by Funa
Mavis was an aspiring knight. Wasn’t felling evil-doers her sacred duty?
Wasn’t Pauline more cynical than she’d shown?
Reina had killed people.
Yet her recollection of that time was hazy. Why couldn’t she remember?
She’d killed the foes who had murdered her friends. Shouldn’t that have been an exhilarating memory? Why couldn’t she recall it clearly?
Or…was it something she didn’t want to remember?
Did she regret killing those bandits?
That was stupid. She’d slain the Crimson Lightning’s enemies. How could she regret that?! But there was some truth to what Pauline had said.
“If you kill them, their pain is over in an instant.” Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d suffered, repenting their crimes as they labored in a mine until they perished of accident or illness…
Perhaps it was true that their deaths could have been deferred…
Regardless, there was no reason why they couldn’t each act as they pleased. Just as their opponents were free to choose whether they lived or died.
Reina looked toward her companions.
At Mavis, sword drawn, polishing her blade.
At Pauline, grinning strangely as she wrote something in her notebook.
And at Mile, fast asleep, drool running from her open mouth.
Looking at them, it suddenly seemed ridiculous for Reina to be sitting there and worrying. And yet…
No, stop that! These people are the reason I have to be strong! This time, I won’t let anyone die! No one!
Reina’s worries never ceased.
Twitch!
Mile was sleeping soundly when her body spasmed. That sort of thing was wont to happen now and then.
Her eyes flashed wide open. “The enemy’s here.”
“And just how do you know that?!”
Ignoring Reina’s shout, Mile climbed from the back of the cart onto the top of the tarp, and whistled through her fingers.
Piiiiiiiiiiii!!!
The six wagons stopped, and the leaders of Dragonbreath and the Flaming Wolves rushed over. The others remained in their wagons, watchful and ready.
“What’s wrong? Is it the enemy?”
“Yes! There’s about twenty of them up ahead.”
“How do you know that?!”
It seemed that the leader of the Flaming Wolves was still not accustomed to Mile.
“Around twenty, huh? Can you be any more precise?” Bart asked, ignoring him.
“Umm, there are nineteen. They’re in two lines of nine, with one in the front.”
“I’m asking you again: just how do you know that?!”
“What did you say?!”
“Are you ignoring me?!”
They were, in fact, ignoring him.
“Gather everyone. This is a Code Red!”
Once all the hunters were gathered, Bart explained.
“We’re in a pinch. According to Mile’s magic… it’s magic, right? According to her magic, there are nineteen bandits up ahead, lying in wait. They’re in lines of nine, nine, and one…”
“That’s about what we expected, isn’t it? We’d heard there could be more than twenty, so with less than that, it should be a cakewalk, right?”
Chuck, one of the swordsmen of the Flaming Wolves, was optimistic. Even if there had been twice as many bandits as hunters, it still wouldn’t be a huge problem, he thought.
Fargus, the Dragonbreath lancer, shook his head.
“It makes sense that there would be fewer than were reported at the time of the posting. You might overlook people who are there, or hallucinate people who aren’t. If you think you see about twenty people in the forest, it’s natural that there might be more, and just as likely that there are fewer. The fact that they are standing in line is bad.”
“What’s so bad about that?”
The Flaming Wolves failed to catch Fargus’s drift. The Crimson Vow had no idea what he meant, either.
“The reason that there are so few is probably because they’ve split into two parties to form a pincer attack. So, it’s possible that there are actually twice as many. And furthermore…” Bart said slowly, looking over everyone’s faces. “Bandits don’t stand in neat little lines. The only people who stand in nice lines while waiting for their prey are knights and soldiers. That is to say, armies.”
“…………”
Bart continued: “Most countries’ armies organize their fighters nine to a squad. Those eight soldiers are split into four groups of two, or two groups of four, with one more to direct them. Four of those squads together make up a platoon. The platoon will have a commanding officer, an aide, and two more lower-ranking officers. Forty in total, with each of those lower officers in charge of two of the squads. And so, the fact that there are nineteen people in lines means…”
Several people gulped at once.
“Indeed. Just a little farther ahead are twenty-one more, including the commander and their aide. I did think it rather strange that, in the absence of any war or famine, such a large group of bandits would remain in an area like this without either establishing a base or moving on. Without some means of resupply, they wouldn’t have been able to maintain their food stores.”
“It’s hopeless! We heard that there were twenty-ish bandits at best, so we thought that this amount of firepower would be enough! But twice as many, and soldiers, no less?! There’s no way we can win!” A cry of despair rose from the Flaming Wolves. To be fair, the reaction was only natural.
“What’s an army doing here in the first place?! Why would they suddenly decide to turn to banditry?! Are we sure they’re not simply here to wipe the bandits out?!” The Flaming Wolves continued to cry out.
Mile spoke softly. “A trading blockade?”
Bart looked surprised.
“Oh! Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to be a bit dim?”
“Who said that I was?!”
