Chapter 34 - Why Go That Far?

"Does scouting mean something different to you than it does to me, Squad Leader?" Rem asked, twirling the axe in his hand. "What do you mean?" "You look like you came back halfway to being fucking dead." "Just a scratch on my side." "If that's a scratch, would an actual cut kill you on the spot?" Rem snickered. The bastard hadn't changed. Not that a few days apart would have changed him. Months had passed for Encrid, but for these men, it hadn't even been a week. "I did nearly die."

Encrid felt the wound in his side as he spoke. He had actually experienced death countless times, but he could hardly tell them that. "Let me see."

Jaxon approached and lifted the clothing over his wounded side. Encrid turned and raised his shirt to give him a better look. "What would you know about it?"

Rem grumbled, but Jaxon blithely ignored him and examined the wound. "It's nothing," Encrid said. "The bone isn't damaged, but dismissing it as a minor wound could make you suffer." That was true enough. "I put ointment on it." "That's a relief." Jaxon nodded. "Ran into a fight while scouting, did you?"

Big-eyes surveyed Encrid's bedraggled appearance. His hair was greasy, and his eyes were hollow from marching straight after the fighting without rest. He hadn't had enough to eat or drink during the mission, let alone a proper wash. Of course he looked a mess. 'A fight? I went and stirred up their whole camp.'

There was no need to tell him everything, so Encrid merely nodded in agreement. Watching Rem and Ragna fight the moment he returned had drenched him in sweat again, leaving him weary. So, for now... "Anything to eat? Water, too." It was time to eat and rest. In truth, he wanted to start swinging his sword right away, but there were limits to what his body could manage in its current condition. And judging by the enemies gathered in the tall-grass fields, this battle wasn't likely to end here. He would probably have to take the field again, so he needed to get himself back into shape. "Go wash up. I'll lay out a royal feast for you," Rem said with a grin. Encrid nodded and headed for the nearby stream. They hadn't established the infantry position here for nothing. A stream ran behind it, making drinking water and a place to wash readily available. When he dipped a hand into the water, a sudden chill ran through him. 'It's getting cold.'

It was the time of year for temperatures to fall. He gave his face a quick rinse, stripped off his clothes, and washed the blood, grease, sweat, and grime from his body. 'That bastard.'

As he washed, the events of the mission filled his mind unbidden: the tall-grass fields, the ambush, the flagpoles, and finally the man holding a sword and torch. 'I have a feeling we'll meet again.'

He had a premonition that they would meet in circumstances where he couldn't avoid the man. 'Is this one of those walls?'

Hadn't the eyeless ferryman said that walls would block his path endlessly? He wasn't worried. If one blocked him, he simply had to get over it. To be honest, he was quietly looking forward to it. He was still disappointed that he had returned without settling things with that bastard. Of course, if they had fought to the finish, he would have been the one to die. Even so, he didn't want to avoid it. He wanted to take him on. The moment he'd seen that man, he'd felt a strangely intense urge to win. Every so often, you met someone like that. It was like falling in love at first sight, except the opposite: someone you wanted to fight and beat. When he returned, freshly washed, he found warm soup and bread waiting, along with skewers of meat roasted golden brown, procured from who knew where. It hardly qualified as a royal feast, but it was a spread rarely seen on the battlefield. "Rabbit?"

At Encrid's question, Rem cleared his throat importantly and stepped forward. "Prepared it myself." "No, I got it, not you."

Big-eyes shot him a reproachful look. "Right. Thanks."

Encrid sat down and polished off the food in no time. "I think this every time I watch you, Squad Leader. You sure can eat." "Need to eat well to keep my strength up." "You're the strangest man I've ever met, Squad Leader."

Rem had been standing beside him watching him eat, only to fold his arms and come out with that nonsense. This was the troublemaker squad, and of all its members, the man whose hobby was beating up his own allies was calling him strange. "You're the last person I want to hear that from."

Rem snickered again. Afterward, the squad members went their separate ways. Jaxon left, saying he had business to attend to, while Krais said it was time to do some trading. The religious nut started praying in a corner, and Rem lounged about outside the barracks, snickering. He was probably tossing stupid jokes at passing soldiers. Ragna, meanwhile, stared silently at Encrid. Encrid kept feeling his gaze. "What?"

Distracted by the stare, Encrid turned to ask. "Just looking."

Ragna answered from his half-reclining sprawl. When Encrid tilted his head, Ragna said it was nothing and rolled over. He seemed to have something to say, but Encrid didn't press him. His experience leading the troublemaker squad told him he wouldn't get an answer now, even if he asked. In cases like this, waiting usually prompted them to bring it up later. And if they didn't, well, he could let it go. Having just returned from a mission, he was excused from both sentry duty and meal duty. Encrid ate well and slept soundly. Jaxon's ointment worked wonders; the wound in his side was closing quickly. At this rate, two days of rest seemed enough. Resting didn't mean he was simply idling away his time. 'I'd probably lose ten times out of ten, though.'

Sitting there, Encrid swung his sword over and over in his mind. His first opponent was Rem, then Ragna, then the enemy he'd met in hostile territory. He thought it through again and again. An old swordsman who taught swordsmanship in a quiet coastal town had once told him: ["If you don't want to die to a stray blade, you have two options. One is to pray and pray to the goddess of luck until your hands wear out."] The first was to leave it to luck. ["The second is to think things through, over and over again."] Hadn't he said that if you fought with half your life on the line and survived, that fight would become an asset? It was something the old swordsman in the coastal town often said. Then how did you survive a fight with half your life on the line? By working it out. By thinking. By agonizing over it. He had told Encrid to keep thinking of ways, endlessly. If he faced an enemy without any forethought, he would have to stake everything on the first option. If he didn't want that, he needed to think ahead in his everyday life. 'He was a good teacher.'

