Spice & Wolf II

Chapter 1

The rolling hills continued endlessly.

Boulders were prominent; grass and trees were few.

The road wound thinly between the hills, frequently becoming so narrow that even the single cart was enough to block it entirely.

Just when it seemed the climbing would continue forever, the road turned down, and the seemingly endless naked rocks and dried shrubs suddenly changed to a wide awaiting vista.

While the journey had been more interesting than endless grass plains, most anyone would find the travel tiresome by the fifth day.

From the road, tinged with a loneliness that suggested the coming winter, the voice that once sounded its delight at the dandelions of the stony path was now gone. Its owner was now apparently too bored to even sit on the bench of the cart; she lay instead in the bed, grooming the fur of her tail.

A young man drove the cart, apparently used to such selfish behavior on the part of his companion. The man, Kraft Lawrence, was instantly recognizable as a traveling merchant. This year made the seventh since he’d struck out on his own, and he appeared to be around twenty-five. As if in acknowledgment of the chill that came with the deepening autumn, he tightened the fur coat that was wrapped around his body.

Occasionally, the chill also caused him to stroke his chin, covered in the sort of beard one often saw on traveling merchants, since when he sat still, he became slightly cooler. Letting a breath escape that would have turned foggy once the sun set, Lawrence glanced over his shoulder at the bed of the cart.

Normally filled to the brim with various goods, the bed was enjoying a brief respite. All that stood out was the firewood and straw that provided warmth at night, along with a single bag, small enough for a child to carry.

However, the contents of the bag were more valuable than an entire cart full of wheat would have been. The bag was full of high-grade pepper worth roughly one thousand silver trenni. If it could be sold in a mountain town, it might fetch as much as seventeen hundred pieces, but the bag was currently being used as a pillow by Lawrence’s companion, who continued lazily grooming her tail.

She was small with a face that was somehow imperious despite its apparent youth, reminiscent of a queen relaxing in her palace. The hood of her robe was thrown back, exposing her pointed ears as she attended to her tail, her expression listless.

Given the tail, the pointed ears, and the fact of her status as a merchant’s traveling companion, one might reasonably think of a dog, but unfortunately she was no dog.

She was apparently a “wisewolf,” a wolf-god from the taiga in the distant north—but Lawrence felt there was some question as to whether she could be properly called a wolf.

After all, this “wolf” appeared to be a young girl. Calling her a wolf seemed slightly inaccurate.

“We’ll be reaching the town soon. Be careful,” he said.

It would be disastrous for the girl’s ears and tail to be seen by others. The truth was, her canniness would put the instincts of even the sharpest merchant to shame, thus Lawrence didn’t need to warn her of the danger. However, she was so thoroughly relaxed that he simply had to speak up.

Not so much as glancing at him, she only yawned hugely.

Her yawn concluding with a vacant exhalation, she now nibbled puppylike on the snow white tip of her dark brown tail, as though it itched. She did not appear to have the slightest inclination to “be careful.”

Having introduced herself as a wolf and possessing these ears and this tail, Holo certainly relaxed with the carelessness of an animal, if nothing else.

“...Hrm.”

A slight vocalization that could have been a reply (or it could simply have been a small utterance of satisfaction at having conquered the itch) reached Lawrence’s ears. Tired of waiting for her reply, he looked forward again.

Holo and Lawrence had met two weeks earlier. Owing to a si range event in one of the villages Lawrence stopped at, Holo had joined him, and the two had been traveling together since. With her ears and tail, she was currently regarded as an evil spirit, and the Church sought to end her life to preserve order.