by Funa
The maid had a wide, dangerous grin upon her face.
The noble maiden held her sword in her right hand, the thumb and pointer of her left hand opening and closing like a crab claw.
And the golden-haired swordswoman, who still appeared unsatisfied, swiveled her sword in wide circles in one hand.
“I surrender! I surrendeeeeeeerr!!” the leader shouted.
“Aw…” the four girls sighed.
“Wh-why do y’all sound so disappointeeeeeeeed?!?!”
***
“Now then, you’re saying that this is only the second time you’ve ever attacked anyone?”
“Y-yes’m! I swear it to the Goddess!”
There were no gods or goddesses in this world, really, but their influence remained strong in the minds of individuals who did not know this. Accordingly, most soldiers, hunters, bandits, and anyone else whose lives depended on the whims of fortune were—in direct contrast to their speech and manners—actually quite devout. At the very least, praying to the divine gave them peace of mind free of charge, so there wasn’t any harm in their believing—it wasn’t even as though they needed to donate to any church.
“What do you think?” asked Mavis.
“Hmm,” Reina thought. “All their previous victims have either been killed or sold off to places, so we have no way of confirming either way. But, I mean, a bandit’s a bandit, and they’ll be sent off to the mines all the same. So, why don’t we just say it was these guys?”
“Wait! Waaaaaaaaaait!!” the bandit leader frantically interrupted their exchange.
The punishment mentioned was not, in fact, “all the same.”
If a man had been a bandit his whole life, then he had likely committed the act around thirty times in his life before sentencing. As a result, he would probably be sentenced to hard labor, in the harshest environments possible, for the rest of his life. Of course, for better or for worse, that life would not be a very long one…
However, if he had committed the act only once before, and the victims were not killed but only sold off, still alive and able to be rescued—and if the man was able to provide tips on the illicit slave trade, then he would be assigned to jobs with far fewer hardships with a potential term of only thirty or forty years.
“It’s true! There’ve been so many bandit attacks lately that we figured if we just did it once or twice then it’d all be blamed on those guys! But you can’t pin everythin’ those guys did on our heads! I’m beggin’ ya!”
Mavis was bewildered at the man’s excuse. “I can’t help but wonder if the other guys were thinking the same thing…”
“No, but seriously! We’ve got an alibi! Most of the other attacks happened while we were on jobs or drinkin’ at the pub! Even if ya turn us in, it’s gonna be obvious there’s still plenty of other bandits out there. Plus, even after we’re captured, the attacks aren’t gonna stop, so folks are gonna figure it out real quick!”
“I-I see. I guess you’re right…”
She had no choice now but to accept his explanation. If they were to call the job finished here, and the attacks still continued afterward, they’d be in a bit of a pickle. Of course, they could truthfully say that they had captured some bandits, so the job would be counted as complete, but that was not a result that the members of the Crimson Vow themselves could be satisfied with.
“Let’s continue!” said Mile, to nods all around.
***
“I think this should just about do it,” Mile declared.
The other three shrank back slightly but nodded.
Before them were eight bandits buried up to their necks in the dirt. As usual, they had been bound entirely with fishing line and then buried into the ground, the dirt magically packed in around them. They were then gagged and blindfolded, and their ears were covered. Thankfully, Mile had at least had the forethought to leave them a bit of a gap around their chests so that they might be able to breathe.
Before covering their ears, Mile had firmly warned them that if they should scream too loudly, their throats would dry out, and they would perish of thirst before the girls returned to collect them. Plus, if they made too much noise, beasts or monsters might hear them and come prowling. Also, as she had placed a wooden sign behind them, labeling them as bandits, they might be killed by any travelers who came upon them… And so, she posited, it was best that they kept quiet and saved their breath until the Crimson Vow returned.
The men all nodded in agreement, their faces pale; as their mouths were already stopped up with the gags, they could not respond verbally.
Just in case, she had also cut down some leafy tree branches, which she placed over their heads, and put up a barrier. Their voices and smells would be isolated, but air could still come through. Granted, as soon as Mile left, the barrier would dissipate, but it at least offered her momentary peace of mind.
“Well then, shall we be going, Mistress?”
“Indeed, let us proceed!”
“…We’re still doing that?”
“You’re the one who said we should…”
And so the journey of the noble maiden and her servants continued.
***
“End of the road, girls!”
“Here we go!!!” the Crimson Vow chorused.
(As per usual, Mile’s line of thought was a complete non-sequitur, as she was suddenly reminded of an old commercial for a brand of chocolate.)
This time, four men had appeared in front of them. They looked back, but there were no men behind them.
“Another miss?” asked Reina.
“Looks like it…” said Mile.
Indeed, it did seem like another miss. For as much as they had seen, it was difficult to believe that four bandits alone could have been responsible for all of the attacks that had happened up until now. It was equally difficult to believe that a larger party would not have surrounded them from behind. In other words…
“All right there, ladies, give us all yer cash!” the bandits said, grinning.
