Chapter 4

Translator: Willia

From Count Aethelred's office, one could take in the whole view through the window: beyond the castle walls, down the hill, the village and its farmland spread out at a single glance.

Further still, there lay vast tracts of land, forests, rivers, and the mountain ridges that marked the borders of the region, all of it lit by the bright spring sun.

"......Well, you see, even though I clearly warned him, the, uh, Wid...... Young Master? The Young Master was not properly dressed for work yesterday. I wonder if, perhaps, the duties have been a little too much for him of late......"

Toward Count Aethelred, who stood gazing out the window, the treasurer was fumbling his way through a report on anything of note.

Dealing with Wid directly was easy enough: one could simply treat him as a young boy. But since no one had any idea how the Count regarded his own Bastard, even settling on a proper form of address seemed beyond him.

"Anything else?"

Count Aethelred asked without even turning around.

"Anything else...... On reviewing the papers, his work has been done without a single slip......"

"Very well. You may go."

At the dismissal, the treasurer somehow managed to bend his ample waist into a bow, then escaped the uncomfortable room as though fleeing from it.

Off to one side of the office, Gidwin was tending to his sword, looking somewhat less uneasy than the treasurer had. Even so, he watched the Count for a moment before venturing to speak.

"Yesterday morning, Wid and Tommy got into a scuffle in the woods. It was...... quite something. Tommy was put down before he could even lift a hand."

"......Was he now? Did he seem interested in a knight's training?"

Unlike with the treasurer, whom he had not even glanced at, Count Aethelred turned to face Gidwin as he asked.

"I've never caught the slightest hint of it before. It just flared up yesterday out of nowhere. He couldn't have been training on his own, yet the talent was unmistakable. No, honestly, he was extraordinary. Almost hard to believe."

"......"

Count Aethelred thought to himself: perhaps it was only natural, given that the boy carried the blood of House Vǫlsungr, the last lineage of the gods.

But that distinction was hardly a welcome thing. His duty was to keep the secret absolutely, and to raise Valery safely until the current King died.

There was nothing to be gained by drawing people's attention with uncommon talent. It could make the secret harder to keep, and if the boy took up a blade only to get himself killed showing off somewhere, that would be the end of everything.

And since the Count had not seen it for himself, he could only guess that it had been impressive by the standards of children. Even granting the boy had some talent, he did not think much of Valery's actual ability.

"Why not put him to the test once?"

Gidwin cautiously offered his opinion.

For a mere squire, not even a knight, to offer an opinion was perhaps overstepping, but he had served the Count long enough that an occasional word might be permitted.

Count Aethelred did not rebuke him. Unexpectedly, he only shook his head with a faint smile.

"Every man has his own place."

To Gidwin's ears, it sounded like saying that a Bastard was, in the end, still a Bastard. Count Aethelred seemed to regard Valery the way one regards a sore that would not heal, and yet he did not seem willing to take any active hand in supporting him. At least, that was how it felt to Gidwin.

"And Harold? Is he attending his lessons properly?"

Count Aethelred asked after Harold.

Harold, as it happened, had plenty to do. His mornings were spent in lessons with his tutor, and his afternoons in what was called the Seven Arts of Knighthood, the seven skills a knight was required to master.

His lessons covered Heraldry, history, arithmetic, and Court Etiquette; the Seven Arts of Knighthood were Swordsmanship, Archery, Spearmanship, Horsemanship, swimming, chess, and Versification.

Some could be learned once and drawn on for a lifetime; others demanded a lifetime of diligent practice.

Mastering them all was no small feat, but at the very least a man was expected to be better than passable with arms. Some noble houses drilled the martial arts so obsessively that their sons could not even read or write.

Because in this world, a blade carried more weight than any word written or spoken.

"Pardon? Ah, well...... hahaha......"

At the Count's question, however, Gidwin laughed awkwardly and tried to smooth it over. The truth was that Harold had been cutting nearly every lesson, too busy at play.

Each morning, the sound of the tutor roaring through the halls after Harold had become something like a fixed ritual at Winsloe Castle. Only when the Count was away, of course.

Stealing a glance at him, Gidwin saw that the Count did not look especially angry. His expression, rather, was that of a man on the verge of sighing at any moment.

"It's high time he started acting his age......"

In a world where fifteen marked adulthood, and where boys younger than that sometimes saw battle, thirteen could hardly be dismissed as simply too young.

"S, still, everyone loves the young master. They'd go through fire and water for him, never shrinking from the hardest work."

Gidwin did his best to defend Harold. To him, Harold was at once a lord owed his loyalty, a friend, and a younger brother to look after.

But Count Aethelred shook his head.

