Chapter 6: Chase

The villagers were evacuating the town when Ishida and Rhina arrived. Men took up their guns and prepared to defend their houses as women and children headed further up the mountain to seek refuge. 

As they were walking in front of a doorway, Ishida and Rhina were grabbed and pulled into a house by an old lady.

Inside the house were a number of grandmothers who had armed themselves with wooden rolling pins and whisks. 

“You children can hide in our house,” one of the elderly ladies said kindly. “We’ll protect you from those nasty Medietans.”

When Ishida turned around to thank the lady, she dropped her rolling pin and shrieked. 

“It’s ISHIDA!” 

“Keep the girl inside but kick Ishida OUT!” Another elderly lady screamed.

Ishida was spat on and pushed out the door. Rhina wrested herself out of the senior lady’s grasp and rushed outside. 

BANG!

The door immediately swung shut.

Rhina wiped the spit off Ishida’s back with her handkerchief with shaking hands.

“What’s the matter, Rhina?” Ishida asked when he saw that she was crying silently. “Are you hurt?”

Rhina shook her head. “I feel sorry for you, Ishida. The villagers treat you so badly.”

Ishida smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve gotten quite used to it.”

Just then, the Lagodan soldiers began shooting. 

“The Medietans are coming!” someone shouted.

Frightened by the gunfire, the old ladies fled out of their house and headed up the mountain. 

“Come, Rhina, we have to go!” Ishida told his friend. “We’ll be safer in my cabin; the Medietans won’t bother looking inside a small cabin for more people to capture.”

But before long the Lagodans were overwhelmed by the invaders and scattered in all directions. 

“Forward, men! Capture all the rebels!” the leader of the Medietan army ordered his troops. “You will be rewarded fifteen Koblos for each rebel you capture!”

Ishida saw that many Medietan soldiers, having lightened their loads by leaving their backpacks on the ground, had gone ahead of him and blocked the path up the mountain. 

More soldiers caught sight of Ishida and were quickly in his pursuit. 

“This way!” Ishida said to Rhina, reaching for her hand. 

They took a sudden turn around a curb and headed down a narrow brick road. 

“They went this way!” a Medietan soldier shouted. “I saw them turning at that curb!”

Ishida and Rhina soon ran into a dead end. In front of them was an unfinished brick wall with brown bricks, buckets of cement, trowels, a ladder, and a wheelbarrow lying on the ground.

The brick masons who were constructing the wall had probably abandoned their work when the Medietans came, leaving all their tools on the ground.

The wall, despite not being complete, towered high above Ishida’s head.

Ishida grabbed the ladder, put it up against the wall, and climbed up to see what was on the other side. 

“What do you see, Ishida?” Rhina asked him.

“Tall mountain pines and larches,” Ishida replied as he looked through a pair of binoculars. “Their leaves are covered in acid snow, and so is the ground beneath. This must be the back side of the mountain. I don’t see any barbed wire or fences down there, though.”

“But is it safe?” Rhina inquired. 

“It should be safe. The factories are all empty, and the small arms factory is nowhere near us.”

Rhina ascended the ladder and looked through Ishida’s binoculars.

The words, “Rhina, you should go back home,” escaped Ishida’s mouth. “Climb up this ladder. I’ll lower you down on the other side of the wall. The slope here isn’t very steep; you’ll be able to get down the mountain easily. Then, you can use your earrings to walk over the river and get back to Lucada.”

“What are you talking about? We’re both going, aren’t we?” Rhina insisted.

“No, I’m staying here. I won’t let those soldiers do anything to MY cabin and MY people. I will fight to the very end. You, meanwhile, are going home. This place is too dangerous for you.”

“Didn’t you say that your people treat you with cruelty? What do you care about them?”

 Ishida stared at Rhina. He didn’t know what to say. “I…I can’t answer that question. Get going, Rhina. The Medietans would accuse you of treason if they capture you, a Medietan girl, hiding with a rebel.”

“But I owe you my life! I will follow you wherever you go if that’s the least I can do,”

“You don’t need to thank me, now go home before the Medietans find you,” 

“No, I’m NOT going home,”

“Fine! Stay with me if you really want to,” Ishida responded crossly and got down the ladder.

He did not speak to his friend again, no matter how much he wanted to. It was simply out of the question for him.

Five Medietan soldiers stepped into the alley. “There they are! We’ve found the rebels!” 

