A Vulture's Justice
For a moment, we simply stared at each other. As word spread, people began to gather one by one, and the captain of the guard led us toward the official residence the mayor used.
The bandits were handed over to the guards and locked away in the holding cells, bound in iron chains. The wolves were returned to the forest where the return portal waited. Last time, I had sent them back in a hurry alongside the Duramino Cordos, so I had been somewhat worried, but seeing how well they looked, it seemed their habitat had not treated them poorly.
Before long, a crowd had gathered around us, and cheers for Rowell and Aegina—and occasionally my own name—echoed from every direction. Of course, the voices calling my name carried a faint note of doubt, though I suspected that was not merely my imagination.
When we reached the residence, a middle-aged man of considerable presence greeted us. His clothes gleamed as though newly purchased, and his leather shoes were polished to a shine; anyone could tell at a glance that he was the mayor.
“Thank you for coming. And to think you even eradicated that dangerous band of bandits. As expected of the heroes who saved the world.”
Yet I found myself disliking him. He did not fawn over Rowell the way others did, nor did he appear moved to tears. It was not simply that he remained calm. There was a strange irritation in his eyes, the same measuring gaze I had once seen in the older nobles of the Empire.
“I am Mayor Tidre, responsible for Sirau City.”
His tone suggested he took considerable pride in his position.
“The lord is not present, I take it?”
That was why I deliberately asked the question with feigned ignorance, cutting in before Rowell and Aegina could offer their greetings. The mayor’s expression stiffened for an instant. He quickly composed himself, but even without seeing his face, the brief silence that followed told me everything.
“Ah, yes. Sirau City no longer has a lord. Instead, the king appoints a mayor based on the citizens’ recommendations.”
“He does not grant a title?”
“…No, he does not.”
It was a rather satisfying way to vent my irritation. My mood had already been poor, so watching that arrogant face tighten was not entirely unpleasant.
Using local residents to govern remote towns and cities had long been one of the easiest methods the weakened royal family and central authority employed. Once royal power recovered, they would simply send a new lord from the capital.
Yet here he was, pretending to be nobility over something so trivial. If it had been the innocent joy of a simple provincial man, I might have played along, but his attempt to act the ambitious schemer was a century too early.
“…Thank you for welcoming us, Mayor.”
Rowell, who had been robbed of the initiative, finally responded to the mayor’s greeting, but the mayor’s expression remained awkwardly stiff and showed no sign of relaxing.
The mayor granted us permission to use the residence. Rowell took Aegina, who complained of fatigue, and headed to their room first. It was nearly dinnertime, but she clearly had no appetite.
Left alone, and unable to visit Rofena while Rowell and Aegina might come looking for me at any moment, I simply followed the guard captain toward the holding cells where the bandits were imprisoned.
I had originally intended to take a walk around the village, but the gathered crowd made that impossible without the guards’ help, so I had no choice.
The holding cells stood relatively close to the central square. The gallows near the entrance were quite small, which I found striking—likely designed so many could watch an execution. It meant there were few criminals or capital offenses here, though hanging all the men we had brought would take considerable time.
“Who are those people?”
A group had gathered in front of the cells.
“Ah, they are…”
I did not need to hear the answer. They were a mix of elderly men, children, and young men, yet every pair of eyes held the same sorrow and thirst for vengeance.
“The victims’ families.”
They recognized me and bowed their heads or raised their hands in quiet gratitude. None of them spoke. They simply looked at me, demanding that justice be carried out swiftly.
“…Let us go inside.”
I had noticed it earlier, but the guard captain’s gaze resembled theirs. Though more restrained, the emotion within was unmistakably the same.
“They must have been quite vicious.”
“Yes. Murder, robbery, assault, kidnapping, threats—each crime is enough to make one’s blood boil. They have been causing trouble throughout the surrounding region for the past two years.”
“I see. Forgive me if this is rude, but why were you unable to capture them?”
The number of guards seemed somewhat low, yet capturing a band of just over twenty bandits should not have been impossible. Even if they could not request reinforcements from a larger city or neighboring villages, they could surely have gathered enough civilian volunteers.
“…We caught some of them once when they came down near the village. We captured three, but that very night their comrades stormed the outpost, killed two guards, and freed their men. We immediately gathered volunteers and gave chase, but they kept moving their hideout, and in the end we could not find them. Several of our men were injured in the process. Eventually, the mayor ordered us to abandon the pursuit. He said that as long as they did not directly raid our city and only troubled other villages or travelers, we lacked the resources to sacrifice more personnel to catch them.”
