Chapter 45: A Knight’s Reward

When Balian came to, it was already dinner time.

He opened his eyes to the canvas ceiling of his tent, dyed a murky yellow by the setting sun. A thin wool blanket covered him, and his pillow had been swapped for a soft goose-down one. On the small table beside him sat a jug of water and a plate of honey bread.

He looked around. Aurora was nowhere in sight.

That disappointed him a bit.

Just then, the tent flap was pushed open, and a maid walked in carrying a tray. She looked up, saw him, and nearly dropped the dishes.

“Oh! Milord, you’re awake!”

Milord?

Balian blinked. The maids always called him “Mr. Balian” or just his name. When had he been promoted to “milord”?

“Wait. What did you call me?”

“Milord!” The maid set the tray on the small table, her face brimming with proud excitement. “Don’t you know? After the tournament ended this afternoon, His Majesty announced before all the nobles that you fought with such bravery that you deserve to be knighted!”

Balian’s mind was still foggy. He instinctively felt his ribs. The bone pain lingered far longer than the ache in his midsection.

“The King and Marquis Ed are still discussing who should preside over the ceremony. I heard the Marquis seemed hesitant.”

She poured him some water as she spoke.

“But it’ll have to wait until we return to the capital. A knighting has a whole formal procedure.”

A knight.

The lowest rank of nobility, sure, but still genuine nobility. Go back a few generations, and the Olivia family’s ancestors had started out as knights too, carving out a border Marquisate one sword stroke at a time.

Balian felt dazed.

He had stepped up to challenge Lancelot on his master’s behalf today, really just on a whim, because he didn’t want Aurora and the Marquis to lose face at the banquet. And now this one moment in the spotlight had turned him into a noble?

Marquis Ed’s original plan was to slot him into the Church Knights and let him grind out seniority slowly. But now King Louis, in his good mood, had skipped every step of the process.

Beyond the nervous awe, Balian found he had no idea what to do.

The maid set down the water jug and turned to leave. Balian stopped her.

“And Lady Aurora?”

“Lady Aurora?” The maid thought for a moment. “She’s in the rear camp, with the cooks. Should I go call her over?”

“No need.”

Balian shook his head and gave a wry smile.

“You wouldn’t be able to get her here.”

Ignoring the maid’s protests, he got out of bed and stretched his arms. His ribs twinged, but overall he was fine. Not dying.

He tossed a leather jacket over his shoulders and pushed through the tent flap.

The sunset burned half the sky red. Smoke rose in thin columns from the camp, and the smell of roasting meat mixed with burning pine drifted over, enough to make anyone’s stomach growl.

Aurora was crouched by a bonfire in the rear camp, watching with obvious interest as the cooks dressed a wild boar.

The boar was no small thing, at least two hundred pounds, gutted and hanging from a frame while two cooks worked on carving it up.

Juliet sat cross-legged on a wooden crate nearby, holding a violin she’d picked up from who knows where, lazily drawing the bow across the strings. Her fox ears twitched with the melody.

Vapgis leaned against a tree reading a book, turning a page now and then, occasionally glancing up to check the progress on the pork.

Keen had her sleeves rolled up, helping the cooks with a hind leg. A curved blade worked through the skin more smoothly than any kitchen knife, her movements so deft the two cooks looked almost embarrassed.

“Good work, Lady Keen,” Aurora nodded at her. “Thank you for hunting for the camp.”

Keen’s mouth curved up. She didn’t stop working.

“Don’t mention it. Better than sitting around.”

Of course, the boar wasn’t something Keen had hunted just to pass the time. Aurora knew better. This guild master had disappeared for most of the day, and the boar was just cover, a convenient way to explain where she’d been.

As she was thinking, footsteps came from behind, an uneven gait.

Aurora turned. Balian was limping toward them, jacket hanging open over his bandages. His face looked spirited enough.

She shot to her feet.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Just came to see you all.”

“See us? You’re injured. Why aren’t you lying down instead of out here in the wind?”

Aurora’s words came faster than usual, her brows knotted tight.

“I’m really fine…”

“Sometimes I really don’t understand what goes on in your head.”

Aurora said bluntly:

“Let me tell you plainly. You are a guard I watched grow up. That’s all. Don’t do useless things. Understand?”

