There was now one more human being squatting in a corner of the plaza watching people go by. Even so, he was buried in the crowds that filled the square and drew no notice at all. Word that the slave boy who had been all but dead had come back to life reached even Walter's crew, who came around now and then to collect the pitch money.
"They say the kid you let go cheap the other day is healthy again."
"Is that so?"
Walter shrugged.
"Glad he lived, then."
It might be a back-alley life, but even so, Walter thought a story about somebody living was a great deal better than a story about somebody dying. The big men beside him nodded as well.
Eating well and sleeping at proper hours, the boy put on flesh day by day, and along with it the warmth came back into Hans's eyes. Once the boy's health had improved, Hans made ready to take to the road again.
He put out feelers for a place as a caravan laborer. Soft flesh was creeping onto his idle body, and by now the killing intent had settled enough that he could face people. Until then, the only ones Hans had been able to meet in the eye without worrying were small children.
Hans looked at the boy and spoke.
"Let's live. For our comrades' shares as well."
The boy gave no response.
***
Walter braced himself as he received Hans's out-of-nowhere visit.
"Ah, what is it this time......."
"I'm looking for work with a caravan. Where should I go?"
Walter obligingly directed him to the lodging house on the city's outskirts where the caravans usually put up, and saw him off on behalf of Fourth Street.
"Farewell, then."
He had been an awkward presence, but they remembered the generosity he had shown them, and in his own way Walter felt a mix of relief and regret.
"He was a decent son of a bitch, though."
Walter said it out loud.
"But why did he just stand there and take it from us that day?"
"If some little kid started kicking you, what would you do?"
At Walter's question, one of the big men tilted his head.
"Little kids are afraid of me, though?"
"Right. But there are kids who are a bit lacking, aren't there?"
"Ah, of course. Now and then you get those cute little things."
Walter said nothing, narrowed his eyes, and looked at him.
"......."
"......?"
"What I'm saying is that to him, we were nothing more than cute little kids. Did you see that man's eyes the day he was getting beaten by us?"
"Ah, that look like he was smiling. That was even more frightening, really."
"Right. Thinking about it now, our lives were hanging by a thread that day."
"Eh, surely not."
Walter did not bother forcing his view on them. What was the use of making these idiots understand, he thought.
***
Hans and the boy loitered under a sign that read 'Travelers' Rest' — no originality to it, but it got the meaning across.
"What do you want?"
A caravan hand who had been checking quantities on a cart came over and looked Hans up and down.
"I'm after work."
The man's manner softened a little.
"Did the guild send you?"
"No. I'm a discharged soldier."
His attitude changed once more.
"Ah. Is that so? Come with me. Let's go to the master."
A discharged soldier, rough as they tend to be, is not welcome in a city, but with a caravan it is another matter. A caravan's journeys carry no end of risk, so a laborer with a verified identity who can project force was welcome. Some of the larger caravans were even moving to form their own escort details made up of discharged men.
By the caravan master's good graces the interview was finished on the spot and he was taken on.
A caravan laborer's work consists largely of loading goods at the point of departure, odd jobs along the way, and unloading at the destination. The loading was already done, so he simply exchanged names with the other laborers and made himself known to the escort mercenaries as well.
It was a fortnight's journey, passing through two villages to a city called Lumon.
On the way out of the walls they happened to meet the guards coming on shift.
"Off home, are you."
"Thank you for everything."
"Go carefully now."
"I will."
He traded nods with a few guards whose faces he knew. That he had been a person of concern, that he had been shown consideration, and that the consideration had come not from an order but as an extension of fellow feeling — it warmed a corner of his chest.
A man needs money to live comfortably. But being shown consideration by people gets you some of the way there too.
***
A dark room. The silhouette seated on the throne faced a shadow cast across the floor.
"There are signs of infighting among the margrave and the war nobles under him."
"Tell me in detail."
"There appears to be resentment at the commander taking the spoils for himself."
"That is interesting."
Life came back into the king's eyes, which had been dull and without appetite. Tapping his fingers against the arm of the throne, he spoke.
"How large is Marquis Offenhauts's force?"
"Before the war he held sixty knights, three hundred cavalry and seven thousand infantry, and since the war's end he appears to have made up his losses and to be holding the same strength."
"A margrave indeed. And the rest of the nobles?"
"For all that they stand opposed to him, they fall a little short. Three or more of them would have to combine to come near it."
"Look into it more closely. This could become an opportunity for us. And take care not to be found out."
"Understood. I shall give particular instructions to the back channel."
One of the shadows on the floor quietly went out, and only the king's silhouette remained, alone, becoming one with the dark.
***
He walked, and walked. Marching, then cooking and eating, then walking again, and building a camp when night came and standing watch — seen a certain way, it was work he had grown used to over the past three years.
When evening came they pitched tents, gathered firewood, lit fires and boiled soup. In the easy atmosphere the party divided naturally into caravan hands, mercenaries and laborers. Hans finished his meal with the boy without thinking much about it. Then some went to their beds, some waited around the fires, and some stood watch.
Hans mixed herbs into a paste and spread it over the boy's body. The small abrasions on him were healing well, without festering.
"Might I have a look at those injuries?"
A stranger spoke to him out of nowhere, but Hans, unexpectedly, did not go on his guard.
"Ah. Would you?"
They were ascetics of the Necro Order. They seemed to have been mixed in among the travelers following the caravan.
Theirs was an order that stressed ascetic practice above any other religious body, and its ascetics would move back and forth through the secular world, making contact with common folk and doing the good work of treating the sick.