Hm…?
The Crimson Vow found this peculiar. Normally, the standard procedure here would be to capture the girls and drag them back to their base and then rob them of all their possessions at the bandits’ leisure. There was no way they would let a group of pretty young girls, who would fetch a good price, slip out from under their noses, and if they intended to carry them off, then there was no reason to do something as futile as robbing them where they stood. Though bandits were not the brightest of the bunch, the men now before them appeared to be pros, so they had to know at least that much.
Plus, all they were doing now was standing before the girls. They were not approaching, and they had left a wide gap. There was clearly something fishy going on here.
“C’mon now,” said one of the men, “Give it up and do as you’re told.”
However, he made no moves to do anything about it. It was almost as though…
“Are they stalling?” Mile asked quietly.
“I swear,” said Reina, “Why is it the wheels in your head only get turning at times like this?”
“That’s Mile for you,” said Mavis.
“It’d be nice if you could break that out all the time,” Pauline agreed.
Apparently, the three of them had all come to the same conclusion as Mile had.
The standoff had dragged on for around ten more seconds, when suddenly, there was a strange voice from behind.
“Hold it! Hold it right there, you bandits!!!”
The Crimson Vow turned to look, and saw four more men approaching quickly from behind them. These men appeared to be hunters.
“Looks like we’ve got trouble,” said Reina. “If we let them steal our prey, it’s gonna make things more complicated. Mile, Mavis, handle this!”
“On it!” the two acknowledged.
They rushed forward, striking down the bandits in an instant. Naturally, they struck the men with the flats of their blades, just as they had with the bandits before. If
they killed them, they wouldn’t be able to sell them off for a reward—and besides, it caused all other sorts of issues… Er, well, they did it because it was the humane thing to do. Probably.
“Fiendish bandits! We, the Soaring Twin Dragons, shall… Uh?”
When the hunters finally made it to the scene, they found four girls standing nonchalantly before them and four bandits writhing on the ground.
“How…?”
It should have been obvious what happened, but if no one said anything, it seemed as though the frozen hunters might never move again. So Reina offered an explanation to the stunned men.
“I get the impression that you gentlemen were trying to save us. For that, you have my thanks. However, this sort of thing is barely notable for us. We’ll be fine so, please, feel free to carry on your way.”
The four men were stunned silent, troubled looks upon their faces.
“N-no, we couldn’t possibly do that! They might try to launch a counterstrike! We will escort the bandits from here!”
“Are you trying to steal our quarry?!” shouted Pauline. “Or are you going to try and extort an escort fee out of us? You’ve just seen that we’re more than capable of handling these men, so we have no need for your assistance! We will transport these men, and we will turn them over to the Guild!”
She could not forgive anyone who would try to muscle in on their hard-earned profits. There was no one who could bend the aspiring merchant’s iron will when it came to such matters.
“Ngh… W-well in that case, to eliminate the danger, we should kill the bandits where they stand! C’mon!”
At the instructions of the man who appeared to be the leader, all four of the hunters drew their swords, walking toward the bandits. They then thrust the points of their swords down violently at the men, who were still prone on the ground.
Ka-clang! Clang, clang!
“Huh…?”
The four men were speechless. Though no normal hunter could have been expected to make it in time, two of the girls had deflected the men’s swords, leaving them to look on, once again awestruck.
“What in the blazes do you think you’re doing laying a hand on our quarry like that?!” Pauline raged. “If you kill them, their price will go down!”
“………”
With Pauline already having done the shouting, the other three had nothing to add, though they were thinking to themselves how peculiar it was that these hunters would be so hasty in trying to muscle in on someone else’s prey.
That’s suspicious…
Indeed, it was highly suspicious.
These hunters were malicious thugs if they would interfere with another hunter’s quarry unprompted. If the Guild caught onto such a thing, it could be ruinous for your reputation—you could lose your qualifications as a hunter, or, should worst come to worst, be sentenced to several years’ hard labor on top of that. Normally, the only sort of people who were driven to such acts were old men at the end of their wits, not young twenty-somethings like this party who still had long lives ahead of them. This was on top of the suspicious behavior of the bandits just before…
Reina turned her back to the men and gave a quick glance to the others, moving only her eyes. It was one of the signals that the group had previously established. It meant, They might be enemies. Be on your guard.
Seeing this, the other three moved their eyes quickly downward as surreptitiously as Reina had. Roger that, said their silent reply. It was subtle enough to avoid setting off alarm bells in an enemy’s mind.
“What’re you all looking at? Hurry up and move along,” said Reina, but the men showed no signs of moving, and Mile and Mavis remained in place between the hunters and the fallen bandits. It was a natural stance to take as the men still had their drawn swords in hand.
When the men realized that the two girls’ eyes were still upon their blades, they hesitated briefly. Then one of them put his sword away, and following his lead, the other three sheathed their weapons as well.
Seriously, why were they hesitating?! the four girls thought.
