Page 61 of The Wild Prince’s Favorite (The Dragon Empire Saga #3)
There were a few seconds of heavy silence as the actual meaning of his orders sunk into those men’s heads.
Units Five and Six were the only ones on the sand with the Commander in Chief.
Suddenly, all the other units felt all the more grateful to have been ordered to stand on the sidelines, and some even instinctively took another step away from the line of sand.
Those twelve men were about to die, there was no doubt about that.
The ones condemned were also starting to realize how bad their position was.
They glanced around at the stares of the other units, and then faced the Commander in Chief.
“This... This isn’t fair!” one of them finally uttered. “We’re going to die!”
“It’s a deathmatch,” Kassein retorted with an ice-cold tone. “If you kill me and everyone else, you can survive. Unit Five first.”
Tievin smirked. So he wanted to make sure the sixth unit knew what was coming to them.
.. Indeed, he was in a foul mood. Those men knew their chances were naught.
They could possibly kill the others, but the Commander’s presence annihilated their chances of survival.
A few of them glanced to the sides, but their chances of running out of there weren’t much better; there were twice the number of men ready to greet them with swords, and they had done absolutely nothing that would make the other units want to save them, quite the opposite.
“W-we... M-maybe we can take him, all of us! There are twelve of us! L-let’s get rid of this bastard!”
There were a handful of half-convinced cheers, more to try and summon the bravery they didn’t have than anything. Then, someone began running, sword first, toward Kassein, and the bloodshed began.
Tievin suppressed his vomit and quickly raised his notepad to block his view.
He had little doubts about the outcome, and he hoped to keep his lunch down.
Instead, he turned to Sazaran. Unlike him, the General had his eyes riveted on the fight, nodding at intervals as if he was watching an interesting scene and mentally giving points.
“Sazaran. Your opinion on the Commander’s recent... acquisition?” Tievin asked, trying to speak not too loudly so Kassein wouldn’t hear, but loud enough for Sazaran to hear him above all the screaming and shouting.
“The woman?” Sazaran scoffed. “What of it? The Commander’s a young man. Good for him!”
“She’s going to bring trouble,” Tievin insisted. “She’s a foreigner. An enemy.”
“So what?!” Sazaran shrugged, seeming annoyed to be distracted. “Nothing the Commander in Chief can’t handle. Plus, Princess Kiera is here, isn’t she? What are you scared of, Tievin, you chicken!”
Tievin rolled his eyes. These brainless animals...
“...The men are talking, for sure,” Sazaran said after a while.
“A woman in the camp is a first... Frankly, we should worry more about the trouble on the inside than the outside. I’m not mad to be rid of those animals, but they aren’t the only ones.
We’re not doing charity work here. Nobody would blame the Commander in Chief for taking a firmer hand on his troops! ”
His words had Tievin smirk.
The issue wasn’t about Kassein being soft, but him lacking any interest. He had been sent here as a punishment and decided to stay because he refused to go back.
Having to lead and take care of an entire army was just like a side dish on his plate.
He didn’t care for it, just like he cared very little about actually conquering those mountains.
In fact, that woman was the first thing he’d shown any interest in for months. ..
Just then, there was a damp sound of something landing in the sand a few feet away from them, and Tievin made the mistake of peeking. He almost threw up again and quickly hid behind his notepad.
“...How bad is it?”
“We’re going to need a big order of sand,” Sazaran chuckled. “The Commander in Chief is in particularly good shape today.”
Tievin rolled his eyes.
“Just let me know when he’s done...” he grumbled.
It didn’t take long, fortunately. After many screams, grunts, and shouts, everything suddenly seemed to fall into a half-admirative, half-horrified silence.
Still, Tievin wasn’t foolish enough to lower his notepad just yet.
He watched as Sazaran left his side to get on the sand, declare without surprise the Prince as the winner, and then start scolding his troops. That was Tievin’s cue.
He grabbed the Commander in Chief’s heavy cloak and took a large detour around the sand to get through the crowd of soldiers and find Kassein to follow him out of there.
Although he did his very best to avoid looking, it was clear the sand had taken a crimson color, and the horrified gazes of the other soldiers convinced him to keep looking in the opposite direction until they stepped out.