That men who served a god bound up with death should look after the living and treat the poor and the struggling was an irony.
They were also the first to take the field when a war broke out, treating the wounded. Hans, who owed the Necro Order a great deal from the battlefield, showed them the boy's condition without any resistance.
"The wounds have closed, and I'm working on disinfecting them at the end."
"Battlefield scars. On one so young......."
Hans lowered his eyes and answered in a low voice.
"In a place like that, a hell on earth, how could anyone be without a story? He survived, and forgetting the pain seems to be the only thing he can do."
—Nod, nod.
Running his hands over the boy's injuries, the ascetic glanced at the brand on his forehead.
"Treatment came late at the start and it festered, but the follow-up was done well, and they were comparatively light, so there will be no scarring to speak of."
The priest turned to Hans and went on.
"A discharged soldier? Your face seems familiar, somehow."
"I served in the Four-Year War."
"I see. I am on my way back to the order myself, my own service finished."
Hans belatedly bowed his head in respect.
"Is that so. There were several times over these past three years when I lost consciousness and woke again, and I was indebted more than once to the practicing priests of the Necro Order, but I was in no state to take it in and my memory of it is faint."
The priest nodded.
"It was a hell on earth, as you say. If your memory is faint, is that not a blessing rather than otherwise?"
The priest turned to the boy, who was gazing at him, met his eyes, and spoke kindly.
"It is a man who takes the devil's hand, and a man who follows a god's teaching. Only let a sharp blade never turn upon yourself......."
At the warmth of the comfort, the boy bowed his head.
The Necro Order of the Kingdom of Calemon went to war and looked after its soldiers too.
It was the ascetics of the Necro Order who cut away a rotting arm to save a life, and it was they who gave a painless death, by way of a poisonous herb, to a life that would otherwise spend the whole night in agony before it ended.
To save a man they had to endure the curses of the living, and for granting a painless death they were thanked.
They said they served a god and followed his will, but to sort the living from the dead is far too inhuman a task.
The hymn sung while the dead were burned and the prayer recited while the leftover bone ash was gathered up were the only rite and the only comfort that saw off men who would be forgotten.
Service to the people cast out at the lowest place of all might be called the teaching of god that every religion ought to pursue. In that respect the Necro Order, more than any, deserved to be a model for every religious man.
But the reality was that they were treated as an ill-omened order in the service of a god of death. In children's tales they were routinely portrayed as a dark religion that summoned devils, and since they did not devote themselves to any profitable enterprise in particular, they never managed to spread a respectable congregation either.
This became a vicious circle that tormented the ascetics further still. It went so far that ascetics caring for the poor were branded dark apostles by foolish men and murdered.
There were countless people in the world who had received the Necro Order's grace, but a man who becomes healthy soon forgets that he was ever sick. To ordinary people, hard pressed simply to get through the day, there is no strength left over to stand up for a powerless order.
In any place and in any age of human history, that strength comes from money and power has been an unchanging truth.
The Necro Order's ascetics went about all night, seeking out the sick and treating them.
The travelers were grateful to them, and soon the fires went out one by one and everyone was able to go to their rest in peace.
And so the first day passed and morning broke.
***
On the second day, the caravan's column ran into trouble.
As they were about to set out early in the morning, a wheel collapsed on one of the carts. A caravan prepares spare wheels against just such a thing, but it came out that through the negligence of the man responsible, none had been readied.
"Who is the one in charge of cart parts?"
"I'm sorry."
A man came out hesitantly and bowed his head.
The caravan master blazed with anger and dressed him down. The man had to stand and take it in silence for some time. In the end a cart's worth of freight had to be carried by the laborers and the mercenaries.
They loaded what they could onto the donkeys and split the rest between laborers and mercenaries, and the man who had actually caused the situation carried himself with perfect confidence.
'So this is what it is to be the party holding the contract?'
The fault is forgiven, and the cleanup is left as a burden on the lesser party.
'On this, civilian life and the army are no different.'
The boy's eyes met Hans's. He seemed to have had a similar thought.
That evening the party set up camp and hurried to prepare their supper. And then a quarrel broke out.
The boy had the brand of a slave on his forehead and had nothing to do with the caravan's business. But with everyone worn out and on edge, one of the mercenaries picked a fight with him.
—SLAP!
The boy's head snapped round from the blow to his cheek.
"Your manner when you answer is poor. Your slave training isn't finished yet."
From the fact that only his head had turned, it was plain this was simply a provocation aimed at Hans. A mere laborer dragging a slave around, and that oddly distinctive title of 'discharged soldier' — he did not care for any of it.
A quarrel between members of a party is one of the taboos of caravan travel. But perhaps because stress had built up to just the right degree, not one person moved to stop it, and every eye turned to watch. The boy did not resist in particular. He only smiled.
"Kh kh kh kh."
Hans stepped in front of him. He glanced down at the boy, then looked up at the mercenary, who stood a head taller than he did.
"What's this about?"
"Give your slave some training. A man asks him something and he doesn't answer."
"And so you hit him? For the reason that he gave no answer?"
"No, that's......."
"Is he a slave you own?"
Stopped for words for a moment, the mercenary stammered.
He wanted to avoid causing trouble if he could, but Hans was not so weak as to run from a problem set in front of him. He put force into both eyes, and the killing intent that had been hidden came creeping up.
—Falter, falter.
The mercenary took a step back without meaning to.
"Since you give no answer, you'll have to be hit as well."
A bleak wind came blowing through.