Chapter 56 - Frontier Town of Listace

[293 days remaining]

The next morning, I headed outside the city to meet the fifteen soldiers that had been assigned to my subjugation squadron.

As I arrived at the prearranged location at the base of the nearby forest, I saw the state of my squadron.

It was intriguing, but the majority of my subordinate soldiers seem to consist of females. There were 12 female soldiers and 3 male soldiers.

One soldier out of the male group stepped forward just as I was dismounting my horse.

“Commander Verath, I presume?” the male soldier said. He wore a white breastplate with the grey tabard of the proud, majestic wolf of the Serle family.

“Yes, I am to be your commander for the subjugation,” I replied.

The soldier nodded shortly. “I am the vice-commander of this squadron, Commander Verath, personally assigned by the Serle family.”

There were many implications behind that one sentence, but perhaps the most important one was that it seems like I was still not to be trusted. Perhaps the soldier had been sent to observe me.

I suppose it was only natural since I had no experience commanding a group of soldiers. Rather, my past experience only consisted of working with hired caravan guards. That, combined with the fact that I was a stranger, would have allowed for a healthy dose of distrust.

Also, I could see that only a minority of my squadron were wearing the wolf tabards of the Serle family.

“What is your name, vice-commander?”

“It is Orik, Sir.”

“Right. Would you mind if I ask you a question, vice-commander Orik?”

“It is easily within your boundaries as the commander, and I also do not mind.”

“Why are there more...” I hesitated a short moment, trying to find the right phrase.

“Do you mean to say more females? Or do you mean why there are more soldiers that are not wearing the Serle tabards?”

“The latter, vice-commander Orik. I have no discrimination against gender and soldiering.”

I could sense some suppressed laughter in Orik's voice as he explained.

“That is because we were asked for who wanted to volunteer working under you for this subjugation quest, commander. These soldiers here, for example, were the ones that volunteered first. They primarily come from various sections of the northern army who is not under Baron Serle.”

“I see. Thank you for your explanation, vice-commander. I had not been informed of that.”

Still, I thought to myself. It was strange that the majority of the soldiers who volunteered were primarily females. Perhaps it had something to do with the tournament I had just recently won.

I stepped back a little to properly face the fifteen soldiers and their horses of various shades of brown to black. Then in a firm voice, I addressed them, “For those of you who do not know me, I am Commander Verath, a wanderer who has been recently promoted to a knight. I may be lacking in experience, but I shall try my best to be a good leader. Thus, I expect you to point out my errors.”

I observed their faces while introducing myself.

It was strange, but all fifteen of them looked motivated, perhaps even enthusiastic. The female soldiers, particularly, were giving me eyes that were strangely reminiscent of hungry lionesses.

Quite strange, if I do say so myself.

“Now then,” I continued, “let us all mount up and head to the frontier town of Listace, where we shall kill some dark elves.”

The journey there would take about two days by horseback if we traveled quickly and efficiently.

And I for one, planned to finish this task as soon as possible. The livelihood of the people of that frontier town were depending on our group...not that I cared much for it.

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[291 days remaining]

“Commander Verath,” Orik informed me, gesturing a hand to the front of me, “we should be nearing the frontier town of Listace once we exit this forest. It should take a few hours at most by then.”

I nodded to Orik beside me. “Should be early afternoon by then, I suppose.”

At this moment, our group was in a large forest, each on top of our respective horses, and riding for the small opening of the forest up ahead.

As I first neared the opening (I was in the lead since I was the commander and Orik a few steps behind me, to the side of me), I suddenly saw a man in ragged and tattered garments running out from the opening of the forest.

The man stopped running only after he had come within distance of me, his breathing heavily erratic, as if he had been running away for his life.

I had to reign in my horse to avoid bumping into the shaggy man.

“Please!” the man shouted in a panicked voice, “you must help me!”

I almost frowned upon inspecting the man in front of me. For some strange reason, I could observe a faint pink sheen of aura surrounding his whole body and ragged face.

“Explain yourself, stranger,” Orik commanded from beside me. “What are—

It was quick, and almost went unnoticed. A flash of a movement.

The tattered man reached into the folds of his clothing and whipped out a small dagger, the weapon almost instantly leaving his hand.

The hidden dagger flew toward my face.

Had I been a normal man and had not noticed the suspicious faint pink sheen of aura, my face would have been pierced with the dagger by then.

Instead, I only dodged the dagger, and it went past me, lodging itself into a tree with a thud.

