༺ 𓆩 Chapter 51 — The Most Likely Future 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
Isaac's ultra long-range magic had succeeded.
The ice crystal had, in all likelihood, driven through Baris's left eye and reached his brain - there was no way to confirm it from where he stood, but news of Baris's death or survival would be along soon enough.
Even if the man yet drew breath, he would be no proper man any longer, and that would serve as warning enough to those who cast covetous eyes upon another's city.
"............."
Isaac rose unsteadily to his feet.
There was no strength left in his body.
Coming down the spiral stair of the bell tower, he missed his footing more than once and nearly tumbled.
To go rolling down a railless flight of steps might well have ant following Baris into the dark.
Bracing his hand against the wall, Isaac descended one careful step after another.
Every step gave him the dizzying sense that he was about to fall.
"Hooo."
When he had at last set foot on solid ground, Isaac paused for a mont to draw a relieved breath.
Then he went on toward the chapel.
On the pew, just as Isaac had left him before climbing the bell tower, Bill lay deep in slumber.
"Hey, hey."
Isaac nudged the dozing Bill with his foot.
"Huh, ngh, yes? What is it?"
Bill startled awake, wiping at the dried saliva caked white at the corner of his mouth.
"Let's go."
"What? But Baris—" Bill clipped his own voice short, lest soone overhear what he had been about to say. "What about the assassination?"
"It's done."
With that, Isaac walked out of the church at his leisure.
"What—what's done?"
"You'll know soon enough."
Hurrying after Isaac, Bill noticed that the air of the streets was rather different from before.
The cocks were crowing, and the city watch was moving about in so haste.
"Surely not…"
While Isaac walked on ahead with his hood pulled low, Bill caught hold of a watchman whose face he knew. It was a watchman he had often slipped a fat bribe to whenever he had spotted the man on guard at the bridge.
"Jero."
"Bill? You're alive. I thought the Weissmann fellows had done you in."
"I don't go down that easy. What's got you in such a hurry before sunup?"
"Later."
The watchman shoved Bill aside, aning to fall back into the column.
But Bill caught hold of him again and pressed three coppers into his hand.
"Ah, I shouldn't be saying any of this."
The watchman cast his eyes about him with a troubled look.
Bill laid two more coppers on top.
At that, the watchman drew Bill into a nearby alley.
He looked round more than once to make sure no one was about.
"You're going to keel over from the suspense. Going to tell your great-grandchildren? Out with it already."
The man's excessive caution had Bill ready to co out of his skin.
"The mayor's dead. His left eye was bored straight through. Punched right into the brain, killed him. Fourteen guardsn rotating watches around the place, servants in and out attending to him, and that's how he ended up."
"............"
Bill's mouth slowly fell open.
"The funny thing is, no one knows yet what killed him. A great deal of blood and brain matter ran out of the hole, but the only foreign thing they pulled out was a single strand of straw. We've taken to calling it the Straw Murder among ourselves, by way of a joke—"
The watchman, evidently set on giving full value for the five coppers, was pouring out everything he knew.
But Bill no longer heard the watchman's voice from a certain point on.
A coldness ran through his body as though cold water had been thrown over him.
That Isaac was the one behind it, there could be no doubt.
But what Isaac had done, he could not begin to guess.
Could it really be that God Himself had answered Isaac's prayer.
Letting his mind run wild with one outlandish notion after another, Bill slipped out of the alley and went chasing after Isaac.
***⚜***
Early dawn, Carlson gathered up his belongings in his room.
He had stayed longer than he had intended.
He had co both to carry out Isaac's orders and to look in on Randolph's bereaved family.
Yet in truth Carlson felt as though he had passed the past few days in deep rest.
The credit, no doubt, belonged to the upright and gentle nature of Madam Randolph.
The children, too, took after her.
Perhaps it was true that like sought out like.
For Randolph had been such a man himself.
Madam Randolph had sold off a portion of the parcel of land sent by the Margrave and set up an inn within the city of Bern.
Though the inn was a recent venture and its rates higher than the others, it had quickly drawn custom.
Most inns crowded the whole of the second floor with straw pallets to take in as many guests as they could.
Here, by contrast, private rooms were on offer.
The bedding, too, was kept clean.
To Carlson, who had only ever lodged at flea-ridden inns, the beds in this place were almost too tidy by half.
There was no rotten stink of dried fluids and aged fabric mingled together; the blankets and pillows carried the scent of wildflowers.
The food, too, was admirable.
Not the everlasting stew, where leftover scraps were swept up and tossed in together to boil, but proper fare made with fresh ingredients.
That all of it was possible owed to ample funds and the diligence of the lady's nature.
Though it was still dim outside, the sounds of soone moving briskly about could already be heard from the ground floor.
