The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 746: The Knights of Wavemates

Amie opened a portal directly to the prison in Lympsbury.

"Warden, we have a prisoner transfer for you. Found guilty of banditry, murder and robbery by the Duke of Wistover, and captured by the Stansia Provincial Knight patrols just outside the city.

This is the leader of the forces that have been harrying your farmers." She explained.

The warden smiled. "Oh, now that is wonderful news. We didn’t think that there would be anyone alive after the enforcement action, unless they fled. Having even one in the prison will be enough good news to keep the city satisfied that we’re doing our best to keep the common folk safe.

Do you know who he is?"

Amie shrugged. "Some untitled Dagos Noble brat who didn’t flee back home. Doesn’t matter now. The Duke has asked that he be confined indefinitely."

The prison guards escorted the prisoner away, and Amie handed the Warden a bag of coins.

"Take good care of him for us. The Duke is counting on your competence."

The warden silently pocketed the money. "Of course, madam. It is my honour to manage the Lympsbury prison system. Under my guidance, we haven’t had one major uprising or disorder incident."

Dominic nodded to the Warden, and then turned and walked back through the portal, leaving Amie to close it as she followed him back.

"Is it settled?" The Knight Commander asked.

"Indeed. He won’t be troubling anyone again. The warden is quite competent at his job, and he certainly won’t allow anyone to escape his prison alive." Dominic agreed.

"Understood. I will fill out the letter of condolence for the deceased man’s Uncle. Should we move along to Causter now that the area is cleared?"

Dominic nodded. "You can continue your patrols. We have a mage surveying the area for trouble, so we’ve been able to send strike teams anywhere that we find particularly troubling signs. However, most of what we’ve found are new Trollish villages in southwestern Kinewen Province."

The Knight smiled. "The trolls have been most helpful since we arrived. There aren’t many in each village, and they’re mostly in hiding, but they always sent someone to pass us the information that they thought we needed."

Dominic smiled back. "The bandits stole goats, didn’t they?"

"Nearly everywhere they went. Apparently, the trolls take that personally."

That made the soldiers nearby laugh quietly. If there was one thing in this world that was guaranteed to make a troll angry, it was messing with the goats.

You could attack the troll himself, and he wouldn’t get as mad as if you harassed his goat.

Fortunately, they had spent a bit of time in Wistover around Dave, and he had given them the introduction to living with Trolls. It was easier than expected, and there weren’t a lot of rules.

Only two essential ones.

If it can be soup, make the food into soup.

Do not mess with the goats. Goats are friends, right until they are food. And to trolls, that usually means somewhere around natural death, though they do accept that others get hungry earlier.

As long as you stuck with those two rules, most misunderstandings with the trolls could be remedied.

In fact, with as helpful as they’d been since the Knights arrived in the region, they were actually looking forward to getting a chance to visit a whole village full of the notoriously durable species.

The trolls were thinking the same thing. If these Knights were sent by the Dragon Duke, then they could be friends.

They had utter faith that Dominic would not pick people who could not get along with trolls to patrol the Provinces for him. In fact, they simply assumed that was the whole reason that they were picked.

The Nobles in the cities were less hostile than the last Nobles, but they weren’t dragonkin.

So, Dominic must have picked friendly humans to act as his intermediary.

Once Dominic and Amie returned to the Manor, Dave passed the message to the others. The Knights were helpful, and they got rid of people who harassed the trolls’ farms and villages.

So, they could go to the Knights to get problems with the humans around them solved.

Not that most of the villages were close enough to have human neighbours, but the concept was the same.

That revelation totally changed the way that the Knights’ patrol from Lympsbury to Causter went. They didn’t follow the road, they followed the population, which was mostly along the valleys, where the soil was better, and the houses were out of the wind.

Nearly every village seemed to have a Trollish healer, or a witch coven.

In some cases, it was a new thing, in others, it was an old one, and they had simply come out of hiding when Dominic took over. The effect was the same, though.

The small towns and farming villages were all doing exceptionally well, and the amount of nature magic that they were seeing was absolutely stunning. The crops were so good that even the men who had been sent along to keep track of the state of the Duchy were struggling to describe it in ways that didn’t sound outlandish.

Their path was a looping one, going back and forth to visit every village that they heard about from the locals. That way, everyone knew that they were in the region, and that they were taking reports for the Duke.

Mostly, that amounted to a letter from every Mayor congratulating him either on his appointment or on his firstborn, if they had heard about it already.

News spread fast in Stansia Province.

Causter had its own permanent staff, so the Knights bypassed it and followed the population along the river toward Wistfield.

They didn’t need to cover the regions that had Nobles actively monitoring them, unless there were signs of trouble. But around here, the only reports of trouble they got were the occasional complaint of roaming monsters.

That had been good for their pockets, and not bad for the unit’s supplies.

When they came across a pack of Water Buffalo monsters, they managed to load enough meat on a makeshift wagon that they had to stop in three different villages to trade all the excess away.

By the time that they were done that, they had more supplies than they left home with.

And it was better quality.

But now they were headed into the true wilderness, and the supposedly unpopulated regions of northern Stansia Province and western Kinewen Province.