Creeping forwards slowly and gesturing for Aethisia to mind a branch nearby, I peered through the dark and caught sight of our destination; the charred wooden wall was currently home to two very drowsy guards, and neither was looking our direction.
Keeping my voice low and making sure that we were truly out of sight of those guards, I leaned close to my daughter and murmured "See how tired they are? The best times to attack are before shift changes, because the guards are at their 'weakest' mentally. However, if we were going for something sneaky..."
"You would want to hit them sometime in the middle of their shift, right? To make sure no one would come to check on them but also to take advantage of long amount of time spent observing nothing?"
"It seems you get the idea... That's good, because we have two choices to make. We can go about this as quickly as possible but take on more risks, or we can continue to scout and take it slow. Either or works, but... well... we do need to make the choice soon. We are on a timetable, even if it is rather generous. This is the one time you want to finish early~!"
Even in this sort of situation I couldn't help but crack a joke like that, something that made Aethisia roll her eyes before she murmured back "Could we get closer and take a better look at the town itself? Also, if it's a mining town, couldn't we sneak in through the mines and attack from the inside?"
I kept my usual smile even as my heart swelled a little with pride at her thought process, since it was aligning with what I was thinking of doing as well; she really was just a younger, less experienced version of me with white hair~!
Not as handsome though, and definitely~ not as good of a lover~!
"We can indeed, thanks to the Duchess providing a map of the current tunnels that the citizens have dug. It'll take us a few minutes to get there and then just a few more to emerge into the town itself. The only issue with that is we won't really know where everyone actually is until we're in the town."
"That shouldn't be too much of an issue. Though we definitely need to take a look around now, so... let's get going."
The wall was tall but it was in a pathetic state thanks to the initial attack as well as the second attack that left the invaders reeling; pieces of it were missing and there were definitely many ways to sneak in, but considering the warm glow of the numerous campfires I didn't want to take that risk.
However there were a quite a few trees nearby that were thick enough for climbing, and since the guards were stationed roughly in the middle we just needed to scale one of the trees far away from them and survey the scene from up there.
This mountain town was a small, hardy place, its population numbering between 150 to 200 people while its value really came from it being an in between of Birchan and the cities to the north and the west.
It produced a few valuable ores but otherwise it was rather unimportant to the Queendom at large, however if the Duchess said she thought it was valuable then it was valuable; besides, no matter how unimportant a place was, if it had citizens of the Queendom it deserved protection.
For the town that was protected by the wall it was a very simple, basic congregation of structures; stone foundations and logs interlocked together to create flat roofed boxes that were more than enough to house everyone while being compact enough to save space.
Tightly packed together meant close alleyways and few long lines of sight, which were both a boon and a bane for what we wanted to do; cobbled roads were littered with wooden splinters and rocks, which would make travel even noisier if we didn't take immense care.
As for the sources of light that we could see, they were three separate bonfires hosting four or so mercenaries each, and of course... I wasn't surprised by what I saw; at each there was at least one or two captives being used by their captors to pass the time, and when they were finished with them they tossed them back into the various cages that surrounded said fires.
But there were nowhere near the one hundred plus civilians I was expecting in those cages, meaning that they were being primarily stored somewhere else... and that likely was where the leader of this group could be found...
"They..."
Biting her tongue and just staring hatefully at the scenes down below, Aethisia gripped at the bark of the tree harder than she needed to as she restrained herself, which I thought was admirable considering this was her first time having to witness something like this.
"Yes, this is likely what's been happening ever since they arrived. The strong dictate what happens to weak, and in this case... it's this. That's why we're here though, and now I think you have even more reason to want to put them to the blade, no?"
She just nodded silently, which was all I needed to see from her to feel confident that what was going to happen in the immediate future would be far more manageable and acceptable than what I had initially anticipated.
I wasn't happy that this was happening nor that she had to see this, but it was a cruel reality of the world that our family was all too familiar with, even if the end result was far different from everyone else's.
If Aethisia could take this anger and use it as the fuel necessary to complete her mission here, then that was something I could be selfishly thankful for, though I was going to make sure justic was served wherever it was needed... no matter what.
The Queendom might have given up on me systemically, but the people had never truly given up on me, so I still felt that obligation to them even after everything that had happened.