Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 15 - Chapter 8

8. Rusty Eyes

Their camp in the shadow of the rocks grew more complete by the day. Now that they had tried living here, he could tell the surrounding area held a greater bounty than what they’d had access to in the valley. There was a greater variety of plants, and not just ones they could eat, but an abundance of sturdy vines, too.

Some ivy they found could be used as rope, obviously, but Setora also experimented with it and found it worked as a bowstring, too. Setora would have had trouble making arrows with proper arrowheads, but the penetrating power of even a plain pointy stick was not to be underestimated. Having bows made a huge difference in how efficiently they were able to hunt.

They had gotten nails at the Lonesome Field Outpost. Plus they had access to all the sturdy vines they wanted. That greatly expanded the range of things they could build.

There were a lot of animals, too. They had only spotted the horse-dragon that one time, but there were packs of pebies, which were these rabbit-like dog creatures, and they often saw ganaroes, which were like wild cows, and closer to the Tenryu Mountains there were monkeys with fox-like faces. Judging from the distant howls, the scratch marks left on trees, and the droppings they occasionally came across, there were wolves and bears around, too. If such fierce predators were able to breed here, that meant the area had to have an abundance of prey.

They were at least ten, probably fifteen kilometers from Riverside Iron Fortress and the kobolds occupying it. Was that close enough to feel they were a threat, or far enough away not to?

Like the valley in the foothills, they would have to remain cautious of the dragons that made the Tenryu Mountains their home.

On the third day at their camp in the shadow of the rocks, they tried walking five or six kilometers west to the Jet River.

When they happened to look upstream, there was a massive creature swimming with its head above the water. It looked like a dragon. The whole group panicked and got out of there in a hurry. That was a thing that happened.

On the fourth day, they found some interesting tracks about a kilometer east of their camp. Multiple sets of footprints, and marks like something had sat on the ground. They seemed to come not from a four-legged beast, but some bipedal creature.

That night, Haruhiro, Setora, and Kiichi were standing guard next to a stove that had been built to conceal the light of its fire as much as possible, when suddenly, Kiichi turned towards the southeast, and his ears stood straight up.

Setora tried to say something. Haruhiro raised a hand to stop her, but she closed her mouth before she could speak.

There was a noise.

Haruhiro heard it, too, but he didn’t know what kind of noise it was.

It wasn’t an animal. He could sort of tell that. He had no proof. It was all a hunch.

Haruhiro waved to Setora and Kiichi, giving them a signal.

“Stay here. I’ll go look,” it said.

Setora nodded. Kiichi would likely obey her.

Haruhiro moved away from the stove without a sound.

He didn’t mind this sensation, like he was swimming through the darkness. You might even say he found it comfortable.

The air at night suited Haruhiro better than the daytime. He even imagined that he could touch things through the night air, feel their heat.

He searched all over, but nothing.

He had to conclude there was no large animal nearby.

However, even if there wasn’t one now, there might have been at one point.

For instance, something might have approached to scope out Haruhiro and his group, but accidentally, or for reasons beyond their control, ended up making noise. They might have thought, Oh, no, and ran away.

There were the footprints, too. Whatever was going on, they were going to have to be all the more cautious. Depending on the situation, they might have to abandon their camp in the shadow of the rocks. It would hurt, but if they had to do it, they shouldn’t hesitate.

When they were talking about it over breakfast, they heard more than just a noise. They heard a man’s voice.

“Volunteer soldiers?” the voice said.

“...Huh?” Kuzaku picked up the large katana lying at his feet. “Wh-Who’s there?!”

“Do you think we’d answer honestly?” Setora took up her bow, and looked to Haruhiro.

Haruhiro took a deep breath.

Volunteer soldiers?

The voice had asked if they were volunteer soldiers.

Merry kept quiet and looked in the direction the voice had come from. It was the southeast.

What were they to think of this? Or should they move rather than think?

We were careless. There were signs. We should have anticipated this could happen, he thought for a moment, but was that really true? Hindsight was always 20-20. Haruhiro wasn’t an omniscient god or a genius. He was nothing but a plain, mediocre human, so even if he could have predicted this might happen, he couldn’t have known all the concrete details. It wouldn’t do him any good to lament not having been able to do something he never stood a chance of being able to do in the first place.

“If you’re volunteer soldiers, please, answer,” the voice said.

“...What do we do?” Kuzaku crouched as he asked Haruhiro.

Before Haruhiro could answer him, the voice pressed for a response.

“Your suspicion is inevitable, but we are not suspicious. If you are volunteer soldiers, you and we can work together.”

