When the three files were laid on the hearing table, the first word crossed out was "Successor."
The Land of Grass had taken over the northern lands of the North Valley domain.
A fief in the Land of Fire administered some of its former residents.
Mountain Trade Town had retained the Border Defense Office's warehouses.
None of these facts automatically made any party the vanished North Valley domain, nor entitled them to choose whichever record they preferred to represent the entire past.
The investigator first separated the three charges on the wanted notice.
Whether Kawasuke had left the border defense unit.
Whether the forty-three youths had been legally conscripted.
How the two guards had died.
Kawasuke admitted to the first act, but refused to admit that it constituted desertion in the face of battle.
The old conscription order predated the North Valley domain's formal declaration of wartime mobilization by two days.
Luma found a granary notice in an old chest belonging to the migration group.
The notice demanded that every household provide one person capable of using farming tools, or their grain rations would be cut off.
It bore the lord's private seal, not the Border Defense Office's military command stamp.
The representative from the Land of Grass argued that a lord's personal order was equally valid in exceptional circumstances.
Gen asked, "Valid to what extent?"
"For recruiting people to guard the granary."
"Did it authorize sending twelve-year-old children to the front lines?"
The representative could find no corresponding provision.
The forty-three ranged in age from twelve to seventeen.
Eleven had never received Ninja Training.
The so-called military supplies were the eight sacks of grain, three bundles of bandages, and twelve Farm Scythes they had taken when they left.
Whether taking these things constituted emergency self-preservation remained open to debate.