Book 1 (2): Summer Darkness — Chapter 5: |
Chapter 5
In order to quickly subdue the enemy, the Ground Spiders fumigate their enemy’s nest with poisonous gas.
There have also been cases where indigenous colonies will flood their enemies by drawing water from the rivers. But the objective of war is to capture and enslave the opposing colony, so tactics that would cause mass deaths are unsuitable. On the other hand, the wars on the mainland are mostly centered around acquiring and protecting limited resources, so killing the enemy might be more efficient in their case.
The gas that they used remains unidentified to this day. The remains of the gas dispersal equipment we found only tells us that the Ground Spiders built a furnace out of stones and mud upwind from the Robber Flies.
I guessed that the rotten-egg smell came from chunks of sulfur that they harvested from a volcano. When sulfur is burned, it creates hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide, which are both extremely poisonous and heavier than air so they would be able to penetrate deep into queerat nests. However, it’s hard to imagine those two things alone have the power to exterminate an entire colony.
Satoru was of the opinion that the Ground Spiders went digging through abandoned cities for plastics that contained chlorine. For example vinyl chloride burns to create hydrogen chloride gas, which is also very poisonous and heavier than air. There are a plethora of gases that are lethal, and even more things that can be combined and burned to create them. Or, most terrifying of all, it could be something new that we have yet to discover.
Purging the gas from the Robber Fly colony took some time.
Even using cantus to displace massive amounts of air was not an easy thing. No matter where you tried to move the air, there would be a force pushing back on it. Creating a powerful whirlwind, Satoru churned up the polluted air closer to the ground and carried it far away, letting the clean air flow back in. The image he created for that must have been quite something.
After the gale subsided, I saw the tranquil blue sky above us. In dazzling morning light, we were like two moles that had accidentally burrowed aboveground, squinting our eyes and filling our lungs with fresh air. Goosebumps prickled my skin as I was exposed to cold air for the first time in a long while.
“I’ll go first.”
“Wait,” I held him back. “I’ll go look first.”
“No, the Ground Spiders might shoot you from afar.”
“That’s exactly why I should go first. If something happens and you can’t use your cantus anymore, then we’re done for.”
I didn’t say anything more and started up the stairs. Before exiting, I listened closely for any movement, but all was silent. Nothing apart from bird cries.
Keeping my body low, I poked my head out.
The whirlwind had flattened out the grass, but I still couldn’t see anything. I crept out quietly on all fours and slowly stood up after checking that the surroundings were clear.
Everything swayed gently in the breeze. There were no corpses, no wreckage, nothing.
Satoru came up behind me. “How is it?”
“There’s nothing around.”
Looking farther, more than a hundred meters out, I saw what I thought were queerat corpses. Maybe from the whirlwind. From this distance, it’s hard to tell them apart from humans. A shiver ran up my spine.
“They’re definitely around here somewhere. The wind couldn’t have killed them all.”
We stood motionless, carefully observing our surroundings. Someone like Shisei Kaburagi could create a vacuum lens in midair (the opposite of a normal lens, it magnified things using a concave surface), but of course Satoru didn’t have the skill to do that.
“Look over there!” I pointed at a hill to the north where I had seen something move.
We both gazed intently, but nothing suspicious appeared.
“Sorry, it was probably just my imagination.”
“No…I don’t think so,” Satoru crossed his arms, still searching the area closely. “That looks like the best place to spread poisonous gas from. Since they’re on a hill and the gas is heavier than air, they don’t have to worry about it going the wrong way. And there are relatively fewer obstacles too.”
He pulled up a few blades of grass and let them fall to test the direction of the wind.
“There’s barely any wind, but it’s coming from the north. So I think we’re right. They have to be somewhere in that direction.”
“Then we should run south!”
Satoru grabbed my arm as I turned around.
“What are you saying? They’ll come after us for sure if we run and we’ll never know when we’ll be attacked from behind.”
“But…” I didn’t understand what he was trying to say. “What do we do then?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We attack first. Unless we exterminate them, we’ll never be safe.”
