Chapter 32

Translator: Willia

Valery arrived in Hemsley village around evening.

Perhaps because Marshals had not come through very often lately, when a man on horseback appeared in the village, the people did little more than stare blankly at him at first.

Once they learned he was a Provincial Marshal, however, they gave him a place to sleep.

An ordinary traveler might have been allowed to sleep somewhere like a barn if he was lucky, or driven out of the village if he was unlucky, but Valery was able to stay at the Village Head's house.

The house, however, had no separate rooms, not even curtains dividing up the space.

That meant he had to sleep alongside the Village Head's family, which was inconvenient to say the least.

The Village Head had a wife, two grown sons, two daughters-in-law, and six grandchildren. Valery was staying in a house occupied by a family of twelve.

He did wonder where on earth they had managed to make all those children, but in any case, there was only one bed in the entire space, and Valery was given it.

Four little children stared fixedly at the sword Valery had propped against the wall. They seemed curious.

“Want to try drawing it?”

Valery asked. One of them nodded while sucking on a finger.

Valery handed the sword to the child. Unable even to hold it off the floor, the child braced it against the ground and tried to draw the blade.

Just then, a woman who was either his mother or his aunt rushed over and smacked the back of his head.

Smack!

“Ow!”

“My apologies, My Lord. You, get over here! All of you, come here. Stop bothering My Lord.”

The woman swept the children away with her.

Valery propped his sword against the wall again and sat quietly for a moment with a hand pressed to his forehead. Deciding this would not do, he asked the Village Head,

“Village Head, do you have a barn or anything of the sort? If you can give me something to cover myself with, I'll sleep there.”

“What? Oh, but you're a Marshal. We can't make you sleep in a barn. There's a widow's house you could stay at. Would you like to sleep there?”

“......No. Never mind.”

Valery considered it for a very brief moment, then shook his head.

“By the way, has the Tax Collector not come through here?”

“The Tax Collector? Ah, do you mean ‘Moneyworm’, perhaps? He's a vile bastard if there ever was one. We used to just beat him up and chase him off, but these days he's taking Hostages and trying all sorts of things.”

They beat him up? Were they allowed to do that? In truth, whether they were allowed to or not was beside the point. This was simply what reality looked like once one strayed even slightly beyond a Lord's effective control.

A Viscount might be administering the area, but once outside the directly governed lands, people were often openly defiant, their attitude little different from: So what if you're a Duke?

Even the peasants here tended to be tough and fierce, and they did not meekly hand over their taxes just because someone told them to.

Astrians or Nordics, these were people who had lived through brutal times. When it came to defending what was theirs, they were more than willing to fight.

Being a Viscount was no easy task either. They were essentially stuck in the middle and suffering for it. If the peasants rose up or unrest broke out, the Duke held the Viscount responsible.

To a Lord, villages and cities, along with the people living in them, were among his most important assets.

A peasant revolt meant losing those assets in itself, and suppressing one was like cutting away one's own flesh.

So managing a fief ‘well’, suppressing rebellious tendencies while still securing tax revenue, was anything but easy.

Seen from that perspective, Count Aethelred truly was an exceptionally diligent man when it came to managing his own territory.

Of course, there were probably places where the words Tax Collector made people think of the Grim Reaper, but here in Krisher they did not seem to command much respect.

“And that bastard isn't even a Tax Collector. There's a real Tax Collector somewhere else. More precisely, he's a man who bought the Tax Collection Rights from the Tax Collector. Seems he's working pretty hard in his own way to earn back what he paid, but we wouldn't even give money to the Tax Collector himself, so why would we give any to a bastard like that?”

You could sell Tax Collection Rights? With nothing in the system working properly, it was frankly a complete mess.

In any case, the real Tax Collector had apparently gotten thoroughly sick of the whole business and sold off the Tax Collection Rights, leaving the buyer, just as the Village Head said, needing to recoup what he had paid. Except there was no chance of him recovering it properly.

