Ten Days to the First Line
“Urgh… uuuurgh…!”
“P-please, spare me…!”
“Hup! Huuup…!”
The four men who had been dragged out to the training ground were enduring an experience entirely new to them—something they had never suffered before.
Watching the four soldiers move in a line, Arteon allowed the corner of his mouth to lift.
“If it’s too hard, you can rest. I’ll take you on whenever you like, so feel free.”
“No, sir…!”
Once they reached the training ground, Arteon worked them like dogs.
It was not a metaphor. He truly made them walk on all fours.
The only difference was that he forced them to keep their knees hovering just a hair above the dirt as they crawled forward.
Strolling slowly beside them, Arteon spoke.
“The moment a knee touches the ground, you die. If you think I’m bluffing, you’re welcome to show me the courage to put a knee down.”
All four shook their heads like madmen.
They had seen, with perfect clarity, what happened the one time Raphelson’s knee had brushed the earth.
J-just kill me already…!
What the hell kind of torture is this…?
It barely qualified as training.
The instant they assumed the position, their entire bodies began to tremble as if seized by fever.
Arteon watched them shudder like aspen leaves and smiled again.
It was one of the training methods he had devised years later, after becoming a platoon leader and experimenting with every approach he could invent—usually while staring at squad members who looked ready to die.
“On your feet.”
They sprang up the moment the order left his mouth.
At last they looked as though some real discipline had been beaten into them.
“If you’ve got a problem, feel free to come at me the way Bert did. I’ll accept a challenge anytime.”
“N-no, sir!”
“Absolutely not, sir!”
The men shouted, frozen stiff.
The image of Bert lying on his bunk—face so ruined no one could recognize him—flashed through every mind.
Just then—
“S-Squad Leader. I brought water.”
“Hand it out to them. From now on, you’re training with us.”
“Yes, sir!”
Graphil, who had already chosen Arteon’s side without hesitation, answered at once.
The boy was sharp; he had already figured out that Arteon hated anyone who hemmed and hawed.
If you weren’t going to follow, you raised the flag of open rebellion—
Or you answered instantly, no second thoughts.
That was Graphil’s reading of Arteon’s character, and the reading was dead accurate.
Arteon lined the four soldiers up at once.
The three besides Graphil looked like hell, but he ignored it.
“From now on, wake-up is the moment the first watch steps out for sentry duty. No exceptions. Memorize that.”
“T-the first watch, sir? What are we supposed to do once we’re up?”
Zalbarog, the one with a scar cutting across his left eye, asked.
Arteon answered.
“Train, obviously. In your current state you’d just go out to the battlefield and die. So we drill in three sessions—morning, noon, and evening.”
“T-train? It’s pitch dark at that hour. You can’t even see in front of your face.”
“And the wind’s like knives. One wrong move and you’ll freeze to death.”
The others started to push back.
Given the barren north, their complaints weren’t entirely empty.
But—
“If you’ve got a problem, come at me.”
“……”
One sentence from Arteon ended every objection.
Then Arteon let his thoughts turn to the road ahead.
To slip free of their interference… I need greater strength.
The high-ranking bastards of the Empire.
The ones who treated men like chess pieces—used and discarded without a second thought.
Even if I killed Moldrek, nothing would change.
The real problem was the people standing behind him.
In the end they would keep feeding soldiers into the grinder for the sake of their own power.
Only by maintaining a carefully measured tension in the north could they play the “politics” they wanted.
There was only one way to escape that fate.
I have to grow stronger.
Grow strong enough to unify the entire disputed north under one will.
Of course they would try to stop him.
But if he became powerful enough to brush those obstacles aside, that was all that mattered.
“First…”
The road was long, but he would deal with what stood right in front of him.
Arteon murmured the words like a vow.
“Not only me… the entire unit has to become stronger.”
Being used and dying like dogs once was more than enough.
Arteon clenched his fist.
At that moment—
“Squad Leader Arteon.”
“……?”
A soldier approached across the training ground and called his name.
When Arteon turned—
“The platoon leader is calling for you.”
“……?”
There was no reason he could think of for a summons.
Following the soldier to the 4th Platoon Leader, Arteon could only say—
“……Would you repeat that once more?”
—with a face gone hard as stone.
Benhard’s battlefield was broadly divided into five fronts.
From the First Line to the Fifth Line.
There were small differences in scale and terrain, but nothing truly significant—
except for the First Line.
“You’re ordering us to the First Line, sir?”
“That’s right. The recent fighting left the First Line critically short of men. Orders came down to draw troops from every line… and our 4th Platoon has been chosen.”
Damn it all.
Arteon now understood why 4th Platoon Leader Hendris looked so grim.
Unlike the other lines, the First Line was open plain in every direction.
They had piled corpses and rocks into makeshift barricades, but the defenses were barely worth the name.
Which was why—
The battlefield that produces the most casualties.
It was known throughout the north as the place every soldier dreaded most.
Even so—
“When do we depart?”
“We move in ten days. There shouldn’t be any fighting before then, so rest properly and prepare.”
“……Understood.”
There was no way to refuse an order already issued.
And yet—
The First Line…
It was the most dangerous ground in Benhard, but danger also meant opportunity in equal measure.
