Dark Elf Mercenary Red Hood #4
"Hey. You look like a kid. Why don't you get lost already?"
I'd barely set foot in the tavern before the eviction order came flying at me.
I'd only just opened the door, so the place held no one but the sharp-faced proprietor and myself. The emptiness and silence pressing in at once felt only natural.
Ignoring the man's order, I took a seat at the counter—close enough that I could meet his eyes without trouble. I refused to leave for two simple reasons: hunting down another tavern sounded like a pain, and more than anything, the fact that he wouldn't serve children sat well with me. Depending on the place, there were plenty of bastards who'd happily pick a kid's pockets clean.
"Hey. You deaf? Get the hell out of—"
But if he kept refusing, I wouldn't be able to say what I'd come to say. So I pressed a dirk to the throat of the man scowling at me with his most vicious face and gave a thin smile. Needless to say, the blade had been hidden inside my black tailcoat.
The reason was simple. Stop wasting my time and take a customer like a good little barkeeper.
"Haaah—would you look at this son of a bitch. Hey, you even know how to use that knife?!"
"Before I came to this territory, I stuck a few of them real nice into bandit necks."
"Still talking shit you can't back up…"
I flicked the dirk so it skimmed the man's throat—barely—and buried it in the liquor shelf behind him. My wrist had moved as lightly as if I were tossing out trash, but the result was plenty grim: a thin red line scored across his neck, and the blade stood quivering among the bottles.
"That was on purpose. Next time, it's your skull. If you don't want to die, take me as a customer and shut up."
"You little—!"
The man flushed scarlet with rage and looked ready to tear into me, but the moment I casually opened my jacket to show him what else I was carrying, the color drained from his face so fast it almost looked like the anger had been an act.
Only then did I figure he was ready to talk. I pulled three silver coins from my pocket and set them on the counter.
"What's this…?"
"One beer. The rest is a tip."
"A tip, huh…"
The man shook his head as if he found the whole thing distasteful, but he snatched up the coins quick enough. Then he set a mug of beer in front of me.
I wasn't much of a drinker; I'd ordered it for form's sake. I took a single swallow from the oversized mug. I hadn't planned to finish it anyway, and the lukewarm taste made me reluctant to try another. So I set the half-full glass down with a solid thud and looked at the man still watching me.
"Truth is, I'm a merchant. The civil war in the Bluenail Kingdom dragged on longer than I expected, so I came looking to make a decent cut… If you don't mind, I'd like to hear whatever rumors you've picked up."
"Tch. So that money was the tip, then."
"It's enough, isn't it? I'm not asking for classified intelligence—just the current situation, the kind of talk floating around."
"…Fine. Whatever."
Determined to earn what he'd been paid, the man laid it out in a blunt, clipped tone. For a merchant, he carried himself with a stiff-necked pride—but he was far friendlier than a few minutes ago, and for my purposes that was more than enough.
The war had settled into a strange deadlock. Three factions were fighting over a single high ground that passed for a strategic point, and the strongest alliance—the First and Third Princes—had taken it. The Second and Fourth Princes had joined forces to keep them from holding it.
As I listened, I thought of the hill battles from the Korean War. Blood spilled for a single height, lives thrown away by the thousands—the history overlapped too neatly to ignore.
"So both sides are hammering each other over that stretch of ground. But the Second and Fourth Princes' coalition is just as shaky. They're holding hands for now, but the second they take the high ground, the whole thing could fracture."
"Hmm…"
Once you'd joined hands only temporarily, dropping them at any moment wouldn't be strange. Still, if that happened, the threat from the defeated First Prince would only grow. Exploiting a split in the enemy ranks was the most natural strategy in the world.
The man shared more besides: how each prince was faring, the quiet corruption festering under the surface…
"Ah. And I heard Red Hood's been a big reason the stalemate's holding."
There it was—the information I'd wanted most. News of Ellen.
She was currently attached to the First and Third Princes' coalition, handling trench defense and quietly cutting into the enemy supply lines. Day and night, they were working her hard.
But Ellen took contracts by the job, not by the stretch of time. Coercion might have played a part, sure—but her own will was clearly the greater force. If it weren't, she'd have walked away already.
"I see. That's good information. I owe you."
I'd gotten what mattered most. There was no reason to stay. I offered a clean farewell, left my seat, and headed for the agreed rendezvous point.
I'd expected to arrive first, but a sizable crowd had already gathered. That surprised me.
"Welcome back. Any luck?"
"Yes. You could say so. Actually…"
I shared what I'd learned with Dex's group, who'd somehow managed to offload their grain in that short span of time. The overall picture matched what I'd heard, but the details filled in further—questions of who held real authority even within the same faction, for instance.