Valery could understand a little better why the man had even gone after the Rangers. Since he could hardly collect any money, he had probably been trying to squeeze something out of the Rangers as well.

Valery had thought the man was simply using his measly scrap of authority to torment people, but it no longer seemed worth paying much attention to him.

Still, he could not let the man run around stirring up trouble everywhere, so perhaps he ought to lay down the law at least once. The Rangers indisputably served under the Duke, so demanding anything from them had definitely crossed a line.

“I see. I understand.”

Valery lay down on the bed. In case the children tried touching it again, he placed his sword in a corner.

He turned over to sleep, but sensed someone nearby and looked back. One or two of the little children stood beside the bed, staring at him as though they wanted to sleep there too.

Valery patted the empty space on the bed to show they could climb up. He expected one or two of them to join him, only for all of them to come tumbling onto the bed at once.

It wasn't that he had no regrets, but no journey could possibly be comfortable every step of the way. He simply wedged himself into a corner of the bed and tried to sleep.

Time passed, dawn came, and Valery opened his eyes. The Village Head's family was still asleep. He quietly got up, went to the village well, and washed himself.

He hauled up a bucket of water and poured it over himself from the top of his head. As always, his head reeled, and every trace of sleep vanished in an instant.

A few early risers stared wide-eyed at Valery standing there completely naked, but there was no other way to wash.

He returned to the Village Head's house and quickly dried himself off and dressed before anyone else woke up. The interior was dark, but he was so accustomed to his equipment that even the more complicated pieces went on quickly.

One of the children sleeping on the bed opened their eyes and looked up at him. Valery stroked the child's head once, then went outside.

He went to the stable, brought Snow out, saddled him, and mounted. Then, without so much as looking back, he rode off at a gallop.

Clop-clop-clop-clop.

After perhaps six or seven hours of riding while eating his meal in the saddle, the sun had climbed high overhead, and a strange wind blew in. It was a sea breeze.

The sea was nowhere in sight, and he could not hear the waves, but a strong wind blew from somewhere far to the east. Valery's platinum-blond hair whipped ceaselessly around him.

Beside the road stood a forest of thick, towering conifers. This was Thunder Forest.

The road stretched straight east along the forest's edge, and Valery followed it.

Then, instead of the sound of waves, he heard a distant shout that sounded almost like a howl.

“Fuck off! All of you, fuck off! I told you to bring money! Who told you to come swarming over here!?”

A low hill blocked his view of whatever was happening. Valery followed the road around it and found a hostage standoff unfolding on the other side.

A man was holding a knife to the throat of a girl who looked three or four years old, desperately shouting at the men surrounding him.

“Get the fuck away! Can't you hear me!? You don't care if the brat dies!? Go! Get out of here!”

The men surrounding the hostage-taker were all huge, with forearms as thick as logs. Most were barehanded, though several carried axes used for felling trees. Lumberjacks? Carpenters? Probably both.

“Everyone, back away!”

A shout like the roar of a wild beast erupted from among them. Everyone flinched, including the hostage-taker.

The man who had shouted stepped forward. He too was enormous, but he was an old man whose hair and beard had already gone half white.

Valery recognized him immediately. Torvald, the Thunder-Herald. He had already been an old man before regression, and since he was an old man now as well, he did not look drastically different.

His hair and beard simply had not yet gone completely white, and perhaps he had a few fewer wrinkles.

His eyes blazed just as fiercely now as they had then. They were eyes filled with quiet anger, fighting spirit, and will.

Torvald stepped forward, ripped open his shirt, and said to the hostage-taker,

“Come. Come and stab me to death. You will earn renown for it. In exchange, release the child.”

“......What the hell is this old man talking about? I said I wanted money in the first place. You come swarming over here without bringing any, and what kind of fame would killing you get me? I don't need that shit! Give me money! Money!”

Watching from a distance, Valery realized that the three- or four-year-old girl being held Hostage was Torvald's granddaughter.

It gave him a strange feeling. Back then, I was the one who took her Hostage.

The hostage-taker slowly edged backward. He seemed to have given up on getting the money and decided he needed to escape first.

