Chapter 118

Altogether, including the overturned ones, there were four chairs. There were also the same number of steins, still filled with ale, which meant they had been gambling until the moment of the wolf attack. The fact the man had been left behind meant he must have passed out in the middle of the match. Either way, it seemed like all the respect he had been paid was all for show, and the thieves did not consider him one of their own. His right hand still gripped his booze-filled stein, and his left hand grasped a piece of paper. Col glanced to Myuri, silently asking if he was asleep, and then held his light up to the man. The paper was very old, and there was a picture on it. “A well?” Like a hound eager to eat her master’s food, Myuri propped her front paws up on the table and peered at the paper. Col also thought it might be a well, but it was a bit oddly shaped for that. As he wondered what it might be, Myuri’s ears suddenly pricked. “………” And she glanced at him. Perhaps the thieves who made their temporary escape had come back to check on things. “You go back first, Brother. I’ll go get my hat,” Myuri said, then dashed off into the darkness. Your hat doesn’t matter— But before he could open his mouth to say that, she was gone. He dropped his shoulders. He gave one last quick look around, and with his eyes adjusted to the dim, he spotted an emblazoned banner on the wall. Swords crossed before a shield was a common design, but upon closer look, he found it was not two swords, but one sword and— “One…hammer?” He thought it was a strange crest for a noble house, but he quickly snapped back to the present when Hobeln groaned again, and Col quickly retreated into the corridor. He stepped over the overturned crate and the spilled silver coins, relying on his memory to make the turn he thought was right, and went back the way they came. At worst, he would take the wrong path and Myuri would come running for him. He buried the lower half of his face in his cloak, just in case he happened to run into the thieves, so they would not see his face. Then, he came to a dead end. He could hear a voice echo in his head—You’re so stupid, Brother. The moment he thought about turning back, he suddenly realized this was not a wall, but a very sturdy door. Or perhaps, this was their treasury. Though he had no intentions of stealing from them, he figured it would not hurt to know what sort of assets they had at their disposal. So he pushed the heavy door open with his shoulder. The first thing to hit his nose was the smell of metal. He thought of the fervent faith the people of Ohlburg had as he wondered just how much they had accumulated, and he could feel his anger toward the scammers reaching a boil. Col and his allies were not fighting the Church for money. They were fighting the injustices of the world so they may live a nobler, more righteous life, so they may walk the correct path God had set out for them—and then he smelled something else. Pig fat. That smell had very little to do with gold and silver coin. But he knew in which situations the smell of grease might go along with that of metal. It was the one thing that rambunctious girl loved, the thing she cared for every day with the same passion she gave her own hair— “These…are…” The candlelight illuminated an extravagant store of weapons, an amount that was wholly unneeded for a simple scam. “What is…the meaning of this…?” It was far from unusual for those who devoted themselves to evil pursuits to arm themselves; it was the sheer number of weapons that caught Col by surprise. Every inch of the room was covered in weaponry, from his feet to the ceiling. “………” This was not someone who was pretending to be the Twilight Cardinal to afford a few days’ lodgings and food. In the beginning, Col thought it might be. But Ohlburg was a town practically overflowing with faith, and this hideout was the real thing, based in the ruins from the ancient empire. And all these weapons… Col gulped, took a slow step backward, then whirled around on his heel. He had no memory of how he managed to get outside. The next thing he knew, he was outside the hideout, and Myuri was close behind. Her little hat sat on her wolf head, a chain of pork sausage hung around her neck like a massive necklace, and she had a large piece of jerky in her mouth. She was clearly satisfied. Col stood staring blankly, unable to fully digest what he had seen in the hideout; Myuri, however, seemed just the same, and he found himself bursting out in laughter at the sight. That was when he realized he felt like he could breathe again. “They had a whole barrel of honey, too,” Myuri said, after changing back into her human form and stroking her spoils of war. They left the hideout and set up camp on top of a hill at around the halfway point between Ohlburg and Estatt. It was thick with grass and was nice and airy—the perfect place to spend the night. Furthermore, Myuri had not even blinked when she stole the food—though