by Funa
However...
“How many settlements are ahead of us?”
“Six villages and one medium-sized town between our current position and the capital, sir.”
“Good. Send a messenger to Rueda and make a request for food, water, and other necessary supplies. We’ll continue pressing ahead and commandeer what we can from the settlements we come across—emergency food stores, crops, livestock...everything. We won’t leave even a single seed for next year’s crops behind! There will be no food distribution until we reach the next town, and water rations will only be a third of the usual amount. The troops should be able to endure that for a day.”
Retreat was never an option for them. The fate of the empire was riding on this invasion, and their allies to the west were risking their lives acting as a distraction for the brunt of Balmore’s forces. They couldn’t return home with a paltry excuse of running out of food and water. The commanding officers would all surely hang.
The northern Aligot forces resumed their march on Grua, the capital of the Kingdom of Balmore.
“What was that?!”
After enduring empty stomachs and crippling thirst, the empire’s troops had finally managed to make it to the village. The general had arrived at the village a bit later than the vanguard of their forces when he received an alarming report: every one of the soldiers who’d drank from the wells were violently throwing up and suffering from severe diarrhea. Those who happened to sample the food and water they found in the houses were suffering the same fate.
“Damn them... Those Balmore bastards poisoned the wells! Where are the villagers?!”
“There’s not a single one to be found, sir.”
“So they were evacuated... Search for any hidden food stores, and any crops as well!”
The soldiers spread out in all directions after receiving their orders.
The enemy had to be out of their minds to actually dump poison into the wells. Even if it successfully drove the army away, they’d have to draw out all the water in the well just to purify the water. At worst, it could even spread to the main water source and end up contaminating the other wells. It was something no sane villager would agree to doing.
A short while later, the soldiers returned to make their reports. There wasn’t any food to be found, and not even the slightest hint of any crops in the fields.
“Staying here without food or water will only exhaust the troops further. Get them ready to head out again, double time! We’re heading to the next village!”
In the back of his mind, the general couldn’t shake the thought that the next village would end up being barren as well. Depending on how long it took for the messenger they sent to reach Rueda, the time it would take for them to prepare the supplies and wagons, and the days it would take to deliver, who knew how long it would be until they saw food and water again... And that was only if Rueda was willing to take on something not part of their initial secret agreement.
Though food and munitions were important, the biggest problem they were dealing with was water. There weren’t that many rivers in this part of the country, and they wouldn’t be running into any of them on their way to Grua. The farms here were smaller since the crops raised depended on rain and the water drawn from the wells to grow, with only a couple dozen settlements sparsely dotted along the path they’d be taking. If all the wells had been poisoned, they wouldn’t have any hope of refilling their water supplies. But if they could just reach the town right before the capital...
Unlike these small villages, it’d be impossible for them to evacuate every single person living there. There could be people intentionally defying the order to evacuate, or some who didn’t have any other place to stay. There may have been others who were too old or had injuries that kept them from moving anywhere else. Emptying the entire town of all food would be an impossible task, and they wouldn’t be able to chuck poison into the wells if they wanted it to stay inhabitable later on.
The capital’s forces were all holed up in the city, so their main goal would be to occupy the town and commandeer its supplies along with what they could get from the surrounding villages. That should let their soldiers recuperate somewhat while they waited for Rueda to send aid. They’d wait a while after taking the town, and if the supplies still hadn’t arrived, they’d lay siege to the capital regardless. They could just keep taking what supplies they needed from the area around them, and it was a simple task to fashion together some sort of siege equipment on the spot. It wasn’t the hardest thing in the world to make grappling hooks or a simple battering ram, after all.
Unlike the troops in the capital, they had the villages and towns to rely on, and with everything the citizens in Balmore had to take care of, they’d be burning through supplies much faster as well. Even if Balmore’s main forces did return, the empire’s forces to the west could follow them from behind and make a pincer attack. The general in charge of the northern forces knew it was just wishful thinking on his part...but he was going to bet on that chance. He didn’t have any other choice.
They’d sent soldiers ahead on horseback in the hopes they could prevent more wells from being poisoned. But when they arrived in the next town, the wells had been contaminated all the same. There wasn’t a scrap of food to be found, and the rations for food and water were cut to a quarter of what they were as they headed for the next town.
Kaoru and the others had finished sabotaging the fourth town, and would be arriving at the fifth before long.
“I wonder if it’s working...” Kaoru muttered to herself.
“I’m sure they must be trying to deal with the lack of water right about now,” Roland answered. “They’re soldiers forced to march out there under the blazing hot sun. If they don’t get enough water, the fatigue and internal damage to their bodies should be enough to start dropping them like flies. Some of them will even drink the water from the wells, even though they know it’ll wreck their stomachs.”
“Yeah...”
