MISTERLP
I used some of the materials that were offered to the royal family as
gifts, ones where there were no other uses for, to improve my Little
Musashibos, and it looked like this maid outfit used them, too. It was a
superior product: blade-, arrow-, acid-, and heat-resistant; hard to stain,
and easy to wash.
...Where does our head maid's passion come from, and where is it
going? I wondered.
That aside, I praised Carla for her work.
"Well done. How was it?"
"There were no dangerous creatures up ahead... However..." Carla said
awkwardly, looking at her winged back.
I looked at her, wondering what was up, when I noticed two tiny feet
sticking out from under Carla's armpits. Carla turned to face the other
way, and I saw a little human boy who was about five years old stuck to
her back. The boy looked frightened, clinging tightly.
Carla seemed troubled, saying, "I found this boy alone and crying in an
open spot on the mountains, and I couldn't leave him alone, so I brought
him back with me. He seems scared of something... and he won't get
down." Carla shrugged as if to say she didn't understand the reason at all.
"Isn't he just scared because you flew through the sky?" I asked. It
looked like she'd been flying at a pretty high altitude, so the boy had
probably been clinging tightly so that he wouldn't fall.
When I pointed that out, Carla's eyes opened wide in realization. "Ah!
Y-You're right. I had forgotten that humans don't fly."
"Oh, come on..."
When I gave her a less-than-amused look, Carla blatantly averted her
eyes.
Kaede and Tomoe spoke to the boy gently, and managed to coax him
down from Carla's back. But once he was down and the tension was
relieved, the boy started to cry.
He was probably from a nearby village, and had gotten lost after
wandering into the mountains. We had a boy on our hands who didn't
know his name, didn't know where he lived, and kept on crying.
If I'd been the dog police officer in the song "Inu no Omawari-san,"
this would be where I would start barking because I didn't know what to
do, and then give up.
The boy seemed to have taken to Carla because he was still clinging to
her, and she was still panicking when I asked her, "Do we have anything to
go on?"
"Uh... AH!" Carla cried. "Now that you mention it. I saw a number of
strange men in the mountains."
"Strange men?" I repeated.
"Yes. They had the appearance of filthy bandits. The fact that there
were people like that lurking around in the area was one of the reasons I
decided to take this kid with me."
"Mountain bandits?" I pondered. "I haven't heard any reports of
bandits appearing in our territory..."
When I'd only just taken the throne, there were still occasional reports
of thieves and mountain bandits. However, with the transportation network
laid out, allowing troops to move around the country quickly, I stopped
hearing reports of these sorts of robbers in the country. The only "thieves"
I heard about were adventurers who took that name as their job title.
Whenever there was a report of an incident, it was put down immediately,
and if an armed band was found, the military would be sent to monitor
them, or if necessary put them down.
That was how many groups of bandits had been defeated, or left the
business of their own accord. Some of those bandits had actually been
harmless, and for people like that... Ah!
"Hey, Carla, do you remember what color they were wearing?" I asked.
"Now that you bring it up... they were all wearing matching orange
breastplates."
"Yeah, I figured..." I said, nodding.
"You have some idea who they are, then?"
"Oh, I have more than an idea..."
I was the one who formed their organization.
We traveled for maybe another thirty minutes after that. When we
brought the boy to the foot of the mountain where Carla said she had seen
the men, the men in orange breastplates came out in force to greet us. I
sent Carla ahead to explain the situation to them.
Like Carla had said, the men certainly did look like bandits. Their skin
was tanned and swarthy, their faces thick with stubble, and they were a
burly band of louts. They looked bad enough that Aisha and Hal tensed for
battle when they saw them (Tomoe and Kaede were waiting inside the
covered wagon), but the men showed no sign of bloodlust, and displayed
no tension whatsoever.
One man who was larger than the rest stepped forward. "You the one,
mister? I'm told you took a child into custody."
The man spread his arms out in an exaggerated gesture, grinning.
