The carriage rumbled across the lands, a lone vampire inside. The curtains closed, nobody could see inside, and yet this wasn’t the reason why I closed them. My photophobia, or simply put my intolerance of light made it impossible to look outside, even though I would really like to. The landscape, hidden from my eyes, must have looked truly beautiful to me, considering that I only lived in the mansion or purgatory so far.

And yet, here I was, reading a few articles in a piece of paper Arthur called ‘newspaper’. It was an interesting invention if the news weren’t already a month old. As I was still curious about the state of affairs in this kingdom, I read it with great interest. Well, at least some of it. I wasn’t that keen on finding out how fast some random earl rode his horse after all. But I did find other news rather interesting.

The economy of the Kingdom I lived in, the Worchester Kingdom, was booming, fuelled by public spending. Most of this funding went into raising armies to fight against the elves in the east. While everything seemed fine on the surface so far, it didn’t mean it was perfect. Especially the east seemed to suffer immensely under forced conscription, relocation of the population, and the constant skirmishes with the elves. In the beginning, I didn’t think the outcome of this war concerned me at all, but sadly the White´s territory was in the east, directly bordering the elven forest. It sucked that we would have to win this war if I wanted to use the influence and power of the family I was leeching off. And in this situation, the humans chose to intrude into the heart of the elven territory, the elven forest, for the first time after winning a series of border clashes. This approach was certainly bold considering that we barely had any information about this mysterious forest and what dwelled in it. Thus far, they only fought on the outskirts of elven territory which was exactly like the human lands. But further in elven territory … things changed.

While I was still reading about the war, the carriage suddenly stopped and the door was opened a few centimetres wide. The afternoon sun luckily shone on the other side, enabling me to see the incredibly bright outside instead of falling asleep instantly.

“Can I come in?” Arthur´s voice, as distinctive as always, resounded outside. I was quite surprised that he learned to ask before intruding instead of rudely entering my personal space.

“Sure.” The door opened completely while I closed my eyes. Shortly afterwards, he shut the door again and sat down right next to me. The horses soon pulled the carriage again and the rumbling returned while I stared into the newspaper. “How come this carriage is so uncomfortable? Even a pillow isn’t enough to dampen the impact from potholes and such.”

“Hmm.” I raised my eyebrow while he continued to stay silent. My guess was that he wasn’t the person for small talk and I also knew that he would never visit me without a reason. It took him a few minutes to stare at the carriage wall opposite of him to finally start talking again. “We will arrive at the castle Humel tomorrow where two female mages will join you. They will sleep in this carriage at night and ride it during the day. I want you to keep an eye on them, at least somewhat. I don’t want any bad publicity because some idiot couldn’t get to a whore in time. Understood?”

“Aye.” While his task was quite unusual, I had no reason to complain. After all, I at least needed to follow his orders on the surface. “What about recruiting others for my unit though?”

“You can do that while keeping them safe.” Silence soon returned because I couldn’t find a good way to continue the conversation. A simple yes wouldn’t do it here. After a few minutes, I finally found a topic that interested me.

“Why are we at war?” I glanced over to Arthur who wore a rather complicated expression. He leaned over to the door and grabbed the handle, but stopped short of opening it yet.

“A good soldier doesn’t ask such questions. He just follows orders.” The problem was that I neither saw myself as good nor as a soldier. As such, I could only stare at his back grimly as he opened the door and stepped out of it again as soon as we came to a halt.

I spent the rest of the day in complete silence and went through my plans again. Both of them went fairly well as Arthur apparently started to depend on me a bit and Mary was backed so far into a corner that she had no other option except to do what I asked her to. Whatever ending this would have, I was sure to profit from it.

After a few hours though, the carriage stopped and the soldiers started to build a simple camp. I still couldn’t go out as the sun hadn’t set yet, but it was only a matter of minutes until I stepped out of the carriage. Tents were already erected as far as I could see and fires burnt to provide precious heat for grilling meat.

I have never seen so many humans in one place. Heck, I haven’t seen so many living humans during my life at all. I only saw their souls, but there was a distinct difference between these two. Humans were loud, smelled and behaved quite rudely in front of me. The men with better manners stared at me as I stepped out of the carriage, the others laughed or whistled.

“What? Never seen a girl in your life before?” I grabbed behind me into the carriage and pulled the sword I was gifted out. Still inside the scabbard and a bit shorter than others, it didn’t look very threatening for the soldiers around me.

“Watch out! You are going to hurt yourself if you pull that out.” A particular tall and muscular man exited the circle of onlookers and approached me. I saw some scars on his arms as I inspected him from head to toe. He seemed like a good warrior, and yet I was completely disinterested in recruiting him. He was simply put too dumb. While the others certainly understood that I had some kind of connection to the duke, he stepped out of the safety of the masses and painted a huge target onto himself.

