Leon’s unit got ready with little complaint. It seemed that his display with the duels had cowed the nobles well enough that they didn’t question it when Leon informed them of the mission that August had tasked them with. The giants, as always, were rather silent and followed Leon unfailingly.
It gave Leon no small amount of pride to see his unit moving so quickly and without so much as a hint of discord in their ranks. Of course, it was still early, so there was still plenty of time for the Barons to get some fire back into their hearts and become insubordinate. Leon figured that it would take his leading them for months before they would truly become loyal to him, and he doubted that the war would continue for that long.
Well, he hoped it wouldn’t. He didn’t think he’d be able to stand to be apart from Elise for that long.
For now, though, Leon’s biggest concern was the unit’s logistics. He and the Barons were carrying all of their requisitioned supplies, and they had to properly manage it since they and the main army would be separated for weeks. If any of the Barons were to fall in battle or start to refuse to comply with Leon’s orders, they could withhold significant amounts of the unit’s food as a way of gaining leverage.
Part of this was by design. Leon had known this when he had tasked the Barons with this duty. In his childhood, Artorias had taught him that showing trust was a good way to instill some amount of loyalty immediately following a display of strength or dominance, and for Leon, giving the Barons most of their supplies was his way of showing trust.
He found himself remembering quite a few of Artorias’ old lessons in the past two days, most of which had been largely forgotten since he hadn’t a group of people of his own to protect and lead. Now that he did, it was all starting to come back, and he hoped that it would prove useful. At the very least, he didn’t think he’d ever have handed over those supplies if Artorias hadn’t taught him that such a thing could be useful.
With their supply situation worked out—at least, for the time being—their primary logistical issue turned toward the path they’d take. They could’ve turned directly north and taken the Gold Road close to Lentia and been there in a week, but Leon decided that they’d take a more scenic route, marching through the countryside of the Southern Territories. Given that they were almost three thousand strong—most of the camp servants being left behind so they could move faster—plus a hundred giants, they weren’t going to be inconspicuous no matter what they did. Still, Leon judged that they’d have an easier time maintaining whatever subtlety they had by sticking to the forests.
But that also meant they had to cross dozens of streams, creeks, and swamps, meander through dense, hot, and humid forests, and ford half a dozen large tributaries of the Naga River. The giants and earth mages in their party were able to make bridges past the rivers, but the swamps and forests they had to trudge through on their own.
It was slow going, and it took a couple more days for them to reach their destination than Leon had initially estimated when meeting with August. He could only hope that August, Roland, and Aeneas would be able to hold out for the extra time.
The Duchy of Lentia was fairly small compared to many other noble territories of the same rank. Before the First Bull King unified the region, Lentia’s enemies and neighbors had eaten away at much of its former territory, but the old Lentian royalty had readily surrendered to the First Bull King, allowing them to keep the lands they still held. But they had lost much of their most valuable resources to their neighbors, and so most of the Duchy’s income these days came from spell paper production—decently lucrative in and of itself, but the Duchy’s economy was almost completely reliant upon that one product.
What that meant for Leon, though, is that before he and his unit reached the villa where Marcus was being kept, they had to make their way around some of the plantations that grew the reeds that were processed into that spell paper. It was a relatively wealthy rural region, with frequent patrols by the Lentian Duke and the other nearby nobles to make sure that the wealth wasn’t being stolen.
Leon and the others would have to avoid those patrols as much as they could, and with thousands of people and a hundred giants, that wasn’t going to be easy. Still, their route had kept them far from the roads, and they managed to reach a staging area about five miles from their destination with little trouble.
Now, they just had to assault what was sure to be a heavily guarded compound and extract its prisoners.
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Leon rode out on the back of Anzu, the griffin’s gleaming white coat extremely eye-catching in the light of the full moon. Behind him rode Valeria and Alix, still on their borrowed horses, and the few hundred light cavalry that the unit had flanking them. Most of the infantry would follow, but their task was to secure a few strong points on the way to the villa, with Baron Gellius supervising them.
The other four Barons would be accompanying Leon in the main assault with their knights. For a task this sensitive, Leon wasn’t going to rely on peasant levies, which was why they were being kept out of it. Besides, after the rough march, most of the relatively weak levies were tired, but the more powerful knights were still in much better fighting condition.
Similar to the levies, the giants peeled off and waited at the nearest of these strong points to the villa, a hill that they immediately began to fortify. From there, they’d be close enough to assist Leon if he needed them, but he also wouldn’t have to worry about them causing too much collateral damage. The giants were weapons that he wanted to use with some restraint rather than trying to solve every problem with them. Besides, he’d asked them to leave their reproduction rituals and join a war that they had no stake in, which only made that much more reluctant to commit them to battle unless they were truly necessary.
Like that, Leon and about five hundred knights and nobles surged out across the nearby farms and toward their villa at the top of a gentle hill.
Their approach went unchallenged; not even a horn blast greeted them as they came barreling out of the trees to the south. This confused Leon more than a little, and he almost called the charge off right then. However, as he looked backward and saw that the stone giants were still waiting there, his confidence soared and he let the charge continue.
Unfortunately, the villa itself was warded against magic senses, but the outer wall was much flimsier than expected. As the unit thundered across the reed plantation south of the villa, Leon and a couple of fire mages surged forward and started hurling fireballs at the wall, breaking right through the weak stonework.
