Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 6

“There she is.”

“Mm.”

Astride her chestnut steed, Neia chewed on a head of dried grass as she watched a pair of ranchers guide a cow and her calf back to their herd. The two Lanca had gotten lost somehow earlier that day, but it didn’t take long for her men to track them down.

Track, huh…I guess father was right.

The ranchers did indeed seem to be Rangers. Neia could see that everything they did was something that Rangers were known for. They ranged over their territory, which consisted of open grasslands rather than forests, just as any Ranger would. Every one of them somehow grasped the condition of the land without thinking, driving their cattle from place to place as necessary without needing to confer with their fellows. The men tirelessly maintained their vigil throughout the day, keeping the herds together, fighting off wild beasts, and deterring Human trespassers.

Human trespassers, huh…

She hadn’t witnessed that part, yet. Of course, they mentioned it to her back when she was patrolling as part of the Holy Order, but land disputes weren’t rare even before Jaldabaoth’s invasion. Storms came, knocking over fences or moving markers and everyone swore that the border was a metre or two in their favour when putting them back up. The Holy Order was called upon to intervene only if the local leaders couldn’t make a call and rulings had to be made on their behalf.

Neia idly plucked her bowstring while she eyed the horizon, alert for the telltale silhouettes of Humans trekking over the grassland. What would she do if it happened? Fighting off beasts and monsters was fine, but she didn’t want to fight her own people.

Work on the ranch kept her busy, but it wasn’t the same sort of busy as in the cities or working with the Holy Order. Overall, it was a relaxing way of life that afforded her a lot of time to think. The people were similarly relaxed and easy to get along with. When she thought about it a bit more, she couldn’t imagine any violence occurring.

She nudged her mount into a walk as the herd started moving.

“Where are we going next?” Neia asked.

“There’s a small river three kilometres down the other side of this ridge,” Carlos, the rancher riding beside her, said. “We’ll be setting up camp there.”

Neia nodded, watching the sea of Lanca as they plodded their way forward. When they crested the ridge, she took in the vast landscape under the clear blue sky. She pointed to a distant patch of off-coloured fields to the south.

“Is that a farming village over there?”

“It is,” Carlos nodded. “Gora.”

Really? How did I not know that?

Gora was one of the stops along her old patrol route, so she thought she should have noticed. Then again, it wasn’t as if they were following the roads.

“Do you ever have any trouble with the farming villages?” Neia asked.

“We make sure to keep the herds a few hundred metres from their fields,” Carlos replied. “Lousa gives them milk from time to time, but they still sneak onto our land to steal Lanca chips.”

“Eh…we don’t fight them over that, do we?”

“It’s sad to see the people so desperate, but theft is theft.”

‘Lanca chips’ were piles of dried Lanca manure. It would be inconceivable to city dwellers that one would so jealously guard their literal crap, but it was a valuable resource. Not only was it fertiliser, but the womenfolk in Mister Lousa’s holdings also regularly came around with carts, collecting it to use as fuel for their fires.

Neia gestured to the veil of haze that drifted from the village.

“If they’re short on fuel,” she said, “then why are they turning copse wood into charcoal to sell in town?”

“Because it’s the easiest thing for them to sell until their crops are ready,” Carlos shrugged. “They need to survive until then.”

“I see. In that case, why not loan them er…”

Neia’s voice trailed off as she tried to figure out how to phrase it. ‘Loan them your poop’ just sounded wrong. The man’s chuckle filled the awkward silence.

“Doesn’t work,” he told her.

“Why?”

“It’s hard to put a finger on why,” Carlos said. “Maybe it’s because we don’t see eye to eye on what’s worth what. Aside from that, the Nobles ‘managing’ those territories refuse to recognise it as a proper commodity. Neither do the Merchants.”

“Hmm…”

It was yet another way that the ranchers were similar to her father. They had a distinct sense of ‘wholeness’ that they strictly enforced on the ranch whenever they could. Everything was a part of something, and they saw themselves as a part of that something. Everything had value and absolutely nothing was considered ‘waste’.

As with most professional Rangers, they considered themselves custodians of the land that maintained its balance, not masters who tamed it to suit their whims. Neia could never quite figure out how it worked, but she knew better than to try and dislodge them from their thinking.

