Everyone in the room gave August and Isabelle some space to reconnect. Given how long it had been since August had last seen his mother, everyone understood that he needed some time with her without their presence. There were no judgments at his minor breakdown, either.

Instead, Stefania led Leon and Minerva into another room while the guards respectfully stood outside the doors to give August and his mother some privacy.

“So, how did your escape go?” Stefania asked once she and the other two were seated.

“About as well as we could expect,” Minerva answered with a scowl.

“You missed the 4th Legion, though, good job on that,” Stefania replied. “We saw them encamped to the east of the capital as if waiting for someone to come through with a certain Royal fugitive…”

“It didn’t take a soothsayer to predict that Octavius would’ve made preparations just in case his pet Paladins failed.” Minerva accompanied her statement with a brief smile, but it quickly turned back into a scowl as she remembered how the actual escape went. “The 1st and 2nd Legions managed to catch up, though…”

It took a few minutes, but Minerva explained to Stefania everything that happened, with occasional input from Leon regarding his actions.

“… That was quite the story…” the Princess murmured once Minerva was finished. “Sounds like you were lucky that you got away with as few casualties as you did…”

“Indeed, it could’ve been much worse,” Minerva agreed. Tallying up their injured and dead, the four-thousand knights and men-at-arms had taken about a tenth of their number as casualties, which was a minuscule amount considering they faced off against two Paladins and a force ten times their number on the same day.

“We could’ve done much better, though,” Leon said, his tone bitter enough that Stefania guessed he was referring to some problem she wasn’t privy to.

When the Princess raised an eyebrow in a silent question, Minerva testily responded, “He’s just a little upset that his pet giant wasn’t more utilized.”

“Lapis isn’t my pet, and I think I have every right to be upset when I loaned the big guy to you only for you to use him to guard the boats!”

“We’ve been over this, Lapis is a stone giant, a member of a race that was, until just a couple of years ago, hostile! We need to be seen as liberators, as seekers of justice and upholders of the law! Not as people who invite foreign interests and beings that are still seen as enemies by the majority of the Kingdom!”

The way they bickered gave Stefania the mildly amused impression that they had had this argument before—probably several times over the past few days as they made their way to Ironford. She wasn’t wrong, Leon was frustrated that Minerva wasn’t using her forces to their greatest extent, as seen with Lapis and the order she gave him to stay put and not launch hit-and-run attacks on their pursuers, while Minerva was frustrated with Leon for not keeping the political and strategic viewpoints in mind. She took the 2nd Legion’s refusal to charge when ordered as proof that her policies were the best way to proceed, and not Leon’s advocated policies of pursuing maximum damage against their enemies.

“Please, let’s all just calm down, we’re all friends here,” she said in a soothing voice. Leon and Minerva weren’t truly fighting, just a bit frustrated with each other, so they were quite receptive to her calming words. “That’s better, we need cool heads if we’re to plan our next moves…”

“If ‘we’re’ to plan our next moves?” Minerva inquired. “Should I take this to mean that you’re going to side with us?”

“You can, though I won’t be taking all that public or important a role, I should think. However, I helped to break Cristina and Isabelle out of the harem, so that alone essentially makes me guilty of treason should we lose.”

“Then let’s endeavor not to lose, what should we do next?” Leon asked.

“Would you happen to have any suggestions?” Stefania politely asked him.

“I would happen to have a suggestion,” Leon replied with a smile. “I have promises of support from the Crater Tribe of stone giants. I didn’t call it in with the recent war with Talfar, but after getting to know Lapis better over these past couple of years, I think it’s time to call in that promise.”

“I would disagree, again for the same reasons why I didn’t use Lapis in our assault on the dungeon,” Minerva said. “This is a matter of internal politics, we shouldn’t be asking outside powers to interfere, no matter who they are or what promises they may have made!”

Sensing a more serious fight brewing as both of their tones started to heat back up, Stefania interrupted again, “How about we discuss this over a meal? I can’t imagine that you two have had a good, hot meal in a few days!”

With that, their barely-started discussion was put on hold as Stefania sent for a servant to take their orders to the kitchens. Stefania opted for a salad, Minerva for fish a fruit, and Leon, unwilling to waste time deliberating the weighty and immensely important decision of what to eat—as he knew he would—simply asked for the kitchen to surprise him.

“What?” Leon asked, looking at the ladies who were giving him very strange looks.

“You know, some women don’t like a man who doesn’t know what he wants…” Stefania said in an amused tone. She gave Leon a teasing smile as his face began to heat up in anger and embarrassment.

“If I—” Leon began, but Minerva cut him off.

“Yes, young Ursus, you should always know what you want just in case. Otherwise, you look ignorant and backward, like you don’t belong.”

Leon looked back and forth between them, exasperation making an appearance across his face, as both ladies fought to suppress their mirth. It took a couple of seconds for him to realize that they weren’t being serious and were just having some fun at his expense, and when that realization dawned, he decided to play into a little.

“I like giving the cooking staff some freedom. Makes for some interesting things to try. But hey, I’m just an ignorant barbarian, my taste is questionable at best. Maybe you southerners only want what you’ve already had before, but I like to add a bit of spice every now and then.”

He spoke with more than a hint of sarcasm, owning his decision completely, and all three burst out with a few laughs, relieving a bit of stress that had built up since leaving the capital. However, once they were done, they did not return to planning their next moves, especially since August was still catching up with his mother and Roland was watching over the west, so they simply sat and talked at length for a few more hours. Leon told the other two of the Northern Vales, Minerva spoke of battles she’d fought in, and Stefania narrated a few of the more scandalous affairs she’d witnessed—or taken part in—during her time in the capital.

