PDCOO Chapter 16

"The stone walls just make it look distinguished. Objectively speaking, it's a genuinely peaceful little town. Isn't that right, Bertram?"

Bertram nodded.

"I agree. Due to the regular market, this district serves the administrative function of a city within its region—but in terms of actual scale, it is closer to what is commonly called a village. The traffickers apprehended earlier were also individuals who had been wanted in actual cities and fled to the outskirts."

"That's right. And even after running away, a leopard doesn't change its spots—they were trying to kidnap naive village girls and ship them off to the city. Anyway, Anna. You."

"Yes?"

"I don't care how angry you were—you don't go picking fights with a trafficking ring. What would have happened without Bertram? Hmm?"

"...I'm sorry."

"You nearly got yourself and Lara trafficked! Goodness. I'm not saying you were wrong to do what you did, just—be careful. All right?"

Even as he lectured, the chief was smiling somewhere inside.

During market days, village residents being tricked by smooth talk and taken—that was something that had happened often enough when the chief was young. Reporting it to the guards only to hear 'didn't they just run away because they hated village life?' had been a common enough response.

Today, catching the traffickers and giving them what they deserved. How satisfying that had been.

"We owe Bertram a great deal as well. When are you heading home? If you're not leaving today, have dinner with us—my treat."

"For the foreseeable future I intend to remain in this... town."

"You're not planning to quietly tag along back to our village again, are you? Karlah will have my head."

"..."

"...You were planning exactly that."

"...Let's eat dinner first. Sir, do you have any recommendations?"

The moment food was mentioned, the chief practically flew through the alleyways toward a particular establishment. The place they entered was an ordinary restaurant frequented by working people. Lara, however, went tense and pressed herself against Anna.

"Anna, I've never been to a restaurant before! Paying money for food—how strange. Seems wasteful."

"Then what do you think our place is?"

"More of an eatery than a restaurant, isn't it? Oh—they've written down everything you can order on a separate piece of paper! I don't have to eat everything on it, do I?"

"For the love of—just ask quietly, separately, to one person!"

Anna wore the expression of someone who would very much like to find a hole to crawl into. The guests at surrounding tables were already sneaking curious glances at Lara and Anna—though they quickly looked elsewhere when they encountered Bertram's stone face.

The chief couldn't have cared less, and knocked back his beer.

"Ahhhhh—now that's the taste. Care for a drink?"

"No, thank you."

"Tsk. Beer only tastes right with company."

Lara's eyes lit up and Anna pinched her cheek. The chief pretended not to notice.

"So. Where are you from?"

"Schleisen."

Even the chief, who had long suspected Bertram came from good stock, raised his eyebrows at that. Schleisen was the capital. A former officer with a Schleisen address meant—at minimum—that this man was either nobility, a wealthy merchant, or someone's son with a powerful position.

The chief compressed his entire assessment into a single sentence.

"Long way to come. Do you have money to get back? You can't walk it."

"No. Would you lend me some?"

"Don't be so transparent! You'd use the debt as an excuse to come back to our village, wouldn't you?"

"..."

"If you can't lie, at least admit to it honestly! Either way it's equally maddening!"

At that, Lara pointed to a notice posted on the restaurant wall.

"If you don't have money, what about something like this?"

「CHALLENGE! THE WILD BOAR FESTIVAL! Held during the village festival. The first person to reach the goal while evading the wild boars will receive a prize of 5 Golder and the fattest black pig!」

"The festival's tomorrow, too. Anna, how much is a pig worth?"

"Depends on the weight, but somewhere between eight and ten Golder a head."

"Is that cheap or expensive?"

"Let's start your economics education from scratch."

The chief shook his head as though he couldn't find the energy to laugh.

"Getting involved in nonsense... wait. Why are you looking at the notice?"

"Confirming the time and location."

"You're going to enter? Even if you win—where are you going with a full-grown pig? You'd be stuck here. Sell it and you won't even have travel money! Say every butcher in town agreed to offer exactly one Golder, just to spite you—what then?"

"In that case—"

"Don't you dare say you'd bring it to our village as a gift."

"Would you have any interest in the experience of skewering a whole pig on a spit and roasting it over a fire in the village square?"

Anna and Lara's eyes lit up at exactly the same moment.

Only the chief cried out in lonely protest.

"Don't do it!"

But his own mouth was already filling with saliva.

While Bertram was laying out his grand vision, the guards at the city gate were also talking about Bertram.

