Forestfolk. To people like us, born in the Ancient Gold Empire, they were a special race that served the emperor directly. They rarely left Ancient Gold Province, so normal people rarely ever met them, but they held a position higher than that of even the provincial officials. Their prestige was only natural, as they had served the one and only emperor the Ancient Gold Empire had ever known since the beginning. So when I was first asked by a friend to take a forestfolk on board, I was immediately ready to complain about the suffering he was about to put me through.
Most people from other countries would think our heads were in the clouds if we told them our emperor was a holy mystic. And honestly, not too many of the Empire’s people believed it either. But any merchant born here and familiar with foreign nations understood better than most that there was something off about the Ancient Gold Empire.
Countries were generally rather vague, fragile things. They were similar to the weather. They were large in scale, so looking up at them from below gave the impression that they would last forever, but it didn’t take much to make them fall apart, and they always did eventually. No matter how stable a country was, no sunny day lasted forever. Before you knew it, clouds had rolled in and rain had started to fall.
Even the most stable nations had to deal with the deaths of their rulers and the wide impact it had on their societies. Succession wars, dispersion of authority to nobles and other powerful families, corruption among government officials, internal conflict, threats from other nations...there were countless elements that, though they might not topple a nation by themselves, all shook its stability. At the very least, every human kingdom I knew of was like that.
But the Ancient Gold Empire was different. It had existed before the histories of every other nation currently standing, and it had never suffered so much as a hint of instability. There had been a few small incidents, of course, but nothing on a scale that threatened the entire Empire. In fact, according to some literature, those very incidents had been intentionally instigated to efficiently restructure and rejuvenate the political system. I couldn’t imagine anything like that in a human kingdom.
So, as a merchant who traveled to all sorts of foreign nations and made friends all over the world, I could recognize just how strange the Ancient Gold Empire really was. It wasn’t all that hard to believe such an Empire was ruled by a holy mystic. And the forestfolk were especially close to the emperor, meaning they might have even had personal connections to him. I knew the challenges in traveling the seas, so it was only natural I would balk at the idea of having one of those forestfolk on board. In fact, I had wanted to avoid meeting one at all.
But now that I had been asked, I couldn’t just refuse. Even if both would end up leaving a negative impression, the difference between accepting their request and giving them a bad experience was far different from refusing their request outright. Though I knew it would be a pain, I didn’t have any choice but to accept.
I knew that the forestfolk—or “elves,” as they were called in the center of the continent—didn’t associate much with humans. I had even heard rumors that farther west, elves were sold as slaves. But I was born in the Ancient Gold Empire, so no matter what anyone else called them, they were all forestfolk to me.
Apparently there had been an incident before I was born where some merchant from the West had tried to sell an elven slave here in the Ancient Gold Empire. It had caused no small amount of violence. When I was a kid, veteran sailors had told me the heroic story of how the merchant’s ship had been sunk and the forestfolk had been rescued and brought to Ancient Gold Province. That was how the merchants of the Ancient Gold Empire thought of the forestfolk.
As for today, the particular forestfolk I was introduced to was a rather peculiar guy. I was pretty confident in my ability to judge people, but unless my eyes deceived me, this forestfolk was also an accomplished warrior. He was reasonably stable on his feet despite the swaying of the ship and seemed quite knowledgeable about martial arts.
However, he didn’t have the same dangerous aura of other warriors, nor the scent of blood on him. Together with the way he gawked at everything on board, he seemed more like a curious child, so it was hard to pin down his character. Judging by his clothes and his name, he didn’t seem to be from the Ancient Gold Empire.
At the very least, it didn’t seem like he would be a huge hassle to have around, and that was enough for me. I gave the order to set sail. We would only be with each other for a short time anyway. There was no need for me to understand him on a deeper level. A quick, pleasant journey would be best for all of us.
Having successfully transported a forestfolk on board my own ship would also help my reputation within the Empire as well. In that regard, this wasn’t actually a bad deal for me.
At least, that’s what I had thought until I learned more about just who this Acer was, and how he would get us through all sorts of trouble.
The first bit of trouble we ran into was our encounter with the Skrolm navy. As a rival kingdom to our destination of Mintar, they levied a “tax” on ships passing through their waters, effectively stealing a portion of the money and goods they carried. They hoped that would encourage merchants to visit Skrolm instead. Of course, Mintar did the same with merchants visiting Skrolm, so it wasn’t like one of them was in the wrong, but it was a huge nuisance to merchant vessels like ours. Naturally, if escape was an option, we would take it. Luckily, with the distance between us and the current direction of the wind, outpacing them didn’t seem impossible, so we ignored their calls for us to halt and increased our speed.
“Captain Suin, this direction is no good.”
But in the middle of our attempted flight, Acer butted in. I was a bit frustrated at him for bothering me when I was at my busiest, so I asked him to be quiet and leave us alone without much thought. Rather than take offense, he warned me that two more ships were waiting ahead of us. Looking ahead, there was no sign of any other ships. But Acer seemed quite sure of his claim, and so he had come to warn me, thinking it would be a problem.
To be quite honest, I doubted him a little. There was no evidence of any ships ahead of us, and our escape would be all but guaranteed if the way was in fact clear. But because our chances looked so good, it seemed more believable that a trap had been set. And above all, Acer had no reason to lie to me. As for how he could know about two ships waiting ahead of us while we still couldn’t see them...I still don’t know, but I’d heard that forestfolk had strange powers.
“If you go that way, you should be able to escape.”
He then pointed south, and I decided to bet everything on him. That was probably the moment I stopped thinking of Acer as a passenger and started thinking of him as an ally.
And it hadn’t been just me either. From that moment on, he seemed to meld seamlessly into the crew. Before I knew it, they were treating him as an old friend that had voyaged with them for years. He traded drinks with them, fished off the side of the ship with them, and even learned from them how to work the sails. There were even times he ended up climbing to the crow’s nest. He leaped into a drunken brawl and knocked out seven sailors, only to come up laughing when the eighth took him down. Everyone on board, myself included, wanted to take him on as a permanent member of the crew. But he refused the invitation.
After disembarking in Mintar, I helped him search for a ship to take him farther west. I imagined the man who had asked me to take Acer on my ship felt much the same way I did then. It was hard to say goodbye to him, but I wanted to do everything I could to help. I knew I might never meet Acer again, but when I made it back to the Empire, there was a chance the guy who had asked me to take him would be in the same port. If the timing lined up well, we could trade stories about him over some drinks.
I could declare with pride that I had brought him safely to Mintar, and that I had secured a reliable ship to take him farther west.