It was almost a direct rejection of Balian’s advances.

Unfortunately, Balian didn’t get it.

Instead of getting angry at the tongue-lashing, he broke into a silly grin.

“What’s in my head right now is something pretty happy.”

Aurora’s expression froze.

“Shut up. Say something that disgusting again and I’ll throw you back in your tent.” She turned her face away. “Don’t think I did this to help you. You’re my family’s knight, that’s all. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to buff you before the duel.”

Vapgis snorted with laughter.

Juliet, never one to hold her tongue, said:

“You’re such a tsundere.”

Aurora turned her head slowly, her eyes like ice picks.

“Go die.”

Vapgis immediately buried her face in her book.

Juliet made a face.

“Ahem,” Aurora looked away and dusted the dirt off her hands. “The cooks still have a while to go. Now, let’s get to business.”

She scanned the group and beckoned to Balian, Keen, Vapgis, and Juliet.

“Follow me. Meeting in my tent.”

The five of them filed into Aurora’s tent.

The tent wasn’t large, but it was tidy. A campaign table held maps and rolls of parchment, and crates of scroll materials were stacked in a corner.

Vapgis came in last, pulling a small fluffy creature from her coat and setting it by the tent entrance. Her familiar, a blue owl the size of a palm, would stand sentry and raise the alarm if anyone approached.

Everyone sat down. Aurora spoke first, looking at Keen.

“Lady Keen. Where did you go during the day?”

Keen was wiping leftover lard off her curved blade. She looked up.

“Out to handle some personal business.”

“If it’s not convenient to say, you don’t have to,” Aurora leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. “But next time, give me a heads up. In this camp, you’re Vapgis’s aunt. If you vanish for a whole day and someone notices, it’ll be hard to explain.”

Keen nodded and sheathed her blade.

“I can say it.”

She paused, her dark eyes sweeping across the people in the tent.

“Have you heard of the Harpist Alliance?”

Aurora narrowed her eyes, digging through her memory.

“Vaguely. A legendary adventurers’ organization?”

“Not a legend. They’re still active,” Keen said. “And they have contact channels with the guild. That’s where I went today, to one of their nearby outposts.”

The tent went quiet for a moment. Juliet stopped fiddling with the violin strings and pricked up her ears.

“And?” Aurora asked.

Keen’s expression darkened.

“I was too late. The outpost was surrounded by goblins and orcs, layer after layer. There were traces of a fight, but no sound of battle. I think no one inside made it out alive.”

She rested her hands on her knees and leaned forward slightly.

“I wanted to go in, grab some intel, but I couldn’t do it alone. Too many of them.”

“How many?”

“A dense crowd. Estimate three to four hundred? Maybe more.”

Aurora frowned.

“Can you spare a few squads of knights to help clear them out?” Keen asked. “Open the road, and I’ll slip in to get the stuff.”

“Knights?” Aurora shook her head. “This is the royal hunting camp. The knights answer to their own nobles and the King. I don’t have that authority. Even if I asked my father for a writ, I’d need a convincing reason, and the round trip would take days.”

“Then what? The few of us fight our way in?” Keen gave a bitter smile. “I can handle a dozen or so goblins on my own, but three or four hundred? Even with all of you, we wouldn’t last.”

Aurora didn’t answer right away.

She got up, walked to the campaign table, and pulled a blank sheet of paper and a charcoal stick from the pile of odds and ends. She pushed them in front of Keen.

“Don’t jump to conclusions. Draw what you saw. The terrain, the outpost’s position, the goblins’ camp layout, the surrounding hills and rivers. Mark down everything you remember.”

Keen took the charcoal, thought for a moment, and began sketching a rough terrain map on the parchment. Her lines were coarse but precise, the labels clear. Soon a simple battle map lay on the table.

Aurora leaned over the edge of the table, studying it, then tapped two fingers on a valley.

“These goblins. What’s their combat level?”

Keen scoffed.

“What level can goblins have? Any knight here could kill a swarm of them. It’s purely a matter of numbers.”

Aurora stared at the map, thinking for a moment.

Then she raised her head, her gaze calm as it swept over everyone in the tent.

“I think we can handle these goblins ourselves.”

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