TUK 10

Chapter 10

Clop. Clop.

Rian left the main camp after finishing a meagre meal of dried meat and vegetables cooked into a rough stew.

He was heading for a nearby rise.

He wasn’t accompanied by any drafted troops — his footsteps moved entirely alone.

His steps were closer to freedom than compulsion.

“After we already won the fight? Why bother? You’d be better off sleeping.”
“They all ran off looking only forward — an ambush, my foot! Pointless waste of stamina and time. Everyone’s exhausted; no one even wants to stand watch….”
“We searched from the trees to the bushes while pursuing, but there wasn’t even so much as imperial trash out here. Tell that curse not to waste his strength.”

After sending Sion’s apprentice with the pursuit team, Mongclay gathered the captains together and announced his intent to draft soldiers for rearguard duty.

To make responsibility clear, he stated the suggestion had come from Rian Kade.

Hearing that, the captains strongly objected and flatly refused the drafting order.

Even Mongclay’s explanation that they had killed a mage and turned the tide didn’t help. Within the battalion, Rian still could not break free from the label “curse.”

Perhaps it was an expected result — the captains surely suspected Mongclay was using Rian simply to secure his own advantage.

Clop.

So Rian left the camp alone and hid himself under the shade of a tree standing tall on the top of the rise.

He didn’t intend to hide with great effort.

The starlight had begun to blur, and the moonlight slanted as if its duties were done, creating a deep darkness. The drifting wisps of cloud had gathered, swelling until they covered the sky.

The deepening night’s veil swallowed the whole forest and concealed Rian’s presence.

Only the campfires for the encamped main force pushed back the darkness in their immediate area.

On the four hilltops, campfires glowed faintly. Even on the lower slopes, on the paths between rises, and toward the small clearing where all the roads met, lights narrowed into columns. From a distance, they looked like webs holding light.

“Hm. Was I just being too jumpy?”

With that setup, if one side were ambushed, they could probably respond immediately. If you looked for a downside, it was only that the units posted on the hilltops and checkpoints were somewhat distant from the interior — but any loud noise would be heard by all, so it was hard to call that a serious flaw.

The real question was whether the sentries’ alertness was functioning properly.

The enemy was an elite force of the Empire. If you assume a single person could handle the equivalent of ten regular soldiers…

“They could be picked off one by one.”

Their victory had made them complacent; exhaustion from the long pursuit had peaked. And now they had full bellies — they might not even realize an executioner’s blade across their necks.

“I wish this was all just me overreacting.”

But the enemy was the Imperial army. They had concealed elite troops during the battle on the plains, used a mage, and prepared thoroughly. It was reasonable to think they might have engineered a reversal even during the retreat.

At that thought, the worst case flashed clearly through Rian’s mind.

“Gods, this is maddening.”

His eyes landed on the clouds that covered the sky like a blanket.

If it rained, the light that at least let friend from foe be identified would be blocked. In deep darkness, a numerically superior force could actually be at a disadvantage.

A chill ran down Rian’s spine.

Shadow troops — this environment was ideal for them to unleash a massacre. Maybe somewhere, someone was watching this place, plotting an ambush or assassination. Or perhaps both.

“If they disguise themselves as our men and hack in the dark… it’s the worst.”

There would be slaughter, each side suspecting the other. If they tried to behead Commander Mongclay in such a trap, there would be nothing to stop it.

“What should I do.”

As the imagining of near-annihilation grew, the tension swelled inside Rian until his head spun.

But not to the point of fainting. Instead, his mind cleared.

“Well, there’s only one thing to do: move.”

Rian decided he wouldn’t just sit and wait for the worst and hurried his steps toward the camp.

Tap-tap.

Maybe it would have been wiser to slip away from the battlefield altogether. They still treated him as “the curse,” had turned a blind eye and deaf ear to warnings about an ambush. He had no reason to risk his life struggling alone for those people.

Yet there was no flicker of wavering in Rian’s eyes. Only determination to do what he should do.

Not to save his comrades. Not to save the battalion commander either.

“I won’t run.”

He would not flee responsibility. He would not flee from his convictions. He would not flee from the things he had decided to protect — even if those things were the people who slandered and cursed him. If he chose to protect them, he would protect them.

With that resolve, Rian descended the slope and approached the brown horse tied near the camp.

“Sorry, but rest time is over.”

The brown horse snorted and shook its head the moment it saw Rian.

No matter how widely the troops were spread in pursuit, gaps were inevitable unless they had enough manpower to cover the entire forest.

Azrion’s forces numbered roughly between sixteen hundred and seventeen hundred.

To encircle the entire forest, they would need at least five thousand soldiers.

So it wasn’t hard for Gerard and the nine shadow operatives to bypass the forest and lie in ambush.

There was no need to go all the way to the forest’s edge for fear of being spotted; that area would be overrun with monsters drawn by the war, so detouring that far would be disadvantageous.

Gerard dug in with his unit near where the encirclement ended and lay in wait.

“Move.”