Shouts of alarm came from the soldiers and vice-commander Orik was roaring for the attacker's head.

But the man in front of me only growled in anger. Then he threw a small round object onto the ground and white smoke came bursting out, almost filling the whole area.

All of our visibility were reduced and we could barely even see half a foot in front of us. The horses we were riding, though well trained, were panicking and rearing.

By the time the smoke had cleared and our horses were back under control, the man—no, the assassin—had disappeared.

Interesting, I thought to myself. Just who was that assassin? And what was that faint aura surrounding his body? I could only think that it was a sort of magic of a different hue from my black-colored magic.

“Are you alright, commander?” came the chorus of worried female soldiers along with Orik's voice, which said something along that line.

I waved a hand to show that I was uninjured and only said to continue toward our destination.

There was no need to check the dagger for a clue, since I had seen that it was just a plain dagger with a black hilt.

I also was not worried too much, for the next time I meet that “pink” assassin, it would be his last living moment, which I would savor every last torturous second.

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Early afternoon, we arrived at our destination.

The frontier town of Listace was not what one would call prosperous, nor was it highly populated. Judging from the number of buildings and the size of the area, there were probably only about four hundred or so people living there.

When we first arrived, we were greeted by ragged people with depressed looks. When I say ragged, what I mean is that their appearances were shabby and tired. Sleep deprived, I suppose, would be a better term.

It was only later that I found out that those ragged people were the guards of the town. They were not the original guards that had been assigned to Listace. No, these sad-looking guards were inexperienced conscripts and had been men who had drawn the unlucky straws, so to speak.

We were escorted by these guards to the center of the town, where a middle-aged man was waiting, stamping a foot impatiently. Judging from his outward pose of importance, I ascribed the man's position to be the chief of the town.

Passing through the town, I noticed that there were people whose faces brightened noticeably upon seeing us. It suggested that our presence for the subjugation of the black elf raiders was sorely needed.

I also noticed a strange thing—there were barely any children or women in the town.

“Thank the gods,” the middle-aged man loudly spoke, “I was beginning to think that our request of guards had been never delivered, and that our messenger had been waylaid or even worse, dead.” His tone turned softer, almost begging. “Please, you must help us. I beg you as the chief and head of this town. The thrice-damned dark elves have kidnapped most of our children and women to force us into accepting their ultimatum.”

“You need not beg us,” I told the chief in a voice, trying to spread calmness, “we would have helped even without that.” I paused a moment to let my words register, before asking, “Ultimatum?”

A huge sigh of relief went out of the chief as confidence returned to his face. “Yes! They want us to hand over all our gold, weapons, and food! Our livelihood! Do these damned raiders expect us to eat dirt afterward?”

The chief finally turned his eyes away from mine, having gained the confidence to inspect us. Then my strange appearance finally registered in his mind.

Then his eyes wandered over to the group of soldiers behind me, all on whom were on horseback. His eyes and face visibly shook as his confidence crumbled away. He even let out a groan of disappointment and disbelief was apparent in his voice.

“This can't be...this can't be...”

The chief repeated those words over and over, before finally regaining his senses. A distressed face was shown before us.

“No, no! There is no way fifteen soldiers can win against more than forty dark elves! I cannot believe they only sent 15 soldiers for our protection! I even expressively stated that there were forty raiders plaguing our town in the message!”

The chief let out another groan of disbelief. “Furthermore, twelve of these soldiers are all women. We are doomed. My town is doomed, I tell you!”

Seeing this, I could not help but feel that the chief was perhaps overreacting a little bit. But I did understand a little, since most of the children and women of the town were kidnapped.

“You have nothing to worry about, chief!” a voice from one of my female subordinate soldiers cut in.

“Yeah! That's right. Our commander Verath here can take on a hundred of these dark elves if he feels like doing so!” another female voice butted in.

“Yes! He will rape those elves into submission!”

I could not help but turn back to look for the one who had spoken that last interjection. You would too if your position as a newly-minted commander was being taken for as a rapist.

The comment had come from a small, petite-looking female soldier with mousy-brown hair. As my green eyes met her own brown eyes, she had the dignity to blush a little, probably realizing that her comment had gotten out of hand.

Note to self: be wary of some of the female soldiers in my squadron.

Some of them, I was beginning to feel, were quite delusional.

“Now, now, calm yourself. You should know that it is quite impossible for just one person to take on like forty dark elves. I do not think even some of the strongest Knight Commanders could manage that feat,” vice-commander Orik reasonably remarked.

