1. The Healer with the Slightly Odd Head (2)
Adventurers only ever came into the guild; they never left. As a result, every last seat in the guild office was packed to bursting.
"Ugh, the B.O. Would it kill you to wash up once in a while?"
"…Get your hand off my head."
Yona was lazily stroking Alec's shiny bald head with her right hand.
That hand—wrapped in the Holy Shroud, every single finger bound in its blessed cloth—was busy caressing Alec's scalp.
"What? I'm healing your hair roots."
"I shaved it myself, you lunatic. It didn't die! My roots aren't dead!"
"Then you'd be the lunatic, wouldn't you?"
"Argh, seriously."
Alec's face flushed red with irritation. Sensing that one more pass would snap even his patience clean in two, Yona slowly withdrew her hand.
"They say one of the survey team died a couple days back. And yet the punitive force is moving this fast?"
Weren't these the nobles famous for dragging their feet?
Three years in this world—and the single biggest lesson life had taught her in that time was this: never expect speed from a noble. They were men who believed that swiftness and dignity were inversely proportional.
Alec pulled out a cloth and wiped the sweat from his head.
"It's a demon, man. A demon. And one from the Catacombs, no less. This is the kind of incident that should have the lord moving his eyebrows off his face in flames."
Yona had seen the lord once from a distance. For that much flesh to get moving in a hurry… The image sprang unbidden into her mind, and she broke into a snicker. Flesh rippling, sweat streaming. Ah, disgusting.
"They looked like they set out from the castle this morning, though. Shouldn't be long now."
"Faster than I expected. Guess the eyebrows really did catch fire?"
She was genuinely surprised inside. Even stranger was the fact that those fat-bottomed priests of the Cathedral had moved that quickly too.
"Anyway, Alec—you're joining the punitive force, right?"
"Have to. That's the whole reason I've been squatting around here all day."
"Good. Then party up with me."
"Sure, why not."
Alec agreed without hesitation. Yona might be a few screws loose, but her skill was beyond question. She was quick on her feet and sharp in a fight. For a vanguard like Alec—someone who carried a hair-trigger relationship with death—just having a healer of Yona's caliber attached to him was something to be grateful for.
*
Barely had they finished saying "let's party up" when the commander of the lord's punitive force stormed in. He huddled with Mary and the guild master, exchanged a few words, then immediately launched into a situation briefing and started taking applications from adventurers wishing to join the punitive force.
Needless to say, Alec and Yona signed up as well, and now they were loaded onto a departing carriage.
Yona, seated in the canvas-enclosed carriage—the walls lined with thick, oil-treated cloth—stretched her legs out and cracked her spine with a long yawn. The ten adventurers crammed shoulder to shoulder into the carriage, including Yona and Alec at the very back, were mostly Copper-rank like her, and mostly familiar faces.
Their skill levels, however, varied wildly. Yona didn't throw together parties carelessly—not unless she'd run enough jobs with them, the way she had with Alec, to be certain of what they could do. But since this was a punitive force, the party assignments would probably be random; counting Alec, whose companionship she'd already registered, she'd likely be grouped with four or so.
"Alec, how much are you getting paid?"
"Ten silver."
"Oh."
They pay vanguards decently, at least. Yona was getting ten too. Vanguard and healer—the two classes that were indispensable to any party yet maddeningly hard to find. Probably why the compensation was fairly generous.
Demons… actual demons…
It had already been three years since she'd been flung, without warning, into this world. Somewhere in that span, her holy power had awakened, she'd been classified as a Healer, and she'd started working as an adventurer—about two and a half years now. And in all that time, she had never once laid eyes on a demon.
Mostly it had been dungeon delving, or punitive expeditions against monsters and beasts. But today was a war against demons—a whole different class of threat from anything she'd faced. It was impossible not to be nervous.
"Hey there, missy. Nervous?"
"Goddammit, how many times do I have to tell you—don't call me missy."
The axe warrior Miscot, seated beside Alec, grinned crookedly as he threw the words at her. Two times? Three? He was someone she'd partied with before. His skill was passable, but the man threw caution to the wind so recklessly that Yona—who had to keep her vanguard under constant guard—had remember it as exhausting work.
"First time facing a demon, right?"
"Yeah. Got any decent intel?"
Yona, who'd been burning with quiet rage at the word "missy," lowered her voice a little at the question. Maybe he knew something. He was such a battle-crazed fool that he might have picked something up. For adventurers, information was tied directly to survival rate.
"First time for me too."
Miscot shrugged with theatrical flair. Just as Yona was about to blow her stack—was that all he had?—a loud voice rang out across the carriage staging area.
"We're moving out now! Full briefing when we arrive, so get your rest on the road!"
The relatively veteran adventurers sitting along the outermost edge of the carriage bellowed back a rousing "Sir, yes, sir!"
