1

A few days earlier.

“Huff… huff….”

Louis was running. His injured leg kept throbbing. He had been struck by a barbarians’ arrow. Even while running, Louis tried to figure out by what route the barbarians had come, but nothing came to mind.

Anyway, Louis had to get out of this pursuit now.

The barbarians were chasing him to capture him.

Whether to kill him, enslave him, or demand ransom—none of it would end well for Louis.

He already hadn’t earned his family’s trust, and the third option could even spell the end of his political life.

“Ngh….”

Unable to endure the throbbing, Louis looked down at his leg.

He was bleeding heavily. If he kept moving like this, he would surely come to grief.

‘I’ve lost too much blood… I have to pull it out here.’

Louis looked around.

There were many thickets. He quickly sketched a map in his head. This was near the city he administered. Louis had memorized the terrain here.

The brushland was good for hiding for the moment, but that was all. This place was little different from open ground and perfect for getting isolated. If his leg were fine, he could have sprinted straight along the brushland.

But with this much blood loss, it was impossible.

He felt he could collapse at any moment; he couldn’t sprint across the plains.

That was, even if it meant hellish pain, he had to administer first aid here and then find another direction. The one fortunate point was that time was on Louis’s side. Before fleeing, he had informed his second brother. Today, rotating troops were on alert in the commercial city his second brother administered.

Thus the barbarians had to find Louis by today. Louis, on the other hand, only needed to buy about a day.

‘Huff… huff….’

Louis grabbed the arrowhead lodged in his thigh. Normally arrowheads were made to cause more damage when pulled out once they were in flesh, but this one wasn’t.

Barbarian arrowheads were crude to the extreme. And that point puzzled Louis, because the Gedra tribe—who frequently plundered the Pontina family’s cities—were famous as barbarians who did not use arrows.

It was no coincidence that his city had been attacked and that they had begun using arrows. Something was happening among the barbarians. But he stopped thinking there. In any case, the barbarians were not Louis’s purview. That fell to the Pontina family’s eldest son, Fred, who stood in sharp confrontation with them—Louis’s brother’s job.

“…………”

Louis pulled out the arrowhead. He gritted his teeth and endured the pain. If any sound leaked out now, the barbarians might hear him. But the real problem came after he had dug around the wound. With the pain that followed, Louis could only keep groaning inwardly.

‘…First, bind it….’

He tore the hem of his garment and wrapped the bleeding area. After winding it tight three or four more times and pulling all the way, the pain seemed to ease a little. Quickly… quickly he adapted to the pain. In very urgent situations, humans can even forget pain and move.

‘…Move.’

Considering his current location, he had to move elsewhere. In open ground there was no hope. Louis turned left. The barbarians were on horseback. Therefore he needed to move to terrain where horses had great difficulty tracking. If he went left, there would be wetlands. In wetlands, you can’t drive horses recklessly. In addition, thick reeds like these grew in abundance there. Topographically, it was ideal for fleeing now. The problem, however, was that the wetlands were a dangerous place even the residents avoided. With all manner of flora and fauna, just hiding there meant being ready to risk one’s life.

However, there was no time to think of this and that. Louis figured that precisely because of the danger, the barbarians wouldn’t expect him to enter such a place. Common sense said that once he crossed only the grasslands, his second brother’s city lay ahead. From the city, his brother’s soldiers would have set out by now, and if he was lucky, they would cross paths before the day was out. Of course, in Louis’s judgment, the probability of being caught by the barbarians before that was higher. That was why he meant to go this way….

Louis hobbled along.

Less than an hour after Louis disappeared to the left, the ground trembled. The barbarians appeared on horseback. The one at the very front looked at the grassland mixed with reeds and brush and spoke.

“…A fork.”

“He must have gone into the brush.”

Their garb was bizarre. Wearing leather clothes stripped from sheep’s wool, they covered their feet, legs, and torso, and the hats they wore were curved.

The brush was bent, and they headed inside without hesitation.

“He ran toward his own lines on the opposite side. Run. We must seize him before he meets the troops. Do not disappoint Chieftain Atila. If you fail to capture the city’s governor today, you’ll taste his wrath.”

Except for the man, the subordinates burst out like arrows.

Thus most of the barbarians dashed off. He thought about the young chieftain who had engineered this operation.

The young chieftain was unconventional—and capable. Everyone had doubted his claim, but the city would be looted from now until tomorrow. If they returned with plunder, the tribe would look at the young chieftain anew. That in itself was dangerous.

‘A blood wind will blow.’

He urged his horse on. The animal leisurely pressed down the brush as it walked.

Then something split through the branches and moved. A small animal.

Confirming the creature’s movement and about to go on his way, his eyes caught sight of red blood.

He kicked his horse toward the bloodstains. Arriving in a flash, he dismounted and examined the tracks.

‘He veered left….’

He looked toward the direction his soldiers had run and thought.

‘An ordinary man would have run straight.’

“What is it, sir?”

“This way.”

“..Yes?”

“He fled this way. Chase down the vanguard and bring them here.”

“Yes.”

The man who had been examining the bloodstains mounted his horse.

‘He didn’t get far.’

“Gasp… gasp… gasp… gasp… gasp….”

His heart felt like it would burst. Louis was pushing himself hard. The pain in his leg returned whenever he was about to forget it. The bleeding had mostly stopped, then started flowing again. He felt a bit dizzy. But Louis could not stop.

‘Three are on my tail.’

They were not on horseback. They couldn’t be. This was wetland terrain. Being barbarians, their tracking speed was beyond imagination. Louis, on the other hand, was injured. He had time to spare, but even that difference put him in a bind. The one piece of luck was that their torches had gone out. Even in wetlands, torches didn’t easily go out, but he had been fortunate. The torches were out, and they too were searching in the dark. Louis groped forward over the soggy ground by moonlight. He keyed up his nerves to the utmost. If he was caught, he’d die; if he sank into a bog, he’d die; if a venomous creature bit him, he’d die; if he met a monster, he’d die.

If his big brother Fred were here, even meeting a monster would be no problem. If it were his younger brother, he’d detect with a simple spell. But Louis, who lacked both of their talents, could do neither. The only thing Louis did better than his brothers was cold rationality. He had studied vast histories and knew how to make reasonable judgments. But that did not save his life now. He had thought he could shake pursuit by going into the wetlands, but failed. And then a shout rang out.

“I think he’s nearby!”

“Find him!! There’s not much time left. We must find him before dawn!”

Yet they had no fire. A good point about wetlands is that, because there’s so much moisture, once a torch goes out it won’t light again.

‘If I can just find a place to hide….’

A dead deer’s carcass came into Louis’s view. He flinched. Thanks to the moonlight he barely saw it. The body was half-sunken. This was it. This was a bog. If he didn’t skirt it, he’d end up the same. Louis had to change direction. He walked, watching the grass. Right above a bog, a peculiar grass grew. The grass had a whitish hue. He didn’t know its name, but it grew only right above bogs. Stepping with utmost care, Louis escaped the first danger zone. Because he had moved carefully, he had nearly reached the far edge when…

“There he is!!”

He had been spotted. One of them drew a bow and loosed at once. The arrow buried itself right next to Louis. He looked back. There were four of them. There had been one more. But calmly—calmly—he thought.

‘I have time. As long as I don’t take any more arrows, I’ll have time to hide….’