August calmly regarded Leon as the younger man entered the command tent and gave the Prince a short, almost curt bow. Leon was usually a rather reserved and quiet individual, but now he was moving with a confidence that August hadn’t ever seen in him.

“Sir Leon, I hear you ought to be congratulated on your victories,” August said as a smile broke out across his thin face.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Leon replied as a smile of his own graced his lips.

“Tell me about it,” August said with interest, leaning forward in his chair while wordlessly inviting Leon to sit across the small table from him.

Leon acquiesced, narrating the events of the previous hour as well as he could, and only boasting a little bit about how easy the fights were. He had to restrain himself a bit, despite his joy, for the fights weren’t entirely fair, him being sixth-tier and all of his opponents being of the fifth.

Still, it was an accomplishment that he took pride in, and it showed in his demeanor.

“Wonderful, simply wonderful,” August said in obvious praise as Leon finished. “Nobles, especially those of the lower landed ranks, aren’t usually so used to taking orders from ‘lesser’ knights. I’m glad that you dealt with the issue so quickly, barely even a day after they were assigned to you.”

“I doubt the issues have been totally fixed, Your Highness,” Leon responded. “If all it took to solve problems like these were a few minutes in a fighting ring, we wouldn’t have problems.”

“It’s still a good start. At the very least, they can’t now complain that they didn’t have their chance to take charge. Should make them less likely to be overtly insubordinate, though that may make them a bit more dangerous, too.”

“So long as they follow my orders in battle, I don’t care what they say behind my back,” Leon emphasized. “Well, that’s not entirely true, but so long as I don’t hear about it, I won’t go looking for rumors and the like. I just don’t want something to happen again like when Baron Gellius refused to fall back when I ordered him to.”

“Right.”

As they spoke, one of August’s secretaries quietly entered the tent and whispered something into the Prince’s ear.

“Ah, it seems that the reason why I called you here is ready, Sir Leon,” August said. He then turned back to the secretary and ordered, “Please show her in.”

The secretary bowed, then went back outside. Leon gave August a questioning look—they were the only two people in the tent, which was strange in itself, but now the Prince was acting a bit coy and deliberately mysterious.

A moment later, a young woman walked in dressed in terribly dull clothing, looking like nothing more than an average traveler. However, Leon could sense a few strands of her aura that she had failed to completely hide, revealing her status as a fourth-tier mage and thus, as far more than just a simple traveler. He took a closer look at her, taking in her dark, somewhat greasy hair, her round face, her clothes that were just a bit too big, her face and arms that had been heavily tanned from time spent outdoors, and her bright, blue eyes that glittered with intelligence. She looked the very picture of a relatively impoverished woman who had been traveling on foot for a long while without much of a chance to stop and rest, though she at least didn’t smell like that’s what she’d been doing.

“Sir Leon, this is one of Sir Publius’ informants,” August said, saying no more about the woman’s identity.

“A spy?” Leon asked as he remembered Publius, the, until very recently, Kingdom’s Spymaster.

“I’m no spy,” the woman growled, clearly taking offense to Leon’s statement. “I’m an investigator.”

“I see, my mistake,” Leon replied with an apologetic look. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to insult. I hope you can understand the mistake, Dame…?”

“I’m not a knight, either,” she said, though her expression had softened into something resembling curiosity after Leon apologized for the unintentional insult. After Leon’s expression and demeanor failed to change after she revealed she wasn’t a knight, that look of curiosity deepened. She didn’t, however, properly introduce herself.

After a moment of awkward silence, August said, “Our friend here has been sent by Sir Publius with a message. Perhaps she would like to repeat the message for Sir Leon to hear?”

“Yes, Your Highness!” the woman replied as Leon cocked an eyebrow in interest. If the old Spymaster had sent someone all the way here, then it had to be worthwhile. The woman began with the most relevant information, “We found Sir Marcus Aeneas.”

At that, Leon sat up much straighter and focused all of his attention on the woman. He knew Marcus relatively well and had a good opinion of him after their time together in the Knight Academy, but more importantly, Marcus was the son of Marquis Aeneas, who was leading August’s noble armies. Marcus had disappeared not long after August fled the Central Territories, so Leon knew that if they had found Marcus and were telling him about it, then it meant only one thing.

“I’d like to task you with his rescue,” August informed Leon as he carefully watched the younger man’s reaction.

“Sir Aeneas is being held at a prison in the territory of Baron Capetti, a vassal of the Duke of Lentia,” the woman continued her explanation with barely a glance toward August for the slight interruption. “He isn’t alone, either. More than a dozen other young nobles with ties to the Eastern Territories are being held in the same location, alongside a hundred or so common-born knights.”

“It’s a prison?” Leon asked.

“It can be thought of that way, sure,” the woman replied. “It’s hardly an uncomfortable place, from what I hear, though. It’s more like being in an inn that you can’t leave rather than a dungeon or a more conventional prison.”

“It must be quite a large place to hold so many people,” Leon observed.

“It… it’s a bit crowded, I think that the conditions are only passable where the nobles are concerned,” the woman admitted as a light sheepish look graced her otherwise professionally stoic face for just a moment. “The rest of the knights are being held in cramped conditions, and I doubt that it’s particularly sanitary.”

