Spice & Wolf I (29 page)

Despite their overwhelming advantage, the five men did not converge, choosing instead to stop at the corner and scrutinize the pair.

Lawrence imagined they were waiting for backup, though five men were more than sufficient to take both him and his companion. Lawrence was obviously in no shape for a fight, and Holo was just a girl.

But the men held fast, and at length more arrived. The first five looked back, then stepped aside.

“Ah—” Holo made a sound as a figure rounded the corner. Lawrence, too, nearly spoke.

The man rounding the corner was none other than Yarei.

“I wondered, given the description we got,” he said. “But to think it really was you, Lawrence.”

Unlike the residents who lived within the city walls, or the dusty, sweaty merchants that traveled between them, Yarei wore the colors of the sun and the earth and looked almost sad as he spoke.

“I’m just as surprised,” said Lawrence. “Most of Pasloe thinks only of sickle or hoe at the mention of metal—to think they’d be involved in such a grand silver scheme.”

“There are few who understand this transaction,” said Yarei, as if it wasn’t his village at all, which was understandable given his attire. The depth of his connection with the Medio Company was self-evident in its color and texture.

A humble farmer would never be able to afford such finery. “Let’s catch up later, shall we? We’ve no time for it now.”

“Come now, Yarei—I came all the way to your village and still wasn’t able to see you.”

“Ah, but you met someone else, didn’t you?” Yarei glanced past Lawrence to Holo behind him. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but she really is right out of the fairy tales. The wolf-spirit incarnate, responsible for harvests great and poor.”

Lawrence felt Holo flinch but didn’t turn to look at her.

“Hand her over,” Yarei demanded. “We’ll give her to the Church and put the old ways to rest forever!” He took a step forward.

“Lawrence, if we have her, we can destroy the Milone Company. Then once we’ve abolished the wheat tariff, the wheat of our vil-lage will be hugely profitable, and we who sell it rich men. Nothing is so profitable as an untaxed commodity.”

Yarei was two paces from them when Holo grabbed Lawrence’s shirt. Despite his dizziness, he could feel her hands trembling.

“Lawrence, our village still remembers that you bought wheat from us when we were suffering under heavy taxation. It would be no trouble to give you purchasing priority now. And were friends, nay? Surely as a merchant you can figure gain and loss.”

Yarei’s words sank slowly into Lawrence’s consciousness. Selling untaxed wheat would be like plucking gold from the stalks. If he took Yarei up on his offer, his fortunes would surely rise. When he’d saved enough, he could open a shop in Pazzio—and with those wheat options as his weapon, he’d continue to expand his business.

Yarei promised the fulfillment of his dreams.

“Oh, I can figure gain and loss all right,” said Lawrence.

“Ho, Lawrence!” said Yarei brightly, his arms wide in welcome. Holo tightened her grip on Lawrence’s shirt.

Lawrence used the last of his strength to turn back to Holo, who looked up at him.

Her amber eyes saddened as she looked at him; she soon closed them.

Lawrence slowly turned back around.

“However, a merchant must always honor his contracts,” he said.

“Lawrence?” asked Yarei suspiciously.

Lawrence continued. “As fate would have it, this strange girl I’ve picked up wishes to return to the northlands. I have a contract to accompany her there. Breaking that contract is something I cannot do, Yarei.”

“You—” a shocked Holo began as Lawrence stared down Yarei.

Yarei shook his head in disbelief, sighing deeply, then looked at Lawrence. “In that case, I have no choice but to fulfill my contract.”

He raised his right hand, and the gathered Medio henchmen, who’d only watched until that point, took aggressive stances.

“I’m sorry our friendship was a short one, Lawrence.”

“A traveling merchant is always saying good-bye,” replied Lawrence.

“You can kill the man. Bring the girl alive.” Yarei’s voice was cold now, like a different person entirely. The Medio lackeys advanced.

Lawrence held the dagger fast in his right hand, but he was still unable to take a step either forward or back.

If he could somehow buy them just a bit more time, the Milone Company might yet come to their rescue. He clung to that hope as he waved the dagger about clumsily.

In that moment, Holo flung her arms around him.

“H-Holo, what are you—”

Her slender arms held him fast, then forced him to the ground.

He wondered where she’d gotten this sudden strength, but then realized it was probably because he had no power left to resist.