Thud.
With the sound of the chock being pulled free, the carriage jolted and began to roll.
"You bastard, I'll deal with you later."
"Oh dear, little lady has committed a mortal sin, haven't we, milady?"
"This bastard, I swear—"
The adventurers sitting around them laughed at the sight. The crazy healer who insisted she'd been a man. The slightly unhinged healer who claimed she'd come from another world. And yet her skill was so good that among healers—the vast majority of whom died off at Rock and Iron rank—she was one of the rare few to hold Copper.
"Sleep, you bastards. Once we're off the wagon you won't get to, even if you want to. Yona, stop yapping and sleep too."
Kayak, the Lizardman seated at the far end of the carriage, grumbled in his low voice. At that, Yona pouted and obediently closed her eyes. She hadn't thought she'd be able to sleep—but the moment her eyes shut, she drifted off all the same.
*
The carriage lurched. A thud, followed by the sound of a chock being driven back into place.
Yona cracked her eyes half open and peered outside. They'd set out around midmorning with the sun in plain view; now the light was harsh, but the sun itself was nowhere to be seen—it must be near midday.
"Right, everyone off! Off the wagon!"
The call set off a burst of commotion. As if no one had been asleep at all, they hoisted up their gear and baggage and clambered down from the carriage, one heavy drop after another.
"Now, form up in neat lines!"
A knight of the lord's own order—clad in fairly splendid armor—swept a sharp-eyed look over the assembled adventurers.
"Must be nice, having armor."
"Sell a few of those milk jugs of yours and you could afford one, easy."
"Shut it, you bald bastard."
Yona smacked the back of Alec's head with a crack, then looked around. Forty adventurers, no more. Sixty or so counting the knights. And then—
"My, is everyone here already?"
"Yes, Reverend. Please, disembark."
Priests stepped down under the escort of a cluster of knights. The carriage they'd ridden in was a visibly different class of machine from the one Yona and the others had been packed into. The wheels were doubled up to minimize the jolt, and even a glance made it clear that speed and passenger capacity had been tossed out the window in favor of pure ride comfort.
Ugh, damned bitches. Same holy power running through all of them, and yet some ride in that while others get fussed over like porcelain.
"You're a woman too—bet you'd like an escort yourself, huh?"
"Shut your mouth, Alec."
Just as she raised her hand to smack the back of his head again, the knight-commander's voice boomed across the field.
"We hold position here until sundown! Each wagon's lead adventurers—report to the command post!"
Yona, for her part, had nowhere to be. The Lizardman warrior Kayak cracked his neck with a series of pops and headed off toward the command post or whatever it was, while Alec tugged Yona by the arm over to a fallen log that was at least good for sitting on.
"Hey, Yona."
"What."
His voice was unusually serious. In response, Yona steadied her own tone for a moment.
"You ever fought a demon before?"
"No? Isn't that what those priests are for?"
"We're the ones taking the hits, you know."
"You're the bastard taking the hits."
"I mean, yeah, I do—but so do you."
That was just what healers did, so Alec wasn't wrong. Vanguard and healer came as a matched set.
"So what's your point?"
"I've got a bad feeling about this one. I trust your skill, obviously, I always have—but just, watch my back a little extra this time."
"When have I ever not watched your back? If you die, I die. Don't you get that much by now?"
"No, I—I know that, it's just…"
There was real tension sitting on Alec's face. And that tension pulled Yona's along with it. What was with him today, of all days?
"Look, my gut is screaming at me about this one. That's all."
"Oh, for the love of… your gut. Fine, fine. I got it."
If his gut said trouble, then the answer was simple: keep him alive. Yona ran her left hand over the Holy Shroud wound snug around her right arm. It was a bottom-shelf shroud so cheap it was almost embarrassing to have it graded at all—but it had carried her through three years.
Healer: the class that competed with the vanguard for the top of the mortality chart every single time they marched out. Healer: the extreme occupation with an average survival span of one year. And Yona had survived in that occupation for three years running now.
"You watch me too, Alec. I'll watch you, so—"
"Don't worry about it. Where are you gonna find a vanguard who doesn't look after his healer?"
"Plenty of them, bastard."
Yona grinned and gave his shoulder a couple of light thumps. This scatterbrained mountain of a bald man worrying over something so pointless—it was kind of endearing, she had to admit.
"Alright—everyone gather round! We're calling out party assignments, so get over here, fast!"
The summons came again from far off.
"See, it's just a feeling. Don't let it eat at you. I'll watch your back, you watch mine—between the two of us, we've got it covered. Right? No point in a scatterbrain like you getting cold feet."
"…Yeah. Got it. Yona—I'm counting on you."
"Yap! And I intend to earn it!"
Yona flashed him a thumbs-up.
Bastard. Kind of cute.