Setora’s brow furrowed.

“We?”

“...He’s not alone,” Shihoru whispered.

Merry looked at Haruhiro.

“They could be remnants of the Frontier Army.”

“I’ll come over to you,” Haruhiro told the owner of the voice. Then, he quickly looked at each of his comrades. “Everyone, stay here. Just be careful.”

Kuzaku gave him a, “’Kay,” but Setora gave him a look that seemed more exasperated with his decision than dissatisfied, and Shihoru seemed worried, too.

“Hold on,” Merry grabbed Haruhiro’s arm. “Take me with you.”

“No, but...”

“You have no memories, remember? Can you make a split-second decision?”

“She has a point.” Setora nodded. “You two go together. Self-sacrifice is fine and all, but taken too far, it becomes insufferable and does more harm than good.”

Haruhiro almost apologized despite himself, but managed to stop at just saying, “...Right.”

Merry headed towards the voice with him.

A single man appeared from the trees about 30 meters ahead of them.

“Here,” he said.

Haruhiro and Merry looked at one another.

What kind of man was he? As far as Haruhiro was concerned, the man didn’t look like he was dressed all that differently from them. He was considerably older, though. The guy had to be over 30. He was bearded, and wore a leather outfit, along with boots and a deep green cloak.

“...I don’t know him,” Merry said dubiously. “I don’t think the Frontier Army had soldiers like that. But he doesn’t look like a volunteer soldier, either...”

The man approached.

“I’m with the Expeditionary Force from the Kingdom of Arabakia.”

“Expeditionary Force?” Haruhiro furrowed his brow. “...Merry, have you heard of them?”

Merry shook her head.

“But if he’s not with the Frontier Army...”

Haruhiro stepped forward, keeping Merry safely behind him.

The man came to a stop about ten meters away from the pair.

He didn’t have a feeling of cleanliness about him. The man’s skin was dark with grime. Haruhiro was used to living in the great outdoors, too, though, so he wasn’t one to talk.

The whites of his eyes were yellowed and bloodshot, and his ungloved hands were awfully dirty. His nails were cut short.

Also, when the man walked, he made almost no sound.

“We came from the mainland,” the man said, then grinned. “If you’re volunteer soldiers, that makes us reinforcements. I was expecting you would welcome us.”

“Welcome...” Haruhiro mumbled, then responded with a smile.

To be honest, he was trying to hide his confusion. He wanted to be able to process the information he had. That would take time.

“Why are you here?” Merry asked the man.

“...In a place like this?”

The man shrugged. He apparently either didn’t want to answer, or couldn’t.

He looked pretty tough. Could they trust him? Haruhiro couldn’t decide.

“I’m a scout. Basically, I’m at the bottom of the heap.” He smiled, with an implied, You know how that is, right? “I have no authority. If you people accept, I’m to lead you back to camp. The commander, or someone working for him, will reveal any information you should be told.”

Camp. Commander. Information. Haruhiro mulled over what the man said as he listened.

“You were the one monitoring us last night, huh?”

“So you did notice.” The man licked his bottom lip. “You’re the same as me. A scout... No, they’d call you a thief out in the frontier, huh?”

The man spoke politely enough, but there was a roughness in his gestures and expression.

Even now, this man was evaluating Haruhiro and Merry. Here’s what he had to be thinking: If I have to kill these two, how am I going to do it?

Haruhiro was thinking much the same thing, as a matter of fact.

The man looked capable. But he didn’t feel like an opponent they couldn’t beat. With Merry here, it was two against one, but that wasn’t why. The man was clearly underestimating Haruhiro. That meant there was an opening he could work with.

That said, perhaps the man had a good reason to be so relaxed.

“And if we—” Haruhiro started.

“And if you,” the man took over for him, “are the sort of unscrupulous people who wouldn’t welcome us, I’m afraid to say I’ll have no choice but to eliminate you. If you’re not a fool, I think you’ll understand this is not an idle threat, and I say it because I can deliver on it.”

“What do you mean...?” Merry whispered.

Basically, it meant the man, or rather the Expeditionary Force, or whatever they were, were a level or two above Haruhiro’s group.

Haruhiro glanced past the man. He hadn’t noticed before now, but that was because his attention had been on the person before him. The man had made sure it was.

There were armed men here and there throughout the forest. They weren’t standing there openly, and more than a few were sticking out halfway from behind trees or bushes.

Even at a glance, he counted ten-ish.

Haruhiro put his hands up.

“Of course we welcome you.”

There were five of them, plus Kiichi. These guys were calling themselves a military force, so there were presumably more than ten or twenty of them. They were working on a different scale.