Even if they knew what it would do to them, they wouldn’t be able to bear the thirst and would end up drinking it anyway. That’s why Kaoru had decided to go with something that caused vomiting and diarrhea instead of straight-up death. They’d be able to slake their thirst if they drank the contaminated water, but they’d end up losing more liquid than they were getting from it, causing them to be worse off than before.
They wouldn’t be in any condition to keep marching with heavy armor, so their only options would be to leave it behind or have others help them. Either way, it would end up slowing them down. To an army, infirmed or wounded were worse than having their people killed in battle.
Right as they were getting close to the next village, Kaoru and the others found a little boy walking along the road toward them. Kaoru had a bad feeling about this, stopping the wagon so she could talk with him.
“What’s wrong? You didn’t evacuate with everyone else?” Kaoru questioned as she stepped down from the wagon.
“We’re in trouble, Miss Angel! The bad guys found a well!”
Shocked, Kaoru pressed him for more information. Apparently, there was a hidden well located in the village they’d left earlier that morning. For some reason, this one almost never dried up, even during the harshest of droughts. It was kept hidden from the other villages so they wouldn’t try to rush it during one of the dry spells that happened every few decades—and the villagers also hadn’t told Kaoru and the others about it. It could’ve been because they wanted the well to stay hidden, or they were afraid that something might happen to it if they spilled the beans, or even because they thought the empire wouldn’t be able to find it so easily.
But the boy had overheard what three of the other villagers had been whispering to each other. They’d double back and return to the village, selling the information about the hidden well to the empire and get rich from it. After the soldiers left, they’d raid all the villagers’ homes and steal as many valuables as they could throw onto a cart bef
ore heading to Rueda.
After the three men had disappeared, the boy had run to the adults to let them know what he heard. The men in question were burly with violent dispositions, however, and the villagers didn’t exactly want to catch up with them and risk getting killed in the process. That was why they decided to ignore them and head straight to the capital.
After spending a night in the neighboring village, the boy had told his family he was going to take a walk with his friends before secretly sneaking away from the group and heading back to warn Kaoru and the others.
“Why didn’t you leave with everyone else? It’s dangerous here,” Kaoru asked the boy.
“Ginnie was saved because of the medicine we got from the Goddess.”
Kaoru didn’t know if Ginnie was part of this kid’s family or just a friend or whatever, but she’d seen the eyes he was giving her more times than she could count. He wouldn’t listen even if she explained, and she didn’t have time for it either.
“Can I ask you to guide us there?”
“Of course!”
Kaoru left two imperial guards behind to watch over the other two wells with some spare bottles of poison. She took the rest with her back to the other village. They should still have a good two days’ head start on the empire’s troops, so they should be able to make the return trip without the empire’s army catching up to them. They’d already finished sabotaging that village, so if they could just poison that last hidden well, then that would be it.
But just like the enemy general, that was nothing more than wishful thinking on their part...
Chapter 11: Hell
With Tapani leading the way, Kaoru and the others headed to a small house just on the outskirts of the village they’d left earlier. A small shed was built around the hidden well so it didn’t look like anything more than a storage shed from the outside.
“It’s that cabin over there,” Tapani said, pointing.
As Kaoru and the others stepped down from the wagon to get closer, a group of twenty soldiers on horseback headed toward them from the center of the village.
“Damn it, they sent troops ahead!” Roland cursed under his breath, drawing his sword. Francette and the five imperial knights followed suit.
Though they were outnumbered three-to-one, they had Roland, a man famed for his bravery, and a group of elite knights with them. The fact that Francette only looked like a knight-in-training would cause anyone to underestimate her true abilities, which were vastly superior compared to before she drank the potion Kaoru had given her (she was still incredibly talented before drinking it as well, though).
On the other hand, the Aligot troops were dehydrated, underfed, and exhausted. Even the horses they were riding on looked exhausted. Thinking they should be able to handle anything that came their way, Kaoru headed toward the shed. Tapani and the other eight children followed after her.
Four of the children stood in front of the shed to guard the entrance. They appeared empty-handed, but each one of them carried a knife hidden in one of their pockets. It was a strategy that would turn the fact that they were kids into a positive, trying to catch the soldiers off guard and start slashing if the time called for it.
Kaoru took a single bottle from her Item Box and gripped it tightly in her left hand. It was a pain in the butt to decide what the potion would do every time she made them, so she decided to make them in advance and stuff them into her Item Box beforehand.
When she opened the door and walked inside the dim shed with the other kids...they were met face-to-face with three Aligot soldiers. It seemed like the soldiers hadn’t just arrived after all.
“Who are you supposed to be?” one of the soldiers said after scooping up some water to drink.
The five of them froze up on the spot. There was no way they could tell them the truth. Suddenly, one of the soldiers noticed the bottle Kaoru was holding in her hand.
“Hey! What’s that?! Answer me!”
By the time Kaoru realized her mistake, it was already too late.
“Wait a second... Were you the ones poisoning the wells?”
