They Should Have Looked Before They Stretched Their Legs (2)
Contrary to what Lee Han had been hoping, the mercenaries did not pick a fight.
They did flick a glance his way.
Then they flinched.
As if they had seen something they were never meant to see, they snapped their eyes away at once and went back to minding their own business.
...Shame.
Lee Han clicked his tongue. It would have been more entertaining if they had simply started something. Then again, maybe the reaction was only natural. Now and then you did get mercenaries who went looking for trouble in a tavern, but those were the riffraff, the mayflies living a day at a time. Men like these...
Veterans. Every one of them.
That sort of nonsense did not apply to upper-grade mercenaries.
Metal clicked softly against metal. The leather armor looked worn at a glance, yet the hide itself was excellent—almost certainly worked from the hide of a mid-to-high-rank monster. The iron swords, spears, and shields were just as fine. Whoever these men were, they had spent real coin on arms and armor. Proof, in other words, that they were no pack of drifters. And sure enough—
"That's the Oberon Company."
"They famous?"
"A small elite outfit. Nothing but upper-grade mercenaries, and they're known for keeping their word even though they're sellswords."
"Thought so. They didn't look ordinary."
A company with a name spread rumors the way a prestigious knightly order did. Warm, approving looks found the mercenaries almost at once. Even so—
"What's a crew like that doing in a backwater like this?"
"That's what I was wondering."
The whispers turned doubtful, and the room was soon busy with a fresh topic.
"...Hm."
Lee Han caught every murmur that took the mercenaries as its subject. However quietly people spoke, none of it escaped his ears. He heard the talk from farther off as well, and in the end he gathered quite a lot.
Domain wars breaking out all at once. Damage left in the wake of monsters. Word that mages out of the Empire had fled into the South. There was no shortage of talk that stank of something worse, and just as much that he had no interest in—how hard it was to live, children, the state of someone's marriage. He listened to all of it anyway, sifting for anything that mattered.
"Sir Knight, what do you make of it?"
"As expected, I suppose. Most of it can't be checked. Plenty of wild rumors, too. ...Still."
"...?"
"The world's unstable. That much is clear."
He was not merely hearing the words. In their voices, in the air of the room, he could feel the unease, the impatience, the despair sunk underneath. More than half the talk never failed to circle back to how hard it was to live, and that alone told him how badly the South had been shaken.
A lot must have happened while I was gone from the kingdom.
And none of it in a good direction.
Demons and witches...
Even amid that flood of rumor, Lee Han turned toward the thread that seemed least unworthy of trust, and his eyes sharpened. He drank the warm milk that had just been set before him.
The cup came down with a flat tap.
"......Don't look over there."
Oberon Huang, captain of the Oberon Company, gave the order in a low voice: under no circumstances were they to meet that man's eyes. The rest of the company broke into a cold sweat and nodded hard.
"What is a monster like that doing in a village like this..."
"Did you see him when he came in? Light flashing in his eyes, burning like fire, I swear—"
"And those forearms? I've never seen arms that insane in my life. Don't think a blade would even go in..."
Famous or not, they were still men in the prime of their blood. Spending their coin on drink and women was nothing unusual for them, and yet just now neither drink nor women could hold their eyes. They had caught a glimpse of the woman seated in front of that nameless man. A hood hid her face, but the line of it alone promised considerable beauty. On any other day they would have stolen a look even if she already belonged to someone.
...Some warning bell rang in their skulls that doing so now might genuinely see them off this earth, so they did not so much as glance at her.
A fierce survival instinct.
A veteran stayed a veteran because that instinct ran sharper in him than in other men, and they obeyed it faithfully.
"L-let's talk about the job."
"R-right, Captain."
For once they were of a mind to get the work over with quickly, and their voices dropped.
"...Is it really a witch?"
"If the rumors are true."
