I Will Be the Greatest Knight
Chapter 62: Getting Hungry

Chapter 62: Getting Hungry

"Dire wolves! Get them!"

Irene sat at a table, slowly eating porridge with preserved berries sprinkled over the top. She was lost in thought until they heard the voice of someone surprising at the dining hall entrance.

Her green eyes snapped to attention and they realized it was the Duchess yelling that there were dire wolves outside.

The brief few moments Irene had seen her, she looked the same as usual with a peculiar thin appearance and eyes that darted all around. She still felt a strange suspicion about the woman but she couldn’t voice it because it would be unbelievably disrespectful to talk badly about someone who held a high title she could never even dream of having.

They had been having sunny days, but those days were still mostly frigid and the snow remained on the ground.

However, all of them were still warmed up from morning practice and Sir Gunnar gestured for them to get on their feet.

"Which direction, my lady?" Gunnar asked the Duchess as he approached her.

"Northwest!" she shouted.

Her eyes went along all the people in the room and she let out a noise of frustration only to lift her skirts and run off.

No one commented on her strange behavior.

"Sir Sven, Irene, both of you will go to the highest level through the outer stairs and use your bows—see if you can spot anything else further away and act as our backup," Gunnar explained. "The rest of us shall go outside. Get me my horse with a caparison so that it will be harder to get bitten by one of those bastards. I want all of you to make sure they don’t approach the stables like last time. It’s the end of winter. These beasts are likely starving and throwing caution to the wind to find food."

"Yes, sir!" rang out through the dining hall and everyone went to their respective positions.

Irene nodded at Sir Sven who she had been getting used to more that season. They had an unfamiliar relationship before but she found that he was adept with a bow and often clung to him in terms of advisement with bow and arrow. An itching in the back of her head told her that perhaps one day he would choose her as his apprentice. They were of the few bow-wielders and got along well.

"Let’s go, Iro," the knight ordered.

They went in the opposite direction of the other apprentices and out a side door that led them to stairs winding out the outside of the tower and leading to higher levels such as the maid and butler’s quarters.

Once they were at the summit of the stairs, the two bow-wielders pulled out their weapons and aimed as they were told.

Already there were a few apprentices out with weapons drawn. She spotted Felix and Leif and couldn’t help her bias of wanting to make sure that they were protected the most. They felt the most like brothers to her, after all.

However, knighthood meant duty to all and so she widened her focus, realizing the wolves, more than anything else, were her priority. Gunnar had told them to keep an eye out to make sure there weren’t ones further off.

Sure enough, from what the girl could tell, the wolves were scrawny compared to the season before.

"I have never seen a dire wolf in the winter before," she admitted. "They’re so thin."

"They’ve exhausted all sources of food in the forests, I imagine," Sir Sven admitted. "This is about the time of year we expect them to come down and start giving townships trouble. That’s why we have all hands here."

The man tightened his bowstring as the wolves got closer. There was a straggler in the group that was avoiding a few apprentices.

In his thick clothing, Irene could hear Sir Sven adjust and she realized she should do the same as well.

Soon the snow was littered with blood splatter where apprentices took on the dire wolves two to three people to one wolf while Felix was fine with a smaller one and then went to help the others. It was no wonder he was the most experienced apprentice. Irene thought he was due to become a knight soon.

It gave her the thought that one day Sir Gunnar may ask Felix to be his apprentice and her eyes widened at the thought. What a great honor it would be. Under her father, he was the highest, after all.

Sir Sven and Irene had the same instincts when the straggler wolf started to run towards the front of the Duke’s Tower.

The fwip! of their bows went off at nearly the same time and the animal was stunned for a moment but kept moving.

They were fast to redraw and shoot once more.

Those were enough to stop the animal because those shots were a bit more precise, having taken advantage of its slowness by that point.

The archers stood for a few moments more with arrows ready in case there was further movement from down below. However, they soon saw Sir Gunnar, who had rushed out with his horse and gone to the furthest wolf then towards the forest’s edge to make sure there was no more, offer them a stern nod and a thumbs up.

"Shall we?" the knight asked the apprentice and she gave an eager nod. "You’ll find the furs of dire wolves to be much more lush in the wintertime and they go for a lot more if you sell them. You can have the one we’ve taken down. I have plenty of my own."

"Really?!" Irene exclaimed, wonderment in her eyes.

"Of course," the knight said. "Let’s lay our claim."

Since he gestured with a gloved hand for her to go first, she took to the stone stairs. Once she was at the bottom, she found it faster to jump over the stone railing along the side and only a few feet to the ground below.

Perhaps it wasn’t wise to show one of the knights just where she, Felix, and Leif snuck into the building in the early morning once, but he didn’t say anything and simply jumped over the side as well.

As the girl got to the wolf and made sure it was no longer living, she heard hoofbeats crunching in the snow and quickly looked up at whoever stood above her.

"The next time we go through this, I do hope you shoot a bow from horseback," the knight reiterated a point he had made earlier that winter.

"Yes, sir," she responded. "Next winter will be a different story."

"Good," the knight said before he went to attend to other apprentices.

Since Irene had Sir Sven at her side helping her with the wolf, there was nothing more for him to do.