PDCOO Chapter 10

Handsome enough, if you shut your mouth and just looked. Big frame, strong, quick enough when it came to actual work. For a backwater village, the makings of a son-in-law out of a storybook.

Provided he had a clean past.

"Bertram. Straight question. What did you do before this?"

"I was a soldier."

"Why haven't you gone home?"

"During the war, I accumulated personal debts. I'm in the process of repaying them."

"Mm. Out of guilt?"

"Yes."

"...Were you an officer?"

"Yes."

She'd almost asked outright whether he was nobility, but that felt too transparent. Common people didn't serve as officers unless they came from families of some standing.

Karlah decided to leave it there.

One last question.

"Did something happen? Anna asked if you were all right earlier."

"...Nothing happened."

The brief hesitation before the answer nagged at her.

But pressing further felt like running an interrogation, so Karlah made a show of ending it— moved one seat over and settled herself down. Bertram resumed eating. He appeared to intend finishing everything Anna had laid out for him.

'He eats well. Looks the same as ever. So why is Anna worri—'

"Hey! Bertram, stop a moment— what happened to that spoon?"

"I beg your pardon? ...Ah."

The spoon in Bertram's right hand had been crumpled like a folded piece of paper, bent and broken at the bowl. He'd apparently been gnawing at it without noticing.

Karlah stared at it in alarm.

"Are you actually all right? I've never seen you do anything like that! Though I suppose we've only known each other a few days."

"I..."

Bertram stared at the spoon with genuine bewilderment.

Why had he done something so strange?

Had he been in a hurry to finish everything Anna had made— anxious not to leave any behind?

...No. That wasn't the root of it.

He needed to go further back.

The night before, he had dreamed. He was back at sixteen, the day the mage had cursed him. The mage had stroked the dragon bone he'd pressed into Bertram's chest.

The Bertram of the dream, who already knew how things ended, had ordered him to stop. Then begged. Then screamed. The mage had only smiled.

And so the anguish felt for the last time at sixteen sometimes surfaced with the nightmares, like an old wound remembering the weather.

An ordinary person waking from a dark dream might chase it off with something amusing. Seek out friends to cry with, go somewhere, do anything. What Bertram could do was none of this.

He had only to wait for the smudged residue of feeling to settle back to the bottom—

But then this morning, Anna had said something to him.

‘I found myself thinking—he really is rather cute, isn't he.’

That word— 

Never once in his life heard applied to himself—struck his chest.

Thunk.

Cute. 

His understanding of the word: what you feel when looking at something small or young, tenderness and fondness arriving together.

But what arrived alongside the confusion was a sensation like someone tickling his heart from the inside.

It was the same now. The instant he recalled Anna's voice, his fingers felt strangely light, all the way to the tips. As if air were bubbling up softly from somewhere within him.

Bertram set down the spoon, opened and closed his fist a few times, and looked at Karlah.

"I'll bend it back later. But I also have one question for you. I ask that you answer honestly."

"What are you going to—"

"Am I cute?"

Karlah nearly flipped the table.

It was only the mountain of food Anna had left that kept the table upright.

Watching Karlah's arm muscles quivering with the effort, Bertram realized he'd said something wrong.

'If I've said something wrong, then Anna also said something wrong. Which would make both of us wrong, wouldn't it?'

There was, of course, no one to answer that question.

By the village chief's orders, a team of five men swept the outskirts of the village.

First order of business: reexamine the wolf Bertram had killed.

The wolf he'd kicked lay sprawled in the weeds at the side of the road. Its body was bent backward, broken ribs pushed clean through its chest. The village chief squinted.

"Bertram. You killed this by kicking it?"

"Yes. I was in the process of transporting Anna and had no opportunity to consider other methods."

A wolf was not the sort of creature that died from a single human kick, but—

The village chief looked back and forth between Bertram's thick thigh and shin and the wolf's carcass and arrived at the conclusion that a person who wasn't quite a person could probably manage it.

Extended consideration was not in his nature.

"Must've been a weak one, run out of its pack. Hey, drag the carcass somewhere and bury it."

"Just bury it? We're not skinning it first?"

"It's riddled with holes. Who's going to buy that!"

"What a waste. Not that Bertram did wrong," one of the young men added quickly. "The claws can still be sold at the city market."

