Chapter 432: Brine

Beneath the net woven by the canals, everything was ablaze with light.

Beneath the veil, layer pressed upon layer. The lowest layer wore tunics, longbows laid beside them.

Above them were breastplates and pikes, the rust on the armor three hundred years old.

Further up lay a row of red coats, their buttons identical to those worn by the man in their group.

The topmost layer was freshly laid tonight, still warm.

This land was cultivated by war, a truly contested battleground.

Crop after crop was planted, crop after crop harvested. After the harvest, the soil was turned over to be planted again the following year.

Hanging just over a man's height off the ground was the newest layer of yellow-green poison gas.

It wasn't just the layer in the material world; the layer behind the veil was equally corrosive.

It spread flat and even, stretching from the west all the way into the unseen distance in the east.

Someone had laid out a tablecloth across the entire front line, waiting for guests to take their seats.

"Do you know what this place reminds me of right now?"

The simple-minded young man wielding the axe had started muttering again.

No one paid him any mind, but he kept talking to himself. "Brine. The kind of brine used to marinate things."

The old Scholar, however, nodded in approval. "You finally said something smart tonight."

"The mud in Flanders doesn't drain. Whatever you pour into it, it refuses to leak a single drop."

"You couldn't find a better pot anywhere in the world. The ingredients are already prepared, the pot doesn't leak, and firewood is still being added."

"That person only needs to add their own seasoning."

Richard spread out Still Water.

After Perception was raised to that tier, this surface of water gained a bottom.

The pot underneath began to churn.

The wandering souls and subservient echoes, originally so thin they were translucent, fully swelled up once drenched by that scent.

In a communication trench to the south in the material world, over twenty wounded soldiers who had just been dragged out of the poison gas were sliding down the trench wall.

They should have survived.

The medic had already arrived, their wet cloths had been changed for a second time, and one of them had even started cursing.

That wounded soldier cursed the Quartermaster Department, the cart that had delivered the wet cloths, and the eighteen generations of ancestors of whoever invented this stuff.

He cursed with vigorous breath, his spit splashing against the trench wall.

Hearing him curse, the medic instead set down the cloth in his hand.

Then, the cursing cut off mid-sentence.

The medic raised his head.

The layer of yellow-green poison gas had clearly faded, but the chest of the man beside him was bulging again, as if someone were blowing air into him from below.

"It claimed the ones who could still be saved along with the rest," Richard said.

Dead silence fell over the wind gap.

Then, the dozens of hands gripping the reins simultaneously pulled back half a loop.

"Let's go."

"Go?"

"Let's go," the dozens of hands said in unison.

"What was purged at Walburg were the things that had lingered through the winter and refused to leave. The ones below were catalyzed. They have a master."

"We don't touch things that have a master."

The shadow struck the Caduceus against the ground.

"You all promised me in the court."

"What we promised in court was to purge the masterless. We have no reason to hunt down those mastered evil creatures for you. You aren't the lord of the hunt."

"Then I ask you all to take one more look."

The shadow reached out and pointed below.

"Someone is indeed standing by the pot, but the ones at the very bottom were buried over the course of three hundred years. They have long since been remembered, mourned, and sealed. There are names in the parish registers, years carved on stones, and the grass on their graves has grown and died countless times."

"It is also digging up other people's graves."

It was quiet at the wind gap for a long time.

"...He makes some sense."

"You've made your case on the rules," the foremost hand finally spoke up. "But the hounds can't drive them."

"How so?"

That hand beckoned downward, and the pack of hounds lunged down.

They scattered from the air, circling and running through every single trench.

After running through, they came back up sullenly, nothing in their mouths.

The crippled one came up last, flopping down at the shadow's feet and hanging its head.

Its tail tucked under its belly, a half-whimper trapped in its throat.

"Do you see?" the dozens of hands asked.

"Tens of thousands died at the exact same moment. When the hounds sniff them, it's just a solid wall. They can't distinguish a door on that wall."

"Have any of you ever hunted pheasant?"

Richard thought for a moment before suddenly changing the subject.

Interrupted like this, someone in the back let out a laugh.

"We don't hunt pheasants."

"I have." The lobsterback in the red coat leaned out from the ranks.

"Back then, we'd hit the trees with sticks and stomp on the bushes until the birds flushed themselves out."

"And if you didn't flush them out?"

"If you didn't, the birds would just hunker down. You could stand out there all day and not see a single feather."

Right after finishing, the redcoat suddenly realized it himself.

"...Is that what you mean?"

"That's exactly what I mean," Richard said.

