Rebels?
For Marlow, that was quite a novel term. He had never encountered anything like this before, so when the report reached him, his first suspicion was that the tax collectors under him were up to something.
Back at school, Marlow had heard his teachers describe similar incidents: "a fire dragon burned down the granary," "floodwaters sank the grain barges," "bandits stole the horses."
So his instinct was to question just what these "rebels" really were.
Only after more soldiers and laborers from the attacked convoys fled back, bringing further reports, did he believe that a band of rebels flying a red flag had appeared deep behind the lines, right near the city of Ankandela.
The tax collectors might have been able to buy off a few people, but with so many mouths talking, any deception was bound to reveal itself.
Marlow had questioned all those people without finding a single inconsistency. That meant it was true.
Late that night, as dawn approached, Marlow learned what it meant to feel his scalp crawl.
By questioning the soldiers and laborers who kept straggling back from the grain convoys, he confirmed that there were only a little over twenty rebels, and that they were now heading toward East Birch Town with the wagon of black powder.
What those bastards intended to do was obvious.
Twenty rebels could never take East Birch Town. They were probably heading there because of the sea of birch trees beside it, a forest stretching more than fifty kilometers in both length and width.
Once those twenty-odd rebels escaped into the woods, almost no one would be able to find them. They could flee wherever they pleased, easily bypassing the Republic army's roadblocks.
Suppressing the rebellion and hunting down rebels were not Quartermaster Marlow's responsibilities. Failing to prepare