Chapter 6
The decision to go to the Empire sent no small ripple through the tribe.
But the chieftain's orders.
And the firm resolve of the future chieftain and his wife were things no one could break.
Granny Baba spent the entire night chasing Gorgon around and pounding his back.
“You stupid, thickheaded bear! Do you have a brain in that head of yours or not!”
Smack!
“Ow! Granny, I told you it hurts!”
“I’m hitting you because it’s supposed to hurt! You’re sending a pregnant woman all the way to that distant Empire? And to that barren den of bastards, no less?”
Granny’s nagging continued the entire time we packed.
“Tsk, tsk! A child of the Winterclaw Tribe ought to be born alongside snow flowers! If it’s born in the lukewarm lands of those Imperial bastards, it’ll grow up weak as a kitten!”
Even as she grumbled, Granny kept stuffing dried herbs, talismans, and all sorts of other things into our baggage.
On the surface, it seemed like resentment toward the Empire, but I knew better.
The faint tremor in her voice.
Fear.
And deep regret.
After Kara and I were married, I remembered what Granny had confessed while drunk.
『I’ve delivered countless children in my life... but I failed exactly once.』
A massive ice pick driven into Granny Baba’s heart.
Plina, Kara’s mother.
It had been a difficult labor.
Granny had struggled for days and nights, but in the end, she couldn’t save the mother.
That terrible trauma made her fingertips tremble.
That trauma was tormenting her.
‘I’m supposed to deliver Kara’s child with my own hands... What if something goes wrong in those Imperial lands?’
But her body was far too old for her to follow us.
Granny stopped packing and let the words slip out as though speaking to herself.
“...If I were ten years younger, I’d learn those Imperial bastards’ medicine and bring it back. My medical skills aren’t enough....”
Moisture gathered at the corners of Granny’s eyes as her voice trailed off.
That was when it happened.
Kara, who had been packing, quietly approached and hugged Granny’s small back tightly.
“Granny.”
“......Let go. I have to pack.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going away for good.”
Kara rubbed her face against Granny’s shoulder and whispered.
“I’ll come back every vacation. I’ll make sure you’re the one who delivers our baby. Okay?”
“......Hmph. The Imperial doctors will probably do a better job.”
“No. Your hands are the warmest. Mom must have felt the same way.”
At those words, Granny stiffened for a moment, then awkwardly stroked Kara’s back with her rough hands.
“......Yes. It has to be that way. Just come back with a healthy baby.”
In the end, Granny turned away and left the tent so she wouldn’t show her tears, but she couldn’t hide the way her shoulders trembled.
That night, I was summoned by Gorgon.
The place was a hill overlooking the tribe across the snowfield.
Rather than the mammoth-bone throne, Gorgon sat on a snow-covered rock, looking less like a chieftain and more like a father and veteran warrior.
“You came.”
“Yes, Father.”
I stood beside Gorgon.
Though the cold night wind blew, I could feel the heat radiating from Gorgon’s massive back.
He stared silently at the sky toward the Empire for a while before speaking.
“Varg. At the Imperial Academy, you won’t only learn swordsmanship and magic.”
“I know.”
“You’ll learn how to govern a territory and a nation—in other words, ‘politics.’”
Gorgon smiled bitterly.
“Of course, the learning you acquire beneath the sun will differ from the survival skills we practice in Norheim’s icy winds. It might make your body soft. You might even become a coward with nothing but an oversized head.”
“Don’t worry. There’s no chance my ax will rust.”
“Of course. Not you.”
Gorgon gave my shoulder a light tap.
Then he returned to a serious expression and asked,
“Varg. Do you remember the day we first met?”
“Yes. I haven’t forgotten it for even a moment.”
How could I forget?
The day he was dying in a bear trap yet still radiating murderous intent.
The massive back of the man who had first held out a hand to me.
Gorgon laughed heartily.
