Chapter . 79
Dragons were picky towards humans, and there was practically no human who suited their taste.
Michelon even occasionally scolded Nanette, whom he adored so much. Saying that the girl's value system, which prioritized studying over playing with him, was wrong.
Yolande got angry, but even she was just pointed out as the person who instilled such wrong values into the child.
“Sir Rolf is too soft. Would he really be able to kill people on the battlefield? He fought well in the joust, but the battlefield is different. If someone begs for their life saying they have an old mother and a motherless baby, he'll probably spare them. And then he'll turn his back and get stabbed, dying. Then you lose your first knight.”
“Michelon!”
“It is fine, Prince. I will be too busy killing enemies to give them a chance to kneel, so do not worry. Michelon is just being imaginative as always.”
Sir Rolf, who shut the dragon's fiery snout, was truly reassuring. I couldn't just ignore such loyal advice.
***
“It is truly a huge mountain.”
Riding towards Mount Petrafis, Sir Rolf exclaimed.
“Somehow, it doesn't feel like we're getting any closer no matter how much we go.”
At my words, the Count of Montova said.
“Since it is a huge mountain from any angle, it feels like that when you go for the first time.”
It wasn't my first time, but before the regression, I flew on a dragon.
“It's not even winter yet... A mountain where snow doesn't melt throughout the four seasons, how high must it be to be like that.”
Yolande, who had never learned horseback riding and was sitting behind Michelon, exclaimed.
“It really touches the sky.”
When Sir Rolf chimed in, the Count looked bewildered by our group's attitude of treating a mage without reserve.
But there was no one to sympathize with him. Because I had allowed only the Count to participate when leaving for Mount Petrafis early in the morning.
Therefore, the Count couldn't bring his knights or squires. Although the Count's mother was anxious about this, she seemed to believe that Nanette and Vincent, whom we left behind, would serve as hostages. Of course, I didn't leave them there alone without safety measures.
“Where is the village?”
“It is between those forests. It is a village built using the terrain so that it cannot be seen well from the outside.”
The Count answered my question.
“Something is happening in that village.”
Michelon, who had to use honorifics to me because of the Count, spoke bluntly.
“What is happening? Surely the Knights of Saint Romola haven't arrived already?”
“It doesn't seem like that, but a fight is breaking out―”
“I will go ahead and check!”
Before Michelon even finished his sentence, the Count spurred his horse and dashed out like lightning.
“Oh, eager to show loyalty. Shouldn't Sir Rolf compete with him too?”
“I stay by Prince Leontes's side. Competing is for others.”
Sir Rolf calmly deflected Michelon's provocation.
“Let's go too!”
At my signal, everyone galloped. Even though Montova gave me the best horse, Michelon's horse carrying two people ran the fastest. When Michelon touched them, even stallions that would kick other horses and throw off their masters became docile as sheep.
“Drown it!”
“Right now!”
As we neared the village, shouts from many people were heard.
“Will you not stop!”
The Count's shout too.
“Yolande, cast sound amplification magic!”
Yolande nodded at my words. Sound amplification was ultimately wind magic moving the air, so it wasn't easy for her, a fire mage, but if she roughly chanted any spell, I could cast it instead.
Sound amplification was basically a fundamental magic like anti-scrying, but depending on the attribute, there were some tricky spells for each mage, which was a drawback of elemental magic.
“Wind, maaaaaagic!”
But at that moment, Michelon, seeing something again, made the horse run faster, and Yolande screamed clinging to his back. Even after casting adhesion magic on the saddle herself and asking me to cast a double layer, doesn't she trust me?
Anyway, as the sound was amplified, the conversation was soon heard.
“Why do you stop us! This thing is a mage!”
“What crazy talk is that! This is not the time. Everyone calm down! Do you know who has come―”
“We know too! They say the holy knights are coming, those notorious Knights of Purity!”
“Prince Leontes has come here as the new lord right now!”
“Then we must do it faster!”
“Drown it! Drown it!”
“To do things as you please without the Prince's permission, you are all dead meat!”
“Drown it! Drown it!”
Yolande's face turned pale.
‘Ordeal by water…….’
The ordeal where a suspect is thrown into water—if they float, they are a mage; if they sink, they are innocent—was a long-standing tradition. Originally a trial to easily determine the suspect's guilt, it came to be used even for mage hunting, and the trial by water, easier to handle than fire or sword, was the most frequent.
Driving the horses madly, we arrived at the village. People were gathered by the stream in the valley where glacial meltwater flowed.
The Count, who had run ahead, had drawn his sword, and the peasants confronting him, holding pickaxes or axes, did not back down even with terrified faces. It looked like a peasant revolt right upon my arrival as lord.
“Prince!”
The young Count's face flushed.
“I apologize. I tried to subdue them before Your Highness arrived, but―”
“Did you truly think I would be pleased if you killed my estate residents?”
He must have tried to show off his aspect as an administrator ruling them, but it was a wrong thought.
Leaving the red-faced Count behind, I approached the peasants on horseback, and they backed away in fear. Looking down from the horse, they were hiding something behind them.
“They are hiding a mage behind them.”
The Count reported. I spoke to the peasants.
“I am Prince Leontes, your new lord.”
No one answered. With faces both fearful and stubborn.
“If there is someone accused of being a mage here, bring them out. As the lord ruling you, I will hold a fair trial.”
