Leon and Grim’s group of knights rode north along a road so small and untraveled that it wasn’t even paved after leaving the capital. It would’ve been paved if it were more well-traveled, but most people would take the much bigger road toward Teira when heading north, but that went north-east, whereas their group wanted to go roughly north-west.
It was just the eight of them, as those that had squires or men-at-arms didn’t bring them, but none of them disagreed with Caelestius when the Legate said that he thought that even this small group was too much for the mission they were assigned. A single third or fourth-tier werewolf killing livestock was barely enough of a threat to deploy a single fifth-tier knight, let alone eight of them. Needless to say, the atmosphere between the knights was incredibly relaxed as they rode along, as none of them had any doubts about whether or not they would succeed in their mission.
“… but the place was filled with mold, there was a dresser covering up a hole in the wall, and I could hear rats scurrying around beneath the floor!” one knight, an older man with a thick black beard and graying hair, complained.
“It sounds like it should’ve been obvious the place was a dive from the moment you saw it,” a brown-haired lady knight responded.
“You should just stay with us in the barracks!” said a third knight, a blond man who would’ve been the youngest had Leon not been present. “The apartments we got are actually better than what we were assigned back at the Horns!”
“My wife doesn’t want to live so close to the Legion Headquarters,” the first knight explained. “She wants someplace we can raise our kids with other kids. Not a lot of families in the barracks, and even less schools.”
“Still, that kind of dinginess shouldn’t be legal,” the second knight said with a disgusted look on her face.
“It isn’t,” Adalgrim mentioned. “There are multiple regulations dictating that houses must be safe to live in, but the inspectors readily accept bribes, so most of the major landowners will cut a lot of corners when it comes to maintaining their properties. Few people with the power to change that seem to care, though, they’re far too concerned about the corruption of higher officials to bother themselves with simple safety inspectors.”
“Fucking dickheads,” the young blond knight bitterly muttered.
For his part, Leon wasn’t paying any attention at all to this talk of housing, he was too busy quietly training as best he could in the saddle. They had left the outskirts of the city not too long ago, and he allowed his mind to wander a bit as the group made their way through the countryside. Their horses were fast and well trained, so Leon’s horse didn’t need much encouragement from him to follow the rest; he could afford to just sit back and relax now that there weren’t millions of people all around him.
He was jerked out of his reverie when the young knight asked him, “Hey, Leon! I couldn’t help but notice that you weren’t assigned a barracks room, where are you staying?”
Leon looked over at the man, his blue eyes sparkling with curiosity. It took a moment for him to refocus on what was around him and process the question, but once he did he simply answered, “I’m staying with my girlfriend.”
None of the knights were particularly surprised with his simple answer given that they had all become decently acquainted with him during his time at the Horns, but most were at least hoping for something more since, apart from Grim, this was their first mission with Leon. But after a moment of silence, it was Grim who gave more specifics.
“Leon’s lady friend is extremely rich, I had to go to her place to deliver a message to him. Her house is… well, more of a palace than a villa. It was in the noble district!”
“Wait, wait, wait,” the young knight said—Leon was starting to wish he could remember the man’s name, but it was eluding him. “You have a girlfriend? I always thought that you and your squire were… you know, since you two were inseparable, living together, and so close in age…”
“Did you not see this lucky dork and his lady during the triumph?” the old knight asked in disbelief.
“You’d have had to be blind to miss it…” the brown-haired lady knight said with a teasing smile.
“No, I didn’t see him, I wasn’t looking for it, and I was busy with my own wife!” the young knight retorted indignantly.
“Alix and I are friends, we’re not involved in that way,” Leon clarified.
“You know, I have to admit, I’m a little surprised, myself,” a blond lady knight said. She’d been quiet up until this point, but the surprise of Leon’s reveal was so much that she had to join the conversation. “I guess, it makes a bit of sense since you never seemed to be interested in anyone else while we were at the Horns, but you didn’t let on at all that you were dating someone!”
“No one asked,” Leon replied as he suppressed a smile of embarrassment.
“Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that people keep to themselves, most at least bring up their significant others in casual conversation,” the older knight said. “Not even to draw attention to it, just something like, ‘my girlfriend once told me…’ or other things of that nature.”
Leon could only shrug. He never intended to hide the fact that he and Elise were an item, but he wasn’t close to any of these knights, and he spoke to them so rarely that Grim was the only one of them whose name he could remember. In fact, this problem was getting to the point that he was feeling extremely awkward, and he couldn’t alleviate it by asking their names without looking like an asshole.
The blond man had been riding in front of Leon, but he trailed back a bit and fell in beside the teenage knight. He reached over and threw his arms around Leon’s shoulders, just as he’d done when their mission had been given to them and said, “The opportunity to brag has come up! Come on, I can only speak for myself but I’m sure we’re all dying to know just what kind of woman has caught your eye!”
Leon smiled sheepishly, then hesitantly began to describe Elise to the other knights. All seven of the others went silent, even those who hadn’t participated in their conversation as they were all interested in hearing some details of the extremely taciturn Leon’s life. Plus, he was nearly always completely stone-faced around them, and the sight of him actually embarrassed by their questions was a sight that they all wanted to see.
“The daughter of the Heaven’s Eye Tower Lord…” the blond man whispered in amazement.
“How did… is she… I don’t…” the old knight sputtered in disbelief, his natural friendliness leaving him unable to say anything disparaging toward either Leon or Elise.
