Night fell. We moved the goblins’ corpses to one side and settled down to sleep inside the cave.
“I’ll take the first watch, so everyone rest.”
“Yes!”
The battle had not been particularly close or fierce, but the others’ stamina was half spent. I thought it would be better to let them rest for several hours before setting a watch.
After a simple meal, I went to the cave entrance. I built a fire, set my sword beside me, and dropped down to sit.
I heard footsteps. Melinda approached my side.
“I am sorry about the ingots. I swear that we did not hide them in secret, nor are we lying that we found them but could not find them.”
“No…….”
She opened the lid of a pocket in her armor. The smell of alcohol rushed out.
“Want a drink? It’s beer. I made it myself.”
“Who drinks while they are on watch?”
“Goodness…… you’re strict.”
“If you were one of my subordinates, ma’am, I would wake every one of them right now and give you a sound spanking. I can understand someone dozing off on watch, but I cannot forgive someone who drinks.”
No matter how powerful a mercenary company was, it could do nothing if it was ambushed while asleep.
If a mercenary made a major mistake in battle or ran away, that mercenary alone would die or be injured, and it would end there. But if someone drank on watch and collapsed, the entire mercenary company would fall apart.
“All right, all right…… Then I’ll drink by myself. Could you at least listen to me talk?”
“That is not difficult. I was bored anyway.”
Melinda sat beside me and poured the strong alcohol down her throat in great gulps.
“Aah…… Ah. Young mercenary, I’m sorry. I talked such a big game, then ran away without even properly fighting…… You hated me for it, didn’t you?”
“May I be honest?”
Melinda’s expression stiffened for a moment. She bit her lip tightly, then nodded weakly.
“Go ahead.”
“I did not think much of it.”
“What?”
“You did not meet the level I expected, but you fought bravely and well at first. You benefited the company; you did not harm it.”
There was no need to lie to her.
If she wanted comfort, she could go home and receive it from her daughter. If she wanted reprimanding, she could return to the dwarf village and receive it from one of the elders.
I felt no need to comfort Melinda or teach her anything. It had nothing to do with me.
“You…… did not hate me?”
“I was a little startled. But why would I need to hate you? I was paid well.”
“I see…….”
A tear slipped from Melinda’s eye.
“I, too, once…… used to be an adventurer.”
“I see.”
I had expected it. Melinda was a complete dwarf warrior.
If I had made a dwarf who was not a warrior fight, such as a miner or blacksmith, they would have fought far more awkwardly than she had.
“I was born without a beard, you see? My hometown was no different from hell for me…….”
“I understand.”
I nodded calmly. Melinda looked at me as though I were absurd.
“How could you know that?”
“I understand it in my head. What sort of life a beardless dwarf lives.”
To dwarves, a beard was honor. It was a right.
I had jokingly told Iris, ‘It is like a human’s hair,’ but in truth it carried a meaning beyond that.
‘When a dwarf who committed a shameful act is caught, their beard is cut off so everyone will know what they did.’
Until their beard grew back, that dwarf served society while receiving others’ contempt, ridicule, and wariness.
‘At least if it was real baldness, some people would pity them…….’
A beardless dwarf was no different from a human on Earth covered head to toe in tattoos and wearing an electronic ankle monitor. They were a dwarf people could not help but mistrust and would not want to approach.
Of course, Melinda had not actually committed a crime, so some dwarves might understand if she explained her circumstances well.
But to do that, Melinda would have had to prove dozens, perhaps hundreds of times that she was harmless. It would not have been easy.
“After I came out…… it was fun. I made friends and went on adventures, and at least other humans treated me like a child instead of trash with a shaved beard.”
“I suppose so.”
To humans, a dwarf’s beard was somewhat burdensome. Humans who knew much about dwarven circumstances were also rare.
When seeing a dwarf with a shaved beard, it was not strange for them to think only, ‘That is a little unusual,’ and leave it at that.
“It was good for a while…… Then our captain went into some village and fell head over heels for the village chief’s daughter…….”
“…….”
“He said we should fight orcs for the village. It seemed a little excessive, but I thought we could do it. We were full of confidence then…… We won every fight. No one was hurt.”
“That is a sad story.”
Defeat was not what made a mercenary company dangerous. It merely made the company weaker.
Repeated victories. Miraculous luck. Situations that proceeded perfectly, exactly as planned.
‘That is even more dangerous…….’
Battle was a mass of variables. If a mercenary company possessed a strength of 10, the strength it could actually produce in battle was around 7~13.
But if a mercenary company became lucky enough to keep rolling 13, it could no longer view its own level objectively. Neither the captain nor the members.
‘We easily solved an assignment worth 11 last time, so could we not do an assignment worth 13 this time if we try a little harder?’
And then, when the dice betrayed them. When they could barely exert a strength of 7 on the battlefield.
It was annihilation. The collapse of the mercenary company.
“The orcs came pouring in. We tried to fight, but something went wrong and the magic got tangled, and they kept running forward even after being hit by arrows…… The bastards came charging in from every direction…….”
