The decision to go to the Empire sent no small ripple through the tribe.
But it was the chieftain’s order.
And no one could break the firm will of the future chieftain and his wife.
Old Baba chased Gorgon around all night, beating him across the back.
“You foolish bear of a man! Do you have any sense in that head of yours or not!”
Smack!
“Ow! Baba, that hurts!”
“I’m hitting you so it hurts! You’re sending a pregnant girl all the way to that far-off Empire? To those dreary bastards’ den, no less?”
The old woman’s scolding continued the entire time we packed.
“Bah, tch! A child of Winterclaw ought to be born with the snow blossoms! What if the child is born weak and feeble in the lukewarm lands of the Empire?”
Even as she grumbled, Baba kept shoving dried herbs and talismans into our bundles.
On the surface, it looked like hostility toward the Empire, but I knew.
I could hear the faint tremor mixed into her voice.
Fear.
And deep regret.
I remembered the story Baba had told me in a drunken moment after Kara and I held our wedding.
“I’ve delivered countless children in my life... but I failed once.”
The enormous icicle lodged in Old Baba’s heart.
Kara’s mother, Plina.
It had been a difficult birth.
Baba had clung on for days and nights, but in the end, she had failed to save the mother.
That terrible trauma was making the old woman’s fingertips tremble.
That trauma was tormenting her.
“I should be the one to deliver Kara’s child... What if something goes wrong in the lands of those Imperial bastards?”
But her body was far too old to go with us.
Baba stopped packing for a moment and murmured as if to herself.
“...If only I were ten years younger, I’d go learn the Imperial bastards’ medicine myself. My own healing arts aren’t enough....”
Her voice trailed off, and moisture gathered at the corners of her eyes.
It was then.
Kara, who had been packing, quietly approached and wrapped her arms tightly around Baba’s small back.
“Baba.”
“......Let go. I need to pack.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not leaving forever.”
Kara rubbed her face against Baba’s shoulder and whispered.
“I’ll come back every break. I’ll make sure our baby is delivered by your hands, Baba. Okay?”
“......Hmph. Those Imperial doctors will do a better job.”
“No. Your hands are the warmest, Baba. I’m sure Mother thought so too.”
At those words, Baba flinched stiffly, then soon stroked Kara’s back with her rough hand.
“......Yes. You’d better. Just give birth in good health and come back.”
Baba turned her head and left the tent so that she would not show her tears to the end, but she could not hide the trembling of her shoulders.
That night, Gorgon summoned me.
The place was a snowy hill overlooking the tribe.
Instead of the throne made from mammoth bones, Gorgon sat on a snow-covered rock, looking not like a chieftain but like a father and a senior warrior.
“You’re here.”
“Yes, Father.”
I stood beside Gorgon.
The night wind was cold, but I could feel the heat radiating from Gorgon’s massive back.
For a while, he silently stared at the sky in the direction of the Empire, then opened his mouth.
“Varg. When you go to the Imperial Academy, you won’t just be learning 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, scholarship learned beneath the sun will be different from the ways of survival in Norheim’s frost winds. It might make your body lazy. You might become a coward with nothing but a swollen head.”
“Do not worry. My axe will not rust.”
“Yes. If it’s you, that’s true enough.”
Gorgon gave my shoulder a light smack.
Then he soon returned to a serious expression and asked.
“Varg. Do you remember the day we first met?”
“Yes. I have never forgotten it for even a single moment.”
How could I forget?
That day when I was dying in a bear trap and still radiating killing intent.
That huge back that first reached out a hand to me.
Gorgon laughed heartily.
“Right. It feels like only yesterday that a scrawny little brat caught in a bear trap was snarling at me with a bear’s head in his hand.”
He looked at me with sentimental eyes.
“And now you’ve grown so tall and are about to become a father to a child. Time truly flies.”
“......”
“But learn while you can. One day, when you govern this tribe, when you govern Norheim, it will become your strongest weapon.”
“......”
“The Croatina Empire has been at peace for the past hundred years. That means it is rotting. Stagnant water always rots.”
Gorgon’s eyes gleamed sharply.
They were the eyes of a leader who read the currents of the continent.
“You never know when or where division will erupt. The seeds of that chaos are crouching low.”
“Winter is coming.”
“Yes. Before the true winter comes, you must read the current. For the survival of our tribe.”
Gorgon held out his rough hand.
I gripped it tightly.
Rough, hard calluses.
A hand like a medal earned from protecting the tribe all his life.
I was growing to resemble that hand.
“I will keep it in mind, Father. I will carve it into my bones and return.”
“Good. I trust you, my son.”
That night, the stars over the snowfield shone especially bright.
As if blessing our future, or perhaps warning us.
And from the next day on, we had to face a new enemy.
Not snowfield trolls.
Not snow bears.
It was a beast called “paperwork.”
“Aaaaaagh! What is all this!”
Kara screamed, clutching at her hair.
Before our eyes, piles of parchment densely covered in the Empire’s common tongue were stacked like a mountain.
Admission application.
Identity guarantee form.
Tuition support application.
Dormitory application....
“Varg, do we really have to write all this? Can’t we just go there and stamp something?”
“No. Those Imperial bastards stake their lives on scraps of paper like this.”
I glared at the parchment with a frown.
Perhaps because Gorgon had worried early about the political situation and insisted on it, Kara and I had learned the Imperial language from Baba since we were children, so reading it was not a problem. The problem was the contents.
The most troublesome of all was the “identity guarantee.”
For a couple like us from a barbarian tribe to enter an academy attended by the children of Imperial nobles, a guarantee from an Imperial noble of certain status was essential.
