With him being so up front about his desire not to listen, all I could do was obey. I sighed inwardly and picked up my shovel once more.
[Tips] It isn’t all too difficult to study and learn specialist knowledge. However, many of those same specialists keep their secrets to themselves in order to maintain their hegemony. Silence is golden, as they say.
Cantons in early summer usually buzzed with activity, but the canton that the messenger group arrived at was nothing like normal.
“This is...”
Riding alongside another rider on one of the horses, the arachne couldn’t hide her displeasure at the sight. She pinched her nose.
“Big Sis...”
“You don’t need to protect me. Whatever happened is already over,” Margit said, trailing off a bit.
She hopped off the horse that her chosen bodyguard, Yorgos, was on. Castor seemed a little tired from carrying him, but that was no real surprise—a two-meter-tall ogre with metal bones to boot weighed as much as a knight in heavy armor. Yorgos’s intimidating presence correlated well to his size, so Erich’s beloved horse had done a good job bringing him all this way. Despite getting on in years, Castor was still quick enough to keep up with the fastest warhorse. He was truly a fine steed. Of course, keeping such a powerful horse healthy was an ordeal in itself, requiring a lot of water and feed.
The anomaly that Margit had sensed was the fact that the air wasn’t filled with the cheerful laborers’ songs, but with crying and groaning. She had wrinkled her nose because instead of the fragrant smell of earth and growing crops, she could smell burning wood and the whiff of decay. Instead of children playing in the paths, there were bodies left to rot by the roadside.
This was a sight that most adventurers acclimated to early on, but one that the Fellowship hadn’t often seen.
“What... What’s going on?!”
One of the younger Mottenheim folk, astride his own unbroken horse, split from the party and exclaimed his own confusion. Given one of the canton’s fastest horses and charged with delivering the missive to the magistrate, he was none other than Giesebrecht’s son-in-law. It wasn’t difficult to see why this young man, wed to Firene’s older sister and charged with leading the next generation, would be chosen for this job. There was danger in Mottenheim, and it was more convincing if someone in a position of power was the one to entreat the higher-ups for aid—especially if the first messenger had died in the process.
An amount of decorum was required to make negotiations and receive orders, so it made sense for someone with decision-making power to be present. If the canton had sent along someone with no standing, then they would have proven no more useful than a slow messenger pigeon. To show the desperation of their petition, this man had been chosen for his ability to make quick decisions when the time came. Having formerly worked as a tax collector for a magistrate, even Margit could tell that he was capable and shrewd.
Over the course of their journey, he had decided that they should stop at local cantons in order to gather information and take the opportunity to rest their horses before their fatigue posed further complications. As they traveled, he had chosen routes along flat land so that they could easily spot approaching enemies. Margit praised him for his expertise, and he modestly replied that a tax collector needed to know the lay of the land. In his previous job, he had learned the local geography and learned what tax would be appropriate for them.
But now, his face was pale with shock. He had been at the forefront when giving instructions when his own canton had been beset by danger, but even he couldn’t bear the sight of a canton being ravaged by a one-sided assault.
“Oh! You’re from Mottenheim!”
From a burning house came a small, withered old man, smoke still lingering around him. That wasn’t quite right. He only looked so small and fatigued because of the soot, exhaustion, and resignation etched upon him. His expensive clothes were singed and torn. His body, once so sturdy, looked exhausted. When he finally stood alongside the mensch messenger, the group realized just how tall he actually was.
“What happened here, good gentleman? What is this?!” Giesebrecht’s son-in-law demanded.
“We don’t know either... Bandits just appeared out of nowhere...”
Despite the battery of questions, all he could say about the tragedy was that it was a surprise assault. The brigands had come in the night and set his home ablaze. When the Watch came with weapons in hand, half of them were killed. The old man was trapped inside with his son—the village head—as well as his daughter-in-law, who both perished in the flames.
This much seemed to be nothing more than a bandit gang’s usual modus operandi—something that, sad to say, was all too common—but what happened next didn’t follow the usual script. Not only had they not taken any of the women, they hadn’t even raided the stores for food or valuables. It seemed like their only goal was to kill. They set fire to the doors of homes and slaughtered any who tried to escape. It was only when the sun rose that they finally left.
This wasn’t normal. It was like cooking up a big dinner only to leave the house with it untouched—it made no sense. Piecing together their objective was daunting beyond belief. Murder, assault—these were things that one did to achieve some sort of goal.
Margit was smart, but she was neither a strategist nor a tactician. She couldn’t suss out the workings of a group of dozens at the best of times, and this was a particularly odd scenario. Who would brutally assault a canton and then slip away come sunrise? She was a normal woman who had never had cause to wargame out an explanation before. She could make a few deductive leaps; she could pose theories, but she had no idea what the right answer would be.
The arachne gritted her teeth in frustration that the magic tool her partner had made didn’t allow her to transmit her voice from quite this far. Wishing to get moving quickly, she asked for some water before suggesting they make their way onward swiftly.