* * *

Valeri reached Hemsley village toward evening. Perhaps patrol officers had been scarce lately, for at first the villagers merely stared blankly at the stranger riding into their village. Once they learned he was a territorial patrol officer, however, they offered him lodging. An ordinary traveler might have been allowed to sleep in a barn if he was lucky, or driven out of the village if he was not, but Valeri was given a place in the village headman's home.

The house had no separate rooms, though, not even curtains partitioning the space. Having to share it with the headman's family was decidedly uncomfortable. The headman had a wife, two grown sons, two daughters-in-law, and six grandchildren. Valeri was staying in a house occupied by twelve people.

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

Four little children stared at the sword Valeri had propped against the wall, evidently curious.

"Want to try drawing it?" he asked.

One nodded, sucking a finger. Valeri handed the sword over. Unable even to lift it properly, the child rested it on the floor and tried to pull it from its scabbard.

Just then, a woman—either the child's mother or aunt—rushed over and smacked the back of the child's head.

SMACK!

"Ow!"

"I'm sorry, sir. You, come here! The rest of you too. Stop bothering the gentleman."

She swept all the children away.

Valeri propped his sword against the wall again and sat for a while with a hand to his forehead. Deciding this would never do, he asked the headman,

"Do you have a barn or something? Give me something to cover myself with, and I'll sleep there."

"What? Oh, no, we couldn't have a patrol officer sleeping in a barn. There's a widow's house. Would you like to stay there?"

"... No, never mind."

Valeri considered it very briefly, then shook his head.

"By the way, has the tax collector been here?"

"The tax collector? Ah, do you mean that Moneygrubber? A thoroughly vile bastard. We used to just beat him up and chase him off, but these days he's taking hostages and pulling all sorts of tricks."

Beat him up? Were they allowed to do that? In truth, allowed or not, this was how things worked once you strayed even slightly beyond a lord's reach. A viscount might administer the land, but outside his directly controlled territory, people routinely defied him as if to say, What, are you the duke?

Even peasants had a tough, fierce streak. They did not obediently pay their taxes just because someone told them to. Astrians and Nords alike had lived through harsh times. When it came to protecting what was theirs, they were more than willing to fight.

Being a viscount was no easy task either. He was effectively trapped in the middle, suffering from both sides: if the peasants rose up or trouble broke out, the duke held him responsible.

To a lord, villages, towns, and their inhabitants were assets of paramount importance. A peasant revolt was itself a loss of assets, and suppressing it meant cutting into his own flesh. Managing a domain well—keeping defiance in check while securing tax revenue and all the rest—was therefore no simple matter.

Seen in that light, Earl Æthelred was an extraordinarily diligent and capable administrator of his lands.

Of course, there were places where people regarded a tax collector as death itself, but here in Krischer, they seemed to think little of him.

"Besides, that fellow isn't even the tax collector. The real one is someone else. To be precise, he bought the right to collect taxes from the collector. Seems he's working hard to recoup what he spent, but we wouldn't pay the collector himself. Why would we pay a man like that?"

You could sell tax-collection rights? Nothing seemed to be working properly. Frankly, it sounded like a bit of a shitshow.

In any case, the real tax collector had thrown up his hands and sold off the rights, and as the headman said, the buyer now needed to recoup his investment. But there was no chance of that going smoothly.

Valeri could understand a little better why the man had gone after even the rangers. Unable to collect much money, he had apparently tried to squeeze something out of them instead. Valeri had thought he was someone abusing a petty scrap of power to harass people, but he hardly seemed worth worrying about.

Still, he could not simply let the man keep stirring up trouble everywhere. Perhaps a stern warning was in order. The rangers served directly under the duke, after all. Demanding things from them was certainly overstepping.

"I see. Thank you for telling me."

Valeri lay down on the bed. He had put his sword in a corner in case the children tried touching it again. He turned over to sleep, but sensed someone nearby. Looking back, he found a child or two standing beside the bed and staring at him, seemingly wanting to sleep with him.

He patted an empty spot on the mattress to invite them up. He had expected one or two to climb aboard, but they all piled on.

It was not as though he had no regrets, but how could every part of a journey be pleasant? He simply squeezed into a corner of the bed and tried to sleep.

Dawn came, and Valeri opened his eyes. The headman's family was still asleep. He quietly got up and went to the village well to wash. Hauling up a bucket of water, he poured it over his head. As always, the dizzying shock drove sleep away in an instant.

A few early risers stared wide-eyed at the stark-naked Valeri, but there was no other way to wash.

He returned to the headman's house and quickly dried and dressed before the others woke. Though the interior was dark, familiarity allowed him to put on even his complicated equipment swiftly.

One of the children on the bed opened their eyes and looked up at him. He stroked the child's head once, then went outside. At the stable, he brought Snow out, tacked him up, and mounted. Then he rode off without looking back.

CLIP-CLOP, CLIP-CLOP, CLIP-CLOP.

He ate in the saddle as he traveled. After perhaps six or seven hours, the sun stood high overhead, and an unfamiliar wind blew toward him. A sea breeze.

He could neither see the sea nor hear its waves, but a strong wind came from far to the east, tossing his platinum-blond hair incessantly. Beside the road stood a forest of tall, thick-trunked conifers. This was Thunder Forest. The road ran straight east along its edge, and Valeri followed it.