“I’m impressed,” the blond lady said with an expression to match her statement.
“As am I,” the brown-haired lady agreed.
“That makes a lot of sense,” Adalgrim said, dispelling any doubts they may have had regarding Leon’s description. “I only saw her once during the triumph, but her family’s palace is right next to the Heaven’s Eye Tower. If she isn’t related to the Heaven’s Eye Tower Lord, then that palace would’ve long been bought out from under her, I’d think.”
“I’ve got to know, what’s your strategy? How did you land a girl like that?!” the blond man asked as he pulled Leon closer and stared wildly into the eighteen-year-old’s golden eyes.
“Don’t be an ass, Lothar!” the blond woman chastised, slightly offended at his womanizing language.
“Yeah, why are you looking for tips when you’re married? Looking for a second wife?” the brown-haired woman asked.
“I love my wife, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be taking another!” Lothar shouted. “I just want to know how a Valeman who never speaks started a relationship with one of the noblest and most beautiful women in the entire Kingdom! Is that so wrong?!”
“Maybe a little,” the old man said as he cleared the last traces of shock and disbelief from his expression. “How about you start telling us about your own wife, then? I certainly haven’t met her, and I don’t think anyone else here has, so who’s to say she’s not completely mythical?”
“You…” Lothar said in friendly anger. “I will have you know, old man, that my wife isn’t fictional!”
“Then tell us about her!” the old knight replied. “Sir Leon shared, so now it’s your turn!”
Leon silently chuckled as Lothar removed his arm from his shoulders and began to vigorously defend himself and insist that his own wife wasn’t made-up. Of course, no one actually thought he was lying, they were just having fun at his expense, but the fun was infectious, and Leon couldn’t help but smile along with all the rest of them. Even Anzu, who had been happily trotting alongside the group, got into the swing of things and began to jump and chirp and flap his wings every time Lothar got angry, kicking up quite a bit of dust.
Over the course of all this, Leon finally managed to learn the other knights’ names from their conversation.
The old knight was named Cyricus, and he not only had five wives, he also had fifteen children, more than two dozen grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. However, only one of his wives and her children were staying with him in the capital, the rest were living in his villa in the Southern Territories.
The blond woman was Olympia, and her family included three husbands, though she had no children yet.
The brown-haired lady knight was named Fara, and she chose not to date, as she was still in her mid-forties, a very young age for a fifth-tier mage—and the third youngest of the group after Leon and Lothar—and she wanted to rock the single life for a while longer before settling down with someone else.
By the time everyone had finished regaling the others with tales of their love lives, the village that they were traveling to appeared over the rolling, lightly forested hills of the Central Territories. It was fairly standard as far as rural villages went, being mostly just a small collection of several dozen families that either operated ranches or supported those who did. Miles of fencing made of unenchanted wooden stakes crisscrossed the countryside, clearly designating where one rancher’s property ended and another’s began.
“What do they raise here?” Lothar wondered aloud.
“Horses, mostly,” Grim answered. “I think there are chickens and pigs here, too, but horses are the biggest draw.”
“Where are we heading?” Leon asked, cutting straight to the chase.
“That big villa,” Grim said, indicating the largest house in the village, a place large enough to be called a small palace. The other houses in the village weren’t quite as large, but as they approached Leon could see that they were at least well off, at least compared to some of the other rural villages he’d seen. They were relatively spacious homes, and he could sense enough magic coming from them to know that they probably had some amenities like fine temperature control and magic lanterns in addition to the standard food preservation and water enchantments, and the facades of the houses were painted in dark red and dull gold, rather than simply being the plain brown of the wood that they were made of.
“I thought Sir Caelestius said we were dealing with backwoods hicks, not country nobles,” Fara whispered.
“That place is just owned by some rich guy, not a noble,” Grim said. “I think we’re here in the Exarchate of… shit, what was it called…? I can’t remember, either way, there aren’t any landed nobles on this side of the capital.”
“Might as well get this show on the road,” Cyricus said as he led the group toward the mansion on the hill. “We’ve got a werewolf to hunt down, and if we get it done soon enough, we can sleep in our own beds tonight!”
“Right!” Grim responded.
The mansion was made entirely of wood, though it was surrounded by a low stone wall that Leon could sense a fair amount of magic flowing through, so he guessed that there were more than a few defensive enchantments woven into the stone bricks. The thick wooden gate opened on their approach, leading them into a small cobblestone courtyard edged with thin wooden columns, forming a kind of pavilion around the gate. In the center of the courtyard was a mosaic depicting horses and a bull in blue, black, and gold, surrounded by a green field. To the right were stables, and the main mansion was directly ahead of them.
However, their attention was drawn to the left, where there was a small detached wing of the mansion that opened up into the courtyard. A middle-aged man possessed with third-tier magic had walked out of this wing just as they came to a halt in the courtyard.
“Welcome!” he called out. “I am Odulf, the guard captain for this estate!” Given that he was unable to sense anything distinct about any of their auras, he acted with as much politeness as he was able to muster.
“I am Sir Adalgrim, I and my comrades have come from the capital after receiving word of a possible werewolf in the area!” Grim responded.
“You’ve come to the right place, then, Sir!” Odulf replied. “Please, let the servants take care of your fine steeds and come and join me inside! We have much to discuss, I think!”
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