Chapter 79 - 7-5
In the southeastern part of Siddim, on the northern side of the forested region known as the "Dark Forest," stand the Twin Forts.
These are two forts newly constructed according to the plans of the Count of Carossa, and the gap between them is not wide. They are positioned as if they were a gate entering the Kingdom of Siddim. That is precisely their purpose; the trees of the Dark Forest have been deforested to a certain extent to lure enemies toward this gate.
That said, the outer perimeter of the northern edge of the Dark Forest is long.
It is difficult to predict where the enemy will emerge. Enemies appear from unexpected places, and even if they were to run behind the gate, the fortresses of Ganlord, Kraff, and Belgau stand in a line behind the forts.
In front of the Twin Forts, at a position where the forest can be seen in the distance, the tents of the Siddim soldiers were lined up.
While walking between the tents, the Commander-in-Chief of the Siddim Army, Sedias Thora, narrowed his eyes.
It was a day with a blue sky and a pleasant breeze.
In the forest, the young leaves of the broad-leaved trees glowed a yellowish-green, looking as if powder had been sprinkled over the bubbling shapes of the branches. Here and there, coniferous trees grew in clusters, mottling the patterns of the trees and casting the forest in shadow.
Ahead of where Sedias Thora was walking, there were four men clad in animal furs. They were sitting cross-legged on the ground. Since they were direct vassals of His Majesty, in terms of rank, they were equal to Sedias. Originally, there was no need for them to bow.
However, the chiefs of the Dark Forest clans bowed their heads so low their foreheads nearly touched the ground.
Sedias lowered himself to the ground with some effort and, imitating the chiefs, sat cross-legged.
"I speak to the chiefs," Sedias said. "I am the Chief of the Siddim Plains, Sedias Thora. I am the first to serve His Majesty the King."
"Tokeya, Chief of the Three Clans."
"Kito, Chief of the Three Clans."
"Brutius, Chief of the Two Clans."
"Jimari, Chief of the Two Clans."
The four men sitting cross-legged there raised their faces simultaneously.
With the greetings concluded, Sedias immediately got to the point.
"I believe you are already aware of what I wish to ask of you, sirs."
He looked over the faces of the men, who wore animal skulls on their heads.
"As for us," Tokeya sighed. "What we worry about are the soldiers you have brought. We do not mind if they become a hindrance, but should they fall into crisis, we may not be able to save them."
"Due to the nature of the operation, that will be the case," Sedias said. "I have instructed them that once they enter the forest, they must survive by their own skill. To put it plainly, my soldiers are decoys. I have told them to become targets of flesh. And I must say the same to you, sirs."
"You speak quite plainly," Kito said with a smile.
"This is not, of course, a request for you to die. It is a request to live—to survive, to confound the enemy, and to continue instilling fear. If you find the enemy, hide and attack. You do not need to think about defeating or annihilating them. I expect a battle where you kill a single enemy and then flee, waiting for another opportunity. It pains me to say this, but the enemy's advance likely cannot be stopped in the forest. Therefore, I want you to bring the enemy before our eyes."
"Communication with your side will be cut off; what of that?" Brutius moved his face.
"I can only believe that you and my soldiers will do your best."
"In other words, you are telling us to fight our own fight."
The fourth chief, Jimari, spoke energetically and stood up. As if prompted, all the men there stood.
The clan chiefs turned on their heels with indifference, without farewells, and walked toward the forest across the empty field. Only Tokeya turned back as if remembering something,
"Oh, Great General, whatever you do, do not set foot in the forest,"
he said with a smile.
The Chief of the Siddim Plains nodded.
The forest before his eyes would likely become a demonic realm that greedily swallowed soldiers.
Sedias believed he understood that.
On the southern side of the same forest, the one commanding the Kosa army was Pusiteto.
Until then, Pusiteto, along with Kushitante, King of the Tawaru, had been exerting himself in the dismantling of the southern nations at the confiscated villa of the Koroi Emperor.
Then, a summons came from Great King Geraha.
"As I thought, it has come."
Kushitante, the Tawaru chieftain, looked puzzled.
