2
It was another day on the border between the kingdom and the empire, and the watchman in the guardhouse was bored, again.
“Yawwwn…” The young man put a hand to his mouth, unsuccessfully trying to stifle a yawn. It actually made tears come to his eyes. If the royal army of Lugunica was a ladder, he was at the very bottom of it. A foot soldier. What’s more, it was evident that he was not overflowing with motivation and morale. Even any particular commitment to the task the man had been given seemed too much to hope for.
He owed his position as a guardsman to his parents’ connections, and his lack of drive was not lost on his superiors, nor neglected in their reports. Hence, he found himself relegated to this guardhouse, a place whose importance turned out to be purely nominal.
Relations between the Kingdom of Lugunica and the Volakian Empire had never been warm, not in the thousand years and more since the two nations had been founded. The history books were littered with their territorial skirmishes. Perhaps that made the presence of such an irresponsible young lout on the border seem strange…
“Yep… No war today, either,” the young man remarked, gazing out from the observation tower at the clouds as they drifted by. He felt no more urgency than those indifferent denizens of the great, blue sky, and why should he? The last time battles had broken out between the kingdom and the empire with any frequency had been centuries ago; there hadn’t been any engagements worth mentioning for decades. The watchman’s role as a border guard was as simple as jobs got, and in the months since he had been assigned to this position, his daily reports had all consisted of the same two words: All quiet. In fact, in order to save himself the trouble of having to produce a fresh report each day, the layabout had already prepared reports reading All quiet for the entirety of next month.
In fairness, it seemed there had been some trouble in the capital the last several months, but it meant little to him out here on the frontier. It seemed an unreasonable burden for him even to read the written orders he was sent from the capital city, and for the most part, he simply skimmed them. There was just one thing that had registered with him.
“‘Increase vigilance regarding the Volakian Empire.’ Yeah, but how?”
It wasn’t like they were sending the man anyone new to help at the checkpoint, so it wasn’t clear to him how he was supposed to implement these orders. A more dedicated colleague had suggested redoubling the watch, but with the men they had on hand, they could barely maintain the watch schedule they already had. So here he was today, watching, just as vigilant as ever, and no more.
“Hmm…?” The young man suddenly glanced down from the clouds toward the roadway, frowning. At first, he thought he must be seeing things. However, the guard’s doubts quickly turned to prayers. Then from prayers to wishes—and then within a few seconds, all hopes were dashed.
A tremendous dust cloud was approaching the checkpoint directly down the road from the empire. It moved almost too fast to believe, as if a land dragon were running with all its speed. No, even faster than that. As the young man watched, frozen, the source of the dust cloud cut across his view, heading into kingdom territory. The thing simply barreled straight past the checkpoint.
“Whoa! H-hey, wait…!”
This was a border outpost. Vetting anyone traveling from one side of the line to the other was a big part of the job. And yet this whirlwind hadn’t so much as stopped to acknowledge the outpost, instead speeding right by. That was an unauthorized border crossing, clearly a crime. But—
“Heeeey, time to change the guard!”
“Huh?” Taken by surprise, the young man found the dust cloud had grown too distant to see. He was more startled still by the voice of one of his comrades, who was climbing up the ladder from below. He turned back to see his more diligent companion, who stared at the pale boy.
“Oh…,” he said.
“What’s with the look? Wait… Did something happen?”
“No, uh, er…” The young man was at a loss to respond. Had something happened? Yes. But it was also a fact that he had been unable to do anything about it. If he reported that he had simply let an identified intruder waltz by, he assumed he could expect much worse than just an assignment to some godforsaken corner of the frontier. The fear silenced him for a long moment. Finally, he managed, “…Nah, nothing. Nothing at all. Same old boring world out there.”
In the end, the lazy guardsman never mentioned what he had seen, not to his comrade and not in his written report. The record would show that on this day at the border between the kingdom and the empire, absolutely nothing had happened.
A small digression: Some months later, this young border guard was turned in by his comrade for false reporting and dereliction of duty. He was then reassigned to guard a jail instead—but that is a story for another time.
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