The knights and their mounts poured through the breach and into the gardens of the villa. And yet, there still wasn’t even the slightest hint of an armed response. No alarms, no guards, nothing.
Now thoroughly disconcerted, Leon released his magic senses once again—now that he was on the other side of the wall, the pulse of his magic power wouldn’t be scattered before he saw what was within.
And as soon as he did, a deep scowl appeared on his face and he slowly lowered the blade in his hand.
“Sir Leon!” Baroness Orientis cried out as she rode to his side. “We ought to retreat, this is clearly a trap!”
“Do you sense any guards or an army nearby?” Leon quietly asked as he stared at the villa further up the gentle hill with a dark look in his eyes.
“No, Sir,” Orientis replied as she flicked her hair almost dismissively.
“Then we’re fine,” Leon said. “Secure the villa. You know what your job is.”
And with that, Leon and Anzu sped toward the villa, Alix, Valeria, and a dozen other knights in tow. The remaining knights, meanwhile, followed their Barons in securing the compound. Not a single one of them found so much as a hostile rat, let alone armed guards.
The lack of violence, however, didn’t stop Leon’s party from crashing into the central courtyard of the villa with blades drawn and magic channeled. There they found only a handful of people sitting around a table in the center of the courtyard. The table was in a gazebo surrounded by a small garden, seemingly having a nice, pleasant chat in the moonlight.
“Ah, you’ve arrived!” one of them called out as he rose from his seat and gestured toward Leon’s group. “Please, whoever leads you, come join us! We have much to discuss!”
“Sir…?” Alix asked, looking to Leon for orders as the other knights began to spread out in the courtyard, surrounding the gazebo.
Leon sighed, recognizing several faces at the table, and turned to Valeria. She glanced back at him, clearly recognizing those same people, too.
Marcus was there, his clothes fine and clean and not even one black hair out of place. He did not look like someone who had spent weeks in prison, though Leon figured that a noble of his station wouldn’t have been kept in squalor.
Next to Marcus was Alcander, the tall and heavily muscled nobleman who had acted as Marcus’ second-in-command during their time at the Knight Academy. He’d pestered Leon on more than one occasion to duel and had only given up after their squireships had ended and Leon’s power was revealed to have completely eclipsed his. Leon didn’t even know that he’d been taken prisoner, so seeing him here was quite surprising.
The third and final person that Leon recognized was Gaius Tullius, his golden-blond hair shining in the light of the moon and the villa’s magic lanterns, his cool blue eyes regarding Leon with little emotion. They flickered toward Valeria a few times, but Gaius managed to remain stoic and expressionless.
None of these people were the man who had risen and invited Leon to join them, however. That man was tall, with hair that matched Gaius’ in color, a square jaw, and a prominent nose. He was classically handsome and held himself with the confidence of a man who was in total control of the situation, despite Leon’s knights swarming over the villa.
Alongside these four were four more, two men and two women whom Leon didn’t recognize, but given who they were with, he could make a couple of guesses. He figured one of the men was the Baron who owned the villa, but both were too well-dressed for him to tell which. The women, too, were impeccably well-dressed, showing that they were probably nobles of some level, and both had sigils on their tunics that were unfamiliar to Leon.
“Be on guard for anything,” Leon growled to Alix and Valeria, and they both nodded in response. He then leaped down from Anzu’s back and began walking forward.
“Is that Sir Leon?” Marcus asked as Leon drew close. Leon removed his helmet in response, showing Marcus that his guess was accurate. “I thought so, you’ve a rather unique aura and air about you…”
“Are you all right?” Leon asked, glancing at both Marcus and Alcander.
“We are, we haven’t been mistreated in any way,” Marcus replied.
“Indeed, we’ve been treated with nothing less than honor and respect,” Alcander added, smiling and nodding first toward a man who appeared—at least, as far as his looks were concerned—related to Gaius, and then to one of the other men.
“What about the other prisoners that were supposed to be here?” Leon inquired further.
“They’re here—” Marcus began, but he was cut off by the blond man who appeared to be in charge.
“So, you’re Sir Leon?” he asked. “Please, we have much to discuss, would you care to join us?”
“I’ll stand,” Leon replied as he conspicuously adjusted his grip on his sword. That this man seemed to have heard of him wasn’t something that Leon relished, and, in fact, put him quite on edge.
“Have it your way, then,” the man replied good-naturedly and with a wide smile. “Seems like a way to get tired feet to me, but to each their own, I suppose.”
“What did you want to talk about?” Leon asked, his tone grave and brokering no levity or familiarity.
The man finally seemed a bit taken aback at Leon’s straightforward and almost excessively formal attitude, but Leon didn’t care. In this situation, his heart was furiously beating, and he was bathing the villa in his magic senses, alert for any sign that this was, indeed, a trap. At the very least, he spared a few moments to watch as Baron Orientis found the others imprisoned in the villa, all of whom had been brought to one of the ballrooms as if awaiting Leon’s arrival.
“Getting right down to brass tacks, huh?” the man asked as he slid back into his seat. “I can appreciate that. Allow me to introduce myself, then. I am Gratian Tullius, Duke of Lentia, and I would like to negotiate. What I want from you, specifically, is to take my request to Prince August and impress upon him that I do not willingly support Prince Octavius, and that if he would have me, I would like to support him instead.”
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