I Will Be the Greatest Knight
Chapter 134: Snow Mound

Chapter 134: Snow Mound

If it was possible, the township they went through seemed even more ghostlike than the day before.

After the snow fell and heavy winds caused snowdrifts to stack up on the sides of people’s houses, it was hard to imagine that anyone lived in a house looking like that.

However, the oddities didn’t end with how the township looked.

As they rounded the trees that sat at the edge of town before the hill that led up to her grandmother’s house, Irene’s eyebrows lowered when all they saw ahead of them was a white expanse faintly littered with logs and the tops of trees. Her heart began to race as her head swiveled left and right, trying to scan the area for any sign that her grandmother had been there in the first place.

She pulled her hood off as if that was somehow blocking her way. However, it only exposed her to the bright expanse ahead. Even with a cloudy sky, the stark whiteness was a bit blinding. She had to squint her eyes once her face was in the light.

"What on earth?!" Irene exclaimed and she squeezed her knees harder so that Sorrel would ride much faster than before.

"Wait, Irene!" Arthur shouted, but his daughter didn’t hear him because she was already racing up the hill. "It happens every—! Ah, well."

The knight pushed his hood down as well and let out a sigh. He turned to Sir Gunnar and gestured for him to go forth in a much more relaxed manner than Irene was behaving at that moment.

Since Irene was going off in a different direction than he expected—something he couldn’t blame her for considering how bright it was—the knight decided to redirect her.

"The one that’s smoking!" Arthur yelled from behind Irene. He felt it a bit cruel to keep her worried since she was clearly on the verge of panicking.

It was then that Irene realized one of the stumps seemed to be smoking and the lump of snow around it was the house itself rather than a strange snow drift.

She felt a bit crazed but after receiving an answer became more dutiful and determined.

When she was feet away from what she imagined was her grandmother’s front door, Irene jumped off of Sorrel and urged him to go back down the hill.

With gloved hands, she then started pushing away the snow as quickly as she could. It was heavy and piling higher. Based on the clouds, it would pile into the next day as well.

The knights were close at heel and they jumped off of their horses as well. Since they were larger than Irene, they did a bit more damage to the snow that surrounded the house. By that point, Arthur had worked to the front door.

"It hasn’t done this in quite some time," he admitted. "This winter is heavier than the last few."

"In quite some time?!" Irene echoed, horrified. "You were expecting this?!"

"It isn’t to say I was expecting it," Arthur corrected her. "It was simply a possibility I had already considered based on the way our manor was looking."

Gunnar merely chuckled as he continued unburying the dwelling. When Arthur talked about what a shabby house it was, he wasn’t expecting it to be so small and buried.

Since the snow underfoot had frozen solid, they were a couple of feet higher than they would have been in the first place. The additional layer of snow from the night before had made the situation look far worse than it actually was. However unburying someone’s home was a bit alarming no matter how they looked at it.

Arthur was finally able to start knocking on the door.

The knock was answered in only a few moments accompanied by an angry voice that began the second there was merely a hair’s width of the door opened.

"I wondered when you would finally unbury me!" Kara exclaimed. "I was digging out one of the windows myself!"

Since they all had to step down off of the snow to enter the house, Irene rushed in first because she entered the easiest when her grandmother was moved to the side.

Her green eyes scanned the one-room dwelling and she slumped when she saw that her grandmother had in fact opened one of the windows and used one of her cooking utensils to start digging her way out of the snow. She had only gotten through a couple of feet but it was likely a precarious task since the windows were high.

The girl rushed to the window and pushed the snow back outside so it wouldn’t melt and get everything wet. She then closed the window in time to see her father and Sir Gunnar stepping inside the house and looking around.

"I brought you more food, mother," Arthur stated as he handed her a leather pouch full of more rolls and a paper bag full of dried vermicelli so she could rehydrate them and make soup. "Glad to see your house didn’t collapse despite all the snow, but I think it’s better if we push the snow off of your roof because more will fall tonight."

"Whatever you have to do, dear," Kara responded and she gently patted Arthur’s cheek and took the food from his hands before putting it in what she called a kitchen but was merely a stove with a few cupboards around it. Since Sünstoian people heavily relied on the outdoors, she cooked most of her larger meals outside anyway when she was able to.

"I’ll climb on the roof," Irene volunteered. "I imagine I’m the only one light enough not to risk a cave-in further."

However, her eyes looked up at the ceiling where there were evident patches and more beams put up to carry the weight of the roof. It seemed her father had already worried about the risk of a cave-in when he was fixing it over the spring and summer.

Arthur was already rummaging through a tall cupboard that seemed to have a few tools inside of it. Eventually, he found what could hardly be considered a shovel but was going to have to work. His daughter then took the post with a piece of board connected to it and she was helped to the roof by the knights.

Her father and Gunnar stayed outside and began carving out more places for the old woman to walk around and go to the well.

However, as the girl did her promised share of the work, even eventually taking off the cloak she wore because she started feeling warm, she was shocked when she looked up to see a northern dire wolf with lighter colored fur than the usual dire wolves in the valley coming down the foothills. It was walking slowly towards where they were all working.

Since Irene had her bow and arrows with her, she slowly placed down the makeshift shovel and pulled her bow out with her eyes never leaving the animal.

As she raised her bow to line up a shot and not alarm the others, there was a crash from behind her and she saw her grandmother climbing onto the roof.

"Don’t shoot it!" the old woman shouted.

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