The guard captain spoke while visibly struggling to contain his anger.
“Did you know any of the victims?”
“…My nephew was among them. He lost his father early and worked harder than anyone, yet Will Carson…”
He could not continue. His eyes were those of a wounded beast, tormented by its inability to bare its fangs.
“I see.”
I followed him deeper inside.
“Will you observe the interrogation?”
“I will.”
He offered me tea first, then ordered the other guards to prepare the interrogation room. I, however, was thinking of something else.
From the mayor’s perspective, pouring too many personnel and funds into eradicating bandits was burdensome unless it caused immediate, significant damage to the village—especially if casualties mounted. Yet the wealth the bandits had accumulated suggested the damage was by no means small.
Even a small town would have trade and exchanges with neighboring villages. Leaving the bandits alone would only increase the harm, and I doubted he was incapable of such basic calculations. Of course, that did not mean the mayor and the bandits had any direct collusion.
Such an arrangement would have been far too dangerous for the mayor, and someone in his position would have no need to covet the paltry sums he might gain from them. There were far easier and safer ways to make money.
Simply by altering a few numbers on paper.
“Then there must be another reason.”
“Pardon? Did you have something to say?”
“Ah, no. Is the interrogation room ready?”
Following the captain’s guidance, I entered the interrogation room. It lived up to its name: dark, containing only an old desk, two chairs, a wooden board fitted with chains large enough for a person, a whip, and a bucket filled with water.
“Is there really any need to extract confessions?”
Their crimes were already notorious, and they had been caught red-handed. Interrogation seemed pointless.
“If possible, we need to determine the exact origins of the stolen goods and identify the victims. We also require their names for the report.”
What followed was a rather tedious process. Most of the men brought in one by one readily admitted their crimes. Some had eyes already dead with resignation, while others begged for their lives. The largest group, however, were the shameless ones who claimed they had merely watched from the side and done nothing themselves.
“No, I’m telling you, I was just standing there holding a sword. When they killed that woman, I even said it was a waste—no, that it was wrong.”
Each time, my hand moved before the guard captain could signal his men.
“You are innocent?”
A small summoning circle appeared above my hand, and a black, bloated leech-like creature with numerous long legs materialized. Honestly, the sight of it resting on my palm was unpleasant enough, but its effect was immediate.
They screamed and confessed their crimes. Even the one who held out the longest abandoned all resistance the moment the creature brought its mouth full of tiny teeth toward his face.
In truth, these creatures were not meant for torture or intimidation. They were medicinal insects, but as summoned beings, their use depended entirely on the summoner.
Finally, when the last one’s turn came, the guard captain—who had been maintaining his composure—showed a change in his eyes.
It was the bandit leader, Will Carson’s turn.
When the guards dragged him into the room, the captain lunged without a word and struck him across the head with his sheathed sword. A scream rang out as the bandit’s forehead split and blood poured down, yet neither the guards nor I moved to stop him.
The beating continued for some time. For a moment, I thought the captain might sink his teeth into the man’s throat. He was violent, cruelty incarnate.
If he had wanted, there were better methods, and if he had asked me, I could have created a far more brutal scene—one even I would not have been able to watch with open eyes. But he wanted to deliver the punishment with his own hands.
“Haa, haa…!”
By the time the metallic scent of blood filled the room and both the bandit and the captain were stained red, the captain finally stopped. Will Carson had already lost consciousness and collapsed, yet the guards made no move to help him. They seemed to think it would not matter if he died like this, but that could not be allowed.
“Take him away and treat him, at least roughly.”
At my words, every gaze in the room turned toward me. For an instant, those eyes even carried killing intent. In normal circumstances I might have flinched, but fortunately, I did not.
“The people outside deserve to see justice being carried out, do they not? Or rather, to see vengeance being fulfilled.”
Only then did the hostility in their eyes ease slightly. Still, as I met those gazes filled with lingering dissatisfaction, I felt a faint disappointment at the fact that I could speak such words with a genuine smile. As expected, I was different from Rowell and the others.
Corpse vulture. Yes. Orcan’s words had not been entirely wrong.
“And this vengeance must not end with something as simple as a hanging.”