Chapter 51: Carts Waiting for the Dragon

When I returned to Rue, Lina came running out of the village before I had even landed.

“Val, welcome back!”

I set my feet on the ground and folded my wings.

Before looking at my face, Lina spotted the bundle dangling by a rope from my mouth.

“What’s that?”

I set the rope down on the ground.

“…Payment.”

“Payment?”

“…Meat.”

“Meat?”

Dario, who had come up behind her, laughed.

“So you went to town and earned something properly, did you?”

“…I did the work properly.”

“I’m not doubting you.”

Lina crouched beside the bundle.

“Can I look?”

“…Sure.”

I had Dario undo the rope.

When the dried meat appeared from inside the cloth, Lina leaned in to smell it.

“It smells good.”

“…It’s salty.”

“You ate some?”

“…One piece.”

“I want some too.”

“You really don’t hold back, do you?”

Dario sounded exasperated.

“Just one piece.”

“…Sure.”

“Yes!”

Lina looked delighted.

The chief arrived just then as well.

“You came back in quite a good mood.”

“…The work is done.”

“And you received your payment?”

“…Yeah.”

The chief looked at the dried meat and nodded.

“Then it belongs to you. Do as you please with it.”

“…I’ll give Lina one piece.”

“That’s also for you to decide.”

It was just as I had been told before.

If I accepted a job myself, then whatever I received for it belonged to me too.

That reminded me of the other problem I had brought back from Sedol.

“…Chief.”

“What is it?”

“…Can you read?”

“Letters?”

“…Yeah.”

The chief gave me a slightly puzzled look.

“I can read what I need to, to a certain extent.”

“…Teach me.”

“That’s sudden.”

“…Had trouble in Sedol.”

I explained how someone had shown me a wooden tablet with the details of a request written on it.

I had been told that the destination, cargo, and payment were all written there, yet I hadn’t been able to read a single thing.

“I see.”

The chief understood at once.

“I forgot about it because you learned to speak, but I suppose that doesn’t mean you suddenly learned to read too.”

“…Yeah.”

“Val, you didn’t know any letters?”

Lina seemed a little surprised too.

“…I understand speech. But I don’t understand letters.”

“And that’s why you want to learn.”

“…Yeah. It causes trouble when I work.”

“Then shall we try?”

The chief went back into the village and returned a short while later with a flat piece of wood and a piece of charcoal.

I lay down on the ground.

The chief wrote letters on the wood.

“First, this is your name.”

“…Val?”

“Yes.”

I studied the written shape.

I knew the sound.

I knew its meaning too.

But until now, I had never connected that sound with that shape.

“Next.”

The chief wrote something else beside it.

“Rue.”

“…This is Rue.”

“That’s right.”

“…Next.”

“Wait. You memorized it?”

“…Yeah.”

“You only saw it once.”

“…Write it again.”

The chief wrote the same word somewhere else.

I compared it to the first one.

“…Rue.”

“Correct.”

The chief’s expression changed slightly.

One more.

“This means meat.”

“…Meat.”

Then road.

Cargo.

Village.

One by one, I connected the shapes the chief wrote with the sounds he spoke.

I couldn’t understand everything after seeing it once.

Naturally, I couldn’t read a letter I had never seen before.

But if something I had just been taught appeared again, I recognized it.

Even when I made a mistake, one correction from the chief was enough for me to catch it the next time.

“…This is village?”

I indicated one spot on the wood with the tip of my snout.

“That’s right.”

“…And this one is road.”

“Right again.”

The chief stopped with the charcoal still in his hand.

“You’re much faster than I expected.”

“…Because I already know the words.”

“Even so.”

To me, it didn’t feel as though I were learning the words themselves anew.

I was only matching unfamiliar shapes to sounds I already knew, one at a time.

“Want me to write more?”

“…Yeah.”

“Don’t you need a rest?”

“…I’m still fine.”

The chief added more letters to the wood.

Partway through, Lina received a piece of dried meat and watched from beside them as she chewed it.

“Val, you might end up learning more than I know.”

“I don’t know how much you can read.”

“I haven’t told you either.”

While the chief and Lina went back and forth about something, I kept studying the wood.

Then Dario turned south.

“Someone’s coming.”

I raised my head as well.

A figure was coming up the road.

Once the man came closer, I recognized him.

“…Elmer.”

It was the man I had met many times at the manor at the foot of the mountain.

When Elmer spotted me, he walked straight out to the edge of the village.

“So you were back.”

“…Just returned.”

“From Sedol?”

“…Yeah.”

“Then you may have heard something there.”

The chief put down the wood and charcoal.

“About the east?”

“Yes.”

Elmer’s expression shifted into the one he wore for work.

“The manor has received word as well. There have been several reports of gray, horned magical beasts east of Sedol.”

“…I heard.”

I answered.

“Someone came to Sedol from the east too.”

“Perhaps the same warning reached them.”

“Do you know the cause?” Dario asked.

“Not yet. They weren’t all seen in one place, and we haven’t confirmed whether it is one group moving about or several different groups.”

“…I saw them several times too. But I don’t know if they were the same ones.”

“That’s fine for now. There’s no need to force what we don’t know into a single explanation.”