Finally, a voice of reason, I thought to myself with small relief. I was beginning to think that I would not be seen as a human constrained well within the boundaries of mortal strength.

“Thirty-nine dark elves, however,” Orik continued, “would be a possible feat for our commander here.”

'…' That was my only thought, or rather, non-thought, on hearing my vice-commander say that.

I was now beginning to believe that I had shown off too much at the tournament. I suppose the fact that I had hidden my face had not really helped, since my waist-length silver hair was a glaring, noticeable feature of mine.

Trust me, it had been quite a noticeable feature, a trait of mine that had been pointed out multiple times the past two days on our journey to this town.

Strangely enough, the questioning had mostly come from the female soldiers. Some of them had even marveled at how silky my hair felt on their hands after they had asked for permission to touch it during one of our short, resting break.

At first, I had been reluctant to give permission as I was wary of the relationship between commander and soldier. But I finally gave up after continual protests from a majority of the female soldiers; some of the protests had even come from vice-commander Orik, who had become sick and tired of listening to such outbursts; a few even came from the other two males, who, incidentally, had also wanted to feel my hair.

You ask what I felt at that time?

Well, I only felt a little reluctance. Mostly, I felt indifferent and slightly curious as to whether the relationship between soldiers were all like that.

I was suspicious of that reason though. Somehow, I felt that Lady Fate (if such an entity truly did exist) had given me most of the strangest and weirdest soldiers in the northern army as my subordinates.

To my great relief, after we had settled down in the town, placated the shaken chief, and were creating plans and contingencies on how to counter the dark elf raiders, I found out that my subordinates had merely been making fun at my expense.

I was a little happy, since I was seriously thinking of making a back-up plan on how to rid myself of these soldiers, through lethal or non-lethal ways. They were starting to become too close in finding out my secret.

The first plan of the afternoon, out of the many plans we had made, was that I would scout out the defenses and hideout of the dark elf raiders.

This had been a personal plan of mine, which I had suggested, and which I had also ignored the subsequent protests of danger from my squadron.

A normal commander, Orik and a few others had commented, would not do such an abnormal thing. Instead, a normal commander would have left it to one of his scouts.

From this, by the way, I had learned that the scout in my squadron was a female by the name of Leana. She, the scout soldier, was also the one who had made that uncomfortable, raping, comment.

At this, you could say that I put down “my foot” as the commander, overriding any objections.

My soldiers, after all, still had no clue of my true capabilities other than the fighting strength they had witnessed in the Tournament of the Wolf.

I was also a little distrusting of the fifteen soldiers in my squadron. I felt that one of them or perhaps even a few of them were related to that assassin incident. They could also perhaps be spies.

Oh well, there was nothing they could do that would put my life in danger without me noticing right away, anyway.

Thus, I put those suspicious thoughts out of my mind and decided to initiate the first plan of the afternoon: finding the hideout and the numbers of the dark elf raiders.

For the sake of secrecy, I also would have to be wary of not showing too much of my strength.

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Discourse #9

I have realized something, Marius Whitewill, my retainer and guest. You must be wondering as to how my squadron did not notice my abnormal sleeping time at night. Well, that is an easily answered question.

Though I tell you that I only needed an hour to feel well-rested and waking up like a new dragon, I could, in fact, choose to sleep more than an hour.

Somehow, the ability to do so, that is, this will to choose how long I slept, seems to come with the fact that I had been born with a dampened emotional capacity.

A speculation I have made is that this dampened emotional capacity has given me a greater control over my mind, and with that, my ability to choose how long I could sleep.

Oh yes, I also forgot to mention that the female soldiers in my human squadron were perhaps becoming a little too personal for my taste, not that I minded it much.

One of them, the human scout known as Leana, if memory serves, even dared to wake up in the middle of the night to hug my body.

Naturally, I woke up instantly, feeling her presence so close to me. I pretended, however, not to wake up. I could not complain much since the night was a little cold and her body heat along with mine served a logical purpose. So who was I to complain?

I had also given up long ago by then due to the continual protests from the female soldiers, which almost bordered on insubordination and rioting.

I realized the next morning then, that not doing anything about this, had been a mistake. It had led to some awkwardness and envy, I think, from the female soldiers in my squadron. There had also been some envy from one of the male soldiers...

That said, I shall continue on with my story, Marius Whitewill.

Also, I shall continue to omit my human and dragon names. It is amusing to me, after all, to leave you in the dark of some aspects of my story.

What can I say, I am a loving dragon lord...