Chapter 20: Swamp

"Alright, boys," the man who appeared to be the regiment's executive officer stood up in the middle of the group. "The sun's starting ain't shy to exposed itself, we need to have our objectives secured before noon, so let's move out, shake those knees."

After treating several wounded soldiers, most of them nothing more than light injuries, and having just filled my stomach with a few bites of biscuit as breakfast, it was finally time to get moving again.

It was only now that we learned their regiment was the 423rd PIR, whose objective ran through Causeway 3, which sat right in the middle of the causeway line that had to be seized and luckily also side by side with ours. At least that was what I had gathered from the pre-jump briefing three hours before we boarded the aircraft.

That said, it was true that we were not part of their regiment and had a different objective from theirs, but since we shared the same general direction we ended up choosing to combine forces with their group.

With that, our group, improvised and mixed from various elements as it was, could already be called the early stages of a platoon, and the feeling of being alone had faded from my mind entirely. It felt like a relief to find ourselves gathering into a larger number of people.

Proving what Colonel Dinks had said, there was no change at all to our original unit formation, still the same as before. Only now we were placed at the front leading the column, with the 423rd regiment's unit taking up the rearguard position, and of course I was somewhere in the middle of all that.

"Watch your step, and by the way, wanna hold my hand?"

"No."

"Come on, don't be so stubborn about it."

I turned down Ashton's offer without hesitation, since the path we were taking right now was not really a path at all. It was a flooded field that had turned into something closer to an enormous murky pond.

I would not deny that I was struggling a little more than the others, since for most of them the water only reached their knees, but for me it was well past my thighs, which meant my movement was considerably more hindered than everyone else's.

Even I could feel the ground beneath my feet was dangerously soft, and one wrong step could easily send me sinking with my foot getting stuck, swallowed by the mud that had no intention of letting go.

According to Philipe, this was actually the easiest terrain compared to the alternative routes, where if we had gone that way only my head would have been above the waterline, so I supposed I had every reason to be grateful for the route we had chosen.

"Ah! Shit!" Someone behind us cried out loudly, drawing irritated looks from everyone nearby who were worried about drawing enemy attention.

I was no exception. When I turned to look, a man from the 423rd regiment had his right leg sunk deep into the ground, swallowed all the way up to his thigh, going far deeper than the water itself. He was genuinely unlucky for stepping on the wrong patch of ground, and now his foot was stuck fast. Lucky it was not me, because I would have gone under instantly.

"I feel like I'm being sucked in, somebody help me up!" the man cried out, starting to panic as his body slowly got pulled down like a vacuum. "Damn it, it's going deeper!"

"Calm down, you idiot," their Corporal waded over to the stuck soldier and started working on him. "Hey, I need some extra hands here, quit standing around watching."

"Hell is goin' on? Why we stop in this kind of place, Corporal?" Even the Colonel appeared from behind to the center of the line.

"Sorry colonel, this idiot's foot is stuck in the mud."

"I'm really sorry, sir!"

"Yeah, whatever. Hey, help them," the colonel ordered, pointing at the soldiers around him.

Unlike me, whose overall load was not nearly as heavy compared to the combatants carrying equipment that weighed their bodies down, which was likely also part of the reason why soldiers crossing waterlogged or muddy terrain like this were at such risk of sinking, the extra weight simply made it easier to go under.

There was no way we could just keep moving, so whether we liked it or not, even a few of us stopped and decided to help pull the poor soldier out, since the sooner we got this done the sooner we could get out of here before the enemy spotted us in the open, which would have been a disaster for all of us.

"On three, we all pull together, alright?" The Corporal directed the others, his hands hooked under the soldier's armpits. "One, two-"

"Wait! Stop!" I cut them off immediately before they could put the soldier through any more misery.

The Corporal and the others froze before they could start, staring at me with a mix of curiosity and irritation. "Not now, lady! I can feel this idiot sinking deeper!"

"No, she probably has something important to say," Lieutenant Bulgers stepped up beside me and backed me up. "Right, Colonel?"

"Again, whatever. Just get this done as fast as possible, so spit it out, girl."

Glad for their response, I gave a quick nod.

"If you pull him like that, you'll pop his hip right out of the socket!" I said it as plainly as I could. "The mud won't release him in that posture. You're pulling against the weight of his equipment and the suction of the ground, if you yank without the right approach you'll split him into two pieces of top and bottom."