"That big dumb bear who came back today—I heard he caught the trafficking ring."

"What? He had the sense for that?"

"Apparently there was a sharp woman in the group he came with. That small one with the big eyes—remember her?"

"Can't keep track of everyone who passes through. Only someone like our big dumb bear—enormous, acts strange."

"Fair."

Not long ago. The moment that dark-haired man had entered the city, he'd walked straight into the city's one and only bookshop, announcing he had come to repay a debt. Apparently he'd borrowed books during the war and burned them for fuel.

Since he couldn't return books that had already been burned, he'd asked what kind of books he could give as replacement—but the bookshop owner had died after the war, wasting away from grief. His son and daughter-in-law were in the process of throwing out all remaining inventory to set up a different business. Books received at this point would be good for nothing more than kindling.

"How did it end, again. Did the bookshop swindle him?"

"Yep. Told him it was a very rare book, couldn't possibly accept money for it—and then stripped him of the horse he'd arrived on. A magnificent horse, too. Our bear really is quite a bear. Gives up the horse and just... walks."

"Exactly. I fully expected him to get eaten by wolves crossing the wilderness. And somehow he turns up back in a village chief's cart."

"The bookshop's biting its nails right about now."

The guards snickered.

Their idle time ended when a voice of some authority cut through it.

"Is there a foreigner here causing unrest in the city?"

The guards turned.

A blond young man of striking beauty, on horseback, looking down at them. Behind him: four mounted men, armed.

The guards found themselves standing at attention without quite deciding to.

The young man—clearly a knight—spoke in a cool voice.

"I am Franz Gerhardt, knight of the capital. I am searching for someone on His Majesty's orders. Tell me more about what you were just discussing."

It was not really a request.

Franz Gerhardt.

Said to be the most beautiful and the strongest of all the children born to the twelfth Duke Gerhardt. The man who, at barely mid-adolescence, had become escort knight to the kingdom's prince, Bertram Hertz Wächter.

That Bertram had been his childhood friend had certainly influenced the appointment—but no one questioned his ability. At twenty-six, there were perhaps five men in the kingdom who could hold three exchanges against him.

...A life that should have gone on as well as the past promised.

"Bertram, you absolute—what has he been doing, wandering around a place like this!"

One of the soldiers accompanying Franz waved a cautious hand.

"Please don't call it a village, sir. Call it a 'city' and the locals will cooperate better."

"If a stone wall makes something a city, then Gerhardt Estate would rank as the kingdom's third. And there's no one here to overhear us."

Guided by the gate guards, they arrived at a corner of the security office where the 'foreigner causing city unrest' was being held.

The traffickers, who had been crouching, flinched. The edge in Franz's voice made his intentions plain.

He had no intention of treating the trafficking ring as human beings.

Franz looked them over with a humorless expression.

"A large black-haired man interrogated you?"

"Y-yes. We told him everything! We fully cooperated!"

"That is no concern of mine. You only need to tell me what I want to know. What is the name of the man who interrogated you?"

The men exchanged glances.

The small woman had said something. A needlessly long name, and given how urgently the situation had been moving, no one had retained it.

But when Franz's hand moved to the sword at his hip, something had to be produced.

"R-Ram! He was called Ram!"

"Is that his full name?"

"It seemed like there was more to it..."

Franz smiled at the men.

At that face—the kind of face that could casually undo a woman's composure, or so it had been reported—the trafficking ring was first dumbstruck, then confused. Why was he smiling?

Franz, of course, had his reasons.

If it had been Bertram who interrogated these men, they'd already looked directly into a face that belonged to something out of a nightmare. Trying to look threatening in front of people who'd survived that would only be embarrassing.

Meanwhile, the trafficking ring, presented with that smile, all arrived at the same thought simultaneously:

Handsome. How much would he fetch if we sold him...

"...You just thought something inappropriate."

"We didn't! In front of someone of your station, how could we possibly—grrhhk!"

A sword came to rest at the man's throat.

"I don't repeat myself three times. Tell me everything you know about that man."

"He was enormous—and very strong!"

"That's what I told you. Next."

"And... his companions were two country women."

"Next."

"He seemed to know the guards here..."

"A little more specifically."

"The guards were talking like, 'that strange-talking big dumb bear actually went and did something.' Like they'd had dealings with him before."

Franz and the soldiers looked at one another and nodded simultaneously.