Leon took a deep breath of the salty sea air as Sigebert’s flagship left Kraterok behind them.

It had been eight long days since they’d arrived and took the city by storm.  It was now barely half-populated, having been the site of a brutal sack and two naval battles, but it was still without a doubt the largest city in the Serpentine Isles.

The Legion fleets didn’t waste time dealing with the rest of the settlements on the island aside from a few cursory and token inspections during the search for Octavius.  If they needed further attention, then whoever the King decided to install as Earl would see to it.  Kraterok was back in their possession, and that was all the Legion cared about.  However, it had taken all of those eight days to ensure that Kraterok would stay theirs once they left.

The task force left behind one of the recovered Flame Lances, fifty ships of varying size, and a thousand Legion marines.  Normally, this would’ve been considered absolutely overkill, but given that Jormun had already destroyed one fleet, no one wanted to take any chances with leaving behind a weak garrison.  Even when the scouts surveyed the island during the week and reported back that Jormun’s pirate fleet wasn’t anywhere on the island, no one relaxed; Jormun himself had managed to infiltrate the island and interact with the Fleet Legates face-to-face, and no one had been the wiser until he left.  If anything, as Kraterok grew smaller behind them, Leon knew that the Fleet Legates were nervous that the forces they left behind wouldn’t be enough if Jormun were hiding his people somewhere else on the island, just waiting for their main forces to leave.

But they had to move on.  If Leon knew anything about the Legion that could hold his respect, it was that they didn’t waste time deliberating.  If Jormun retook Kraterok again, then they’d just turn around and burn him out of whatever hole he was hiding in.

For now, they’d move on to the second island.  With the losses sustained during the taking of Kraterok and the demands of the garrison they left behind, the fleet was objectively much smaller, even if they hadn’t taken so many overall losses as to be much affected.  They were now down one and half thousand marines, and a little over one hundred ships.  Granted, most of those ships were fairly small with crews barely more than a couple dozen at most, but the Islander Flame Lances had still managed to sink or severely damage a dozen heavier escorts.

Sigebert’s flagship had also been heavily damaged in their initial salvo, with one of his Flame Lances having been knocked out of commission.  Fortunately, it had been an easy affair for the naval engineers to rip the slagged weapon down and replace it with the seized Islander Flame Lance that they weren’t leaving behind.

The fleets began to speed up as they left the first island, though Leon noted that they stopped accelerating at a slightly slower speed than they had risen to when leaving the Bull Kingdom.  They also adopted a more defensive formation, letting smaller and faster ships range ahead farther than they had on approach to the first island.  It seemed that they had been once bitten by the Flame Lances taken by Jormun and were now twice shy; they were going to approach the capitals of each island with much more caution from now on, and their eyes were going to be open for any signs of ambush.

Leon himself participated little in the actual affairs of setting up the temporary garrison in Kraterok, though he was still there for most of the meetings.  They bored him almost to tears, but he’d taken Nestor’s advice and his own realization to heart: he needed the experience in these matters, even if he wasn’t going to be calling the shots for these particular cases.  He made sure to pay attention to exactly how the Fleet Legates went about incentivizing the remaining local elites into helping them, how they used their manpower to help the people of the city begin rebuilding, and how they subtly and tacitly threatened everyone involved by leaving behind the garrison—for their ‘protection’.

Leon would remember these lessons.  He’d taken a few walks down into the city with his small squad several times, and it seemed like the Islanders, while not entirely happy with the Legion forces themselves, were at least content and grateful that they weren’t being sacked.  It seemed like, to Leon’s eyes, at least, that the Bull Kingdom had successfully taken back Kraterok and ensured that it would stay in their hands even after they left, barring any action from Jormun.

As for the pirate himself, Leon was sure that Jormun had already quit the island.  Instead of sticking around and trying to resist the Legion, Leon felt like Jormun had another goal, one that wasn’t quite so practical and grounded as everyone else was assuming.  Leon had thought a lot about the story that Jormun had told him, about the godlike Serpent sealed beneath the island chain, just waiting for someone to come along and release it.  The way that Jormun had described it and the way that the bird that so resembled his thunderous Ancestor drew attention to it were signs and glimpses into the pirate’s true intention—or so Leon felt.  Jormun could’ve just been messing with his head, but Leon wasn’t so sure about that.

