One Small Stage, Well Played
Not a soul opened their mouth until they had picked a restaurant and taken their seats. The only conversation that passed was the pointless back-and-forth between Arendt and Arthur.
"Young master, I deeply apologize for having to receive you in such a shabby establishment."
"I told you it doesn't matter. We all set out on this trip knowing full well what to expect."
All of it, of course, performed in character — the devoted mercenary and the insufferable young lord.
The rest of the company, meanwhile, kept their mouths firmly shut and did nothing but stare holes into the floor.
Once they started noticing, the sheer number of gazes fixed on them was almost incomprehensible — how could they possibly have missed this from the very beginning? Those stray glances, needlessly snagged by his over-sensitive senses, had the knights badly flustered.
"What on earth? What's the problem?"
"Mercenaries have eyes too, you know. A good number of them have shown up wearing nothing but brand-new gear — of course they're sneaking looks."
Ryder, seizing a moment's gap and dropping his voice to a whisper, got his answer from Arthur in a flash.
"So what if they do?"
"To their eyes it looks like our employer kitted us out from weapons to armor, all freshly made. Which means they want to snatch the job for themselves. Landing a wealthy employer is every mercenary's dream."
Arthur, the only one among them well-versed in the ways of mercenary companies, laid it all out — making no effort whatsoever to hide the contemptuous note in his voice.
Yet even faced with such insolence, the knights couldn't manage a single rebuke. Arendt, for his part, muttered a jab pitched just loud enough for them alone.
"Judging by the look of you, you must have drunk some very fine water back at the palace. My, my... I do recall half our order being of common birth. Has life outside really faded from memory that quickly?"
"The last person I want to hear that from, you damned brat."
Glenn growled under his breath, but Arendt only swept him with a cold glance and twisted the knife a little further.
"If you're a mercenary, act like one. Insufferable."
"……."
Glenn's fist, planted on the table, began to tremble. The urge to land just one punch was overwhelming — but there were far too many eyes watching.
Receiving Richt's pitying gaze on all sides, Glenn tipped back his innocent glass of water and gulped it down in great swallows.
The food they'd ordered arrived shortly after.
At the sight of it, the knights could only be flustered yet again.
Plates visibly heavy at a glance, piled with mountains of meat, and before each person stood an ale mug the size of a small child's torso. The server who'd carried it all out turned on his heel and left without a word of greeting, abandoning them with nothing but a daunting quantity of rough, rustic meat and mugs frothing over with fizz.
Ryder murmured faintly, as if from far away.
"What is this... what did we even order?"
"Ordering anything fancy in a place like this would just seem unnatural. I told them to bring out whatever, enough for the head count. Probably boar."
It was Arthur's answer — the sort of world-weary savvy one would expect from a man who'd basked in Laios's trust while handling every dirty job imaginable.
A quick glance around confirmed it: mercenaries chugging ale or tearing meat off the bone one-handed filled the tavern to bursting.
The party gave up and resigned themselves to their meals.
But there was no helping the prickle at the backs of their necks.
Richt, after prodding at his meat with a fork a few times, lowered his voice to a whisper.
"...The stares keep following us."
"Same ones who were watching from outside the restaurant, I'd say."
Glenn muttered back, uncomfortable.
Frankly, it would have been preferable to take killing intent from an unseen enemy — at least that, they could meet in battle stance.
But this — there was nothing to be done about it. Trying to keep their identities hidden under the eyes of a crowd left them feeling as though they couldn't even breathe.
And so...
Playing ignorant is the best policy.
Having reached that conclusion, the knights buried their faces in their meat and threw themselves wholeheartedly into eating.
Right up until one blasted bastard did something reckless.
CRASH!
Arendt abruptly dropped his fork onto the table as though throwing it down.
"No manners at all, and all they do is gawk. It's off-putting enough to ruin my meal."
"……."
The knights went soundlessly rigid, then whipped their heads around to stare at Arendt.
What in the hell is that lunatic doing right now?
At that very moment.
Scrape.
The mercenaries seated directly behind them shoved back their chairs and rose to their feet. As though they'd been waiting for this, a pack of hulking mercenaries swarmed over and ringed their table.
The one who looked to be their leader strode right up to Arendt and flashed a wide, toothy grin.
"Quite the foul mouth on you, young master."
We're done for.
With hearts sinking into despair, the knights each pressed a hand to their forehead.
A low buzz of commotion rose from around them.
"What's this, a fight?"
"Ah, for crying out loud, I'm eating here."
Grumbling in irritation, yet clearly finding the situation rather entertaining, onlookers began drifting over bit by bit to watch.
Arendt, seated at an insolent slant in his chair, met the mercenary captain's eyes.
"What. Never seen a young lord with a bad mouth before? Maybe you should be minding your men's roving eyes instead. What do you think you've been doing this whole time, hmm?"
The torrent of ugly words spilling from that pretty little mouth was enough to make anyone's head spin. The mercenary captain, taken aback in his own right, let out an awkward laugh.
"Never seen your faces before, so I was keeping an eye out. And from the look of you, you're all blank-faced nobodies. What do you say? Come over to our side. We're at loose ends anyway, nothing to do at the moment."
"Pretty confident of yourself, aren't you? So what have you got that's so special?"
"A young lord who clearly doesn't know the ways of the world, I see. My men are a far sight more useful than any rabble you scraped together. Look."
The man let out a snorting laugh and jerked his chin toward the rest of the party.
"Their precious employer is trading words with a total stranger, and not one of them has so much as twitched."