“Tell me more about this place,” Leon said as he sat back in his chair in thought, wondering how an assault on this not-prison would work out. “What are the defenses like? Guards? Do we know the layout? How about specific knowledge about enchantments? I can’t imagine the place would hold so many knights if it weren’t adequately guarded and warded, especially if it isn’t a dedicated prison…”

“It’s an old countryside villa that Baron Capetti wasn’t using,” the woman explained as she rummaged around in a satchel at her waist.

A moment later, she pulled out a roll of paper, which she then laid out on the table, showing Leon a blueprint of the building complete with a graph and scale, showing that it was an official government document. It was a large place, with around a hundred rooms built in four wings around a big central courtyard. Crucially, though, the blueprint ended only a few relative feet from the edge of the paper, meaning that it only showed the main building. Leon could guess that a villa of its size probably had other buildings, too, like guest houses or other guardrooms.

“Most of the prisoners are being held here in the old storerooms and servant’s quarters…” the woman said as she indicated the western wing, which had the most rooms, though they were quite small compared to some of the others. “the guard barracks are over here…” She then indicated the southern wing, where what Leon could only guess used to be dining halls and ballrooms. “The northern and eastern wings are mostly reserved for the Baron, who’s residing in the villa currently to keep an eye on the prisoners, and for the guard’s common areas.”

“Is there anything else to the property?” Leon asked as the woman finished her explanation.

“There is,” the woman said as she pulled out a second map, this one much less formal and clearly hand-drawn, though no less exact in its measurements. It showed the villa and its attached property, including an outer wall, extensive gardens, and a huge open field on the southern side. In the north-western corner was a wooded area, taking up about a fifth of the entire property and cut off from the rest of the gardens by a river that ran right through the estate’s grounds.

“One of the Naga’s tributaries?” Leon asked, tapping the river. “Or is it purely decoration that was built and maintained with magic?”

“Natural and feeds into the Naga,” the woman replied. “It looks a lot more impressive on this map. In reality, it’s not very deep, and most of the time it’s still and stagnant. More a creek than a proper river.

Leon nodded as he took it all in.

“Do we have another map showing its location?” Leon asked.

This time it was August who laid out the map on the table, showing most of the Southern Territories. They were close to the eastern edge, while the Duchy of Lentia was north-west of their location, almost at the northern tip of the region. The Barony that was their target was outlined, while the villa-prison itself was marked with a dot.

Leon nodded again as he built a proper picture in his mind of what exactly the prison was, where it was located, it’s layout, and how he would crack it.

Interrupting Leon’s thoughts, August asked, “Should we take this to mean that you’ll do the mission willingly?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, I’ll do it,” Leon said. “But what are all of you going to do while I’m gone? I can’t imagine that fighting off Duronius’ army will be all that easy without the giants. I can even see that they might attack if they realize that they’re gone…”

“If you move quickly, then it won’t be a problem,” August said. “Besides, we can take a strong defensive position and wait them out. Attacking us if we fortify our location will be a tall order, so if you accomplish your task within a couple of weeks, then there shouldn’t be anything to worry about.”

Leon nodded a third time as his eyes turned back to the largest map. If he pushed his unit, he could be at the villa in eight to nine days. Double that for the return journey, and then probably add another couple of days for the assault on the villa and to accommodate for any slowdowns.

“I’ll be gone almost a month,” he said. “Three weeks minimum.”

“We can hold out for three weeks,” August said with a smile. “Don’t worry about us, just get those prisoners out of there.”

“I understand,” Leon responded, briefly wondering what August’s motivation truly was—either a selfless desire to save these people or it was a political maneuver to win points both with his loyal nobles and with other nobles who might see the act and open themselves up to be coerced into joining August’s side.

‘Probably a mix of both…’ Leon thought to himself as he closely observed August as subtly as he could.

“How did we get this information?” Leon asked when he turned his attention back to the woman.

“We were tipped off by one of Sir Publius’ contacts,” she replied. Seeing Leon’s stoic face start to turn into a scowl, she quickly added, “I don’t know anything more than that, I’m afraid.”

Leon shrugged. It could be a trap, but he wasn’t going to back down just because of that. The thought of someone like Marcus stuck in a prison wasn’t one that appealed to Leon, despite how little they knew about each other. Still, Marcus had always acquitted himself with more honor than Leon had expected of a Kingdom noble, and he had to admit that he kind of liked the man.

He’d free Marcus and the rest from that prison. He wouldn’t allow any other version of events to play out.

After a few more questions, Leon had all the information he thought he needed, and so he departed August’s tent to start setting up for the march to the villa. Logistics had to be worked out, routes had to be planned… he was in charge of thousands of people now, and a hundred giants. There was a lot of work he had to do now to make sure that they were properly supplied.

—

“You’re sure the message was received?” Duke Gratian asked his younger brother.

“I’d stake my life upon it,” Gaius replied as the two gazed out from a terrace of the palace in Lentia’s capital city of the same name. To their west, they could see the Naga River, and just north of the city were the plantations that grew the reeds that would eventually be turned into spell paper of decent quality. To the south of the city, however, were some of their family’s vassals, including a relatively wealthy Baron with a country estate that was more than willing to lend it out for their purposes.

“Good, then we should prepare our welcome for when they come,” Gratian replied.