Chapter 267 - Mission

When Zaos was readying himself to go to the headquarters on a certain morning, his father stopped him in the garden. It took a while, but his anger subdued while Zaos was working with his unit.

"His Majesty declared that your unit should depart to the West in a week," Laiex said. "Once you arrive at the border, you need to look for the commander of the Western base and then follow his command."

"That is one week sooner than you had told me before," Zaos said.

"Orders change according to with the circumstances on the battlefield. You should know that by now," Laiex said.

"I didn't know that the capital was under a siege," Zaos shrugged. "I want to know why we are supposed to leave sooner. What happened in the border?"

"The mercenaries took over a town forty kilometers away from the western base," Laiex replied. "They killed more than five thousand civilians, and they are establishing their strength before they try to take over the western base."

"If it is a walled town, recover the place will be difficult," Zaos said. "We can almost say that we lost a part of our border. Why only the members of a new unit are being sent there?"

"We can't afford to send more help than that," Laiex said. "Show that you are as resourceful as you think you are. You should have a small taste of His Majesty's troubles at ruling the kingdom."

"I see now… you people decided to give me a hard task in order to show to everyone, in case I fail, that my accomplishments were achieved purely by luck," Zaos said. "Let me guess, if I were to fail, you would send Drannor, right?"

"I don't know what you are talking about," Laiex said.

"You know… I always thought that you were an ever so serious person because of your life as a soldier and commander. Still, I was wrong," Zaos said after a long sigh. "That is just a mask. You have one, the king has one, and Drian has one. The other two seem pretty laid back despite being respected leaders. I assume that is just something you all planned in order to hide the things that you think or know. So pathetic…"

"Watch your tongue when you speak of them," Laiex said. "You are a nobody if compared to what the leaders of this country achieved and the price they had to pay for that."

"There is no need to become that angry. I was just mentioning a possibility of what is happening behind the scenes," Zaos said. "After all, you can't say that you three don't have a history of plotting things behind the scenes. Well, I might be wrong, and this is just a task that was decided to punish me for my recent actions. Not that I mind. The farther away I stay from people like you and them, the better."

Zaos left the mansion wondering what he should do about his life. He will never get along with his father, so he might as well move to somewhere else. He still had a lot of money from the magic books being sold, and more always entered every day, so money wasn't a problem. The only issue was that he couldn't visit his mother's grave every day.

As usual, Zaos met Cohnal and Melisse in the headquarters. Although they were using a nearby inn to sleep, it seemed like they were actually sleeping in the headquarters. Even though they could only find there a lot of chairs and tables.

"What is wrong, Captain?" Cohnal said. "You seem a bit different today."

"We receive the orders to march west. We have one week to prepare everything," Zaos said.

"So, something finally happened there, huh…" Melisse furrowed her eyebrows.

Zaos explained to them what happened, and even the usual laid-back Cohnal couldn't help but show a concerned expression. He was also worried that a single unit of five hundred might not help all that much when the situation in the west got that severe.

"You can leave most of the preparations to us, Captain," Cohnal said. "We are well-versed in dealing with the logistics of a long expedition. You can stay here and inform the others about the mission. You should also tell them to buy some horses. The terrain in the west is a bit difficult to move in, and horses are actually one of the many weapons the mercenaries use. We will need that kind of animal on our side as well."

"I guess I will have to talk with some horse breeders to sell them to me with some discount…" Zaos said. "It will be a pain to exhaust everyone's stamina along the way, so we should save as much energy as possible since we don't know when we will have to fight."

Cohnal and Melisse left to deal with the mission's logistics, and after a while, pretty much every one of the unity was in the headquarters. Zaos explained to them the details of the mission. If they use horses, they should arrive on the Western base in two weeks… it was even farther away than the northern base. Regardless, after hearing the details, some of the members looked pretty excited. Still, the ones who had some real combat experience were worried since they could understand that their first mission was going to be a difficult one. However, they knew that Zaos would fight with them, and that wasn't the first time he had to fight with a massive numerical disadvantage. In fact, in all the wars he fought, he was on the side that had fewer numbers. Despite that, he survived.

The job of that day and of the next couldn't be canceled, but Zaos gave everyone the rest of the week to his subordinates some time to rest and prepare for the trip. There was no telling when they might return home, so they needed to spend some time with their families.