"Send half of your numbers down, and only herd the living toward the high ground to the south."

"Stomp heavily while you herd them. Don't be light on your feet."

"When the living move, the ones in the mud will move with them."

........................

Tucker leaned against the trench wall, still clutching that Pocket Watch in his hand.

The hands had stopped long ago. He didn't know how long they had been stopped, but he was still counting anyway.

When he counted to eighty, he felt a wind on his face.

The wind pressed against his back, beating in a steady rhythm.

"...Sergeant?"

No one answered.

The wind pushed against him again, shoving him forward a half step.

Only then did Tucker realize that his feet could move again.

He shoved the Pocket Watch into his breast pocket and stood up, supporting himself against the trench wall.

His foot slipped on a gap, and he pitched forward toward the south.

As he fell, he heard a squelch in the mud behind him.

The sound was muffled, like someone pulling their entire hand out of kneaded dough.

Tucker didn't look back.

No answer the first time, no answer the second.

He counted in his head as he crawled, and when he reached three, he crawled even faster.

Half a li further south, the signaler who always swung his legs too wide when he ran was dragged out from the entrance of a half-collapsed bunker.

He was shoved south along the communication trench, pushed so hard that his hands scrambled wildly against the trench wall, clawing down a handful of wet dirt.

He cried the entire way. Even as he cried, he remembered to press the long-dried cloth tight against his face.

Eventually, feeling that pressing it was useless, he just clutched the cloth in a death grip in the palm of his hand.

Above him, a small hound with a slight limp in its hind leg hugged the edge of the trench and followed him the whole way.

It only stopped when it reached the bottom of the low hill to the south.

..................

Where the ether eruption had burned, traces would be left on this side of the veil.

Baldwin was dragging a person southward.

Walking ten steps and stopping for one, forcing the breath back down into his lungs whenever he paused.

The shadow did not approach.

It merely let its own line of hounds walk a pass just outside Baldwin's trench.

As the hounds passed by, all the lingering things in the trench that refused to leave shrank back to the sides in unison.

Baldwin lifted his head slightly, then pretended he hadn't seen a thing.

He hoisted the man securely once more and continued south.

Six li further south, Richard found Vincent.

His nominal cousin was in a support trench, his arm cradling the back of someone's head.

His area was the most chaotic.

The living and the not-living were entirely mixed together, tangled so thoroughly that even the veil could barely tell them apart.

The shadow spent a bit more effort there.

It spat out Silence, casting it incredibly thin—just thin enough to cover a small patch.

Within that covered patch, there was something just about to open its mouth to call Vincent's name.

It opened its mouth, but no sound came out.

After trying a few times and finding it useless, it retreated back into the mud.

Vincent helped the man up, glanced back over his shoulder, and left.

Further north, the shadow pushed that sentence out.

Hermes's words did not travel through the ears.

"Head south. Don't go down into the craters."

In a communication trench, over a dozen men crawling toward the low ground stopped simultaneously.

They looked at each other; no one asked who had spoken.

Then, the leader pressed the wet cloth tight against his face, turned around, and crawled up toward the south.

The second trench, the third trench... By the time it pushed to the ninth trench, the wisp of spirit inside the shadow had already begun to turn sluggish.

The shadow traced back along Baldwin's path.

It was looking for someone.

Richard had administered needles to him dozens of times; he could recognize him with his eyes closed.

It searched once, but found nothing.

The shadow expanded its Perception range, sweeping over the fire steps, bunkers, first-aid stations, and ammo dumps of the entire company.

It searched again, but still found nothing.

It expanded the range to the entire trench.

The living all had circuits on them, and those circuits were bright.

Counting the bright ones in this sector one by one, all the way to the last—that specific circuit wasn't there.

The shadow stopped on the fire step.

On the step lay a tin box. The lid was knocked open, and one corner of the box had been trampled flat.

A layer of crumbs was scattered beside the box, ground into the wooden cracks by the soles of boots over and over until they became part of the mud.

The old newspaper lining the bottom of the box was still there.

The column on that newspaper printed the price of white sugar in the Imperial Capital from last month.

In a backyard hundreds of miles away, the man in the wicker chair shifted.

Gerard stood behind the porch pillar and watched as his grandson's hand resting on the armrest slowly tightened.

Amidst the Wild Hunt procession, the barefooted one had shifted next to the shadow at some unknown point.

"Looking for someone?"

The shadow did not answer.

"Mr. Envoy."

"Hmm."

"The stench of the living on you is too heavy."

........................

