Chapter 55: The Bear Arrives at the Royal Capital

Chapter 55:
The Bear Arrives at the Royal Capital

 

EVERYONE WAS AWAKE when I arrived with the cage. Fina and Noa were on Kumayuru, waiting. I wondered if they were getting ready in case they had to run away on their own.

“You all got up?”

“It’s not like we could sleep knowing bandits were coming!”

“Yes, that is right. Of course we could not sleep when there was a chance bandits would be attacking us!” Gran was also awake. A geezer like him really ought to have stayed in bed.

“Yuna, I never thought you’d slip away without saying a word,” Noa said.

“Yuna, I think you went too far this time…” said Fina.

I caught the bandits, so why did I feel like I was the one in trouble here?

“Um, where do I even start?” Marina said, echoing what everyone was obviously thinking. “For now, could you tell us what you did with the bandits?”

Everyone’s eyes focused on me, and the cross-examination started. Why is this happening? I thought.

“As you can see, I caught the bandits, so I just put them in a cage.”

“How did you catch that many people alone?”

“I whipped it up with some earth magic.”

“And that cage?”

“I whipped it up with some earth magic.”

“And lastly, what about that bear?”

“I needed it to move the cage, so I whipped something up.”

From the looks on their faces and the way they’d sigh a little every time I answered, I got the impression I was exasperating them.

“The more I hear you talk, the stronger the urge to just laugh at what you’re saying,” Marina said. She looked fed up. “Well then, what are you going to do with those bandits?”

“I dunno, what do you think? Should we take them to the royal capital? Should we kill them here?”

“Those couldn’t be the Zamon bandits, could they?” Elle, the sorceress, spoke up from behind Marina, looking at the group.

“The Zamon bandits?” I remembered them saying something of the sort.

“They’re a group of bandits that have been running wild around here.”

“You’ve got to be joking. You caught the Zamon bandits singlehandedly?”

“Are they that big of a deal?”

“I’ve heard they’re a dreadful group that strips their victims of all money and valuables, and violates any women they cross paths with.”

There was a possibility their targets were Marina and the other women. On the other hand, just thinking that Fina and the other girls might have been who they were after…

“So we should kill them?” I suggested.

“I know it’ll be a lot of work, but we should deliver them to the capital’s guards and force them to give up the location of their hideout. They might be holding the women they’ve abducted there, and we don’t know where it is, or how many people they have guarding it. Getting that information out of them in a verifiable way is going to take time, and we’re in the middle of an escort mission. I think our best bet is to head for the royal capital and deliver them to the authorities there.”

Marina’s plan was airtight. I had no objections. She and her party probably wanted to save the women captured by the bandits as soon as possible, but had come to this decision after weighing their skills and situation. I didn’t plan on leaving Noa and Fina behind to go to the hideout, either. Much as it would be a giant pain in the behind, we’d take the bandits to the capital.

“Well, we’ve decided what to do from here. It’s still dark, so should we go back to sleep?”

“You can sleep in a situation like this?”

“I don’t feel like I can sleep after seeing all these bandits.”

“Me neither.”

“Yuna, I can’t sleep either.”

“Yuna…”

“Naturally, I do not feel as though I could sleep, either.”

Not a single person was with me. They’d have to sleep near these bandits the next day, anyway, and dawn was still hours away. What were they going to do if they weren’t going to sleep?

“Well then,” said Gran, “what do we say to departing early? If the horses show signs of fatigue, we can allow them to rest at that point.”

And so, we ended up resuming our journey to the royal capital even though it was still the middle of the night. Well, I was going to sleep on top of Kumakyu.

When the sun came up, we decided to have breakfast in order to give the horses a break. It sent the bandits into an uproar.

“Give us food!”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s right.”

“You won’t die from not eating a few days.”

“You gotta be kidding!”

I threw water on the rambunctious bandits to silence them. We confiscated all the bandits’ bottomless bags with their weapons and such, so even if they had food, they couldn’t eat it now. The only thing they were getting was the water their sorcerer made.

 

Around noon a few days after we captured the bandits, the wall surrounding the royal capital came into view. Multiple roads were converging at this point, all filled with carriages. At Gran’s instruction, our carriage stopped.

“If we proceed any further than this, we’ll draw attention to ourselves,” he said.

“Yuna, sorry, but please wait here. We’ll call the guards.”

Gran, Marina, and the others advised me that unless I wanted to make an absurd name for myself or cause an uproar, I shouldn’t take the bear golem into the city. We decided they’d go fetch the guards while I stayed behind.

I dismissed the golem and took apart the cage. Between being weakened by hunger and being tied up, the bandits had no strength to make a break for it. I recalled Kumayuru and Kumakyu, and then all that remained was to bide my time until Gran and the others returned.