“But that,” I was at a loss for words. “It’s impossible. You’re the only one that can fight.”
“Even if it’s impossible, we have to do it,” Satoru said resolutely. “You saw what they did to the monk. Cantus is useless for defense. Using it offensively is the only way to stay alive. …but if you’re scared, Saki, you can run. Like you said, I’m the only one who can fight.”
Now that he’s said that, I couldn’t run even if I wanted to. I tried reasoning with him, but in the end we still headed north. No matter how much power we had, if the attack came from an unseen location, we were done for. I acted as an extra pair of eyes for Satoru, prepared to warn him of any dangers.
“We’re most likely within shooting range now. Be careful. Let’s try attacking from here.”
We stood in the shadow of a large rock on the hill and looked up.
“Bullets,” Satoru sang out in a strangely euphoric voice.
Tortoiseshell cracks appeared on the top portion of the rock and split it into small pieces.
“Fly.”
All at once, the rocks rocketed toward the enemies.
Panic broke out at the top of the hill. Screams of fear and rage from the queerats. They seemed to be scrambling to battle formation. There was the metallic sound of metal on metal, and the twang of bowstrings as they fired back at us.
“Fools,” Satoru snorted.
The arrows that had been traveling in a shallow parabola turned in midair and sped back to the archers like faithful hounds.
More cries of pain.
“I wish I could make a wind scythe, but I guess I’ll have to make do,” Satoru said, sounding like he was making plans for some game.
He glanced back. Forty or fifty meters away, trees were ripped out of their roots and hung in the air.
“Go.”
Six huge trees flew toward the top of the hill. I thought they would smash into the enemy camp, but they simply floated above them threateningly.
Screams rose in a cacophony through the air.
“Hm. They look scared.”
Satoru’s attitude was the same as when he was playing with the pusher during the ball tournament.
“But this is kinda boring. …alright, burn!”
The trees burst into flame, turning into giant torches. Clumps of burning leaves fell onto the enemies.
The queerats were thrown into disarray. The fire ignited everything it touched and pillars of thick black smoke rose toward the sky.
“Now’s our chance. Let’s climb up.”
We left the shelter of the rock and wasted no time running up the hill. The queerats who spotted us as we neared the top let out warning cries, but the next moment fell in a burst of white flames.
“Is that what they use to make the gas?” I pointed at a strange clay structure shaped like a mosquito fumigator.
Five or six of them had protrusions like elephant trunks pointed down the hill.
The nearest one exploded into a million pieces. The ones beside it followed. A troop of queerats were hit with the shards and went down instantly.
“Are you playing with them?”
The queerats hesitated when the saw their comrades fall. When the corpses rose like puppets on a string and started toward them, the troops scattered.
It turns out the only thing needed to crush the spirits of the belligerent queerats was to exploit their fear of the supernatural.
“I see…instead of using brute force, controlling them through fear is much more effective.”
Satoru put his newfound knowledge to use immediately. He started raising dead bodies left, right, and center. Queerats who were thought to have no human emotions lost their minds with fear and started attacking each other.
The ones who lost their will to fight and were trying to escape found themselves being choked to death by an invisible hand. In the end, the obliteration of an entire troop took no more than five or six minutes.
“It’s too dangerous to go straight through the field. We’re totally exposed to the rest of the forest where Ground Spider archers might be lurking,” Squealer reported to Satoru.
He was as polite as before, but his words were tinged awe. No doubt he now understood the terrible power of cantus.
“But the Ground Spiders are in the forest, aren’t they?” Satoru scowled discontentedly. “Attacking from here, we can’t see the enemies, and they’ll just get away. And the field is easy to clear too.”
“It is as you say. Imagine however, a single one of them escapes and, heaven forbid, shoots one of the gods with a poison arrow,” Squealer looked up fearfully at Satoru.
There was a gash on his nose and dirt was stuck to the blood here and there.
“Our own arrows only cause numbness, but the Ground Spiders are assassins; the poison they procure from their indigenous frogs are lethal. If you are even grazed by them, there’s no cure. Our spies have found a safe route, so please come with me.”
