Dances with Goblins (4)
At my shout, Sonya answered as if I were already grating on her last nerve.
"Goat. What is it this time that you're making such a goddamn fuss?"
"It's not a fuss. This is a real, actual, top-tier emergency!!!"
Everyone turned and stared blankly at the sudden uproar. This time, though, the party looked perfectly intact, so no whispering reached my ears.
"Goblins again?"
"If it were goblins, the four of us would've come back having butchered them for fun."
"Then what?"
"An orc! I'm telling you, it was an orc!!"
Ext's shout pulled every eye in the hall. In Baikal, where most adventurers wore a Bronze Plate, the name orc carried that much weight.
"You didn't go in deep, did you?"
"No. It was the entrance."
"Hm. All right. Let's hear how it happened."
Babar stepped forward and launched into the story, spraying spit, giving it everything he had.
"So you owe your lives to Eline... We can ask her when she gets back from the commission, yes?"
"What he said is right."
Speak of the devil, and in walked Eline. Her left hand held the four orc tusks she'd carved off earlier. Her right held five pairs of goblin ears.
"I was passing by, an orc was there, so I helped."
"See? I told you it was a real orc!"
Sonya's face went grave. We'd only lived because Eline happened to be nearby. Any other adventurer? You meet an orc, you die. Once word spread that orcs were starting to show up at the forest's edge, everyone would pull their heads in. Monster numbers were already climbing, and if adventurers started shying away from the hunt, those numbers would swell past anyone's control. From the guild's side of the desk, that was a genuine headache.
"Ugh... I'll have to report this to the branch chief again."
Sonya told us to wait a moment and vanished upstairs. The guild hall grew noisy. Raccoon and Babar were busy spinning war stories for the adventurers around them.
"No, listen—six tusks, top and bottom, and I am not lying, its forearm was as thick as my waist."
"I've still got plenty more. How about we go somewhere and talk it over with a drink..."
The tale was loaded with enough MSG to glaze a roast, but none of them had ever seen an orc, so they believed every word. Listening in, others wore hard faces and argued over what to do next. Talk of moving their hunting grounds to another territory came up more than once.
Somewhere in the middle of it, Eline slid up beside me.
"...Goat. You didn't tell anyone, did you?"
"Nobody's got a tighter mouth than me."
"A tight mouth? Your mouth is steel?"
"I mean I keep secrets."
"Aha."
We were still trading that nonsense when Sonya came back down, the branch chief with her.
"Adventurers. I have something to tell you."
A former adventurer himself, the branch chief seized the room on presence alone and went on. A special commission, posted by the Adventurer Guild—only the reward was fatter than what I'd heard last time. Maybe they were trying to stop people from walking out.
"Goat, Babar, Raccoon, Ext. Over here a moment."
Sonya dropped her voice so the other adventurers wouldn't hear.
"As payment for this commission, we've decided to give you ten silver. Not four."
"Heeek—"
She ignored the sound of Ext's soul leaving his body and added the rest.
"On top of that, five silver for the merit of this report. And if you wish, you may end the commission here."
Babar, Ext, and Raccoon did not look especially eager to keep going. Fair enough. Adventurers are a superstitious breed. When bad luck keeps piling up, their instinct is to drop everything they're doing and wait to see which way the wind turns.
"However, anyone who continues the commission for the remaining six days will receive an additional two silver per day."
"So six days from now, the baseline would be twenty-seven silver."
Too much money to walk away from. Stack this reward on the fifty silver from the goblin incident, and—no exaggeration—we might actually afford a piece of dwarven gear. Secondhand, of course.
"Well. It's not as if anything that big will happen, right?"
"Quite right, Babar. The real disaster is that fellow's petty little character."
Raccoon and Babar's total absence of any sense of danger. Were we really all right like this?
"Hehe. I'll sit this one out."
As expected, Ext was quitting. He'd already said he meant to retire soon. No reason to gamble his neck.
"Yes. You've worked hard. The rest of you are continuing, then?"
"Of course."
"Loy—alty!!"
Sonya promised she'd find us a new party member as fast as she could.
"I'll do it."
"Eline?"
Of all people, Eline volunteered to come with us. A Silver Plate dropped in among Bronze Plates. It did feel a little like hanging a pearl necklace on a pig, but if she wanted in, what were we supposed to do? We had no reason to refuse a Silver Plate as sharp with her head as with a blade, and so we ended up with her.
"Hey. Hey. You don't think Eline's into me?"
I whispered it to Raccoon, and his face curdled on the spot. For that one moment, even a goblin would have been better-looking.
"I know perfectly well that small eyes don't mean a man can't see what's in front of him, my friend."