“Thank you for your kind words. I will keep them in mind.” I tried to walk past him, but he always stood in the way. I stepped left, and he followed suit. I stepped right, and he went in my way a third time. Annoyed, I looked up towards his smiling face. Honestly, I doubted that someone with a shred of honour would try to get in a fight with a little girl on their own. Either he was completely stupid, or Arthur told him to fight me in front of the others. “Listen, this will get very embarrassing for you.”

While I could understand Arthur´s intention to help me build up a reputation, it was exactly what I didn’t want. I wanted to be hidden from the eyes of the public, at least as much as possible. Being outed as a vampire was the last thing I needed back then. As such, I tried to threaten him quietly, but as I expected, he didn’t move to the side at all.

As there was no way out of this except beating him in some way, I took three steps back from him. I didn’t draw my sword yet, and neither did I intend to. I pointed my undrawn sword towards him and trembled a bit, trying my best to look as scared as I could.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” He laughed as I said that and didn’t even bother to fight me with his own sword. Instead, he just stood there and waited for me to run up to him. I fulfilled his wish, but not in a way he desired. As I ran up to him, I stumbled over my own foot a metre away, completely on purpose naturally. He tried to grab the scabbard that was aimed at his belly with his right hand, but failed miserably as I threw it away from me, seemingly in panic. He just didn’t expect the sword to accelerate this fast from half a metre away from him. Additionally, I pushed the sword down a little, making it strike lower than he expected.

He collapsed as the sword hit a certain area and screamed in pain while holding said place. It must have hurt a lot, especially because I could retrieve my sword without him noticing. The onlookers were stunned, but some already started chuckling as I hurried away, the sword in my arms.

I have beaten him, but not in an expected way. The narrative changed completely just by making it seem like a mistake from my side. It wasn’t me who would have been the focus of the story this way, but rather the guy who got stabbed in a certain area. I was merely the little girl who got lucky, a little extra to the story, but not the main protagonist. I smiled as I noticed how easy it was. I certainly needed to talk to Arthur about this, as it was already too much publicity for me. I would stand out either way as a girl with my apparent age was unusual in an army, but I intended to limit it as much as possible.

After the little incident, I was largely left alone. Sure, gazes followed me wherever I went, but none seemed to be willing to behave rudely, which confirmed my suspicion even more that Arthur sent the man to bully me. Soon, I found myself in a rather precarious spot. I wanted to recruit a few men into my unit but haven’t found a way of actually doing so yet. I didn’t know who was good enough and whose personality I found acceptable. I didn’t want to surround myself with idiots, because that would only lead to the kind of bloodshed I would be made accountable for. Additionally, I couldn’t just go around and recruit men easily. It would be a hassle and wouldn’t fit with the image of the friendly, but powerless girl I was trying to build up.

And yet, I had to start somehow. As such, I approached a group of six men who sat around a tree stump and played cards.

“Is that poker?” And the staring began anew. It didn’t take long for one of them to snap out of their daze though.

“Yes … who wants to know that?” He was as curious about me as the others, which was understandable. After all, I was quite the oddity here.

“Me. Can I join for a few rounds?” I knelt down between two of them and looked at the table with great interest as if it was only natural that they wouldn’t reject me.

“Sure, I guess.” They soon finished their round and an archer started dealing cards for another round. They even gave me a few coins to play with, a really nice gesture as I haven’t had any money yet. My cards, a seven and a nine, were incredibly mediocre. The flop turned everything around as an eight was laid down on the tree stump. A street was in sight but was threatened by the possibility of three kings as two were already laid out. The eyes of the man sitting exactly opposite of me flickered with anticipation as we bet another round.

“All in.” Most of them didn’t participate anymore, but the one who probably held a king did. I smiled as he put a few of his coins on the stump and turned around two more cards. It was in all honestly quite a disappointment. My straight never came to be as two utterly useless cards were turned around. I lost in my first round of playing to someone who I could read like an open book. He obviously held the king and won the round. A few of them tried to comfort me as I looked a little bit sad and so, I returned to my usual smile within a few seconds, in fact, rather happy that I already got everything I wanted.

More than anything, I wanted to observe others and figure out how they behaved. And now, I was within a circle of soldiers who played a game full of lies and deception and was free to watch them as long as I liked, although I still had to ask for it.

“Can I still watch?” None of them rejected my proposal. Most of them were probably happy that I didn’t throw a tantrum or whatever twelve-year-old girls did in that situation. Well, I doubted that they would ever get into said situation in the first place, but whatever …

They played bad. Really bad. None of them even tried to count cards and most of them were so bad a bluffing that I wondered if they ever lied before. Not a single one of them qualified to be my subordinate.

I was too picky, I knew that. But I also probably needed at least a few soldiers who could actually think, and not just charge in during a battle. In this round of six, I haven’t found the qualities I was searching for, but there were probably a few more days and poker rounds until I was sent to battle. As such, I excused myself after an hour or so and searched for the next round of soldiers who played cards, hoping to find someone who had the brains to deceive even me.