The bandits were all defeated and unconscious, so there was no need for these hunters to keep up their guard, weapons brandished. They could always draw their swords again if there was any sign of the enemies regaining consciousness. There was no way that anyone would be able to launch an immediate attack from a prone position on the ground. And yet, there they had stood, swords still in hand.
It seems like they were trying to decide whether to attack us…
Reina’s train of thought was indeed not unfounded. However, though it seemed that whatever they had initially intended to do had not panned out, the men did not seem prepared to continue to force the matter. Of course, doing so would reveal them as bandits rather than the hunters they had presented themselves as since arriving on the scene.
“A-anyway, we’ll go ahead and transport those bandits. It’s still quite a ways to Caldile, and for four greenhorns like you to have to transport bandits that far alone would be…”
“Oh? Still on about that, are you? Awfully rude of you… The ‘Soaring Twin Dragons,’ was it? If you’re going to continue to threaten to interfere with our hunt, we’ll be reporting your attempted poaching to the Guild!”
“Er…”
That would be rather inconvenient for the men. It would be one thing if they had participated in the battle, but for them to show up after the fact and try to meddle… If they were hunters, they would face punishment for the crime of poaching prey, but civilians would be treated as plain old bandits.
“Plus, why in the world would you take those men all the way to Caldile? As you implied, it’s still some days away. There’s nothing but tiny villages in between here and there, with nowhere to turn them in. Wouldn’t it make more sense to take them back to Zarbef, which is only a day’s travel from here?”
“Er…”
For the last minute or so, the men had only been able to stammer wordlessly. Surely, they were thinking that, on a journey that took days, with several nights of camping, there were plenty of chances for them to claim, “They slipped away when we weren’t looking.” Of course, there was no way that the Crimson Vow would have agreed to traveling along with them in the first place—not as companions, anyway.
As captive prey, however, that was another matter…
While Reina was speaking with the men, Mile had busied herself binding the bandits. As always, in her practiced style, she used her thin and sturdy fishing line. Mavis was holding herself in a battle-ready stance, her blade ready to be drawn at any moment, and Pauline held a spell ready to fire, both prepared for an enemy strike at any moment—the enemies being not the bandits but the suspicious hunters, of course.
Mile then withdrew some smelling salts from her inventory, pretending to produce them from a pocket, and held them under the bandit leader’s nose to rouse him. She had prepared an ammonia-like medicine, in case of just such an occasion.
“Uh… Ugh…”
The leader awoke, groaning.
“Wh-where am I…?”
“You’re on the highway, where we just captured you and the rest of your bandit group. We’re very grateful to you lot—you’re going to make us a lot of money and then work in service of the country doing hard labor for the rest of your life.”
“Wha…?” The man slowly processed Mile’s words, seemingly still in a daze. “Wait! Wait just a minute! We ain’t bandits! We were just asked to…”
Suddenly, the man noticed the four hunters and shut his mouth.
“What sore losers you all are. You can’t try and tell me that after you were clearly performing bandit-like acts. You’re just lucky we didn’t go ahead and kill you right off the bat, like these hunters over here urged us to do.”
The hunters, to whom Mile gestured, suddenly began to go pale. And so, of course, did the bandit leader.
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-what did you say?!” he screamed in disbelief. “Y-you backstabbers!”
Jus
t as planned. Mile spoke again, to be doubly sure.
“Just before, while you were unconscious, those men tried to stab you right through, but luckily we stopped them! My, that sure was risky! We stopped them, like, just in the nick of time—for real!”
“Y-you bastards…”
The hunters unconsciously retreated a few steps as the leader glared daggers at them.
“Well, it seems there’s been some kind of setup here,” said Mile. “As it stands, I guess you’ll all be facing a nice long life in the mines. Still, is there anything you’d like to say in your defense? We’ll listen.”
Faced with the prospect of a life of hard labor, the leader’s lips suddenly loosened.
“We aren’t bandits! We’re just humble woodcutters! Those men there hired us on. They told us, ‘There’s a group of defenseless and stupid young girls trying to leave town without hiring an escort, so we need you to intimidate them into hiring someone. It’s an act of mercy.’ It seemed like all they really wanted to do was promote themselves for the job, but we figured that, being that there really have been bandits around, it was in your ladies’ best interest. Plus, we were gettin’ paid for it, so it should’ve been a win for everyone involved… They told us that the only one in yer group with any kind of battle sense was an apprentice knight—they never said anything about y’all having the skill to defeat us all in the blink of an eye!”
The hunters fell silent as he stared them down.
“Is all that true?” asked Mile. “If it is, and there’s really no evidence that you were attempting to act as bandits—and furthermore, that you were merely trying to do a job out of goodwill, with no ill intent—then this will probably just end with these men here getting a good scolding from the authorities… Assuming we don’t press charges, that is. However, if you’re lying to me, you’ll end up in the mines for the rest of your life. So, give it to me straight: is all that true, every word?”