Whatever Raccoon thought, I was soaked in a rose-colored dream. What if Eline had her eye on me, and we became a fixed party? Just picturing it was sweet. But that dream was never going to come true. As if to mock me, not a single thing went wrong for the next five days.
And so the last day arrived. Day seven.
Eline, Raccoon, Babar, and I gathered at the guild building.
"Let's enjoy today's commission too."
"Yeah, yeah. But show a little respect for your elders. You all walk too fast."
"Safety! Good! Good! Good!"
Leaving Raccoon's bizarre chant and Babar's grumbling behind us, we headed for the forest. At first the place had felt nothing but gloomy. Now, after so much coming and going, it was as familiar as my own room.
"Yaaawn— isn't this way too boring?"
Raccoon had it right. It was so peaceful it had gone dull. Countless adventurers had combed the forest down to the lice and found not a single sign. I was starting to wonder if the orc on the first day had been a lie.
"Eline, you're not picking the dung mushrooms?"
"I dislike those. They smell."
"As expected. A noble fairy really is a cut above."
"You mocking me?"
"No."
When she traveled with us, Eline had started going without the hood. She'd never wanted to wear the thing—it was stuffy—but all the staring had left her no choice. Of course, the moment she sensed other adventurers nearby, the way she did now, the hood went right back up.
"Yo."
Six adventurers came our way, led by a man with a viciously mean face. The one out front was another utterly ordinary one-eye. He approached with both hands raised, as if he had no intention of starting a fight. Even so, something about him stank.
"Find anything?"
"Not really."
I couldn't afford to relax. There isn't much difference between an adventurer and a bandit. It's only whether you carry an adventurer's plate or you don't, and sometimes the plate doesn't even settle it. An adventurer will smile at you and still put a knife in your back the moment the mood turns. These ones looked especially dangerous. The men in back were smirking, and the one in front kept flicking glances at Eline. Suspicious as it got.
The one-eyed man rubbed his palms together.
"Got a good proposal for you."
"Don't talk shit."
"Hey now, don't be like that."
"Watching you fidget those hands like a blowfly, I don't think it's worth hearing."
A jab that blunt should have set him off, but he didn't so much as look annoyed.
"I'm telling you, it's good for everyone. All but one."
He said it while looking at Eline and licking his chops, and that killed any reason to keep talking.
"Just leave. I'm saying it for your sake."
"Yeah, yeah, fellas. This could turn into a real mess."
Raccoon backed me up. They could talk that brave only because they still didn't know what Eline could do. One Silver Plate, they figured, was something nine Bronze Plates could handle if they put their backs into it. She could flatten nine Bronze Plates in her sleep and still have room to spare. Knowing that and betraying her anyway would be suicide.
Eline spoke so quietly only we could hear.
"...And this is why humans."
"Think it over one more time."
One-Eye kept at us. He was worked up something fierce; his lips wouldn't stop twitching, and it was revolting. Worse, whatever filthy thing he'd been picturing had the front of his trousers pitched like a tent. I wouldn't have helped him if a knife went into his eye.
Raccoon and Babar had no interest in siding with them either, so we each drew our weapons. Maybe they'd only meant to start something if we joined their side. Hands still raised, they backed off, putting distance between us.
"All right, all right."
"Tch. Boring."
They left without taking their eyes off us until the very end. The muttering trailed after them, and I had the ugly feeling that something troublesome was coming.
"On behalf of humanity, I apologize, Eline."
"Forget it. I never expected anything from humans."
"Then why bother mixing with people and working as an adventurer?"
As far as I knew, fairies were a closed people. They didn't stray far from where they were born, and they lived without touching the outside. Becoming an adventurer and wandering the world like this was a rare thing.
"...There is something I have to find."
Some grave duty for her village, maybe. She didn't look like she wanted to say more, so I didn't ask. Eline changed the subject.
"Today, let us go a little deeper."
True enough, we hadn't pushed far into the forest yet. But six days had shown us everything the entrance had to offer, and with so many adventurers searching, combing the same ground again was a waste of time. Plenty of people besides us could look around here.
"Will it be all right..."
Babar fretted. Eline didn't listen.
"I will protect you, so do not be worrying."
What were you supposed to say when someone with a Gold Plate adventurer's skill told you she'd keep you safe? We settled it without another word, and how far had we gone after that? Into a stretch where the trees grew so thick that even the light could barely get through.
"Shh."
We were looking at something deeply wrong.
"Kerek, kerek, kerek."
"Are you kidding me... what the hell is all that...?"
Dozens of goblins, dressed into ranks, were marching toward somewhere.