Leon kept that theory to himself.  He had nothing in the way of evidence to support it, but it just felt right.  However, the Fleet Legates were clearly of a more immediate suspicion; they believed that when Jormun, as Turiel, claimed that he’d been trying to become King of the Isles, he hadn’t been joking.  And that theory didn’t necessarily conflict with Leon’s impression—at the very least, Jormun had certainly come off to him as an ambitious man.  But Leon didn’t think it was his political ambitions that defined him, but rather his magical and symbolic ambitions.

He believed in what he was doing, Leon heard it in his voice when he told him the story, despite later seeming to dismiss the story as just that… though Leon did wonder several times if that was simply his memory playing tricks on him, warping his recollections to suit his narrative.

Whatever the case, as Leon turned his eyes away from Kraterok and toward the second island—even to his eyes still just a gray-green smear in the distance—Leon readied himself for whatever was going to come next, for if he was certain about anything, it was that Jormun was planning something much bigger than the mere act of state-building.  He was trying to do something on a whole other level. 

If he weren’t, then at the very least, Leon would’ve expected a much more vigorous defense of the Serpentine Isles’ largest city and de facto capital.  Leon also would’ve expected an assassination or two after Jormun’s successful deception.

As Leon stood there on the deck, leaning on a railing, he glanced over his shoulder at Marcus and Alix sparring together.  Marcus was clearly better than her, but Alix was still performing admirably, giving almost as good as she was getting.  Alcander was standing nearby, silently watching and waiting with obvious eagerness for his turn to fight.  Maia was standing next to Leon, staring down at the water that they were sailing through with a thoughtful expression.  Gaius hadn’t joined the rest of them for the journey so far, being still an official member of Sigebert’s staff and having a few duties to fulfill with the Fleet Legate, but Leon noticed Gaius walking out of the command tower only a few moments after these thoughts finished going through his head, pause for a brief stretch, then start walking languidly in their direction.

Gaius exchanged brief greetings with the others—save for Maia, who barely responded—before joining Leon at the railing.

“So,” he began, “Sir Sigebert wants you to know that things are going to be very different when we reach the second island.”

“I figured that would be so,” Leon replied, his eyes barely straying from watching Alix and Marcus duel.  The longer he watched, the prouder and more dejected at Alix’s performance he became.  Prouder because he’d taught her much of the Raime fighting style when she had squired for him, but also dejected because she wasn’t able to overcome Marcus’ lifetime of noble training with the blade, even as skilled as she was.  Leon took the blame for that, as he had been Alix’s primary teacher during her squireship, even if she had received some tutoring from Prince Trajan.

Gaius paused a moment to watch the spar before he continued.  “The second island has several key points of interest we need to capture: the Earl’s city, along with a pair of relatively large merchant enclaves.  One of these enclaves was established by citizens from the Bull Kingdom, and is also the closest to Serpent’s Fang—Kraterok—so that’s where we’re going to making landfall.  Hopefully, if anyone is still there that’s sympathetic to the Bull Kingdom, we’ll have a much easier landing this time around, but we’re still going to assume that the colony has fallen into Jormun’s hands and is occupied by enemy forces.  We’ll hit the sand with a couple battalions of marines, then shadow the fleet by moving south and west along the coast.  We’ll take the colony by land and sea, establish it as our headquarters on the island, then move on to the rest of the island’s settlements.  Shouldn’t take more than a few days to take all of the targets we need to, but we ought to prepare for a few days spent out in the jungles, just in case.”

Leon nodded in acknowledgment.  He didn’t much mind sleeping out in the jungles—at least, for the moment—and his mind was still more taken by thoughts of Jormun than that rest of the Serpentine Isles.

“It’s worth noting,” Gaius said, “that the coasts of this island are a lot rougher than the first island.  Lots of cliffs, rocks, caves, and all sorts of other places for a possible fleet of pirates to hide in.”

