(￣︶￣) Chasing the Fugitive
While Ilena, Fern, and Frieren ate and discussed things to keep in mind while sightseeing in the city, and while some troublesome little girl was still fast asleep, the north gate of the County of Granat suddenly swung open. A force of roughly three hundred heavy cavalry charged out beneath the morning sun.
About half an hour later...
Dust billowed along the northern wilderness road as the three hundred armored cavalrymen of the County of Granat swept around a sizable caravan like an iron torrent, surrounding it with terrifying force.
By then, the sunlight had grown warm and fierce. It glinted off the cold plate armor, bright enough to sting the eyes, but it did nothing to dispel the restless chill that hung over the cavalry.
The reason was that the raid on the count's castle two days earlier had haunted every soldier like a nightmare.
Two... no, supposedly it had been just one little girl mage?
All by herself, she had broken through the castle's defenses head-on, killed and wounded countless comrades, rescued a prisoner, and left without a care. The terror of that deed had been seared into the souls of every soldier there, carried by the survivors and reinforced by the harshly worded wanted poster.
They had been ordered to hunt her down for the past two days, but every one of them knew that the whole thing felt more like a performance they were forced to put on.
Half an hour earlier, when word came that a luxurious carriage was heading east from the north of the city, the city guard cavalry's captain—a weary middle-aged officer with several old scars on his face—had practically forced himself to muster the three hundred most elite riders under his command.
Now, they had surrounded the