“I mean, we welcomed you to begin with. Did it not look that way?”

“Oh, I could see it.” The man gave him a mocking smile. “I came all alone last night, though. I was confident, if we came back in force, you would definitely welcome us. If you’re going to have a party, the more the merrier, right?”

Haruhiro was the type that preferred a calm evening to a raucous celebration, but he didn’t need to rock the boat now.

“You’re right.”

“The name’s Neal.” The man walked over with large strides, and extended his right hand. “You?”

Haruhiro took the man’s hand and gave his own name.

“I’m Haruhiro.”

Neal pulled Haruhiro in close, and whispered in his ear.

“That’s a fine woman you’ve got with you.”

The blood rushed to his head.

Neal seemed to see right through him as he clapped Haruhiro on the shoulder with a smile.

“That was a compliment.”

Haruhiro and Merry returned to the camp in the shadow of the rocks with Neal. They explained the situation to Kuzaku, Setora, and Shihoru, and decided to pack up and head to the Expeditionary Force’s camp.

The Expeditionary Force’s camp was more than five kilometers from the rocks, in the forest to the southwest. It was pretty close to the Tenryu Mountains, but according to Neal, they had yet to be attacked by any dragons.

There were a good 50 tents pitched in the area, and armed soldiers lay about resting or maintaining their equipment. The groups of soldiers sitting in a circle didn’t look like they were just chatting. They were rolling wooden dice, or doing something with a large number of short wooden sticks. Were they gambling, maybe?

When the soldiers noticed Haruhiro and the others, they stared, whispered to their fellows, and let out mean-spirited laughs.

Many of them were young, just a little older or even a little younger than Haruhiro and his group. There were a good number of middle-aged, maybe even elderly soldiers whose beards had gone half white, too.

Frankly, they gave off a bad vibe.

Haruhiro wouldn’t really know, but there were probably regulations a military force needed to follow. These guys seemed slovenly. He’d been living in the wild, so Haruhiro wasn’t one to talk, but they looked like a bunch of barbarians.

Even under the indiscreet stares of all those soldiers, Setora seemed unperturbed. But Merry and Shihoru both looked really disgusted.

“They’ve come a long way from their hometowns to serve the military, and... Well, everyone’s on edge,” Neal explained, smirking. “It may be a little bit too stimulating for the young ladies here, but put up with them, will you? It’s not malicious.”

“Stimulating, huh?” Kuzaku seemed pretty mad. “You sure it’s not malicious? I’m having a hard time believing that.”

Neal cleared his throat, then let out a low laugh, but he didn’t respond.

They walked through the camp, which wasn’t really divided up into sections, until they came to an area where some large tents were concentrated. There was a table and chairs around it, where some people were sitting and others stood. These guys didn’t seem like the rank-and-file soldiers.

Neal walked forward, dropped to one knee, and bowed his head.

“General. I’ve brought them.”

“Well done.”

The man he called General was not unkempt like Neal and the other soldiers; he had grown a proper beard that he kept well-groomed. In terms of age, he looked forty, or somewhere thereabouts, with red hair and sharp eyes. His armor was polished, and he wore a black fur cloak over the top of it. Plus, this red-haired general was tall, even if not as tall as Kuzaku.

“You’re surviving volunteer soldiers, huh?”

He had a throaty, intimidating voice.

For a moment, Haruhiro hesitated. Should he kiss up to the man? Or just act normal?

“Um, yes.”

“What do you mean, ‘Um’?”

“Yes.” Haruhiro corrected himself.

He broke into a cold sweat, and grimaced a little. The guy was pretty scary.

The general looked over to another man, who was a short distance away, standing instead of sitting in a chair.

“Do you know them, Anthony?” the general asked.

The man called Anthony shook his head.

“No, General. I have no personal acquaintances among the volunteer soldiers. I know a number of them by name, though.”

The general looked at Haruhiro with rust-colored eyes.

“What is your name?”

“It’s Haruhiro.”

It was probably best not to defy this man. He seemed kinda scary. Though, he didn’t want to be too subservient. Where was this mentality coming from? Haruhiro didn’t even know that himself.

“The others are Kuzaku, Shihoru, Merry, and Setora. Also, the nyaa’s name is Kiichi.”

“I don’t know them,” Anthony said with a shrug. “I don’t think they’re like Soma, Akira, or Renji, who even the regular forces respected.”

“Soma... Renji...” Merry whispered.

Both those names had come up in the stories Merry had told them.

