The Road Back (3)
-Jjareureureung, jjareureung, jjareung….
An ominous sound, one that forcibly cut short the peaceful conversation we'd been having in front of the campfire.
Ethan had heard the security alarm trigger just as I had, and his expression hardened in an instant.
Holding that frozen look, he exchanged a few quiet words with me, our eyes meeting in the dark.
"Lilith, that sound just now…"
"…One moment, Young Master Ethan. There's something else I need to confirm."
-Nod.
I pressed a finger to my lips, and he gave a silent nod in understanding. I strained my ears for a few seconds, half-expecting the bell to ring a second time—but after that first chime, nothing came from the alarm.
The good news was that, at the very least, this wasn't a pack of monsters.
…The bad news was that the odds had just shifted toward this being something worse than monsters.
If it had been monsters, they should have charged at us the moment they sensed our presence. Yet from the darkness came no bestial howls, no footsteps—nothing that could be mistaken for either.
Sleeping soundly tonight was, apparently, a fate I'd have to give up on.
-Shff… shff….
Slow footsteps, the intent to muffle them so obviously transparent it was almost comical.
Anyone could tell the approach was suspicious, so I relayed my assessment to Ethan in a whisper.
"It's people. Six or so, I'd guess."
"Bandits?"
"Can't say for certain, but I think it's best we don't let them get any closer. We have Isabel with us, after all."
"…Right. We have you and Isabel, so we'll be fine."
The darkness made visibility poor, but the flickering light of the campfire and the faint moonlight were enough to gauge where they were.
When the group had crept to within about ten meters of our campsite, Ethan drew the sword at his hip, leveled it into the darkness, and issued his warning.
"That's far enough. Don't take another step."
"……"
"If you've merely lost your way, I'll let you go—turn back the way you came. This is our campsite, and I cannot allow you any closer."
A faint murmuring stirred in the dark. The unseen figures were conferring among themselves, identities still unconfirmed.
I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I could catch the gist well enough: they were trying to get their story straight.
"Oh come now, good sir. Won't you put that scary sword away?"
"I am not your 'good sir.' We'll be using this spot until morning, so take yourselves elsewhere."
"Well, the thing is~ we went up the mountain at midday and took a wrong turn somewhere, see~. Somehow or other we managed to make it down by nightfall, but it's so pitch dark out here we can't tell where we even are~."
"A tragic tale, I'm sure. But it has nothing to do with us."
"Aw, come on, sir~ have a heart, won't you~? We'll be gone the moment the sun comes up tomorrow, I swear it~."
"……"
A man with a rather ingratiating face had stepped forward from the group of six, doing his best to talk Ethan around.
The rest stayed hidden in the darkness, refusing to show themselves—and honestly, that alone was enough for me to start piecing together who these people really were.
Ethan glanced cautiously my way, as if asking for my read on the situation.
"……"
-Shake, shake.
"……"
-Nod.
In a brief span of seconds, our eyes met and we confirmed our intentions through a short exchange of body language.
Ethan kept his drawn sword trained on them and repeated himself, flat and final.
"That's none of my concern. Take one more step toward us, and I won't hesitate to use force."
"Aww~ why so cold, good sir~? You'd send us off to die wandering this pitch-black night~?"
"Then walk back the way you came. If necessary, I'll even give you a torch."
"……"
The lead man's expression stiffened, and the wariness between Ethan and me deepened further.
The negotiation—or scheme, more likely—had barely gotten off the ground when the rest of the group began to emerge from the darkness one by one, dropping the pretense.
"What's taking so long? How long are we supposed to wait?"
"You said you could talk him into letting us use the fire. Why is this still dragging on?"
Counting the lead man, six grown men stood in view.
Aside from the friendly-faced man who'd shown himself first, every one of them carried a sword at his hip—arming swords or broadswords, by the look of them.
Scars and old blade wounds marked their faces and hands, and their expressions weren't exactly welcoming. In that moment, whatever one-percent chance remained that these were 'lost travelers' vanished entirely.
'Damn it. I had a feeling it'd come to this.'
Setting aside the sleep I'd never get back, the first thing I needed to determine was whether we could actually handle them with the strength we had on hand.
First: my Mana Arrow was out of the question. My accuracy was garbage to begin with—hitting anything in this darkness was impossible.
Mana Blast had far too long a cast time, and since I'd only just used it recently, casting it again in succession would put serious strain on my body. It was a large-scale spell, too—one wrong move and Ethan could get caught in the blast.
Dim Light was useless against enemies already shrouded in darkness, which meant it came down to close-quarters combat with my daggers. Naturally, I wasn't thrilled about that.
I was still running through what I could do—leaving Ethan's exact capabilities out of the equation for the moment—when one of the bandits who'd belatedly showed his face shouted at Ethan.
"Hey, boss, forget this! Let's just share the campfire! You wanna answer for it if we freeze to death out here in the dark?"
"I see no obligation on my part to do so. If you're that aggrieved, freeze to death first, then go take it up with the sun."
