Wolf and the Biggest Secret Scheme

Wolf and the Biggest Secret Scheme is the eleventh episode of the first season of the Spice and Wolf anime.

Synopsis
Lawrence and Holo devise a plan to relieve their debt and must attempt to persuade the shepherd to take part in the risky scheme.

Plot
Lawrence scrounges a few coins but has nowhere near enough to repay his debt. He attempts to give them to Holo as an apology for his earlier behavior, but she rejects them and chides Lawrence for being too nice and not blaming her for his situation. He tells her that he does not because she was there trying to help him, and he feared he would not be able to take back what he did. After clearing things up, Holo proposes a daring plan.

The next day, the pair go to Hans Remerio and lay out Holo's plan: gold smuggling. Since the Remelio Company is nearly bankrupt, Holo corners Remerio by pointing out that she can hear his employees abandoning the company one by one even as they speak. Remerio agrees to sponsor their scheme by purchasing the gold wholesale from pagan Lamtra for Lawrence's team to smuggle into Ruvinheigen, after which his company will use its channels and contacts to sell the gold and avoid the steep Church tariff, making back ten times the purchase price. In return, Remerio will postpone Lawrence's debt deadline until the transaction is complete, as part of Lawrence's take will be his payment.

Lawrence and Holo later meet with Nora Arendt after church services and tell her about their plan to smuggle gold in the stomachs of the sheep she will be given that day; she will be paid 20 lumione gold coins, in essence hazard pay. The shortest path between Lamtra and Ruvinheigen is through a dangerous forest, and only Nora has guided sheep there; her doing so again would not be suspicious.

Lawrence points out how he deduced that the Church suspects her of having pagan powers because she has such a high success rate in not losing any sheep. The local clergy, whom Lawrence angrily calls "lower than pigs" for their actions, will keep sending her to dangerous, high-risk areas, purposely putting her life at risk (a bit rather like a witch trial) to 'prove' their theory, and the only way they will be satisfied that she is not pagan is her being attacked by wolves or mercenaries one day. Her payment would allow her to leave Ruvinheigen behind as she's always wanted, which would be safer to do so anyway once they successfully complete the job. After considering the unfair hardship her employers have put her through and how their paranoia has caused the citizens to largely shun her, Nora firmly agrees.