Chapter 268 - Rumors

That day, Zaos woke up sooner than usual and then said goodbye to his mom. After all, who knows when he might return? With that in mind, he talked with her for a while longer than usual. After that, he headed to the West entrance of the capital on his new horse, his name Moody. Zaos named him that way because he always gets moody when he doesn't eat on time. In a sense, his horse was just like Zaos, pretty methodical with his daily habits.

Most of the members of the unit were already there when Zaos arrived. He only had to wait for a couple of minutes for the rest to arrive. Although Zaos wanted to arrive at the base as soon as possible, in order to avoid letting the situation to worse, Zaos couldn't hurry because some of the members of his unit didn't have much experience riding horses. Nyana was one of them. Whenever Zaos looked at her, he could see her having a hard time making her horse stay still.

Although some of them were having a hard time adapting to the horses, they were in a good mood since Zaos gave them a pretty decent discount. Soldiers and mercenaries trade horses pretty much every year, due to the age of the horses, diseases, or because they fall in battle. So, even they welcomed that discount.

"We are ready to go, Captain," Cohnal said.

"All right, I will trust you two to watch the rearguard and keep an eye on our supplies," Zaos said. "Let's get going, everyone!"

Despite the fact that it has been a while since Zaos led anyone to anywhere, he still didn't forget what to do. The main trick was to remain confident and not doubt yourself. If you doubt yourself, your subordinates will doubt your choices as well.

Zaos had planned to make his subordinates train one hour in the morning and one hour after sunset. Still, in the end, he had to give up on that since on the first half of the journey, it was hard to find someone who wasn't massaging their butts. It was pretty hard to ride a horse thought an entire day, after all. Even Zaos felt like scratching his butt now and then.

On the second half of the journey, Zaos gave up entirely on the idea of training his troops because the terrain became more challenging to move in. There were too many hills and slops around. On the good side, there weren't many mountains to the wind was pretty pleasant, and there was plenty of grass for five hundred horses. Also, another thing that worked for the group was the fact that their horsemanship improved while passing through those obstacles.

"I guess this should count as training. Once the battle starts, we will need that much experience dealing with horses," Zaos said.

"HIIIIIINNNNNN!" Moody snorted.

"Yeah, you can keep hoping that I will remember of all your names," Zaos said after he heard his horse complaining.

Zaos didn't feel like talking with his horse all that much. Still, after ten days of dealing with that horse, he understood that ignoring him only made Moody moodier. He even almost made Zaos fall when Zaos got mad at him and threatened to bring him to the battlefield. If he didn't know any better, Zaos would think that his horse could understand human language, but it wasn't that. Animals have good instincts, so they can tell what humans are talking… to some extent based on their tone.

Although they passed by many towns and villages along the day, Zaos decided not to stop in neither of them. First of all, it would be a pain to wait for everyone to assemble if they stopped to rest in some of those, and second of all, there wasn't enough room for five hundred soldiers.

Fortunately, Zaos didn't have to deal with problems caused by his soldiers during the trip. They didn't have to worry about food, and they have fresh horses as far as they were concerned.

Once Zaos and his unit arrived in the Western part of the kingdom, they noticed that things were pretty tense there. Most villages only had half of their original citizens. The other half had left in fear for the war. The one who stayed behind couldn't afford to move to other parts of the kingdom or had lived in those parts for too long to think of dying anywhere else.

"It seems this part of the country has a low number of citizens," Zaos said.

"It is due to the terrain, too many hills, and slopes," Cohnal said. "The people here try to cultivate and raise cattle, but the terrain doesn't let them grow too much of those. Not to mention, it is kind of risky to have a large farm around these parts."

"Why?" Zaos asked.

"Well, unlike in the north, we don't have a mountain to divide the territory between the enemies and us," Cohnal replied. "So, now and then, some mercenaries groups invade, steal, capture some villages and then return before anyone can do anything."

"They capture people?" Zaos frowned. "What for?"

"The country of the mercenaries are constantly at war, several mercenaries groups fight each other, those groups only raise their kids to become mercenaries, so they don't have many farmers," Cohnal explained. "They capture the young people and kill the elderly. They use the young captured villagers, turn them into slaves to cultivate the lands for them. They also use them to give birth to kids and make them into slaves as well…"

Zaos imagined that sooner or later, he would find that kind of situation. That was why he wasn't surprised or angry. However, on the other hand, Melisse seemed more pissed than usual.

"Speaking of which, Captain," Cohnal suddenly raised his voice. "You fought the mercenaries two times when you were a recruit, right? I heard that you killed hundreds of them even though you were so small."

"Why did you suddenly raised your voice?" Zaos frowned. "Well, that isn't a lie, but I didn't fight alone."

After a while, Zaos heard the soldiers behind him murmuring about the rumors. They seemed pretty excited to confirm those rumors… as expected. Cohnal really knows how to raise the morale of these allies.