"Go, Pusiteto. Perhaps from now on, we shall walk separate paths. But that is fine. Kosa is Kosa, Tawaru is Tawaru. The era of acting in such solidified groups has ended. Great King's Kosa Empire will now become one people, with ethnicities mixed together."
"Haa. Is that how it is?" Pusiteto was a pale, fat man. He spoke in his naturally quiet voice. "I thought perhaps the Great King still suspected the Tawaru."
"Do not ever let that slip out over there, you hear? Anyway, this is for the best. Take Hazab with you. Despite being a southerner, that man looks happiest when he is fighting in the field."
"Is that alright? He is a man loyal to the chieftain."
"It doesn't matter. Also, do not say 'chieftain.' Call me the King of the Tawaru."
"I would prefer to call you the King of Koroi, though."
Kushitante stroked his bald head and looked at Pusiteto.
"Thinking that I will no longer hear your flattery makes me feel a bit lonely. Pusiteto... return alive. I shall fulfill the dream of the Tawaru here."
"Yes. I look forward to it."
"I believe you know, but do not forget the name Yugis Necrat. If you find him, bring him back alive. He is the man who stepped on my head."
"I will remember."
Pusiteto returned to the plains with Hazab. Waiting for him was the Great King's elder brother, Mozu Wolf.
As for what Mozu had been ordered to do, he was the master of the woodcutters.
He was to clear a path through the Dark Forest to Siddim.
The nations of the plains viewed this forest as sacred and were supposed to have forbidden people from entering at will. However, it seemed they could not defy Great King Geraha. By the time Pusiteto arrived, they had already been providing personnel with a positive attitude toward cooperation.
"May I see the Great King?"
When Pusiteto asked, Mozu, who sported a black beard, shook his head.
"The Great King is in the east now."
"The east? He is not here?"
"No need to worry, he will return soon. Our role is to prepare everything so that work can begin immediately upon his return."
Through repeated discussions with Mozu Wolf, Pusiteto hammered the operation into his head.
In short, they would push through the forest with a massive army.
With that momentum, they would seize the forts in the southeast of Siddim.
Pusiteto found it interesting. Pusiteto was a man known as a veteran general among the Tawaru, but this was his first time with such an operation.
What was good about it was the scale. The soldiers entrusted to him numbered approximately one hundred thousand. The main force consisted of southerners, with many mercenaries from Koroi and the surrounding areas. If these were turned into combat engineers, a splendid road would be made in no time to the country called Siddim.
Horses would surely flow into the north as a black torrent. Pusiteto wanted to see that. The greatness of Great King Geraha was that he knew well what the people of the grasslands wanted to see.
Pusiteto himself did not enter the forest, but sent the soldiers who had become laborers ahead in the direction of progress. Rather than fixing a single point for the tip of the work, he established work sites ahead, as if carving a dashed line, having them deforest trees to connect the roads. Like stepping stones leaping across a river, he placed soldiers ahead: dot, dot, dot. He would then extend those dots and connect them to the dots before and after to make a single line. That line was, in other words, the road.
The engineering units dispatched to various points were attacked.
Not at the tip of the road construction aiming for Siddim, but a unit in the middle.
—A unit consisting of two hundred men vanished entirely.
This was the report Pusiteto received.
"Were they taken away?"
"Some may have been taken away," said Hazab, who had compiled the report. "There are traces of combat, and eight corpses have been found."
Eight out of two hundred. Even for an enemy attack, the situation was strange. Nearby units went out to search. However, it seemed those units were not returning either.
At each deforesting site, escort soldiers were present. They should have been conducting meticulous reconnaissance. Despite this, what did it mean for two hundred sturdy men to vanish? If one could think of a reason, they were lured somewhere by some method.
—It is better not to judge immediately.
Pusiteto became cautious. This was not a battle on the plains. It would be dangerous if he did not proceed while learning about warfare in the forest.
"I will send reinforcements. Find out what happened."
"Understood."
A few days later, the reinforced investigation team vanished. Hearing the report, Pusiteto's mind entered a combat state. There was no longer any room for doubt; though hidden in the forest and unseen, the battle had begun. What foolishness to have overlooked it.
"The entire army will aim for Siddim," Pusiteto decided in a low, echoing quiet voice. "We will move in a tight formation and break through the forest. Hazab, we shall lead the army."