The soldiers set down their wooden cups and stood up.
Kaoru hesitated, unsure of what to do next. An explosion would attract attention from the soldiers outside. No matter how strong Roland and the others were, they were still outnumbered, and it could end up being a struggle for them to fend off any more reinforcements that came to the shed.
But how could she incapacitate them? Hydrochloric acid? Maybe sulfuric acid? If they began screaming, reinforcements would still come running anyway. It wasn’t that hard to take down soldiers if she put her mind to it, and it wasn’t like they would cut down a bunch of kids out of nowhere, either.
Kaoru had taken advantage of the lull to wrack her brain for a plan. The kids took that as a sign she was out of options and didn’t know what to do.
“...Huh?”
The youngest child of the group, the eight-year-old Belle, had snatched the bottle from Kaoru’s hand and began trotting over to the soldiers. Kaoru reached out to try and stop her, but Emile held her back.
“It’s all right. Belle will take care of it.”
Kaoru didn’t know what Emile was trying to say.
The soldiers grinned as they watched Belle totter toward them, bottle pressed against her chest. It was going to be a piece of cake to catch a little girl like her—or, to be more accurate, child’s play. She was heading straight toward them, and she would have to move her arms if she was going to get ready to pop off the lid to the bottle or throw it into the well. Either way, they’d stop her or make her slow down before that happened.
She was still walking straight ahead. If she tried throwing it now, the three would just smack it away. The soldiers stood in front of the well, blocking her.
Suddenly, Belle stepped hard off her left foot and dodged to the right, breaking into a full-on sprint and dodged between them. They only had one arm available to try and stop her now, each soldier thinking the one next to him would do so. With their guards completely down, she aimed for the easiest spot to run through them.
It was a technique she’d perfected during her time as a street urchin, and was necessary to survive when trying to escape when surrounded by adults. She folded her arms and ducked down low, not losing any of her speed as she minimized her chance of being captured while opening the lid of the bottle. The slow, tottering jog from earlier had been a feint, since she was actually the fastest sprinter of all the children. After she managed to slip through the soldiers, she dove headfirst...right into the well.
“What...?” Kaoru was shocked speechless.
“I told you, didn’t I? Belle would take care of it,” Emile responded.
Kaoru couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. His face was completely expressionless.
“But why?! Why would she do something as stupid as that?!” Kaoru shouted furiously.
“If you didn’t give her that medicine, Belle would have been dead already,” Emile answered calmly. “The happy days she got to live because of that were more than worth paying for with her life. And... And Belle was one of the Eyes of the Goddess.”
“Don’t gimme that crap!”
Kaoru was inches away from socking Emile off his feet...but when she caught a glance of his face, she could see the trail of tears running down his cheek. Kaoru slowly lowered her arm.
“You idiot...”
It was then the dazed soldiers finally came back to their senses...
“Y-You damn brats... What have you done?!”
“That was the only safe well we had... It was our only hope...”
The soldiers drew their swords, seething with anger over losing any hope they had for the future because they underestimated a child. Kaoru could see it in their eyes: they were going to kill the children.
But it wasn’t just the soldiers who were blind with rage.
“...Die.”
At Kaoru’s words, the soldiers began wri
thing in agony. One had lost the ability to breathe, drowning on the land as his lungs suddenly filled with water. Another clutched his stomach, his insides slowly melting away from having his stomach acids suddenly released throughout his body. The last one was robbed of his ability to move because of the poison spreading throughout his body, his breathing slowly becoming more shallow as his heartbeat became weaker.
The soldiers finally succumbed.
“This is only the beginning,” Kaoru muttered.
There was no way for the kids to know the meaning behind those ominous words.
Before Kaoru knew it, Emile had sprinted to the well and was just about to throw himself down.
“What are you doing?”
“Belle might still be alive, I have to save her!”
“No need,” Kaoru responded.
“What are you saying...” Emile asked back, dumbstruck.
Kaoru stuck out her left hand, and in the next instant, a little girl stood where she was pointed.
“H-Huh? But I was...”
“““Belle!!!”””
Back when Kaoru was negotiating with Celes for her Item Box, the goddess was kind enough not to place any restrictions on how she could use it. Not only was time frozen inside it, but since it connected to a different dimension, there were no problems storing living things. And since it existed in a different dimension, there was no need to physically touch what she wanted to put inside, either.
Kaoru had stored Belle in her Item Box as soon as she dove into the well. She’d gone in headfirst, after all, so there was a chance she could end up hurt, or worse—dead.
It was a mystery why no one had thought it strange there was no splash after she jumped.
“Emile, I want you to give everyone a message from me: If you’ve all offered your lives to me, then you don’t get to die without my permission. Got it?”
Emile nodded over and over again, tears streaming down his face as he held Belle close. Tapani could only watch on, his mouth agape after bearing witness to a bona fide miracle.