Dark Elf Mercenary Red Hood #5
"Market research, you say…?"
"That's right. I know you nobles and the people fighting this war look sideways at the likes of us, but we've got our own reasons for doing this. We weren't gouging anyone, either."
At the checkpoint of Count Margus's territory, after crossing mountains and rivers to get there, I kept the conversation flowing with the gate guard.
It was all to soothe his wariness and slip past those suspicious eyes.
Count Margus's lands sat somewhat off the path I had been traveling, so reaching them meant taking a detour. By pure efficiency, the right move would have been to keep straight on toward Exus, the domain of the First and Third Princes. I had my own reasons for coming this way instead.
Namely: I had already sold off my grain in the Fourth Prince's territory.
A merchant hunting wartime profits had no real need to pick a side. As long as someone was buying, the faction shouldn't have mattered. Still, a faint unease clung to me. I couldn't shake the thought that someone might use my selling grain to the Fourth Prince's camp as an excuse to make trouble.
Anyway, arriving was one thing… but the place was under strict travel restrictions. In simple terms, it felt like a civilian walking up to a military base.
That didn't mean entry was completely sealed off. Merchants who had come this far to sell goods were being processed through, and supply wagons rolling in from other territories were a common enough sight.
"So… you came to sell twenty swords?"
"Sending me off empty-handed felt wrong, so they dumped some arms on me and told me to at least make a few coins. Not that many of them, really."
To keep up the ordinary merchant act, I had brought along the weapons the bandits had dropped. If I claimed I was here for market research and just happened to be selling a few goods on the side, it might loosen a little of the suspicion. Besides, with a major battlefield right on the doorstep, I doubted a bribe would have worked anyway. It would only have drawn useless attention.
"Hmm… the goods look serviceable enough for common soldiers. And you've got the transaction certificate for that earlier grain deal, so…"
The guard inspected everything with care, from my cargo down to the papers I handed over. It took a fair while, but in the end I got my clearance.
"Here. Your pass. Lose it and you'll have a headache, so mind yourself."
"Yes. Thank you."
I took the entry permit he offered and tucked it carefully into my coat. That earned me the right to go inside, but I still had a long way to go. The soldier they had assigned to guide—and watch—me still needed to be shed.
That didn't mean bolting. There was no need. Once a transaction was wrapped up naturally, the soldier would peel off on his own. Until then, I had no interest in drawing pointless suspicion.
As it was, soldiers marched in formation through the village streets, and the place felt bleak enough that the scrape of weapons and armor was almost all you could hear. Moving freely simply wasn't an option.
"Will this do?"
"Oh, more than enough."
Once we reached the area near the supply depot, I closed a clean deal with a man there. Profit had never been the point, so there was no need for any tiresome haggling. I took the money and was free to leave almost at once.
"By the way—where do merchants who come here usually stay?"
"Some pay for a room in whatever house will take them. Others find a building whose owner has fled and rest there. Most end up in the inn stables, though. People like you, the ones who roll in with a cart, make up the majority."
After that, I stopped a soldier on patrol and asked him a few things. It wasn't free—I slipped him two silver coins for his trouble—and the information I got was useful.
"Thank you. Sorry for holding you up when you're busy."
"Forget it. Just look after yourself."
"You too, soldier."
The moment we parted, I headed straight for any inn I could find. They weren't open for business, but by the lord's order the stables were left accessible, which made them a favorite stop for merchants only passing through for a short stay.
And that turned out to be exactly right. Just the merchants I saw in passing were already a considerable number. Finding a suitable inn stable still took me a fair amount of time.
"Well now. A young fellow like you, all the way out here to trade?"
The instant I parked my cart, a man lying in the next stall with his own wagon pulled up called out in a friendly voice. His cart was empty—looked like he had just finished a deal of his own.
"Yes. Things just worked out that way. Our company's motto is a little rough around the edges, so I'm following along."
I hadn't meant to start a conversation, but the flow wasn't bad. Talking might even net me a scrap of information, so I kept playing the part of a young man trying to gain experience as a merchant.
"Ha ha. Rough enough to send a youngster like you all the way out here?"
"I don't like saying it myself, but I suppose it's because they have fairly high expectations of me. And I had my own greed for coming this far, too."
"So half of it was your own idea? Impressive for someone so young. I'd almost like my son to take a page from you."
The merchant's eyes shone with genuine admiration. It was almost enough to make me feel bad for lying so casually.
"It's not worth that much praise. Looking around was the bigger reason I came."
"Looking around? Interested in the battlefield, are you?"
"I'd be lying if I said no. Even selling a fraction of the supplies a war burns through would leave a steady profit."
Grain, weapons, daily necessities—war, in the ordinary sense, was an act of consuming those things. And when that consumption went too far, a nation's strength was said to wither. People also claimed that producing military goods could stimulate an economy, but that was beyond me.
"A rather cold-eyed young man."
"That's my small-minded way of looking at it. There's no way to dress this kind of thing up nicely, no matter how you put it."
"True enough… In the end, profiting off someone else's war is just that. Once it becomes a transaction instead of aid, there's nothing pretty about it. Then again, even 'aid' is rarely pure of heart."
The merchant sighed, noting that someone could always use the pretense of support to squeeze out a profit. I nodded, thinking he was right. It was more than possible.
