Chapter 10: Counterattack

“Huh?”

Roland and Kaoru were in sync as they expressed their disbelief: Roland because he saw the seven children Kaoru had brought with her, and Kaoru because she saw Roland was fully prepared to come along with the soldiers he’d brought.

“It was already bad enough having you go, but why are you bringing kids into this as well?! The youngest one can’t be more than seven or eight!”

“Why is someone from the royal family coming with us?!”

Both of them retorted back and forth, attacking one another for their lack of common sense.

Unable to find a way to compromise on the sudden turn of events, they ended up leaving as one. All together, their effective fighting force consisted of Kaoru, the seven children who made up the Eyes of the Goddess, Roland, Francette, eight of the royal guards, and two drivers for the wagons—twenty people total.

Though Kaoru had warned the children they could die out here, she had no intention of putting them in that sort of danger. To prevent that outcome, she had her secret technique: to not give a damn and use everything she had. It wasn’t like Celes had given her any restrictions in exchange for all the cheat powers she’d received, though she was hoping she wouldn’t have to use them. She’d come up with all sorts of contingency plans, just in case.

Still, there was always a chance for the unexpected to happen. Things would become far worse, in more ways than one, if Roland were to die off. It wasn’t exactly ideal to show off her powers in front of people, no matter if they were soldiers, nobles, royals, or otherwise. Human greed knew no bounds, after all.

But it was too late to worry about that now. She was told that the royal guard and wagon drivers had already sworn their undying loyalty and wouldn’t reveal any of her secrets, but that didn’t matter. The royal family were the ones she didn’t want to know her secret the most and, lo and behold, the king’s brother was traveling along with their group.

The group from the royal palace was all on horseback, while Kaoru and the kids were traveling by wagon. The wagons weren’t anything fancy or extravagant like the nobles would use, but the type of covered wagons you’d find in a caravan. One wagon had Kaoru and the kids, along with some food and water, while the other wagon was packed full of food, water, feed for the horses, and a plethora of camping equipment. The reason Kaoru’s wagon had supplies as well was so she could escape with the children if the situation called for it, while the others would stay behind to hold off the enemy for as long as they could.

Even though she’d planned to go on foot and take care of this by herself, that Kaoru suddenly found herself traveling with this hodgepodge of a unit brought a scowl to her face.

It was the day after Kaoru and her group left the capital, and they’d just finished passing through a fairly developed town. From here on out it would be nothing but small villages ahead of them. There was no point in building up any large towns close to a country as small as Rueda, which didn’t have any significant industry going for it, so the area ahead of them was dotted with smaller settlements that existed only for the sake of agriculture.

It was around then that Kaoru and the others began preparing for what lay ahead. They instructed the inhabitants of every village they passed through to pack up the bare necessities of their personal belongings, as well as all the food on hand, and evacuate for the time being. The villagers would be able to come back right away, so they directed the people to only take what was important and hide in the mountains. They also went about asking the villagers they met where the wells and other water sources were, taking note of those locations. Judging by when the enemy was expected to arrive and how fast that army was moving, they made sure to stress how important it was to be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice before heading on to the next village.

There wasn’t a single person who didn’t know of Roland, the king’s brother, and if Kaoru (albeit reluctantly) also went so far as to introduce herself as an angel of the Goddess, there wasn’t a soul who opposed their idea. By giving potions to those who couldn’t move, whether due to injuries or illness, they were able to double the speed at which the villagers could prepare to make an escape.

Six days after leaving the capital—

When Kaoru’s group reached a village that was supposed to be around two days away from the encroaching army, they gave the villagers the same instructions to get ready to evacuate. The only difference this time was that they told this village to do so immediately.

Four of the eight royal guards stayed behind to assist and watch over the evacuation. The rest of the group left the wagons and horses behind as well and headed out on foot.

The reason they’d left half of the royal guards behind was because they wouldn’t have the luxury of being able to search the village at their leisure afterward. The four guards were insurance in the event the enemy sent out a scout or an advance party to the village before Kaoru and the others could make their way back first.

As they continued on their way the next morning, Francette returned to the group in an outfit that made her look like a simple village girl. She had the most stamina out of all the soldiers traveling with them, so she’d gone out alone to confirm the enemy’s location.

“The vanguard of the enemy troops were taking a short rest about two hours ahead of here. At the rate they’re moving, I would expect them to arrive in another six hours...”

Judging by it taking two hours for Francette to come back, she could move around four times as fast as it took for the enemy to march.