“They said the Grand Duke of Northguard would back us, but....”
There was no way that arrogant grand duke would personally come all the way here to stamp a seal.
Then the grand duke’s representative would come.
“I wonder who it’ll be?”
I searched through my knowledge of the original work, but I couldn’t know.
In the original, Kara had been dragged there alone, practically as a hostage, and Kairon had taken the lead, so there probably had not been any complicated procedure like this.
The variables I had created were producing an unpredictable situation.
“Good thing we learned letters. Otherwise, we might have blown our noses on these scraps of paper.”
I grumbled as I adjusted my quill.
Just then, Gorgon’s hearty voice rang out from outside the tent.
“Son-in-law! Daughter! Have you finished packing?”
Gorgon entered the tent with a booming laugh.
He saw our troubled expressions and grinned.
“Don’t worry. The fellow coming today has been going back and forth as part of the Norheim delegation since before Kara was even born.”
“You know him?”
“Of course I do. I haven’t really seen him since he inherited his title back in his homeland, but... he was damn good at getting work done.”
Gorgon narrowed his eyes as if lost in old memories.
“His mouth may chatter a bit, but what he says is solid, so you can trust him. I didn’t trust him at first either because a stuttering fellow like him talked so much.”
“His mouth chatters...?”
Did he mean he stuttered?
And yet what he said was solid?
With only Gorgon’s contradictory explanation, I could not get a sense of him at all.
Was there a character like that in the original?
I searched my memory, but no particular person came to mind.
A short while later.
The sound of the watchman’s horn came from the tribe entrance.
It was the signal that a guest had arrived.
Kara, Gorgon, and I headed toward the tribe 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 clear crest was engraved on the carriage door.
A blue feather fluttering in the wind.
“......Huh?”
The moment I saw that emblem, I stopped short.
Memories of my previous life flashed through my mind like lightning.
“A blue feather... That’s the crest of House Aizen!”
Count Aizen.
He was a character treated with considerable importance in the original novel.
Whenever the male lead, Kairon, took a dump...
No, whenever he caused trouble, Count Aizen was the “extreme-job administrator” who silently paid the settlement money, controlled the press, and handled the aftermath from behind the scenes.
Cool-headed, competent, and a perfectionist who seemed like he would not bleed a single drop even if stabbed.
That was the image of Count Aizen I knew.
In the original, he had also been quite favorable toward Kara.
Whenever Kairon made a mess, he was the only normal person who would quietly come to apologize and secretly provide medicine or daily necessities from behind the scenes.
Every episode he appeared in had made the comment section explode.
“Please, dump that junker Kairon and go to Mercedes Aizen!”
“Count Aizen, please just take Kara as your concubine or something ㅠㅠ”
He was a promising sub-male lead who had received passionate support from readers.
Of course, he maintained his position as a “loyal vassal” until the end.
If he had one weakness, it was that he was old enough to be Kara’s father, but at the time, reader sentiment toward Kairon had been so ugly that even that age gap had not counted as much of a flaw.
“Wait, Count Aizen? He’s the ‘fellow whose mouth chatters’ Father was talking about?”
I was confused.
The Count Aizen of the original was a fluent speaker, not someone with a stutter.
As I tilted my head at the discrepancy in my memories, the carriage came to a stop.
I swallowed dryly and muttered to myself.
“Count Aizen... He came all the way here personally?”
Would he really be the cold-blooded man from my memories?
Bang.
The carriage door opened.
But contrary to my expectations, no sharp and cold administrator appeared.
Instead.
“......?”
A giant ball of fur rolled out.
Bearhide, fox fur, even a mink coat—it was a round shape that looked as if he were wearing a good ten layers.
The lump staggered down into the snowfield, indistinguishable from a person or a snowman.
The only thing proving he was human was the pair of glasses shining between his fur hat.
But even those had turned white with frost from the temperature difference.
“That’s... Count Aizen?”
While I was shocked, a clacking sound came from inside the fur ball.
It was the sound of teeth knocking together.
“V-V-V... Varg... my b-boy...?”
He looked at me... though I wasn’t sure that was the right way to put it, since he was probably trying his hardest to see, and opened his mouth with difficulty.
“I-I... am... A-Aize... zen... C-Cou... count....”
Severe stuttering.
Seeing him, Gorgon gave me a nudge and laughed.
“See? I told you he stutters.”
“......”
I stared at him blankly.
The image of the original’s greatest intellectual.
The image of the cold Count Aizen shattered to pieces.
“N-No... It’s c-c-cold... My m-mouth... w-won’t... m-move... Gorg... gon....”
Count Aizen appealed with an expression that looked on the verge of tears.
Only then did I realize.
“Ah, so he doesn’t normally stutter...”
He was just ridiculously vulnerable to the cold.
Now that I thought about it, in the original novel, Count Aizen was always shut up in his office.
He had only ever appeared in a very warm and comfortable office with a blazing fireplace, so there had been no chance for any setting about him being weak to the cold to come up.
I had discovered the fatal weakness of the extreme-job administrator.
Looking at the Empire’s greatest administrator trembling before me, I swallowed a hollow laugh.
The truth behind the “stuttering fellow” Gorgon knew had been revealed, and the misunderstanding was cleared.
“Please come inside for now. We will serve you some warm tea with deer antler.”
“Th-Tha... th-thank you... I-I’m saved....”
Supported by me, Count Aizen waddled toward the tent like a penguin.
To think it could turn the great Count Aizen into a penguin.
The cold of Norheim was truly fair.