Linus's House (4)
The Imperial 8th Corps — the unit Linus belonged to — had only recently landed at the southernmost tip of the small Kingdom of Avoca.
Avoca was a peninsula nation that stretched out like a boot. A narrow sea was all that separated it from the Imperial capital of Calbassar, and the two had been close allies since time immemorial, traffic between them constant and familiar.
When the Demon King's army invaded, Avoca's forces could not hold. They fell back, and fell back again, until there was nowhere left to retreat but the sea.
The Empire responded by moving the entire 8th Corps to the rear of Avoca's royal army, under the banner of rescuing a vassal state. If Avoca fell, the enemy could sail a straight line all the way to Calbassar. The kingdom could not be allowed to collapse — not at any cost.
After coming ashore and joining with Avoca's troops, the 8th Corps drove north in high spirits. They made it a third of the way up the peninsula before the Demon King's army stopped them cold at Camel Pass. Magic and every kind of siege weapon filled the sky, and both sides dug trenches along the front and settled into a grinding stalemate.
At corps headquarters, the staff were tearing their hair out trying to determine which legion of the Demon King's army they were facing. They needed to know who was on the other side if they were going to estimate their strength and formulate a response. But there was no way of telling how many troops waited behind that godforsaken trench line. And if the enemy happened to be the elite 9th Legion that had vanished from Avoca's borderlands, pushing any further would be suicide.
Unable to advance, unable to retreat, locked in that deadlock — that was when Linus and Dian found each other in the frontline trenches.
"I'm Linus."
Linus took the hand Dian offered.
"You enlisted about a month ago, didn't you? I came in right around then myself. Let's look out for each other — we're the same class."
In truth, Dian had enlisted only a week earlier, when the 8th Corps was just putting together its landing fleet — the greenest of green recruits, and strictly speaking Linus's junior. But men were dying before they could last half a day in combat. Drawing seniority between privates of the same rank was a meaningless exercise.
"So," Dian asked around a mouthful of potato, "where are you from?"
"You wouldn't know even if I told you. Just know I come from a small fief in some backwater kingdom on the edge of the Empire."
"A fief? So you're a noble?"
"I was a serf's son."
"Then shouldn't you have been folded into a noble's levy? What are you doing in the Imperial army?"
"Our lord is a decent man, but incompetent in every other respect. I had no desire to follow him onto the battlefield and die a pointless death. So I volunteered for the Imperial army."
Dian cocked his head.
"That's weird. If you didn't want to die, why not just run? I doubt this place is any different from a noble's army."
"I couldn't do that. I can't sit back and watch the continent fall into chaos because of the Demon King's rabble."
"Yep. That's Linus, all right. I found the right one."
Dian muttered something Linus couldn't make sense of, and Linus gave him a dubious look.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing. All right then. I'll help you."
"Help me with what?"
That was when they heard it.
A long, whistling shriek cut through the air—
"Magic!"
Dian and Linus threw themselves to the floor of the trench just as a thunderous blast shook the entire position, and a cascade of dirt poured down over their heads.
The shriek came again — then a crash. Another whistle — another boom.
"Goddamn it. Those horned bastards."
Dian spat a curse, looking ruefully at the salt that had been dumped onto the ground and was now uneatable. Linus's potato had rolled some distance away, thoroughly filthy.
When the enemy's sporadic magical bombardment finally ceased, Dian and Linus stood and brushed themselves off.
"What a mess."
Dian clicked his tongue at the scattered pieces of soldiers who'd had the misfortune of catching a spell.
"Hey, Linus. You said you didn't want to die a dog's death, right? Then you'd rather survive to the end and put a stop to this unjust state of affairs, wouldn't you?"
"I... well, yes..."
Linus stammered, his mind still reeling from the grim spectacle of bodies blown apart.
"Good. Then stick with me. Let's get out of this godforsaken trench and go all the way to the Demon King's Castle. Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"You'll see if you follow."
"You insolent little shits! Do you have any idea where you are?!"
Battalion headquarters, behind the trenches. A staff officer was chewing out two soldiers who had barged in out of nowhere.
"We have a proposal for the battalion commander."
"Are your platoon leader and company commander both dead?!"
"We told them. They ignored us, so we came here."
Dian stood unflinching under the staff officer's blistering rebuke. Linus stood behind him, looking somewhat tense.
"What's going on out there?"
The battalion commander's voice came from inside.
"My apologies, sir. Two soldiers showed up claiming they have a proposal. It's bound to be nothing — a request for rear transfer over some minor wound, or something of the sort..."
"Commander! We'll capture an enemy prisoner!"
"Shut your mouth, you—"
"Let them in."
The staff officer, who had been shouting, had no choice but to usher them inside at the commander's order.
"Hrm."
Inside, the battalion commander studied Dian and Linus's faces carefully.
"You'll capture a prisoner, you say? Why?"
"The reason we can neither advance nor retreat is because we don't know who those people out front belong to, isn't it?"
"That's right."
"Then if we capture a prisoner and interrogate him, we'll know."