“I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out,” Leon replied.  The island was far too big for his magic senses to cover the entire thing, but not for Maia.  Magic senses weren’t a guarantee that they’d see something, of course, but he was hopeful that if Jormun was going to attack them conventionally, then the pirates would be seen first.  “He’s not going to stay out in the open, though,” Leon said, finishing his thought out loud.  “At least, not his real troops.  Maybe the Islanders will be more blatant in their hostility, but Jormun isn’t going to do that.  I guarantee you that if he doesn’t want to be found, then finding him without tearing the island asunder isn’t going to be easy.”

“Why do you think that?” Gaius asked, not disagreeing but merely curious as to Leon’s reasoning.

“He infiltrated the meeting and hid a pair of Flame Lances that caused a hefty amount of damage,” Leon replied, not elaborating too much on specific events.  “I spoke with him at great length, and I don’t think a man who goes to the trouble of pretending he was someone trustworthy so completely and draw so much attention to himself only to seemingly abandon whatever he was doing and disappear is going to be fighting in any conventional way.  We’ll need to be prepared for ambushes, misdirections, and feints; sudden strikes and even more sudden retreats, hit and run tactics.  Jormun doesn’t need to stop us here, he’s got three more islands to make us bleed before he’ll have to hold the line…”

Leon trailed off a bit, reluctant to continue his line of thought out loud.

‘If he even cares about stopping us, that is,’ he silently finished.  His unease grew with every second they spent slowly sailing toward the second island.  Even then, though, not once did he think, even with his doubts about Jormun’s ‘official’ motivation, that the Legion was going to be allowed to run right over the second island, let alone the remaining four.  There was going to be at least some resistance, and he had to prepare himself for it.

“You sound almost like you admire him a bit,” Gaius said with a sly grin.

“I do,” Leon readily admitted.  “I could never do what he did, I’m not that good of a liar.  You have to admit, though, that it took a crazy amount of balls to just walk right up to the Fleet Legates in the guise of someone else, convincing those hunting you down so thoroughly that you’re not the subject of their hunt that they’re willing to let you be in charge after they leave.  And keeping the rest of the remaining nobles in the city in line long enough that no one said anything until more than a day after you leave.  So, yeah, I respect him for that.  Were I in his shoes, I don’t even think I’d have that amount of patience or restraint.  It just… utterly blows my mind that he did that.”

“I guess I can understand,” Gaius replied.  “Sir Sigebert is incensed, though.  Even now, he’s practically chomping at the bit to introduce that pirate to the nearest headsman.”

“Who isn’t?” Leon sarcastically asked, though he could think of a few.  “I suppose the Islanders don’t want to see him dead,” he said, his tone turning serious.

“That would make sense to me,” Gaius replied.  “I don’t know any Islanders personally, but I can’t imagine they’ve been all that thrilled with having to give tribute to the Bull Kingdom in punishment for their raiding decades ago.”

“You might actually know an Islander,” Leon said, surprising the other man.

“Oh?  Don’t tell me you’re an Islander, now, I’ve already embarrassed myself enough, I’d say, for taking you to be a Valeman…”

“No, not me.  One of the people in my unit from our Academy days, a man named Charles.  I don’t think you’d know him, but his family immigrated from the Serpentine Isles into the Northern Territories.  I don’t think he’d be all that happy with Jormun, but the people who stayed here might be different.  I know that I wouldn’t be too thrilled if my home were invaded…”

Leon briefly thought about the attack on his home in the Forest of Black and White that left his father dead, and he felt like he could empathize a little bit with how many of the Islanders might feel toward the Bull Kingdom.  As soon as the decision was made by Trajan, August, Octavius, and later King Julius that the Serpentine Isles could not be allowed to deny the Bull Kingdom’s suzerainty, it was all-but guaranteed that thousands of Islanders would die.

Already, thousands of Islanders had died.

Gaius frowned, clearly unable to remember Charles, but he nodded in agreement as Leon continued. 