“Renji enlisted at the same time as us,” Haruhiro said, then paused a moment. “We’re... members of Soma’s guild, the Day Breakers.”

He wasn’t lying, as far as he knew. He just didn’t remember the details surrounding that, either.

“Day Breakers?” The general looked to Anthony.

Anthony nodded.

“The clan is something like a platoon in the military. Soma gathered capable volunteer soldiers to form the Day Breakers. Some of them, like Akira, Rock, and Io, were famous even among us in the Frontier Army.”

“You’re in the Frontier Army?” Haruhiro asked.

Anthony nodded. “That’s right. Graham Rasentra, who was commanding the Frontier Army in Alterna, sent an envoy to the mainland to request aid. My men and I were the ones ordered to guard that envoy.”

“We don’t know the frontier,” the general said, looking to those around him. “Anthony is a valuable guide. That is why, even though it meant departing as soon as he arrived, we had him accompany the Expeditionary Force.”

“I was born in the frontier, after all,” Anthony said with a servile expression on his face. “I have no intention of living in peace and safety in the mainland. I meant to come back, either way.”

Haruhiro really couldn’t have cared less about their situation, but he sort of got the picture.

The Kingdom of Arabakia had once prospered north of the Tenryu Mountains, in the land they now called the frontier. However, when they were defeated by the Alliance of Kings led by the No-Life King, they fled south of the Tenryus. What they now called the mainland would have, a long time ago, been called the frontier.

The Kingdom of Arabakia’s largest base in the frontier, Alterna, had suddenly been attacked.

General Graham Whatshisface of the Frontier Army figured he couldn’t defend it, and asked the mainland for reinforcements.

In the end, the reinforcements came.

Or they barely made it, rather.

“It looks like there’s nothing but goblins in Alterna.” Haruhiro lowered his eyes. It was best to convey this dispassionately. “There were orcs at Deadhead Watching Keep, kobolds at Riverside Iron Fortress, and there was no one at the Lonesome Field Outpost.”

“We have that information,” the general said, waving his hand.

Haruhiro didn’t immediately understand what it was they wanted from him.

Anthony decided to help him out.

“The general wants to speak with you personally.”

Obviously, there was no way that they had anything personal to talk about. The general wanted to talk in secret. Anthony was telling him that in a roundabout way.

Haruhiro glanced at his comrades, then approached the general.

The general turned away from Haruhiro, and started walking. That probably meant, Follow me.

“Our Kingdom of Arabakia no longer has any foothold in this frontier,” the general said in a low voice as he walked along at a relaxed pace. “If the king and his favored retainers back in the mainland decide that the situation is too difficult to reverse, it will put you people in a somewhat difficult spot... And us, too.”

Haruhiro couldn’t understand what the general meant if he was going to beat around the bush like this. He had no memories.

Was it better to keep that a secret? Or to be forthright and reveal it? He hadn’t been able to consult his comrades about that yet. They’d have to make up their minds soon, but right now, it was probably not a good idea to bring it up.

Actually, he couldn’t decide if it was a good idea or not. The situation was too complicated and delicate. He’d have to keep quiet for now.

“Um, so, basically...”

“The king and his close retainers will, almost certainly, attempt to sever the mainland from the frontier permanently.”

“Sever.”

“To make it impossible to travel from one to the other.”

“...I got that much.”

What was it? He felt like he’d heard something about this from Merry.

Oh, right.

In the Tenryu Mountains, or maybe it was under them, there was this secret passage, the Something-or-Other Road. The people of the Kingdom of Arabakia had originally used that road to evacuate south of the Tenryu Mountains. However, they also used it to send an army into the frontier, and build Alterna.

Even now, people and trade flowed between Alterna and the mainland using that Something-or-Other Road.

Or they had, until just recently.

Whatever the case, if they knew where the Something-or-Other Road was, it would be possible to go from the frontier to the mainland, and vice versa.

The Expeditionary Force must have traveled through the Something-or-Other Road, too.

The general stopped walking, so Haruhiro stopped, too.

There were no tents around them, and no soldiers, either.

“If we cannot secure a base on the scale of Alterna, the king will surely destroy the Earth Dragon’s Aorta Road.”

Ohhh. The official name of the Something-or-Other road was the Earth Dragon’s Aorta Road.

“...Destroy it?” Haruhiro said.

The general turned, leaning in a bit to bring his face close to Haruhiro’s.

“We’re a ragtag band, as you can see. We need all the help we can get. You’ll be cooperating, volunteer soldier. Don’t say no. We have to worry about information leaking. If you won’t obey, I’ll have no choice but to kill you.”