Spice & Wolf VI Read online

  Spice & Wolf

  VI

  Written By: Hasekura Isuna

  Illustrated By: Ayakura Jyuu

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Prologue

  Holo’s strides were long and quick.

  She walked as though she meant to punch holes in the cobblestones with her heels, and although Lawrence usually found himself slowing his walking pace to let her keep up, suddenly the tables were turned.

  The town was still chaotic; the clamor of the waves of humanity was violent as they crossed the harbor. Lawrence found himself pulled toward the water’s edge by Holo, as she took his hand and led the way.

  From outside, it might well have looked as though a kind-hearted nun was pulling along a haggard traveling merchant in an effort to protect him.

  But in reality, there was nothing kindhearted about her.

  After all, just a short time ago, she had struck a forceful blow to the already-swelled-up right side of his head.

  “Come, can you not walk a bit faster?!”

  Holo showed not a shred of kindness now, pulling hard on his hand and scolding him roundly if he slowed even a little, her expression sharp, as though she had been about to eat some honey-drizzled raspberry tarts but had dropped them on the floor.

  But Lawrence said nothing.

  That her expression did not seem to accuse him made her actions difficult to criticize.

  Lawrence was well aware of the fact that she was angry at herself.

  That said, here in the town of Lenos, he had worked up a scheme to sell furs with Eve that had put his life on the line and even wound up injuring him, only to then have a dizzyingly difficult exchange with Holo.

  A bit of a rest would have been nice.

  “Can we walk a bit slower? Just for a little while.”

  It wasn’t as though Lawrence had lost a significant amount of blood, but the earlier scuffle involving knives and cleavers had left him more than usually tired. His feet were leaden, and his arms felt like those of a wood-carved mannequin.

  And in any case, hurrying was pointless.

  Lawrence tried to convince Holo of as much, but she looked back at him with a glare as hot as boiling oil.

  “Walk? Walk, you say? So did you walk when you came to meet me then?”

  The town of Lenos was on the edge of chaos; no one turned to look at Holo when she shouted.

  “N-no! I ran. I ran!”

  Holo looked ahead again without bothering to voice her reply–then a bit more running will hardly kill you–and continued to walk with large strides. Because she was still gripping his hand so tightly, he had no choice but to keep up.

  He was just as he had been when going to the Delink Company, pressuring them into giving up Holo, then convincing Holo not to go through with her plan of ending their journey right then and there, instead resuming their business together.

  Holo’s slender fingers intertwined tightly with his. She was not so much holding his hand as their hands were joined.

  And so Lawrence had no choice but to be pulled along. If Holo moved forward, so did he. If he stopped, his fingers would be yanked painfully, and the only solution was to catch up with her.

  The forced march brought them shortly to Arold’s inn.

  “Out of my way!” cried Holo to the crowd of merchants that had gathered there to exchange information on the upheaval in the town.

  Despite being well used to being yelled at, the merchants gave way to Holo’s threatening stance.

  Their eyes followed her in, peering closely at Lawrence as he trailed behind her.

  Lawrence felt a bit oppressed, already anticipating the things that would be said about him when next he returned to this town to do business.

  “Where is the old man?” Holo demanded.

  Upon entering the inn, instead of finding Arold in his usual place, there were two men who looked like traveling craftsmen sitting in front of the charcoal brazier and drinking mulled wine.

  “Th-the old man?”

  “The old man with the beard! The master of this shop. Where is he?”

  Going by their outwardly apparent ages, the two craftsmen would have been three times Holo’s age, but they were so cowed by her threatening attitude that they looked to each other hastily before one spoke. “Er, he just asked us to look after the place while he was gone, but we don’t know where...”

  “Rrrrrr,” growled Holo; it was enough to make even Lawrence flinch, to say nothing of the two craftsmen.

  Her sharp canines might well have been visible, and little was as intimidating as an angry woman baring her fangs.

  That would have been Lawrence’s answer, he guessed, had anybody said anything to him.

  “He must have gone off with that fox...Perhaps they think to make fools of us. Come, you! Let us go!” shouted Holo, pulling again on Lawrence’s hand and leading him farther into the inn and up the stairs.

  The two craftsmen watched them go.

  No doubt they had looked back at each other once Holo and Lawrence disappeared up the stairs. The scene seemed amusingly plausible in Lawrence’s mind.

  For Arold, the master of this inn, to do something like leaving these two craftsmen to watch over his place while he was out, Lawrence could think of only one possibility: It had to be because of Eve, whose plan for fur trading was so dangerous that not even Lawrence could be party to it. Arold must have headed downriver with her. While Eve’s goal was the port town of Kerube, Arold was probably taking his pilgrimage south.

  Arold had never talked about himself very much, so Lawrence didn’t know exactly what it was that could spur him to such action. Eve seemed quite familiar with him, so perhaps there was something in their shared past that led them to a mutual understanding.

