MHHC Chapter 133

The Raid

He was watching Adele with eyes that seemed almost pained.

The worry and restlessness etched into his strained expression were vivid enough to touch. Without meaning to, Adelheid took a step toward the front of the procession.

The desire to soothe him—to press close and whisper that he needn't worry—surged fiercely through her chest.

Then it happened. The horn sounded once more in a long, drawn-out cry, and a cloud of ochre dust billowed up and swallowed the view.

"It seems we're about to depart. Please hurry, Your Grace."

Hermann's prompting jolted Adelheid back to herself, and she hastened to climb up into the supply wagon.

The moment she settled into her seat, Yanik pressed a thick blanket and a hot-water warming pouch into her hands.

"It will grow colder the farther north we travel. You must keep warm, Your Grace."

"Thank you. Please give my regards to Margaret as well—and tell her I pray for a safe delivery."

"Please take good care of yourself. We'll be waiting for your return."

The phrase waiting for your return always made her heart quicken. It meant she had somewhere to belong—somewhere to come back to.

At last, the wheels of the wagon bearing her northward began to turn, slowly at first, then gathering speed.

"Your Grace! Do take care of yourself!"

At the booming voice, Adelheid leaned out of the wagon and looked back.

Yanik had thrown both arms high above his head and was waving them wide from side to side. That guileless sight pulled a smile to her lips before she could help it.

Adelheid summoned her courage, raised her own hand high, and waved in return.

"I'll be back."

The farther north they traveled, the more the weather turned, and the monster attacks grew bolder.

No amount of reinforced vigilance could stop them. The monsters were cunning—lying in wait for the precise moments when knights rode out on patrol, finding the hairline cracks in human attention and sliding through them.

Several horses vanished entirely, only to be found later emptied of their entrails.

After this happened more than once, they kept fires blazing as bright as midday even through the night hours, rotating sentries to protect the precious animals.

They moved without rest, but the sheer scale of the expedition set hard limits on how far they could travel in a single day.

The roads themselves were an unceasing ordeal.

The advance expedition had fought fierce, bloody battles with the monsters—evidence of it everywhere in the cratered earth and the shattered remnants of broken trees.

Even the anti-vibration spells were useless. They could do nothing to prevent wheels from sinking into the gouged ground.

The carriage would roll along smoothly and then suddenly lurch as though it meant to overturn, and each time it did, Adelheid would crack her head without warning and swallow her cry.

Every muscle in her body knotted and ached, and each morning she woke feeling as though she had been thoroughly beaten.

She managed the days by chewing herbs that staved off the motion sickness, one at a time.

'What's happening?'

Adelheid jolted awake from the thin, shallow sleep she had barely managed to find just before dawn, startled by a terrible sound.

What followed was a massive tremor that shook the carriage as though the sky itself were falling.

Something had clearly gone wrong. She scrambled to push the carriage door open and stepped out.

"Cough—ugh..."

Acrid smoke from the nightlong campfires hung thick in every direction.

Adelheid squinted against the sting and pressed her hand over her nose and mouth. She was stumbling through a bout of sneezes when an arm caught hold of hers.

"Your Grace. Are you all right?"

Adelheid nodded, eyes still pressed shut. From the voice, it was the maidservant Lena.

She was the girl Hermann had emphatically recommended and Adelheid had taken on—on the grounds that she could hardly be sent off without even a single maid to see to her daily needs—and Lena had turned out to be rather more useful in all sorts of ways than expected.

"Be careful. You nearly stepped into the fire."

Lena guided Adelheid carefully to safety.

A few soldiers glanced up to check on the two figures approaching through the haze, then looked away again.

Perhaps because monster cries had continued echoing through the night—everyone wore the hollowed look of those who had not truly slept.

"What on earth is all this commotion?"

Lena quickly used water from her flask to wipe the ash from Adelheid's right eye as she explained.

"Giant-type monsters approached close to the camp. They use a magic that conceals their presence—if we'd detected them even a little later, it would have been catastrophic."

"They conceal their presence?"

Adelheid pressed her lips together in surprise. Come to think of it, she had read about this.

Lower-tier monsters were stupid and simple, but some among the higher-ranked wielded mana by instinct, expressing abilities beyond mere brute force.

It was not without reason that mana had once been considered something belonging exclusively to monsters.

In any case, if Lena's account was true, this was no ordinary matter.

From what she had read, giant-type monsters had tough, resilient hides that made them difficult to kill, and their thick-fisted blows carried devastating destructive force.

She hastily pushed Lena's hands away and rubbed at her watering eye with the back of her hand.

