Wild Dragon of Rome 11 (Patreon)

“Hey, lady, calm down a minute,” I called as I rolled to avoid another water blade, trying to understand what was going on. “I’m not with the pirates!” 

“I know!” she bellowed, only to send another water-blade attack, which I dodged with surprising ease. A part of it was her lack of combat experience, which had been obvious from her earlier show, but even more pronounced was her mana depletion. She was clearly running on fumes. 

That, more than anything, held my hand despite her clearly murderous actions. I was confident that I could handle her with only a minor risk to myself. As whether I would have taken the risk to keep her alive if the assistance of a friendly mage could be the key to staying alive during the inevitable chaos that would follow … but that was a question that didn’t need any answer. 

However, I didn’t roll back to speak with her, not when she was at the entrance, cutting my escape path. Initially, I had been treating the small size of the cave as an advantage, but that was when I didn’t even consider keeping the visitor alive. 

I timed a gap between two attacks before charging forward, and hit her chest with the blunt end of the spear, right under her ribs. Her eyes widened as her ability to breathe was suddenly gone, and she fell on her knees, temporarily unable to speak. 

I immediately ripped a strip from her skirt and tied her hands, wishing that it was that easy to immobilize a mage. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any of the extremely rare and expensive tools that could suppress the mana of a prisoner. I tied her hands more of a mental trick. Since she was unused to combat, maybe she wouldn’t immediately consider one of the dozen ways she could use it… particularly when she had a spear pointing at her neck, this time the sharp spear. 

I examined her while her breathing returned. The first thing that I noticed was her beauty. Blonde hair as bright as gold even after running through a downpour, a fair, beautiful face. Not to mention her curves, which had been very noticeable with her drenched dress sticking close. It was particularly noticeable since the battle was over, but my blood was still pumping. 

I forcibly raised my gaze to her face. She mistook me for someone else, and I didn’t want to risk annoying her further. However, the more I looked at her face, the more, I found her familiar, as if I had seen her before. 

I decided to speak once her breathing calmed down. “Why don’t we calm down and talk. I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m sure—” 

“Really, you Scipio dog. Do you think I don’t recognize you!” she interrupted me. A part of me wondered whether she was brave or stupid, insulting the man who was holding a spear against her throat, but I didn’t ask her that. 

“You know me? How?” I asked, which made her look even angrier. “Is it the wanted posters?” I asked, ready to explain to her the gist of the situation, and hoping she would believe. If she recognized me from them, then her anger wouldn’t be too shocking. 

Patricide was a hated crime for a reason. 

“What poster?” she asked, surprised, but it didn’t take long for her expression to shift back to anger. “I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s clear that finally, someone caught your reprehensible family’s ways!” 

I paused a moment, shocked by her statement, but connecting the dots had been easy. After all, there was only one man I know who carried the family name whose actions would be credited to the whole family. “It’s my fucking uncle, right? What did he do?” I asked but kept my spear against her throat. 

“You know very well what did he do!” she said. “Don’t think that you can get away!” 

I sighed. “Just calm down and think for a second. You’re tied, and I have a weapon. I had you under my mercy. Why would I bother talking with you instead of knocking your head and taking you down,” I said, then looked out. The battle was still ongoing, but the distance between the two groups was getting wider, signaling the battle was winding down. “And, speak fast. We don’t have much time, and I would be running away. Without you, if you can’t convince me to bring you with me.” 

“You have a way to escape?” she asked. I nodded shamelessly. Technically, it was even the truth, but it required staying on the island for several days first. “I’ll speak,” she said. 

“First, tell me how you recognized me?” I asked. 

“You were fighting for the Scipio family during the games three years ago. I had seen you during the fights, and … I remember you,” she said. I thought that I caught a blush, but it was hard to be sure under the light. Maybe she was getting sick. 

I remembered the games. They were a bunch of pointless duels between noble families, with their warriors fighting against various imported first-order beasts. My bastard of an uncle had arranged for me to fight when my grandfather’s illness first started to flare up, flaunting his increased control. Worse, he had managed to arrange that the pair of tigers imported tigers I arranged to fight had been drugged, forcing me to reveal far more of my abilities than I had been willing to, and still only winning after some very painful wounds. 

“Alright, that’s how you recognize me. How did you get caught?” 

“My family has been invited to one of his feasts in Londonium, but he drugged us. When I woke up, I was on a ship, locked down. I was there for two weeks, when a water mage attacked the ship and kidnapped me from there.” 

I sighed. It was just my luck that I escaped from Britannia, but somehow found myself entangled with the ploys of my bastard of an uncle. 

“Now, I’m going to cut you free, but please don’t attack me. We’re in a very dangerous situation, and only by cooperating we can survive,” I explained. 

She nodded, blushing more. Her condition must be even worse than I expected. “Why are you helping me? They are determined to capture me for some reason, and staying together with me will only risk you.” 

“Because I don’t have any choice. After such an intense battle, the beasts of the island will get far more aggressive, and no matter how hard I work, I can’t avoid them all. I need your help to get deeper into the island to avoid the pirates and the other party, and you need my assistance not to anger every beast on the way.” 

“Well, putting it that way, we’re helping each other,” she said as she stood up, but her legs were trembling. “I’m ready.” 

“First, remove your dress,” I ordered. 

Her blush got more intense, and this time, it was clearly not about her exhaustion. “I … here … right now,” she stammered. “But, we need to escape. And I never…”

“We need your dress to bait the inevitable chase. The rain is going to help us to erase our tracks, but we can’t easily leave false tracks either. So, we’re going to use one thing they will be looking for.” 

“M-my dress,” she stammered. “But, I will be…” 

“You have other clothes under your dress, right. I know that much about fashion at least,” I said. 

“Yes, but—” she tried to argue. 

“We don’t have time. I’ll even turn my back, and you can wear my shirt,” I said, and turned my back before removing my shirt. 

She gasped. “So many scars.” 

“I had a tough training,” I countered. “Now, quick. We don’t have much time.” 

When something heavy dropped to the ground, I picked it up and walked without looking back, no matter the temptation. The view would be spectacular, I had no doubt, but nowhere near valuable enough to anger the mage I would be relying on for my survival. 

Instead, I left the cave and went for the location of her battle, where I found a second-order snake bisected in two, surrounded by several deep crevices. I shivered. “Thank gods she’s an incompetent fighter,” I muttered. I didn’t want to imagine how the fight in the cave would have gone if she wasn’t at the edge of a collapse. 

Still, once I looked around, I saw what I had been hoping for. Several first-order beasts, were drawn to the blood despite the rain. I quickly wrapped the dress around the snake, trusting the other beasts to do the job of dragging the dress around when they inevitably fought for the remains. I didn’t cut any meat for myself, because I didn’t want any of the beasts following me for an easy reward. 

It wouldn’t convince any tracker, not even a novice one, that she died there, but my hope wasn’t to convince them to call off the chase but give them too many false leads, hoping that, eventually, they would anger too many beasts to make it worthwhile no matter how much my new ally was worth to them. 

And, at one point, they had to believe that a rich girl with no training had died to a beast, and leave. We just needed to stay hidden until then. 

When I returned to the cave, she was at the entrance, trying to stand, but her legs were trembling badly. “Can you walk?” I said. Her head dipped in shame, which was enough of an answer. 

Like things weren’t difficult.