Once again, Squealer had appeared before us with impeccable timing. After exterminating the troop at the top of the hill, we were having a discussion. I was saying that there was no more danger of being pursued by the enemies and that we should leave as soon as possible. But Satoru was stubbornly insisting on killing all the queerats.
Why was Satoru like this? I was shocked when I looked at his face. The boy I knew so well, the one that hid his kind nature behind a facade of sarcasm and boastfulness was nowhere to be seen. I was looking at someone completely different.
Although he gave all sorts of reasons, like the canoes being hidden too far away, or that we had to strike back when we were struck, I knew from the strange gleam in his eyes that he simply wanted to kill more. No matter what logical argument I came up with, Satoru was unfazed. We had only vague memories of the location of the Ground Spider colony and had no idea where its core (the place the queen lived) was. With so little information, it was impossible to eradicate them. And more importantly, if Satoru was injured, then that would be the end of it.
My tenacity was working and Satoru was beginning to give in. From the bottom of the came a voice calling at us. Fearing a trap by the Ground Spiders, we looked down cautiously, and saw Squealer with the remnants of the Robber Fly colony prostrated on the ground worshipping us from afar. There were only fifty or sixty of them left, a testament to the efficacy of the poison gas.
By Squealer’s explanation, it seemed as if the Robber Fly colony had all retreated deep underground at the smell of the poison gas had been wiped out as a result. (The Ground Spiders probably added the smell of sulfur to the gas, purposely using the queerats’ instinct to hide against them.) On the other hand, Squealer and his group of bodyguards were transporting the queen, and by choosing a higher location, had managed to escape with their lives.
Although their colony had just suffered a debilitating defeat, Squealer and his troop were in good spirits. For one, the queen was safe (as the queen in the sole reproducer, her death would mean the death of the colony), and for another, they had just seen Satoru defeat the despicable Ground Spiders with his powers.
The remaining Robber Flies were clamoring for revenge. Even the usually calm Squealer was no exception, goading Satoru with the fact that he had previously found out the location of the enemy queen until he had no choice but to agree to subjugating the Ground Spiders.
Let’s go back to the original topic. At Squealer’s insistence, we made a loop to the left at the field and headed toward the Ground Spider’s nest in the forest.
“Is this really safe?” I asked Squealer as we walked. Although it was detour, we were still taking a well-cut path through the undergrowth. If the Ground Spiders were so used to battle, they definitely wouldn’t miss patrolling a route like this.
“Please don’t worry. We sent a scout earlier and there were no signs of the enemy. They must believe that we have all been killed by the poison gas, so they won’t be anticipating an attack right after.”
Were the Ground Spiders such easy opponents? As of two days ago, I would have accepted his words without question. But after yesterday’s events, I was extremely suspicious.
I ordered Squealer to arrange some decoys. It was more for peace of mind than anything else, but Satoru humored me by playing along. Not ten minutes later, this proved to be the right thing to do.
The soldiers walking in front let out sharp warning cries. I had no idea what was happening, but when he looked and started shooting, I realized that we were under attack.
“Gods, hide yourselves! It’s the Ground Spiders!” Squealer cried.
“Where?”
“In the trees…the decoy, they fell for it!”
The queerat I appointed to dress as Satoru was lying on the ground. I had chosen the biggest in the troop, but from far away he still didn’t look humanoid, so I had him wear two hats and a cape as disguise. There were now three arrows sticking out of him. The strange thing was that the arrows had no feathers on them, but were instead wrapped with string.
“Blowguns! Poison darts…watch out!”
Squealer had reached the same conclusion and shouted a warning. Where in the world were the enemies hiding? I scanned the trees but didn’t see any shapes that resembled queerats. I wondered if the shooters could see us as well, but it seemed like they were shooting the darts willy nilly.
There was a rustling in a big oak tree. I couldn’t see anything, but I was sure that something was there.
“Satoru! Shake that tree!”
