IBTRFL Chapter 32

A Drink

Madness. Sheer madness.

But there wasn't a hint of hesitation in the exhausted face just visible beneath her hood.

Pale, drained, the bandits stumbled back, sweat oozing cold and steady from their skin. It wasn't long before the wall of ice, breathing out its chill, stopped them cold.

"Let's finish this quickly."

Voice flat, Aer murmured and walked up, steady, step after step. On the sword's edge, blood not yet gone cold still gleamed, ugly.

"W-w-wait, please!"

"W-we were only doing what the boss told us to!"

"I-if you let us go, we'll live honest, we won't even think about thieving again!"

Aer's face twisted, crooked.

How did they manage to sound so rehearsed, like they'd all agreed on the lines in advance.

Three mugs, all of them, begging for their lives—reflected in eyes gone purple with contempt.

Perfectly ordinary faces. Ordinary. Like the countless faces that slip past you, every day, and you never think twice—

But a mercenary who'd been through the grinder knew, all too well, exactly how cruel these ordinary faces could turn out to be.

Letting them go now would be nothing but turning wolves loose among the sheep.

Aer raised her sword without a word. One of the bandits let out a plea that came out closer to a shriek.

"I-I was an ordinary trader too! I got caught by bandits and somehow ended up here! O-of course, that doesn't change that I'm a rotten piece of work, but p-please, just this once, give me a chance!"

"……."

Aer let out a sigh and let her shoulders drop. The bandits were just starting to breathe easier when it happened.

The sword, still dragging on the ground, flashed like lightning and cut behind the knee.

"Huh?"

Before the first man could even scream, the other two had already joined him in the same fate.

Clutching legs where red blood welled up, the three bandits looked up at the one standing before them. Tears pooling at the corners of their eyes mixed with the sweat already beading there and ran down together.

Aer flicked the blood off her sword and spoke.

"You think this is the first time I've seen men like you? And everything filthy you've done up till now?"

The bandits dropped their heads. Aer pointed her sword tip toward the trees.

"Last mercy. Get out of my sight."

Shoulders heaving, the bandits scrambled to push themselves up. But against their desperate will, their legs wouldn't obey.

Gasping for breath, they reached out with their arms and crawled along the ground instead. Not once looking back, in case she changed her mind and dragged them back.

The three vanished into the underbrush.

If they were lucky, they'd survive. If not, they'd end up as monster feed or ghosts haunting the woods. Either way. None of it mattered.

Aer sheathed her sword and walked over to the sprawled body.

"Nothing worth taking… just the sword and the dagger."

She picked up the dagger hanging at the corpse's belt.

Old as it clearly was, the leather still held its distinctive deep sheen. Someone had put real care into maintaining it.

Her gaze, sweeping over it, snagged on one spot. Near the base of the hilt, a crest had been engraved.

Worn faint with the years, but unmistakably the shape of a sun.

Aer drew the dagger without a word. Along the carefully maintained blade sat a line of text she hadn't noticed before.

I shall return to the sun.

Aer checked the sword lying on the ground. Unlike the dagger, no special crest or inscription marked it.

Her dry gaze settled on the corpse, growing cold.

A knight, stripped of honor and cast out. And the one symbol of honor that knight had kept to the very end.

Regret for something he'd let go of with his own hand, or longing for a bright, glorious past?

Perhaps both, in the end.

"……Fat lot of good that did you. Shit all over your order's name and this is what you kept."

Aer looked away and stepped into the cave.

Torches, hung at even intervals, lit the dark interior. Between them sat small rooms that had clearly been built on purpose.

A room stuffed with soft hay, a room piled high with clothes, a room stocked neatly with food.

Aer's brow furrowed.

"……only four men used all this?"

Judging by the signs of living and the sheer scale of it, this place would have held a good twenty people, easily.

But she'd only found four here. The bandit knight and his three underlings.

The bandits' words came back to her without warning.

'What, you? The boss said not to go wandering around, it's dangerous.'

'Hey, calm down already, would you! The boss told us not to go out until that one's gone!'

Aer pressed a hand against her cheek.

The priest's warning, the cowed monsters, the vanished bandits. Different pieces, each on its own, tangling together into one ominous signal.

"Should I catch them again?"

Those men—they'd know something about the monster. Aer was about to bolt back outside when it happened.

