Hunt #6
Late at night, while we were still warming ourselves by the campfire, Helena suddenly asked about my age.
"You'll be sixteen once your birthday passes, right?"
"That's right. Why do you ask?"
"I was wondering… when we're going to get married."
I answered her question with one of my own, and she answered in turn.
Marriage. Marriage, huh. I had always figured it would happen someday, and she had asked me about my intentions more than a few times already.
Each time I had put her off with later, once I've put on a few more years. Getting married at fifteen—or younger—just didn't sit right with my senses.
It was the gap between thought and reality.
"Come to think of it, you're almost twenty-four yourself, aren't you, Helena? Sorry. I've been thinking only about myself."
"Ah—no! You don't have a single thing to apologize for, Zion! And now I feel even worse because it sounds like I was pressuring you! What am I supposed to do…!"
Helena's voice shattered the dark, quiet night air and rolled through the forest. Because of the darkness the sound carried even better, as if it were shaking the ground itself, and her flustered gestures looked as bright as broad daylight.
Her hands, which had been waving wildly at the sky, suddenly caught mine.
Her eyes were desperately earnest, like a puppy that had just realized it was being abandoned—or was about to be. Her lips were pressed into a thin line and trembling. Even her head was bowed low, as if she were sorry beyond words for having offended me.
I almost snorted. The usual roles of the man soothing a sulky woman had completely flipped.
I hadn't watched much television in a long time, but old drama scenes kept floating up—slightly exaggerated, maybe, but still the kind that drag the gray illusions on the screen into real life.
"Then how about we get married on my sixteenth birthday?"
"…Huh?"
Helena's mouth fell open at the question she had never seen coming. She looked as if someone she never imagined had just ambushed her, her head emptied clean.
One glance at those slack eyes and blank expression left no other conclusion. She almost seemed hypnotized.
"What? Weren't you the one who wanted to get married?"
I gave a short laugh and tossed the joke out, yet at the same time I steadied my resolve all over again.
She had become a woman I could confidently call precious—not only for practical reasons but emotionally as well—yet that did not change the work I still had to do.
Keep Helena from going mad, and quietly neutralize every other danger around us. That was my job.
I had only postponed things because marrying so young felt wrong, but looking at it again, Helena was already twenty-three. In the modern world even thirty would still be young enough for a shrug, but not here.
With the average marriage age at eighteen, twenty-three was well past the proper season.
The reason no one around us had said a word was simple: we were already engaged. And from the outside it looked so solid—so unbreakable—that it might as well have been marriage already. That was why the adults, including Is, simply waited for the right time without comment.
"I—I do want to! No, please let me…!"
Helena clung to my arm not as the master but as the subordinate. Who held the lead in our relationship was hard to pin down cleanly, yet I had always believed that if I ever chose to take it, I could. The way she was raising her speech and hanging on me right now was proof enough.
Even through the leather armor I could almost feel the warm flesh and heat of her arms and upper body pressing against me. I gently stroked her chin. It was a gesture possible only because everyone else was asleep and just the two of us remained. Had anyone been awake I would never have done it.
"All right. Then this year on my birthday I'll receive Helena as my present."
"Ah, Zion…!"
Helena called my name with a hazy look in her eyes, as if she were staring at something far away or lost inside a dream she could not leave. That was how sweet the word marriage must have been to her.
A lowlife who had lucked into a fine woman and now wanted to wave that power around—if anyone saw me now they might judge me that way, and I could not entirely deny the charge.
"I love you. More than anyone……"
Helena poured out words that would have made her parents shudder with hurt, then sank into my arms. I felt a genuine twinge of conscience, as if I really had become the worst kind of freeloader. I had done similar things before, yet somehow the words still stuck in my throat…
Good heavens.
I stared open-mouthed at a monster I was seeing for the first time in my life. It wasn't enough to shake my mind completely, but it came close.
Magic items had been moderately surprising, yet the monsters lumbering around in the distance carried a different kind of vivid presence. They were exactly what made fantasy feel like fantasy.
"They said orcs are the easiest ones to run into……"
Pig heads, green skin, massive builds—textbook orcs, moving about in a group. I couldn't tell what they were doing, but to my eyes it looked as if they were heading out on a hunt. The crude wooden clubs and other weapons in their hands, plus the sheer menace that needed no language to understand, made me think so.
Come to think of it, elves and orcs, female knights and orcs… those had always been classic pairings too.
"Just as you said. They're the breed with the strongest fertility, so you run into them often. Usually three to five make a pack—quite the nuisance."
"If they're in packs, ordinary hunting methods won't cut it."
"Exactly. If a large army came through you could swarm them one by one like regular game, but otherwise one person often has to take on one orc."
Ellen lay prone in the snow-dusted shade of a tree, drawing her bowstring. Her sharpened gaze looked ready to pierce straight through an orc, and a fierce wind began to coil around the arrow. She looked exactly like a sniper who had been lying in wait for a long time at long range.