"General, the report is not finished yet—"
"What?"
"Large-scale attacks began yesterday, and combat has broken out in various places."
"Various places? Specifically where? The front line is..."
"There is no front line; even if there is, it is fragmented. Enemies are hiding throughout the forest. Far from the units coordinating, we are in a situation where we do not even know each other's locations."
Pusiteto's face must have turned pale. Hazab, conversely, had a reddish-black face.
Those on the scene were likely angry and excited, like Hazab.
"If there is no front line, then we shall make one!"
Pusiteto shouted in a loud voice that would have been unthinkable for him normally.
Hazab looked up at Pusiteto with wide eyes.
"We will march to the tip of the road and establish a base there! We will make a road. We will make a splendid road where we can grandly welcome the Great King!"
Though called the Dark Forest, sunlight filtered through abundantly.
Light and forest, leaves and flowers, vines and trunks, and shadows. For example, most of the leaves had nearly the same shape. Despite that, people could not find a law of fixed patterns in the forest's scenery. Dark places and places hit by light were mixed haphazardly and indiscriminately. This chaotic camouflage was likely the very essence of the vulgarity of life. It was a forest of miscellaneous trees.
Everything was engaged in a struggle to survive. There were no laws, no ethics. Only humans attempted to bring rules into such a place. This was a land where any barbarism was permitted in order to survive even a little longer.
Many southerners had entered this alien land.
Many were from the wealthy great nation called Koroi. They remembered the situation where Koroi's nobles and merchants monopolized the money. Money flowed only among the upper class of Koroi, drifting a sweet scent and dripping droplets. Those of the lower class quenched their thirst with those droplets.
That flow had changed recently.
The Kosa army entered the city, and the river that flowed to the upper class dried up.
The lower classes of Koroi caught the scent sensitively. Money was about to flow in a different direction. Those who saw that the source seemed to be in the nations of the plains scrambled to buy horses and headed for the plains.
Great King Geraha Wolf of Kosa had once felt gloomy considering the effort and cost of using southern soldiers for the northern conquest, but circumstances had changed since then. Now, upon hearing that Kosa required infantry, southerners rushed there of their own accord.
The Kosa people were strict about payment to a nervous degree.
They surely did not want to be slandered as stingy. The amount was about thirty percent higher than the rewards previously considered appropriate. Moreover, they certainly paid on the due date.
The woodcutting sites of the Dark Forest near the nations of the plains took on the appearance of a great boom.
Taverns in the city-states were overwhelmed by the influx of customers. Many could not enter the walls of the city-states. A pleasure district made of tents appeared on the plains.
What was supplied in the open-air pleasure district was not just the liquor brought in daily. Women also began to scatter coquetry in the fields, seducing the men.
Those supplying this liquor and the prostitutes were the Kosa people, and a new circulation of money began to swirl here.
The southern people entered the forest one after another.
They began their work, calling out to each other with their innate cheerfulness.
And then they were attacked.
When the southerners were attacked, rather than being frightened, they conversely charged. In the unfamiliar forest, they chased the enemy. Since the enemy attempted only slight attacks and immediately fled, they had no choice but to pursue.
However, the opponents they chased could only be thought of as evil spirits of the forest.
No matter how much they chased, they could never catch up. On the contrary, before they knew it, they found themselves surrounded by the enemy. Or rather, they only thought they were surrounded. After all, the enemy's form was completely invisible.
In the forest with poor visibility, there was not a single shadow that looked human. Yet, arrows flew. They were there. They were just invisible, but they were certainly there. Looking up, thinking they were in the trees—there were no human figures. Searching desperately, thinking they were lying on the ground—it ended in a futile effort. The moment they carelessly revealed themselves from behind a tree, they were shot through with an arrow. Yet the opponent remained invisible. The southerners grew terrified. The patterns of shadows drawn by the sunlight filtering through the leaves began to look like human faces.
They continued to hide, holding their breath, and when they felt certain the enemy had left and let their guard down, an arrow would be stuck in their chest at that very moment. The accuracy of the enemy, piercing vital spots, did not seem like human skill.
Even if they suspected superstition, they could not help but associate it with monsters or demons.