“Anyway,” Bart ignored Mile’s protests, instead looking over the uneasy faces before him. “For now, this is all just speculation. It’s not that I can’t think of any countries that might do such a thing—but there’s still a chance that these are just plain old bandits, and that this might be all of them.”
An air of relief washed over them.
“But,” he finished, “we had better prepare ourselves for the worst.”
“What’s the probability that this is a worst-case scenario?” asked Brett, leader of the Flaming Wolves.
Bart replied with a calm expression. “About eighty percent, perhaps?”
“…………”
He turned to consult with the merchants, who had yet to speak up.
“So what do you, our clients, feel is the best course of action?”
“Hmm well then… if they’re soldiers, with three times our fighting strength, there’s no way that we can win against them in an honest fight, is there? We don’t have much choice but to simply confirm their identity and numbers and retreat, do we? Then, we can report our information to the palace, and they can return with their own troops.
“However, these enemies might move on before our own army has a chance to mobilize. Plus, the fact that they’ve slaughtered every caravan they’ve encountered up until now means that they’re probably hoping to conceal their true identities. No matter how good their disguises are, leaving survivors means there’s a chance they could be discovered.
“If we turn back, the enemy will realize that we’ve spotted them, won’t they? They’ll get worried, wondering how much of their true identity we’ve uncovered, and they may pursue us. Even if we’d already disposed of the prisoners, they’d quickly catch up to our wagons. And there’s a chance that they’ve also prepared some cavalry for the chase. Rather than running, not knowing when or where we’ll be attacked, we have at least a slightly better chance if we choose the place to face them head-on.”
Bart gazed over the hunters and grinned.
“What? All each of you has to do is kill three or four apiece! That’s no big deal.”
“Are you saying they’ve got no choice in this?!”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
Bart and the merchants laughed together.
The other members of Dragonbreath shrugged, exasperated. For Bart, this was probably normal behavior. The Flaming Wolves had gone a bit green in the gills but kept their silence, perhaps as a matter of hunters’ pride. As for the Crimson Vow…
What is with these people???
They were stunned at the nerve of the other hunters. And also…
“They don’t seem very bandit-like, do they? I guess there wouldn’t be much use talking to them…?”
“No. Even if they’re soldiers, they’ve invaded another country and are looting without a formal declaration of war, which means that this can’t be a sanctioned operation. We should consider them like bandits, which means that there’s no problem with killing them. We’ll deal with them accordingly.”
“If we can capture their commander and press him for information, I bet we’ll fetch a nice big reward.”
“You guys…?”
Normally they would be able to travel a little farther. This time however, they decided to make camp for the night where they were. The highway wound into the mountains, a steep cliff face to their right and on their left a rocky plain with no trees or water. It was not a place where you’d normally choose to camp. Especially since a grassy field stood just beyond the mountain.
However, this place was convenient for their true purpose—not camping, but fighting.
On a rocky field, free of trees, you could use as much fire magic as you liked.
Fighting with a sharp cliff face behind them helped to avoid being ambushed.
Of course, any foe who came to investigate their prey might be suspicious of a merchant caravan setting up camp so early and in such a strange place, but there was nothing the hunters could do about that.
They didn’t expect to wait until morning, only a few hundred meters from the bandits. They knew that they would be attacked.
The wagons were parked close to the cliff wall in two lines of three, making the lines that the hunters had to defend as short as possible. The captured bandits were bound tightly—not just by their arms, but by their legs as well—and it was agreed that, if possible, they would be knocked unconscious before the battle. Should the battle turn against them, or the enemy draw too near, the merchants gave strict orders to kill their prisoners immediately. It would be a small task to kill seven people who were tied up and unconscious, the merchants argued—but then, these world-weary men had little reservations about killing bandits in the first place.
After securing the wagons and binding the bandits, the hunters prepared for an all-out counterattack.
They didn’t eat. Any idiot who stuffed his face right before a melee battle would not live very long.
All there was left to do was wait for their enemies to move.
Around an hour passed.
“They’re here.”
The archer Vera, with her keen eyesight, was the first to spot the first enemy.
Because they’d prepared their camp so early, there was still time until sunset, and the sky was bright. No doubt the bandits had judged it would be more advantageous to strike while it was light, surrounding their enemies with overwhelming force. When it got dark, there was too great a chance of people slipping away unnoticed.
There was no need for the attackers to divide their forces, for the cliff wall behind the merchants blocked any possibility of retreat. Therefore it was about forty enemies who surrounded the caravan in a semi-circle—likely the entirety of their force. Just as Bart had predicted.
“We are bandits! Forfeit your weapons and capitulate!”
The man who seemed to be the leader gave a rather abrupt introduction, “We are bandits.” Furthermore, he did not command them to “surrender,” but rather to “capitulate.”
“Since it looks like we’ve got a fight either way, it doesn’t matter what we say, right?” Bart asked. “I want to try to get some information out of them. All right if I lob a few comments their way?”
The merchants nodded. The Flaming Wolves and Crimson Vow, who had no idea what was going on, bobbed their heads in unison.