"A Sovereign who is only loved cannot keep what is his. You boys are too young to understand. Once that paper-thin wrapping we call peace is torn away, you have no notion how savage the world becomes. The reason a man studies and trains day after day is so that, when a storm too fierce to bear comes down on him, he can find some way to live through it."

With a troubled expression, Count Aethelred turned once more to the window. Before him lay a land as peaceful as any could be, and yet to him it seemed precarious.

Gidwin was not unable to understand his Liege Lord's worry, but he thought it a little excessive.

Because he had never seen fields piled with corpses, or rivers turned red with blood.

After he had announced he would quit his post as cashier, Valery found himself with nothing to do. Put another way, he was living in the castle, idling and eating his fill.

In a world where "he who does not work shall not eat" was taken for plain common sense, he drew no shortage of quietly disapproving looks from here and there.

But no one dared step forward and say a word. The treatment of a Bastard depended on some order, or at least some hint of feeling, from Count Aethelred or his wife, by which the servants might gauge how to behave. There had been nothing of the kind.

Which meant a Bastard could be handled as something lower than a Lowborn or treated all but as true nobility, depending on circumstance. It rested entirely on the Sovereign's favor or regard.

Tommy used to slight him in small, unspoken ways, but after the birthday even that had stopped, leaving Valery quite literally untouched by anyone, a stranger drifting at the edges of the household.

No, there was exactly one exception.

Valery sat somewhere on the slope below the castle, gazing endlessly out across the fields.

Far off, herds of cattle that looked no bigger than specks as they grazed, carts coming and going along the roads, people bent nearly in half at the waist as they weeded the earth, the world beyond that distant ridge, and, somewhere in that world, his mother.

Mother, mama: names Valery had never once spoken aloud, nor carried in his heart. Before regression, it had never even occurred to him to search for her. If he asked himself why, he could say only that rage had blinded him.

To look for her now, there were processes to go through, or obstacles to break through.

To begin with, the King, unlike the common customs of marriage, was permitted several wives. And they did not live together either; he would stay at the wife's household for a time, and once she was with child, the King would depart.

It was the method chosen by the first King, that is, by Valery's grandfather, to stabilize the realm in the wake of conquest.

Originally, the Nordics had had no concept of a kingdom. There were only countless tribes. When they suddenly acquired a country overnight through conquest, the only way to earn the support of the Chieftains and keep it was surely through the alliance-form of marriage.

But such a system would produce so many Princes that the country risked being torn to pieces, for the Nordics traditionally practiced Partible Inheritance.

And so what was established was this strange, or grotesque, or sacred law of Royal Succession.

A Prince, upon birth, was taken from his mother at once, and his name, his title, and the relevant particulars were entered into what was called the Golden Seal Registry.

The Registry was kept by people known as the Rune Mages, who assigned guardians to keep the secret and raise the Prince.

When the Royal Father passed away, the Valkyries, that is, the King's daughters, consulted the Registry and delivered to the Princes their true names and titles. From that moment on, the War of Royal Succession began.

Under such a system, not even the King himself had any way of knowing who his sons were or what they were called. A Prince, in particular, could not possibly know who his mother was unless he looked into the Golden Seal Registry himself.

So learning the identity of one's mother was, in practical terms, all but impossible. Not unless one went to war with the King, or committed the great sin of killing a Rune Mage.

He could do it if he chose to. The Valery of now was capable of it. But was it worth going that far? At any price? And even if he did find her, what then?

"Wid."

A breeze from somewhere brushed his nose with the scent of acacia blossoms, and with it came a voice calling a name that was not his real one. He turned, and there was the one person who bothered him, Harold.

He had his half-grown hounds with him. When Valery turned, the hounds came bounding up, tails wagging, trying to lick his face and his hands.

It was every bit the nuisance it seemed, but Valery did not actually dislike dogs.

Fending them off just enough and petting them just enough, he answered.

"What?"

"What're you doing?"

"Can't you see? I'm sitting."

Undeterred by Valery's curt tone, Harold came closer still, sat down beside him, and petted the dogs along with him.

"You know, that day. At the banquet. Did I do something wrong?"

"No."

"Were you upset?"

"No."

"I'll apologize. I'm sorry."

"......You're going to be a Count, and you apologize?"

"Counts aren't allowed to apologize?"

"Unbelievable."

Valery shook his head as if thoroughly done with Harold's hopelessly naive reactions. Harold, for his part, only grinned.

Harold fell into thought for a moment. The two of them sat together in the spring breeze blowing over the hill.

Then the smile faded from Harold's face, and with what was, in his own way, a serious expression, he spoke.

"Want to look for her together? Your mother."

"Don't pity me. That really gets under my skin."

"It's not pity."

"And don't joke about it."

"Not joking."