While the soldiers endured, their clothes drenched in cold sweat, enemy soldiers would suddenly come running while letting out strange cries. Like berserkers, they would swing their swords and attack. They were white-skinned northern soldiers. They wore cloaks that looked like uniforms.
Looking closely, the southerners likely noticed that their movements were as dull and clumsy as their own.
But the southern soldiers became hesitant to fight. One after another, they became prey for those swords.
Invisible, skilled slaughterers and white-skinned berserkers.
That seemed to be the composition of the enemy.
There were units that did not take the bait of the invisible slaughterers.
They were units searching for their vanished comrades.
They moved cautiously, hiding their bodies behind tree trunks to weather the enemy's arrows. Even when it grew dark, they did not start fires, continuing their search while carving marks into trees so as not to get lost.
Thanks to this, they sometimes found the corpses of their comrades in the forest.
The search party would grow excited and rush to the corpse. The first member to approach would end up screaming and losing their balance. One leg had fallen into the ground. It was a pitfall.
It was a trap like a child's prank, but at the bottom of the hole, countless nails pointed their sharp tips toward the sky. If one stepped on this, the nails would penetrate not only the sole of the shoe but also the instep and the ankle bone.
However, in many cases, it was not life-threatening.
—I'm saved.
Though they rejoiced in this silver lining, perhaps there was an enemy intention here as well. If a person died in a trap, it was unfortunate, but they could be buried here and the party could move on.
But it was not so for the injured. Since they could not leave behind a member who was injured and unable to walk, they had to be carried back to the deforesting site. Transporting the injured required manpower. The number of people in the search party decreased by one or two every day.
The pitfalls were cleverly set. Most often, they were set near the corpses or belongings of allies. Approaching carelessly led to falling into a hole. Jumping over a small stream, a pitfall at the landing point; jumping over a fallen tree, a pitfall; in the shadow of a rock where the enemy seemed to be hiding, a pitfall. They were everywhere.
Since the pitfalls were covered with dead leaves, they could not be discovered by sight alone. They had to walk while poking the ground with a stick.
However, that stick sometimes triggered another trap.
Ropes were stretched in low places where they would almost touch the ground. When a shoe or a stick poking the pitfall touched that rope, an arrow would fly. It seemed that bows in a drawn state were installed in the treetops. The thin rope at the feet likely connected to the fastener holding the drawn bowstring.
Moreover, it was not just a single arrow. Linked with the first bow, bows and arrows installed nearby would fire arrows in succession with a time lag. Their aim could be called peerless. They shot precisely at the location where a person was.
Traps triggered by thin ropes stretched horizontally were not limited to bows and arrows. Sometimes large stones would fall from overhead. Logs suspended by ropes would become pendulums and pierce through the column.
The thin ropes were often hidden in the undergrowth, thickets, or shrubs. These also could not be seen unless one was extremely careful.
The morale of the search party plummeted to rock bottom in just a few days.
They began to scream even at a spiderweb landing on their faces.
It was not just the sprawling traps. There was always the danger of an invisible enemy firing arrows. There was the terror of being surrounded by white-skinned berserkers who came running with strange cries.
It was like a nightmare from which one could not wake. A nightmare that began upon waking. The heart was wounded by fear and began to bleed. The bleeding of the heart fatigued the body many times over. If they proceeded, the unit would likely be annihilated. They would have to return without any results. But would the way back still be safe? What were they doing in a place like this?
The southerners were forced into self-questioning.
On their exhausted faces, blood spray from their comrades was scattered. The watersides had many traps, so they did not feel like going to wash their faces.
Among the southern infantry, there was a sign of breaking through this situation.
A hunting tribe called the Canine-Tooth Tribe was among their allies.
They were an obviously primitive lot, wearing tiger and reindeer furs, and the southerners had laughed at them. That was a terrible mistake. They were hunters capable of contending with the fierce beasts of the forest.
They could see through the traps set by the enemy. They could also disable them.
The primitive lot suddenly began to be treated as precious.
In the forest, just by following their instructions, the hope of survival increased significantly.
The Canine-Tooth Tribe even set traps in reverse. When they brought back the corpse of a white-skinned enemy soldier caught in such a trap, cheers of joy rose from the southerners.
