of a knot in my stomach,‘ muttered Toinen.
‘You're not the only one,’ replied the twins.
‘Hold on, hold on…’ Einar quickened his pace to catch up with Ceet. ‘And what do those two legionaries who attacked me have to do with this?’ he asked, remembering a more pressing problem.
‘It’s simple,’ Tahon shrugged. ‘They both come from… hmmm… aristocratic families, but their fathers don’t sit in the Senate. They want to raise their family’s… Hmmm… Prestige. Sons with military achievements in a famous legion help with that. They bribed the right people, and that’s how Flavius and Valesius ended up in the 44th Legion. It seems nobody told them that they might well end up where they wanted, but nobody would treat them any differently, and they certainly wouldn’t be officers straight away. When they were assigned to us, we were in the capital, and when Arkali found out about it, he ordered them to be thrown into the worst hole on the ship and given the nastiest tasks you could find on an imperial vessel. They weren’t exactly… Hmmm… Delighted, but they had no choice and had to put up with it for the entire journey from XuinDo all the way to Iverlis.
‘So they were trying to…’
‘…make up for something,’ sighed the twins. ‘Perhaps it’s better…’
‘…that the reason for all this fuss is…’
‘…so simple.’
‘The reason may well be simple, but your law is truly harsh.’ The beastman said this calmly, but a slight tremor of unease ran through his voice.
‘All we can do is wait and see how the gods view this matter.’ Kari and Leif agreed with Einar with an indefinable grunt.