Perhaps she did not even want to think about that moment. Melinda squeezed her eyes shut.
“Still, I tried to fight, but after I cut down one orc, another orc struck my head with a crash. I somehow came to my senses and tried to fight again, but…….”
I listened to her story in silence.
“A companion died beside me…… A friend who had drunk beer with me only a little while before…… A friend a human nobleman had praised as talented…… Their body was split in two…….”
It was sad. It was also something that could happen all too easily.
“The two people who held the front line with me died one after another, so I was surrounded. I tried to fight somehow, but an axe struck my shoulder. I fell. I broke down. Still, still, I think I could have stood back up…….”
Tears streamed down Melinda’s cheeks.
“I was scared. I could not stand up at all, because I thought I would be hit again if I stood. I thought I would really die if I was hit this time, so I, I……!”
This was her trauma. The past that had made her unable to remain sane before a green tide.
“When three people went down one after another, the people in the rear were driven back too, and we lost the fight. My companions. They all died…….”
She kept drinking beer without pause.
“I, I…… survived by playing dead…….”
It was not strange.
Dwarven armor was too small. An orc might wear human armor, but it would not try to wear dwarven armor.
“My companions were captured alive and being eaten by the orcs, but I was too scared even to stand up…….”
“…….”
“Then, when I opened my eyes. I met the eyes of a companion who was being eaten alive—”
I clasped Melinda’s small hand tightly.
“It must have been hard.”
“They died because of me. Because of me, because of me……”
Melinda crawled slowly toward me. I embraced her gently.
A little time passed. Once she had calmed down somewhat, she looked up at me with wet eyes.
“Disgusting, right? A bitch who did something like that brought mercenaries just to wash away a little disgrace, and still ran away…….”
“Would you like me to be honest?”
“……Yes.”
“From what I have heard, the captain of that adventurer party was simply foolish.”
Melinda shook her head.
“That cannot be…….”
“It is reckless to wage a frontal battle against a group of orcs with ten people. It is also reckless for an organization of ten to have only three people capable of holding the front line.”
I considered who the seven rear-line members might have been.
‘An archer, a mage, a rogue, a bard, a gunner, a priest, and a commander, perhaps?’
Each was necessary when considered individually, but the balance of the mercenary company itself could not be said to be very good.
To respond to sudden situations, at least half of a mercenary company had to be able to fight in the first line when necessary.
“If not, they should at least have positioned themselves properly. The archer should have first brought down the dangerous…… hammer-wielding orcs, or the mage should have cast some sort of curse. They should have done something.”
It was foolish to expect more than that from a dwarf warrior. Even if Melinda had risen without hesitation, the situation would not have changed.
Dwarves were small. Their target area was small and their stopping power was low. The number of orcs they could hold at once was limited.
While Melinda held only two or three orcs at most, the rear line would have collapsed.
“So do not take it so much to heart. It was not your fault.”
“Sob…….”
It seemed to comfort her a little. She sobbed in my arms and fell asleep as though collapsing.
The smell of beer kept stabbing at my nose.
***
By the time the battle with the goblins ended, it was already close to dawn. Naturally, the time we awoke could only be after the sun had risen high in the sky.
“Phew…….”
Melinda could not look me directly in the eye, constantly averting her gaze. Dana cocked her head.
“Captain, why is Melinda acting like that toward you?”
“I do not know.”
“Did she confess to you or something?”
“Why would she?”
It was not something to be particularly proud of or feel confident about, revealing one’s shameful past through the help of alcohol.
Still, she did not seem to dislike me. At the very least, she would pay me the remainder she owed, then part with me amicably.
If my luck was better than I thought, I might gain even more than that.
“It is already dark…….”
By the time we reached the village again, the sun had completely set. It seemed we should go inside and rest immediately.
“We will all move together, receive only the commission fee, and go straight to the inn.”
“The commission fee…….”
Melinda let out a deep sigh.
She had paid an enormous sum to overcome her trauma. But her trauma had not improved at all.
Moreover, the goblins had not been the ones who took the blacksmith’s ingots. This assignment had left nothing but failure for her.
But unfortunately, that was her circumstance. She had not asked me from the beginning to ‘recover the ingots,’ so I had no choice but to collect every bit of the commission fee set in advance.
‘If I collect this too, our finances will finally loosen up.’
The 600 Gold I had received before had vanished like melting snow, but I could use the 700 Gold I received this time in full.
I might be able to buy proper armor, or hire new mercenaries at a reasonable price to increase our strength.
Filled with anticipation, I walked lightly toward the smithy.
“……Ah!”
At some point, Melinda broke into a frantic run. I sensed that something was wrong as well.
‘It smells like something is burning!’
At that moment, Melinda and I prayed for the same thing. Please, let the place burning now not be her smithy.
But it was.
“Ah…… ah?”
Melinda collapsed to the ground.
Before her eyes, a massive blaze burned.