Dark Elf Mercenary Redhood #7
“Haa.”
A dark elf let out a sigh and looked up at the sky.
She brushed her long white hair back from her face, her expression a swirl of tangled feeling, as if she were quietly turning her solitude over and over in her mind.
The dark elf was a woman, and her name was Ellen.
She had become famous under the name Redhood, though she herself never much cared for it. She simply allowed it because it was far better than being looked down on.
She was brooding.
Ever since she had thrown herself into Bluenail’s civil war a few years earlier, she had been stuck on this battlefield, and even that had begun to wear thin. Being pinned to one place for so long grated on her. So did the endless parade of blood and flesh.
Still, leaving to hunt for some new war that might serve as a home was a hassle in its own right, so she stayed.
She was used to war, but she did not love it. After so many years she simply took it as it came, with a kind of numb acceptance. That was the truth of the woman they called Redhood.
“What are you doing off in a corner by yourself?”
Ellen turned toward the voice tickling her ear and smiled. It was Olivia’s, as familiar as anything—no need to put her guard up.
“You know me. Crowds are noisy and I hate them. When I rest, I want to rest quietly.”
“It’s not like we’re criminals. If you look at it purely by merit, there aren’t many vassals more loyal than us… You’re way too withdrawn, Ellen.”
“Even so, to them we’ll always be filth. Our skill is worth acknowledging, but they don’t want to praise us for it, and they sure as hell don’t want us close. That sort of thing.”
Filth. Ellen gave a short, dry laugh. There was no better word for what dark elves were now.
Olivia’s brow furrowed, then her shoulders sagged in something like defeat. Ellen had been like this for as long as anyone could remember; there was nothing to do but get used to it.
“Ah—right. There was someone who wanted to meet you, so I brought him.”
Olivia suddenly remembered why she had come and clapped her hands. Strength returned to her slumped shoulders, and a spark of life lit her face.
“Me? A staff officer? Some guerrilla general? Or is it someone higher than that?”
“No. He’s from Soter.”
“Soter…? A human from Soter came all the way out here?”
For a moment a gleam entered Ellen’s eyes at the name. People sometimes came looking from other countries or distant territories, but not one of them had ever set foot in this killing field.
“Do you know his name?”
Maybe because the situation finally offered something worth caring about, a little energy began to creep into Ellen’s voice—pure curiosity. After the endless sameness of her days, she was almost glad of it.
“Yeah. Zion Altram. Ever heard of him? He looked like some noble’s kid.”
“Altram… Altram…”
Olivia and the rest of the mercenary band never paid much attention to the wider world, but Ellen was different. As a woman who had started her mercenary life alone, and as the head of a company, she had to keep abreast of the news. Without that, she could never keep drifting from battlefield to battlefield.
She rolled the half-familiar name over her tongue a few times, then her eyes went wide. She had heard the rumors about Helena.
Word traveled a thousand leagues without feet, as the saying went—and so the news of Helena’s duel had reached even war-torn Bluenail.
“I know him. I heard he’s the lover of that Swordmaster, Krauser.”
“Krauser?! That’s not just any big shot. He’s that woman’s lover? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
No wonder he had that refined look about him. Olivia nodded, recalling Zion’s face. Learning he was Krauser’s lover made a lot of things fall into place.
The real question was whether a noble like that could treat dark elves with any kind of ease.
“But why didn’t that aristocrat so much as wrinkle his nose when he met dark elves? It’s just weird…”
The doubt that slipped from Olivia’s lips was only natural. She had never seen a human treat filth warmly, and by common sense it made no sense at all. In this world, dark elves were born under ill omen and impurity—that was settled doctrine.
“Tell me more about what struck you as so strange.”
So of course Ellen tilted her head, a sharp light entering her eyes.
I was sleepy.
Even a battlefield has its rest, and so long as there was no sign of a night raid, the night here was not much different from any other. Yawning might have been taking the screws a little too far, but with dark elves standing watch, I didn’t seem likely to die anytime soon.
“You seem to have a fair bit of war experience.”
Dana spoke into the quiet night, and my half-dozing brain stirred itself awake. Her tone was stiffer than when the dark elves talked among themselves.
I had no war experience, though. Combat experience, yes. That was probably why the tension didn’t sit quite so heavy on me.
“No. None at all.”
“None? And you can still doze off and yawn that casually?”
“Maybe a few screws have come loose. Besides, we aren’t fighting a war right this second, are we? It’s quiet enough.”
My indifferent answer left Dana looking thoroughly appalled. A man with no experience remaining perfectly calm under the heavy air of a battlefield—it was enough to get under anyone’s skin.
If I hadn’t had the gods’ blessings myself, I probably would have stayed wound tight and rigid from start to finish.
“Saying that out of your own mouth is impressive in itself.”
“Thank you.”
It wasn’t praise, but I took it as such and thanked her anyway. Dana’s face twisted a degree further—not in anger so much as the look of someone who had no idea what to say next. Complicated feelings, in other words.