After saying that, Elmer looked at me with slight unease.

“And there’s one more thing.”

“…What?”

“You escorted a cart east from Sedol, didn’t you?”

“…I did.”

“Word has spread.”

I had a bad feeling about that.

“…Another job?”

“I didn’t come to ask you to work.”

Elmer denied it at once.

“But some people in Sedol have delayed sending their cargo east.”

“…Why?”

“Apparently they want to travel with you the next time you go east.”

I fell silent.

I remembered the people who had followed Rody’s cart.

That time, their numbers had grown after I departed.

This time, they intended to wait before I even set out.

“…I haven’t decided when I’ll go.”

“I assumed as much.”

“…I haven’t decided whether I’ll take a job either.”

“I’ll tell them that too.”

“Then why wait?”

Elmer shrugged.

“If they must use a dangerous road, they want to travel when it seems even a little safer. I understand how they feel.”

I understood that much too.

“How many are there?” the chief asked.

“It isn’t as though a crowd is blocking the road. Some who meant to head east immediately have simply begun waiting to see what happens.”

“Even so, the cargo will stop moving.”

“Yes.”

Elmer nodded.

“At present, no one has promised them Val’s protection. Yet if they decide to wait until the dragon next goes east, there’s no telling how long they’ll wait.”

“…I don’t go to Sedol every day.”

“I know.”

“…I stay in Rue too.”

“I know that as well.”

His answers came quickly.

It didn’t seem that Elmer had come to demand they let him use me.

“The manor will tell them that Val doesn’t escort carts on a regular schedule. We’ll also tell them not to wait on the assumption that he’s coming when they haven’t even spoken to him.”

“…That’s good.”

“However…”

Elmer continued.

“Once you escorted that cart, people learned that there are things they can ask a dragon to do. We can’t make them forget that now.”

I thought for a moment.

“…They can ask.”

“Yes.”

“…But I decide if I do it.”

“That hasn’t changed.”

It was the same thing I had told Rody at the start.

But at the time, only one person had made a request.

Now even people I had never met were holding their cargo because they thought I might come.

“Did anyone else ask you for work in Sedol?”

“…One person. He brought a wooden tablet.”

“A wooden tablet?”

“…The work was written on it. But I couldn’t read.”

“Is that so?”

“…I’m learning now.”

Elmer looked at the piece of wood before the chief.

Several words had been written across it.

“You only just started?”

“…Yeah.”

“Which ones can you read?”

Elmer asked casually.

I brought my face closer to the wood.

I looked over what the chief had written, one item at a time.

“…Val. Rue. Meat. Road. Cargo. Village.”

“Already?”

“…He just taught me.”

Elmer looked at the chief.

“All of them after one look?”

“So far.”

“…Some took more than one.”

“When you made a mistake, you remembered after one correction.”

“That still counts as once.”

Dario laughed.

Elmer looked slightly taken aback as well.

“At that rate, it shouldn’t take you long to read a work notice.”

“…There are still lots of letters I can’t read.”

“Of course there are. You started today.”

I studied the wood again.

Among the lines that had meant nothing to me a short while ago, there were now shapes I understood.

Not all of them.

But I had already moved beyond understanding none of them.

“Elmer.”

“What is it?”

“…If people are waiting in Sedol…”

“Yes?”

“…Tell them not to wait.”

“Are you sure?”

“…Yeah. I never said I was going.”

“Understood. I’ll tell them exactly that.”

“…But they can ask me for work.”

“They should speak to you themselves, you mean.”

“…Yeah.”

Elmer nodded.

“The manor will continue gathering information about the magical beasts in the east. I’ll let you know if we learn anything.”

“…I’ll tell you if I see anything.”

“Please do. But you don’t need to push yourself to fly out solely to investigate.”

“…I know.”

Elmer asked nothing more of me.

After speaking briefly with the chief, he returned to the road south.

By the time his back disappeared from view, Lina had finished chewing her dried meat.

“Val.”

“…What?”

“Are you going to keep learning letters?”

“…Yeah.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“…A little. But this much is fine.”

The chief picked up the charcoal.

“Then we’ll continue from where we left off.”

He wrote a new word.

I listened to its sound and studied its shape.

Once.

Then the next.

And the one after that.

As the number I had been taught grew, I began to notice shapes similar to ones I had already seen.

After some time, the chief turned over an earlier piece of wood as though testing me.

Words I had learned near the beginning were mixed together on it.

“Read only the parts you can.”

I followed them from the top.

“…Rue. Road. …I don’t know this one. Cargo. …Sedol?”

The chief froze.

“I only wrote Sedol once.”

“…Yeah.”

“You’re right.”

“…Then next.”

“You really are fast.”

“…There are still lots I can’t read.”

“At this rate, you won’t be saying that tomorrow.”

Dario laughed.

I didn’t answer. I waited for the chief to write the next word.

In Sedol, carts were delaying their departures merely because I might come.

In the east, the gray magical beasts were still on the move.

Learning letters wouldn’t solve either problem.

Even so, the next time someone held out a wooden tablet, I wanted to be able to confirm for myself at least what they were asking me to do.

“…Chief, next.”

“Yes, yes.”

The charcoal moved across the wood.

I needed only one look at this shape as well.