“It doesn’t look like there are any better spots farther ahead, and there’s always the chance they could make it here faster than we thought, so let’s head back to the gorge we passed by earlier and ambush them there.”

With a nod, everyone headed back along the road.

As Kaoru and the others retraced their steps, they’d pushed their way through one of the bumpy, out-of-the-way paths and made it up to a cliff that overlooked the road that ran through the gorge. The kids had trained their legs back when they were thieves...rather, back when they had to work extra hard to make a living, so they made it up without much trouble at all.

At the very least, there wasn’t anyone among them slower than Kaoru. She’d managed to get through the ordeal by downing potion after potion, but now they were all sloshing around uncomfortably in her stomach.

“They should be here any second now...” Kaoru muttered to herself, turning her attention from the road to look behind her.

There were all sorts of suspicious red and white glass spheres lined up there, all about the size of clenched fists, along with several tree branches around a meter in length, each of which had nets made of vines attached to the end of them. One of the royal guards had come up with the idea after Kaoru created the glass spheres and wondered aloud if there was any way to send them flying farther than when throwing them by hand.

“...They’re here.”

Francette doesn’t just have amazing endurance, she’s got eyes like a hawk as well... Dang, just how strong was that potion I gave her?

“It’s still not time for us to make our move,” Kaoru told the group, “so all I want you to do is stay calm and be careful not to be seen by anyone below us.”

The thirteen others silently nodded back in response.

The enemy forces gradually marched closer and closer, eventually advancing right below Kaoru and the others. They were getting ready to carry out their attack on the troops—but it wasn’t going to be against the ones at the front.

The Aligot army continued passing by right under their noses.

“Ah...” A slight expression of dull surprise escaped from Roland’s lips.

“Something wrong?” Kaoru asked.

“You see that group over there? I’m pretty sure they’re the commanders of this army. But I also caught a glimpse of people who looked like priests mixed in with them...and some were armed.”

Taking a look for herself, they definitely looked like priests. There were a few who looked like they could even be bishops, while the others wore simple cassocks, and all were outfitted with armor and weapons.

“So not only did Rueda let Aligot pass right through their country and try to hide it, now they’re even participating directly... My guess is that they’re planning on appealing to the people of the royal capital in the name of the pope and attempting to take the capital’s main temple under their control. That, or they were planning on capturing Kaoru in the chaos after they invaded Grua...”

Anger clouded the children’s faces after hearing what Roland had said.

It had been some time since the vanguard of the troops had passed them by, and the support troops bringing up the rear were almost directly under the cliff. Everyone in Kaoru’s group was in position on top of the cliff, waiting for her signal.

That was when she gave the order:

“Throw the white ones at both ends of the line of support troops!”

The members of Kaoru’s group stationed at either end of the cliff began using their homemade slingshots to launch the white orbs at the soldiers below. Booming explosions shook the earth as they made impact after impact with the ground. Pandemonium spread throughout the support troops. The soldiers at the front were desperately looking around for their assailants, but they wouldn’t be able to find Kaoru and the others right away, since they’d hidden up on the cliff.

“The red ones next! Fire!”

As the red orbs made contact with the ground, swathes of flame spread out as they shattered on impact. They kept up their bombardment using their slingshots and throwing the glass orbs by hand, fire enveloping the army’s wagons one after the other. Unlike the soldiers, it was no easy task for the wagons to move off the road, and they ended up trapped with nowhere to go because of the craters and fires from the explosions cutting off their paths.

The white orbs were packed full of a substance similar to nitroglycerin, their threshold for exploding lowered for the sake of safety. The red orbs, on the other hand, were firebombs brimming with a flammable jelly-like substance made up of napalm and naphtha which was designed to spontaneously ignite once it made contact with the air. Even if you tried dousing the flames in water, they just wouldn’t go out.

After focusing their attacks solely on the support troops, Kaoru barked out her next order.

“Launch the red and white orbs toward the back of their main forces!”

Though they knew they were being attacked from the cliff, the archers weren’t able to get any shots off at Kaoru and the others because they would immediately back away after throwing a glass orb. The soldiers couldn’t exactly scramble up the cliffside to get to them right away, either. The only thing the army could do was take the full brunt of the one-sided attack.

Kaoru had begun the attack by focusing only on the support troops, but slowly changed targets to the main body of soldiers in the center, causing them to fly into a panic. They raced forward in a desperate attempt to escape the blast zone, yelling at the soldiers in front of them all the while. The soldiers ahead realized what was going on and began sprinting for dear life, but couldn’t move fast enough due to the heavy armor they wore. Despite this setback, they were all frantic to escape the hellish gorge as fast as humanly possible.

