Irene shouldn’t have been hurt that others had discovered sothing she had been looking for for ages. Not only that, but it was a Hydrogian apprentice rather than one of the ones from Chemois who were dying to know if people were left behind in the tower.
The rumors that there was a light in the Duke’s Tower were only that. Each ti she and Leif were on the wall, she diligently watched the field as well as the tower’s windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of sothing.
A sign of survival? How would anyone survive in that place teeming with monsters?
Who was it?
"Which maid?" Irene asked desperately.
There were a few possibilities. She heard that Ingrid escaped the tower. Had Rosalind as well?
"I know as much as you do," Gunnar admitted. "She remains asleep. Her appearance is bad. Not only is she emaciated, but her mouth and neck are covered with evidence of her long-ti exposure to the poison. All we can do is wait for the girl to wake up and get information that way... If she ever does."
Irene could only sigh. She didn’t like being kept in the dark, and that trait was sothing that got her in trouble in the past. It wasn’t worth it to cause trouble when everyone was already on high alert and miserable.
As unfortunate as it was, that war was the perfect opportunity to prove herself as a chivalrous rule follower. She hoped that it would allow the King to see how hard they worked to protect the kingdom and grant them the honor of knighthood. They had already lost so much. The large places left behind by fallen knights needed to be filled so that they could continue protecting the duchy when the war was finally over.
"Go back to your usual posts," Gunnar decided. "Finish preparing lunch and beginning supper. I will inform you if there are further developnts."
"Yes, sir," both apprentices responded dutifully.
Leif seed to slouch slightly at the uselessness they had in that situation, but when Irene seed like she was going to follow Gunnar rather than going where he told her to, he grabbed the girl’s wrist.
"Let’s go, Iro," he insisted.
However, he was set on not letting her wrist go until they were both in the cooking area of the camp. Before they could walk towards the other apprentices already there, the girl wrenched her wrist away from the teenager.
"That’s enough," she muttered as she passed him to step onto the boards that surrounded the area.
From that point on, other than the knights who rushed in and out between various tents as they attended to discussions that seed to likely revolve around the discovery from the night before, there wasn’t much more to happen.
Irene and Leif fell into their usual routine and, after the lunch rush of everyone at the encampnt coming through to fill their stomachs, they decided to take boxes of dishes to a stream.
It was nice having actual fresh, running water to clean up everything. They had been using snow before, but as expected of a place that was constantly used by monsters and humans, there was little clean snow to use, and they kept having to go further and further from the encampnt.
Irene couldn’t help herself as she knelt to dip a few dishes in the water. When Leif crouched down in the small stream across from her, she splashed water at him.
His blue eyes snapped up, and a small smile pulled at his lips despite how irritated he was pretending to be.
He grabbed a bowl he had just cleaned off and used it to toss water at the girl as well.
"You’re so irritating, Iro!" Leif shouted, but even after he yelled, a laugh escaped his lips.
However, her stupid, childish action broke the tension they had been feeling all day, and they continued to throw water at each other until they both wound up in the stream with slippery rocks underneath them. They fell down in the water and laughed at how ridiculous it was that they were in that situation in the first place.
Their laughs died down, and Irene glanced towards the camp in the distance, where others were still dutifully going along with their tasks.
Her eyes snapped back towards Leif, and she dropped her gaze.
"I suppose we should finish what we set out to do," she muttered. "Before we get yelled at."
"Bla yourself," Leif responded. "I’ll tell them you were being so clumsy that you fell into the stream on your own and dragged down with you."
"And you call irritating," she responded with a scoff.
With that, the girl stood up from the stream. The water was up to her waist when she was sitting down. The water dripped off of her, and her clothing felt unbelievably heavy.
Her eyes went down to her tunic in a bit of a panic, wondering if it had caused it to beco more see-through and reveal her half chemise underneath. She was relieved to see that it hadn’t.
She could go on with her secret, sa as always.
Since her now soaked gloves were already tucked into her belt, she offered Leif a hand, and he allowed her to help him up.
They resud the activity for a short while longer.
By that point, Irene was shivering a little bit. The sun was getting lower, and she would need to dry off before dinner and attend the first half of night watch. She wondered if the extra clothing she had with her would be good enough to wear even if her other pants were torn and her other tunic had been worn without being washed yet.
There was never ti to repair her clothing or wash her clothes. She felt dirty because she could hardly bathe properly either.
The front lines were truly unglamorous.
However, before more words could be said between the two of them, horns from the ancient wall segnt broke their focus.
Knowing that it ant sothing, the wooden bowls dropped from their hands, and they stood up straight.
Looking in the direction those on the wall segnt were looking, Irene and Leif were shocked to see a stampede of goblins surrounding two ogres coming from lower levels of the valley towards the southwest.
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