One day, a Thousand Autumns

While the smell of winter was approaching ever closer with the apparent increase in the necessity for thicker clothes, autumn was still a season for food, homesick, and where people had to clean the fall of leaves.

Gathering such leaves were usually outside the jurisdiction of the noble knights, but under the direct order of the prince that preferred to use what was less useful rather than using haystack that can be used for feed or oil, they just simply had to do it. Fortunately, their generation of knights had received some excellent education beforehand as they quickly found a way to maintain and protected their image less the public found a bizarre scene where the ones that were known to be always so imposing could be dubbed as public janitors.

"Here's one silver coin. Good work."

With an indifferent face, Carter Lannis flipped a silver coin to the group of people who had nothing to do he had gathered for the sake of burying the three corpses with enough fallen leaves. Receiving the money that equal to a sum of hundred copper coins, the people were all smiling and gave their thanks to the knight loudly. They only leave after a stern glare from Carter.

Not just the hired workers, the place chosen was selectively picked to be one of a rather desolate area, and any people curious enough would be sent away, be it with persuasion or force.

To a chief knight like him, a silver wasn't something so heart rendering he had to cry over. The bitterness only came from feeling the injustice of doing unreasonable work in the first place.

"Sir Carter, you're so cool!"

A young knight earnestly praised Carter, while the few other knights present gave at least a nod. Not bothering with the nonsense flattery that can be interpreted as either good or bad performance, he instead threw a glance at the high stack of leaves.

Border Town, as barren as it was in a lot of aspects, still had a lot of trees growing up here and there. And since they were all falling due to the natural occurrence from the season, naturally it wasn't so hard to seek them. It just since the knights themselves didn't willing to work and only waiting, unknowingly an hour and a half had passed before they finally gathered enough.

"Wait, are these leaves wet? If so, then we're really wasting time." The chief knight murmured.

Carter irritatedly scratched his hair before ordering his man to lit a torch. The eldest of them, a middle-aged knight was already prepared, he immediately stepped up and gave their boss the stuff.

"Speaking of which, since when we have a tradition to burn criminals?"

The young knight asked no one in particular as he tilted his head, watching the leaves caught fire with interest. He might be young, but he was a certified knight and didn't feel anything weird about seeing corpses. But burning them was a relatively new experience, and that now he had seen them up close, he remembered to ask.

"I don't think we have something like that, but it wasn't like it had never been done before." The old knight answered while rubbed his beard covered chin, and didn't forget to supplement his thought. "For people who died while bearing diseases, it's quite a common practice. Perhaps, these criminals were like that?"

The flame was getting bigger, despite the occasional chilling breeze characteristic of late autumn, the knights retreated a few steps as it was likewise becoming hotter.

"I don't know about the two criminals, but one of them is a witch, no? Maybe because of that." a knight chimed in.

"Hey hey hey." The youngest knight revealed a mischevious smile hearing that and uttered a weird laugh. "Don't you know our witch could control fire? Perhaps she would resurrect instead if we burn her dead body."

Carter frowned as their conversation was getting out of topic to a territory he didn't want to touch, but since the task would still require some time, shutting them forcefully would resulting in awkward silence. After pondering it for a moment, he kept his mouth shut and continued watching.

A knight showed a doubtful expression. "Is a witch really that impressive? I had seen the street performer from capital breath a burst of fire and juggled burning balls."

"That's just a trick. Speaking of which, my butler back home can also do what you said." The young knight smirked. "I had seen the victim you know. I never know a person could die like that, no matter what, I couldn't see a normal person could perform such murder."

"Like what?" The knight curiosity was piqued.

"The head and a large part of the body were spread out on the ground as if he was melted." The young knight used exaggerated gesture to give a clearer idea. "He reminded people of burnt-out black candles."

Even if a person was burned to death, they wouldn't really melt. This was just a common knowledge, and thus the impression of the witch feat was very scary, very evil.

It was unknown who did it, but someone sucked a deep breath of cold air.

A mumble about saving money for buying a god's stone of retaliation can be heard.

"No wonder so many knights stationed just to burn corpses..." A knight came to some sort of realization on his own.

"It was a just precaution." Someone concurred.

Carter shook his head while unknowingly, a bead of cold sweat already rolled off his forehead. His fear of the witches was also not that severe, at least not until he met the witch called Anna that could produce such scene with her power. Like the young knight, even with his vast experience in combat and knowledge of various dirty tricks, he couldn't help but perceived it as an impossible act unless one used something sinister as the foul witchcraft.

It was because of that he and Barov were very worried about the existence of strangely carved coin that gave an evidence of that witch association. Since the risk was indeed very real, even if the prince assumption was right that she was harmless and only waiting for death, was it really necessary to save her to the point he had to secretly and personally offered help in directing this elaborate show?

Now that he thought about it carefully, the prince was an odd person. He just got to know the prince recently, but he was quite sure this royal person was genuinely silly. Yet earlier he saw something different from him. Like his choice of actions, and like the light of his eyes. It gave him an impression of someone who was intelligent but having a complicated feeling, yet very firm of his decision.

He was made a chief knight when he came to the Border Town, but only after seeing the burning scene in front of him, he felt the previous months he was in were just a dream, and he was just sobering up.

It was unknown whether it was really the breeze of autumn that made him tighten his grip to his celebrated sword hanging on his waist or something else.