Chapter 19: No Thieves Under Heaven

  “A knight should win victory by facing enemies head-on in battle,” Rodhart declared, his face wearing an expression of unmatched bravery. “Any underhanded trick is an insult to one’s character and the code of chivalry. But strategically… I’m afraid they’ll use Lord Imperial Envoy as a hostage against us. So maybe we should sneak in instead. What do you think we should do?”

  “Do whatever you want,” Ethan replied bluntly.

  “I want to uphold my honor as a knight, but I also want to complete the mission perfectly… I need a way to do both,” Rodhart said, holding his head in thought.

  “I choose to sneak in,” he finally announced, his face lighting up as he found a reason to justify both approaches. He looked proud of himself for the solution. “This isn’t going against the knightly code of openness—it’s about valuing life. I think I’ve gained a deeper understanding of chivalry now.”

  He led Ethan to the spot where the Imperial Envoy was said to have been ambushed. It was a clearing in a thicket, a shortcut worn into the ground by the frequent passage of carriages and people. It was the perfect place for bandits to lie in wait. For the Imperial Envoy to venture here with only two or three attendants, he must have drastically overestimated the local security.

  Rodhart glanced around at the surroundings. “Thank the gods it hasn’t rained,” he said triumphantly. “And the local officials are too scared to send men to search here—they’re afraid of spooking the bandits and endangering the Envoy. Now I just need to use the tracking skills I learned at school to find their trail.”

  He bent down and searched carefully on the ground and in the grass. After a long while, he stood up, rubbing his sore back, and exclaimed in shock: “There’s no trace at all! Those soldiers at the town hall took my money and lied to me!”

  “It’s right here,” Ethan said. He had already spotted the footprints and the flattened grass. “Only about a dozen of them, no horses—they’re holding the Imperial Envoy captive and walking him. Follow me.” Ethan ducked into the depths of the woods, and Rodhart hurried after him.

  In the forest, Ethan tracked the bandits’ trail with barely any effort. For someone who had once played a game of cat-and-mouse with a werewolf in the most dangerous uninhabited regions of the continent, this was child’s play. The trail was as obvious to Ethan as if it had been marked with signs. He leaped and wove through the trees, moving as freely as an animal in its territory. Rodhart, weighed down by his steel armor, struggled to keep up.

  Suddenly, Ethan stopped and reached out to pull Rodhart back.

  Four seemingly natural vines stretched from the bases of four trees to their tops, blending seamlessly with the other wild vines. It was a surprisingly well-made trap—obviously designed for humans, not animals. Animal traps did not need to be hidden this carefully, nor would they be placed where the trappers themselves had walked.

  It was just a net trap, with no lethal mechanisms. Such traps were usually not very effective against humans; anyone with a knife could free themselves quickly. Which meant this trap must have an alarm to alert the setters to come and capture their prey. The bandits’ lair could not be far.

  Ethan turned to Rodhart. “Take off that armor. It’s too heavy—you won’t be able to run fast.”

  Rodhart shook his head. “I can’t. This is the symbol of a knight.”

  “Then keep up if you can. If not, stay there and try to delay any bandits who come this way,” Ethan said. Dealing with someone like this was a hassle, and he had no patience for it. Still, Rodhart’s skills were probably good enough to handle a dozen bandits.

  Ethan picked up a thick dead branch from the ground and tossed it toward a patch of tall grass ahead. Whoosh! A large net shot up from the dead leaves and grass below, then closed tight between the treetops. At the same time, the faint sound of a gong echoed in the distance.

  Ethan immediately pinpointed the direction and distance of the sound. He sprinted to the side, planning to circle around the approaching bandits and sneak into their lair.

  Rodhart managed to run a few steps, but watched in frustration as Ethan clambered through the trees like a wildcat—disappearing after just a few moves. He shook his head, then walked back to the trap to wait for the bandits.

  After running for a while, Ethan spotted several simple thatched huts in a forest clearing up ahead. Next to them were piles of dying campfires, and a few treehouses built into the large trees nearby. This must be the bandits’ camp.