“Well, if that ain’t the voice of the commander! Just what are y’all doing all the way out here?”
“Uh…”
Bart’s bluff hit the bull’s eye, and the commander began to stammer.
“It’s me! From the shop in the capital!”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about! W-we are mere bandits! Quit speaking nonsense. Forfeit your weapons and capitulate, immediately!”
“What d’you think?” Bart asked the others.
“Ha ha!” Mile gave a wry laugh in reply.
“Well, I didn’t get a straight response, but I think that about settles it. If we surrender, they’ll certainly kill us all. Are you all ready?”
Everyone nodded silently.
“All right. Noncombatants, retreat to the second wagon, as planned. Guards, take your positions!”
Everyone took their places as per Bart’s instructions, the merchants slipping into the second wagon, which they had already unloaded the goods from. Now they were in the very middle of wagons parked tight against the cliffs. Any arrows or magic to come flying their way would be blocked by the other two wagons first.
Mile accompanied them as they’d decided earlier, casting magic over the prisoners, bound like silkworms in the wagon.
“Beings of ether, steal consciousness away! Until dawn breaks, cover the noses and mouths of these bandits!”
It was appropriate—a sort of magic spell, if a somewhat silly one. Anyway, the nanomachines caught Mile’s meaning, and the bandits lost consciousness. This eliminated even the distant chance of them launching a counterattack. Should the time come, it would be up to the merchants to “handle” them. At the very least, Mile had absolutely no intention of doing such a thing herself.
“All right. Now, please just wait here!” Mile smiled at the merchants, before climbing down from the cart.
Before she left the wagon behind, she whispered a few more words: “Lattice power barrier with transparency!”
There was a small shing, and for just a moment, the air seemed to sparkle with reflected light.
Mile returned to where the others were waiting just as the enemy began to advance, moving in orderly formation.
Although at first they had been at least a bit bandit-like, their movements and their weaponry were uncomfortably stiff. Everything was far too efficient, far too uniform. Some of them even wore metal armor underneath their rags.
As they got within firing range, Jeanie fired off a spell in accordance with Bart’s instructions. It was not unusual for a force with inferior numbers to make a pre-emptive strike in an attempt to reduce enemy numbers, rather than waiting until they were close enough to strike with more power and accuracy. This time, Bart hoped to test the waters.
“Firebomb!”
The flames that Jeanie fired toward the enemy’s front line dissipated before they could strike.
“Well, of course a force that seems to include special ops fighters would have one or two magic users in their squads…”
In war, a standard fighting force would not include mages. Instead, magic would be concentrated into a separate, special force. Their effectiveness was far higher this way. However, a special ops squad—one that would move independently on the battlefield—had no such limitations.
It seemed that Bart had quite a detailed knowledge of armies, though it was unclear whether this was thanks to his many years as a hunter or because he had once served as a soldier himself.
“They’ve got some pretty skilled guys in there. We have four magic users on our side, but the question is, how many do they have?”
As Bart spoke, Reina began to incant a combat spell.
“Firebomb!”
Another flame bomb went flying.
“They’re just going to block that ag—” Jeanie started.
Reina’s firebomb was consumed by the enemy’s protection magic, shattering into embers. But a single foe fell.
The soldier who had taken the direct hit was blown backwards and the men to his left and right, who’d also been caught in the blast, rolled on the ground trying to extinguish the flames. The first soldier was now incapacitated—alive only by the grace of the squad’s protection magic, (which had deflected some of the power) as well as the metal armor he was wearing underneath his cheap bandit clothing.
“Huh…?”
“What?” asked Reina, as she turned around to see Jeanie staring speechlessly.
Reina had not gotten a chance to show off her combat magic at the graduation exam. The match was called before she had the opportunity. And so Jeanie was stunned. Judging by her appearance, she’d assumed that Reina was around twelve years old, the same age as Mile. Now, she discovered that Reina not only had the stalwart protection magic that she had shown at the exam, but also combat magic with a power that surpassed even Jeanie’s. She’d been certain that Reina was a support-focused magic user, with protection magic as her specialty.
“Boiling Water Ball!”
Pauline fired off the spell that she’d begun casting just after Reina. Two softball-sized globes of water whooshed through the air at a leisurely pace, looking somewhat less than menacing.
Having judged that it was not worth using their magic to intercept these jiggling water balls, the enemies stood back and watched Pauline’s spell approach, stepping back to avoid it. But the moment the spell reached them, the balls suddenly changed course, striking the soldiers on the backs of their necks as they moved away.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!”
Scalding water, well past its boiling point, spread across the soldiers’ bodies, seeping beneath their armor and clothing.
As it squeezed and compressed, the water had grown hotter and hotter due to diffusion. The moment the water moved through its pressurized loop into a space with lower air pressure, the results were explosive.
No matter how much they flailed and rolled, the boiling water blistered their skin—even their clothing wouldn’t absorb it. As the seconds passed, their burns grew deeper and more severe. Others, who’d taken the water balls—no, boiling water balls—to the face, were screaming.