Wolf claws were among the items town children coveted on market days. Some parents bought them as good-luck charms for timid sons. A tidy bit of pocket money.

Two young men crouched down to sort through the undamaged claws.

The only one who grumbled was Dieter.

"Smashed it to pieces. Showing off your strength? And what's this 'transporting Anna'—Anna isn't cargo. If there was a wolf around, you should have taken her somewhere far away, not—"

The young men carefully avoided Dieter's eyes, hiding their smiles. This should be interesting. Would that oblivious man actually get his nose flattened? Come on, Dieter.

But Bertram deflated him from an entirely unexpected direction.

"My judgment is better."

"...I beg your pardon?"

"I was in the field for six years. I know better than anyone what must be prioritized when transporting a casualty. If there were a branch in the road while you were carrying an injured person, Dieter—would you kick it aside or take a long detour around it?"

A branch. A wolf. To him, essentially the same obstacle, cleared by the most direct method available.

Dieter ground his teeth and fell back. The village chief tried to smooth things over with a loud laugh and a clap on Bertram's shoulder.

"Six years—that's the whole war, start to finish. You've earned some pride. But the war's been over three years now— time to shake some of that soldier off. Try smiling once in a while, yeah?"

"I cannot smile or cry. I injured my head in the war."

The mood did not smooth over.

It sank.

The borrowed excuse Anna had taught him seemed to have worked; the young men bowed their heads and resumed sorting wolf claws, though their eyes kept drifting sideways to the back of Bertram's head. The thick black hair gave nothing away. Which, if anything, gave their imaginations more room to work.

'Come to think of it, it was strange for a grown man to keep his hair down past his ears.'

'Pull it back and you'd probably find a crater in his skull.'

The village chief, for the first time in a good long while, was visibly at a loss.

Then Bertram turned to look deeper into the forest and said:

"Do you need an intact wolf pelt?"

"Hm? If one turned up, sure. Not as if I'd go out of my way."

"Then should I not catch this one."

"Catch— what? Where?"

"There is a wolf watching us from over there."

The young men and the village chief froze where they stood.

The direction Bertram pointed. In the green brush, a gray shadow stirred. They wouldn't have noticed it on their own.

The village chief muttered from the side of his mouth:

"Came back for revenge, has it. Everyone shout together and drive it off."

"No. I'll handle it. Everyone stand still."

"It's a wolf, I said—it's dangerous to go alone!"

"There is no problem."

Bertram stepped forward one pace toward the wolf.

The young men watched his back and swallowed. A wolf was not a creature a man fought alone. But looking at Bertram's broad shoulders, it seemed entirely possible he could tear one apart with his bare hands—

Like a hero out of a legend.

As he reached out one weaponless hand—

—Dieter suddenly burst past him.

"Stop trying to look impressive all by yourself! Scaring a wolf off is easy enough. RAAAAARGH!"

Dieter threw his arms wide and made a spectacle of himself. He looked less threatening than baffling—precisely the sort of thing that might make a wolf wander off in sheer bewilderment.

The wolf pushed its head out through the brush. Yellow eyes that hadn't decided yet whether to bolt or lunge fixed on Dieter.

Then the village chief shouted:

"Dieter, you bloody fool, MOVE!"

"What?"

"It's tasted human before! Look at the paw!"

Every eye snapped to the wolf's front paw. Gray-white fur— and tangled around it, unmistakably human blond hair.

Dieter went rigid.

The wolf chose that precise moment to make up its mind.

"Grrrrrr—!"

One thick forepaw launched off the ground.

Dieter stumbled backward in a half-turn, only getting his body around when the village chief's voice reached him. Something made a sound at his ankle—

Crack— but there was no time for that.

If his ankle gave out he'd crawl. Four legs was still better than being stationary.

While Dieter scrambled along the ground like an animal with a broken hind leg, Bertram stepped forward once more.

The wolf was nearly on top of him.

Even so, Bertram turned to the village chief with a question—

"Chief. If I wish to preserve the pelt's value, where should I strike?"

"Never mind that, just RUN!"

No opportunity for further advice.

The wolf ignored Bertram—standing solid as a boulder—and made straight for Dieter, still scrabbling across the ground.

Bertram grabbed the wolf by the tail at exactly the moment the front paw touched Dieter's backside.

"GWAAAAAAH!"

"Grrrrngh—!"

The cries of man and wolf rang out as one.