Spoils of the Hunt
At first, the mercenaries simply could not believe it. No—disbelief was too mild a word for the thick wall of distrust that rose around them.
There was only one reason anyone bothered to come out to a place like this—the Riesling March and every other stretch of land that shared a border with the monster wilds. You came to kill monsters, strip them for parts, and turn those parts into coin.
A well-tanned monster hide could rival plate mail for toughness, and that kind of quality demanded a certain amount of money from whoever wanted to own it. Not the kind of fortune that ran a merchant caravan or padded a particularly rich noble’s purse, maybe—but still more than the riffraff loafing in the gutters could ever scrape together.
That was why there were mercenaries willing to risk their lives on a hunt. For money, and for money alone.
"You're really just… giving this to us?"
Which was why the offer being made to them now felt almost impossible to accept as real.
Handing over orc carcasses out of nowhere was suspicious enough. That the one making the offer was the infamous Red Hood only made it worse.
"Yeah. We don't need them."
"Are you insane? You come out here to hunt monsters and then throw the spoils away? Who the hell is going to believe crap like that!"
The mercenary who barked the challenge had every right to be suspicious. It wasn't pride talking—not some refusal to scavenge another man's kill. He simply had no idea what price would be demanded in exchange for those carcasses.
For people who lived and died by coin, that kind of doubt was only natural.
Ellen, however, did not take offense. She only nodded, as if she understood them perfectly. In a way, she was one of the longest-working mercenaries on the continent; of course she knew their ways inside and out.
"Our party's goal isn't to make money. We've already earned more than enough to cover the road expenses both ways, so there's no need to haul carcasses off to market."
"So what you're saying is—that still doesn't make any—"
"If you can't understand it, does that automatically make it nonsense? What a fool."
Ellen crossed her arms and smirked, deliberately needling him. A vein jumped on the forehead of the mercenary who had been picking the fight, and his face flushed furnace-red.
Provocation and brawling were practically part of a mercenary's daily bread, but this time he could not answer with his fists. Opposite him stood a living legend who had been doing mercenary work for more than half a century—and that fact outweighed even the usual dark-elf prejudice.
"You son of a—!"
"There. Even if you don't understand, it seems you've at least gotten the gist. So what will it be? If you'd rather not, you can go find another company, or ask the March for help. I approached you first because we're both mercenaries. Call it a sense of kinship."
"…Tch."
The mercenary clicked his tongue and swallowed his anger. Snapping back would get him nowhere, and if it came to force he would lose without question. Out here in the forest, a man could die without a single bird noticing and become fertilizer by morning. Backing down was the smart play.
If he had been a few years younger, hot blood might have carried him into a fight he could not win. But this man had been worn smooth by the trade; he knew how to cool his temper and step aside.
Ellen watched him, decided he was ready to talk properly, and lifted one corner of her mouth as she asked the final question.
"So. What are you going to do?"
I held my breath as I watched them tear through the forest as if it were their own front yard. Chaos did not begin to cover it.
"Hey, grab it and move! Hurry up!"
A forest that was supposed to be crawling with monsters had been reduced to something like a noble's private hunting ground, its dignity stripped bare. Mercenaries raced between the trees, scrambling to collect the carcasses with feverish enthusiasm.
Ellen and her people did the hunting; through a little careful manipulation they had drawn in company after company of mercenaries to haul away their share of the kill. I was standing on the front line doing my part as best I could, but in truth the whole affair was closer to a one-man show staged by the dark-elf mercenary company.
"Urgh—?!"
"Idiot. Watch yourself. Have you forgotten the mercenary proverb that a life is worth more than coin, no matter how good the haul?"
Even while they hunted, they cut down diamond wolves that lunged in sudden ambushes and pulled mercenaries free of those fangs a heartbeat before they closed. Hunting and protection, carried out at the same time.
It was something like a free-for-all, but even the scavengers who had come running for easy corpses still had enough skill to keep themselves alive. As long as they did not let the tension go completely slack, they could brace for a monster's surprise attack and answer it. That was how they managed to stay in the Riesling March and keep hunting at all.
Still—they had to feel like they had struck gold.
Orcs, diamond wolves, mad rabbits, and more… carcasses lay everywhere. Calling the place a paradise was no exaggeration. It had become a land of milk and honey, as if a rain of gold had fallen like lightning from a clear sky.
At least, that was how it looked to the mercenaries.
"Damn it! Thanks!"
"Heh. If you're grateful, get yourself sorted and clear out. You don't want to die, do you?"
"Ah, shit!"
A rough-faced mercenary spat a string of curses and scrambled away. Greed had nearly gotten him killed, and the embarrassment was written all over him. Still, the fact that he managed a proper thank-you suggested he was not a complete lost cause when it came to character.
Over several days we had fattened the mercenaries' purses; next it was the March's turn.
Helena and I had hoped that word of mouth among the sellswords would at least somewhat repair Ellen's reputation, but winning goodwill from the territory's own people mattered in its own right.
Unlike the mercenaries, the local troops had the overwhelming advantage of numbers—but individually they were weaker. That forced them to hone their group tactics, and it also left them vulnerable in a crisis. Put them in one-on-one situations and nine times out of ten they would die.
The soldiers of the Riesling March were well trained, so such disasters were not constant—but they were hardly unheard of, either. Even when they did not die, injuries were common enough.
"If you're not hurt, get back in formation and tighten the line!"
"Y-yes, ma'am…!"
Like a battering ram slamming into a castle gate, the mercenary company centered on Ellen stood at the very tip of the spear and swept the monsters aside. The soldiers then rushed in to haul the carcasses clear, rejoined the ranks, and repeated the cycle. The whole thing had the look of a factory's division of labor.
