“They’ve lost track of the princess?!” I shouted, unintentionally loud enough to echo throughout the office we’d set up inside our temporary lodgings.
Seeing my subordinate (who should’ve been used to me yelling) flinch, I quickly waved my hand to clarify that it wasn’t him I was mad at. The guy was already shrinking inside his stuffy knight’s armor from the ridiculous report he was having to give me—it wouldn’t be fair to scare him any more. After all, it wasn’t even his fault. Plus, things had been tense from the moment we holed up in this shady fortress right on the border of the country we’d only recently stopped being at war with, so making the bad vibes worse wasn’t going to help anybody.
I took a deep breath and asked in the most normal tone I could muster, “So, what happened? Explain it in detail.”
“Understood! As you previously ordered, Your Excellency, our unit arrived at the city on the border with Sylvario to meet Her Royal Highness, but...”
I still can’t get used to being called “Your Excellency.”
I, Ark McGuine, had been awarded the peerage of viscount at the young age of twenty-five. I’d also been given a suit of black armor to go with my nickname “the Black Wolf.” I’d earned the name due to my black hair and eyes, and for the fact that I was so wild in battle that I always came away splattered with dark blood.
Thanks to my rise in rank, my subordinates were now putting me on a pedestal, though some of them put that pedestal a bit too high and were now afraid of me... But whether or not it was out of fear, even the knight in front of me—probably several years my senior—was giving me a brisk report.
But that was the only good thing about it.
“According to the city’s viceroy, Her Royal Highness has yet to arrive.”
“That’s what I’m wondering about first of all... Go on.”
As I pressed for more information, I heaved a little sigh. It looked like the nonsense war we had just gotten out of was going to continue to make trouble for everyone.
Originally, the war between our kingdom of Brigandia and the neighboring kingdom of Sylvario was apparently triggered by some small border disputes. I say “apparently” because by the time we in the capital knew there was even a problem, the regional lords of both kingdoms were already in battle. In the end, both national armies got involved, and it ballooned into a full-scale war.
The countries started on even footing at the beginning, but as soon as things started getting drawn out, Sylvario lost their momentum. In the end, Brigandia emerged the true victor.
Afterwards, the two countries reached an armistice, territories were divided up, and reparations were decided on...but something strange happened at that point too.
Sylvario asked Brigandia to reduce the reparation demands. In exchange, they offered their fourth and youngest princess, Her Royal Highness Princess Sonia, to marry into Brigandia and solidify friendly relations between the two nations.
Honestly, they should’ve just refused the ridiculous request. But luckily or unluckily, it was granted. Brigandia’s third prince, His Royal Highness Prince Alphonse, was still single.
“If she’s a princess, she should know of things around their palace, right? I don’t expect anything top secret, but we might be able to get some info on the little things,” said His Royal Highness Prince Alphonse with a great big smile. It chilled me to the bone.
(By the way, as the leader of the Special Battalion—a troop which directly serves His Royal Highness, and of which I’m a member—His Royal Highness is basically my boss. We’ve been buddies since we attended the Noble’s Academy together, so we often talk casually to each other.)
Having settled the fine print, the loser Sylvario sent Princess Sonia to the winner Brigandia as a hostage-slash-information source in a show of friendship. And, to communicate that “We’re still on guard. If you wanna go, we’ll go,” Brigandia sent the infamous “Black Wolf” (read: me) to the border city to retrieve the hostage-princess.
But on the day she was supposed to arrive...she didn’t show.
We decided to wait; things like health or bad weather could’ve easily caused a delay. But three days passed, and we still hadn’t heard anything. Because it was so weird that they were that late and hadn’t even sent anyone to tell us why, I sent a few of my knights to go check things out, and...
“We had guessed that they might have run into some trouble and been unable to proceed, so we questioned some merchants who had traveled down the road, but none of them had seen a single royal carriage. Commander Gale continued towards Sylvario’s capital thinking that they might be nearby and sent me to report back to you, Your Excellency.”
“I see,” I said. “Gale made a good call. I expect nothing less.”
Gale was one of my subordinates, and a common-born chevalier. Without the privileges of nobility to support him, he had worked hard to study and hone his skills, eventually beating out the children of barons and viscounts to gain the position of platoon commander. I relied on him heavily because of this, and he met my expectations. Not only was he skilled with a sword, but as you might expect of someone who crawled up the ranks of the knight squad against nobles, his situational awareness skills were especially high.
This time too, he hadn’t just checked to see if the princess had arrived; he’d had the sense to gather additional information on the situation and send me an interim report. Long story short, he wasn’t one to cut corners like a slacker. Gale’s work was instrumental in me coming to fully comprehend what a difficult situation we were in.
“Which means... Ah, thank you for the report. Take the day off and rest.”
I gave the knight who rushed back here a break, and tossed out some orders to nearby military officials. “Now, prepare two fast horses, and bring me two skilled riders for them!”
While they were getting me what I needed, I jotted some letters and had them sent to Brigandia’s royal capital on another fast horse. One was a report about the situation, and the other...
“Take care of things while I’m gone. I’m going to fetch her myself!” I told my adjutant, choosing a couple of elite knights and preparing to depart.
While Gale was skilled and prudent, his common-born station and rank as a chevalier were ultimately a little too low for the situation. If we ended up needing to do a lot of work while out in the field, then it’d probably speed things up having a viscount like me—the person in charge of the operation who’d been granted a certain authority—to collect the princess and do all the talking.
Which is why I made a written record that was both a declaration that I was heading into Sylvario to join the vanguard in their investigations, and an apology for reporting about it after the fact. The situation was what it was, after all, and as a potentially time-sensitive matter, I couldn’t afford to go back to the capital to ask for permission. That was why I had been given the authority to make my own decisions out here on the field.
Just how much of this did His Royal Highness see coming?
Anyway, since my appointment to viscount was so recent, and I was independent without any family members (on paper) who might end up in the crosshairs, it’d be easier for me to take all the blame if negotiations ended up going south. If I said that I forced my subordinates to comply with my orders, I’d probably be able to protect them too. My ma and pops might cry, but there was no helping that.
After preparing several contingency plans and clearing my mind for the task ahead, I headed outside and found that both the horses and knights I’d requested were all prepared.
“Okay, let’s go!”
I fired myself up and hopped on my own favorite horse, and at once we started riding in complete unison. We were part of an active duty, highly experienced force, so scrambling was something we had down pat. And these being the elites of a squad like that, they were on a different level entirely.
We rode in sync, as if we were one organism, heading towards the city on Sylvario’s side of the border. It was a few hours away, but since we left before noon, we managed to make it to the border city of Vestigo before the sun set.
Since the city was the keystone of the national border, they made sure to lock the gate on Brigandia’s side good and tight once the sun went down. We were in the middle of autumn and the days were getting shorter, so if we’d been any later, we’d have been forced to camp outside. And seeing as we left in a rush without much in the way of camping supplies, no matter how confident in our stamina we were, we really wanted to avoid spending the night on the cold ground if we could help it.