036. Aslan of the Western Mountains (3)
When Aslan and Bart returned to the village clearing, the sun was already getting dark. Night in the mountains comes quickly.
“First of all, tomorrow morning I will go out to dig up herbs. “Still, you have to have some kind of performance that can be seen by Jerome, so be prepared to buy it early.”
Bart was staring up the mountain with a thoughtful expression on his face.
Wow, he’s a person with no facial expression.
“Then shall we rest now? “Please stay in my cabin for now until you find a place to stay.”
Aslan, who was just walking towards his quarters, stopped when he noticed a figure approaching them.
It was a thin woman who walked unsteadily, but her face was hard to see because of the darkness. But upon seeing her left arm twisted at a strange angle, Aslan recognized who she was.
Martha. She is Jerome’s poor wife who gets beaten every day.
When I saw her up close, she had a face with fine lines that seemed to have boasted great beauty in her youth, but she was a woman who looked older than she actually was due to the hardships of living in a slash-and-burn village and the violence of Jerome.
The dark spots under her eyes and her gloomy expression made her look like a patient who had suffered from a long-term illness.
She asked Aslan in a thin, trembling voice.
“Hey. Aslan. “Have you not seen our Cayenne?”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry, Martha. “I didn’t see it.”
“She went out with Jerome. “Did you hear anything when you came to my house during the day?”
Aslan seemed to know why she was anxious. She seemed to think that Jerome was dragging Cayenne somewhere and beating her.
Aslan thought that it didn’t really matter what happened to a mean bastard like Cayenne, but he felt sorry for Martha, who was worried about her son. When he shakes her head with an apologetic look on her face, she bites her lip as if she’s going to cry and then stumbles away from them.
Aslan couldn’t take his eyes off her for a while, then clicked his tongue and muttered.
“I feel bad for that person too. It is said that he was taken by Jerome when he was young and left to live with him, but he was beaten all his life. It’s really no joke if Jerome’s eyes roll once. It seems like he couldn’t even leave because of his son, but he only has that one son… … .”
But Bart looked at Martha disappearing down the path for a long time and then said something that didn’t make sense.
“That woman is not worried about her son.”
“… … ?”
“You are in danger too, Aslan.”
Bart looked at him and asked an unexpected question.
“Have you ever held a grudge against a child named Kaien?”
“… to?”
Aslan blinked.
resentment? Didn’t he just hate everyone?
Come to think of it, when Aslan passes by, it seems like he glares with a particularly grim face?
“I’m not sure? Why is that suddenly… … .”
Aslan, who had been asking foolishly, suddenly closed his mouth as a cold feeling came upon him. This is because Bart’s eyes seemed to emit a strange light in the dark. The eyes, which I thought were clear gray, now had a strange silvery metallic luster.
“If I must climb that mountain tomorrow, I will at least have to move carefully to a place I don’t usually go to.”
“… … .”
Since you are new to this town, on what basis do you say such things? I have no intention of making an objection like that.
It was a strange sensation.
An eerie feeling, as if standing in front of someone who sees through everything about Aslan. The feeling of my heart sinking, as if I had heard an order that should never be refused.
So the boy could only swallow and nod.
* * *
The next morning, the two woke up at dawn and set off for the mountain.
Aslan, who was a little concerned about what Bart said the day before, decided to look beyond the abandoned field that he usually didn’t go to today.
As I was leading Bart through the vacant lot and up the path to the field, I felt eyes staring at them, unlike usual.
“… … ?”
When the puzzled Aslan turned around, the guys who were looking at them turned their heads and pretended not to notice and went about their business. Most of them were marauders who came over from Rohan with Jerome.
‘… what?’
They didn’t say anything to them but just looked at them, so even though it was suspicious, I had no choice but to pass by.
Trying to ignore his uneasy premonition, he hurried his steps. He had to rush a bit to get around to the new place and replenish his forage.
Aslan was a little worried as he climbed the unfamiliar mountain path. Still, he started working with a new group, and if the amount of gathering was less than usual, I wonder if an angry Jerome would just kill Bart.
But it was nothing more than a false hope.
Bart found the herb like a ghost. When he was looking somewhere, strangely enough, a place where precious medicinal herbs grew naturally would appear nearby.
Do you have a good sense of smell and can smell medicinal herbs? Like a hunting dog?
Thanks to this, Aslan’s mouth widened as he prepared to wander all over the mountain.
The problem was that he had little help with the gathering itself. That’s because when Bart tried to touch the herb growing area, the heavy handcuffs and chains crushed all the nearby herbs.
It wasn’t just herbs that went bad. Even if Bart tried to move his hands even a little, the thick handcuffs left heavy scratches on his skin. In an instant, Aslan looked at his wrist, which was covered in scratches and bruises, and clicked his tongue.
“I’ll dig the herbs, so just leave them and sit over there.”
At his words, Bart squatted down in a corner under the shade of a tree with a gloomy expression. It was a bit funny to see a man who didn’t even blink when Jerome beat a man to death right in front of his eyes or even when a blind hammer flew from his hand, but was depressed and crushed like that.
Anyway, how on earth was my wrist so fine before?
Fortunately, the time spent looking for herbs was greatly reduced, so Aslan seemed to be able to collect a large amount on his own.