Holo couldn’t actually support his weight, so Lawrence half-fell backward, landing on his rear. The impact dislodged the knife from his hand.

Lawrence reached for the dagger and tried to get up, but he couldn’t manage it. Unable to support even his outstretched arm, he fell forward.

“Holo...the dagger...”

“That’s enough.”

“Holo?”

She gave no response save putting her hand to Lawrence’s out stretched arm.

“This may hurt a bit. Please bear it.”

“What—”

Lawrence failed to utter another word before Holo undid the bandage on his left arm and sniffed at the exposed wound.

Suddenly his memory returned. He recalled their conversation when they first met, when he made her prove she was truly a wolf.

He remembered her nonchalant reply.

To assume her wolf form, she needed either a bit of wheat or...

...
Fresh blood
.

“What are you doing! Hurry, take them!” Yarei shouted, and the Medio henchmen—whose advance had been stalled by Holo’s strange actions—regained their senses and began to close in.

Holo closed her eyes, bared her fangs, and sank them into Lawrence’s wound. “Sh-she’s drinking his blood!”

Holo opened her eyes slightly at the shout and glanced at Lawrence.

He couldn’t have conjectured as to his own expression, but Holo seemed to smile sadly at him.

After all, only a demon would drink blood.

“Don’t fall back! She’s only a possessed girl! Get her!” Yarei’s exhortations were no use; the men were frozen in their tracks.

Holo slowly pulled her mouth back from Lawrence’s arm; her transformation had already begun.

“I’ll always...” she began as her long hair began to stir, trans-forming into animal fur. Her arms, visible through her torn sleeves, took the form of wolf paws.

“I’ll always remember that you chose me.”

She cleaned the blood from the corner of her mouth with her bright red tongue rather than her hand, an image that lingered with Lawrence.

“Lawrence—” she said, standing and facing him. She had a small, sad smile on her face as she spoke her final words.

“Please don’t look at me.”

Her body grew up and out rapidly to the sound of tearing fabric, brown fur nearly exploding through it. Her wheat pouch fell to the ground among the tatters of clothing.

Lawrence automatically reached out for the wheat in which Holo lived. When he looked back up, a massive wolf stood before him.

Its paws were tipped with scythe like claws, and its teeth were so large that the shape of each fang was clearly visible. It looked capable of eating a man in a single bite.

The wolf was so massive that the very air around it felt heavy and hot—as if one might melt by mere proximity. In spite of that, its eyes were cool and calculating.

There was no escape.

Every man in the tunnel came to the same conclusion at once.

“Aaaaauuggh!” The single cry was the trigger. Most of the assailants dropped their weapons and ran. Two men hurled their weapons at the wolf, mostly out of terror.

The beast moved its muzzle adroitly, picking up each iron weapon in turn and crushing it between massive jaws.

This was a god.

In the northlands, the word “god” was used to describe anything beyond a human’s ability to engage.

Lawrence had never understood that definition until now—and now he understood it all too well.

There was nothing anyone could do to this wolf. Nothing at all.

“Guh—”

“Wha—”

The two that threw their weapons made strangled exclamations that were barely worthy of the term.

The wolf swatted them aside with a massive paw, then ran forward, seeming almost to slide over the ground.

“
None of you will leave here alive!
” a low, bestial voice echoed. The sounds of claw striking iron mingled with the cries of the felled as Lawrence frantically tried to right himself.

But the massacre ended in an instant.

The wolf paused, and the voice of perhaps the last man left alive was audible.

“G-gods are always like that. .. always...unfair...” It was Yarei s voice.

There was no response but the sound of the colossal wolf opening its jaws. Lawrence cried out.

“Holo, no!”

There was a snap, surely those same jaws closing.

The image of Yarei’s torso in Holo’s fangs came unbidden to Lawrence’s mind. It was unthinkable that Yarei could escape. He was a bird with no chance to avoid the hound’s attack.

But after a few moments of silence, Holo turned around in the narrow passageway, and her teeth were not smeared with the blood Lawrence expected.

Instead, an unconscious Yarei dangled helplessly from her fangs.

“Holo...” Lawrence murmured her name in relief, but Holo merely dropped Yarei to the ground and did not look at him.

A low voice sounded.