69. After the Competition
After the Competition
The morning between the competition and the festival, Kain spent at the farm.
The pumpkin field was clear. The garden was going to mulch.
He spread the last of the straw across the east plots and forked compost from the bin onto the rows.
Roan was shedding his summer coat in patches under the curry comb.
Kain worked him over twice and turned him into the paddock. Then he rode to the Kettle.
There were two days between the day of the competition and the festival. The day afterward, there was still quite a lot of talk among the adventurers about it, and Kain was fielding questions almost all day long.
"Is that normal for things around here?"
"Do you do that every year?"
"Can I enter it? Like, if I buy something in another town, can I bring it and enter it?"
There were a thousand such questions, and Kain did his best to stay on top of all of them. It had interested the warriors in the village, if only in a curious, this-is-strange sort of way. Kain wasn't going to stop it.
The day after the competition was another rain day, and as Kain worked at the bar, thunder rolled in the distance, and dozens of cold and wet warriors and adventurers filled the area. One of them was grumbling about a hole in his tent.
"And I still say that the Iron Hills warriors did it," he grumbled. "They've had it out for me ever since I managed to kill one of those root things with my flame spell."
There was a sharp clunk, and another warrior turned. Kain sensed the beginning of a conflict, and his eyes swept the crowd.
The warrior who had been complaining wore silver armor, and had a green tree stenciled on it. The warrior who had just turned around had a hammer emblazoned across his own steel-grey breastplate.
"You missed the Root Walker and hit me," the Iron Hills warrior grumbled. "Burned my eyebrows off and seared half my back."
"You can't take a burn from a friend's spell. You call yourself a warrior?" the Green Tree warrior snorted.
"I can take a burn. What I can't take is reckless men like you who think they can just walk around blowing up anything they want. You don't have a single thought or care about the people or things around you."
As he said it, he picked up the chair he had been sitting in, and smashed it on the floor in a show of force. The legs snapped and the back cracked, and Kain shook his head, said nothing, and stepped from behind the bar.
"And what I can't take are people who insist on always being the first to clear a room." The Green Tree warrior stood. "You took every kill on the floor."
"Then you should have been faster."
"You cheated us out of a clear."
Both men reached for their swords, while all the other warriors in the bar stepped back. Their eyes were eager. They wanted to see a fight. Kain, most certainly, didn't.
Without a word, Kain strode around the bar and walked toward them. Neither saw him coming until he planted himself between the two of them. He stood there for a long moment, turning his gaze back and forth, looking first one in the eye, and then the other.
"Out of our way, peasant," the Green Tree warrior growled. "This doesn't concern you."
"I'm the one who will be scrubbing the blood off the floor, so it does concern me," Kain countered.
He turned to the Iron Hills warrior and nodded at the chair.
"I'm also the person who has to fix things when people barge around breaking them, without a single thought or care about the people or things around them. "
If the accusation landed, if the warrior realized that Kain had thrown his own words back at him, he didn't show it. Instead, he simply growled.
"You can't stop us."
"Maybe not, but I hope I can convince you to stop." Kain glanced back and forth between them. "The enemy is the dungeon. The enemy is the tide of monsters always threatening to sweep over the land. Fight them, not each other."
A few of the warriors laughed softly. One of them raised his voice.
"Hey, Bard. Better watch out. That's the gryphon-slayer."
Both warriors changed their demeanor. The Green Tree warrior lowered his sword.
"Really? You?"
Kain turned and squared his shoulders. His B-rank physique shone through, and he balled his hands into fists. No longer was he asking. Now, he was telling. He didn't have to use a single word.
「Intimidation: B- → B」
Both warriors took a step back. Kain was unarmed, but he had somehow killed a gryphon by himself.
A peasant who could do something like that was an improbability, and warriors didn't like things that they couldn't explain.
They liked exact numbers. They wanted to know floor plans and spawn rates and damage thresholds and all sorts of other pieces of information, long before they went inside.
Kain was something that they couldn't explain.
He was something that they couldn't really even properly fathom.
They soon backed down, and Kain returned to the bar. The deescalation of the fight seemed to be a cue, and everyone slowly began to leave. Soon, it was just Kain and Sasha at the bar, with Matthew slumbering away in the back. They started to clean up, and Kain began to wipe down the tables.
Neither one of them spoke for a time. Kain stacked the chairs and swept the floor. Finally, as Sasha cleaned up the mugs of ale, she lifted her gaze.
"You know, they didn't respond when you tried to appeal to reason."
"Huh?" Kain asked, looking up.
"You tried to talk to them. It didn't work," Sasha said. "Anyone else in the town could talk to them. I could have talked to them. I could have pointed out the flaws in their logic, the holes in their accusations. It wouldn't have worked. It didn't work for you."
Kain picked up the broken pieces of the chair, and tossed the pieces that couldn't be salvaged into the fire. "What's your point?"
"My point is that they stood down when they saw you. You, specifically. It doesn't matter if the strongest of us were to train in public speaking, and throw on armor, and try to stare them down," Sasha shrugged. "It wouldn't work. You're the only one who can do this, Kain."
Kain didn't say anything for a long time. There was nothing to say. Finally, Sasha continued.
"I talked to Sam. If we don't get something together, they'll send someone to help keep the warriors in line."
"I know," Kain said.
"If they do, that person's only concern will be making sure that the warriors aren't hurting each other.
Whoever they send isn't going to have any more consideration for this town than the warriors themselves," Sasha pressed.
