Chapter 292: Conversation on a Snowy Night
Northern Territory, the snow forest outside Horton Fort.
A heavy snowfall had just passed through here. In the deepest drifts the snow reached a full meter, completely burying the hooves of the thick-furred snow horses and leaving only deep snow pits.
A scouting cavalry unit of about ten men was struggling to follow the silent figure of the knight sitting on horseback ahead, trudging through snow up to their knees, but none dared utter a complaint.
Lide Valentián, once the commander of the Fifth Legion stationed at the border, after fleeing the Storm Territory, had his real military authority stripped by the demon lord who rules the Forge Region, left only with an empty title, and was then sent to do this thankless task of tracking orc movements in the frozen wasteland.
He himself showed no obvious resentment, but to these veterans born in the north, hardened by cold and military life, the taciturn commander was clearly brooding with a deep, smoldering anger.
That calmness made their hearts pound even more than outright anger would have.
If anyone foolishly provoked him now, it wouldn’t just be the hardship of trudging through snow they’d suffer; whether they could make it back to Horton Fort alive would be an entirely different matter.
The rider ahead, Lide, slowly moving on horseback, had no idea of the soldiers’ anxious thoughts and guesses behind him.
He simply closed the book in his hand, his gray-blue eyes flicked toward a low, unremarkable depression in the snow, then he pulled the reins and halted.