“You… want to defect to Prince August…?” Leon asked as he narrowed his golden eyes in confusion.

“That’s a rather strong way to put it… but I suppose it isn’t inaccurate…” Gratian said with a look of general distaste followed by one of reluctant acceptance.

“Why?” Leon asked with more than a hint of suspicion in his tone.

“I’ve never much liked Octavius,” Gratian said. “I don’t think he’s going to win this war, not with the way he’s been steadily alienating so many people in the capital. I could support him for the promise of expanded noble privileges benefits and other personal boons, but if he loses, then what benefits are there to be had? And from what my younger brother has told me of his time as a hostage with the Prince…” Gratian nodded to Gaius, “… Octavius is depraved and morally bankrupt in his personal life, too. Adding to all of this, His Majesty didn’t make him the sole regent, meaning that not even the King himself thought that Octavius would make for a good ruler on his own. And that’s not even getting into what a farce that trial for Prince August was.

“So, tell me, Sir Leon, without personal, practical, legal, or moral grounds to stand upon, how should I justify supporting Prince Octavius, if that is, indeed, what you think I ought to be doing?”

Leon shrugged. “It’s what so many of your fellow nobles are doing, I figured that there was simply some reason that I didn’t know about that had all of you supporting him. Or maybe all of you are just blinded by the greed or arrogance that so often festers in nobility, I don’t know. Regardless, I’m fairly certain that you’re the only noble that has offered to switch sides.”

Gratian looked more than a little pleased as Leon finished his statement. He knew that it was best to switch sides early and in so doing, instill a bit of gratitude within August. If he waited until it was clearer that August would win—and Gratian was all-but-certain that August would be the victor in this conflict—then he would be seen as an opportunist and despised for it, rather than respected and thought wise and moral.

But Leon wasn’t a mind reader and had no idea what Gratian’s true intentions were. Still, if he was willing to release so many prisoners, then that counted for something.

“I will relay your request to Prince August in return for your release of the prisoners,” Leon said.

“Thank you,” Gratian responded. “I have troops in Duke Duronius’ army, and I am currently mustering more to reinforce them. I’m sure that we can inflict some serious damage together if we wait for the right time to make this official…”

“How many troops do you have?” Leon seriously asked as his hand momentarily tightened on the hilt of his sword, taking the statement as both offer and threat. Gratian could either continue putting pressure on August, or he could alleviate some of that pressure, instead.

“Ten thousand with Duronius, and another four thousand mustering in Lentia,” Gratian answered.

“And your troops will turn on Duronius at your command?” Leon skeptically asked.

“They will,” Gratian responded without a shred of hesitation.

Leon was silent for a long moment, but in the end, it wasn’t his place to judge Gratian’s intent, he was only being asked to relay the message. So, as his way of ending the conversation, he simply said, “I guess we’ll see about that.”

He then gestured to Marcus and Alcander, wordlessly telling them to get up, which they made to do. However, just because Leon was done with the conversation didn’t mean that Gratian was, too.

“I understand your mistrust, Sir Leon, I do,” the Duke said, his words giving Marcus and Alcander some pause, and they sank back into their seats. It was only polite to stay when a Duke was speaking, after all. “But I will show you that my intentions are honorable.”

Leon nodded, but he said nothing more. Despite his people flooding throughout the villa and getting the prisoners ready for evacuation, he felt extremely vulnerable so far from support and so deep in territory that he still felt was the enemy’s. He wanted to leave as quickly as he could and let August sort all of this out.

But he had a question or two that he wanted answered, first.

“I can’t help but wonder how Sir Publius got word of this place, in light of your stated intent,” Leon said, giving Gratian an accusatory look.

“No need to wonder, I purposely leaked it,” Gratian explained. “I was hoping that someone would come to try and negotiate for the release of the prisoners, as is most common. I honestly didn’t think that an armed party would come by, but I have to admit that I’m grateful you’ve been so accommodating…”

Leon raised an eyebrow as he stared at Gratian—the Duke was perfectly calm, sitting in his chair with perfect noble posture but also no obvious anxiety or concern showing in his body language or expression. “You hardly seem like a man worried about being in the same place as five hundred knights that, for now, at least, are still enemies of yours…”

“I do have some contingencies, I’m not entirely trusting myself, my brother, and my associates to the whims of fate,” Gratian said with a mysterious smile. “Fortunately, I haven’t seen the need to invoke any of those contingencies.”

Leon frowned again. He couldn’t sense anything nearby, and the power levels of Gratian and his people weren’t overly concerning, but that didn’t stop Leon from wanting to play it safe and fall back. He had hundreds of people to look out for, now, and that was forcing him to reign in his recklessness.

As Leon began to make it more and more obvious that he wanted to leave in light of this conversation, the Baron who owned the villa suddenly spoke up. “You don’t have to be in such a hurry to leave, you and your people are more than welcome here as my guests.”

“Yes, please stay for at least a little while, I’d like the chance to speak with you for a little longer,” Gratian cheerfully added, acting as if he and Leon had just been discussing the weather rather than subtly threatening each other. “I’ve heard a great deal about you over the past year, and I would love to know if your reputation is accurate.”

“Reputation…?” Leon asked, his face awash with confusion. He didn’t think he had one of those outside of Trajan’s old retinue, but now that he thought about it, Gratian had earlier acted a bit like he’d heard Leon’s name before.

