Oh Crap, We're in Too Deep

Morin and his men mounted their bicycles again and sped after the Royal Army unit in the direction the villager had indicated.

Hundreds of marching soldiers and wagons had left a trail along the dirt road. There was no need to search for it.

"Sir, look!" Corporal Baumann pointed to a military cap in the grass beside the road.

It was a battered Aragonese Army cap, with mud still clinging to its brim. A soldier had evidently dropped it during the march and hadn't bothered to pick it up.

Morin gave it a glance and kept pedaling.

Before they had gone much farther, they spotted a discarded ammunition crate. It was empty and had been left right in the middle of the road.

Farther on, piles of horse manure lay scattered along the road like markers, without anyone having made the slightest effort to clear them away.

Morin almost laughed.

Was this a regular army on the march, or a rabble out for a picnic?

Their military discipline was worse than that of the university students on training marches before he'd crossed over. At least those students knew to take their trash with them.

"Looks like they really did head straight back to Seville," Morin called to Corporal Baumann behind him.

The traces they had left pointed in one clear direction. There was no sign that the unit had split up or set an ambush.

Morin had no idea what made them so confident the Saxons wouldn't catch up this quickly.

That confidence—or ignorance—gave Morin and his men cover.

They followed the "signposts" the Royal Army had left behind and rode south without obstruction.

As they drew closer to Seville, the ground began to rise gently.

At last, they reached the top of a small hill, where the sight ahead brought them all to a halt.

About two kilometers away, the old buildings on Seville's outskirts were faintly visible.

On a rise outside the city, a unit was resting in place. An Aragonese Army flag flew from the crest.

"Found them." Morin lifted the binoculars from around his neck and adjusted the focus.

Through the lenses, he could clearly see the Royal Army soldiers in black uniforms.

Their numbers matched what the old farmer had told him. This was probably the unit that had passed through Alcolea.

If the Royal Army organized its units much like the Saxon Empire did, there were roughly half a battalion of them.

Tents dotted the rise, and makeshift fortifications had already taken shape.

Royal Army soldiers in black uniforms wandered about in twos and threes. Some had even lit fires near the front of the position. They showed no sign of being on guard.

Morin swept his gaze across the rise. Something strange soon caught his attention.

Farther back stood several unusually shaped "cannons."

They resembled none of the artillery used by the Saxon army and looked quite different from the barrelled guns Morin knew.

Their barrels were exceptionally short and thick, almost like mortars. Some kind of glowing crystal seemed to be set into both the carriages and the short barrels.

As Morin puzzled over them, a translucent window appeared in his system interface.

When he focused on the strange "cannons," new information appeared.

[Special units detected... Analyzing information...]

[Aragonese Army Magic Crystal Cannon Position]

[Weapon model: Britannian Comet Mark I Magic Crystal Cannon]

[Effective range: 4,500 meters]

[Ammunition types: Potent Magic Crystal Shell, Shrapnel Magic Crystal Shell]

Magic Crystal Cannons?

Morin repeated the name to himself, seized by a sense of foreboding.

Whatever they were, they sounded dangerous. They were probably a product of magical technology unique to this world.

He turned his attention back to his System Map.

The markers represented the half-battalion of Royal Army infantry and the Magic Crystal Cannon Position behind them.

More troubling still, as he surveyed the area through his binoculars, several more red diamond-shaped unit markers appeared on the map southeast of Seville. Each represented a sizable force.

That suggested the Royal Army and the Britannians had decided the outlying villages alone could not stop an attack by the Saxons, the National Army, and the International Brigades.

They had pulled their defensive line back to the outskirts and built a complete perimeter around these Magic Crystal Cannons, whose capabilities Morin knew nothing about.

His six-man reconnaissance team had passed every outlying village and ridden straight into the heart of that perimeter.

On the map, the tiny gold star marking his team stood alone amid a broad red expanse of enemy forces.

"Shit..."

Morin lowered his binoculars. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.

They had pushed too far, too fast.

The Royal Army had set up no checkpoints on the road to Seville, so Morin's team had traveled unhindered, much faster than even he had expected.

The soldiers with him had not yet grasped the danger. They were still marveling at the size of the enemy positions and the unfamiliar weapons.

Only Morin, with his bird's-eye view of the map, could see how deep they were in enemy territory.

The good news was that they had gathered valuable intelligence that could help the troops coming after them attack.

The bad news was that their position was dangerous.

"Sir, should we..."

Corporal Baumann had noticed the change in Morin's expression and came closer, tense.

Morin took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

The others were relying on him. Panicking now would do nothing but get them all killed.

He quickly wheeled his bicycle into cover behind the slope and laid it down. Then he crouched and signaled the others to take cover.

"We may have gone a little too far in."

"What do we do now, sir? Retreat?"

Corporal Baumann and the other soldiers gathered around him, tension plain on every face.

Morin did not answer at once.

He lay on the slope and raised his binoculars again, studying the distant enemy position while his mind raced.

Retreat?

No. We've come this far. How can we go back after seeing so little?

The Royal Army's defenses looked thorough, but its soldiers were so lax that Morin could see openings everywhere.

"We've come this far..." Morin muttered the old saying from home.

Having ventured into the tiger's den, he couldn't bear to turn back with so little to show for it.

Great rewards came with great risks.

If he could gather intelligence that made the coming attack go more smoothly and reduced his unit's casualties, his own chances of surviving would rise as well.

That would make this risk worth taking.