There were four queerats lying on top of him as a living shield. Ignoring Squealer’s orders, he slipped out under them. As if blown by a storm, the tree swayed and bent. Leaves fell like snow and branches snapped loudly.
Something heavy fell out. At once, the queerat soldiers seized it.
“What is it?” I asked, looking at the thing.
What would be the best way to describe it? It looked like those stick insects from the south, or a relative of the sea horse called the leafy sea dragon.
It was about a meter in length and resembled a normal queerat. Looking carefully, its head and limbs were also like a queerat’s. The difference was that it was abnormally thin and had skin the color of the oak tree and green leafy protrusions growing from its body. It, the Ground Spider’s forest fighter, looked toward the sky and gave a birdlike cry. The Robber Fly soldiers stabbed it with their spears, killing it instantly.
Judging from what just happened, they must have more comrades hidden nearby. I looked around at the trees once more. Now that I knew what to look for, it wasn’t half as difficult. In no time, I spotted three more of the camouflaged soldiers.
Before I had even finished pointing them out, Satoru released his cantus and brought them crashing to the ground.
“What the heck are these things?” I asked.
Satoru looked over the corpses with his brow furrowed. I couldn’t bring myself to touch them, but the protrusions on their bodies and the leafy structures didn’t look artificially made.
“It’s not too surprising though. When we ran into them last night, most of the troop members looked like monsters anyway.”
I thought of the scales covering Captain Pinecone.
“But…so, they can look like anything? Why?”
“I don’t know, but I have a theory,” Satoru covered himself with the hood again. “Anyway, we have to be careful from now on, since we don’t know what forms they might take.”
“We should just turn back. It’s too dangerous.”
“We’ve come too far, they’ll chase down us if we run.”
Satoru left no room for argument, so we kept going.
After a while, the path started curving to the right. We were slowly approaching the Ground Spider’s nest.
I reflected on our encounter with the tree fighters. Satoru had ripped up enormous trees and sent them flying through the air, knocking down more trees and bushes along the way.
Gradually, the dense growth thinned out. On the left was a marsh so full of duckweed it looked like it was covered in confetti.
“Wait,” I held Satoru back by the elbow. “I have a bad feeling about this place.”
I wondered if Satoru was going to mock me, but he looked completely serious.
“You mean there’s a trap?”
“I’m not sure…”
I looked suspiciously at the swamp. Bubbles occasionally rose to the surface and I wondered what they were from. Satoru seemed to be thinking the same thing. He levitated boulders over the swamp, dropping them wherever the bubbles surfaced.
They fell with a giant splash and swampy water flew everywhere.
Nothing happened.
“It’s fine. Let’s go,” he said impatiently.
“…but.”
“Mammals can’t stay that long underwater anyway.”
Right now, Satoru had the last say in everything, so we continued forward slowly.
A strange popping sound came from the swamp.
Three otter-like heads floated on the surface, staring at us.
No one could react. The three heads drew out long pipes and blew their darts at us before slipping quickly back under the water, leaving only ripples in the duckweed.
“Damn it. They’re messing with us,” Satoru’s anger boiled over.
The two Robber Fly soldiers that had been hit died instantly from the poison.
“Fine, hide all you want. …I’ll boil you alive.”
The swamp water began steaming like a hot spring.
I’m not sure why I chose that moment to look away. Anyway, I turned to look in the opposite direction of the swamp and saw something unbelievable.
There was a patch of damp sandy ground full of weeds with a little bulge about twenty centimeters high. What was strange was that the swell was moving slowly, as if moles were tunneling underneath it.
I realized with a jolt that there were more than one of these bumps. Four in all were moving slowly but steadily toward us like sharks following the smell of blood.
I tried to say something but was frozen with fear. Finally I managed to choke out “Satoru…!” but he didn’t hear me. I looked back at the steaming swamp right as they caught the enemy. The queerats gathered around let out triumphant yells.
Three boiled corpses floated in the water. They looked more like frogs than otters, with well developed webs on all four feet.
“Satoru. Behind us…under the sand,” I whispered.