“That sure is a big wall.”

Even from a distance, I could tell it was huge. Fina looked awed by seeing something so big for the first time, too.

“I didn’t think I would ever come this far away from home. My dad died when I was little, and my mother got sick, and even finding food every day was such a struggle that I didn’t think I would ever go to the royal capital. This is all because of you, Yuna. Again.”

“There’ll be fun things ahead, too. Let’s have a good time at the capital, shall we?”

“Yes!”

While I talked to Fina about our plans, Gran’s carriage came back. I saw about a dozen guards on horseback behind him.

“Ms. Marina, are these the Zamon bandits?” The guards looked at the bound bandits. Marina got down from the carriage’s driver seat.

“Yes, that’s right,” she said.

“I’m impressed you captured so many.”

“Yes, well, that girl played a large part in making this happen.”

“You mean the girl in the bear clothing you mentioned earlier, yes?”

They looked at me dubiously, but maybe because they accepted Marina and Gran’s explanation, they didn’t ask more about it. They loaded the bandits onto the guard’s carriage. Since they were all exhausted, they didn’t resist.

A little ways away, Gran was talking to someone who looked like the head of the guards. “Ranzel, may we leave? We are fatigued from our long trip and wish to rest.”

Right. I wanted to get inside the royal capital soon, too.

“Yes, of course. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“If there is anything you need to know, please come see me.” Gran was taking all the questions that would have been directed at me. He owed me his life, so he said this was the least he could do. He seemed like a pretty good guy. I wondered if a lot of the aristocrats in this world were actually decent people?

“Well then,” said the guard, “I’ll make arrangements for preferential entry into the capital.”

“I’d be much obliged.”

I was ready to walk the rest of the way when Gran told me to hop up into the carriage. I was grateful, but unsure if I’d fit on account of the onesie. Marina and two of her company were sitting in the driver’s seat, so I took a spot between Fina and Noa. Across from us were Misa, Gran, and Elle. Even though they were squeezed in with me, Fina and Noa didn’t complain at all; they seemed pretty happy being next to me. With nine people aboard, we started trotting along toward the entrance of the royal capital.

Mounted guards guided us as we jumped to the head of the line. I felt a little bit sorry for all the people we passed still standing in queue. When we got to the entrance, the guards stopped their horses and told us to touch our guild and resident cards to the crystal panel for verification.

To do that, you had to get out of the carriage. When I disembarked, it caused an immediate commotion from the people around me.

“A bear?”

“Is that a bear?”

“What is with that getup?”

“You sure do stand out, Yuna.”

They really didn’t have to go out of their way to say anything. I touched my guild card to the crystal panel, and once it confirmed I had no criminal record, I went back into the carriage. Maybe I looked funny doing it, since Fina and the others were laughing at me.

“Yuna, it’s all right. Your clothes look cute.”

I didn’t know how to respond to a ten-year-old girl calling me cute.

Once we were all back on board, the carriage started moving again. Gran was being kind enough to take us all the way over to Noa’s mother’s house.

“Where’s your house, Noa?”

“In the upper-class district. It’s a slight distance from here.”

The carriage moved at a slow trot. The royal capital looked like it was bustling, based on what I could see of it from the small window. Fina was staring outside too, with her little mouth hanging open. Seeing that look on her face made me glad I brought her along.

“People have gathered from all over because of the king’s birthday celebration.”

“The capital has a lot of residents to begin with, but you’ll see more and more gathering as time goes on,” Marina told us from her seat at the reins.

Little by little, the carriage made its way to more deserted roads. The buildings around us changed, and mansions that looked like elegant estates became more frequent.

“Yuna, I can see it now. That’s where my mother’s house is.”

It was about the same size as the Lord of Crimonia’s house. I wondered who Noa’s mother was? She wasn’t with her family, and they said that she was working at the castle. I tried asking Noa, but apparently, she didn’t know anything other than where her mom worked.

The carriage stopped in front of the estate.

“Well then, Noir,” said Gran, “if you have time while you are in the royal capital, please come pay Misa a visit.”

“Will you not meet with my mother?”

“She likely isn’t home around this time. I will come greet her in the future, once I receive a full report from the guards.”

“Dear Noa, Fina, dear Yuna, please come by to see me.”

“Yeah, we will.”

“If possible,” said Misa, “I would like to play with Kumayuru and Kumakyu.”

“Sure. Include them in your playtime.”

“I will!”

We thanked Marina and the others, then got out of the carriage.

“You really helped us out. At first I thought you were just a weird looking girl.” Marina laughed, but it wasn’t mocking. “Let me know if you ever need a hand. If there’s anything we can do to help, we will.”

She grasped the reins and spurred the horses on. The carriage slowly came alive and pulled away.