Chapter 8
The next morning.
The time to depart had arrived.
Count Eisen emerged after spending the night in the yurt, once again wearing three layers of fur clothing and looking like a round snowman.
All preparations were complete.
Every tribesperson had come out to see us off.
“Sniff... Sweetheart... my little puppy....”
Granny Baba clung to Kara and would not let go.
Her wrinkled hands stroked Kara’s back incessantly.
“Don’t skip your meals... Don’t try to endure it if you get sick... Be sure to write....”
“I know, Granny. Don’t cry. I’ll be back soon.”
Kara patted Granny’s back too, her eyes reddened.
The other tribespeople patted my shoulder and wished me safe travels.
“Varg! Go flatten those Imperial bastards’ noses!”
“Go show them the strength of our Winterclaw!”
Amid the boisterous farewells, Gorgon walked out of the tent.
His expression was solemn, devoid of its usual playfulness.
He held something in both hands.
The crowd fell silent.
Gorgon approached Kara and held out a sleek sword with a bluish sheen.
“Kara, take it.”
“......What is this?”
“I saw the sword you used during the last war. Every tooth was chipped away, turning it into a saw. You can’t go to the Empire carrying a club like that.”
The scabbard Gorgon held out was intricately engraved with the wolf emblem symbolizing the Winterclaw Tribe.
The blade gave off a chilly aura, as though it had just been sharpened on a whetstone and oiled.
“This is the sword your mother used, 「Frostwind」. I completely refurbished it after your wedding.”
“......!”
Kara accepted the sword with trembling hands.
The spot where Gorgon’s hand had gripped it remained warm inside the cold scabbard.
It seemed as though she could feel her mother’s warmth and her father’s care within it.
Kara hugged the sword to her chest and bowed deeply.
“Mom’s sword... I’ll treasure it.”
Gorgon roughly patted Kara’s head, then turned to me.
“And Varg. Here, your ax.”
He tossed me the old double-edged ax I usually used.
Thunk.
I caught the ax with practiced ease.
Its weighty grip.
It was a weapon like my other self, fitting my hand perfectly.
But something was different.
‘Huh?’
In fact, this ax had been shoved into a corner of the storehouse after the war with the Bloodfang Tribe.
It was made of solid iron, absurdly thick and practically unbreakable, but its edge had dulled and caked-on blood had left it looking terrible.
Besides, recently I had been so absorbed in my sweet newlywed life with Kara that I had completely forgotten about things like weapon maintenance.
The ax in my hand now gleamed like a mirror.
Its edge was honed sharp as a razor, and the handle was meticulously wrapped in a new, untouched leather strap.
‘Father...’
He must have spent every night sharpening and polishing it while we slept.
It seemed to have bothered him that his son was walking around with a rusty ax.
Just as I was about to feel a lump in my throat.
Thwack!
“Ow!”
A flash of fire suddenly burst across my forehead.
Gorgon had delivered a solid knuckle tap to my forehead with one thick finger.
When that lighthearted yet menacing impact rang out, Count Eisen, standing beside me, began trembling like an aspen and let out a “Eek!”
He reflexively moved both hands behind him, clutching his back and shoulders as he shrank in on himself.
Like a conditioned reflex.
‘Ah... I think I get it.’
I rubbed my forehead and looked Count Eisen up and down.
Twenty years ago, when Gorgon was young and full of vigor, I could practically see him pounding that man’s back while shouting, “Hahaha! Good to see you, my friend!”
Gorgon’s grip alone could bring down a bear—and this was him in his prime.
Even I, who could turn most pain into strength, felt like I was dying from it, so imagine Count Eisen, a civil official by profession, having to take it on his back while laughing.
That trauma was fear of Gorgon’s ‘brute strength’ itself.
“Hey, why did you hit me?”
I grumbled, pretending not to notice Count Eisen’s pitiful trembling.
“You rascal, I know you’re enjoying newlywed life, but still! I told you until your ears were calloused that weapon maintenance is the foundation of a warrior and a form of self-discipline!”
