March Through the Desert (Day 3, Before Noon)

[Three Ri East of the Dungeon]

"It's hot."

So grumbled a mercenary.

"It's a desert, so what do you expect? Hot by day, cold by night, that's a desert for you."

Another mercenary answered. Up ahead, their destination, the dungeon, grew little by little larger.

"Still, do we really need this many of us? How many thousand men are here, anyway?"

"It's a dungeon with pirates attached, or rather, pirates who live in a dungeon. If it were just clearing the dungeon, that'd be a job for the adventurers, but when pirates hole up inside a dungeon, taking it is a lot harder than taking your average castle. And on top of that, a dungeon core in a tower-type like this is usually on the very top floor, and in a cave-type it's at the very bottom, so in the end nothing's finished until you've swept the whole place clean."

So answered a samurai of mounted rank. He was on foot, having no horse. Needless to say, they call them pirates, but with no sea about, they were mountain bandits.

"What a nuisance."

"Well, that's exactly why His Lordship gathered up all the warriors in the realm and, sparing no expense, hired mercenaries and adventurers like you lot besides. Lord Oda and Lord Satake didn't come in person, mind, just dispatched a few kinsmen and clansmen for form's sake."

They had been promised pay above the going rate. On top of that, merchants and courtesans came along with them, and even the likes of male prostitutes and hosts who cater to female mercenaries, so a man could spend his advance on food, drink, and amusement. Though there were also those who'd been stripped of everything at the gambling tables, reduced to penniless wretches dependent on the rationed provisions.

"To such lengths…"

"For Tsukuba, this is a do-or-die gamble for everything. That dungeon is water-attribute, with water so abundant it overflows from the dungeon itself. And yet pirates have seized it and can't put it to any good use, and that, right there, is a great problem for the whole realm. It'd be another matter if Iruma were subduing the pirates and developing the land, but as I said before, 'pirates that have settled into a dungeon' are a formidable foe, beyond the reach of a mere provincial daikan."

"Crossing ten days of desert just for this expedition, you samurai gents have it rough too. Then again, even though our marching from the muster point was six days, just getting to the muster point was the hard part."

"You mercenaries, you've come a long way too, all the way from Sō, from the Land of Ke, even from distant Mutsu, and I thank you for it. I'd have liked, if possible, to organize a separate detachment from the west as well, but Iruma has no will to act, and there'd be no point if the detachment got picked off piecemeal. Just like those fool sons of the Hiki."

"They botched something, did they?"

"According to His Lordship, not knowing pirates were there, they set out to clear the dungeon with a small party though they weren't even adventurers, and got themselves eaten by the dungeon."

"That's just suicide. Clearing a dungeon, if you're not an adventurer, comes down to shoving through by sheer numbers. Oh, beg pardon, talking to a samurai gent like that."

"It's fine, it's fine. If we fall to bickering at a time like this, even a fight we could win, we'd lose."

"So, samurai gent, why is it the lord of Tsukuba in the first place?"

"That dungeon is in Adachi, so by rights it'd be Lord Musashi-no-kami who ought to move, but the daikan of Iruma has no will whatsoever, so nothing's been done. And Lord Kazusa-no-suke is out, because Sō is a neighboring country, so it'd become an international incident. On that score, since His Lordship isn't a direct neighbor, the risk of touching off a great war is low. That's how it goes, apparently."

There being no Tokugawa shogunate, the title "Musashi-no-kami" is in use.

"Apparently?"

"Of course, His Lordship has his own aims too, no doubt: to secure the water, and to gain the upper hand over Lord Satake Hitachi-no-suke. There's Lord Kōzuke-no-suke as well, though by that I don't mean the honorary title but the lord of the Land of Ke, but he's too far off."

A "lord of the realm" here, though, differs as an institution from the great fief-holding lords of the Edo period.

[Core Room]

"Director-dono, aide-de-camp scribe-dono, an estimated two thousand or so refugees are heading this way from the northwest, by the Nakayama Highway."

"At a time as busy as this. And two thousand, no less, will we even have houses enough?"

"Houses we can manage, if we drive off the Tsukuba army and add more tier-groups to the dungeon, but Master, this means that if the enemy routs to the northwest, they'll collide with these people."

"They're far from the dungeon's sphere of influence, and we can't very well build a makeshift fort to shelter them. Shall we send up a drone and tell them to turn back?"

"There's no sign of anything like a supply train, so they likely don't have enough water or food."

"Nothing for it but to abandon them, then."

"Either that. Or annihilate the enemy utterly."