The thing was that I could totally empathize in the opposite case. If Siegfried suddenly revealed that he was a priest packing high-level miracles, then I’d grab him by the shirt and complain about all the jobs we’d done where that would’ve saved our bacon. I knew just how deep a hole I’d dug for myself.
It was true that I’d been following my former master’s request not to make my magic known, but she’d said not to abuse it, not hide it from every single person I met. After all, Margit and Kaya knew.
Fortunately, we hadn’t suffered any losses thanks to my restraint—I wasn’t so coldhearted that I’d keep the secret even at the cost of life and limb—and hadn’t lost anyone’s trust because we hadn’t failed any gigs yet. Or at least that was how I would have liked to view the situation, but it was true that I couldn’t avoid some huge fallout.
Back on Earth, my seniors had told me, “If you screw up, make sure to let people know. The longer you leave it, the worse it’ll become.” This creed had been something I’d made sure to drill into my juniors as it had been into me. I valued Siegfried’s friendship. What could I do?
“Hey, did you see that?” As I was taking my anger out on my shovel, Siegfried spoke up.
“Again, huh?” I looked over to where he’d indicated and saw a faint shadow. “Just the one, I think?”
“They’re not too tall. Mensch, maybe?”
“We’re too far to know.”
Since yesterday, we’d been receiving reports from our scouts and people up on the watchtower that they saw a shadow moving around the corners of the forest. I did a head check to make sure this wasn’t another childish prank, and it seemed like their punishment and subsequent assault had done the trick; everyone was present and accounted for. I factored in the Fellowship and the caravan, just to be extra sure, and there was no exception there either. It wouldn’t have been us anyway—we always traveled in pairs at least, so a single shadow would be weird.
I’d gone into the forest with some backup in case it was the enemy’s own reinforcements, but we couldn’t find hide nor hair of them. We couldn’t waste hours wandering the woods, so we decided to head out every time we caught sight of the mysterious figure. Only after half a day did I realize that they were toying with us. I didn’t know if this figure was a remnant of their forces or someone who’d come from afar, but they really knew how to push a guy’s buttons.
This had forced us into a bit of a corner. We didn’t know the enemy’s objective and now we couldn’t do anything without the possibility that they still had sights on us hanging over our heads. We were in this for the long term, so we couldn’t lose our patience and burn down the forest like I would’ve done with my old tablemates. I couldn’t leave the canton understaffed either, so I couldn’t take a big force with me to flush out our shadowy antagonist.
It was a textbook catch-22 situation.
If only we had all of the Fellowship with us. If those Fellows who’d stayed behind in Marsheim were here, we could get ten or so together and head into those woods. Another example of why playing defensive was tough. The job should’ve gone to some mercenaries or a formal army.
I hoped Margit would be back soon. Hopefully with an imperial patrol in tow, if not a whole war party. It would be so easy if we could just bring the fist of the state to bear.
“What’s the plan? I’m happy to head out if you need me to. I can take five Fellows or so,” Sieg said.
“No, leave it. They’re just trying to rile us up. If we waste energy chasing them our work will stall and fewer of us will be able to rest. It’ll make the night tough.”
Siegfried was just as tired as I was and itching to sort things out, but I decided to reel him in. Our trenches would make it more difficult for the enemy to attack. They were willing to show themselves if it meant we stopped working. That meant we needed to continue to annoy them by sticking at our work. When they finally had enough and came for us, then we’d welcome them with all of our available strength.
“Dammit. If only the forest was a bit closer,” Sieg muttered.
“It’s a windbreak, and the locals use it for lumber and such. It can’t be any closer. It’d be dangerous,” I replied.
“You really know everything, huh? Almost pisses me off.”
“You think?”
With his grimace, I wondered if I’d let too much slip.
It made sense that he’d wonder what kind of life you’d have to lead to learn what I knew. Sure, any fool could tell you a well led to water, but knowing how to effectively dig trenches and why man-made forests were placed on the windy side of settlements were things that only an expert in the field ought to have known. We lived in an era where it was tough to accumulate random trivia.
Earth was damn near swimming in information. Films and manga were chock-full of little tidbits of knowledge, and if you wanted to learn more about something you could count on the shiny auxiliary brain in your pocket to rustle up a dozen different answers to your question in a matter of seconds if you knew how to ask correctly. I’d never given much thought to the omnipresence of information back on Earth, but here even a scrap of knowledge could be overwhelming. People could get real distrustful of anyone who seemed to know too much, and the threshold for “too much” was low.
Heroic songs and war epics detailed battles, but they weren’t exactly fine-grained tactical or historical treatises. Back on Earth, fiction could open doors to all sorts of knowledge. And it seemed like I had been reborn in a world where that information was useful. That was all. But to an outsider, it was hard not to look like a charlatan—or something more sinister.
“Siegfried, listen, I—”
“I know, I know. You were a noble’s servant or whatever, yeah? I know, so shut up and dig. You’re the one who ordered this whole thing.”