Chapter 150: Snow Turned Red
The purpose of having apprentices assigned to knights was intentionally done to ensure the kid’s safety. Unfortunately, there was no such thing as a perfect plan.
The sheer amount of people willing to attack the Royal Family’s carriage as it moved through the north was far more than they could have ever predicted. It threw the carefully planned strategies to the wind as it escalated into a full-blown battle.
The traveling party was merely lucky these people hadn’t attacked before they picked up more knights at the Duke’s Tower.
There was something particularly feral and desperate about a group of people throwing themselves entirely into a fight. Based on the way they gave off a sense of reckless abandon, it seemed they were okay with dying as long as they got their point across.
It wasn’t entirely apparent if they were there to steal something from the richest people in the kingdom. Perhaps they were there to make an example of what the north was capable of—a group of people that felt already slightly abandoned by the monarch considering his slowness in deciding things that regarded that very large area of land.
Chemois was an ancient kingdom that fell to Peroda after being weakened by monsters. After they were finally weakened enough to agree to become a duchy rather than an independent nation, they felt like an afterthought. It became quickly apparent that the King was merely wanting to check them off of a list of conquests but wouldn’t bother them beyond that.
It was a big reason why most in the dukedom refused to call it Tenetium and still called it Chemois.
Sir Gunnar bore his sword fearlessly in the face of fellow men knowing that he was more than just protecting the Prince and Princess, but the apprentices who agreed to fearlessly follow him in the stark coldness of winter.
It became more of an instinctual battle than one practice as things fell apart and the viciousness of the attackers was underestimated.