Down there, as on every other morning, the lady and her servants were busy at their tasks.
They were tidying the floor, wiping down the tables and chairs, gathering up used bedding to take to the stream, and making ready a simple breakfast.
The children, who had risen earlier than Carlson, were lending their hands to it as well.
Randolph's children were likely to prove more diligent than the soldiers of the Vinfeldt camp.
"You're up?"
"Yes."
Carlson answered the lady's greeting with a single word.
"Are you off sowhere?"
It was Wolfgang, Randolph's eldest, who had spotted Carlson with his sword and rucksack in hand.
"I've stayed longer than I ant to. Ti to head back."
For Carlson, today might prove a turning point in his life.
Isaac had said he would assassinate Mayor Baris before the sun went down.
Not rely kill him, he had said, but see him dead without ever having beco aware of Isaac's existence.
Could such a thing be possible?
Carlson knew well enough that Isaac kept the asure of his magic hidden, and that what he hid surpassed by so margin the half-trained noble mages.
But how far it surpassed them, even Carlson could not say.
He could only guess at it dimly, from that earlier business of the bishop reduced to ashes.
Whether Isaac succeeded or failed was not, in itself, what mattered to Carlson.
What mattered was, in the case of failure, which path would best serve his revenge.
That question had robbed him of much sleep the night before.
"You're going already, mister?"
The second son, Hermann, also wore plain disappointnt on his face.
Wolfgang, the elder; Hermann, the younger.
The two brothers were now ten and nine, respectively.
"You haven't even taught us swordsmanship properly."
"As I told you, you still have a choice before you."
Carlson laid his hands on the shoulders of the two boys and spoke.
Randolph had often described himself as a man bound.
When in his cups, he would now and then speak of imagining what his life might have been had he never sworn his oath to the Margrave.
Of himself crossing the continent freely, unfettered by oath or land, walking the seas.
If he were born again, he would say, he would wish to be a rchant.
He had once boarded a galley to escort a diplomat, and only then, he said, had he understood for the first ti how narrow the kingdom was, and how broad the world.
He did not, he said, want his children to live bound as he had been.
He had been an unlikely sort of man for the post of company commander, and an unlikely sort of man for a knight.
"I want to protect Goethe, like Father did."
"Wolfgang, Hermann. Stop pestering the man and co help."
The lady called out.
"Yes!"
Hermann scampered off, but Wolfgang stood quite still and looked at Carlson.
"I know it's silly. Soone like could never beco what Father was. I haven't the gift for it."
In the few days he had spent here, Carlson had given Wolfgang and Hermann the rudints of swordsmanship.
Sad to say, neither of them had any great gift for the blade.
To beco a knight of Randolph's caliber would be hard for them, even with bone-grinding labor.
Wolfgang was only ten years of age, and yet he understood his own asure well.
"Even so, I want to live with honor, as Father did."
Wolfgang's eyes were like Randolph's.
The thought ca to Carlson, suddenly, that if Isaac's assassination went amiss and his own revenge slipped out of reach, working at this inn and teaching the children to use a sword would not be such an ill way to live.
And if either of the two boys took up the rchant's trade, it might prove rather diverting to follow him about as a sworn sword and wander the corners of the world.
To live thus and et his end might give him, at least, the courage to face Randolph again.
It was, of course, only an idle supposition.
Carlson opened his mouth.
"Wolfgang. Your father wished for Hermann to see a wider world. Margrave Goethe is a man worth following, and to be his knight is an honorable thing. But all his ti at Winterband, your father longed for freedom."
"Father did?"
"Whatever path you take, I know you will see it through. But to walk the road your father never walked, the road he wished for himself — is that not also an honorable thing?"
At Carlson's words, a flicker passed through Wolfgang's eyes.
"Wolfgang, Wolfgang! What are you doing?"
The lady was calling for him.
"Thank you, mister."
Wolfgang nodded as though sothing had been settled within him, and ran off to the kitchen.
Carlson did not leave the inn at once.
His path was not yet set.
He sat himself down in a corner of the ground floor and drank a cup of honeyed water.
Now was the ti for waiting.
If, by the ti the sun set, no news of Baris's death ca, or if Baris died but Isaac's na was spoken as the assassin, then Carlson would set out at once for Vinfeldt.
There he would gather the rest of his belongings and pass through the Black Forest to the harbor city of Auton.
There he would gather what he could about his enemy, Viscount Bottr, and then make for the man's domain.
Carlson set his mind to working out how he ought to act if the assassination ca to nothing.
The odds of it succeeding, no matter how he weighed them, were slim.
Gifted as Isaac was, even granting him the na of genius, he was no more than twelve.
He had not been raised an assassin, and he had no inborn knack for the work.
His gifts ran, by all accounts, to magic, and magic could serve as a tool of murder, but a gift for magic did not translate into a gift for assassination.
