Soon her absence will be noticed and Olaf, Joachim, or Hilda will send for her. She’d just have to hold out until then. Christa soothed herself.

“You’re better than you look before, so I guess you like it up north?”

“…….”

Unsurprisingly, no answer came from her veiled mouth. Elio signaled to the person restraining her. The hold on her was slowly released. She stumbled forward helplessly.

“My Lady!”

“Where are you!”

She could hear voices in the distance, urgently calling for her, and she felt tears of relief well up in her eyes.

“Joachim, there!”

Hilda shouted urgently, and Joachim sprang to his feet and stood in front of Christa.

“What have these ruffians done to my lady!”

In Joachim’s eyes that caught sight of Christa, she was surrounded by the unknown men, so he glared at them with a fierceness that could have spewed fire from his eyes.

“I, I’m fine.”

They are the crown prince’s well-trained soldiers. One wrong move and everyone in this area could get hurt. The crown prince is capable enough to do that. Christa shook her head, clutching Joachim’s hand.

“But!”

Just then, Elio kneels down in front of them, his gaze locked with theirs, embarrassment reflected in the gazes of the escorts behind him.

“Oh, there must have been a misunderstanding.”

He reached out and took Christa’s left hand. The action was slow, making her momentarily dizzy. He kissed the back of her hand.

“I’m just greeting an acquaintance. A friend I haven’t seen in a long time.”

He stood up.

“What a coincidence, I heard there are many good hot springs in the north, and I’m here for a vacation.”

Although he didn’t identify himself, the captain of the guard, Olaf, already knew who they were. Wary of the potential for political strife, he hesitated with his hand on the hilt of his sword, wondering whether to unsheathe it.

“Well, then, give my regards to Ragnar. I’ll see you around.”

Elio slipped out of the alleyway, his retinue rushing after him.

“My Lady, are you all right?”

Hilda ran up to her.

“Ah, ah…….”

Christa realized for a moment that she had been holding her breath and released it.

A chill ran down her spine. Why on earth would he be here?

“Why on earth would His Highness the Crown Prince…….”

Olaf muttered, his hand barely leaving the hilt of his sword.

“Did you just say he was the crown prince?”

Hilda asks in astonishment.

“Are you saying that you were acquainted with the crown prince?”

Joachim seemed more bothered by this.

“Joachim, shut up.”

Then Hilda gave her a gentle nudge.

“I, I’m…….”

She started to say that she was fine, but then a wave of dizziness and a terrible headache hit her. Too much was happening all at once.

“I need to get back to the castle.”

Eventually she managed to make it back to the castle with Olaf’s help.

* * *

Ragnar was out on an inspection. It was summer, and the farmable land was growing rye with diligence. He heard a commotion in the distance.

“My lord!”

It was an old man with graying hair. Ragnar’s bodyguard held him at bay with his spear. For some reason, the old man refused to be restrained.

Ragnar nodded, and the escort moved on. He slid to his knees on the ground.

In his arms is a limp goat. Beside him, a boy clutches at the hem of the old man’s robe, his large eyes rolling uneasily.

“What’s going on?”

Mervin, standing next to Ragnar, asked the old man.

“This…… is the eighth one already.”

Ragnar had his squire examine the dead goat. Two tusk marks on the nape of its neck. That was the only trauma. But there was no blood on the animal.

“Did the beast do this?”

Mervin asks the old man, and the old man stiffens. The old man’s words were hard to make out with his heavy accent. The squire got the gist of the story and relayed it to Mervin.

“They are neither a demon nor a wild beast. They say they just wake up one day and find one dead, and the next day another, with no trace of the beast, and not a drop of its prey’s blood.”

It was late summer in the north. With the warm weather, it was not uncommon for wild beasts and demons to descend upon villages in search of food.

The meeting of the Twelve Houses had been all about the appearance of a beast that had never been seen before.

This time, Ragnar himself approached the old man and asked.

“Is it true that there are no signs of an invasion at all?”

The old man nodded his head repeatedly.

“Yes, yes, yes, it was raining heavily last night, and I kept the goats in an indoor shed, but still!”

The old man falls down and sobs. The limp goat’s head shook helplessly.

“If it was a demon or a wild beast, it couldn’t be like this. Even the dogs didn’t notice it at all. How can they only kill one a day, like they’re a ghost?”

If this had been a demon attack, the village would have been wiped out, not just one.

“You, too, tell them.”

The old man tugged at the child beside him. The boy clutched at the hem of his raggedy clothes and shivered.

“This boy said he saw it last night.”

Ragnar walked over to the boy and sat down. His adult hand closed over the boy’s small fist. The boy looked up, startled, and their eyes met.

“What did you see?”

The boy hesitated for a long moment before he managed to spit out the words.

“I woke up in the night needing to pee, and I was worried because our goats keep dying lately, so I went to the barn for a quick look to see if it was okay…….”

The boy barely swallowed a sob. His skinny body shook.

“There was a black……. There was a big black thing, and I saw red eyes in it.”

The old man shouted, undeterred.

“It’s the draugr’s work, my lord, it surely is. It’s a ghost!”

The draugr of which the old man spoke was a superstition in the north. Descending from the faraway land of winter, they were said to worship death, sucking the blood of the living and spreading plague with their poisonous breath.

The boy shuddered pitifully.

“It bit the goat by the neck and shook it, so……. I ran away…….”

“Well said. You are brave.”

Ragnar gave the old man ten Argo silver coins, the currency of the north, for the price of eight goats, and promised to increase security around the estate to reveal the culprit’s identity. The old man shook his head in surprise.

“Ten silver coins is too much, isn’t it?”

Mervin whispered, and Ragnar sighed.

“The affairs of the North are my responsibility.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Something was happening here now, that much was certain.

“My lord!”

Rushing over to him was the officer in charge of the Warring States. He was panting heavily as he rushed over.

Mervin took the telegram from him and unfolded it. The roughness of the scrawled letters revealed the cause of distress of the messenger.

“The crown prince is…… suddenly in Wishus?”

Mervin asked the telegram’s keeper, but he shook his head, knowing nothing of its contents. He had only rushed in because he received the fastest hawk available for urgent matters.

“What?”

Ragnar was handed the document when he was told it was the crown prince. The telegram said, unmistakably, that the crown prince had appeared in the village below Castle Wishus.

So far, they had received no reports of sightings at any of the gates. At the last meeting of the Twelve Families, it was mentioned that he had not been seen, and yet here he is in the North.

They don’t know how he traveled, either because he was in hiding or because he didn’t take the usual route. It was more likely that he traveled overland.

“Is it the Eastern Archipelago…….”

This could be the case if he was using a sea route controlled by pirates from the Eastern Archipelago. But even that was a long shot.

He had a number of civilian spies monitoring the situation in the Eastern Archipelago, and while he didn’t doubt their loyalty, it was odd that they were so uninformed.

He had a bad hunch, and his hunches were always accurate.

Ragnar hurriedly mounted North Wind.

The telegram hadn’t said anything about Christa, but he knew instinctively that it had something to do with her, and what he needed to do now was spur his horse on.

At a steady gallop, he would reach his home by nightfall, and until then, he could only hope that nothing had happened to Christa.