He froze. “Where?”
“One right behind us, about six or seven meters. Two to its left. One behind us diagonally to the right.
Satoru turned around at the same time the four diggers emerged.
In a flash, a spout of swamp water washed over them. The formation fell easily as the boiling water crashed down on their heads.
“Hmm. Were the frogs a decoy?” Satoru said as he wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Don’t get complacent. They seem to like using sneak attacks.”
“Satoru, aren’t you tired?”
“Huh? Of course not. This is nothing.”
“Still, you should rest a bit…”
Satoru just smiled in response.
I was concerned because he was drenched in sweat. At that time, I hadn’t thought beyond that simple explanation.
Cantus can supply infinite energy. But in order to do so, you needed immense concentration, and naturally, both our concentration and physical strength were limited.
“Look out!” I shouted as we stood before a bamboo forest.
Something was falling from high in the sky.
“Don’t worry. Everyone, stay where you are!” Satoru stood as if rooted to the spot, staring upward.
The points in the sky gradually grew larger and larger. When I finally recognized that they were boulders, they flew back the way it came as if bouncing off a trampoline.
“They’re still coming!”
The second wave was even greater. Satoru sent all of them flying back.
“Shooting randomly isn’t doing any damage,” Satoru muttered as he broke three of the boulders into smaller pieces and sent them hurtling to where he thought the enemy troops were hidden.
With that, all was silent.
“Did you get them?”
“I dunno.”
The enemy attack stopped. Maybe our retaliation had been more effective than we’d thought. Just then, the third wave of attacks came.
This time they arrived above the forest in a low trajectory. One, two…Satoru deflected the boulders. The gap between sighting and impact was so short that he didn’t have time to block each one individually.
Then one slipped through his net and came flying into our midst.
My blood ran cold. The rock smashed into the ground, sending up huge clouds of dust. Two, three seconds later, sand and twigs came raining down. The remaining queerats scattered like cockroaches.
“Shit…!”
Satoru didn’t have time to check if everyone was okay. He blocked another boulder that came streaking in.
“Get back!”
We quickly retreated thirty or forty meters to avoid the rock. But as if it had seen us move, the next one came right toward us again. They were sniping us.
“Where are they?” Satoru yelled in frustration. “They’re watching us somehow. Saki, look for them!”
The spy should be nearby. But how should I look for him? If they were disguised like the tree fighters, it wouldn’t be easy. I was at a loss. There was a break in the attacks; the fourth wave hadn’t come yet. They probably needed time to prepare the rocks.
I had a sudden realization. Just following our movements was useless. The spy also had to be able to relay our position to the soldiers.
“Satoru, fall back!”
We retreated another thirty meters. There was still no sign of the spy. But what I was really looking for was the signal.
“Over there!” I pointed to the top of the thicket.
A bamboo stalk waved as if in a breeze, but the movement was clearly unnatural.
“That’s how they know our position!”
I didn’t need to say any more. Flames erupted violently from the stalk and burned with thick black smoke. A blood curdling wail echoed around us.
“We have to move now. Should we retreat?”
“No, keep going.”
Satoru started forward, and all the scattered queerats suddenly reappeared and went into formation.
“Gods, gods,” Squealer panted, “thank goodness you’re unhurt. With this, victory is in our hands. Please bring the hammer of justice down upon these evil Ground Spiders.”
“Stop trying to butter us up,” I snapped at him. “You said this path was safe. How in the world is this safe? There’s been nothing but ambushes the whole time.”
“I am deeply sorry,” Squealer bowed his head. “We sent out a scout earlier and he came back completely unscathed.”
“Isn’t that obvious? They didn’t want your scout, they were waiting for us.”
“That’s enough. We’ve come this far anyway,” Satoru said, grabbing my arms. “Let’s hurry and settle this so we can go home.”
Oh really, I thought. Something was off about him. In addition to being tired, I thought he seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes. The boulder he had failed to block earlier came to mind. The usual Satoru would never make such a huge mistake.