The Oberon Company had come all the way to this tucked-away country village on a request to capture a witch in the area. Even among the mystery-races her kind had the worst reputation: a people who could wield sorcery and magic together, born with a talent for summoning demons, and forever dragging misfortune behind them. Mystery-races were treasured wherever they went, as a rule. These women were cast out all the same, if only for that talent. There was no more dangerous element than a witch.
"Hmph. First one in nearly sixty years. Isn't this just a witch hunt?"
"That hardly matters. We confirm the truth with our own eyes, and that's the end of it. If she's fake, we pocket the fee. And if she's real..."
"......"
"We take a fat cut. Simple as that."
"Heh heh. Hope she really is a witch...!"
Greed lit their eyes. A witch was money. Born with both mana and shamanic power, her heart was something special, and there were stories that an ordinary man who ate one would be cured of every illness.
A cure-all, plain and simple. The price was whatever the seller cared to name, and nobles and merchant houses lined up to buy. That was why the mercenaries had taken the request so willingly.
"Demon-hunting tools all accounted for?"
"Ten bottles of holy water off the market."
"The witch we can hunt well enough, sloppy or not. Just watch the demon."
They had a plan of sorts. Looking at it, the whole approach had a clumsy seam running through it, but in an age when no one was used to hunting witches or demons, it was the best strategy they could scrape together. Clumsy enough that a few of them stood a good chance of never seeing tomorrow's sun. Mercenaries, though, were people who lived with their lives already laid on the table.
So long as it was not them.
There was no way they would be the ones to die.
They trusted their own knack for survival, and even if someone died, they were certain it would not be them.
......Right up until that dawn, when seven of the twenty-one mercenaries who had fallen asleep in the inn died in a hideous state.
Rain hammered down.
Dawn still lay under a sky packed with storm cloud, the downpour unrelenting. The wind outside had only grown fiercer. It was ugly enough weather that the villagers had barred their doors and would not step out, and yet the inn was forced awake early.
"M-Marco! Dino!"
"R-Ridon... wh-why did he suddenly—!"
...Because people had died.
Men who had been perfectly alive the evening before were dead. And they had not merely died.
"Th-the organs!"
Nothing remained of them but shells. Eyes, hearts, livers, every vital organ—and every other organ besides—had been cut out of them, and they lay there in that wretched state.
What in the world had happened?
"Who—who would dare...!!"
Oberon Huang was furious. A comrade's death was not, in itself, something to rage over. A mercenary lived with death in front of him at all times. But not a death like this. If you died, you died making money. Die with everything stripped from you, and what became of the company's name?
Selfish anger, on the face of it. It was also the most mercenary anger there was. And so—
"Innkeeper! Lock the doors this instant, and gather everyone inside the inn!!"
Oberon Huang snarled the order at the innkeeper, declaring that until the culprit was caught, no one was leaving.
Pale with fear, the innkeeper gathered them: the guests who had been asleep, and the serving girls as well. Every face wore the look of someone dragged out of bed and annoyed about it, until they met the mercenaries' murderous temper. Sleep fled. They went white and dropped their eyes. They did not dare meet that gaze.
"From this moment, not one of you leaves this place! If you want out, you'll prove you had nothing to do with it!!"
The furious mercenaries roared it. The thick killing intent pouring off the remaining fourteen was more than ordinary people, who had never stood on a battlefield, could endure. A few of them were on the verge of foaming at the mouth. The mercenaries, eyes gone wild, did not care. From here on, this was going to be the hour of the merciless sellsword—
"—Quiet."
—or it would have been.
"Wake the maid with that racket, and you die by my hand."
Unfortunately for them, one of the people staying at this inn was a man who could not be measured by common sense. That was their problem. If it was a problem.
"For the record, I'm not joking."
It was a warning of perfect calm. A peace that had no business at a murder scene.
Someone swallowed.
People were dead, and he looked as untroubled as if it were nothing at all. The ease of it was almost alien. The mercenaries forgot their anger and simply stared, dumbfounded.
"Wh-what did he just—"
"Your voices..."
"......"
"I said don't raise your voices."
The quiet warning came again. On any other day their pride would have flared. Instead of flaring—
A chill raced up their spines.