It had been exactly the advice Encrid needed then. And it still served him well now. Encrid pondered and thought. What did he need to do to win? What did he need to do to avoid losing, at least? His desperate search for an answer had led him to the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique. Some called it crude trickery, but that swordsmanship was the core of Encrid's repertoire: feigned breath, the Three-Sword Style with its Headbutt, the sword draw used to throw a dagger or stone, and more. Once you'd fallen for them, the techniques seemed absurd and left you feeling cheated, but they worked well on first-time opponents and those with shaky skills. The Encrid in his mind swung his sword. He took a stance for a stab, then threw a stone. He feigned drawing his sword and flung a throwing knife instead. Rem swatted everything aside with his axe, while Ragna dodged it all with his footwork. The man with the sword and torch ignored the incoming stone, charged in, and drove his sword through Encrid's heart. They might not actually move as he imagined, but at least in Encrid's mental picture, that was what they did. 'Again.'

He thought it through countless times. Encrid spent an entire day that way before going to sleep. The moment he laid his head down, he was out. He had just finished a grueling mission, and the fatigue had piled up. The next morning, Krais brought back their breakfast rations: watery soup, dried meat laden with salt, and dry, crumbly bread. "Your turn on meal duty?" "Yes. You were sleeping like a log." "I was tired." Krais rolled his big eyes about, then asked, "What happened out there? Tell me." Krais, or Big-eyes, was the battlefield's source of information. Encrid was about to speak, then paused to think. He decided there was no particular need to hide it. It would be common knowledge soon anyway, and no one had said it was confidential. Still, he couldn't go into too much detail, so he told him only that enemy troops were lying in ambush in the tall-grass fields. A detailed explanation would also leave him struggling for answers. "Damn it. If they've even set an ambush, they're not planning to let this end quietly. But is there any point in setting an ambush there?" Big-eyes didn't know the first thing about strategy, but sometimes he hit the nail on the head. 'There isn't.'

In fact, if the scouts' route hadn't taken them that way, it would have gone undiscovered. And if he hadn't been able to repeat today, it would have ended with nothing more than the scouting party being wiped out. An ambush was a tactic for meeting an attack. But their forces weren't advancing toward the tall-grass fields. Naturally, it served no purpose. That was what Big-eyes meant. "We don't know yet." He didn't know. That was the right answer. He supposed the enemy's higher-ups were plotting something. One thing was certain: something was going on. Those flagpoles, and the man guarding them. The troop deployment alone had conveyed a fierce determination to annihilate any approaching enemy. Troops weren't normally deployed to such extremes. The conclusion, then, was that the enemy had something prepared. "Tch. And here I thought we were done this time." "We'll probably get orders today or tomorrow." Not long after their idle conversation ended, a shout rang out from outside. "We're moving out! Fourth Company, move out!"

It was the Fourth Platoon Commander's voice. "Your legs aren't hurt, are they?"

The man who had been shouting outside poked his head into Encrid's tent. "I hear you had one hell of a time." "Where did you hear that, sir?" "The rumors are everywhere. They say you're the goddess of luck's secret child or something." He had chalked the whole affair up to luck, so in a way, that was only to be expected. "Then who's my dad?" "How should I know?"

The Platoon Commander chuckled at Encrid's joke. "You must be tired, but we're moving out. East of our current position, they say, so let's get going." Encrid got to his feet. East meant toward the tall-grass fields. They knew about the ambush, so they wouldn't enter the grass. "Looks like there's a fight coming. The air's changed."

Rem had appeared at his side without him noticing. "Has it?" "Get cocky just because you've improved and you'll get yourself killed. Watch it." Was that concern, or a curse? It wasn't only Fourth Company moving, but the entire infantry battalion. In other words, most of the infantry brought out for this battle was on the move. With roughly forty soldiers in a platoon, that meant about six hundred infantrymen. TRAMP, TRAMP.

The infantry marched to the sound of their footsteps. There was no fighting that day. They relocated and established another temporary position, lighting fires and settling into their places. Unless the commander had an arrowhead lodged in his brain, he wasn't going to order a charge into the tall-grass fields. It seemed they were moving troops into the area to prepare for any eventuality. After spending the day that way, Encrid barely noticed the wound in his side anymore. The following day, orders came down for each squad to arrange its own meals, so the six squad members gathered and made stew in a single pot. "I caught a lizard on the way."

Jaxon added the drained lizard meat to the stew. "Well, look at you doing something commendable for once."

Rem was delighted by the sight. Naturally, Jaxon didn't answer back. Rem growled about being ignored again, but Jaxon ignored that too. 'They almost seem to get along, in a strange way.'

One talked, and the other ignored him. Somehow, they seemed in sync. In the army, simply moving, eating, and resting was work. And throughout all that marching and eating, Encrid felt an odd gaze on him. Someone kept staring at him. Ragna. "You'll wear my face away."

At the casual remark, Ragna looked away. "It's nothing." He definitely seemed to have something to say. The atmosphere had grown tense enough to suggest battle could break out at any moment, but another day passed. In his spare time, Encrid tried putting his mental practice into physical action. Some things came more easily than he had imagined; others proved difficult. He had been off in a corner swinging his sword since morning when Ragna approached and asked, "Why go that far?" The question came out of nowhere. But Encrid understood him perfectly. He was surrounded by more than a few people who were terrible at expressing themselves. Ragna wasn't much of a talker either. He simply said whatever he pleased, leaving the listener to make sense of it. In that respect, Encrid was just the man for the job. He understood more or less what Ragna meant. Encrid gave his upper forehead a scratch with a finger.