The soldiers stopped and looked at each other, then down at their own positions, and the stuck soldier's face went another shade paler. Oh god, just stay calm....

"So what do we do, doc? He's still sinking," one of them asked.

"You can't pull him straight up like that," I said, then pointed at several others. "Horgan, Pisger, you two have the build for this, tilt his body slightly forward then back. Let the water seep into the hole he's standing in first, that'll break the suction. And for god's sake someone get his belt pack off! You guys going nowhere with that shit still on his body."

The duo gave an immediate nod without any objection. Truth was I had not picked them purely for their build, because if that was the only criteria I could have just asked our Staff Sergeant, though honestly I had no desire to ask him for anything. The real reason was that those two had a solid sense of coordination between them.

Freddy, who was acting as squad leader for them, agreed with it as well, and in fact it was partly because of Freddy that I had this knowledge in the first place.

Following the instructions I had given, they began rocking the soldier's body with a steady rhythm. In the meantime Freddy moved quickly to help, working the belt pack loose from around his waist, and the moment that weight came free the soldier began to rise slightly, letting the water seep gradually into the hole that had been swallowing his foot.

A slow, unpleasant slurping sound came from below, the sound of air and water finally breaking the vacuum the mud had formed.

To help the effort along I had Ashton reach his hands down into the water and work from below, helping to lift the foot from underneath to meet the others pulling from above. He grumbled at me a little for making him get wetter than everyone else, but in the end he threw himself into it wholeheartedly.

"Almost there, I can feel his foot coming up," Ashton said, bent over with both arms submerged.

"Now! This is our chance, no need to adjust anymore," I called out to them.

And just like that, Pisger and Horgan gave the decisive pull, and the soldier's foot finally broke free from the mud's grip. He toppled backward and was caught by a squadmate already waiting behind him, breathing a little hard but the relief on his face said everything.

It was something of a miracle that his boot was still on his foot, though slightly half off, and Ashton who was still holding his leg helped work it back into place.

"Get up, asshole! Watch where you step next time!" The Corporal yanked the soldier up by the collar, putting him back on his own two feet.

I was glad it had all gone smoothly, no unnecessary dislocation injuries to deal with. The Corporal gave a thumbs up to signal everything was settled and we all went back to dragging ourselves through this man-made swamp.

"Good work, Elise," Lieutenant Bulgers murmured quietly, giving my shoulder a brief pat before returning to his position up front.

Having stopped long enough somewhere we should not have, the Colonel ordered us back into formation and after that we got our half-soaked bodies moving again.

Silence settled back over the group, replaced only by the sound of water being pushed aside with every step, everyone focused as before, all of them having learned an important lesson about watching their footing so they would not share the same fate.

"...Hey."

"Wha-Oh, alright."

The same went for me. This time I at least accepted Ashton's earlier offer after what had just happened. Honestly the thought of stepping on the wrong patch and getting swallowed up by the earth was unsettling enough, so with the help of the arm he lent me, it would at least help keep that from happening.

There was no telling how many steps we had taken through this swamp, but there was still no sign of the water coming to an end. This vast mirror still dominated the landscape stretching out before us, reflecting the early morning light from our left with a quiet kind of grace.

The further we pushed through, the more my nose and probably everyone else's caught a very familiar smell. It was the distinctive scent of aircraft fuel from the planes we had flown in on last night, and we soon noticed the water around us was mixed with oil spilling from our aircraft that had likely taken damage during the flight.

"Make sure nothing on you can spark, guys," navigating this critical stretch, the Lieutenant passed along an important warning. "One little spark and we'll be a very special BBQ."

Bad enough if it had only been the smell of aircraft fuel, but the problem was it was mixing with what I guessed was sulfur carried in from wherever this water was sourcing from. Together they produced a smell that was completely foreign to the nose, hitting the throat like something sharp being pushed through it.

Beyond all of that, my feet felt impossibly sticky against the bottom with every step, draining every last bit of energy from all of us. If the Varexil general had done all of this simply to slow us down, then technically he had just achieved exactly that. What a headache, having a competent enemy.

Holding tight to Ashton's arm, I tried to push the negative thoughts out and keep moving, the murky water creeping up to my waist without me even realizing it, turning every single movement into a considerable struggle.