"And the wounded? Where are the monsters now? I should have been up sooner—"

"Everything is fine, there's no need to worry. His Grace the Grand Duke and his knights have already dealt with them all. Look—over there."

Adelheid turned her reddened, half-blinded eyes in the direction the maid was pointing.

Through the narrow slits of her squinting gaze, she could make out several massive bodies lying fallen across the ground.

Dark red blood ran in rivers from the torn-open throats, and the supposedly tough hides had been carved into tatters, as though put to the knife again and again.

Even now, with obstinate vitality, forearms and backs twitched intermittently.

On instinct, Adelheid clapped her hand over her mouth. The sight first thing in the morning made her stomach turn.

"See? I told you—nothing to worry about."

Lena spoke with deliberate brightness and positioned herself so as to block Adelheid's line of sight.

The view was gone from her eyes, but the moment she registered the foul blood-smell mingled into the acrid smoke, dizziness swept through her.

Adelheid lowered the hand she had been holding over her mouth, her face drained pale.

Until now she had only ever seen monsters that dissolved to ash upon death. She had never witnessed anything spread out before her quite so nakedly—in something so like the shape of a corpse.

In any case—if she was joining the subjugation campaign, this was a sight she would have to grow accustomed to. Adelheid managed a smile.

"What a relief."

"No one is hurt, but the knights were covered in monster blood, so they've gone to the spring to wash. Our departure may be delayed a little—would you like to eat something first?"

She had no appetite whatsoever, but letting her strength flag would only slow the expedition down, so Adelheid nodded.

Lena disappeared briefly and returned with a rough, dry piece of bread, a small wedge of cheese, and a cup of water cut with a splash of wine.

Adelheid accepted the wretched food without complaint.

The softer provisions they had brought from the estate had run out two days ago, and it was hardly possible to spend the morning boiling water in a pot just for a warm meal.

The moment the knights returned, they needed to be ready to leave—which meant filling one's belly as simply as possible.

Adelheid pushed the dry, coarse bread into her mouth and chewed—half from obligation, half from duty.

When her throat threatened to close entirely, she took small sips of the watered wine. Lena, who had been nibbling bits of cheese beside her, spoke up as though something had just occurred to her.

"Oh—speaking of which, apparently the first village in Schleicher Territory is somewhere near here. Tonight we might actually be able to sleep somewhere decent."

"Good heavens. Is that true?"

"I heard the knights talking about it. A proper bed, real food. There'll be something there, at least. Shall I try to find out more details?"

"Would you?"

Adelheid looked at Lena with desperate eyes.

Lena nodded and disappeared at once, returning with the welcome news that they would likely arrive by afternoon at the latest.

She didn't let it show on her face, but inwardly Adelheid was overjoyed. To get out of the carriage! And better still—she would be able to use her magic again.

After finishing her meal, she went around to the soldiers who looked most worn through and cast simple recovery spells on them.

"They're back."

By the time she had made the rounds, the knights returned amid a general swell of noise and movement.

Water still dripped from their hair—they had washed at the spring. Adelheid found Valentin among them without difficulty.

He had his exhausted eyes cast downward.

When he extracted the mana stone from the body of a dying monster, the giant-type creature dissolved to ash and vanished in an instant.

"......"

Without meaning to, Adelheid watched him with something like longing. This was only the second time she had seen him properly since the expedition had begun.

Looking at him, the memory of several days prior surfaced at once.

'Please do not give me any special treatment.'

He had been continually occupied, and she herself was exhausted to her limits struggling to adapt to the brutal conditions.

Her words had carried a faint edge.

'While the campaign is underway, I am nothing more than a soldier. To give me the supreme commander's tent would be far more than I deserve. Treating me as an ordinary healer is a greater kindness to me.'

She had accepted the Emperor's offer to serve as a healer on campaign because she wanted to be of use to Ansgar in whatever way she could. Not to become a precious burden to be guarded.

Since that day, Valentin had respected her wishes completely.

Except for the occasional crossing of gazes, he had not approached her first.

This time, too, he glanced at Adelheid for a moment, then disappeared along with the knights.

Adelheid stood for a long moment watching the empty place he had left behind, held in the grip of a strange and inexplicable sense of loss that she could not understand in herself.

"Your Grace! You need to come now! They say we're leaving right away!"

"I'm coming."

At Lena's call, Adelheid hastily finished her healing and made her way back to the carriage.

Word that the village was near must have spread to everyone in the meantime.

The procession began to pick up speed. Adelheid wrapped herself tightly in her thick blanket and braced against the jolts as best she could.

How long had they ridden like that? By the time all sensation had drained from her body and her limbs had gone rigid, they arrived at Anklam—the first village in Schleicher Territory.