An Unexpected Turn (4)
Guided by the girl, they arrived at the village chief's house.
The village itself wasn't large, so it took hardly any time at all to reach the house where they were to lodge.
"This is it?"
"Yes, you can go right in."
The fact that she said you could go in meant, presumably, that she would not be going in herself.
Yona quietly studied the girl's face.
She must have cried for a long while—her face was smeared with sweat, and only the streaks left behind by her tears stood out clearly.
Come to think of it, this child had lost her older sister just that afternoon.
And yet she hadn't even been given a moment to grieve.
It's not as if I don't understand…
But that was simply what life was worth in a place like this.
A place where the very concept of human rights didn't exist.
These were people of this era, forced to worry about tomorrow's bread without even a spare moment to mourn family members who had already crossed the bridge of death.
"Right. Understood."
Since there was nothing to be done about it anyway, Yona decided not to dwell on it.
She had saved this village, and she had saved the girl's life.
That much was enough. A healer had done her duty.
Aize would have said the same, Yona thought.
The meal laid out in the village chief's kitchen was humble, but it showed plainly that they had prepared the very best they could manage.
The bread looked like the same common rye loaf served everywhere, yet it bore no coarse grains—someone had sifted the flour carefully before baking.
There was a medley of vegetables steamed together—every root and stem trimmed away with care so not a trace of bitterness remained.
And a soup of peas and fava beans simmered with a bit of bacon, seasoned with nothing but salt—though even the bacon was more generous than usual.
"Please, everyone, have a seat. It isn't much, but we've prepared it with all our hearts."
An elderly man, bald smooth across the crown of his head, awkwardly ushered them to their places.
The lizardman Kayak and the orc James groaned and grumbled as they squeezed in, and once they were seated, the table around which five people now gathered looked utterly full.
"Now, bring it out."
The moment the chief finished speaking, the grown woman from before appeared balancing cups on a tray, setting them one by one before Yona's party.
Yona looked down at the cup in front of her.
A squat wooden cup, filled to the brim with a cloudy, milky-white liquid.
"Posset?"
"Ah, yes. You've done so much for us that we dug into what we'd been saving."
Posset—a drink made by mixing milk and egg into beer or wine.
Beer might be easy enough to come by, but milk and eggs were another matter entirely.
Milk and eggs were for selling, more than for eating.
To brew liquor from them meant it was a truly precious drink—and with this much, the village's gratitude was no empty gesture.
A cup of posset went around to each of them, and its mellow sweetness and nutty richness lifted everyone's spirits.
The mood had grown warm indeed, and the village chief grinned bashfully, gesturing broadly as he chattered on.
"That—that monster earlier, big as a house…"
"That would be a Troll."
"Ah, yes, yes. In all my years, I've never once seen a monster like that."
The conversation drifted on. Listening to it, though, something did strike Yona as a little off.
It wasn't common for a troll to attack a village like this.
Why would a monster that belonged deep in the forest come after a settlement at all?
Perhaps, like at James's village, someone had done something to provoke it.
"Was there anything… unusual happening in the village, by any chance?"
A step ahead of Yona, Kayak asked the question.
"Unusual, you say?"
The chief thought for a moment, then shook his head.
"Nothing of the sort. It was an ordinary day. For simple country folk like us, nothing ever changes—day in, day out, nothing but work in the fields."
"I see."
Then why had the troll appeared?
It was strange.
Perhaps I should look into it. We have a long journey ahead of us.
Kayak thought this as he drained the last of his posset.
After that first cup of posset, the meal that followed came with beer to wash it down.
Yona was fond of beer herself, and this house's brew was genuinely good, so she accepted cup after cup as they were offered, and before long she was in fine spirits.
"You doing all right there, Yona?"
Kayak quietly asked Alec.
Face flushed crimson, letting out a dopey hehehe of a laugh, Yona was, to any observer, in a slightly worrying state.
But before Alec could answer, the village chief's voice cut in.
"Is… is the blood of that monster really worth that much?"
He was talking about the troll's blood.
Kayak had told them to collect it, and the villagers had swept up every basin and bucket in the village to catch it and stored it somewhere cold—but the chief couldn't quite wrap his head around it.
In a village like this, no one would ever see a troll, and even if they did, how would they know what its blood fetched?
Besides, the villagers had already hauled the troll's corpse off to the empty lot at the edge of town.
"It's an ingredient used to make potions. So yes, it's expensive. The cathedral will be sending people tomorrow—sell it to them then. And you can pay our fee out of that."
Since Yona was already thoroughly drunk and liable to say anything, Alec answered quickly.
"Ah, th—that's… that's right. The fee, yes… the fee. We must pay it."
The chief's expression clouded slightly.
A troll-slaying commission was expensive.
It started at a minimum of one gold coin.
And that single gold coin was only the up-front payment—additional compensation was added depending on how strong the troll turned out to be.
"H-how much would be… appropriate?"
Kayak, who had been silently keeping his mouth shut, fixed the chief with a look as he spoke.
"Four gold coins. One gold coin per person—you can manage at least that."
Kayak had been an adventurer far longer than Alec or Yona, and he'd already seen through the man.
This fellow didn't want to pay.
In other words: who asked you to save us?
Which meant that by now, the appeal to kindness was bound to come out.
"B-but… we've lost so many in this village, and we need to prepare for the coming winter, we don't have the means to…"
"Oh, for pity's sake!"
"Hrk?!"
Cutting the chief off mid-sentence, Kayak drove his fork straight down into the table.