  In the same way that one had nostalgia for one’s hometown, no place was so comforting as a house one had become used to living in.

  The inn was darkened with age, and the sediment of passing time had accumulated within its walls, which had once contained the leather strap tannery where Arold had worked as master.

  It would take something significant indeed to make him abandon all that and head south on pilgrimage.

  Would he count on Eve to handle traveling expenses and to act as a guide for the difficult journey?

  Just as Holo had lived for many years and experienced much, Arold’s life had not been a short one.

  What someone valued, and how he or she conducted his or her judgments, varied from person to person.

  Weighing that value on the balance of the world and testing which way the scales tipped was life itself–and so Lawrence had gone to see Holo at the Delink Company.

  Having let Holo pull him bodily into and out of the room, he now pulled back. Holo turned to face him.

  “There’s something I’d like to ask you,” he said.

  Holo had not been expecting Lawrence to pull away, and as she looked at him, her expression was so simple it was funny–her earlier fierceness had peeled away, revealing her true feelings.

  She seemed both upset and strangely resolute.

  In a word, she was lost.

  As to what it was that had her so confused, Lawrence could hazard a guess.

  “What do you plan to do next?” he asked.

  But that was that. As soon as Lawrence voiced his question, Holo, who was also called the wisewolf, regained her composure.

  “What shall I do, you ask?”

  Her tone was such that Lawrence would have been hardly surprised to hear her follow up by saying, I’ll rip your thr
oat out for asking, that’s what I’ll do.

  Yet Lawrence didn’t flinch, instead bringing up his hand– which still held Holo’s–and brushing a red speck from the corner of her mouth with his knuckle.

  No doubt it was a fleck of dried blood from Lawrence’s own face.

  Her expression seemed angry, but even at a glance, it was clear that her mask was slipping.

  She was angry at herself.

  Her own feelings were too much for her to handle.

  “Even if we’re leaving the town,” said Lawrence, “we’ll need a travel plan.”

  “A-a travel plan, you say?!” Her expression was complicated; it seemed Holo was less and less certain of exactly why she was yelling at Lawrence.

  “It wouldn’t be good to charge out of town on some vague notion.”

  “Some...vague notion? Do you not wish to recover our profit from that vixen?” Holo’s face was suddenly very close to Lawrence’s as she confronted him, but because of the height difference, she was unavoidably looking up.

  It would be easy to think she was drawing near him for an embrace, but Lawrence was sure that if he suggested as much, he’d be hurled from the window.

  “The vixen–ah, you mean Eve. And the profit–”

  “We must get it back! She swindled you and made off with the coin! We must get our due!”

  “As in the gold before?” said Lawrence, at which Holo nodded.

  After nodding, she looked down, no doubt because her mask of anger was slipping and needed to be replaced.

  Previously Lawrence had been completely and utterly betrayed.

  But this time things were not so clear.

  True, Eve had lured Lawrence into a trap, but part of the blame for that lay with Lawrence for not realizing it sooner.

  Moreover, that Holo stood right there in front of him meant that his deal with Eve was fully resolved.

  In reality, Lawrence had backed out of Eve’s suicidally dangerous plan.

  She was going up against the towns church, and Lawrence highly doubted that the church would choose to overlook the offense–though at the moment, Lenos’s church surely had its hands full, trying to gain control over a more violent uprising than it could ever have expected.

  And Eve would not be the only one taking furs downriver for her own profit. The briefest glance at the port made that much obvious.

  Things had not gone as the church had planned, and it could not easily do as it pleased with Eve. The church was no doubt thinking to leave her be, instead dealing with the affair in Lenos.

  Thus it was hard to imagine that it would try to capture her or her accomplice in fur trading–that is to say, Lawrence.

  All this meant that Eve’s gamble had paid off. She had won.

  Lawrence now wondered if he had the right to claim a share of the profit.

  He’d pulled out his support and reclaimed Holo. It didn’t make any sense for him to then go and demand a cut of the gain.

  The ever-wise Holo must have also long since realized this–yet she still spoke of reclaiming their share.

  Moreover, Holo was angry at herself–angry at her own selfishness.

  Whence came that selfishness? Lawrence asked himself.

  The answer was obvious, and it made Lawrence very happy.

  “I-I mean, are you not frustrated? She’s gotten away from us!” Holo said quickly to change the subject, knowing full well that if pressed, she would be at a loss for words.

  Lawrence turned his head askance and nodded.

  He tried his best to make it look as though he was giving in to Holo’s insistence.

  “That is true, yes. But in terms of practical problems that face us, there is a significant one.”

  “...What do you mean?”

  He couldn’t voice his true thoughts, but drawing a veil of lies over the exchange wouldn’t help either of them trust each other, either.

  Both of them were stubborn, so this would have to do: “Eve surely constructed her plan with care. Mere happenstance would never have let her find a ship so quickly. She must have made arrangements in advance. Given that, I highly doubt we can immediately set off after her. Even if we wanted to follow her on horseback, the stables will be as chaotic as the rest of the town is.”