Picking up on Leon’s confusion, Gratian, with a seemingly strange amount of enthusiasm, said, “A knight who stood toe-to-toe with Sertor Arellius and even pushed him back, who held off a force greater than his by an order of magnitude for a week, who rode into battle just a couple weeks ago at the head of a host of stone giants? Yes, people have spoken of you with the same breath that they utter names like ‘Brimstone’, ‘Roland’, and ‘Minerva’. To be honest, since I heard all of these things, and what Gaius has told me about you, I have been hoping we could meet for a while now.”

Leon suppressed a scowl. Fame was all well and good, but he wasn’t the sort to revel in it. Still, it could be useful if he were in the mood to take advantage of it, but it was also more than a little risky. The more people knew about him, after all, the more likely it was the other people would be able to guess who he really was. Already, too many people knew his real name, and he figured it was only a matter of time before it became more widely known.

But that in and of itself hadn’t too much bearing on why Gratian had heard about him, and Leon couldn’t help but feel a few twinges of pride as his immediate reaction of distaste settled down. He didn’t think himself a prideful person by nature, but he still felt relatively good about himself when people mentioned that they’d heard about him.

Keeping his expression as neutral as he could, he said, “Those reports are accurate enough, I suppose. They sound a lot better when spoken aloud than they were in reality.”

As he said this, he noticed a mildly insulted look appear on Gaius’ face for a moment, but the rest of the people at the table, including Marcus and Alcander, were staring at him with interest and curiosity.

After Leon was silent for a moment, Alcander loudly exclaimed, “You can’t leave that as your only statement! What is this about you leading giants?!”

“Right, I can’t believe that the eastern Lords would allow stone giants to walk through their lands unmolested,” Marcus whispered half to himself. “At the very least, I wouldn’t ever imagine that my father would allow them to enter the Kingdom, let alone fight at his side…”

Leon shrugged again. He wasn’t here to convince them, just to bring them back to August’s camp.

“As much as I’d absolutely love to talk about myself, we should get moving,” Leon said, giving Marcus and Alcander an almost threatening look. Turning back to the Duke and the other nobles, Leon summoned all of the politeness that he was capable of and continued, “My Lord, Your Grace, thank you for the invitation, but we will not be taking you up on it. I will relay your offer to Prince August, and we will continue on from there.”

The Duke gave Leon a bitter smile and replied, “Fair enough. I hope to see you again, Sir Leon, and as friends and comrades in arms. Until then, farewell.”

Leon nodded and then escorted Marcus and Alcander back out of the villa. From there, it only took a few more minutes for the rest of his unit to reform and depart the villa’s property with all the prisoners in tow.

Throughout the evacuation, Marcus and Alcander pestered Leon almost nonstop for more information about his actions during the war and of the current situation in general, but Leon repeatedly brushed them off. He didn’t want to discuss those things so close to the enemy. But as they pushed back into the hot, humid forests, linking up with all of the people they’d left behind as they went, Leon wasn’t able to continue putting that off. So, he began to calmly explain the situation to the two, finishing up by about the time they returned to camp.

They weren’t followed as far as Leon could tell, but he kept the stone giants on watch throughout the remainder of the night. Fortunately, the giants didn’t need sleep, and the unit was kept mostly safe as they began the long march back to the Augustine camp.

---

“What now, brother?” Gaius asked Gratian once the two were alone. Leon had left with his unit only a few hours before, and in that time, Gratian and Gaius had linked back up with their force of three hundred hidden knights waiting nearby and returned to their palace.

“Now, we hope that August takes our offer,” Gratian replied as he stared out of the nearby window as if he could see Prince August in the distance. “If he doesn’t, then… we’ll have to take matters into our own hands for dealing with Octavius, which is much more prone to failure.”

“I figured as much, but is there anything we can do right now?”

“If you’re looking to get back out there, then there is certainly something you can do.” Gratian smiled at his youngest brother, and Gaius smiled back. Too long had Gaius been beholden to Octavius, and now that Gratian had made his offer known to Leon, Gaius was more than eager to put it into practice. “Get your gear together,” Gratian continued. “We’ll ride out in three days.”

---

Much like the journey to Lentia, Leon led the unit on a somewhat circuitous route back toward August’s camp. However, he learned a bit from the previous march, and prioritizing speed over subtlety, he allowed them to take a few side roads as they moved. This shaved off a couple of days from their return journey, but it seemed it wasn’t enough.

As they got within three days’ march of the camp, a messenger sent by August found them and was brought to Leon at the front of their marching column.

“What is it?” Leon asked from astride Anzu as he approached Baroness Orientis near the center of the column.

“Bad news,” she said, nodding to one of the people surrounding her, a dirty young man with a harried look about him as if he’d been running for days through some of the worst terrain in the Southern Territories, which Leon guessed he had been.

“Sir Leon!” the man cried out, recognizing Anzu. “I bring word from His Highness! Duke Duronius has surrounded the encampment and has put it to siege!”

“Shit…” Leon swore under his breath. This was always a possibility, especially since about three weeks had passed since Leon had left, but if the camp was under siege, then it would make linking back up with August almost impossible to do.

In other words, they were miles behind enemy lines and cut off from almost all support. Between them and their comrades were hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers and noble retainers.