But in the middle of all that frustration, I noticed everyone around me turning their heads toward the right side of the column at the same time, with Ashton included. Caught by a flicker of curiosity, I followed where all their eyes were landing.

....What? Oh, no...

I was looking at something I genuinely had not hoped to see. My eyes trembled as they found a cluster of white objects floating in the water in the distance. They were exactly what we had been carrying before we jumped, it's clearly bunch of parachutes.

The white silk canopies lay half floating in the murky contaminated water, and what mattered more was the human hand jutting out from beneath the surface, limp, with no movement left in it at all, yet still carrying the last hope of someone who had wished for a hand to pull them out of the hell they were in.

......Of course, in the end that hope vanished together with their lives....

That horrifying sight made me realize that what I had been through still counted as fortunate compared to them. Those jumpers had not simply landed in the wrong zone. They had landed in something that took their lives slowly, the weight of their equipment dragging them down without mercy, drowning them as every piece of gear pulled them further under, thinning their chances of survival until there were none left.

".....Keep walking," aware that our pace had slowed somewhat, Lieutenant Bulgers worked to correct it. "Don't let it get to you. Stay strong, we have a job to finish."

That was true. In the end there was nothing we could do about it. We could only watch from a distance because we had our own targets to chase.

.....Still, I knew going into a battlefield was not a leisure trip and tried to make peace with that, but my chest felt like it was pushing back against me after everything that had happened, all of it coming one after another, the screaming of civilians begging for mercy before being executed, and now this. I did not know where the ceiling of all this was, and I did not know whether I could even hold up when it came to it.

All I could do was watch the reflection of my own tired face in the water rippling from our movement.

It was hard to shake the feeling that our lives were hanging on the roll of a dice. No matter how long we had been trained or how hard we had been pushed, the moment you were thrown out there it felt like everything came down to how that dice landed, and all that training felt like it just went POOF, gone just like that.

Right as I was nearly losing my footing from drifting too deep into my own thoughts, something cold, slippery, and slimy suddenly exploded out from the surface of the water.

SMACK!

Whatever it was hit my left cheek hard and came to rest squarely on my nose. I jolted violently, nearly screaming and nearly letting go of Ashton's hand.

"Wha—?!"

A swamp frog the size of my fist was sitting quite comfortably on my face. Its dirty hind legs were planted on my lips while its yellow reptilian eyes stared straight into mine, showing absolutely no remorse for having used my face as its personal playground.

"Pffft—" The sound of Ashton barely holding back laughter came from ahead of me.

I swept the creature off my face with one sharp swipe. The frog returned to the water without a care, and somehow I got the distinct feeling it was mocking me a little as it swam away.

"Consider it good luck," Pat, who had also seen the whole thing, stifled a chuckle, his shoulders bouncing as he fought to keep the laughter quiet. "Maybe it was a cursed prince? Hey, that's entirely possible—Pffft!"

"Haha, very funny," I muttered, busy wiping the remaining frog slime off my cheek with my sleeve, which was honestly just as filthy.

That brief lightness did not last when the Staff Sergeant shot a sharp look toward all of us who had been joking around and killed the mood dead on the spot, whoever had been laughing went quiet immediately. Great, all because of that frog, and somehow I was the one who ended up caught in it.

Even though the horrifying sight from earlier was now some distance behind us and hidden by the tall grass rising above the floodwater, it still lingered in my mind. But at least thanks to that rude frog, it had stopped me from sinking any further into my own thoughts.

We fell back into silence and kept pushing through the swamp, but finally, after everything, the end of it came into view a few dozen meters ahead. Solid ground was already visible, rising above the level of the floodwater, stretching wide with trees growing across its surface.

Lieutenant Bulgers from up front made a hand signal to pass along the information that the terrain we had been grinding through was almost behind us, and we relayed it down the column in turn.

Slowly but surely, the pressure of the water around my thighs began to ease. What had been creeping up to my waist dropped gradually to my knees, then to my calves. The sticky, slippery mud beneath my feet gave way to something firmer and rougher.

And just like that, our wet ordeal was entering its final stage. One by one we began climbing up onto solid ground, each of us turning to help whoever was behind us.

My last step felt like hauling a ton of weight, but the moment my boot sole touched the grassy mound at the edge of the field, everything suddenly felt light again. Looking down at my lower half, everything was completely soaked through, my boots still carrying clumps of filthy mud, but however you looked at it we had finally made it through.