“We cant keep going this way though. We still don’t know where the rocks are coming from,” I said uncertainly. “We should go back.”
“No,” Satoru shook his head. “The battle has already started. Turning back is suicide.”
“But if we leave the forest, we’ll be attacked by the rocks. And we can’t travel through the forest either because we don’t know what traps are here.”
“I will send scouts ahead,” Squealer said, as if trying to get back into our good graces. “We will find where they are catapulting the boulders from. And with the gods’ help, we can strike them down one by one…”
“Don’t make it sound so easy. Satoru is tired.”
Squealer threw me a deeply suspicious look. I realized I had made a mistake. Even though they might have suspected it earlier, now they probably knew for sure that I couldn’t use cantus.
Taking my silence as consent, Squealer started giving orders in his high-pitched queerat language. The Robber Fly soldiers spread out into the bamboo thicket instantly. Even though they had suffered extreme losses so far, their morale was as high as ever.
But a number of them returned within two minutes and made an anxious report to Squealer. He turned to face us. Although I couldn’t read queerat expressions, it looked like he had serious news.
“On the other side of the bamboo forest is an open area unobstructed by trees. It appears that the enemy’s main force is spread out over there.”
“Then we have the advantage since they’re easy to spot, right?”
“That…how should I say this? Please come see for yourself. This time I am positive that there are no enemies hiding in the thicket.”
Dubious, we followed Squealer through the forest. After about forty or fifty meters, we could see through to the other side. We crouched down to make ourselves less visible and crept forward slowly.
There was an open area of a hundred square meters. The Ground Spiders had felled the trees near their colony to prepare a site for the final battle.
“Amazing…” I said.
The sight of the clamoring troops could only be described as spectacular. Their armor and weapons glittered in the midday sun.
“Three thousand of them divided into five troops,” Satoru said, awed.
“But they’re all in the open, so it’ll be easy to beat them, right?”
I thought Satoru would agree immediately, but he thought for a while.
“It’s not a given.”
“Why?”
“Look at that formation. The heavily armored foot soldiers are at the front and the archers are hiding behind them.”
It was the phalanx formation commonly used in ancient Greece. The frontline had heavy shields and spears, preventing the enemy from penetrating the troop. If that row falls, the one behind would take its place, like a shark replacing its teeth.
“And that’s not all. See all the rocks in the back? The group next to it is probably the catapult.”
“Catapult? Where?”
Then I understood.
“You mean the group itself is the catapult?”
They were too far away for me to get a close look, but the group of queerats near the rocks were the most extremely morphed out of all the ones I’ve see so far. The tree fighters and mole troop didn’t even compare. They were huge; around three meters tall, with unbelievably long torsos that stretched and shrank like accordions and enormous muscled arms thicker than their bodies…
The ten members of the catapult troop working in tandem could throw a rock weighing hundreds of kilograms over a hundred and fifty meters into the air. Of course, I didn’t learn about this, or that they were called the catapult troop, until a long time later.
“Using cantus to wipe out the armored troop will take a long time. During that time, the archers and catapults will be firing, so we’ll have no choice but to block them. Then our position will be revealed and gradually the attacks will become more focused. In the end, we won’t have the time to attack and it’ll become a defensive fight for us.” Satoru sighed. “Actually, that’s not all. …something’s been weird for a while now.”
“What is?”
Satoru lowered his voice so that Squealer couldn’t hear. “It’s probably just because I’m tired, but I’m having a hard time concentrating. I can’t form an image properly.”
That was the worst. I looked up to the sky.
“Then, you can’t use your cantus anymore?”
“No, I can, but I’m at a disadvantage facing such a huge troop all at once.”
I knew that we should have run away after defeating the poison gas group on the hill. At that time, Satoru would have had enough energy left to beat the enemies that came after us. We could have escaped. But swayed by Squealer’s words and drunk on his victory, Satoru lost his powers of judgment. He shouldn’t keep sacrificing himself.
But there’s no use regretting something that’s already happened. Now, the only way to stay alive was to use our brains.
“Gods.”
