Since they would only be a few days away, Rei, Taiyo, and Kasper were kept at the same fort until the last one was taken; he noticed that Kasper didn’t seem particularly pleased, but Taiyo seemed all right as long as Rei was with him.
When the army took the last fort, the rest of the army was divided to keep all of the forts under their control while another group went north to secure a port. By now, Sólstaður made up a good portion of the army’s force—it didn’t sound like anyone else from Gin would be willing to change that, either.
Kasper ultimately went with his father to ask for Sólstaðuric reinforcements once a port in Kuro was taken care of. That finally gave Rei a chance to actually sit in on possible strategies, even if he couldn’t provide any input.
The four of them—Kyoumi, Sorai, Rei, and Taiyo, one of the few times since Taiyo returned—were all in the tactics room. Rei wanted to learn what he could while he had the chance; if they couldn’t let him fight, maybe he could help in the tactics side of things. Roken promised that Sólstaður had enough people wiling to fight to win the war—they just had to come. Taiyo was the only one doing something else, skimming through one of the books Rei brought about Tsujihara Seiko.
The tactics meeting-of-sorts was only interrupted when someone came in; all four of them looked up from what they were doing. From the looks of it, he was a Hiroki messenger.
“There’s some word from Hiroki’s fort,” the man said after giving a quick bow.
“Good or bad?” Kyoumi asked.
The messenger handed her the report, and left again. Judging by her expression, Rei guessed it wasn’t good news.
The next to read the report was Sorai, who actually let out a little curse. Rei frowned.
“What is it?” Rei said.
He didn’t actually expect anyone to tell him. “It looks like Kuro’s trying their luck with putting us back on the defensive,” Sorai explained, standing up and gathering a few things.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“I thought we had all the forts along this part of the river?” Taiyo asked, frowning and probably confused.
“They’re either crossing some other bridge or going across the sea,” Sorai reasoned. “It sounds like they’re coming from the north, at any rate, so they’re not going through the fort right across from Hiroki.”
“At the very least, we should head back,” Kyoumi said quietly, slowly standing up as well. She looked at Rei and Taiyo and continued, “You boys will stay with us. If they get much further, however, you will be going to Tezo—no exceptions this time. Do you understand?”
After both boys nodded their agreement, Kyoumi gave them a thankful smile and looked back at Sorai. “I’ll send someone to tell Roken we need to pull out; the northerners should be able to stay here and hold the forts so we don’t lose ground.”
“I can make sure we have some people to come with us,” Sorai decided.
With that all said, both of them left. It took a minute before Rei and Taiyo got up as well. Rei looked at his brother; he looked a little concerned, but Rei couldn’t tell for sure which part would bother him the most.
“I have some stuff I need to gather,” Rei said. “Books and things—don’t really want to leave them here. You coming?”
“Yeah,” Taiyo replied.
Without much else being said, he followed Rei to the room he’s been using. It was probably the first time since they were kids that they shared clothes and a room—clothes because Taiyo didn’t have any, a room because Taiyo wanted to stay close—so it was fair that Taiyo would help get everything packed up.
Taiyo entertained some conversation as they both made sure they had everything Rei came with. The rest of the time there, then, was spent in the training area waiting for Kyoumi and Sorai to finish up the prep work. The four of them, along with half a dozen soldiers, started to go through the forts to get back to Hiroki.
Their reception was…poor—or at the very least, there wasn’t much fanfare. No one—except for the two or three of Rei’s friends that roped themselves into the army without his consent—seemed to care much.
Conversation waited until they got to the room the head Hiroki set aside for them. Rei wouldn’t be surprised if they were put in a room with other agemate soldiers; it looked like it should be a room for more than two people, at least, and he doubted they were happy enough with them to give them anything nice. They’d probably blame this on Kyoumi, after all.
At least they were back in Gin. Taiyo looked a little better by being here, at least—that was a small reassurance. Rei figured it wouldn’t kill him to try to be less pessimistic. Just this once.