Whenever a soldier fell into danger from a sudden ambush, they appeared like ghosts to pull him free, or bought the time needed to re-form the ranks.
Ellen had claimed she felt a kinship with the mercenaries as one of their own. She had said exactly that—and yet, watching her, she seemed to care even more for the soldiers of the March.
Perhaps it was simply because their individual combat skill fell short of the weather-beaten mercenary companies that lived in these woods. But it did not feel like that alone. She seemed to know these people were not just soldiers but ordinary subjects of the territory, and she was doing everything she could to keep them safe.
—Wooooooaaarrgh!!
"Everyone, careful! That's a troll! We've come in pretty deep today!"
I had thought the roar shaking the ground was unusually fierce—and of course the culprit turned out to be a troll.
I stared at the massive ash-gray giant bellowing in the distance and swallowed dryly. Twice the size of an orc, with a presence that matched, it carried the full majesty of a high-class monster.
"Weren't trolls supposed to only appear from the mid-forest onward?!"
"They are. But the soldiers backing us are so quick that our advance has been faster than expected. At this rate we could cross the forest and…"
Cross the forest. Ellen cut herself off there, and for a moment a gloomy cast settled over her face.
I wondered why she looked so downcast with a monster standing right in front of us—then I realized what waited at the far side of a full crossing. The elven forest from which she had been driven lay beyond.
A civilized society where those commonly called demihumans lived in their own communities. A land of mystery that traded little with the human world, though every so often one of their goods would drift out and fetch a startling price.
"Ellen! Forgive me for interrupting your thoughts, but the troll comes first!"
"…Ah! My apologies!"
At my shout Ellen shook off her brooding, rose, and nocked an arrow in one smooth motion. She was ringed by dark elves ready to protect her, so she was not in immediate danger—but leaving her dazed any longer was a risk. A little rudeness in the form of a verbal whip-crack was the only way to wake her.
"Hoo…!"
Unlike orcs, trolls tended to act alone rather than in packs. Whether that was because of their size or because they simply outclassed orcs by such a wide margin, I could not say—but the trait was real. One look at the bellowing giant charging toward us was enough to confirm the knowledge.
"Loose—huh?! Hold!"
Just before she loosed an arrow laden with wind, Ellen swallowed a sharp breath and ordered the shooting stopped. The other dark elves tilted their heads, wondering what was wrong, but Ellen only stared in silence at the space above the troll's head.
"Quick on the uptake, aren't you?"
Crunch!
A bright, cheerful voice rang out across a forest littered with monster corpses—a voice that did not belong there at all. At the same time, a sickening wet sound of flesh and bone parting drove into my ears. Soft, yet so clear it might have been happening right in front of my face.
"Mm…"
The owner of the voice—Helena—stood with one boot planted on the troll's shoulder, hand still closed around the sword she had driven straight down through its crown. She let out a quiet sigh.
No matter how tough and dense a troll's body was compared to an orc's, a skull run clean through meant instant death. And she had punched that skull with an Aura Blade; there was no chance it could keep breathing. If it had still been moving after that, it would have been an undead, not a troll.
"Whew."
Helena stepped lightly off the collapsing body—falling like a snapped old tree—and sprang down to land in front of me.
Even the soldiers held their breath at the sight. The dark elves who had been feeding wind into their arrows let the power go and stared at Helena as if she were some kind of monster herself. She had been standing right beside me only a moment ago; the sheer agility that had put her on a troll's shoulder without warning was astonishing.
"Well? Clean enough for you?"
"Ah… yeah. You only put a hole through the head. The hide's untouched, and even with the blood spraying, the wound itself is small—so we should be able to use almost everything."
I answered her childlike question with a wry smile. Blood was fountaining from the hole in the troll's crown, but the stream had already lost its force—as if the pressure that had driven it had finally broken.
"So that's Duke Krauser… the genius who reached Master younger than anyone. Gives me chills."
"I've never seen anyone take a troll down that fast and that cleanly."
"Between the dark-elf mercenaries and this, it's a day I won't forget as long as I live."
The soldiers muttered among themselves even as they hurried to recover the troll's body. It had already been an expensive kill; dying this cleanly would only drive the price higher. Even the same hide rose or fell in value depending on the damage, and a troll would be no exception.
"It's already afternoon? Running since morning, I never even noticed the time."
Helena wiped the sweat from her brow and drew a bright, refreshing arc of a smile. Even with her extraordinary physical ability, nearly half a day of constant motion was enough to make anyone sweat.
A young, beautiful knightess wiping the sweat from her face. I found myself newly aware of Helena's abundance and offered a silent prayer of gratitude. I had not forgotten the work still waiting for me at the back of my mind—but joy rose all the same. There was also a cheap, unmistakable little swell of superiority in knowing that a woman so many men looked at with longing was mine.
"Yes. The soldiers followed so well that our pace was remarkably fast."
"It was. You can only say these are soldiers who live and fight in the Riesling March. I think they might even outdo the troops of my own domain."
While the lines were being reorganized, we exchanged a little small talk designed to praise the March's soldiers—a thin little scheme to nudge their goodwill a notch higher. The soldiers looked back and forth between us and the dark-elf company with something like emotion in their eyes. Ellen's mercenaries had caught on to the intent partway through and joined the conversation, which helped.
"All right—shall we call it a day and head back? We didn't bring camping gear, and this isn't exactly a place you'd want to sleep rough."
Once the area had been tidied up, Helena clapped her hands and urged the return. She was right; pushing any farther would have been far too dangerous.