"…Any... one there. P-please—help."

A young voice, half-dead, drifted faintly through the air.

The sound had come from the deepest part of the cave. Aer turned on her heel and ran that way.

At the cave's end sat two rooms. Unlike the room near the entrance, a solid-looking wooden door blocked the way in.

Even an iron lock had been fitted to it—this had to be a fairly important space.

One well-practiced kick, and the door shattered. She kicked the debris out of the way, the motion smooth as flowing water.

Aer knocked the dust off her pants and stepped inside.

"Who……, who's there?"

Damp, stifling darkness. Beneath it, huddled small, was a boy whose voice hadn't even broken yet.

How long had he been shut up in here. His limbs, thin as twigs, and his filthy clothes made it impossible to guess.

"Wh-who……"

"Just a mercenary passing through. The bandits are taken care of."

Aer took her dagger and cut through the rope binding the boy's hands and feet.

"Ah, ah."

A sob, half-relief, tore out through cracked lips. A wet stain spread across the cloth covering the boy's eyes.

"Th-thank—you."

"Don't talk. Drink this."

Lukewarm liquid flowed into his mouth. The boy swallowed it on reflex.

Aer trickled the water in a little at a time. By the time the full waterskin had run dry, some color had come back into the boy's face.

"Th-thank you so much. Could you—could you take the blindfold off, too?"

"……How many days were you shut in here?"

The boy stammered his answer.

"I—I don't know. They gave me water or food a few times, but I don't really remember."

"Then keep it on for now. Your eyes could go blind if they get too much light too fast."

"O-okay, I'll do that."

Frightened, the boy nodded without argument. Aer sat down beside him and asked.

"How'd you get caught?"

"I—I was looking for food, because I was hungry……."

"Food?"

"Yeah. I snuck out and got caught."

"Where's the village?"

The answer stopped short. Aer studied the boy's face carefully.

Stiff facial muscles, lips drained of color. She couldn't see his eyes, but he was plainly, obviously tense.

"That……, I—I don't know."

An answer that made no sense. The boy fidgeted, checking her reaction, then dropped his head.

"Really?"

"Y-yeah."

There was exactly one village anywhere near here. And though the boy had no way of knowing it, Aer had just come from it herself.

The quiet little rural village wasn't exactly wealthy, but you couldn't call it poor either.

Rye bread and warm soup sat at the table in plenty, and thanks to that, the village children's cheeks had stayed round and full.

With the church's help on top of it, there wasn't a soul as gaunt as this boy anywhere in the place.

More than that, in all the time she'd stayed there, she'd never once heard word of a missing child.

If a kid went missing from a town that small, the whole place would've turned upside down five times over by now.

"No, I mean, uh, the grown-ups just—they didn't tell me……."

The boy caught his slip too late and tried to smooth it over, but she could piece together the clues he'd already spilled without much trouble.

There was a village near here that nobody knew about. A village where people who'd committed some crime and run had gathered—or a village of heretics the church had marked as enemies.

She'd traveled all over the world doing mercenary work, and she'd never once seen a case that fell outside those two reasons. Nor had she ever seen one of those cut-off places that wasn't, as a rule, short on everything.

Aer spoke, casual.

"I see. So where's this hidden village, then?"

"……How did you—!"

The boy's lips trembled, and he shrank back. The cloth over his eyes, which had started to dry a little, went damp all over again.

"N-no, I can't. Mom said, absolutely never tell. Mom……."

Catching the mumbled words, Aer added.

"You don't have to worry. I'm not planning to turn the people there in to anyone. Too much trouble, for one thing."

The boy's body went rigid. Somehow she felt like she'd turned into the bad grown-up in the story.

"There's nothing else behind it. I've stopped by other runaway villages a few times before, too. Really, all I'm trying to do is get you home."

"R-really?"

"Yeah."

An unwavering voice. The boy fell into thought at that.

She'd fought off the bandits and rescued him. He hadn't even seen her face, but going by everything she'd done for him so far, she at least didn't sound like the bad people his mother had warned him about.

……Maybe it'd be all right? He missed his mom, too. The boy nodded, slow.

Aer stood and asked.

"Good. What's your name?"

"Fons."

"I'm Rana. Hang tight a second."

"Wh-where are you going?"

"Nowhere. Just going to grab a few things."

Everything in this place. All of it.