“So what do you do about it?” Neia asked.

“All we can really do is deter them. Patrols will keep them from bringing out wagons to collect the stuff, but they’ll still send out their kids to snatch what they can when we’re not around.”

She envisioned herself riding after kids over piles of Lanca dung. In hindsight, she was glad that she didn’t have to settle any poop-related disputes when she was working for the Holy Order.

When they arrived at the river, Neia’s company split up to raise twenty camps around the perimeter of the herd. Though outsiders might have scoffed at the idea that ranchers might organise themselves like the army, each of Mister Lousa’s herds had two thousand Lanca and a company was just enough to do everything related to taking care of them. Mister Lousa had five such herds, which roamed a two-thousand-square-kilometre strip of land that wrapped around the kingswood northwest of Hoburns.

Neia took a clipboard out of her saddlebags and visited each camp before she lost the daylight, recording any problems and changes that the ranchers had noticed over the course of the day. That seemed to be a more practical reason why she had been made a ‘captain’ – very few of the ranchers could read or write very well, if at all.

A pack of stray dogs attacked the herd’s northern flank. A Bunnia colony is digging up holes along the grazing route. Two cows got sick. Twelve new calves…heheheh, that’s good.

That was probably the best part about her new job. Lanca calves were cute. She wondered what Shizu would think of them. The Maid Demon had come by once after the end of the war to pick up the equipment that the Sorcerer King had lent to her, but, unfortunately, Neia was busy with work and Shizu couldn’t stay for long.

Neia wondered what the Maid Demon was doing now. The Sorcerer King had taken her back with him to the Sorcerous Kingdom, but he never did specify what he wanted the Maid Demons for. They were strong and people came to certain conclusions because of that, but would the Sorcerous Kingdom have any enemies at all? The Empire was their client state and Re-Estize had recently been defeated by them in a war. Roble’s delegation tried to learn what they could about the Battle of Katze Plains before heading to the Sorcerous Kingdom and came away with the sense that no one wanted to fight the Sorcerous Kingdom ever again.

I should have accepted their invitation to go visit.

The last time she had seen her, Shizu had invited her to come over and ‘play’, but Neia felt that she had a duty to help in the Holy Kingdom’s recovery and spread the wisdom of the Sorcerer King. If knew of the thankless fate that awaited her, she would have taken Shizu up on her offer without a second thought.

By the time Neia returned to her camp, a simmering pot of stew was waiting to greet her. Her stomach growled as the wind blew its appetising aroma in her direction.

“That smells good,” Neia sat on one of the boulders circling the campfire. “I didn’t know we had meat.”

Some dried fish went into their rations, but that was it as far as she knew.

“We didn’t.”

“…then where did we get the meat from?”

“Our calves were being nipped at by some dogs. One of our guys dropped one off just now.”

“Oh.”

I should have expected that.

People who went onto the ranch without permission were trespassers. Animals that did the same thing were trespassers they could eat. As far as Rangers were concerned, it was population management.

She put her report away and picked up her bow. It had been a long time since she had gotten any practice and she wanted to get used to her new weapon. The four men in her camp gathered behind her, looking on curiously as she placed a peach pit on a distant rock.

Neia paid them no mind, however. She nocked an arrow and drew the bow in a smooth motion, casting aside the turmoil of the past few days. Once her mind was clear of all thoughts – even those of poop and dog meat, which were unexpectedly difficult to get rid of – she stilled her breath and released the arrow.

The missile whistled through the air, knocking the peach pit off of the rock. Whistles rose from the men behind her.

“Didn’t you just get that?” One of the men gestured at her weapon.

“I did,” Neia’s lip twitched as she answered. “I was going to practise to get used to it, but…”

She hadn’t practised in over a month, yet it didn’t seem that way. That was probably because she had used the technique she had learned during the war. Neia would have said so, but she didn’t know how the men would react if she told them that she had imbued her arrow with divine power to attack a peach pit.

One of the men returned with her arrow. The peach pit was back on its rock, so Neia knocked it off again.

“What!”

“Bullshit!”