They rose and trailed Azrion’s soldiers under the cover of darkness.

Rustle.

They were all among the top thirty fighters in their units; their footsteps sounded like leaves swept by the wind.

The shadow troop had been established for ambushes, assassinations, and sabotage — this situation was just an extension of their daily training.

And the weather helped them.

“Maybe we can do more than assassinate.”

Gerard’s mouth twitched upward as he looked at the sky.

Beneath his dishevelled red hair, the gleam in his eyes was so vivid it might make one suspect demonic possession.

But Gerard was fully compos mentis.

Clouds gathered and gained weight. The moon and stars lost their light. Darkness deepened and thickened, seeming ready to swallow up shapes as it took hold of the forest.

If the forest lost all light, they could dismantle Azrion’s troops one by one, sow confusion, disguise themselves in the enemy’s armor, slip deep into their lines, and remove the enemy commander’s head with ease.

Two things would make all this possible:

For the sky to rain.
And for the enemy commander to be foolish enough to camp in the middle of the forest.

Gerard felt a strange excitement at the prospect of a reversal that crisis could create.

In his head he imagined himself burying Azrion’s soldiers in sheets of darkness, imagined Azrion’s men turning on one another in a bloody battle, imagined grasping the enemy commander’s head and returning home triumphant with his comrades.

If things went as he imagined, the blame for the mage escort’s failure could be shrugged off. They could lay the army’s defeat squarely on the commander, brand the petty nobles as traitors and have them killed, and weed out the cowardly soldiers who fled — forging a true shadow unit where only the strong survived.

“Is all power under the knight?”

I won’t argue with that. But power can place the knight beneath it. That is enough. If you cannot be a knight, have the power to wield force. Today, Gerard decided, he would offer Azrion’s soldiers as the sacrifice to fulfill that dream.

Ha!

Gerard didn’t bother to hide his burning desire; his expression reflected it plainly as he kept his distance from Azrion’s men.

And when he saw them gather to set up camp, he uttered a low groan.

“Hah!”

He did not believe in gods, but he felt as if the goddess of fortune wished him victory.

His men were puzzled by the expression Gerard had shown for the first time, unable to conceal their confusion.

“What’s wrong with him? Why is he like that….”
“Damn, did I stay for nothing? Suddenly it’s scary.”
“Maybe the restrain we held back because we thought we were going to die finally exploded into madness?”

A smile stretched up to Gerard’s ears under cold, sharp eyes — an expression that would make anyone think of horror first.

Gerard didn’t stop at the face.

“Listen. Fortune may grant us honor and rank.”

His unusual tone and excitement were strange to his men, yet his words made them imagine the possibility. They let go of their distrust and waited for him to continue.

Gerard obliged.

“We’re changing the assassination of the enemy commander into a campaign of annihilation.”

Assassination alone was already top-level difficulty; annihilation — his men’s disbelief should have been confirmed then, but Gerard poured oil on the fire.

“However — if it rains, annihilation. If not, carry on with the assassination. Understood?”

Pointing to the sky, Gerard’s words sketched vague futures that even his men could picture. They replaced doubt with conviction and decided to trust him.

““Understood.””

They swore their loyalty in low, coordinated voices. Gerard briefly explained the operation.

The operation would begin the moment the sentry on the target fell asleep. After confirmation, they would enter quickly, eliminate soldiers, don their armor as disguise, and then dismantle the forces one by one. If it did not rain, they would assassinate the commander at the center and withdraw. If it rained, they would strike the enemy’s center, incite them to slaughter one another, take out the commander in the chaos, and then kill every enemy they encountered to complete the annihilation.

“Any objections?”

Gerard finished and fell silent; his men answered with silence. Then one of them reported sighting a soldier herding his horse under a torch below the rise where they were hiding.

“There appears to be a patrol.”

Gerard and the others turned their gaze to the torchlight below the rise.

‘They must be exhausted from the relentless pursuit. Who has strength left for patrols? That tiny speck could ruin everything.’

Gerard ordered the man who first spotted the torch.

“Remove it.”

Clack-clack.

Rian used the horsemanship he’d learned from his adoptive father, Ellen Kade, to the fullest — taking a torch and winding along the crooked track.

Soothing and calming his tired horse, and minimizing hoof noise, the skills came in handy.

Clack-clack.

He walked the paths around the camp, thinking about likely ambush routes.

In truth, with forest all around, predicting an exact route was impossible. He only guessed roughly: the northwest opened onto the plains toward the Empire, so an ambush might happen somewhere to the south with the attackers fleeing northwards. But that wasn’t his main purpose in moving about.

‘Hm. After walking this much, I should have been noticed by now.’

By becoming bait for the enemy who might be lying in wait before they launched their operation, Rian could at least determine their positions and make an assault possible. That would buy time for his allies to prepare for an ambush.

‘The key is to lure them before the rain starts.’

As he turned to retrace the winding road—

Shreeek!!

A throwing knife, about the length of a fist, sliced through the dark and flew at Rian.