  “What of your horse, then?”

  “Him? He’s strong, to be sure, but there’s no telling how well he’d do if we made him run over a long distance. Horses bred for speed are nothing like draft horses,” said Lawrence. Holo looked down, evidently deep in thought.

  Lawrence, of course, did not point out the obvious–which was that just as Holo had suggested back at the Delink Company, if she assumed her wolf form, they could travel faster than anything else.

  “What’s more, Eve spoke as though she had already arranged a buyer downriver in Kerube. Eve was discussing plans with the assumption that the church would give chase, so she no doubt already has an escape plan prepared.”

  None of this was exaggeration.

  Plausible escape paths could be divided into transoceanic routes and overland routes. If she fled by sea rather than land, there would be no way to catch her.

  Depending on the destination and given favorable weather, sea travel could be as much as five times faster than land.

  It would be difficult to catch her, even for Holo.

  “P-perhaps that is so, but I still cannot accept it. I’ll not be satisfied unless we give chase,” insisted Holo, despite her flagging enthusiasm.

  Even if half of Holo’s fixation on following Eve was based on a grudge she carried, the other half was certainly not.

  And that was why she was so angry with herself.

  Holo had said she wanted to end her travels with Lawrence.

  Her reasoning was that they got along too well, that she was afraid of the joy they shared weathering and crumbling away.

  In opposition, Lawrence admitted that he understood it would be impossible for their travels to continue forever but insisted that when they did go their separate ways, it should be with smiles upon their faces.

  Naturally there was always that temptation to keep prolonging their travels, even knowing it would come to naught in the end– just as Lawrence sometimes drank too much, despite knowing he would regret it the next morning. And in such a case, he found himself unable to deny the possibility that Holo’s fears would come true.

  But at the very least, he wanted to go with Holo as far as her homeland–so he had gone back to the Delink Company to fetch her.

  And now, having said all that, despite what they might wish, there was one obvious thing that remained unsaid between them.

  This was a detour that would extend their time together.

  “I understand why you wouldn’t be satisfied by that...”

  “I’m right, am I not?” Holo’s face was at once angry and pleased.

  Lawrence found himself impressed that such an expression existed.

  “And it’s true that this is a net loss so far...”

  When Eve decided she had to terminate her agreement with Lawrence, she’d left behind the deed to the inn in which he and Holo now stood. When Lawrence had used Holo as collateral to borrow money, the amount he borrowed was very nearly equivalent to the value of the inn.

  But it had come a little short.

  The Delink Company’s original goal had been to strengthen their relationship with the noble Eve, and having accomplished that, Lawrence doubted they would quibble over the minor discrepancy–and he was right.

  Yet when would that lingering debt be called in–and where and how? It made doing business frightening.

  Even if it took some time, Lawrence wanted to repay what debt remained.

  Which meant he was right now in the red.

  Of course, the debt was not outside the realm of what could be forgiven, and when Holo heard this, she perked up, agreeing wholeheartedly. “Aye. And she drew blood from you, do not forget! I’ll make her understand that when one harms my companion, they har
m me!”

  It was only with effort that Lawrence restrained himself from asking her just who it was who had struck him hard in the face in a fit of passion earlier.

  “So it’s pursuit, is it?”

  “Aye. My first hunt in quite some time,” Holo said with a grin.

  Her smile lacked its usual grim quality, perhaps because both of them were trying their best to smooth things over so they could extend their travels with a detour.

  After the affair in the wheat village of Tereo, both Holo and Lawrence had confessed to wishing their journey would continue.

  Now that he thought about it, it was a rather naive wish–but that was all in the past now.

  People’s hearts change.

  The only thing that didn’t change was the ever-dishonest repartee he shared with Holo.

  “Don’t forget, though–,” began Lawrence, at which Holo looked up at him, her expression serious. “–I am a merchant. I have my pride and my honor, but I’m not some knight who earns money only to bring himself fame. If it seems as though this will only worsen my losses, we’ll pursue her no further. Do you understand?”

  If it would lengthen his travels with Holo, Lawrence would put off doing business until the summer of next year, but if it took any longer than that, problems would start popping up. Business was conducted in the service of mutual gain between parties, so if Lawrence alone was the only one ready to deal, nothing would come of it.

  Of course, it would be a different story if only Holo would say that she wanted to travel with him forever.

  “I do this only for you,” said Holo. “So long as you are satisfied ...aye. It cannot be helped.”

  Her words were strange, but Lawrence nodded. “I appreciate it,” he said by way of thanks to an oddly considerate Holo.

  Holo’s ears flicked up beneath her hood, either because of the ridiculousness of the exchange or out of happiness at having fought the good fight in service of drawing out their travels a little longer.

  Actually it was probably both.

  “Well then, how shall we go about this pursuit?” said Lawrence.

  “How? Will we not go by wagon?” asked Holo.