Exclamations of awe and disbelief rose from her spectators. One of the ranchers went to retrieve the arrow and reset the target while another stepped up and loaded his crossbow.

Neia smiled to herself as she watched the men take turns trying to match her feat. It reminded her of the war, back when she had first started building up her following. Now that she thought about it, it was around the same time she had been given a unit to command, as well.

I wonder how everyone’s doing these days…

After the liberation of Kalinsha, the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps – the organisation that consisted of the men and women that had come to recognise the greatness of His Majesty the Sorcerer King – had reportedly grown to around thirty thousand people. Following the reconquest of Hoburns – which was when the Sorcerer King decided that it was time to return to the Sorcerous Kingdom – Neia had arranged as grand a farewell as she could. In the end, even though it was probably their last chance to see the Sorcerer King, all she could muster was a bit over three thousand.

The membership of the organisation continued to grow on paper, but, at the same time, the number of active members dwindled until the liberation of Rimun and its surrounding territories.

At that point, the war officially ended. Everyone went back to their homes and Neia was buried in work. She was sure that it was like that for everyone else, too. They had all been so enthusiastic about spreading the Sorcerer King’s wisdom, but then the realities of the post-war recovery took over every waking hour of the day. In other words, life happened. No matter how enthusiastic one was about their new philosophical outlook, one still had to eat.

Would they keep the Sorcerer King’s wisdom close to their hearts? How did they apply it to their lives? In times of war, encouraging people to better themselves so their weakness wouldn’t lead to future woes was easy. Saying the same thing to starving people would just make her sound like a self-righteous windbag. It wasn’t as if getting stronger would make fields of seedlings mature and ripen overnight. Most of what people did and the realities that they were subjected to in everyday life had nothing to do with weakness at all.

Then, there were the people who were doing ‘fine’ or at least living a tolerable life. Once the war was behind them, Neia’s words never seemed to reach their hearts. Either they felt that what they had was sufficient, weren’t willing to invest the time to take even the smallest steps toward bettering themselves, or both.

Are the benefits of becoming stronger really that hard to grasp?

Watching the ranchers continue to miss the peach pit for a few minutes before giving up, she could only believe that it was. She couldn’t quite put words to the feeling, but becoming as strong as she currently was would have been unimaginable to the Neia Baraja of a year ago. It was the realm of prolific Adventurers, geniuses, and the privileged elite.

Everyone else was content to live with the choices that they had made, which usually achieved ‘good enough’ in terms of their normal lives. That ‘good enough’ then transformed into ‘nowhere near adequate’ when trouble came knocking at their door. Neia herself had been guilty of that. Before the war, she would have been satisfied with a long and respectable career as a Paladin without aspiring to any notable greatness. She would have even thought those aspirations overambitious.

It was almost as if a curse afflicted the entire Holy Kingdom. The Demon Gods came and destroyed whoever came before them, Demihumans from the Abelion Hills raided them constantly for nearly two centuries and yet another fiendish invasion nearly sent them to join their predecessors. With such a history, one might think that people would be interested in breaking the chains of weakness, yet nothing ever changed.

Weakness is a sin, so one must become strong, or humbly accept justice similar to that of His Majesty.

Her message seemed so obvious back then. The people she had touched with her words were also fervent about that new truth. Yet, after the flames of war died out, the Holy Kingdom answered clearly to her message.

They chose weakness. They chose to be subjected to the justice of the strong…except they weren’t in the Sorcerous Kingdom where the people were protected by the justice of the Sorcerer King. They chose sin.

She suspected that they would forever make that same choice no matter what happened to them. Matters of justice and evil were stomped flat by matters of everyday practicality.

Neia excused herself and went to bed early. She stared at the ceiling of her tent for hours while wracking her brain for a solution to her conundrum, but she fell asleep no closer to an answer than before.

The next afternoon brought their route close to Mister Lousa’s villa, where another company relieved them. Neia and her men arrived at the villa just before twilight and she went straight to Iago Lousa to deliver her report.

“I’m back, Mister Lousa.”

“Ah, Neia, welcome back. Did you have any trouble with the men?”

“No,” Neia shook her head. “Everyone was nice. They even helped me out whenever they saw that I was unfamiliar with something.”

The shorter man broke into a broad grin.