The training area was going to take a while to be cleaned, but that wasn’t his problem.
Sazaran would have his men do it... He doubted any unit would feel like going there after the word spread, anyway.
And no doubt it would spread pretty quickly.
Those men had been executed as an example, although a lot of it was also the result of Kassein’s frustrations.
Every time the Prince was pissed, there would be blood spilled.
That was the rule and the main reason everyone was smartly staying out of their way as they crossed back through the camp.
That, and the trail of blood dripping behind him too. ..
“...Are they back yet?”
Tievin, who was struggling to keep up behind him while carrying Kassein’s humongous cape on top of his notepad, blinked a couple of times, before realizing who he was talking about.
“N-not that I know of, Commander.”
He wanted to ask how he would possibly know better than Kassein when they’d been together all along, but it wasn’t worth dying today.
Instead, Tievin gestured quickly at a unit that was passing by with wide-open eyes at their Commander’s gruesome, blood-soaked appearance.
“You take this,” Tievin said, pushing the heavy fur cloak in their hands with a sigh of relief. “Was Her Highness spotted? And her dragon?”
“Th-the women aren’t back yet that we know of,” they replied with a dry throat. “N-neither is the Commander’s dragon...”
“Fine. Take this to the Commander’s tent, and have someone alert us as soon as they’re back!”
“Yes, Grand Intendant!”
Tievin didn’t need to repeat what had been said, for he was sure Kassein had heard it all already. Instead, his hands now free from that heavy piece of clothing, Tievin hurried behind him, catching up to a safe distance of a couple of steps between them.
“Your Highness, may I suggest you... get cleaned up before the ladies return?”
Kassein stopped and looked down as if he’d only just now realized he was drenched in fresh blood... Tievin sighed.
At the very least, having women in the camp would get a few of those animals to finally exert some basic hygiene.
Soon enough, he ordered another unit to bring a hot bath to the Commander in Chief’s tent.
Kassein kept glancing at the skies, and Tievin silently prayed that his sister would come back before he ran out of patience.
.. He could imagine the ladies would want to take their time and enjoy their baths, but even in his eyes, it had been quite a while since they’d left.
Tievin chose not to voice it out and instead, act as if this was to be expected.
He might have had his doubts if it had been anybody else, but Princess Kiera, the Emperor’s younger sister, had cultivated quite a reputation since childhood as the most unpredictable member of the Imperial Family.
Even when she was young, she’d taken the habit of escaping the safety of the Imperial Palace on her own with her dragon, finding every opportunity she could to escape her caretakers’ watch and disappear, at first for a few hours, and as she grew up, for several days.
Her whereabouts were more often unknown than known, and it usually took one of the dragons to actually find which corner of the Empire she’d gone if she even stayed within the borders. ..
Now that she was an adult, her entire family had quite accepted the fact that Kiera couldn’t be tied down to anywhere, and only visited home whenever she felt like it. As a child though, it had been quite problematic.
The Imperial Family counted eight children, and it was an exceptional sight to see them all in one place, mostly because Kiera had a genuine talent for disappearing.
Tievin, who had been raised alongside them, had a front row seat in witnessing the countless number of times Kiera had been brought home by one of her older siblings’ dragons, or been escorted by the Imperial Guards after she’d been caught stealing with other children in the street.
As she’d grown up, her family had seemed to be less and less bothered by her carefree spirit and accepted that she was more often gone exploring the world than safe at home.
Moreover, when she did return, she spent most of her time training with her older siblings and father, making her one of the best fighters in the Empire and confirming that very few things on this continent could actually harm her.
Thankfully, she’d dropped the stealing habit…
or perhaps she’d gotten good enough at it not to get caught anymore, Tievin wasn’t quite sure.
He had no idea how the dragons were able to find the Imperial Family members no matter how far they were, but he was quite sure Kiera would have been capable of disappearing for entire weeks if it wasn’t for the family dragons chasing her to bring her back home.
Thus, her disappearing with her companion Lorey and that foreign woman wasn’t as worrying as it should have been. It was mostly Kassein being quite annoyed with it, and for his nerves’ sake, Tievin did hope she had intended to return that day.