Hence Carlson found it far more useful to settle a course of action for the case of failure than to plan around success.
"Is your head sore from drink? Shall I bring you another cup of honey water?" Madam Randolph asked.
She must have taken Carlson's deep brooding for the heaviness of a hangover.
"No, I am quite well. Just a cup of water, if you please."
"Yes. A mont, please. Welco! Oh—did the trade go well?"
A party of foreign rchants had co through the door of the inn, and Madam Randolph greeted them cheerfully.
They were rchants who were due to leave Bern this very day, and had been out early to call upon their trading partners.
Yet their faces did not look so cheerful.
"The deal fell through."
"You hadn't found a fur dealer to your liking?"
At the lady's question, the foreign rchants' faces grew gloomy.
"In truth, our trade goods this round were not to be furs. We had heard the furs of this place were of fine make and ant to try a delivery on a trial basis. We were short of funds, so we asked a wealthy man of this city to stand surety. The fee was steep, but he was a man rich enough to back even a sizeable guarantee, and one of standing and good na besides."
"Did this rich man refuse the surety?"
Madam Randolph asked.
Another of the foreign rchants answered.
"No. We had the bond from him in hand, only yesterday. And then this dawn, that bond was made worthless."
"What? Why?"
"The guarantor is dead."
"Dead, you say?"
Madam Randolph's voice rose.
"It's the most senseless thing. How is it the mayor of so great a city, with so many soldiers about him, can die in his own house?"
Scrrrk—!
The very mont the foreign rchant let those words fall, Carlson found himself rising to his feet, his chair scraping behind him.
"Carlson?"
Madam Randolph regarded him with a puzzled look.
"Do you know yet why he was killed, or by whose hand?"
Carlson's question ca in haste.
"No, sad to say. The eye was bored through, but no one knows by what."
"Hah."
"Did your party also seek the mayor's surety?"
"…Sothing of the sort."
Carlson answered with a thin laugh.
To be precise, it was the mayor's death that had stood as surety.
A surety that Isaac was a man worth following.
"I must be going."
He hurried out of the inn.
"Carlson, what about breakfast?"
The lady ca out after him.
"I'm fine."
"Wait a mont."
The street outside the inn was in disarray.
Word of the mayor's death must have already gotten about, for it was on the tongues of every passerby.
Divine judgnt, said one. What about the losses now, said another. What's to beco of the city council. There was no end of talk.
"I packed up so bread and cheese."
"You needn't have."
"Take it as a token from us. Thanks to you, the children have been able to let Randolph go, a little. Thank you, for speaking of him. For rembering him kindly, as a man of his word—"
"There is no need to thank . Randolph was such a man to begin with."
Carlson kept his eyes from the lady's, which had gone red at the rims.
Randolph could have lived.
Had Carlson given his all.
Had he not made the strategic choice for the sake of revenge.
Had he not weighed the chance of the enemy escaping and spreading word of his abilities.
Had it gone otherwise, Randolph's family would have been living well in their own land.
"The boys troubled you a fair bit, didn't they? Boys of that age need soone to look up to. Randolph too, when he was a boy, set his heart on serving at Winterband out of admiration for the Margrave."
At the lady's words, sothing ca back to Carlson.
What Gunther had asked of him at Vinfeldt.
That the children of the tribesfolk needed a back to look upon and follow.
Could that back have been his.
Could it ever be.
For the tribal children of Vinfeldt, at least, he was under no compulsion to be such a back.
He owed those children nothing.
The rcenary's reckoning, which Carlson had learned at his father's knee, applied to children no less than to grown n.
For that very reason, Carlson had to be such a back to Randolph's children.
"Here."
Carlson loosed the scabbard at his waist and pressed it into the lady's hands.
After his fight with the King of Wolves, he had been careless with its keeping; rust had taken to it and the edge was nicked.
He had ant, originally, to sell it to a smith for a pittance and put the money toward a new blade.
A sword without value to him.
But to the boys, it might an sothing.
"Why are you giving —"
"Whether it be Wolfgang, or Hermann. If either of them takes up this road, let him take this sword and—"
Carlson paused for a mont to think.
By the ti these children were grown.
Would he have seen his revenge through.
Would he be alive at all.
If both those things were so, where would he be standing then.
Would he go back to Winterband?
Would he be standing watch at Goethe Manor?
In that mont, Carlson called to mind the future he thought most likely.
"Tell them to co to the village of Vinfeldt."
"Vinfeldt… village? But there's nothing there but barren wilderness, isn't there?"
"By the ti the boys are grown, there will be a village there too. A village rather pleasant to live in."
Carlson answered without the slightest doubt, and then set his feet to moving.
He had work to do.
END σϝ CHAPTER
User Comments
0 comments from readers