind its owner, and the man he had dragged along became his shield.
—CRACK!
When his opponent, made to strike his own side, stood there blank, he kicked him in the face and overturned a table.
—CRASH, CLATTER!
The companions who had been sitting took the table to the head and went down.
The hooded man turned, looked around the room, and shrugged. The man who had been watching him closely said.
"Er...... could it be......."
Hans pushed the hood back, showing his face, and said.
"Mikhail the brawler. You haven't changed."
"Hans, isn't it? Hans Zimmer!"
"Kekeke. That's right."
The pub's owner slipped out and shut the door against the cold wind, and Hans and Mikhail set the men to tidying the wrecked room. Beside the two friends tipping their cups to a long-delayed reunion, four big men knelt on the floor.
In the middle of that commotion, in one corner, the young couple were seeing to their child and eating a precious meal.
"Congratulations on coming back alive, you walking disaster."
"Thanks for the congratulations, you menace."
"Look who's talking."
"Hahaha."
"Heh heh heh."
***
"Susan went to you?"
"Yeah. That's how it turned out."
Susan was the village's greatest beauty. Unlike most girls of a poor country village she had a full figure and a healthy build, and she had been the most popular young woman among the village men of their age.
And that Susan had married Mikhail.
"Mm. I'm furious, but congratulations. Damn it."
Hans threw back his beer as though it galled him.
"Yeah. Thanks."
Mikhail looked down at Hans with a triumphant expression and raised his cup in victory.
"When was it?"
"Two years ago. Going on three now."
—Nod, nod.
"The little ones?"
"Two girls. Susan's planning on a son this time."
Why was it, Hans thought, that Mikhail's face seemed to lose strength the more he said?
"If they take after Susan they'll be lovely. Late as it is, I'll have to get a present together."
"Thanks for the thought, at least."
Wondering what you could expect from a man who had lost a duel, lost half the family property and been hauled off to war, Mikhail looked Hans up and down.
Only then did Hans's clothing register.
With his hood off and hung on the chair beside him, Hans was wearing a fine tunic. The pure white shirt, the glossy leather jerkin and the expensive shoes all came into view.
"You......."
"That's how it turned out."
Hans scratched his head, embarrassed, and Mikhail shouted at him.
"You mad son of a bitch, have you still not grown up?"
"Mm?"
"Blowing a soldier's pittance of a wage on luxury like this — you never did shake the old punk habits......."
"Tch. I got a noble title."
Hans said it without weight, chewing his food.
"......."
"War is......."
Hans broke off for a moment, shrugged, and went on.
"The sort of thing where whoever survives takes the lot."
"Mm, ah, that...... Sir Hans."
"Ah, kekeke. Hey. Do you really want to do that to a friend?"
"Er, r-right?"
"Right. A friend just became a noble, that's all. Think of it as having got yourself solid connections."
"Connections, like hell."
"You never know. If a noble picks a fight, tell me. I'll fight him for you."
"Now that is tempting, isn't it?"
"Why? Is there some swaggering noble about?"
"Not that, but once you marry you start covering yourself. Picking fights is a nuisance and it frightens me."
—Nod, nod.
Hans understood. Having lived through a war, he had learned the truth that in this age every collision of interests ends in blood. If it can be avoided, it is best avoided. That is by no means cowardice.
The reason every father in the world looks indecisive and slow is that he knows how things end. The process unfolds in his head and he is weighing which choice will keep his family at peace, and that looks like hesitation and sounds like silence.
'My friend. You have become a father. Congratulations.'
Hans lifted his cup without a word and touched it to his friend's empty one.
"Two more beers here."
"Yes, sir!"
Every order was fetch-it-yourself, but the pub's owner came briskly over with two beers. With four thugs who ran the district on their knees, the owner did not have the nerve to say 'get it yourself.'
Hans's eye happened to fall on the couple in the corner, dozing against their chairs with the sleeping child in their arms.
"Have you a free room?"
"Yes, fifty bronze."
"Wake that couple first and put them in it."
"Understood."
"Who are they?"
Mikhail jerked his chin at the couple going to the room and asked.
"Wandering freemen. I brought them along to work for me."
"You're taking the farm back?"
"Taking it back, and buying more if I can."
At Hans's confident manner Mikhail put no more questions. Trust in his friend, and the cold recognition that he could no longer involve himself, made him take a step back.
"Malavich — he's well, I take it?"
At Hans's question Mikhail's face turned serious.
"Malavich has changed."
"Changed? That good-for-nothing?"
Mikhail threw back his beer and glanced at Hans.
"Khaa."
Mikhail says what needs saying.
"We changed. There's no rule that says he couldn't."
"Nngh."
It was true enough that he himself had been a punk trading on his family's name and making trouble.
"But seeing you, I understand why he changed the way he did."
"What do you mean?"
"It wasn't growing up that changed him. I think he was afraid of you coming back alive."
"He changed because he was afraid of me?"
Hans looked at him with an expression that said he did not follow.
"These past three years he's been training, went so far as to build himself a private training ground. Out in these hills, and he's not going to be knighted."
"Kekeke. Three years of training because he was afraid of me coming home."
"I don't know how strong a knight is supposed to be. But Malavich now is strong."
"How strong?"
"Last autumn he took the lead in the mountain orc clearing and brought in half the militia's whole score by himself, they say."
"How many did they take?"
"Roughly two hundred, going by what they say."
If two hundred was a rounded figure, it would be about a hundred and sixty or seventy.
"He'll have taken fifty or sixty, then."
"Something like that."
"He trained hard."
What deserved acknowledgment had to be acknowledged. Hans nodded.
"The foundation of strength is stamina. I'm rather looking forward to this."