"That's also true. But how?"
"Give us permission first. Then I'll tell you."
The staff officers were stunned that a mere private would speak so boldly to a battalion commander. Linus was equally taken aback. But the commander asked calmly:
"Let me ask you one thing first. Going out to capture a prisoner in a situation like this is as good as suicide. Why would you take on something so dangerous?"
"We'll die just as surely sitting here. If we're unlucky, a catapult or a spell will kill us while we sit around twiddling our thumbs, and retreat isn't an option. If we get pushed any further, the sea route to Calbassar opens wide."
A gleam of interest entered the commander's eyes.
"Couldn't we request support from another corps?"
"We couldn't."
"Explain."
"The Empire doesn't have a reserve corps to spare for this front. If it did, would they have sent only a single corps? If anything, they'll treat this as a secondary theater because of the sea, and throw everything at defending the inland strongpoints connected by land. One way or another, our corps has to see this through right here."
The battalion staff officers exchanged startled looks. A mere private, thinking that far ahead?
"And I, for one, have no interest in sitting in a trench waiting to die without ever drawing my sword. If we can grab a prisoner, figure out which legion those are, and determine whether our corps can take them head-on — wouldn't that get us out of this shitty situation?"
The commander was silent for a moment, looking at Dian, then spoke.
"Your name is Dian, was it? A Private?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right. Approved."
"Commander! The risk is far too great!"
The commander shook his head at the staff officer's protest.
"The private is right. Our corps has to choose one of two things: push north from here, or end up at the bottom of the sea. That means we have to use every method available to us to push toward the better outcome. Approved. Dian, Linus. You two will bring back a prisoner."
"Thank you. We won't let you down."
Dian answered with complete conviction.
"And the method?"
"Ah, that's actually quite simple."
As Dian explained, the commander's composure, which he had maintained until now, wavered.
"That's insane..."
Dian grinned.
"Are you sure this is going to be all right?"
Just as dawn was breaking. The second-floor window of an abandoned farmhouse behind the trenches. Behind the camouflage netting covering the window, Linus asked anxiously.
"Yeah, yeah, I told you it's fine."
Dian snickered as he peered through the netting at the enemy lines.
"Write it down. Two men. East to north. Normal stride."
Half-convinced, Linus recorded Dian's observations in a notebook. The notebook was packed with a week's worth of observation logs — all of it concerning the enemy's alert posture.
After receiving the commander's approval, Dian had planted himself here and spent every waking hour scrutinizing the enemy position, writing down everything he saw. He had plotted it all on a map, calculated the optimal infiltration route, and today he was making a final check for any changes in the enemy's patrol patterns.
"Good, Linus. Same as always. If we go in today, we'll hit it just right."
"I can't help worrying whether this will actually work."
"What's worrying going to change? And this is exactly what you wanted — contributing to the peace of the continent."
Dian clapped Linus on the shoulder.
"Trust me and follow my lead. Then both of us will make it through this war with all our arms and legs attached."
"What on earth gives you that kind of certainty?"
"In me? What is that supposed to mean?"
"Let's go. If we're late, we'll waste another day waiting until this time tomorrow."
Dian and Linus came down from the farmhouse and moved along the trenches to the front line. They stopped at the starting point of the infiltration route Dian had selected and waited. A moment later, the sound they'd been waiting for arrived.
A long, whistling shriek—
Several streaks of blue light arced in from the allied rear and slammed into the ground just in front of the trench. As the spells struck and a thick pall of smoke billowed up, Dian shouted.
"Run!"
Dian and Linus scrambled out of the trench and sprinted toward the enemy at full tilt.
The whistle came again—
They had just entered the first smoke cloud when a second magical strike landed ahead of them along their path. Bursting through the first cloud, Dian and Linus vanished into the second. They kept running, hiding in the third and fourth bursts of smoke, drawing steadily closer to their target.
"This is insane... this is completely insane..."
Linus muttered without stopping as they punched straight through ear-splitting detonations and skull-rattling shockwaves. It was an extremely reckless maneuver — miss the timing and they could be killed by their own side's attack. But there was no other way to cross the empty wasteland between the two trench lines.
"We're there! That's it, Linus!"
After punching through the fifth smoke cloud, they threw themselves into a narrow patch of brush close to the enemy trench — their objective.
The shriek, then a boom. Another whistle, another crash. The allied magical bombardment swept over them, raked the enemy trench once, and then ceased.
Dian and Linus lay flat on their bellies under the brush and waited. The enemy trench, briefly stirred by what had looked like a pointless magical barrage, gradually fell quiet. Unaimed suppressive fire had become so routine that they seemed to have shrugged it off.
Glancing sidelong at the sun, Dian nudged Linus and signaled to move forward. After a week of watching until his eyes nearly fell out, he knew this time and this spot were when the enemy's guard was at its weakest.
Dian and Linus put daggers in their teeth and crawled slowly through the brush. They had to finish this quickly, before the patrol that made a wide circuit of the trench came back around.