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

"Get lost, all of you! I said get lost! I told you to bring money, not a fucking crowd!"

A low hill hid the scene from view, but when Valeri followed the road around it, he found a hostage crisis unfolding. A man held a blade to the throat of a girl who looked three or four years old, shouting desperately at the men surrounding him.

"Get lost! Can't you hear me? You want the little bitch to die? Go! Get out of here!"

The men surrounding the hostage-taker were all huge, with forearms as thick as logs. Most were unarmed, though a few carried felling axes. Woodcutters, or carpenters? They seemed to be both.

"Everyone, stand back!"

A shout like the roar of a wild beast burst from among them. Everyone flinched, including the hostage-taker. The man who had shouted stepped forward. He too was enormous, but he was old, his hair and beard half white.

Valeri recognized him at once. Thorvald. Thorvald the Thunderbringer. He had been an old man before Valeri's return, and he was an old man now, so his appearance had not changed much. His hair and beard were simply not entirely white yet, and perhaps he had a few fewer wrinkles.

His eyes burned as fiercely now as they had then—eyes filled with quiet anger, indomitable spirit, and resolve.

He stepped forward, tore open his shirt, and addressed the hostage-taker.

"Come. Come and stab me to death. It will win you renown. But let the child go."

"... What the hell are you talking about, old man? I asked for money in the first place! Instead of bringing it, you all come swarming over here. And what renown would I get for killing you? I don't need that shit! Give me money! Money!"

Watching quietly from a distance, Valeri realized that the little girl being held hostage was Thorvald's granddaughter.

It felt strange. Back then, he had been the one holding her hostage.

The hostage-taker edged backward. He seemed to have given up on getting the money and decided to escape first. Valeri thought he knew who the man was, too. Probably the fellow called Moneygrubber, who had bought the tax collector's collection rights and was going around doing all manner of mischief.

At this point, tax collectors and purchased rights seemed to have gone out the window. Apparently, he had simply decided to become a criminal. People tended to lose their fucking minds when they started thinking about recouping their losses.

What was remarkable was that the girl, only three or four years old, remained quiet without crying. Did she not understand what was happening, or did she instinctively know that crying would not help?

Moneygrubber kept backing away, while Thorvald could only stand there and watch. Even offering his own life had accomplished nothing. There truly was nothing he could do.

So Valeri stepped in. As he rode toward the scene, the others finally noticed him and turned to look.

"Who the hell are you? Stay back! I said stay back!" Moneygrubber shouted.

"I am a territorial patrol officer."

"... S-so what? Sir. Come any closer and I'll k-kill the girl!"

"What do you want? I want to resolve this peacefully, without anyone getting hurt."

"Well, m-money, obviously."

Valeri dismounted and approached the hostage-taker as everyone watched.

"Don't come any closer! I'll kill her!" Moneygrubber shouted again.

Valeri stopped, cast off his cloak, unfastened his sword, and threw it far away. He tossed every weapon on his person well out of reach, including his dagger. Then he took a purse from inside his clothes and poured its contents into his palm. There were no fewer than seven gold coins, along with dozens of silver ones.

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

"I am unarmed now. As you can see, all I have is money. Let's trade it for the girl. Then no one gets hurt, and we both get what we want."

Moneygrubber could not tear his eyes from the coins in Valeri's palm. He swallowed hard, then finally began inching closer.

"D-drop the money on the ground."

"No. I want the girl. This is an exchange, not a one-sided demand. I cannot simply give you the money."

"..."

Put that way, it made sense. The situation was so urgent, his emotions so overwrought, and the object of his desire glittering right before his eyes, that Moneygrubber obediently did as Valeri said.

Once they were close enough, Valeri extended his other hand to take the girl, and Moneygrubber reached for the coins. They drew closer still. Then, when the tension reached its peak, Valeri let the money fall to the ground.

"Huh?!"

Moneygrubber's stance faltered for an instant, and Valeri yanked the girl toward himself. The man sensed something had gone wrong, but the clatter of coins on the ground brought his mind to a standstill. Should he attack Valeri, seize the girl again, or pick up the money...?

His brief hesitation was an eternity to Valeri. In a single motion, he snatched away Moneygrubber's sword and drove it into his throat.

"Ghk!"

The man collapsed. Valeri watched dispassionately as he died, then addressed the girl, holding her in one arm.

"Your name is Gudrun, isn't it?"

"Huh? How did you know?"

"I thought it might be. Weren't you scared?"

"Hmm... That man was more scared than me."

Gudrun pointed at the dead Moneygrubber. Valeri let out a small laugh.

Still carrying Gudrun, he approached Thorvald and handed his granddaughter over. From her grandfather's arms, the girl kept looking at Valeri.

"There's no need to thank me. I'll consider it repayment of a debt."

"..."

Thorvald could not fully understand what Valeri meant, but honoring his request not to thank him would be difficult. He was so moved, so grateful, that his heart trembled.

The others came over and picked up the scattered coins. They returned them to Valeri, with not a single coin missing. He gathered his weapons and cloak from the ground and brushed off the dust.

Once he had put everything back on, he turned to the grandfather and granddaughter. The sea breeze blew, tossing his hair and billowing his cloak.

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

But now the sky was pure blue, and the sunlight could not have been clearer.