The timing is earlier than I wanted, but…
He might be able to accelerate every plan he had laid far beyond the original schedule.
A sharp light flashed in Arteon’s eyes.
Only ten days remained until they reached the First Line.
And in those ten days there was work that had to be done.
Arteon headed straight for the barracks where his squad waited.
“Everyone form up. I have an announcement.”
At a single word the squad gathered in seconds.
Even Bert—face so swollen the original features were unrecognizable—was no exception.
Looking at men who now stood far more tense than on the day they first met, Arteon spoke.
“In ten days we move to the First Line.”
“……Sir?”
“The First Line?”
“W-wait, our sector is the Fourth Line, isn’t it?”
“Wha… do… you… mean…? W-why… are… we… going… there…?”
Even Bert forced the mangled words out through ruined lips.
But—
“The order has already been given. It can’t be changed. The entire 4th Platoon is relocating.”
Arteon looked over the men in front of him.
“So for the next ten days… we learn how not to die.”
“……Sir?”
“It’ll be hell, so follow with everything you’ve got.”
The cooperative techniques he had inherited and refined from Wolfhart’s knowledge.
Within ten days—
I’ll burn them into their bodies no matter what.
Arteon clenched his fist tight.
Whoooooosh—!
The occasional snowstorm that swept across the plain seemed to bare the true face of the north.
A breath of pure death that stole every living thing it touched.
In the darkness after sunset, inside a howling blizzard, a lone man stood staring into the distance.
“……”
The First Line.
A battlefield where the Empire’s dogs and the Kar tribe had been locked in stalemate for years.
Kar warlord Bractus fixed his gaze on that line as if he meant to burn a hole through it.
Then—
“Bractus!”
“What is it?”
When his deputy approached, Bractus turned his head.
The deputy spoke.
“A command has come down from the Taman.”
Among the Kar, “Taman” meant a commander who issued orders.
Bractus regarded his subordinate.
“He wishes to advance the timing of the attack.”
“Many warriors are already wounded. We can barely hold as things stand, and the Taman wants us to rush even this?”
“According to fresh intelligence, the enemy’s reinforcements will be delayed.”
“……Is that so.”
Even so, their own situation was no better.
The previous battle had bled both sides white.
And yet—
How many warriors’ lives did they squeeze dry just to buy this scrap of information?
Bractus’s expression hardened.
He knew there were Imperial spies who fed them intelligence.
He also knew that every time they purchased those secrets, the cost was steep.
To raise that coin, the tribe’s warriors bled and sweated until they had nothing left.
“……This time.”
If they could seize the First Line—
We will no longer have to pour our warriors’ blood for the sake of old men.
The enemy had no reinforcements coming?
Their own condition was equally poor, but—
“Turak.”
“Yes, Bractus.”
The deputy called Turak bowed his head.
In a low but iron voice, Bractus said—
“With this battle… we will take the First Line and make it ours.”
At that unyielding tone, Turak simply nodded.
“Cooperative… techniques, sir?”
“What is that?”
“Joint tactics. Something along those lines.”
Raphelson answered Graphil’s question from the side.
Zalbarog, listening, furrowed his brow.
“When the snow is heavy it comes up to your shins—moving at all is hard enough. Can cooperative techniques even work in this north?”
“Of course they can.”
Arteon cut the doubt short and set the weapons he had brought onto the ground.
“From now on you switch to weapons that match your roles, and you master them.”
“……What is all this?”
“Looks like you just hauled whatever was rolling around in the warehouse.”
What Arteon had laid out were weapons that had not even been properly maintained.
Two axes large enough that swinging them one-handed looked awkward.
Two shields riddled with holes big enough for fingers to slip through.
And a single bow.
Not one of them was whole—yet—
“Bert. Pick up those axes and come at me.”
“……Sir? I’ve never used axes in my life.”
“You’ve swung clubs and blades before, haven’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“Quit whining and pick them up. I only want to see whether you can swing the damn things.”
“Something this light? Swinging’s no problem.”
Bert scooped the two axes off the ground.
They were heavy, no question—but—
“I don’t think I’ll have any trouble using them, sir.”
“Good.”
Arteon nodded.
Any of the others would have needed both hands just to lift those weapons; Bert was built differently.
Then Arteon called the rest of the squad one by one.
“Raphelson, Zalbarog. Each of you take a shield and stand on either side.”
“……Us, with shields?”
“That’s right. And saw your spear shafts in half—use them for thrusting only.”
Next—
“Graphil.”
“Yes, sir!”
“From this moment you put the spear down and shoot a bow. For the next ten days you’ll do nothing but archery training. Remember that.”
“……”
Suddenly made into an archer, Graphil could not hide his shock.
He had never loosed a bow in his life.
But their preferences meant nothing.
Ten days from now…
If they kept fighting the way they always had, the entire squad would be wiped out.
No one understood the laws of the northern front better than Arteon; of that he was certain.
He continued.
“For the next ten days, consider yourselves already dead.”
He would not allow the first men assigned to him to be annihilated.
And—
This coming battle…
Because the front was so brutal, even a modest achievement—
Could rocket me upward.
Remembering the killing fields of the First Line, Arteon’s eyes sank into a gravity deeper than any he had shown before.