“Yes. It feels like only yesterday that you, so tiny, snarled at me while holding a bear’s head, even after getting caught in a bear trap.”
He looked at me with nostalgic eyes.
“Before I knew it, you’d grown so much that you were about to become a father. Time certainly flies.”
......
“Still, learn it well. Someday, it will become the strongest weapon you possess when you govern this tribe—when you govern Norheim.”
......
“The Croatina Empire has been at peace for the past hundred years. That means it’s rotting. Stagnant water is bound to rot.”
Gorgon’s eyes gleamed sharply.
The eyes of a leader who could read the currents of the continent.
“We don’t know when or where division will erupt. The seeds of that chaos are already lying in wait.”
“Winter is coming.”
“Yes. Before the real winter arrives, we have to read the currents. For the survival of our tribe.”
Gorgon held out his rough hand.
I clasped it tightly.
Rough, hardened calluses.
A hand like a medal earned from protecting the tribe all his life.
I had grown to resemble that hand.
“I’ll remember, Father. I’ll carve it into my bones and return.”
“Good. I believe in you, my son.”
That night, the stars over the snowfield shone especially brightly.
As though blessing our future—or warning us.
And from the next day onward, we had to face a new enemy.
Not snowfield trolls.
Nor snow bears.
It was a beast called ‘paperwork.’
“Aaaagh! What is all this!”
Kara screamed as she clutched at her hair.
Before us lay a mountain of parchment covered densely in the Imperial common tongue.
An enrollment application.
An identity-guarantee certificate.
An application for tuition assistance.
A dormitory application....
“Varg, do I really have to fill all this out? Can’t we just go there and stamp everything?”
“No. The Imperial bastards stake their lives on scraps of paper like these.”
I frowned and glared at the parchment.
Thanks to Gorgon’s foresight about the political situation, Kara and I had learned the Imperial language from Granny since childhood and could read it without trouble. But the contents were another matter.
The biggest headache was the ‘guarantee of identity.’
For us, a barbarian couple, to enter an academy attended by the children of Imperial nobles, we needed an Imperial noble of unquestioned status to vouch for us.
“The Grand Duke of Northgard said he would take care of it, but....”
There was no way that arrogant Grand Duke would come all the way here himself just to stamp a document.
Then his representative would be coming.
“Who could it be?”
I racked my brain for what I knew of the original novel, but I couldn’t figure it out.
In the original, Kara had been dragged away alone, practically as a hostage, and Kairon had taken charge of everything. There probably hadn’t been any complicated procedures like this.
The variable I had created was generating unpredictable circumstances.
“Good thing I learned to read. Otherwise, I might’ve used this scrap of paper to blow my nose.”
I grumbled as I adjusted my grip on the quill.
Then Gorgon’s hearty voice rang out from beyond the tent.
“Son-in-law! Daughter! Are all the bags packed?”
Gorgon entered the tent with a booming laugh.
He saw our troubled expressions and grinned.
“Don’t worry. The man coming today has been traveling back and forth to Norheim as an envoy since before Kara was born.”
“You know him?”
“Of course I do. I haven’t seen him since he inherited his title back home, but he was always damn good at getting things done.”
Gorgon narrowed his eyes as though lost in old memories.
“His lips may tremble a little, but his words are full of sense, so you can trust him. He talked so much despite his stutter that I didn’t trust him at first, either.”
“His lips tremble...?”
Did he mean that the man stuttered?
And yet his words were full of substance?
I couldn’t make heads or tails of Gorgon’s contradictory description.
Had there been a character like that in the original novel?
I searched through my memories, but no particular person came to mind.
A little while later.
A horn sounded from the direction of the tribal entrance.
It was the signal that a guest had arrived.
Kara, Gorgon, and I headed toward the tribal entrance.
In the distance, a luxurious carriage came rattling through the blizzard.
It was a specially made carriage fitted with sled runners instead of wheels so it could travel across the snowfield.