"It won't be a solution. It will only lock in the problems that we're already facing.
It will make it so that we can't ever go back.
You've been dodging this responsibility for months now, but the fact of the matter, Kain, is that the window is closing.
If you don't take this on, the Guild will gain control of this place. "
Kain set his jaw. He tossed a few more splinters of the chair into the fireplace, then set the bulk of the chair off to one side. He would repair it in the morning. "Maybe it won't be that bad."
"You know better than that," Sasha pressed.
"Kain. I have a son. You have a nephew. I don't want Matthew growing up in a place run by the Guild.
A place run by the Guild is everything that makes mothers fear they'll never see their sons again.
He'll grow up with warriors and ruffians for his role models.
He'll follow their ways because there'll be nothing else to follow.
And that's if he lives. With these people pulling their swords every three seconds, someone is going to get hurt.
Someone is going to get killed. Before all of this I was happy to raise my son in a tavern.
He could mingle. He could see what kinds of people there were in the world.
He could learn to bring some light to them.
Now what he sees is chairs being broken all day long.
He'll see worse if we don't get a handle on this. "
"I know," Kain said.
"You say that, but you're not acting on it," Sasha continued to press, even as she turned from wiping out mugs to wiping down the bar itself.
"Kain, we need you to take this on. To be a constable.
You're the only one who can. I'm not asking you to go back to your old way of life.
I'm not asking you to fight. I'm just asking you to stay.
Stay, because Tillamore is worth staying for. "
"I'm staying," Kain shook his head. "That's not up for debate."
"But there's something you can do, and if you do nothing, you might as well just leave," Sasha shook her head. She paused. "Sorry. Maybe that's harsh."
"Maybe." Kain didn't say a word for a good, long time. Finally, he lifted his gaze. "The farm won't stop just because I'm off doing other things."
"The farm didn't stop when the gryphon attacked. You handled it well enough," Sasha countered.
She turned and walked into the back room to check on Matthew. Kain finished putting up the last chair, then set the broom against the wall. He paused for a long moment, then walked to the door.
He had a key to the Kettle that he had been given long ago. He stepped out, pulled the door shut, and locked it tightly. With that, he started down the road toward his home. A cold wind whistled across the road, but he didn't feel a bit of it.
He passed Sam's store on the way to Roan.
Sam was at the window with a lamp burning behind him and a folded receipt in his hand. He came out and held the receipt up.
"Posting fees through the season. Two silver each from the C-rank pair from the south. Four from the Bear Swords. A piece from twenty smaller parties through the months. Plus the supplies and the lodging the village has taken over the regular trade."
Kain looked at the number at the bottom.
"Two gold seven."
"Two gold seven. Fourteen short of sixteen. The dungeon's coming on at midwinter."
"Fourteen short."
「Village Purse: 2g 7s / 16g target」
「Time to Dungeon Maturity: ~3 months (midwinter)」
"Fourteen short."
Sam folded the receipt and put it back in his pocket.
"I'll keep adding to it."
"Keep adding to it."
Sam went back inside the store and Kain went back to Roan at the rail.
Kain's feet led him down the long road toward the farm. As he walked along, Ghost padded up next to him, walking so closely that Kain's leg brushed up against the wolf's shoulder. They strode along in quiet, past the tents of the warriors, past the trees, underneath the sky.
A few fires crackled in the tents, and Kain saw one or two warriors warming their hands around them, but that was it.
Otherwise, the place was empty. Barren. The trees, as he walked along them, were barren as well.
The leaves were all gone and scattered across the ground, they were prepared for the long winter.
There were no animals in the forest, and while the river babbled off in the distance, it seemed quieter than usual.
When Kain reached the gate of his property, Ghost nosed it open and ran inside, but Kain didn't. Not yet. He put his hands on top of the stone wall and leaned upon it, looking across the house, across the barn, across the garden plots.
Everything that he had built was there. In front of him. The town was just visible off behind him, visible as a few flickering flames from the torches that hung on some of the storefronts.
Otherwise, everything was quiet. Everything was still.
There wasn't a breath of wind. There wasn't a single bird or bat flitting through the night air, and there wasn't a single cicada or cricket chirping off in the distance. Kain stood there. The night didn't make a sound back at him.
He'd walked the property already. He didn't need to walk it again. He needed to decide.
He stood there for a few moments longer, then pushed the gate open and walked up to the porch. He sat down. Ghost walked up onto the porch and lay down and leaned against him. He felt the wolf's breathing heavy against his side. He refrained from petting it.
He thought about that fact, then looked down at his hands. He clenched them slowly. They knew how to hold a shovel. They knew how to hold a rake.
They also knew how to hold a sword.
He lifted his eyes to the road. The road was more well-beaten than it had been two years back.
He looked at the road. He looked at the town. He looked at the northeast corner where Mark's flask was buried.
He stood. Ghost stood with him.
Kain walked back into the house, into his bedroom. He crouched down and opened up the drawer where his sword had lain since he had defeated the gryphon.
His hand closed on the hilt.
The metal was cool.
He stood up.
He drew the blade out and held it up to the lamp.
「─────── STATUS: RE-ENGAGED ───────」
「Name: Kain Asheld」
「Mercenary Rank: B」
「Title: Last of the Silver Hands (REACTIVATED)」
「Title: Gryphon Slayer (Logged)」
「Combat Readiness: Operational」
「Status: Active」