Chương 137: The Border Had Already Moved

They abandoned the carriage shortly after sunrise the following day, when the road narrowed between wooded hills and both horses began resisting every step northward. At first, Ronan tried calming them with quiet words and slower reins, but the animals continued snorting, stamping, and pulling their heads away from the unseen road ahead. Their ears remained flattened, and white foam gathered around the bits despite the cool morning. Whatever frightened them existed beyond anything ordinary training could overcome.

Ronan finally guided the carriage toward an abandoned village beside the road, choosing the least damaged stable among buildings surrendered to weather, weeds, and old violence. The settlement had once held perhaps forty families. Now roofless houses leaned toward empty streets, shutters moved without hands, and grass grew through cracked stone thresholds.

Sieghart climbed down with his bag and immediately noticed deep marks across several doors, as though something clawed through reinforced wood instead of bothering with handles. Dried blood darkened one wall near the well, almost hidden beneath moss. No bodies remained, but several broken weapons lay rusting beneath collapsed roofing. The horses refused to approach the northern edge of the village. Even inside the stable yard, they kept staring toward the distant hills and trembling whenever the wind shifted.

Sieghart watched Ronan remove the harnesses before examining the stable. One supporting wall had collapsed, two roof beams sagged, and the feeding trough had split lengthwise.

"What happened here?" Ronan loosened the first horse's bridle and rubbed the animal's neck patiently until its breathing became slightly less frantic beneath his hand.

"The Chimerians attacked this place." Sieghart crouched beside the ruined wall and placed both hands over the exposed foundation, allowing gray mana to gather between his fingers.

"Recently?"

"Several years ago. Their scent lingers, and the horses know what hunts around here." Ronan looked toward the nervous animals before nodding northward, where the road disappeared between steep hills covered with dark pine and morning fog.

"They scare the shit out of horses. We can't ride them farther." Sieghart activated Earth Creation, producing compact stone directly inside the broken foundation before using Sand Control to fuse loose soil around the new material. The spell still worked slowly at this scale, but endless mana allowed him to replace missing sections without searching the abandoned village for suitable stones.

He rebuilt the lower wall first, then created thick supports beneath the sagging beams and packed fresh earth around every unstable post. Ronan finished unloading their supplies while Sieghart sealed gaps, reinforced the doorway, and shaped a shallow drainage channel leading away from the stable floor.

"You learned something neat."

"I could have learned more if—" Sieghart stopped himself before finishing. Complaining about Mira's missing office and restricted knowledge would accomplish nothing while they were already pursuing her.

"Never mind." Ronan glanced over suspiciously but decided not to investigate, perhaps recognizing that encouraging Sieghart's complaints would make the repair take considerably longer. Sieghart shaped a broad earthen container beside the stable, making its sides thick enough that frightened horses could not crack it by stepping carelessly. He smoothed the interior with Sand Control, hardened the base into stone, then filled the entire improvised trough using Water Creation.

Both horses approached cautiously after Ronan led them forward. They drank deeply, although neither stopped watching the northern road between mouthfuls. Sieghart patted the larger horse's neck and created another smaller container for grain, ensuring the animals had enough supplies if their return took several days. Ronan stared at him while holding one saddlebag, his expression becoming increasingly offended by the care invested in creatures that could not understand sarcasm.

"Why do you treat the horses better than me?"

"Because they don't interrupt my training or enter my room without knocking."

"I knock now."

"After years of correction." Ronan shook his head and carried the saddlebag toward the repaired stable, muttering about children who preserved grudges more carefully than valuable equipment.

"You're going to become someone who holds old grudges forever." Sieghart thought about his grandparents, his parents, the false wanted poster, and every secret enemy still hidden beyond his reach.

"That possibility already passed." Ronan stopped briefly, apparently hearing more beneath the answer than Sieghart intended, but he resumed securing the horses without asking anything further. They concealed the carriage behind the stable using torn canvas and fallen branches, then removed anything valuable enough to attract wandering scavengers. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Ronan left enough water, feed, and loosened rope for the horses to survive if nobody returned, though neither man commented upon what that precaution implied. They departed on foot shortly afterward, following an overgrown track north while the abandoned village disappeared behind bare trees and leaning chimneys. Sieghart maintained Enhanced Smell at low strength, separating damp earth, old smoke, animal trails, and Ronan's familiar scent from anything carrying unfamiliar blood or chemicals.

The landscape looked peaceful from a distance, but closer examination revealed old arrowheads beneath grass, cracked shields beside ditches, and trees scarred by unnatural claws. One stone house had collapsed inward around a blackened circle. Another possessed a hole through both walls, suggesting something large had charged straight across it. They passed a field where rusted helmets protruded from weeds like strange metal flowers. Several contained holes too wide for ordinary arrows or spears.