Only then did the knights realize their mistake. From the very moment those bastards had opened their mouths, they should have shot to their feet and at least made a show of shielding that blasted boy with their bodies.
Arendt shrugged his shoulders with a look of irritation.
"Tch, I was already regretting it. It seems I've hired a pack of good-for-nothings."
"See that?"
The mercenary captain bared his teeth in another fierce grin. His men, boxing in the table from all sides, burst into open, jeering snickers.
The laughter, swelling by the moment, spread through the whole tavern before anyone noticed.
"Bwahaha! No wonder they looked like country bumpkins!"
"Dressed up all fine and full of themselves, no doubt. Poor things."
Mockery rained down on the party from every side.
But the knights kept their mouths clamped shut and gave no answer at all. Arendt, for his part, didn't so much as blink as he began counting the men opposite him.
"Let's see... fifteen in all, is it? A decent crowd."
"Idiots, sure, but when it comes to a fight they're the real thing. Of course — it won't come cheap."
So saying, the mercenary captain let the scar across his face show itself, just subtly enough.
The corner of Arendt's mouth curled in a faint smirk.
"Then let me make you a proposal."
"A proposal?"
"As much as it pains me, there's the loyalty of a journey shared to consider. I can't very well cast these men aside at the drop of a hat. If I tore up the contract one-sidedly, who knows what sort of mischief they might do me later on?"
Arendt, perfectly immersed in his role as the young lord, jerked his chin toward his seniors — who remained nailed to their seats, stiff as statues.
"I noticed this inn has a back yard. How about we have a go at each other back there?"
A spark of intrigue lit the mercenary captain's eyes.
"A fight, you say?"
"You seem rather confident in your skills, so — a bit of diversion, nothing more. The winners get a fat purse from me, and the escort contract all the way to our destination. Well?"
"But my side has you outnumbered. Wouldn't that put you at a disadvantage?"
"What do I care? That's a matter for the men swinging the fists."
"Bwahahaha! This young lord's clearly been around the block a few times!"
A booming laugh erupted through the room.
After laughing himself hoarse for a good long while, the mercenary captain took a step back.
"I accept the proposal. Oi, you lot over there. If you're scared, you're welcome to run — so what'll it be?"
"……."
In answer, the knights rose slowly and silently from their seats. The mercenary captain nodded with evident satisfaction.
"More spine than you look to have, I'll give you that."
Richt, pressing a hand to his temple as though his head ached, shook it slowly from side to side, while Arthur — who had been discreetly watching how things fell — quietly sank back into his seat.
"Ooh, should we put a little money on it?"
"Well now, an unexpected spectacle has dropped into our laps."
Led by the mercenaries who'd picked the fight, a handful of the knights and a crowd of spectators streamed out of their seats, and in an instant the tavern stood empty.
Once the surroundings had quieted, Arendt tore off a piece of the meat that had cooled in the interval, popped it into his mouth, and chewed it slowly — the entire sequence of events apparently of no concern to him whatsoever.
Arthur and Richt exchanged a long, tangled look.
As good as settled, the outcome of this fight needed no waiting to be known.
They waited only a moment before — BOOM! — something slammed into the outer wall, or so it seemed, and the restaurant building shuddered with the impact.
Then, from outside, someone's anguished screams rang out, faint and far away. GYAAAAH! Spare me! I was wrong! KYAAAAH! Boss! Forgive me!
While Richt stared blankly at the ceiling and Arthur chewed his meat in silence, it took hardly any time at all for the commotion to die down.
BANG!
The closed door flew open again, and the knights in mercenary garb trooped back to their seats in good order.
They wiped the blood from their knuckles on the tablecloth with a few brisk swipes, and — just as the mercenaries before them had done — took up bones bare-handed and began tearing into their meat.
The spectators who'd gone out with them slipped quietly back inside and found their seats once more. Then they, too, said not a single word and applied themselves silently to their meals.
In the tavern's back yard, the mercenaries who'd been thoroughly worked over lay sprawled with the whites of their eyes showing, rolling about like snapped chunks of firewood.
Brawls between mercenary bands were an everyday affair in a village like this.
That the strong beat down the weak was simply the way of the world, so the whole incident amounted to nothing more than a bit of gossip within the village walls, soon forgotten.
Though for the nameless mercenary band who'd swaggered about on the strength of their modest reputation, only to get beaten senseless one-sidedly by a group less than half their number, it was surely nothing short of a natural disaster.
And it appeared they weren't the only ones who'd lost something.
The knights, back from their rampage, sank into complicated thoughts.
Half of it was the self-disgust of having been railroaded by Arendt into brawling over something so trivial; the other half, the bitter disappointment of discovering, in the middle of it all, their own slumbering, thuggish instincts.
Not that anyone could hope to untangle the seniors' troubled hearts entirely — but Arthur was a little worried all the same.
If they kept on like this, one by one, being dyed in Arendt's colors, would the day come when not a single seed of sanity remained in this knight order?
It seemed only a matter of time before a hole was punched clean through Commander Laios's stomach.
Chew, chew. Arendt, working through the tough meat, remarked indifferently.
"See? I told you it was nothing."
"You made your point, now shut your mouth and eat your damned food."
Glenn ground his teeth savagely.
Theory mattered, certainly — but nothing taught like live practice.
The improvised stage hastily thrown together out of consideration for the acting novices had been more than effective enough. Laios's request-that-was-not-a-command — please, no incidents — had gone unfulfilled, but well... that was nobody's business but theirs.
With a small smirk, Arendt popped another piece of meat into his mouth.