It was such an entertaining and relaxing discussion that even Leon found himself starting to loosen up and speaking more than he usually did. The three enjoyed their time as much as they could, for they knew that this was only a passing moment and that what would follow would be long nights of work and stress for months, if not years.

—

“They escaped?!” Octavius asked, incredulous, several hours after August and company managed to escape over the bridge.

“I’m afraid they did, Your Royal Highness,” the Consul of the Center replied, his eyes downcast in shame, though not enough shame that he hesitated to reply.

“Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but you outnumbered them, what? Eleven to one? More?”

“… Yes, we did,” the Consul replied, though his tone was one of confusion and apprehension, rather than shame and sorrow as Octavius’ own voice sounded almost elated.

“Interesting…” Octavius whispered. “They made it past two Paladins, eluded one Legion, and escaped two more!”

The Prince leaned back in the chair, turned away from the conference table, and stared off into space, his mind far away from the large meeting of high-ranking Kingdom officials, bureaucrats, and Legion knights that had packed into his office.

‘Probably would’ve been better if we’d caught them, but this isn’t the worst outcome…’ he thought to himself. A crisis to combat immediately upon assuming control of the Kingdom, plus an excuse to purge those in the palace he wanted to go.

“I think I can use this…” he mysteriously whispered. He suddenly turned back to his supporters around him and said, “It’s time. I want the Royal court called into session as soon as is possible. What kind of time frame are we looking at?”

“Your Royal Highness… by ‘it’s time’, do you mean…?” the Count of Tarsus hesitantly asked.

“I mean exactly what I said,” Octavius said with a smile on his face, which quickly twisted in realization. “Actually, don’t call the Royal court just yet. We need to send invitations, we need perhaps a month or more… but we can use that time. I want a full accounting of the people we have working here in the palace. Their lineages and current status; are they knights or not? Are they a part of any major family? That sort of thing.”

“What will Your Royal Highness do with that information?” the Countess of Lindinis asked, her aged face cracking open into a smile of her own.

“Remove all those of common blood,” Octavius answered, obviously relishing every word. “Such an exalted, and dare I say it, august place as the Royal Palace should be reserved only for those of proper breeding.”

—

Roland stared out from his perch on the castle wall. Below him were twenty feet of stone followed by another twenty feet of black and red cliffside—the lowest section of the cliff for at least a hundred miles. The castle watched over a huge section of the Iron Road and, more importantly, the closest pass into the hilly and mountainous Eastern Territories that forces from the capital would have to take to pursue August, and Roland wasn’t about to let them use it.

The pass itself was fairly defensible, though not to the extent that Roland would’ve liked. It was narrow enough that a single Legion company would be able to hold it if their shield wall was twenty soldiers across and five deep. The Iron Road ran down the center of it, though it wasn’t the fused stone of the capital, but instead a more common construction of stone bricks, but that wasn’t to say it wasn’t well-made. It was properly shaped to funnel rain into a pair of small ditches dug into the sand and dirt beside it to allow the water to properly drain; the road had been constructed some five hundred years ago, and yet had required no maintenance it had been so well-constructed.

The rest of the pass was the same black and red stone that the castle had been built upon, with sheer rocky cliffs preventing anyone but the most powerful of mages from scaling, and enchantments powered from the castle even prevented that, to an extent. A sixth-tier mage like Roland would never have been able to jump from the ground to the top of the cliffs, but perhaps someone like Brimstone or Earthshaker would be able to.

Ever since arriving at the castle and gaining the cooperation of the Count that called it home, Roland had been preparing. Over the course of about a day and a half, he’d had a portion of the road torn up in line with the cliff and replaced it with a trench, then had a few earth mages working on raising the iron-rich sand to fully block the pass, with the help of some fire mages heating and melting the sand into a glassy-iron mixture while the earth mages shaped it into a proper wall.

Unfortunately, it was slow work despite multiple high-tiered mages helping out. When Roland had come out to inspect the castle walls, the wall down below blocking access to the pass was barely even four feet high.

Roland sighed as he stared off into the distance, his sixth-tier eyes easily seeing the tell-tale signs of large-scale troop movements approaching, the biggest indicator being the large unusual dust cloud heading roughly in their direction.

“Whatever’s making that will reach us by evening,” he muttered aloud, mostly for himself but also for the benefit of his adjutants who had come out to inspect the castle wall with him. “We must be ready for a fight. Inform the Count to have his own knights prepared, just in case, and send out a few scouts to get a better look at what we’re facing.”

“Yes, Sir,” one of his adjutants responded, quickly leaving their small group of about half a dozen to spread the word.

Roland released his magic senses with a silent prayer to the Ancestors that he wouldn’t see scouts or advance parties of Legion soldiers or any other sign that they would be fighting before evening. He was gratified when he didn’t see anything, but he didn’t let his guard down. Just because he didn’t notice anything didn’t mean nothing was there, but given the general lack of vegetation around the cliffs, it was a good sign. Nothing but red rusty sand for at least half a mile from the cliffs.

After that was grassy plains and light forest, which had plenty of places for a mage to hide.

Roland was about to turn away when he noticed something else, though, something that wasn’t a Legion scouting party. And it caused his face to light up like a party of drunk fire mages.

He could see Brimstone sprinting for the pass.