And she was not the only sniper. Every dark elf was in the same prone position, arrow drawn. Holding the bows sideways made the posture look terribly uncomfortable, yet these were master archers; they were not about to miss their targets by much.
Helena and I were playing the role of escorts for the mercenary band that formed the core of the hunt. No one in Ellen's company was so clumsy they couldn't protect their own body, but right now they were focused entirely on sniping. Their attention was directed differently than usual, so we were there to keep that opening from being exploited. Besides, once the plan centered on sniping there was no real need for close combat; that was why the roles had been divided this way.
"All right… loose."
Ellen released the string with a short word. The motion looked as light as plucking a stringed instrument, yet it carried solid power—power carefully measured in angle and force so the arrow would cleanly pierce an orc's neck or skull. The other dark elves loosed at the same instant, as if they had been waiting for the cue. Six arrows streaked through the air toward three orcs. There were five orcs in total, but two archers aimed at each of three to make absolutely certain of the kills.
—Guaaaah…!
A thick, wet sound of bone and muscle being punched through was followed by a deep, throat-scraping scream. Mid-run toward their prey, the orcs had their necks and heads suddenly skewered by arrows and died on the spot—arrows powered by wind spirits that left clean, refreshing holes.
"Looks like they noticed. Still, they aren't charging straight in……"
"It's only natural they can't tell right away where the arrows came from. Even humans can't always do that."
Ellen answered my remark as if it were nothing, already drawing another arrow from the quiver on her back and nocking it. The prone position made every motion look awkward, yet each one was lightning-fast.
"Loose."
She reloaded and loosed without a second of hesitation. With three of the pack dead the remaining orcs' wariness had peaked; they ground their fangs and scanned the surroundings, but unfortunately the arrows flew faster. The thought that they might have noticed a little sooner was useless. The shafts that had already torn through the air had already cut their life-threads and sent them across the river from which no one returns.
"Now it's time for the real work."
Helena glanced back over her shoulder and sighed. The hunting itself was easy; the problem was hauling the carcasses. Inventory space or a subspace would have been nice, but unfortunately we had no such convenient features. No useful carrying magic either. Everything had to be solved with pure muscle.
Helena and I checked the surroundings and then sprinted toward the ground littered with orc corpses. They had done the hunting, so we would do the carrying—and reverse the earlier roles by covering them while we worked.
"Looking at the cart's strength, two at most is the limit."
"Seems that way. What about the rest?"
"We'll have to leave them for other monsters to eat. Though we can at least take the blood. Orc blood is an ingredient in high-grade virility tonics, you know."
Virility tonics. The moment I heard the words I almost imagined my face heating up, but when I touched my cheek it was still cold. Any flush was only from the cold; embarrassment was long past. Helena, however, was different—she flushed while glancing back and forth between the orcs and me. Watching her casually hoist those massive bodies as if they were sacks of rice only made the contrast more jarring.
Virility tonics. As a man I would be lying if I claimed I had no interest, yet I wasn't sure I needed them. I might someday, but right now I already carried the best tonic of all: youth.
"Hah…!"
Thud!
I heaved an orc corpse onto the cart and let out a long breath. It was less dense than a log, so moving it was possible, but the weight matching that huge frame still took real effort. Helena, by contrast, set hers down lightly with an expression of perfect calm. Comparing physical strength with a swordmaster was stupid and I knew it, yet my pride still took a hit. Outwardly she looked so slender.
"It's the dead of winter, so the bodies won't rot in a day or two, but we should still dispose of them as quickly as we can."
"Mm. Once the hunt is finished we'll turn them over to the craftsmen here."
Since we weren't doing this to make money, I felt little regret. It was easy to fall into the illusion that orcs were pushovers simply because the dark elves made the hunting look effortless, but reality was nothing of the sort. Orcs were as strong as their size suggested, and traveling in packs made them troublesome. It only looked like ordinary game hunting because the women here—everyone except me—were so absurdly capable.
"Ah. If I'd known we were going to drain the blood I would have brought the tools earlier. I'm sorry."
I apologized for the incomplete preparation and lowered my head. I had assumed the hunt would simply end and had never thought of carefully collecting the blood; a small mistake, or a large one, depending on how you looked at it.
"What is there to be sorry for? We aren't leaving today anyway. Once we get back we can just buy whatever tools we need."
"She's right. Don't let it bother you. You've never encountered monsters before, and this is your first hunt. Simply returning safely is already success enough."
Helena and Ellen each took my hand at once and offered comfort. I had expected that much, yet I had never expected Ellen to look so openly disappointed. Even the corners of her eyes drooped; the regret was plain.
—Hey! Watch the rear! The rear! Don't get excited and charge ahead!
Just as the atmosphere began to turn awkward, a noisy clamor reached my ears. Other humans nearby, no doubt, deep in their own monster hunt. Hearing the voices, I decided the timing was perfect, clapped my hands once, and spoke. The thought was possible only because making money had never been the goal.
"These orc carcasses—what if we handed them over to the people over there?"