They faltered, and their mouths shut. Once again, the uncommon survival sense of veteran mercenaries showed itself.
"Hm."
He gave them a look that said not bad. Provoke a man that far and he ought to come at you. That they held back and endured suggested they were not without skill.
...Which was precisely why.
"Funny bastards. Survival sense that good, and they still can't look at the bed before they stretch their legs?"
"?"
"...Pain in the ass."
The sigh came out of him on its own, and he shook his head, as if he had already given them all the hint they were going to get. He turned to go back to his room. The mercenaries could not bring themselves to stop him.
Then he halted.
"......I was going to let it slide. You just crossed the line."
He stopped and looked back, and the moment their eyes met, the mercenaries nearly jumped out of their skins.
A wet gleam burned in his eyes. It was the feeling of standing in front of a predator. They locked up like rabbits before a lion and shook where they stood. A shameful sight for the famously brave Oberon Company, but they were past feeling shame. Under that wave of terror they thought fast. What had they done to set him off? Should they drop to their knees and beg forgiveness before anything else? A hundred such thoughts raced ahead of them in that instant.
"Not you, idiots."
The hand axe left Oberon Huang's belt as if it had always belonged in Lee Han's hand, and he threw it. The axe flew, spinning hard, and—
It punched through.
"......H-how?"
...It had gone clean through the serving girl's skull.
"!!"
"What is that!"
The girl who had been trembling like a coward had her skull split neatly in two, and even with her head in halves she was still making a sound. It was a sight grotesque beyond words. Mercenaries and guests alike recoiled. He did not.
"Who told you to show me killing intent?"
Lee Han was perfectly matter-of-fact, as if he had known what the serving girl was all along. And as if he had a fair idea of what that how was asking, he offered what passed, for him, as a kind answer.
"If you'd only gone after the mercenaries, I wouldn't have stepped in. They came here to hunt you. They should have been ready to be hunted in turn. The moment you turned that killing intent on me, you already lost your chance."
"Ghhk...!"
"They said witch. She's no different from some cheap spell-peddler. Shouldn't have given her the opening."
Lee Han clicked his tongue. Magic-users never did have a conscience.
"Wh-what is this...?"
The mercenaries still could not get their bearings. A serving girl who would not die with a hole through her skull, and a man who stayed that calm through it—none of it made sense. They were not supposed to stand there trying to understand.
Quite the opposite.
"You really going to just stand there?"
"What?"
"A witch summons demons too, doesn't she? So obviously—"
His finger flicked.
"—it isn't over yet. That thought never cross your mind?"
Their eyes followed where he pointed, all on their own. What they saw was nothing other than—
"—Hm. There's a strange human here."
...The innkeeper and the guests, who only a moment ago had been shaking with fear. Something was wrong with them.
"Ki-kihik."
"Things, got, strange, didn't they?"
"—."
The frightened faces were gone. Glass eyes, empty of feeling, and expressions as blank as dolls. The mercenaries backed away before they knew they were moving, and they, tasting the humans' fear, curved their mouths into faint smiles and delighted in it.
"D-demons!!"
The mercenaries knew it on instinct. Those were demons. The shapes were human, yes, but the presence rolling off them was nothing but ill omen. They snatched up their weapons in a rush, meaning to fight—
"I've decided. He irritates me—"
"—."
"—."
"—."
"—so we kill him!"
The demons gave them no time to ready themselves. They simply rushed in. Mad light in their eyes, and a momentum steeped in sticky malice. Even veteran mercenaries found their feet growing heavy, their breath catching hard in their throats—
"I—"
Something crunched, burst, and kept on crunching.
"!!!?"
"I told you to keep your voices down."
"G-ghhk!?!!"
"Why won't a simple word get through?"
Crunch.
The demons' bodies twisted and swelled, over and over, as if fireworks were going off inside them.
"I said our maid is sleeping."
Lee Han demanded silence again.
For the sake of the maid's untroubled rest.