"Come to think of it, you seem to have been trading here for quite a while, sir. Listening to you, you sound thoroughly familiar with the situation."
"Well… it's a civil war that's dragged on for years, and I've been working the gaps for about two years now. Hard not to know."
"Oh. Two years is no small stretch of trading."
Two years. I looked at the merchant who had been coming and going all that time with something like wonder. He had said the proximity and the terms weren't bad, so he'd kept up steady dealings with the Fourth Prince's camp—and he knew the general state of things better than some of the people actually fighting. In a way, it wasn't wrong to call him a party to the war himself. He had been in and out of the place closest to the front constantly.
"Mm. So I've got a rough sense of the cycle, of how they'll fight. The other merchants probably do too."
On top of that, the man seemed fairly well informed about the supply situation. Spending enough time in the territory would teach you those things naturally, but even so, it was hard to deny he had a sharp eye.
"…And among all of it, food supply is the real headache. That infamous dark elf comes after every last scrap and tries to burn it. Highest casualty rate of any duty. You have to figure five out of ten don't come back."
Dark elf. The moment I heard those words, lightning cracked through my mind—so sharp I almost thought my brain might catch fire.
Getting this far had been fine, but I had still been wrestling with how to make an approach. Now a very good method had just presented itself.
"Would you happen to know any of the supply soldiers—or their officer?"
Supplies here moved at night.
At first they had run them to the forward base during the day, but after Ellen started raiding the convoys, they had shifted the schedule to night or the early hours of dawn. Even so, not everything was getting through intact.
If total supplies were a ten, what usually arrived was about a five. With luck, maybe an eight. They still needed the deliveries, and they had tried thickening the escorts to cut down the losses, but it had all been wasted effort. Ellen's mercenary band kept striking out as a detached force and interfering at every turn.
I heard all of this from the supply soldier the merchant had introduced me to. Coming from someone who actually walked into that death trap, the account was vivid enough. Knowing a supply officer would have made things easier, but being connected to a supply soldier at all was more than I could have asked for.
"Hide… in the supply wagon?"
The supply soldier looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Even mediation from a merchant he was friendly with would have been surprising; hearing this from a complete stranger was enough to leave anyone speechless.
From my side—and, I thought, from his—it still looked like a good deal, so I spoke without hesitation.
"Yes. I'm asking you as a favor."
"You do realize how absurd that is? If we're caught, it could mean a death sentence."
Bringing an outsider into a wartime supply run? That was more than enough to warrant execution. I didn't know Bluenail's military code well enough to be certain, but what he said was entirely plausible. His impulse to refuse flat out made sense.
Even so.
"It's already a mission with a high chance of dying, isn't it? There's no war where your life isn't at risk, but I've heard supply duty somehow kills more people than most."
"Th-that's…"
A supply mission where five out of ten died. Its viciousness rivaled the front lines themselves, and the soldier knew it—his face hardened. The silence that followed was only natural.
"I'll say this to you first. I came here to pull Red Hood's mercenary band out of the fight."
"What?!"
When he heard that my target was Red Hood itself, the soldier's eyes went wide. A man who looked like an ordinary merchant dropping that kind of line would have startled anyone.
"W-why?"
"I personally need their strength for something. And it's urgent. To talk to them I have to get close, and I couldn't think of a better way."
Curiosity about my purpose was only natural, but I glossed it over as personal circumstances. It wasn't the sort of story you spelled out for a stranger, and more than that, the tale was far too long. Explaining it properly would also have undercut the whole reason I was traveling under an alias, and inventing a fresh cover story front to back was more trouble than it was worth. So I kept it vague and moved on.
Fortunately, the soldier didn't press. He had only slipped away for a short break and needed to get back soon; it wasn't desertion, but he still had to rejoin his patrol formation. For the record, I had already greased the other soldiers on that patrol with a suitable bribe so they would look the other way.
"Even so, the risk…"
"I know. It's dangerous. But if you smuggle me in, I'll at least make sure Red Hood and the mercenaries under her don't harm you. That would mean you're walking out with an extra life in your pocket. And if I succeed in persuading them, the supply lines should stabilize a great deal once that mercenary band is out of the picture. Don't you think?"
"An extra life…"
It was a mission where death was almost guaranteed. Betting on a chance to live by letting me hide among the cargo didn't seem like such a bad idea. That was only my view of it, but if I were in his place, I would have done the same.
The upper ranks never valued a single soldier's life all that highly. Unless the losses grew large enough to matter, a passive posture was only to be expected. At least, that was how the commanders in this land behaved.
The soldier knew that too, which was why he was still hesitating—but I put on the most confident face I could to turn him. Even while unease whispered that my odds might be thin, what came out of my mouth was calm, easy deception.
"That's right. And even if I can't persuade them, I'll buy you enough time to run. I promise."
I had long since given up on the idea of getting this far unscathed. I was ready to take a few blades on the strength of this body's toughness alone. I had never been stabbed before, but I had swallowed poison and felt my insides twist. I figured I could endure it.
That was all I had to say. In answer, the soldier only let out a low, wordless sound. The look of someone still wrestling with the decision was plain on his face.
But at the end of that silence, he gave me a thoroughly satisfying answer.
"Let's do it. The odds of dying are high either way—what's one more gamble on top of that?"