The things that were flushed out were far more numerous than Richard had imagined.

As the living moved, the mud churned.

When the mud churned, those subservient echoes that had just grown skin breached from underneath, bubbling up in massive swathes.

Some still recognized what they were, shrinking back down halfway up; others recognized nothing, lunging toward the warmth the moment they surfaced.

The hounds were waiting above.

When the first one was bitten, the sound of tearing echoed across the entire sky.

"It worked," the old Scholar said.

"You can tell them apart?"

"We can tell them apart." He nodded.

"The ones that run on their own have already been tainted. The ones that shrink back are still on the threshold."

"And what about those still on the threshold?"

The old Scholar didn't answer.

The shadow descended to the ground and planted the Caduceus firmly.

It first chanted in church liturgical Latin. When it finished, the nearest column didn't so much as lift an eyelid.

Half of these tens of thousands of men had only entered a church twice in their lives—to marry and to be buried. The other half had skipped even those two times.

It switched to runes, using the most ancient method of binding, binding "that which must be returned."

This time, Wind also lent it strength.

But this was not the North, and those buried in the earth were not their ancestors.

It switched to Old Gaelic, then switched again to the Albion dialect.

By the third sentence, the nearest hand slowed for half a beat, but immediately sped back up.

"What's wrong?" someone above asked sarcastically. "Mr. Envoy, are you done chanting already?"

The shadow walked into the ridges.

It no longer looked at the faces. Tens of thousands of faces were identical; there was no way to tell them apart.

It began to look at the hands.

The nearest hand clutched a button, while the one next to it gripped half a shoelace; further in, a man held a photograph in his open palm, the face on it rubbed away by sweat and mud; yet another pinched a spoon, two letters carved into its handle.

Every hand held something different.

There was only one thing that all tens of thousands of hands held in common.

The shadow stopped before a half-collapsed trench and dug a card out of that man's pocket.

It was a pale yellow card with curled edges.

Several lines of pre-written text were printed on it in neat, proper font.

On this card, not a single line had been crossed out.

The shadow cradled it in its palm, raised its head, and swept its gaze across the entire lowland.

Tens of thousands of men, tens of thousands of identical cards.

The words these men had written over their lifetimes had been read, crossed out, and confiscated by others.

If they wrote too long, it was destroyed. If they wrote in too much detail, it was destroyed. If they wrote too clearly, it was absolutely destroyed.

In the end, the Quartermaster Department issued a piece of paper that did the talking for them, only allowing them to cross things out.

Cross out the unwanted lines, and whatever sentence was left was considered the truth.

This was the format in which they were allowed to speak for the final time.

"What are you dawdling down there for?"

"I'm looking for a hook."

"Did you find it?"

The shadow held the card up.

The Caduceus was pulled from the earth, its tip pointed upward. The golden wings at its peak spread open a sliver, and the Ferrying ability activated.

It read the first sentence.

"I have been admitted to the hospital. Cross out."

In the outermost stretch of the trench, dozens of hands paused.

"A letter will be sent soon. Cross out."

"I am in good health. Cross out."

As that sentence fell, many people raised their heads.

"I have received your letter."

Tens of thousands of faces turned in this direction at the exact same moment.

"Aside from what is crossed out, the remaining lines are true."

They marched over in formation, the columns perfectly aligned. They were already accustomed to lining up.

The shadow turned the Caduceus sideways. The two golden snakes parted, opening a fissure down the middle.

The formation passed through the fissure.

The hounds sat on both sides, heads hanging low, making way for the path down the middle.

The more who passed through, the thinner the tablecloth overhead became.

It had originally covered a nameless death. But the moment the name was spoken aloud, it emptied out.

This time, not a single hound missed its mark.

"We can smell them!" the axe-wielding young man shouted from above. "The scents have split!"

"Shut up, it's not your turn yet."

"The court is dismissed!"

"Even dismissed, you wait in line."

The old Scholar stood beside the shadow, watching the columns of men cross through the fissure.

"The threefold confirmation didn't work, the runes couldn't hold them, and they couldn't understand Old Gaelic."

"But this paper, they all recognize."

"Because this is their own paper," the shadow said.

"A verdict written on a form printed by the Quartermaster Department."

The one carrying the charred wood sneered.

"That line of text at the bottom is certainly well written."

"Which line?"

"'Add a single word, and it will be destroyed.'"

Laughter broke out here and there.

"Those rules are even stricter than ours."

The more who passed through, the thinner the tablecloth overhead became.

In the end, only the very last layer remained across the entire front line.