“I’m surprised, Leon, though I suppose I shouldn’t be.  I never pegged you as the sort that thought about politics and how they impact the people all that much…  But I suppose it’s certainly something I’d expect from someone from House Raime…”

Leon gave the other man a bitter smile.  “It’s a recent thing.  I don’t like politics, I don’t like thinking about how they affect the people.  But if I’m going to do accomplish what I want, then I’m going to have to change that.”

“What is it you’re trying to do, if I might ask?”  Gaius gave Leon a strange look as he asked that question, one that Leon interpreted as both surprise and appreciation, with a dash of confusion sprinkled in.  He detected no maliciousness in the other man’s words, and he figured that since it wasn’t exactly something that he had to keep secret, then there’d be no harm in telling Gaius at least some of his future plans.

“When all of this is over, when Jormun is dead and Octavius has been brought back to the Bull Kingdom, I’ll be making plans to leave for the Central Empires.  I might be joining Heaven’s Eye, but it won’t be all that soon.  Regardless, staying around in the Bull Kingdom is not on my list of things to do.  My aim is a little bit higher.”

“I think that might be an understatement,” Gaius whispered as he nodded in admiration.  “Not going to lie, I don’t think I’d ever make that decision if I were in your shoes.  Having a claim to the Great Plateau isn’t something easily given up…”

“Depends on your priorities.  Mine do not lay with the Bull Kingdom.  I don’t plan on stopping my magical growth at the seventh-tier, and the kind of person who would be content with the Great Plateau would, in taking it, only stunt their growth at that level.  Besides, the King’s doing away with landed nobles, and while it’ll take probably the rest of his lifetime to do so, I don’t want to make a push for my ‘birthright’ only to have it taken from my children.  Better to just move on.”

Gaius just shook his head.  “As I said, I don’t think I could ever make that decision, or even think that clearly about it.  I’d just see the Great Plateau and that would be it.”

Leon shrugged.  “To each their own, I suppose.”  Quickly changing the subject, Leon asked Gaius, “Say, what are Sigebert’s expectations for the rest of this mission?  Like what kind of welcome we ought to be expecting from the rest of the Islanders?  I suppose I could ask him myself, but since you’re here…”

“After that battle to take Serpent’s Fang, he’s expecting us to fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground we take,” Gaius replied.

Leon nodded and frowned in dejected agreement.  “I thought the same.”

“I’m thinking most of our people are,” Gaius replied.  “Enough Islanders have shown that they’re willing to fight to keep us away.  Enough Legion marines and sailors have died that everyone—at least in Sigebert’s fleet—knows someone who will never see home again.  They’re already thinking in terms of us-vs-them, assuming they weren’t before.”

“Sounds like a recipe for disaster,” Leon observed, feeling some joy at not having to be the person who’d have to deal with all of those issues… at least, for now.  If he wanted to unite the former lands of his ancient Clan under his own banner—and he did want that—then as Nestor told him that first day in Kraterok, these were problems he was going to have to be prepared to deal with.  And, at least right now, he wasn’t sure how he’d handle the situation.

He sympathized greatly for the Serpentine Islanders; he’d never considered the Bull Kingdom home, either, and he’d chafed while fighting under them as a knight.  Even his current status as something of a mercenary wasn’t exactly to his liking.

A strange look must’ve come over his face, for when Leon glanced at Gaius, he found the other man staring at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Gaius replied.  “It’s just as I said before, I couldn’t have imagined you caring about any of this four years ago.”

“Four years ago, I wouldn’t have,” Leon replied as he pushed himself off the railing.  “I should get back to work.  I haven’t used my bow in a while, and I’d like to make sure it and all the rest of my gear is ready for battle when we arrive.”

Gaius nodded as Maia followed Leon back to their quarters.  Everyone else stayed up top for a while yet, giving the two of them some much-needed time for intimacy, while also roping Gaius into their sparring.

Leon didn’t end up doing much work after touching up some of his older enchantments on his bow.  He simply lay down in his bed, Maia’s satisfied, sleeping form beside him, as his turned over the thought of how he would pacify the Serpentine Isles were he the one in charge.

By the time sleep inevitably pulled him into its dark embrace, he hadn’t managed to come to any decisive conclusions.

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