  For a group of bandits, their lair was surprisingly shoddy—they looked more like a ragtag group of refugees than professional outlaws. Ethan made up his mind: no need to sneak in. He would just charge in and knock them out one by one. Through the trees and grass, he could already see a few figures. He burst out of the underbrush.

  But he immediately froze—he had no idea who to attack first.

  A few elderly men, carrying firewood, stared at him blankly. Their clothes were tattered, barely covering their bodies. Their faces were lined with deep wrinkles of suffering, their backs hunched, their spines too weak to straighten. They stood unsteadily, as if they might collapse at any moment without him lifting a finger.

  From the treehouses, several snot-nosed children shouted down at him. Some wore clothes made of tree bark; others were completely naked. One was even urinating—when he saw Ethan rush out of the bushes, he gleefully tried to spray urine at him, making a hissing sound. Unfortunately, his aim fell far short of his expectations.

  Hearing the children’s shouts, over a dozen women emerged from the thatched huts and treehouses, some still holding pieces of animal hide. They showed no fear at the sight of Ethan—only surprise. One woman stepped forward. She was middle-aged, with relatively intact clothes and her hair tied back with a bunch of grass. Her plain, honest face (typical of a village woman) held a hint of shrewd competence; she was probably the leader among the women. She walked up to Ethan and asked: “Young man, did you trigger the alarm?”

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  “Uh,” Ethan mumbled, dumbfounded. He had no idea how to react. Charging into a group of elders, children, and women and beating them up was the last thing he wanted to do.

  The woman studied Ethan for a moment. “Are you lost? You don’t look like a local. Are you a wanderer from another place?”

  “Oh,” Ethan said, nodding along. It was easier to go along with her assumption. He had hidden his knife under his robe—the old one Sandro had given him—and he never paid attention to his hair, beard, or face. He certainly did not look like someone of status.

  “Are you hungry? Come inside and have some soup to warm up,” the woman said, showing the hospitality of a poor village dweller. “My husband and the others went to check the trap you triggered. It’s only for soldiers—they’ll be back soon.”

  If it were not for the deep forest surrounding them, this place could easily have been mistaken for a small village. Ethan suddenly remembered Rodhart was still waiting by the trap. When Rodhart met the woman’s husband and the others, they would definitely fight—his knight’s armor and sword made it obvious he had come to rescue the Envoy. Ethan turned to head back the way he had come.

  But after taking a few steps, he saw over twenty men approaching. They were dressed in rags, carrying farming tools like pitchforks and hoes—only two of them had short swords and bows. Rodhart was walking among them, chatting amicably with the men beside him. When he spotted Ethan in the distance, he waved enthusiastically.

  As they drew closer, Ethan stared at Rodhart. “What’s going on here?”

  Rodhart grinned like a child. “It’s a misunderstanding! These are all villagers from the nearby villages. I haven’t seen them in years. This is Levin the hunter, this is Brother Bumb…” He introduced the men one by one, like a wanderer bringing a friend back to his hometown.

  They sat down around a campfire and talked. Ethan learned they were all villagers from the surrounding area. They had fled into the mountains after being unable to bear the sudden increase in taxes over the past few months. They survived by hunting and occasionally robbing passersby. The previous day, they had seen a man in fancy clothes with a few attendants by the forest edge. Thinking he was just a wealthy traveler, they had kidnapped him. They had no idea he was an Imperial Envoy from the capital—something that had thrown the local officials into a panic.

  “We have to let him go,” Rodhart urged. “Kidnapping a court official is out of the question.”

  “No way,” someone objected immediately. Ethan recognized him as Brother Bumb—the bald, fat man Rodhart had introduced earlier. It was hard to tell he was poor from his plump face; Ethan heard he had once been a butcher. The fat he had accumulated back then must have been deeply rooted—even starvation could not change his build. He was the first to speak up: “We can’t just let him go. Do you think the local officials will let us off the hook after this? They’ve already exploited us enough. Now that we’ve embarrassed them in front of the Envoy, they’ll hunt us down and kill us! We plan to use this chance to extort a large ransom from them, then take the money and leave this place for good.” His words were met with nods of agreement.