"The place we set up is relatively far from the main fighting, so it's stable, and the flow of goods hasn't completely frozen. But… we're not here to trade, are we?"
Turning a profit if the chance arose was fine. But I agreed completely with Dex: commerce wasn't the goal. The merchant act was only a cover. Getting close to Ellen was the real objective.
"You're right. And dragging a large group into a war zone is far too dangerous. Since profit isn't the point, there's even less reason to go."
"Then… what do you plan to do from here?"
What to do.
I lowered my head for a moment and thought it through. Reaching the battlefield from here would take a few days. To keep playing merchant, we'd need to restock—everything had already been sold. But resupplying inside the Bluenail Kingdom looked difficult. A nation mired in long civil war wasn't likely to free up bulk goods, and even if it did, the prices would be ruinous. Better to go all the way back to the territory and return than try that.
More importantly, if we kept the caravan going, these people would be in real danger. I couldn't watch them suffer just to maintain a disguise.
"…I've just decided. First, let's find a decent inn. We'll talk there."
From here on, I would move alone. That was the conclusion I'd reached.
So after securing a decent inn for the night, I sent Dex and every last member of the group back to the territory. They fretted over me going solo, but I managed to talk them into leaving. They understood my point: traveling as a group only made us more visible—and more vulnerable.
Once they were gone, I stopped by a modest clothier's and bought myself a clean, ordinary set of clothes. Driving a small cart loaded with camping gear in a tailcoat was far too conspicuous. It had been fine until now, but from here on, dressing like this would sit better. And the moment I pulled on those loose, roomy clothes, I did feel more at ease. The stares that used to stick to me thinned out noticeably.
The dirk I'd kept in the tailcoat I wrapped in cloth and pocketed; the rest of my gear went into a corner of the cart. Being more lightly armed than usual might have made some people nervous, but bare-handed fighting had always been my mainstay. The reduced load didn't weigh on me much.
"Sleeping alone feels weird as hell."
Late that night, I made camp in a corner of the woods. Bluenail was thick with trees, so forest was everywhere. It made for an eerie atmosphere—but gathering firewood was easy.
I pitched a tent beside the cart, built a fire, fed the horse. Then I stretched out in the cargo bed and looked up at the sky. Leaves half-hid the view, but they couldn't blot out a beautiful night. The Milky Way had always been there, but never had it felt this close. Maybe that was what came of living in this world at a dead sprint from the day I was born—looking after Helena, training, handling endless chores. I'd been busy.
"Oh—right."
In the middle of savoring the quiet, I sat up in a sudden fluster. Sleeping alone meant I needed simple alarms set around the camp. My ears had grown sharp enough that noisy footsteps would wake me, but that wasn't something I could trust completely. So I strung thread between the trees and near the tent, hanging small black-painted bells at intervals—crude, but functional. The memory it dragged up made me want to retch, but the precaution was necessary.
"Ah…"
The sun had set, the night had deepened, and alone there was nothing left to do. Better to watch the stars a little longer, then crawl into the tent and sleep. The firewood would burn itself out; even if it did, it was summer—no real problem. Warm air already filled the tent as it was.
Sometime after consciousness slipped away—
A restless jingle of bells dragged my heavy eyelids open. An unfamiliar presence outside the tent jolted my sleep-fogged brain wide awake in an instant. Human potential under crisis, maybe. Or maybe I'd simply been startled enough to lose every trace of drowsiness.
"Mmm…"
It could be bandits. It could just be someone passing through. I couldn't go throwing knives and killing people on a guess, so I held my breath inside the tent and strained my ears—hoping for a voice I could use to decide.
—Shit?! They heard us!
—What the hell are you panicking for, you idiot?! If they heard, stick 'em already!
Damn it.
I sighed at the muttering that rose through the sudden commotion. Unfortunately, these weren't travelers. They were bandits. Ordinary people might do any number of things—but "stick 'em" wasn't one of them.
"Hoo…!"
Before they could put a hole in the tent, I slipped outside fast. First I steadied my breathing and grabbed the dirks I'd stashed inside—two in my hands, two in my pockets. Four in all.
"Shit! He's awa—!"
Moonlight filtered through the thick leaves, and my eyes had long since adjusted to the dark, so picking out my targets was easy. Their presence hit me just as clearly. I knew exactly where to throw.
The dirk punched through the man's upper abdomen, near the solar plexus. I'd wanted the heart or the throat—something to end it clean—but it would have to do. So I closed the distance on the collapsing figure at once and drove the dirk in my hand straight into his neck.
"Ghk—ghhh…!"
This time, the man went limp on the ground for good, the life gone out of him.