And a distinct crest was engraved on the carriage door.
A blue feather fluttering in the wind.
“......Huh?”
I stopped short the moment I saw the crest.
Memories from my previous life flashed through my mind like lightning.
‘A blue feather... That’s the crest of House Eisen!’
Count Eisen.
He was a fairly prominent figure in the original novel <The Bastard’s Snowflake Path>.
Whenever the male lead, Kairon, took a dump...
No, whenever he caused trouble, he was the ‘extreme-job administrator’ who quietly paid the settlements, controlled the press, and handled all the cleanup behind the scenes.
A cold, competent perfectionist who looked as though not a single drop of blood would come out if you stabbed him.
That was the image I had of Count Eisen.
In the original, he had also been quite kind toward Kara.
The only sane person who would quietly come to apologize after Kairon made a scene, then secretly provide her with medicine and daily necessities.
The comment section exploded every time he appeared.
『Please dump that jalopy Kairon and go to Benz Eisen!』
『Count Eisen, please take Kara, even if only as a concubine! ㅠㅠ』
He was a promising second male lead who enjoyed passionate support from the readers.
Of course, he maintained his position as a ‘loyal vassal’ until the very end.
His only weakness, if he had one, was the age gap between him and Kara—he was old enough to be her father—but with the readers’ opinion of Kairon so foul at the time, that age difference barely counted as a weakness.
‘Wait, Count Eisen? Is he the “stuttering guy” Father mentioned?’
I was confused.
The Count Eisen of the original novel had been a fluent and eloquent speaker. He was never described as a stutterer.
As I tilted my head over the discrepancy in my memories, the carriage came to a stop.
I swallowed nervously and muttered,
“Count Eisen... That man came all the way here himself?”
Could he really be the cold-blooded man I remembered?
Clack.
The carriage door opened.
But contrary to my expectations, the sharp, cold administrator was nowhere to be seen.
Instead.
“......?”
A gigantic ball of fur rolled out.
A round figure that looked as though it had put on at least ten layers, including bear fur, fox fur, and a mink coat.
The mass, impossible to distinguish from either a person or a snowman, staggered down onto the snow.
The only thing indicating that it was human was the glint of spectacles peeking out from beneath the fur hat.
Even those, however, had frosted white from the change in temperature.
‘That... is Count Eisen?’
As I stared in shock, a clicking sound came from inside the ball of fur.
The sound of teeth chattering.
“V-va, va... V-Varg... L-lord...?”
He looked at me—or at least seemed to be trying to—and struggled to open his mouth.
“I-I... I’m... Ei, Ei... Eisen... C-count....”
An extreme stutter.
Gorgon nudged him and laughed.
“See? I told you he stuttered.”
......
I stared blankly at him.
The greatest intellectual in the original novel.
The image of the cold Count Eisen shattered to pieces.
“N-no... It’s b-because... I’m s-so c-cold... M-my m-mouth... w-won’t... o-open... Go... Gorgon....”
Count Eisen pleaded with an expression that was nearly on the verge of tears.
Only then did I realize.
‘Ah, so he doesn’t actually stutter...’
He was just absurdly sensitive to the cold.
Thinking back, Count Eisen in the original novel had always been holed up in his office.
Since he had only appeared in a warm, comfortable office with a roaring fireplace, there had never been any opportunity for the story to mention that he was weak to the cold.
I’d discovered the extreme-job administrator’s fatal weakness.
I stifled a hollow laugh as I watched the Empire’s greatest administrator tremble violently.
The truth behind Gorgon’s ‘stuttering guy’ had been revealed, clearing up the misunderstanding.
“Let’s get you inside first. I’ll serve you some warm tea with deer-antler velvet in it.”
“Th-th... th-thank you... I-I’m saved....”
With my support, Count Eisen waddled toward the tent like a penguin.
To think the great Count Eisen had been turned into a penguin.
The cold of Norheim was fair, as always.