It was only after the Aligot army had made it out of the gorge and cautiously caught their breath when they finally realized something: The support troops weren’t following them.

When the soldiers went back to check on them, the surviving support troops were standing in a daze beside the wreckage of their wagons. Said wagons had carried their food, water, feed for horses, arrows, spare equipment, camping goods, weapons, and all sorts of other supplies...and they’d lost almost all of it in the attack.

Around that same time, Kaoru’s group had used the mountain trail to get in front of the Aligot army, emerging back onto the main road and heading toward the village.

Despite having women and children with them, they still moved much faster than the heavily armored soldiers. Besides the energy the Aligot troops spent fleeing from the attack, the soldiers most likely had their hands full dealing with the loss of their support troops and trying to come up with countermeasures to cope with it as well. It was almost guaranteed they wouldn’t try moving anywhere else today. That’s why Kaoru determined they should have a whole day’s head start on the troops.

All that was left was for her to prepare their invitation to hell...

The villagers had already finished evacuating by the time Kaoru and the others returned, and they were greeted by the four royal guards they’d left on standby. Luckily for them, they didn’t have any run-ins with enemy scouts or advance parties.

“All right, I want everyone to get ready to move out. First, fill up on all the water you can. After I’m done with the well, you are absolutely not allowed to take any more water from it.”

Finished with her warning, Kaoru went house-to-house to check if the villagers had left any food or water behind. She either threw away the leftover water she found in bottles or pots, or instead poured a suspicious liquid into it. There was barely any food that hadn’t already been taken away, but she sprinkled this liquid over the little she managed to scrounge up as well.

When she finished checking all the houses, Kaoru headed out to the fields and began shoving all sorts of things into her Item Box.

After confirming that everyone had stocked up on water, she pulled out the notes she had taken the other day and visited each of the wells in the village, pouring more of the sketchy liquid into every one of them.

“All right, let’s get going!”

They retraced their steps and went back to the next village, now completely devoid of people since the evacuations had finished.

The wagons they initially came with had become lighter after using up some of their supplies, meaning that they could move at a pace faster than the Aligot army could ever hope to keep up with. They wouldn’t have to worry about the soldiers catching up to them, even if Kaoru took extra time to do some...”preparations” of her own.

They also took the chance to send one of the royal guards back to the capital as a messenger, asking them to relay a single message:

“Everything is going according to plan.”

“All our supplies have been destroyed?!” the general of Aligot’s northern invasion forces said, taken aback when he heard the news.

“Affirmative. We’ve gathered up what wasn’t burnt during the attack, but we’ve lost almost all our reserve weapons and outdoor camping gear. We only have enough water to last two days, and only about a day’s worth of food...”

“Even the siege weapons?!”

“Yes, sir...”

Their mission was to lay siege to Grua and storm the castle, and it had to be done before Balmore’s main forces returned. But even if the majority of the enemy’s troops were being distracted by the empire’s forces to the west, they’d have a hell of a time fighting against an enemy holed up behind their walls without proper siege equipment.

Most importantly, there wasn’t anyone stupid enough to wage a battle of endurance against an enemy they were supposed to be laying siege to. They’d estimated the capital would have less than 10,000 troops available, but that wouldn’t mean a thing if the besiegers didn’t have the supplies to support their own troops.

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 with 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 had never been an option for them. The fate of the empire was riding on this invasion, and their comrades to the west were risking their lives acting as a distraction for the brunt of Balmore’s forces. They couldn’t return home with the 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: all of the soldiers who’d taken water from the wells were now violently throwing up and suffering from severe diarrhea. Those who had happened to sample the food and water they’d 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 that no sane villager would agree to.

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 left 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 had sent to reach Rueda, the time it would take for them to prepare the supplies and the wagons, and the days it would take to get them here, 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 that wasn’t part of their initial secret agreement.

Though food and weapons 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 others 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 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 and execute 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 that 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 rations were cut to a quarter of what they had been, 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 should be enough to start dropping them like flies. Some of them will even drink the water from the wells, knowing 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 their heavy armor, so their only options were to leave it behind, or to have others help them. Either way, it would end up slowing them down. To an army, being burdened with the infirm and wounded was 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, and she stopped 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 getting 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 before heading straight 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 look 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 royal 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’d 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...