“…Ahem. At any rate, coming all this way just to meet Ellen is rather extraordinary.”
“I suppose it is. But I was desperate. That’s why I’m here.”
People shit in life. No—they are built so that they have no choice but to. So how a person cleans up that shit more or less decides their measure. Of course, sometimes you try to clean it up and only make a bigger mess. In that case you get cursed out without fail—but I never thought that left no room at all for credit. At least the mindset was better than the sort who shit and run.
Ah. That didn’t mean the people who had to deal with the shit stopped being angry, of course.
“And what is this desperate reason of yours?”
“I’ll tell the woman riding this way. You can listen in as well.”
I held my breath as I listened to the approaching hoofbeats. Five dark elves on horseback were galloping toward us, Olivia among them, her face already half-familiar.
Ellen’s mercenary band numbered six in all, and the dark elves standing with me—including Dana—were six as well. Meaning the woman I had come to find was among the ones riding in.
“Yes. Here they come.”
Dana seemed to understand my meaning and nodded quietly. A dark elf’s hearing far outstripped a human’s; she had almost certainly heard the ground-shaking hoofbeats long before I mentioned them.
“Whoa. Easy.”
At last they checked their mounts, let the horses rest a moment in the brush, and set their feet on the ground. We were close enough that a short reach would have touched them.
Fortunately their manner looked friendly enough; they didn’t seem about to do anything to me on the spot.
“So you’re the bastard who wanted to meet me?”
Among the five, a short, almost girlish woman spoke first. The air she carried was the strongest of them by far, even if her body was not. Setting beauty aside, her frame fell short on several counts.
But from the way she addressed me, and from the reactions of the others… it was hard to deny that this girl was Ellen.
“Yes. I’m Zion Altram. And you would be Ellen, correct?”
“Decent eye. Yes. I’m Ellen.”
The girl—Ellen—nodded and settled into a crouch so she could meet my eyes where I sat leaning against a tree.
“Lucky for me I guessed well. At any rate, the fact that you came this far means you’re willing to talk, doesn’t it?”
“I’m willing to hear what you have to say. But you’re obviously here because of the duel with Duke Albus Kilinaire.”
I tightened my eyes at her words. She spoke as if she already knew everything, and it startled me.
I had expected the news of friction with Albus to ride from mouth to mouth. Gossip of that sort was always people’s favorite entertainment, and a clash between dukes was especially rich meat to chew on.
Even so, I couldn’t help being surprised. I had never imagined the story would reach a Bluenail territory torn by civil war—let alone a front line where blood was spilled every single day.
“You look rather taken aback. But even on a battlefield, we don’t fight all day long, and people still trade idle talk and pass rumors along, same as anywhere. And supply lines bring more than materiel.”
“Even so… I wouldn’t have expected someone to be as thoroughly informed as you.”
“That much I can’t say. In any case, you clearly mean to drag me into that famous duel… so I suppose we’ll have to negotiate.”
Ellen had the whole situation mapped out without my saying a word. Anyone thinking carefully might have pieced it together, but that she had the leisure for it on a front like this was astonishing. The ease of someone who had spent long years on battlefields, no doubt.
“Very well.”
A swift conversation was more than welcome on my end. And the fact that she hadn’t cut me off cold but had spoken of negotiation gave me a glimmer of hope. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself—but depending on the terms, she seemed likely to take my offer.
“Let’s see… If I were to accept your proposal, the opponent would of course be Expert-class. On a battlefield it might be one thing, but in a one-on-one fight that’s a fairly hard matchup. Keep that in mind and name your price.”
Ellen was being remarkably helpful about estimating the job. It didn’t feel like mere impatience to wrap things up; she seemed to be hiding some other design of her own.
I found myself wishing for mind-reading, then decided to set that aside and simply put my own offer on the table. Speculating about thoughts I couldn’t read was going to make my head explode.
“I’ll give you land.”
I had no way of knowing what Ellen and the other dark elves truly wanted. I only knew they had no place to stay, that they had been driven even from villages, and that this was why they drifted from war to war. From that, I had concluded that offering them ground where they could rest in peace might do the trick.
The Altrams held no proper domain of their own—little more than the land around the mansion and the site of the trading house. I couldn’t carve off a generous territory on the spot, but I could purchase land and give it to them. I already had Chess’s leave for it.
“Land… you say.”
Ellen murmured the word under her breath and sank into thought. Her reaction was hard to read as either acceptance or refusal, but the fact that she was considering it at all felt like success enough. If it hadn’t been worth a second thought, she would have snorted or refused on the spot.
I swallowed dryly to the sound of my own heart, which had begun to beat a little harder. In clock time it might have been only a moment, but to me it felt like forever.
And when that moment passed, Ellen’s tightly closed lips parted. The action itself was more than welcome.
“What sort of land? Some corner fit for a refuse dump—a wasteland that won’t grow a single grain of wheat?”
It was only the frost in her voice and the edge in her eyes that were the problem.