Then an old man stepped forward, bowed his head, and asked.
“Merciful Prince, will you hold the trial before the holy knights arrive?”
They were afraid the holy knights would ransack their village. If someone is accused as a mage, it never ends with just that one person.
False confessions arose from resentment towards the village that drove them to be accused as mages, worn out by torture, and those pointed out also went through the same process. Then the whole village would be ruined.
“I rule and also protect you. Since I will start the trial from now, bring the one accused as a mage before me!”
People still seemed hesitant. Some glared at Yolande. When Michelon and Sir Rolf drew their swords, they flinched but raised the farming tools in their hands.
If peasants, usually treated like livestock by nobles, resisted not only the Count but even me, a Prince, it was clearly a very serious situation.
The castellan being skewered in front of his wife, peasants who did so being retaliated against... it might be a sign of a peasant revolt, of which there were countless terrible precedents.
But instead of me, their lord, they shouldn't fear others more. Whether the Empress or holy knights. Because then I wouldn't be able to protect them either.
“Are you the mage?”
I asked, pointing to the old man who bowed to me first.
He jumped.
“What are you saying, Prince! Absolutely not! It is unjust!”
“I ordered you to bring the mage. But isn't the only one before me right now you?”
“Ahahaha!”
In the bloody atmosphere, Michelon alone threw his head back and laughed.
The Count, as well as the people, looked at him dumbfounded, but the old man closed his eyes tightly at that laughter and gestured. Robust men rushed in and threw something squirming in a sack onto the ground in front of me.
The sack was tied tightly. Yolande picked up her staff to undo the magic, but I shook my head to stop her. So as not to provoke my estate residents who were afraid of magic.
“Untie the sack!”
The Count ordered, but everyone just bowed their heads. Rather than resisting the Count, they really seemed unwilling to touch the sack. Unless they were throwing it into the water immediately upon touching it.
“I will carry out the Prince's order!”
Michelon, speaking cheerfully, jumped off his horse onto the sack. Not getting off the horse and running to the sack, but jumping off the horse and landing on the sack. Even though it was by no means a close distance.
While everyone's eyes widened, Michelon hummed and placed one foot on the highest point of the sack, then plunged his dagger straight down.
“Ack!”
Yolande screamed. Michelon smiled brightly over his shoulder as if she had sung him a song, then ripped the sack straight down to the end with the dagger.
No matter how much the sack squirmed, with Michelon's skill, he wouldn't hurt the person inside. But his utterly unhesitating hand chilled the livers of those watching. Since we were the only ones who knew his skill.
“Huh?”
Still holding the dagger, Michelon spoke resonantly.
“This isn't a human?”
It was a wolf. A wolf wearing tattered rags with heavy stones tied to its four paws. The head of a hammer was bitten in its snout, and it was gagged tightly by tying the hammer with cloth.
The wolf was huge and extraordinary at a glance, but perhaps exhausted from struggling after being caught, it was lying down panting.
“…When I arrived here, these people were trying to drown this wolf in the valley water after catching it.”
The Count of Montova said, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“You didn't catch it for us, Count!”
A woman shouted venomously. Other women also murmured and nodded. Giuliano sighed and continued.
“This wolf is the notorious Wolf of Petrafis in this area. The Knights of Saint Romola are also coming to catch this wolf. Since this big wolf harms the villagers, people petitioned me to catch this wolf. But it was so crafty that it wasn't easy to catch. Still, I didn't give up and planned a wolf hunting operation to scour the mountain. However, the timing was bad, so I had no time to execute it…….”
Because the Empress suddenly abandoned him for refusing to build a gambling den, he must have been busy preparing for the banquet instead of that operation.
Actually, in Armatia's reality, this couldn't be solely called the Empress's fault. When she even orders massacres to subjects who pledged loyalty, a gambling den isn't illegal.
“You promised to come catch it but didn't come, so we were almost attacked by this wolf again!”
“…I had to hurry to welcome Prince Leontes. But how on earth did you catch this thing?”
The Count looked genuinely curious.
“All the herb gatherers joined forces to find its hideout. We caught it with a net when it was disoriented by smoke from burning poisonous mushrooms.”
“Still, it struggled so much that we were almost bitten several times.”
“Well done. Catching a wolf that harms people, you all established merit. I will reward you.”
When I told the complaining people, everyone's eyes widened, then they rejoiced with tears in their eyes.
“Thank you, Prince!”
“Merciful Prince Leontes!”
Smiling at them, I quietly asked the Count, who looked resentful in front of the peasants who caught the wolf he couldn't catch.
“So, is this wolf the suspect you promised to catch for me? It was a human when you spoke this morning.”
“It is a human. This wolf is merely tamed and used by that person to attack people. There certainly is a mage.”
But the people, who were rejoicing yet sensitive to our conversation, immediately retorted.
“We say no!”
“The wolf is that mage!”
“That mage is this wolf!”
It was absurd. Magic existed and mages existed, but since those in power monopolized them, people didn't know what magic was. So all sorts of superstitions about magic and mages arose, and werewolves were one of them.
“…Werewolves turn into wolves only when the full moon rises. It is broad daylight now. If this is truly a werewolf, shouldn't it turn back into a human?”
Sir Rolf sighed and said, but the villagers retorted without wavering.
“It cannot transform because it inhaled smoke from burning poisonous mushrooms.”
From whose head did this amazing nonsense come.