“I told ’em not to play on this side of the canton,” he replied, scratching his head with his free hand.
One half of the kids on the ground looked ready to cry, while the expressions on the others’ faces broadcast their shared foul mood. The only one who looked completely unfazed was the one my comrade had half hoisted in the air. By the look of him, he was the oldest of the group and the one with all the chutzpah. Judging by the scene, the twerp had ignored all of our warnings and run off to play on the northern edge of the canton. Wait... I thought, catching myself. There was a basket nearby, and other trace signs that he’d been trying to head into the forest.
I was proud to say that in both of my lives I had been a well-behaved boy, so I didn’t really understand what had been going through his head, but it seemed like many children seemed to enjoy acting absolutely contrary to anything an adult ever told them. Heinz had been similarly inclined until our incensed parents scolded him, and every year some youngster or two would injure themselves in some foolish scheme. Despite Margit’s mother’s warnings—said with a devilish and utterly terrifying grin—to not go into the forest lest the wolves eat you, there were still a few kids who wandered off never to return. A simple warning would never suffice to stop an idiot from walking into danger.
Maybe the kids here had been playing a game of chicken in the face of the adults’ warnings. I imagined the ones on the ground were either victims of peer pressure or had tagged along out of concern for their leader.
At any rate, I was relieved that the alarm bell had been sounded and we had come here before they could leave. We could hear their excuses later. First things first; we’d have to send someone with quick legs to report the false alarm.
[Tips] Children are by nature loose cannons. Not even their parents have an easy time restraining such creatures, motivated as they seem to be by an unparalleled death drive.
The incident with the children went pretty much as I expected. They had been playing a game of chicken. They also wanted to pick as many raspberries as they desired, because no one had been able to get at them for a little while. Whoever did the best would be crowned hero of the forest.
On behalf of the canton, Mister Giesebrecht apologized—he looked terribly sorry and had even prepared a few bottles of alcohol to help smooth things over—and looked ashamed throughout the whole explanation. Who could blame him? It was a pretty damning thing to have happen under his watch.
These kids’ situation wasn’t completely alien to us. The Fellowship was full of adults who hadn’t lost sight of their childish dreams. A number of the guys gave wry smiles as they remembered similar episodes from their own childhoods. Luckily no one was hurt and so we in the Fellowship gave the typical response of those who decide to let things slide: “Kids will be kids.”
If the children in question had said this, they would be branded cheeky upstarts, but as the ones who were in the position to forgive, it was a really handy one-liner to pull out. As long as the adults gave the naughty kids a proper telling off, then all would be fine. The kids had been punished now, so I expected they wouldn’t do it again. Getting pantsed and tied to the watchtower in plain public view was a hell of an attitude adjustment. From where I stood, the punishment seemed like the right combination of physically harmless and psychologically grave. The shame wouldn’t fade even when they grew up, that was for sure.
Whatever the case, the whole rigmarole had confirmed quite handily that the people of Mottenheim could leap into action during an emergency, so this had wrapped up about as well as could have been expected.
I accepted the liquor from Mister Giesebrecht. While everyone prepared dinner—the Fellows visibly hankering for the moment we were in the clear to start popping bottles—the bell sounded again.
For the first few seconds it was the triple peal, but it immediately switched to a frantic ringing. Ahh crap... Three rings was the pattern we’d agreed upon for an abnormality, such as when someone activated the clappers, but frantic ringing was a warning sound for disasters like fires.
I threw down the bowl I’d just been given and picked up Schutzwolfe, which I’d left resting by the table. Without a moment to spare, I kicked open the door and headed outside. I was only wearing a breastplate, but I didn’t have the time to don the rest of my armor.
The people of Mottenheim looked a little sluggish thanks to the afternoon’s hassle. I couldn’t have that, so I roared into the crowd.
“We are under attack! Assume defensive positions! MOVE!”
Ugh, dammit... Talk about the boy who cried wolf, huh...
That little fable had ended with a boy being gobbled up, but we couldn’t allow a single loss.
Someone gimme a break... Our enemy were some lucky bastards.
[Tips] There are different patterns for ringing warning bells, but in the western Empire, single peals of the bell indicate warning or an assembly. Three peals of the bell signal a call to assume defensive positions. Rapid ringing indicates an enemy attack or a fire.
There was a reason I had deemed Necromancy a powerful skill despite it being in its own stand-alone category. As I’d mentioned before, animating corpses was pretty damn weak on its own. Zombies had decaying flesh, stiff joints, and a natural odor that rendered stealth a nonoption. Their one virtue was that the sort of wounds that could kill a person wouldn’t drop them. When chopped to bits, they writhed uselessly on the ground. If I were being honest, Necromancy wasn’t worth the effort of stockpiling corpses, let alone the damage it’d do to your popularity.