Feeling a little relaxed, Aslan diligently played with his hands and spoke to Bart.
“Bart. You said you did research on plague before, right? “Did you also follow any other school?”
It was a story I heard from Seymour, a pharmacist I once knew. He said that among the pharmacists, there were sometimes those who were interested in the plague itself, and they gathered together to participate in the activities of the plague club.
There were several traditional schools of thought in the Plague Society, the most radical of which had its members all put to death due to a heresy controversy a few years ago.
The Devil’s Plague Club. Aslan guessed that Bart might have received that stigma because he was associated with that radical school.
“Are you also a member of the Devil’s Plague Society?”
“It’s not the Devil’s Plague Society; its official name is the Kshantra’s Plague Society.”
Bart responded in an indifferent tone. He was staring blankly somewhere with his chin resting on his knees, and judging by his lack of focus, he seemed more like he was wandering in thought rather than staring at something.
“Although there has always been controversy over heresy, there is probably no academic society that will escape punishment if all records of plague research are dug up in the first place. “The reason they collapsed was ultimately the internal rift among the members.”
According to him, it was the research documents from within the academy that became the decisive evidence brought to trial.
As it was the most radical society, there were frequent violent arguments within it, and two members, who had a falling out and developed feelings bordering on resentment, reported each other.
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Is there such an idiotic inside story?
“It was an academic society that made many achievements, but in the end, all of its valuable research records were burned. “It was a shame.”
It was a vague feeling, but it seems that he was not a member of that society.
“After that incident, most of the Plague Society went into hiding underground. “It will probably take quite some time for them to come out into the sun again.”
“Hmm, I see.”
Since then, they have been talking about various things. It was mainly about the herbs they were digging, and as Jerome expected, Bart was quite a talented pharmacist.
Even Aslan, who thought he had learned properly from Seymour for a long time, knew so much about herbs that he thought he could not compare to Bart’s knowledge.
“The first pharmacist I studied with was closer to the traditional school. “He devoted his life to discovering the efficacy and cultivation methods of medicinal herbs.”
Bart explained in a quiet tone.
“Perhaps the pharmacist who taught you seems to have received teachings from the Adelheid school, which succinctly connects the symptoms of plague and medicinal effects, rather than knowledge about the herbs themselves.”
It is also said to be a great school, mainly comprised of young pharmacists in the capital. It seems that Seymour was a greater pharmacist than he thought.
And the story continued, moving on to the story of Aslan’s past.
Bart listened closely to Aslan’s stories, and was especially interested in the story about the deer traps commonly used in Rohan. He even let out a small exclamation of admiration as he told the story of how he picked up the basic training techniques and mastered Auror skills on his own.
Then, Aslan was talking about the urgent situation in which he had been running away from Rohan’s punitive force for a long time.
“Aslan.”
Bart suddenly interrupted him and called his name.
“We have to go back to the village now.”
yes? Haven’t you dug up enough yet?
The noon sun hasn’t even risen in the sky yet. However, because his face was quite serious as he stood up and looked toward the village, Aslan hurriedly put away the herbs and tools and stood up.
There was somehow an irresistible power in the words Bart spoke with a straight face every now and then.
In addition, I was absorbed in the story and played with my hands non-stop, so I ended up collecting more than I expected.
When they hurriedly reached the vacant lot in the village, there were quite a few people gathered there and chatting.
They were whispering around something, but when Aslan got closer, their faces hardened and they glared at him.
“Aslan.”
Jerome, who was standing in the middle of the clearing, called out to him.
“You came back faster than usual. “Have you been near a waterfall today?”
Aslan swallowed. The waterfall to the east of the village was a place he often went to collect silk butterfly grass. There are small traps nearby, so you should probably stop by at least once today.
“I still had to look around the trap near the waterfall, so I came back early. “Today, I walked around the back of the northern field.”
“okay.”
As Jerome answered half-heartedly and looked around, several people nodded. Among them, Aslan was able to find the faces of those who had been watching him closely before climbing the mountain this morning.
‘this… what?’
An ominous feeling comes over me.
Jerome, who was looking at Aslan’s face, soon walked over and gave instructions to the guys in the clearing.
“Search around the waterfall to find clues about the mole. “Anyone whose actions are suspicious today should be reported to me.”
“yes!”
“Yes, boss.”
As most of the people in the clearing rushed out, Aslan was only then able to see what they were clamoring about.
It was a corpse. A particularly active member of Jerome’s raiding party.
Was it called Conrad? Until yesterday, I remember being very drunk and talking loudly about robbing Asin of his regular business.
He was dead with his eyes open and a dagger stuck in his back. One of his ankles was broken and bent at a strange angle, and all his fingernails were missing, as if he had been tortured.
spy. Jerome said he was definitely a spy.
My body is shaking as if cold water has been poured down my spine. As she was quietly standing in the clearing and gathering her thoughts, Jerome’s son, Cayenne, who had not left the spot until then, came limping towards Aslan. Even so, the fierce-looking three hundred eyes were particularly white and shiny.
Limping, limping. Eventually, Kaien came up to Aslan’s side, twisted her mouth and laughed, and then she whispered into his ear.
“… “You’re such a quick-witted bastard.”
fantasy,