Valery thought he knew who the hostage-taker was too. He was probably that Moneyworm who had bought the Tax Collection Rights from the Tax Collector and had been going around causing trouble everywhere.

At this point, Tax Collector or not, buying Tax Collection Rights or whatever else no longer seemed to matter. The man had apparently decided to become an outright criminal. People had a way of losing their heads when they got fixated on making their money back.

The surprising thing was that the girl, despite being only three or four years old, remained perfectly still without crying.

Perhaps she did not understand what was happening, or perhaps she instinctively knew that crying would do no good.

Moneyworm continued backing away, while Torvald could only stand there motionless and watch. He had even offered up his own life to no avail, so there truly was nothing he could do.

That was why Valery stepped in. He rode toward the scene, and only belatedly did the others notice him and turn his way.

“Who the hell are you!? Stay back! I said stay back!”

Moneyworm shouted.

“I am a Provincial Marshal.”

“......S-so what, s-sir? Come any closer and I'll k-kill the girl!”

“What do you want? I want to settle this peacefully, without anyone getting hurt.”

“M-money, obviously.”

Valery dismounted. Then, with everyone watching, he approached the hostage-taker.

“Don't come any closer! I'll kill her!”

Moneyworm shouted again.

Valery stopped, removed his cloak and tossed it aside, then unfastened his sword and threw it far away as well. He discarded every weapon he carried, including his dagger.

Then he took a coin purse from inside his clothes and poured its contents into his palm. There were no fewer than seven Gold Coins and dozens of Silver Coins.

Holding them out where Moneyworm could clearly see them, he said,

“I am unarmed now, and as you can see, all I have is money. Let's trade it for the girl. Then no one gets hurt, and each of us gets what we want.”

Moneyworm could not tear his eyes away from the money in Valery's palm. He swallowed hard once, then finally began edging closer.

“D-drop the money on the ground.”

“No. I want the girl. This isn't a one-sided demand; it's a trade. I can't simply hand over the money.”

“......”

Put that way, it made sense.

The situation was too urgent, emotions were running too high, and what he wanted was right there before his eyes. Moneyworm meekly did as Valery said.

Once they were close enough, Valery extended his free hand to receive the girl, while Moneyworm reached out to take the money.

They drew closer and closer, and just as the tension reached its peak, Valery let the coins spill onto the ground.

“Huh!?”

Moneyworm's stance faltered for an instant, and Valery yanked the girl toward himself.

Moneyworm realized something had gone wrong, but the coins scattered across the ground with a bright clatter, and his mind simply froze. Should he attack Valery, snatch the girl back, pick up the money......

His brief hesitation was as good as an eternity to Valery. In a single swift motion, Valery snatched Moneyworm's sword away and stabbed him through the neck.

“Ghk!”

He collapsed to the ground, and Valery watched impassively as he died. Then, lifting the girl into one arm, he asked,

“Your name's Gudrun, right?”

“Huh? How did you know?”

“I figured. Weren't you scared?”

“Hmm...... That man looked more scared than I was.”

Gudrun pointed at the dead Moneyworm as she spoke. Valery let out a quiet chuckle.

Then, still carrying Gudrun, he walked over to Torvald and handed his granddaughter back to him. Cradled in her grandfather's arms, the girl continued staring at Valery.

“No need to thank me. I'll consider this repayment of a debt.”

“......”

Torvald could not fully understand what Valery meant, but the part about not thanking him seemed like one request he would have trouble honoring.

He was so overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude that his heart trembled.

The others came over and gathered up the money scattered across the ground. They returned it to Valery, and not a single coin was missing.

Valery picked up his weapons and cloak from the ground and brushed off the dust.

After putting everything back on, he looked over at the grandfather and granddaughter. A sea breeze swept in, whipping his hair around and setting his cloak fluttering.

Just like that day beneath the overcast sky before the storm, when fierce winds had raged.

But now, the sky was endlessly blue, and the sunlight shone brilliantly clear.