"Yeah," I said. "A member of our group took him in when she found
him alone in the mountains." It would be a pain to deal with it if our
identities came out, so I explained the situation to him politely. "Have the
boy's relatives come to collect him?"
"Of course," said the man. "Hey, you louts! Hurry up and bring the
kid's parents out!"
One of the men shouted, "Yessir!" and rushed off to the rear.
The way they talked, they were totally like a bandit boss and one of his
minions.
Not long after that, a woman who looked like an innkeeper from a
village threaded her way through the men to appear before us. That
woman, who looked confused as she walked through the group of men,
looked pleadingly at me with desperation on her face.
"Th-The boy... is my son, all right?! He wandered into the mountains
on his own, and I haven't heard from him since!"
So this was the boy's mother? She must have been very worried.
"Please, relax," I said. "There was no sign of him being injured."
I asked Carla to bring the boy. When Carla brought him out from the
cart, the little boy made a beeline for the woman the moment he saw her,
jumping into her waiting arms.
"Moooooommy!"
The woman held him tight. "Thank goodness... Honestly, you silly boy!
You had me worried sick!"
"I'm sor... sor... ry..."
"I'm really... glad you're safe..."
The boy and his mother were reunited, and embraced.
While we watched that out of the corner of our eyes, the big man talked
to me. "You really did us a favor there, mister. We'd split up to look for
the kid, but we just weren't having any luck. I wasn't sure what we were
gonna do."
"No, like I said before, we only found him by coincidence."
"Still, I've gotta thank you. I'm the leader of this band. The name's
Gonzales. From the look of you, you're a merchant, are you?"
"Yes," I said. "Kazuma Souya of The Silver Deer."
It would cause trouble if it came out that I was the king, so I was using
the alias I had prepared.
Gonzales went, "Hm?" and furrowed his brow. "Mister... Have we met
somewhere before?"
"Have we? It's my first time in these parts..."
"Am I imagining it? I feel like I've seen you somewhere before..."
"Well, I hope you'll remember my face, then," I said. "We'd appreciate
your business at The Silver Deer."
"Gahaha! You aren't a merchant for nothing, huh?" Gonzales seemed
to like that, because he slapped me hard on the back.
...It kind of hurt.
When I played it off like that and returned to my companions, Hal said,
"Would you mind explaining the situation already? Who are those men,
anyway? They look like a band of brigands."
"Well, they did used to be mountain bandits, after all."
"Huh?! What'd you just say?!"
"Calm down, Hal," I said. "There are all sorts of mountain bandits out
there, you know."
There were mountain bandits who attacked merchants and villagers,
stealing their possessions, abducting their women and children, and even
killing people. These were what you would call villainous bandits.
However, there were also those that occupied mountain roads, charged
a toll for merchants to pass, and protected them in exchange. These were
relatively respectable (?) bandits.
Whenever there were reports of the former, I would just send in the
military to exterminate them; but for the latter, it was a shame to lose such
talented people.
In a way, they were experts on the mountains. They often had roots in
the area, maintaining good relations with the nearby villages, and it would
be a waste to just throw away their knowledge and experience. So, here
was what I did.
"I hired those mountain bandits, and had them form 'mountain rescue
teams.'"
"Mountain rescue teams?" Hal repeated.
"When someone gets lost in the mountains, like what happened here,
they search for them. They also patrol the mountain to keep an eye out for
any strange happenings, and they protect travelers on the roads, like they
had been doing before. The country pays their wages. They charge a fare
for protection on the mountain roads, but the money they collect goes into
the national coffers. If they're found to be skimming off the top,
obviously, we treat them like normal mountain bandits."
"Wow, you've sure got a lot going on..." Hal said, sounding impressed,
but I had to smile wryly.
"Well, I'm the king, after all."
"Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, I guess you are. I forget
sometimes."
"Yeah, I do, too."
The two of us laughed together.
After that, we said our farewells to the mother, child, and mountain
rescue team, and set off on the road once more.
With every meeting comes another parting, and we had other meetings
to get to.
What sort of people would we meet on our trip? I was suddenly looking
forward to finding out.