  “But this is against the law!” Rodhart insisted, probably feeling it was beneath a knight to be part of this discussion and wanting to clarify his stance. “As citizens of the empire, we must obey the law. And I’ve heard the Imperial Envoy is a learned theological scholar. We’re all followers of the gods—how can we do something like this?”

  “The officials can ‘legally’ starve us all to death,” said Levin the hunter, the leader of the group. He was a lean, wiry man—no trace of fat on him, but he seemed as tough as iron. His skin was dark, his hair tied up in a cloth in a strange style, and his face was painted with colorful patterns. A small goatee dotted his chin. “When your grandfather was alive, those officials still had some scruples—they didn’t dare go too far. But lately, it seems the higher-ups are planning something, so they’re squeezing money out of us. First, they raised the land tax. Then they doubled the business tax. Finally, they even said the forest belongs to the state—we have to pay taxes to hunt here! We can’t even make a living anymore, but they still demand a ‘head tax’ from us. If we don’t pay, we’re ‘breaking the law’ and ‘suspected heretics.’ Their laws have pushed us to this point—why should we obey them?”

  Rodhart shook his head. “This is just the fault of the local officials. The capital is too far away, so they dare to act so recklessly. The Imperial Envoy was sent here to supervise them. If we tell him the truth about our hardships, he’ll definitely give us justice.”

  The woman who had greeted Ethan earlier was Levin’s wife. With the sharp insight unique to women, she pointed out: “Little Rod, you’ve been in that school of yours for too long. You’ve learned too many rigid things from books. What are those things, anyway? Just words—marks made with ink. What we see is the truth. Think about it: who is the Envoy closer to—those corrupt officials, or us? When he goes to the city, will he eat and sleep in our homes? Do you really think he’ll stand up for us?”

  Rodhart shook his head stubbornly. “No. There must be justice. Good will prevail, and evil will be punished. My grandfather taught me that.”

  “I’m seventy years old,” an elderly man chimed in from the side. He had few teeth left, so his words lisped—but they carried great weight. He glanced around at the others and emphasized: “Seventy years. And I’ve never seen what ‘justice’ or ‘fairness’ looks like.”

  Rodhart’s face turned red—from excitement, or embarrassment. He looked just as flustered as he had in the mercenary tavern in the city. “No! It must exist! My grandfather told me so!” Suddenly, he remembered he might have an ally. He turned to Ethan, his eyes earnest. “Friend Ethan, you must believe in justice and fairness in this world, too?”

  Ethan frowned, racking his memory. He looked at Rodhart, then answered carefully and honestly: “I… don’t think I’ve ever heard of such things.”

  “Yes, they do exist!” Rodhart was not discouraged by being alone. Instead, he stood up, even more agitated. “Think about it: if we politely send Lord Imperial Envoy back, he’ll see that we could have extorted money but chose not to. He’ll be moved by our sincerity, and he’ll definitely give us justice. And I’ve heard this Lord Imperial Envoy used to study at a seminary—he must have great wisdom and a noble heart.”

  No one spoke. They probably did not want to dampen his enthusiasm.

  “What good will extorting money do us?” Rodhart continued. “We’ll still have to leave our hometown, hide somewhere else, and never be able to come back to this land. Every day, we’ll live in fear—afraid of being discovered, afraid of being caught. Is that a good life? If Lord Imperial Envoy helps adjust the taxes and punishes the local officials, we can go back to our old lives again.”

  The villagers stirred. His words were tempting. For a villager born and raised on this land, the love for their hometown and their way of life was irreplaceable. “He has a point…” some of them murmured, beginning to agree.

  Rodhart’s voice was almost a plea. “Please, trust me. I swear on my honor as a knight—and on my grandfather’s honor.”

  This oath carried weight. Rodhart’s grandfather was highly respected among the villagers. They began to discuss it among themselves. After a while, Levin finally nodded. “All right. Since you’ve said so, and we’ll have to let him go eventually anyway, we’ll listen to you. Let’s take a gamble.”

  Rodhart spoke firmly, full of confidence. “This isn’t a gamble. This is the truth. Don’t think the world is so dark. Everyone in the city says there’s a group of vicious bandits here—but you’re all good people, aren’t you? If we keep an open heart, we’ll see there aren’t that many bad people in this world.”