"Ah, would you look at that! Those tents look plenty big, too—six of us would fit in no problem! And there's two of 'em!"
"Two tents could sleep ten with room to spare! Am I right?"
The bandits advanced a step at a time, shamelessness pouring out of every word.
Ethan drew his second blade, and his battle preparations were complete.
"I believe I told you not to come any closer."
"Ooh~ scary! Look at that, boys—the young master's drawn not one but two swords~!"
"But what can you do? It's two of you against a whole lot of us."
"Two? Oh, the chick's fighting too? What's a dainty little thing like her gonna do?"
"Not her, idiot. He means the maid holed up in the tent with the girl. I scoped her out earlier—no mistaking it."
…What?
What did these worthless bastards just say?
"Aha~. Well, fair enough—two girls handling all of us would be a tall order!"
"I spotted her first, so the black-haired one's mine. And if she's gonna get used, I'm going fi—rst…."
The bandit who'd fixed his leering gaze on me never got to finish his sentence.
The blade Ethan swung from his right hand had already sent the man's head sliding off his neck and tumbling to the ground.
"…Huh?"
"Wh-what the—?!"
By the time the stunned bandits gathered their wits, Ethan was already in the center of their formation, twin blades whirling, eyes cold with murder.
Including the first man to lose his head, three heads hit the ground in rapid succession.
"H-hey! Kill that bastard!"
"Fuck! Whose bright idea was it to raid this place?!"
"He's already dead, you moron!"
Two of the remaining three, the slowest to come to their senses, swung their arming swords at Ethan and started their resistance.
The last one—the most pitiable-looking of the lot—came charging straight at me.
"Drop your sword, you bitch! You really wanna watch this girl die—"
"…Oh, shut the hell up, you son of a bitch."
-CLANG!
"…Huh?"
His arming sword, swung at me with everything he had, bounced clean off my dagger—and confusion flickered across his face for just an instant.
Driving my dagger into the throat of a man that wide open was hardly difficult at all.
-SHLKT!
"Urgh… ah…."
My blade pierced clean through the center of his windpipe, severing his spine and turning his head into one of those floppy, dangling affairs you see in wizard movies.
"…Oh."
Oh, hell. Now that I look at it, this is one of Luke's daggers, isn't it.
I'd just grabbed whatever was closest in the heat of the moment. No wonder it cut so well.
In the split second that useless thought crossed my mind, two miserable screams rang out from Ethan's side of the camp.
And needless to say, neither of them was his.
"Ghhhhkk…."
"Im-impossible… there were six of… us…."
The last one spat out that idiotic fragment of a sentence and collapsed where he stood.
What good did six men do them? When the trash that raids travelers' camps gathers, it's never six—even ten or twenty of them all end up dead all the same.
Truthfully, even without me, Ethan could have carved through ten of them without breaking a sweat.
If anything, in a situation like that one, I was more likely to be a liability. I could handle a bandit or two without much trouble, but if three or four came at me at once, this body would have struggled.
Ethan's judgment—assessing the situation fast and striking first—had been the correct call on every count. …Even if it had looked a little reckless in the moment.
"Lilith, are you okay?!"
"Yes, as you can see, I'm perfectly fine, Young Master Ethan."
"Are you hurt?! Did any of those filthy bastards lay a hand on—!"
"I appreciate the concern, but would you mind lowering your voice a little?"
"…Ah. Right, sorry."
When I pointed toward the tent where Isabel was sleeping, Ethan nodded quietly and dropped his voice to a murmur.
Just to be safe, I pressed my ear against the side of the tent and listened—only Isabel's characteristic shallow breathing, the one she always let out in her sleep, drifted back to me.
"Thankfully, it seems all this commotion didn't wake her."
"…Good."
"This isn't exactly a sight I'd like her to wake up to in the morning, so we should carry them a little distance away and bury them first."
"…I'll handle the burying, so could you check the security wards, Lilith?"
"…Understood, Young Master Ethan."
Not that I'd offered to help move the bodies—if I had, I had a feeling Ethan would have turned pale and flatly refused.
I reset the security devices the bandits had torn down during their assault, and covered the bloodstains left on the ground with scoops of dirt.
The traces spattered across our belongings and the nearby rocks, unfortunately, had to be scrubbed away with cleaning magic.
Digging a burial pit for six grown men was never going to be quick work, of course.
By the time everything was cleaned up and I finally crawled into the tent, it was pushing three in the morning—and there to greet me was the sight of Isabel, dead asleep and blissfully unaware of the world.
'Thank god she slept through it all.'
Isabel was safe and sound. That was more than enough.
For a moment I had the nagging feeling I'd forgotten something, but exhausted as I was—from standing night watch to cleaning up after an ambush—digging it back up was a losing battle.
My body sank into the bedroll and simply dropped off, swallowed whole by the fatigue that had piled up out of nowhere.
…Well, if it was really that important, I'd remember it by morning, wouldn't I?