“Agreed. I’ll tell the hero about it myself.”
“And with regards to his family name, we shall have it formally written into the noble register, and he shall be provided a copy.”
All noble families received a yearly publication from the royal family that listed all the nobility in the land. That meant that if you didn’t receive one, you were not of a noble family.
“Usually, this would require more time, but I’ll find a way to make it work before your departure. You shall offer it to the hero personally.”
“Thank you. Really, the nerve of that man, going off and slaying a titan and giving me all these headaches to deal with.”
I sighed with relief now that the issue of rewarding the hero was finally untangled. Though, on second thought, if he became a marquis, he would become the second-highest-ranking man in my entire territory. Perhaps it really would be for the best to see him and Alcina married after all?
“I do look forward to meeting him. Perhaps he could rid us of a few more titans first, though, eh? Gahaha! I’m not even sure how I would reward him, at that point!”
“Haha, indeed, if that happened, maybe we really would have to give him Alcina. Fortunately, that should be impossible, since there aren’t any other titans confirmed by reliable witnesses within the country.”
“Merely a hypothetical. Well, if it came to that, we could grant him some royal treasure, confer more land upon him, or even create an honorary post in the military for him.”
After conferring with my father, I had a hectic time in the capital, visiting my mother, meeting with officials related to the development plan, and finally speaking with the merchants contracted to produce and transport materials.
As I went through all this, I told myself that when I returned to the frontier this time, I couldn’t possibly be plagued by any further annoyances.
Well. Fine. I couldn’t really call them annoyances, because they were for the good of my territory, but I could say with confidence that I found it annoying the way my civil servants and I were always inches away from death by fatigue.
Argh! How I regretted my inability to gather up all those idle noblemen in the castle, even the three men from before—or even some men of letters among the commoners. I could have abducted them and forced them to do a share of my endless paperwork!
★ Salima ★
Under pleasant skies, our five-hundred-carriage, two-thousand-man convoy proceeded with few troubles and fewer monster attacks for four days.
Things were going perfectly. The only thing I found strange was how the princess started to look at the hero— oops, he told me to call him Sir Chris—
differently.
She would stare at him red-faced from the window of her carriage as he chatted with my eldest, Mahendra, on horseback. Then she would hide, peek out again, and repeat. Sir Chris’s wives watched the charming sight from inside the same carriage.
Then again, what could you expect of a naïve little princess who’d been coddled by a dashing man, and a hero no less? Seemed she had something of a crush.
“Hey, let’s make a bet. Do you think the princess’s crush will grow into something more? I’ll bet you a bottle of my favorite wine that it will.”
“Do you think anyone here is dumb enough to take that bet? You do realize, the princess even had her bodyguards move her carriage so that she could have a better view of the hero.”
Well, since they’d sent her on this mission, it must have already been determined that she should be married to someone from this country. They didn’t seem to have settled on who specifically the lucky man would be, but Sir Chris would have been a natural candidate. If he wanted her badly enough, he could easily become the frontrunner for her hand in marriage. Sir Chris and his wives already spoiled her like a baby sister, so at this rate, she
looked liable to bag her first love, barring any sudden surprises.
As I was entertaining such carefree thoughts, I felt my horse lurch slightly. With such a large army at my command, and with the hero who defeated a titan on our side, I must have let my guard down, and in doing so I allowed a monster to come close enough to take us by surprise. I turned to face the procession of carriages and saw ants the size of children spewing from the forest.
“Armored ants?! Nobody told me these buggers were in the forest!
Booooys, to arms! Front-line soldiers, contain them! The rest of you, set the forest ablaze!”
As the name implied, the yard-long ant monsters were covered from head to toe in an absurdly strong carapace. They were both strong and tough. Their main weak point was their slow movement, as well as a weakness common to all insects: fire.
“Ugh, sucks to waste the goods.”
When the ants appeared, I pulled a jar of oil from a carriage filled with foodstuffs and lobbed it into the woods. Then, I wet a handkerchief with oil, lit it on fire, wrapped it around a rock, and threw that as well. My aim must have been true, the flaming handkerchief landing directly on the spot where the jar broke, because the area burst into flame, stopping the monsters in their tracks. I singed my hand, but not badly enough to get in the way of gripping my sword.
“Any free hands, throw oil into the forest!”
After my shout, many of my men recovered from the initial panic. Some of them readied their weapons and went to hold off the monsters, while others threw more jars of oil into the flames. Oh, what about Sir Chris? I didn’t have to worry about him. Dark fog spread among the ants, and where it enveloped the ants, they convulsed and died on the spot.
In a stroke of luck, the princess and the hero’s wives were in the same carriage. He could be counted on to keep them all safe together. That meant I could focus on driving back the monsters.
From what I knew about armored ants, they lived in colonies numbering about a hundred each, dragging food back to the nest for the queen and her larvae to feast on. The queen was primarily carnivorous, while the larvae were herbivorous. Worker ants would harvest nearby trees and other plants to bring into the nest.
With all these workers around, the nest had to be nearby. And if there were still trees left in the forest, that meant the queen hadn’t given birth yet.
Thus, after we drove off these ants, we would have to locate the nest and set fire to it to finish them off. In a sense, this attack was a stroke of good fortune, in that we could find and exterminate them before they caused any real damage.
“If they’re only at the stage of gathering food for the queen before her eggs hatch, there shouldn’t be many ants. Go all out on ’em, men!”
My subordinates responded to my shout by charging straight into the enemy on horseback… But that was when it happened.
The earth shook. Trees swayed. Horses stopped in place, too afraid to move. Even my battle-hardened subordinates dropped their weapons in dumbfounded shock.
Crunch, crunch, crunch. Creeeeeeak.
The first part that came into view was a head. The head alone, however, was large enough to make trees of a dozen yards in length look like little needles in comparison. As the creature bobbed, the ground shuddered and shrieked.
The creature, which could easily be mistaken for a black mountain, was an ant, its vast abdomen ridiculously swollen.