Sieghart examined one without touching it, noticing that the metal had been punctured inward and twisted as though struck by a narrow horn. The signs became more frequent as they advanced. Shallow graves occupied one hill, while bleached animal bones had been arranged around several unmarked stones. Ronan avoided those stones completely, changing course without explanation. Sieghart followed because the faint chemical odor surrounding them suggested traps had survived their creators.

After another hour, they reached a ridge overlooking the remains of a fortified road station positioned where two valleys met. Its outer wall had collapsed in three places, its watchtower had burned, and unfamiliar wooden spikes now surrounded whatever structures remained inside. Sieghart crouched behind the ridge and studied the ruins. No banners moved above them, and nothing living appeared between the broken buildings.

"Why isn't there a military post around here?"

"There was." Ronan pointed toward the ruined station below, then traced the road beyond it toward several distant hills hidden beneath morning haze.

"The Chimerians took it. Once the post fell, they used the opening to raid every village behind it." Sieghart looked back toward the empty countryside, finally understanding why farms, patrols, and travelers had disappeared long before the official border. The map probably still marked this region as human territory, yet nobody remained capable of enforcing that claim beyond occasional rescue missions and abandoned graves.

"How long ago?"

"The first loss happened twenty-seven years ago. Humans reclaimed it twice, then lost it again each time the Chimerians returned better prepared." Ronan explained that every campaign followed a familiar pattern. Human forces discovered effective weapons, drove the tribe back, rebuilt defenses, and assumed those methods would remain effective. The Chimerians spent the following years studying captured soldiers, damaged equipment, recovered spells, and whatever corpses remained after each battle.

Then they modified themselves specifically against the attacks responsible for their previous defeat, producing new bloodlines, grafts, medicines, and defensive organs.

"Fire drives them back once, so the next generation arrives with heat-resistant skin and lungs that filter smoke." Ronan started down the ridge carefully, keeping his body low while checking every doorway, broken wall, and shadow surrounding the abandoned station.

"Poison works next, so they replace livers, alter blood, and grow glands that break toxins apart before enough damage accumulates." Sieghart followed while imagining an enemy society treating every defeat as a research report written across the bodies of its dead.

"What happens when soldiers change tactics?"

"They adapt too. The problem is that humans need new training and equipment, while Chimerians rebuild the soldiers themselves." Ronan explained that a weapon could become obsolete within years, but a successful graft might spread through births, rituals, apprenticeships, and forced procedures. Each war therefore became more annoying than the last, because yesterday's reliable weakness often became tomorrow's carefully reinforced defense against the same method.

The humans still invented counters, changed formations, and developed specialized units, yet every victory taught the surviving tribe exactly what needed alteration.

"They only need a couple of years to modify enough warriors for another serious attack."

"That seems fast."

"They lose many candidates. They don't care." That answer explained how progress remained possible despite biology, rejection, and failure. Their methods were not efficient; they merely accepted casualties no human command could tolerate. Sieghart remembered the kidnapped descendant whose harmonization might reduce those losses, allowing the tribe to combine more traits without destroying most subjects. If they succeeded, the cycle Ronan described would accelerate.

New adaptations might require months instead of years, while previously incompatible defenses could exist together.

"That relative could make this territory impossible to reclaim."

"Not only this territory." Ronan's voice remained quiet as they approached the shattered station, where old blood, chemicals, and animal musk mixed beneath the colder air.

"A stable method would spread. Every Chimerian tribe would steal it, buy it, copy it, or carve it from whoever learned first." Sieghart understood why Mira had crossed the border personally. The kidnapping threatened her family, but allowing the experiment to succeed could change every future war. He also understood why Ronan had hidden the mission. Public knowledge would encourage rivals to capture other descendants before Lunar Arc moved them somewhere safer.

They entered the ruined post through a breach in the southern wall, stepping around broken masonry and several weathered bones scattered beneath a collapsed platform. Sieghart detected no fresh Chimerian scent inside, but he found recent boot marks pressed into mud near the northern gate. Ronan crouched beside them and touched one print, then examined a broken twig where someone had left the main road deliberately.

"Mira passed here."

"You can tell?"

"She uses the same heel whenever she wants people following her to notice." Sieghart studied the ordinary-looking mark and wondered how many agent techniques depended upon recognizing details nobody else knew carried information. The prints led away from the occupied road and toward a narrow forest trail, suggesting Mira had avoided the main Chimerian routes while approaching their territory.

Ronan stood and adjusted both knives beneath his coat, his earlier humor disappearing as he examined the hills beyond the ruined station.

"From here onward, assume every animal might report us, every plant might contain poison, and every corpse might still possess useful organs."

"That last one sounded unnecessarily dramatic." Sieghart strengthened Protection around himself and followed Ronan through the northern breach, leaving the abandoned military post and its weathered human graves behind. The official border had disappeared decades earlier, but the territory ahead continued changing after every war, learning from anyone foolish enough to attack it twice.