“See,” he held out his palms, “is it not as this Iago said? You will have no worries here.”

“I think you’re right,” Neia smiled back. “Oh, here’s the report.”

She came forward and set down the documents on his desk. As she stepped away, she cocked an ear as a strain of music drifted into the tent.

“A Bard?”

“Yes, we are lucky indeed,” Mister Lousa nodded. “She came in while you were away. Isn’t it a wonder? I haven’t heard a Bard since the early days of the war – I swear that Jaldabaoth killed them all to crush our spirits.”

Neia nodded in agreement. There were also other strategic reasons behind him doing so. Foremost among them was the fact that Bards were very mobile and were one of the primary ways by which information flowed from country to country. Most places welcomed Bards with open arms and didn’t impede them, but a Fiend like Jaldabaoth would have no qualms about having every Bard eliminated to isolate the Holy Kingdom.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to listen for a while…”

“Please do,” Mister Lousa said cheerfully. “I have arranged for a banquet to be hosted in the new courtyard where she is performing. Everyone is free to enjoy themselves.”

She bobbed her head respectfully before leaving the tent. A small crowd was present in the aforementioned courtyard, and she marvelled at the festive atmosphere that greeted her.

I haven’t seen anything remotely close to this since the celebrations at the end of the war…

Platters filled with fruit lined the tables along with cuts of beef. They had somehow gotten their hands on plenty of other types of food and even barrels of wine. The people in attendance were dressed in bright colours and sang along to the tune of The Wind of Rimun. Neia took two steps toward the tables before remembering that she had just come in from nearly a week of driving cattle.

After cleaning herself up, Neia returned to the courtyard with a fresh change of clothes and an appetite that was far more ravenous than she realised. She filled up her plate and retreated to an out-of-the-way corner, wolfing down her dinner while enjoying the music.

Eh…I haven’t heard this one before. It’s nice for this weather, though – I almost feel chilly. Azerlisia…

Neia leaned back and forth, trying to catch a glimpse of the Bard. If she recalled correctly, the Azerlisia Mountains were the snowbound peaks that loomed north of E-Rantel. She had never seen such huge mountains in her life.

If she’s singing about them, is she from around there? Or maybe she just picked it up on the way through. It’d be nice to hear some news from the Sorcerous Kingdom.

To her surprise, the Bard appeared out of the crowd. She went to a nearby bench to sit, setting down a carved wooden cup before wiping her face with a damp cloth.

Heh…as expected of a Bard – she’s so pretty. Is she really travelling at such a young age?

The Bard glanced at her. Too late, Neia averted her gaze.

“Hello,” the Bard smiled.

“H-hi.”

“My name’s Saye, what’s yours?”

Eep! So forward. As expected of a Bard…

“Neia. Neia Baraja.”

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Baraja. I hope you enjoyed the music.”

“Oh, I did,” Neia nodded energetically. “There was one I hadn’t heard before. The one about the Azerlisia Mountains…where is that song from?”

“Ah, Winter’s Crown. That one’s popular along the western frontier of the Baharuth Empire. And in the Azerlisia Mountains, of course.”

“Of course…”

What was she thinking? Maybe she hadn’t been thinking at all. Her enthusiasm overrode everything when it came to anything related to the Sorcerer King.

“It’s a bit weird, though,” Saye said.

“What is?” Neia asked.

“The song,” Saye answered. “Even though it’s about the Azerlisia Mountains, it first appeared in the Sorcerous Kingdom. No one knows–”

“Really?!”

Saye leaned back as Neia leaned forward. Neia calmed herself down and cleared her throat.

“Have you been to the Sorcerous Kingdom before?”

“I have,” Saye replied, taking a sip out of her cup. “Was there something you wanted to know?”

Something? More like everything!

Aside from what Neia saw on her brief visit to E-Rantel, she didn’t know anything about the Sorcerer King’s realm. His Majesty barely talked about it during the war, either.

Surely, it was a place where everyone embraced the Sorcerer King’s wisdom. She especially wanted to know how they went about it in their everyday lives. The people didn’t seem all that different from anyone else when she was there, but that was probably because she wasn’t watching for evidence of His Majesty’s truth back then.