Gorgon clicked his tongue and scolded me.
“You’re a husband now, and soon to be a father. What’s with the state of your ax? Tsk, tsk.”
I rubbed my stinging forehead and gave an awkward laugh.
The future chieftain who would lead the tribe, and a husband who had sworn to protect a woman.
But before Gorgon, I was still just a childish son who needed constant looking after.
Feeling the love contained in that rough rebuke, I bowed my head and put on an exaggerated show of pain.
“I’ll remember that. My self-discipline was lacking.”
That was when I noticed some unfamiliar letters roughly carved into the end of the handle.
「First Snowflake」
“......?”
I furrowed my brow and read the letters.
“...「First Snowflake」? Father, what is this? I’ve told you several times that naming weapons is embarrassing....”
“Enough!”
Gorgon cut me off with a grin.
“If the Great Chieftain’s son and son-in-law wield an ax without a name, what will become of my reputation? If we’re going to intimidate those Imperial bastards, it needs a name like that at least.”
“But still, First Snowflake? Isn’t there a name that sounds more formidable? Something like 「Stone Giant Smasher」 or 「Storm of the Bear’s Claw」.”
“Stop your whining and use it! It means that, just as the whole world looks up in admiration at the first snow, the world will look up to you too!”
At Gorgon’s roar, I let out a hollow laugh.
First Snowflake, huh....
The naming sense was as clumsy as could be, but I could feel Gorgon’s own affection in it.
Though I grumbled outwardly, my grip tightened around the ax handle.
Not bad.
No, actually, I liked it quite a bit.
“I’ll put it to good use, Father.”
I slung the ax over my back and bowed deeply to Gorgon.
Gorgon shouted heartily.
“That’s right. Go! Don’t look back!”
We set off, following behind Count Eisen’s carriage.
The snowfield receding into the distance.
The tribespeople waving their hands.
And Gorgon, like a massive rock, remaining until the very end to watch over us, gradually grew smaller in my field of vision.
「Frostwind」 and 「First Snowflake」.
And the child in Kara’s womb.
Thus, carrying everything with us, we headed toward a new world.
* * *
But the emotion ended right there.
Not long after leaving the tribe, I found myself facing a serious survival crisis.
“......”
Inside Count Eisen’s luxurious carriage.
From the outside, it was a splendid four-person carriage sparkling with gold leaf decorations, but the reality was different.
‘Who said Imperial carriages were spacious and comfortable? This is just a wheeled torture device!’
My inner thoughts nearly burst out on their own.
Of course, the carriage had no wheels now.
It had been modified to run across the snowfield, with its wheels replaced by skis.
The carriage was beyond full and on the verge of bursting, packed with two huge barbarians and the enormous quantity of farewell gifts the tribespeople had given us.
My shoulders nearly touched the ceiling, and my knees were bent so tightly I couldn’t straighten them.
Kara was tall and broad-framed for a woman, so she looked cramped too, but compared to me, who was nearly two meters tall, she had it easy.
“Grrr....”
The carriage let out a scream every time I breathed.
I had to scrunch my body up as much as possible and breathe shallowly.
Count Eisen, huddled in the opposite corner, looked anxiously up at the ceiling.
Every time the carriage jolted, my knee collided with the count’s.
At last, I couldn’t stand it and opened my mouth.
“Count, do nobles usually enjoy traveling trapped in such a cramped space? You certainly have unique tastes.”
“Yes...?”
“It’s not like we’re having some coffin experience. I’m going to suffocate.”
Count Eisen looked near tears but clung to the window, forcibly maintaining his composure.
“A coffin? This is a top-of-the-line four-person carriage. It’s just that... the passengers are somewhat out of the ordinary in size....”
The Empire’s greatest administrator and the North’s barbarian couple.
Our life together had been creaking from the very start.
Literally, it was creaking in the physical sense, too.
That was when it happened.
“Aaaah! The luggage is spilling!”
Every time the carriage jolted, the bundles of luggage stacked almost to the ceiling swayed precariously.