At some point, Squealer had sidled up beside us. He called out to us with a concerned expression.
“We’re thinking about how to defeat the Ground Spiders right now. Don’t interfere.” I glared at the queerat strategist, but he didn’t back down.
“My apologies. But it looks like the enemy is moving.”
“Huh?”
We looked back at the troops. The five groups were slowly changing their positions. The center group hadn’t moved, but the two on either side had advanced slightly. Then the two groups on the outside reduced the distance between each other by half. In other words, they had spread out into a V-shaped formation in preparation to attack.
Crane wing formation, called that because it resembles the spread wings of a crane. Originally a defensive formation used to surround attackers, the Ground Spiders probably had a different idea in mind. In other words, by stretching the frontline out to the side, they were decentralizing the targets vulnerable to cantus attacks while increasing their own angles of attack, making it harder for us to defend…
The reader might wonder how Satoru and I knew all the detailed warfare terminology we’ve been using. Of course, at the time, we had no idea. Books relating to war are either class three–forbidden, or class four–knowledge that must never see the light of day. The knowledge I’m writing about here are all things I learned much later on, discovered in the basement of the ruined library. “Invincible Conquests·A Complete Strategy Guide”.
Let’s get back on topic. In the face of the enemy’s impressive formation, we were at a complete stalemate.
“What do we do?” Shamefully, that was the only thing I could say. I couldn’t use my cantus, and I didn’t have the brains to come up with a solution.
“Well, we can only watch for now,” Satoru closed his eyes, trying to recover his energy a bit.
“Isn’t it better to run? Instead of meeting them head on, going into the forest…”
“We can’t. The reason they’re not attacking us directly is because they’re afraid of our power. They still think we’re hunting them. If we run, they’ll see our weakness and come after us.”
Nonetheless, sooner or later the enemy will question our lack of aggression and go all out on us.
That prediction came true sooner than I expected.
One of the archers stepped forward and let loose the opening shot that flew toward us with a loud buzz. The arrow went way over our heads.
A rain of arrows followed. We covered ourselves, but we could hear the wails of the queerats behind us.
“Shit. Should we retaliate?” Satoru opened his eyes.
“Not yet!” I said frantically. “They’re looking to see how we’ll respond.”
“Then not responding will just make them more confident.”
“If we retaliate half-heartedly, they’ll figure out the extent of our power. On the other hand, not doing anything will creep them out. They won’t expect that we’re waiting out the attack.”
“But, at this rate…”
The lead troop of the crane wing formation was advancing steadily. What should we do?
“Squealer!” I called the queerat waiting behind us.
“Yes. How may I be of service?”
“Where is the enemy’s base…its headquarters?”
“It has not been confirmed, but I believe it is straight ahead in the woods on the other side. The last line of defense for every colony is always in front of the headquarters.”
“Satoru! Set those trees on fire!”
He understood my plan and focused straight ahead.
Usually, it would take but a second for him to set something on fire, but this time it took a couple of seconds. But as the leaves of the Japanese snowbell tree started smoking and burst into flames, the enemy stopped. The rear guard rushed back to the nest and started hacking into roots of the burning trees with axes. It was a primitive way of destructive firefighting, but a few minutes later, the flames went out.
“Should I burn it more?”
“Wait. Let’s see what they do.”
We had to prevent Satoru from using his cantus ineffectively and wasting his energy.
If the enemy advanced, we could threaten them by attacking their home base. But I didn’t know to what extent it would work.
For a while, the Ground Spiders did nothing and waited. Then what looked like a messenger emerged from the nest and they started moving forward again.
“The queen’s been evacuated through the underground tunnels,” Satoru whispered. “They’ve taken care of what matters most. This time they’ll come at us seriously.”
Squealer let out a high pitched cry and ran off. His subordinates followed.
“This is it, huh,” Satoru sighed.
Once again, volleys of arrows flew toward us. Compared to the earlier attack, this was much greater. The sky was filled with arrows that fell on us like hail.
At the same time, the five catapult troops started launching boulders.