"Don't make me angry."

"Did I make you angry? Me?"

Valery furrowed his brow and shot a sharp glare at Harold. But there was no venom in it.

Most people, meeting the force of Valery's gaze, were not merely cowed but frozen on the spot. Harold, though, seemed entirely unaffected. That irritated Valery, just a little.

"I already told you. We're brothers. I mean it. I want you to know that."

Harold said it with something faintly bitter in his expression.

Whoever he had inherited this softness from, it had moved past merely pathetic into something almost admirable. Valery meant to cut him down with a sharp word. Worry about yourself. Leave other people alone.

The words came as far as his throat, but in the end they would not come out.

"Hey, you pair of idiots. What are you doing down there? Bunch of layabouts."

Valery and Harold turned at the same time. Gidwin was looking down at them.

"The Count's asking for you. Come on."

Harold flinched, then rose from the ground with a glum look on his face.

Valery stayed where he was, petting the dogs. Watching him, Gidwin said,

"What are you doing? Wid, you too. He called for you as well."

"......"

Valery, who had hardly expected to be summoned, found himself caught off guard. Me? Why?

He thought about it briefly but could make no sense of it, and simply rose, brushing himself off. With the dogs, he climbed the slope.

When they reached the Count's office, he was seated at his desk, going over documents. Writs of permission, contracts, letters, and the like.

Light streamed in through the window at his back, slanting across him and the desk. The room was thick with the smell of wood, of paper and ink.

Though Gidwin had brought the two boys in, Count Aethelred did not so much as spare them a glance, and for a while went on reviewing the papers on his desk.

Unsure whether he was about to be scolded for skipping lessons or for what had happened at the banquet, Harold stole glances at his father before finally opening his mouth.

"You called for us."

At his son's words, the Count at last raised his head slowly and looked at Harold and Valery. He regarded them in silence for a moment, then, without preamble, gave his orders.

"The horse fair in Blackcen opens in a few days. Go and sell the two horses, Roden and Kale. Get a fair price or trade them, either way, see the deal done and come back. Off with you."

Blackcen was a city belonging to the County of Winsloe. Roden and Kale were both riding horses, Roden an old stallion, Kale a young mare.

The unexpected order left Valery and Harold both at a loss, but Count Aethelred had already turned back to his papers, and they could neither ask nor say anything.

"I said, go."

Count Aethelred repeated himself. Forcing a Sovereign to say the same thing twice was a breach of etiquette, so Valery and Harold had no choice but to leave the office.

"Horses...... do you know how much they go for?"

Harold asked, thinking that Valery, having served as cashier for some time, would have at least a rough idea.

But Valery knew the market for horses regardless of that post. Iron and horses were strategic goods, and before regression he had attended to them carefully.

"There's no set price. It depends. In wartime they go for a fortune, but that's not where we are now. Even outside of war, the price that forms at a given horse fair shifts with the situation. It changes with what sort of horses are brought in, and with what sort people are looking to buy. The big players, the so-called heavy hitters, have a serious hand in setting the price, but even they can't do whatever they please. It's not too late to go first, watch how things move, and then decide. He said a trade was fine too, so if we can swap them for warhorses that'd be a real haul, but don't count on it."

"......"

Harold stared at Valery, eyes wide with astonishment.

"How do you know all that?"

Valery ignored him and simply walked on. Harold hurried after him, pressing on,

"Wid really is clever. I'll just leave the whole thing to you, then."

At that, Valery stopped and turned to glare at him, voice hardening into a warning.

"Hey. Get your head on straight. You're the one making the decisions. All I can do is help a little. And don't take a horse trade lightly. People who won't ever have to come back here are capable of anything. Do you think they'll bow down and play nice just because you're the Count's son? If someone roughs you up, jumps on a horse, and rides across the border, how exactly do you plan to catch him?"

"......S, sorry. I just......"

Rattled by Valery's sharp rebuke, Harold stumbled over his words.

Valery turned his head away as if thoroughly fed up and walked on by himself. Even so, Harold doggedly kept up.

Valery thought he understood why Count Aethelred had given them this order. The Count seemed to want Harold to learn a little about how the world ran, and to hand Valery the work of treasurer. Or, failing that, the role of assistant to the current treasurer.

The trouble was that none of this had happened before regression. That he would end up cleaning up after Harold was something he had never once imagined.

But whether it was better to spend his days counting coin and keeping his presence as faint as possible, or better to live as he did now, even Valery could not say.

It was a nuisance, and yet it was not dull. It was rather like having bought something he had not wanted, at a price he had not wanted to pay.

The greatest change was that, alongside his guilt toward Harold, he no longer simply disliked the boy. And that, more than anything, left Valery uneasy.