To make things a little more comfortable I started scraping the mud off my boots by dragging them hard against the grass, and for the stubborn bits I picked them loose with a stick I found on the ground.

"Where the hell are we?" The Colonel appeared nearby with his men and immediately started doing the same thing as me. "An apple orchard? This is very close to my regiment's target."

Looking around at the trees, they turned out to be no ordinary trees. Apples hung from the branches in an organized fashion, so it seemed we had ended up in an apple orchard.

"So what now, Colonel?" Lieutenant Bulgers approached him alongside the other NCOs.

"I know the march was exhausting, but it would be a waste to stop now if--"

"WHAT THE FUCK!?"

CRACK-CRACK!

The sound of something collapsing hit hard and startled everyone. A wooden structure that had been standing not far from us had partially given way, likely because one of the careless soldiers had leaned against it and the old timber wall simply could not hold the weight.

Old dust scattered from the gaps in the wreckage, and before anyone could get out another curse, the silence inside the structure broke open.

From behind the gaping hole in the wall, figures that had apparently been lying inside moments before suddenly jolted upright, just as startled as the rest of us, and the sight of them sent my body snapping rigid all over again.

W-W-WHY ARE THEY HERE!?

"Shit! Enemy! What the hell are they doing here!?"

CLICK—CLICK!

The sound of weapons being cocked split the air. Facing us, around a dozen or possibly more soldiers in uniforms I immediately recognized as Dretonian had their rifles leveled directly at all of us.

I had no idea what they had been thinking, but it seemed they had been sleeping inside that structure. Whether their eyes were red from anger or lack of sleep was hard to tell, but their weapons were already up.

"DON'T MOVE! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!" Lieutenant Bulgers shouted until the veins in his neck stood out.

"ᚹᚨᚠᚠᛖᚾ!" One of the Dretonian soldiers in front of Scarface screamed back, hands trembling.

"SURRENDER!"

"PUT YOUR FUCKING WEAPONS DOWN!"

"I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU FUCKERS!"

"ᛚᚨᛋᛋᛖᚾ!"

"ᚠᛖᛚᛚᛖᚾ! ᛃᛖᛏᛉᛏ!"

I was caught right in the middle of it all. The atmosphere turned dangerously intense within seconds, both sides holding firm, everyone throwing words at each other in overlapping languages that swallowed one another whole, every shout producing small clouds of breath that hung in the cold morning air. With the distance this close, nobody dared be the first to pull a trigger.

"Ju-ju-just fuckin' surrender!"

"ᛒᛖᛋᛖᚱᚲ!"

There was nothing I could do but stay frozen in the standoff. Looking around, nobody else was attempting to move either, everyone rooted to their spot from the sheer shock of it all.

For a moment my legs nearly gave out from the pressure of it, I almost fell backward, but caught myself before it happened. Even the smallest movement was immediately tracked by one of the Dretonian soldiers. A young soldier with trembling eyes and clenched teeth swung his muzzle directly toward me.

"No, no, no! Don't! Don't you fucking dare, asshole!" Ashton beside me screamed, pressing his own weapon harder toward the young soldier. "I'll FUCKING kill you if you touch her! Come on! Point it at me, bastard!"

Surprisingly the young soldier understood immediately, nervously shifting his muzzle away from me and directing it toward where Ashton was standing. That gave me a small measure of relief, but it did not last long because everyone was still screaming at each other without any sign of it stopping.

Suddenly the world slowed down like it was moving through water, birds scattering from their nests in the trees around us, everything going eerily quiet against everything that was happening, my ears somehow picking up the sound of dripping water with sharp clarity. It felt completely surreal, and yet that was exactly what it was. I felt genuinely resigned to whatever the outcome was going to be.

BANG!

Then all at once, a single gunshot shattered that surreal stillness. Whatever I had been fearing most hit me on reflex and I dropped straight to the ground, curling myself as small as I could, both hands wrapped tight around my head, pressing my ears until it hurt, anything to keep from having to hear what came next.

Brrrrrrrrttttttt!

"ARGGG!"

"UGH!"

The screaming, the cursing, the roar of the machine gun that followed all reached me like a storm heard from far away, muffled by my own heart hammering wildly in my throat. I was trapped in the darkness behind my own eyelids, not even caring anymore who had the upper hand.