Col scolded her for stealing, she quickly countered by telling him it would be strange if a hungry wolf came for food, only to leave without touching anything. She saw she had turned the tables when he failed to muster a response, and she said, “Or should I just have thrown their food around and wasted all of it?” He had no choice but to admit defeat. “But more importantly, Brother—” She insisted that warming herself with a blanket alone was much better than warming by a peat fire, so she had done just that. Wrapped in her blanket, she pushed her shoulder against Col’s as they sat side by side. “What did you find?” Myuri was sharp even under normal circumstances, so she had immediately noticed her brother had been acting strange—though anyone could tell as much given the way he had been staggering around the outside of the hideout. “………” But Col found it difficult to answer. He could explain what he saw, of course—swords casually bundled together like firewood, spears leaning against the wall like silvergrass. There were also numerous bows and arrows, and frightening things like battle-axes. There had been helmets, shields, and a panoply of armor, both metal and leather. And then, there was the drunkard. “Do you think those people truly are nothing more than simple swindlers?” While Col had been quietly thinking, Myuri rifled through their things to pick out a piece of hard cracknel that would not mold in the humidity. When he spoke, her wolf ears and eyes turned to him. “Whahoo ’oo eem?” Her teeth were still stuck in the cracknel when she asked in turn, What do you mean? and she snapped off the rest of the biscuit. “After we parted ways, I took a wrong turn. The room I ended up in held a vast number of weapons.” Just as she had opened her mouth to take her second bite, Myuri’s hands stopped. “Weapons?” “There were clearly far too many if they only intended to arm themselves.” Myuri looked at the biscuit in her hand, then dug her fangs, sharper than any weapon, into it. “That’s proof that place was used in the wars in the time of the ancient empire.” “Do you mean to say people have cared for those weapons, with plenty of oil, continually for centuries?” Myuri bit into the biscuit, which crumbled and cracked loudly and ominously under her teeth. Then finally, she shrugged. “No. Just that it’s a good place for fighting.” Col was momentarily dumbfounded before he asked in return, “Do you think they plan on fighting Estatt?” “Do they have any other enemies here?” She looked at him flatly. “Their commander’s probably that noble guy.” At a glance, Hobeln looked like nothing more than a recluse, but he should have some sort of status. But if that were the case, then it invited more questions. “Is a commander the sort of person you can casually leave behind?” “There are a lot of bad guys like that in stories about righteous knights. The leader of the bad guys always ends up abandoned by his underlings, and then he has to beg for mercy.” Stories were stories and not reality—but Col knew there was no point in telling her this. Instead, he heaved a sigh and murmured, “Something is strange about this.” “You think so?” The next thing he knew, there was only a little bit of the cracknel left in Myuri’s hand. She furiously munched on it, and once she threw the last piece into her mouth, she brushed off her hands. “I’d say the problem got a lot simpler, because your fake turned out to be a genuine scammer.” “………” Myuri had said Col only saw a fourth of the world. He knew nothing of girls, which left half. And the half of that half he often failed to understand… “I think it’s all a lie,” she said. …that half was malice. “Someone saying he’s you to trick a bunch of people, then collecting money from them? I think all of it’s fake.” A wolf raced out from the dark of the forest, red eyes thinned into slits like two smiles. “Who’s your enemy, Brother?” she asked. Col looked up. From their elevated spot on the hill, he could see it in the distance—the shadow of the spire of the great cathedral, reaching to the heavens. The candlelight there burned all night long, faintly visible in the darkness. “It’s all being orchestrated by Estatt?” Myuri gave no answer. But she rested her head on his shoulder, signaling the end of the conversation, and pulled the blanket tighter around her. The reason they had rushed here from Aquent was precisely because they could not have this person pretending to be the Twilight Cardinal do irreparable damage to Col’s reputation. And so what would the Church do, who were so desperate to drag down the Twilight Cardinal from his pedestal? He had seen plenty of clowns who would sarcastically ask, What would you do if you wanted to be a prophet? “Make the prophecy come true yourself.” The tip of Myuri’s ear tickled his cheek, as though teasing him. In truth, the scammers were very skilled. Too, too skilled. Beyond the silvergrass growing over the barren peatlands, the shadow of Estatt stood out above the sea of darkened mud.