Ishida lifted a brick from the ground and flung it at the Medietans. The brick struck a soldier’s face and knocked him out. 

“Stop, or we’ll shoot!”

Rhina grabbed a trowel and smacked another soldier’s head, knocking him out as well. 

“Rhina, get out of there!” Ishida yelled. “You’ll get hurt!”

The soldier standing nearby grabbed Rhina’s braid and lifted her from the ground.

“Ow! Let me down! Get your dirty hands off my hair!”

“Rhina, no!”

“Quiet down, you little brat!”

Ishida picked up another brick and thumped the soldier who was holding Rhina. 

“Are you alright?”

Rhina nodded, dusting off her hair. 

The muscular soldier behind Ishida grabbed him by the collar, lifted him above the ground, and put a gun to his head.

“Hands up, or your friend dies!”

Ishida made no hesitation to strike the soldier’s stomach with his brick. 

SMACK!

What he thought would be a knockout blow, however, caused no harm, as the soldier’s stomach was as tough as iron, and the brick was shattered to pieces and crumbled out of Ishida’s hand.

“Haha, you child! You think that will do anything to a man with hard abs and a glorious six-pack like me? I’ll tell you something: I was a professional boxer before I joined the army— and one of the best in the country! I’ve won something like six gold medals using my rock-hard head to ram into my opponents and— YOUCH!!”

While the man was boasting about himself, Rhina had handed another brick to Ishida and Ishida used it to whack the soldier’s tough head. 

The brick disintegrated, but the man was knocked unconscious.

As soon as the tight grip on Ishida’s collar was released, the young man grabbed the former professional boxer’s gun. 

“Ishida, watch out!”

Ishida felt a hard object, presumably a brick, hitting him in the head and knocking him to the ground. 

He pressed his hands tightly on his head to relieve himself of the sharp pain, but it was useless. Blood began to ooze out of his wound.

Ishida looked up and saw that the last of the four soldiers had hit him with a brick. “Up, young rebel!” 

Ishida got up, grabbed hold of Rhina’s hand, and raised both of his hands high in the air. The soldier took out a walkie-talkie and contacted his commander.

“General, I have captured two youngsters on the foot of Mount Lagoda. One of them is a young man roughly five feet five and a girl about five feet three.” the soldier reported.

“Take them to the town center where the prisoners are being held,” the general replied before hanging up. 

“Hold on, this girl looks quite a bit familiar,” a soldier who had regained consciousness spoke up. 

“How so? I don’t remember seeing a face like this recently,”

“Well, don’t you think she bears a strong resemblance to the general’s daughter?” 

“What? The general’s daughter? No, not all! The general’s daughter is much younger and ties her hair in two short braids, not one long one. She’s not as strong as this one; she can’t possibly lift a brick! Besides, the general always locks her up in her room, guarded by thirty soldiers, so she wouldn’t be able to run away from home,” 

“But she might have made an escape!”

“That’s not possible. The place is heavily guarded. Even if she did, the general wouldn’t have time to do anything about it. Nor would he care,”

“I still strongly suggest that we inform him of this,”

“There’s no need to. You know how busy that man is. Do you really think he would break a sweat for his rebellious daughter? Enough of this nonsense, we don’t want to be late for the looting! Just remember that I will get sixty percent of the valuables we find since I knocked the boy out.”

“Huh? Whatever.”

Ishida and Rhina marched up the slope of the with their hands tied and bayonets to their backs. They joined the other captured Lagodans at the town square, where they were all tied up. 

Within hours, the entire inhabited side of the mountain was under Medietan control. The few hours of fighting saw tremendous losses on both sides. Burning scraps of iron, helmets, swords, and guns littered the streets. 

The ground was now full of craters from explosions and artillery shells. 

Time seemed to go by very slowly as they waited for further instructions. Ishida longed to apologize to Rhina for his rudeness earlier, but his pride held him back from speaking. 

She did not talk to him, either, but he could see the tears rolling down her cheeks. 

In the afternoon, the rest of the Lagodan soldiers had surrendered and were rounded up at the town square. 

Ishida wondered what would happen to them and how the Medietans would punish them for their rebellion.

After what seemed like hours, a Medietan lieutenant came to the town square and began talking to them. 

“My name is Karlos Monte,” he introduced himself. “I am a lieutenant in the great Medietan Land Army which has now come to put down this foolish rebellion of yours and restore peace on this serene mountain...”