“Hello?”

“Oh,” Neia blinked. “Sorry, I was just thinking about what to ask. I don’t have much to pay you for your information…”

That’s right, I nearly forgot in my excitement. Information is valuable to Bards.

Any information at all about His Majesty the Sorcerer King was undoubtedly worth a pile of treasure. A pile of treasure that Neia Baraja didn’t have.

“In that case,” Saye asked, “how about a trade? I came to learn about the war and how the Holy Kingdom is doing now. There weren’t any soldiers in the Sorcerous Kingdom that seemed to know about it.”

That made sense. The only person from the Sorcerous Kingdom who came to fight in the Holy Kingdom was the Sorcerer King, after all.

“Alright,” Neia nodded. “I can do that. You can tell me everything you know about His Majesty’s realm, and I’ll tell you everything about His Majesty!”

“Um, I wanted to learn about the war and the Holy Kingdom, too…”

While Saye had been to the Sorcerous Kingdom, she didn’t appear to appreciate the Sorcerer King’s greatness. Otherwise, she wouldn’t want to hear about anything else. Did that mean she didn’t know about the Sorcerer King’s wisdom, as well? If so, Neia resolved to open her eyes to the truth.

The Bard rose from her seat, draining away the rest of her drink.

“Break’s over,” she said. “Want to meet up after tonight’s banquet is over?”

“Of course!” Neia stood up, “I have a few days off before my next shift, so I’m sure we can share a lot.”

“Great,” Saye grinned. “Where would you like to meet?”

“I have a place on the eastern side of the villa,” Neia told her. “Unit seven.”

“Really? Mister Lousa put me in unit eight.”

“Great!” Neia said, “That’s really convenient. Then…I’ll see you then?”

“Yup!”

Neia returned to her home, giddy over the prospect of having someone to talk about His Majesty to. She went around cleaning things up – even though there wasn’t much to clean – then retired to her room to think about what she would say.

A knock on the door woke her up.

Huh? Wha…

She turned her head to look out the window, groaning at what she saw. The days working out on the ranch must have taken a greater toll on her than she thought.

Another set of knocks issued from the door.

“Just a minute!” Neia said.

She sat up in her bed, trying to comb down her hair with her fingers while straightening out her dress at the same time. It was too dim to see her reflection in the water basin, so she eventually gave up and went to open the door. Saye was on the other side, impeccably groomed and carrying a covered basket in the crook of her arm. The Bard looked up at her for less than a second before speaking.

“I can come back tomorrow if this is a bad time…”

“No, it’s fine,” Neia ushered the Bard in, “I just dozed off, that’s all.”

“Oh. I thought you had a man over or something.”

Neia yelped as she closed the door on her foot. Did she come off as that sort of woman? No, it was probably a normal expectation. Most at her age were already married or close to it. Neia was the rare exception – even her mother, who was a renowned Paladin, had given birth to her around the same age. The war and her busy schedule after it spared no time for romance.

Saye placed the basket on the dining room table, pulling back the cover with a flourish to reveal some bread, cheese and a bottle of wine.

“You shouldn’t have…”

“It would be weird if I didn’t bring anything as a guest,” Saye replied.

Neia looked down at her dress and tried smoothing out a crease. Everything about the young Bard seemed extraordinarily classy – she was probably highly popular wherever she went. Did someone like Neia have any right to entertain such a high-calibre artist? Saye seemed like she would be more suited to the courts of High Nobles or even Kings.

The Bard settled down at the table, patting its surface as she looked up at Neia with her ice-blue eyes. Whether Saye sensed her mounting nerves, Neia couldn’t tell. It could be that she was already used to reactions like hers.

“So,” Saye asked, “how would you like to start?”

“Well,” Neia answered as she took a seat opposite the Bard, “since you brought something nice, why don’t you ask the first question?”

“Alright.”

Saye retrieved a quill, inkwell, and stack of paper from the bottom of the basket. Neia’s eyes shimmered as she tensed, ready to spread the word of the Sorcerer King’s greatness.

“Let’s start with something easy,” Saye said. “What is the Sorcerer King’s favourite colour?”

…huh?

Upon hearing the question, Neia’s anticipation transformed into ash.

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