Some of them contained hard chunks of dried meat or heavy sacks of herbs.
It would be disastrous if those fell onto Kara.
‘There’s no way in hell I’m going to let my beloved Kara and our baby have an uncomfortable journey!’
But I couldn’t exactly throw the gifts imbued with the tribespeople’s devotion out the window.
There was only one way.
I would bear it.
“Hup!”
With a battle cry, I embraced all the huge bundles of luggage leaning toward Kara.
I spread my arms to block the cascading luggage and supported the weight with my chest and shoulders.
I felt like Atlas, the giant from mythology who held up the sky.
My tremendous strength was coming in handy.
Of course, this crisis was self-inflicted, thanks to the body that gave me that strength.
Thanks to that, a comfortable space was secured around Kara.
“Varg, isn’t it heavy? You can just put it on the floor....”
Kara asked with a worried look.
I poked just my face out from between the heaps of luggage and grinned.
“It’s not heavy at all. If it makes more room for my darling and our baby, this much is nothing. It’s as light as a feather, a feather.”
In truth, it was less like a feather and more like a boulder with no handles, but I was enduring through the power of love.
But there was someone across from me who couldn’t endure it even with the power of love.
“......”
Count Eisen.
He was currently experiencing a living hell.
In fact, the root cause of this whole situation was his stubbornness.
『Count, couldn’t we just hang it from the roof and go?』
Before we departed, I had grumbled that it would be difficult to load the luggage, and he had firmly shaken his head.
『Absolutely not. The point of supplies is to transport them intact. The tribespeople packed those things with care, and they weren’t even placed in standardized crates. What if a precious herb fell or the meat went rolling across the snow after we hung them from the jolting roof?』
『But if we tied them down tightly with rope....』
『A zero-percent loss rate during transport. That is my pride and my iron rule. I don’t trust anything I can’t see with my own eyes. It must go inside, no matter what.』
That stubborn insistence was how this mess came to be.
He was an administrator and quartermaster to the bone.
An occupational obsession bordering on pathology, making him hate the loss of supplies more than death itself.
The price was brutal.
We still hadn’t left the snowfield, so he was wearing three layers of thick fur clothing to ward off the cold.
In the already cramped carriage, he had become a giant furry penguin, taking up an enormous amount of space.
On top of that, the remaining luggage I hadn’t been able to hold all lay stacked like a tower on his thighs.
‘I can’t breathe... It’s heavy... It’s hot....’
Fog had clouded Count Eisen’s glasses.
Two massive adults, a man and a woman, and a mountain of luggage in a cramped space.
And fur clothing radiating heat like a heater.
The temperature inside the carriage was rising to sauna levels.
His legs were going numb and he was struggling to breathe, but seeing me supporting the luggage with my whole body, he couldn’t even let on that he was having a hard time.
A patron’s dignity was at stake. If even that barbarian could endure it, a civilized man couldn’t complain.
But Count Eisen’s eyes were already tinged with deep regret.
‘Damn it... I should’ve just hung it up.... Pride be damned, I’m going to die....’
“Haha... You two certainly are... affectionate. Your arms must hurt... if you’re going to carry all that...”
Count Eisen finally managed to speak from behind the luggage, his voice trembling.
He seemed to be trembling not from the cold but from muscle spasms.
Clatter!
The carriage lurched violently.
For a moment, the wooden crates stacked on Count Eisen’s knees looked as though they were about to come tumbling down.
“Oh, oh no!”
Count Eisen frantically flailed his arms, trying to keep his balance.
It was a sight that would bring tears to anyone’s eyes: the Empire’s greatest administrator locked in mortal combat with the luggage.
That was when the coachman’s shout reached us.
“It’s the 「Norheim Wall」! We’re passing through the checkpoint!”
We had reached the massive wall guarding the Empire’s northern border, the 「Norheim Wall」.
‘Beyond this is the Grand Duchy....’
Thus, the barbarian couple set foot in the Empire for the first time.