However, what they did to the enemy soldier's corpse was extremely unpleasant.
The Canine-Tooth Tribe stripped the enemy soldier's corpse naked and began to skin it with practiced ease. The human body with red muscle fibers exposed was an eeriness that induced nausea. They skinned the entire body, except for the part from the neck up.
Before skinning, the Canine-Tooth Tribe would gouge out the head from around the shoulder of the corpse. It seemed that the severed head was more important than the skinned body. The men clad in animal furs would slide the skin off the severed head, turn it inside out, and remove and discard the skull.
After boiling the skin of the severed head in water and hanging it on a tree branch to dry, it became a small, shrunken dried head.
The Canine-Tooth Tribe would prostrate themselves before these dried heads and worship them with great fervor.
The primitives understood a bit of the Kosa language.
"Why do you do such a thing?"
When someone who understood the language asked,
"To ensure the corpse never returns to life. And as respect for the enemy,"
was the answer.
This creepy custom seemed to be some kind of religious act.
The southerners felt depressed, thinking that there was likely no god in this forest.
The body with the raw skin removed was hung from a tree branch. This was a tactical aim to instill fear in the enemy and break their spirit; religion had nothing to do with it. The stripped skin was simply tossed aside and used as feed for hunting dogs.
"Who cares," many southerners said, condoning the barbaric ways of the Canine-Tooth Tribe. "If that's what they do, then it must be the right way here."
—If you carry the head of an enemy, the protection of the spirits will be granted.
More and more southerners began to listen to such words from the Canine-Tooth Tribe.
In this Dark Forest, it was a situation where an alien dogma could easily spread.
The Canine-Tooth Tribe was incorporated into the Kosa army as hunting soldiers.
The enemy side surely had hunting soldiers as well.
The enemy soldiers who did not show themselves, blending into the foliage to fire a single, unerring arrow, were likely hunters similar to the Canine-Tooth Tribe. But what about the enemy soldiers wearing cloaks, whom the southerners named white-skinned berserkers?
There was a strong aura that they were mere infantry, unaccustomed to the forest.
If that were the case, there was a way to fight.
By the time this recognition had spread among the infantry from Koroi, there was a large-scale attack different from those before. A large army attacked the middle of the vertically long Kosa army formation, at the point where the deployment of soldiers was thinnest.
Despite it being a complete night attack and a surprise attack, the southerners fought bravely.
The main force of the enemy were the aforementioned white-skinned berserkers.
The southerners feared the enemy's hunting soldiers. They felt a primitive fear, as if terrified of the darkness. However, the white people in cloaks were not that scary. They were opponents they could fight.
The enemy cut through their vertical formation. The allies were split into two, north and south. It was like a snake whose belly had been sliced; if they continued to be pushed like this, the Kosa army would be defeated piece by piece, the head and the tail respectively. However, if the head and tail both pushed back, they could pincer the enemy.
On the plains, it would have become such a push-and-pull.
The southerners fought hard, thinking thus.
But it was a forest. Moreover, it was night. Principles did not apply in this situation. After all, it was dark and they could see nothing. If the enemy retreated, the light of the bonfires at the deforesting sites they used as bases grew distant. They could hold up torches to illuminate the enemy. However, doing so would light up their own location and tell the enemy where they were.
In the end, it became a melee. Coordination with allies was impossible. Everyone became separated from their units. In the worst cases, they ended up wandering the forest in small groups of only two or three, searching for enemy soldiers. Surprisingly, moving in such a scale might have resulted in a higher survival rate.
The part that was not funny was that the enemy soldiers seemed to have fallen into a similar confusion.
In the night forest, combat began upon chance encounters. Naturally, countless tragedies of friendly fire occurred.
When morning came, the Kosa army remaining at the deforesting bases had been drastically reduced.
It was in this situation that Pusiteto led a large army into the forest.
Pusiteto spent a full day listening to reports and decided to deliberate carefully.
Though proposals for retreat came up from the captains, he rejected them immediately.
—Start a forest fire.
There was such a plan. When he was coordinating the operation with Mozu Wolf, this plan had come up many times. The reason it was not adopted was that the forest was too wide to burn. There was no guarantee the fire would behave as they wanted, and the nations of the plains would not look kindly upon it. Depending on the wind, damage could even reach their own side.