The fork sank deep into the wood, and when Kayak released it, the table gave a low shudder.
"We fought that thing with our lives on the line. Are you seriously asking who told you to save us?"
Kayak's gaze turned to the chief.
The eyes of a Silver-rank warrior bore directly into him.
The atmosphere froze in an instant.
Payment was, of course, their due.
If the man had simply asked them to lower the price, there might have been room for negotiation.
Four gold coins wasn't anyone's child's name being claimed—and the village's coffers were obviously strained, so a simple request to shave the fee would have gone over far better.
"No, no, it's not that…! That's not what I meant…!"
"Then what is it? Selling that troll's blood and corpse would leave you with plenty to spare. That's a lot cheaper than the price of your lives, isn't it?"
Yona, who had been giggling drunkenly a moment ago, was somehow now glaring at the chief with a face cold enough to drip frost.
"You could have just asked us to cut the price. We might have considered it. Right, Kayak?"
"Ahem."
Kayak didn't answer that one, merely tipping back his cup.
"What, is there a problem? The troll's already dead, so whatever almost killed you might as well never have happened, and now that you've had your windfall it stings to see money go out the door—is that it?"
"N-no, that's not…"
The chief was floundering.
Watching him break out in a cold sweat, Yona thought for a moment.
Driving the mood into the ground had been satisfying, but now the question was how far to let it thaw.
If only someone would cut in smoothly and mediate—
"All right, all right, Chief. Four gold coins is a heavy burden for you, I'll grant that."
Alec stepped into the middle of it.
And with that, he shot a wink at Yona and Kayak—a signal that he'd negotiate a middle ground, so ease up a little.
Knowing when to settle for a fair amount was part of an adventurer's trade, after all.
Squeezing a village dry beyond what it could bear was something only common thugs did, so both Kayak and Yona had been prepared to relent at just this point.
"H-honestly, yes. We've lost so many of our young people, or they're wounded… and harvest season is right upon us…"
"Then let's call it two gold coins. Truth be told, Chief, you did help us at the end there—we'll take that into account. We're not so heartless as all that, you know."
Alec rubbed his hands together and flashed a rather genial smile.
Seated right beside the chief, he practically threw an arm around the man's shoulder, making a coin shape with his fingers and wagging it playfully.
"After all, thanks to the villagers, we caught the thing without too much trouble. That's why we cut it in half. We didn't shave it, we reduced it. That's an important distinction, you understand? Got it?"
"That's right, that's right—you got it?"
Alec persuaded; Yona chimed in.
Her old knack for haggling loot at Henson's general store hadn't rusted one bit.
"Good grief, humans. You save them and they don't even know to be grateful."
"Humans are all like that. It's only because you lot are human that you can't see it—humans are all like that."
At Kayak's blunt remark, Yona jutted out her lips.
That was going too far. She drew the line at all humans.
"Oh, come off it. Those people are the weird ones, not everyone."
"Think whatever you like, Yona."
On the way back to their lodging, a derelict house caught Yona's eye.
Abandoned buildings—homes that had lost their owners, or lost one of them—littered the area, but that one house stood out to her.
Or rather, something was peeking out from behind its crumbling wall—a small head that vanished the instant Yona looked its way.
That was what had caught her eye.
"You two go on ahead."
It wasn't as if a monster was lurking there.
But something about it nagged at her.
"Where are you going? Want me to come with?"
"I'm going to take a shit, you idiot. You planning to follow me to the privy too?"
"There's a privy inside the lodging, though—"
Why is this guy so dense?
Irritation flaring, Yona rounded on him and shouted.
"Ugh, just GO already! I'm about to crap myself!"
Alec's face lit up with sudden understanding. Ah—
"If you'd rather not witness the revelation that even beauties defecate, then hurry along, Alec. I'd rather not have an audience."
"Right, off you go, Alec."
Watching James—somewhere along the line they'd started speaking casually to each other—and Kayak seize Alec under both arms and drag him away, Yona strolled toward the abandoned house, humming a light tune.
"I have a pretty good idea who you are, little one. So why exactly were you spying on this oppa from the shadows, hmm?"
The doorway had long since rotted away without a trace. Stepping over where it used to be, Yona scanned the interior.
She didn't have to look far. Behind the one wall still standing, in the corner where it met the house, the little girl sat hugging her knees tight, staring at Yona with wide, unblinking eyes.
No—not really staring.
Fresh tears streamed down and glinted in the moonlight, and though her face was still smeared with sweat, only the paths the tears had carved stayed clean.
Hiccuping between sobs, the girl kept her eyes on Yona.
"…Why are you looking at me like that?"
"S-sorry…"
Her voice was so small that even in the dead of night, you'd have to strain to hear it.
"No, it's not about being sorry… no, wait, that's not…"
Yona didn't dislike children. She just had no idea how to comfort one in a situation like this.
Scratching at her head, she crouched down in front of the girl.
"Come here, little one."
And yet, for all that, Yona edged closer herself and reached out, wiping the tears from the girl's cheek with her thumb.
Washed up, she'd probably be kind of cute…
There really was that feel to her.
Clean her up, get her into proper clothes, and she'd be…
Wait—what was going on with her clothes, anyway?
Even after the chaos of today, did she really have to wear clothes pieced together like this?
No—before that, if this was what she wore normally, wasn't she just desperately, utterly poor?
"Your parents—did they pass away today?"
The girl shook her head.
"It was just me… and my sister. We lived together."
"…And that sister died today?"
The girl nodded.
"…Is there any adult to look after you?"
The girl shook her head.
Ah.