[Tips] Soult the Wolf Cub became famous in later years for his glory as a judicial champion and for his first-class swordsmanship. With his spotless win record, he was valued by nobles for his peerless skills. Thanks to his brilliant results, he received a noble rank and started a family that persists into the present day.
He was unable to inherit Schutzwolfe, but as the first son of Goldilocks Erich (who was famed for being a ladies’ man) he left his own mark on history. When his descendants squabbled over who would take Schutzwolfe, he intervened; in the end, he confiscated it and left it in Count Ubiorum’s hands. Feats like these made his name famous as part of the wolf’s bloodline.
With Iseult resting peacefully atop me after too much excitement, her body warm but cooler than other children her age, I looked out from my bed and realized that the reassuring feeling I felt with my child close to me was a sign that I’d really become a father. They were still so soft, so young; I wondered if the calm I felt having them within arm’s reach was instinct.
Just like how Soult was thinking about what to do with his life, these other kids would one day fly from the nest to start the next stage of their lives. Just thinking about it made me misty-eyed. I really didn’t like getting older.
“Is that you, Margit?” I said as I stroked Iseult’s hair as she slept. From the side of the bed came a charming face that resembled my lovely daughter’s. Margit’s hair was picking up its first gray streaks—a reminder that we were both falling into time’s clutches.
“I suppose I have to put up my scout’s cloak for good if you spotted me so easily,” she said.
Regardless of what she’d said, she’d approached me in utter silence. Margit, who was publicly my only wife, nestled herself opposite Iseult and drew my head down to meet hers.
“It’s because I’m with Iseult. I can’t help but be more on guard,” I said.
“Is that right? A huntress is second-rate if she lets her prey spot her, whether they’re on guard or not,” she said.
“We’ve just gotten older, I suppose.”
I gazed at her face, which hadn’t lost its charm over the years and stroked her hair. Despite the gray, it was as smooth as it was when she was younger. I enjoyed running my fingers through it. However, I could tell that I wasn’t in quite the state that she wanted of me.
“We haven’t left Marsheim in a while,” I said. “Why don’t we all go somewhere a bit further afield?”
“Oh? Marsheim’s top adventurer on a family outing? The rumors will start to fly.”
I felt bad for Soult and embarrassed saying this, but when I received the letter that he had been born, it was so far away that it didn’t really feel real. However, when I went to see him under the guise of work and glimpsed his little form asleep in a cot I felt a powerful urge welling up in me: I need to protect this child.
That was probably the decisive moment that changed the course of my life. I put more importance on being a father than an adventurer, and now that Ende Erde had a semblance of peace, I’d sent out my subordinates to make sure things stayed peaceful further from home, meaning that my own work had gotten a lot less busy. The only jobs I really took nowadays were the sorts of unmotivated peacekeeping jobs that would keep Marsheim safe for my children, such as protecting an important figure who definitely could not be allowed to die. I’d put my life and adventure on the scales and found that the former had won out. I’d become more cowardly since my youth, it seemed.
I couldn’t budge on my ideals. The local lords, who were fading away for good now that they were cornered, were left with only one plan to turn the tables. While it was impossible to take down the Emperor, Margrave Marsheim and his sons (who were in charge of leading battles) were very realistic targets to dispatch. The loss of even one of these people would destroy the western region’s fragile peace and plunge it into chaos.
They couldn’t die yet; I wouldn’t let them. This feeling kept me going and pushed me to grow far more cautious. I wondered what my eighteen-year-old self, who had undertaken so many deadly battles to keep Mottenheim safe, would think of my more pragmatic attitude now. I doubted he would look down on me, but he would probably be disappointed. But when I looked at my children’s faces, I knew that although I could put my life on the line, I could no longer do anything foolish.
“Three times just this month,” I said.
“Ah, yes, the last was an attempted poisoning of Margrave Marsheim, wasn’t it?” Margit replied.
“It was. I wonder where they got a poison that could remain undetected through the usual techniques. I’d bet some foreign influence is involved.”
I felt a cold rush run through me, despite the slight warmth that my daughter offered me. Our Fellows and the margrave’s own taste testers had saved Margrave Marsheim from the three attempted assassinations just this month. This time the assassins had used a really powerful poison. The fact that it had beaten not just the silver test that detected arsenic, the emerald ring test that indicated known poisons, but also the latest magic tool that the College had sent over meant that the pathogen in question had been devised by the kind of potent technologies that were really only available to a state apparatus.
The local lords had realized that a proper victory was out of the question, and so they were aiming to exploit a monarchy’s weakness; the difficulty of electing a substitute and the inflexibility of the whole process. They were desperate. If they couldn’t upturn things with political chaos, all that awaited them was the death of their lineages and a thorough routing. They couldn’t win things themselves, and so their only option was to trip up the Empire and create a chance for another nation to swoop in.