What about the enemy? They might start small fires to smoke them out. However, Pusiteto thought they could not do something like burning the entire forest.
Soldiers, regardless of enemy or ally, were already scattered throughout this forest.
Would the soldiers remain silent if such cruelty as burning their own allies to death were shown?
—Making the road comes later.
Pusiteto decided on a policy.
Anyway, they would break through this forest on foot. He would move the soldiers as tightly as possible, and if they were attacked, they would respond only with bows and basically stick to defense. He would not allow soldiers to leave the column.
He would use the Canine-Tooth Tribe for reconnaissance and scouting. He would have them go ahead to remove traps. If possible, he would even have them perform enemy disruption.
Supplies would be considered non-existent.
They would have horses carry food, and the soldiers would simply traverse the forest leading those horses. The amount of food that could be loaded on horses was limited. In the worst case, they would begin to run out in about ten days.
This was a reckless plan that no proper general would ever execute.
—However.
He thought the enemy general must also have lost communication with the forest units.
—Sedias Thora, was it.
The enemy general's name and military history were well known to the leadership of the Kosa army.
Would that Sedias perhaps not think that the enemy army would break through the forest in about ten days? If things went well, it would be a surprise attack. Once they approached enemy territory, they should be able to move behind the cover of the forest and strike the enemy's blind spot.
The problem was who to send to Mozu Wolf.
—There is only Hazab.
It was a race against time, but he was sure Hazab could pull it off.
While Pusiteto, having made preparations, was solemnly marching north, a report from the forest finally reached Sedias Thora.
Kito, one of the chiefs of the Three Clans, returned from the forest alone and visited Sedias as far as the eastern side of the Twin Forts. As a souvenir, he brought about three rabbits. Sedias ordered his subordinates to cook them.
"What is the situation?"
When Sedias asked while eating, Kito shook his head.
"It is terrible. Ever since the Canine-Tooth Tribe began to move, everyone has started to be terrified. My young folk are like that, and so are your soldiers."
The Canine-Tooth Tribe apparently harvested heads and skinned bodies. It was said that headless corpses with exposed flesh stood like a forest in the woods.
Now the front line had lost its shape, and localized combat was taking place everywhere.
Amidst this, the enemy army seemed to be coming in a tight formation. They were advancing, leading horses and carrying tents and food. A large number of horses were being brought into the forest.
"What about the rear guard?"
The rear guard refers to the reserve army placed behind the vanguard that advances.
"I do not know for sure. But they are certainly there. I think the ones in the back are placed with the intention of continuing the road construction. You could attack them, but you cannot stop the large army coming this way."
"That's fine. I will also commit a large army and pin down their head."
"Not bad. But, a bit..." Kito tilted his head. "I think the enemy general has entered the forest. Their morale is recovering."
"Geraha Wolf?"
"I do not know the name. Anyway, colliding with the enemy is fine, but it might be difficult to maintain our formation. If the formation collapses, many people will just get lost again."
Suddenly, Sedias Thora felt a sensation that froze his spine.
A large army not coordinated with the rear guard was heading this way. The fact that they brought food on horses meant they were prepared to lose contact with the rear.
—For what purpose would they do such a thing?
Even if they came, if there were no supplies, the food would eventually run out. Even if they captured these Twin Forts, they would be stalled there. There would be no further. Would they use the captured forts as a base to proceed with road construction? Or as a foothold to move forward? Regardless, if they holed up in the forts, the vanguard and rear guard would be completely severed, and food would not arrive. They would just wither away.
—Do they intend to provide for themselves by stealing our food?
Sedias went outside to see off Kito, who was returning to the forest.
Kito turned his back with the same indifference as before and walked away without a greeting.
While staring at the lonely back heading toward the Dark Forest, Sedias did not budge. The previous question would not leave his head.
What is the enemy's intention?
Why do they try to force their way through the forest?
There was only one thing to consider. They are coordinating with another unit.
Sedias timidly looked up at the profile of the Dwarf Mountains.
—Impossible.
A large army cannot cross the mountains.
Later, upon receiving reports, Sedias would remember that the combat in the Dwarf Mountains had occurred exactly around this time.