sparrow and lion

Chapter 5: bandits

Leo, of course, had not strictly intended to be captured by bandits. In possession of a healthy sense of curiosity, she had merely intended to talk to the bandit leader. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable profession: banditry. And, sick as she was of nobility, she was quite curious to try it.

But, alas, thieves did not take all too peacefully to the wealthy children of influential people coming upon them in the woods and asking them to spill their secrets, so here she was: Sitting in the center of the bandit camp, her hands bound behind her back, with an unfriendly assortment of eyes trained on her.

Fourteen eyes to be exact. Though two of those eyes were not part of a pair.

It turned out that, since the bandit leader had not come to camp with her, the rest of the bandits did not quite know what to make of her. She had come with her hands freshly tied by said bandit leader, but that did not seem to help the situation. Leo was disappointed. She had hoped that lawless bandits would be, well, lawless. But, like servants in the household, they wanted to be told what to do. What was the point of being a bandit if you let someone else boss you around all the time?

On principle, Leo herself refused to be told what to do. She had no problems issuing instructions, but obeying commands herself was offensive. Being dismembered by bandits, while perhaps not the most enjoyable of pastimes, could at least be done without her compliance. But these people wouldn't even do that. Maybe they just needed more time.

She let them stare at her for nearly an hour before she finally gave up.

She, of course, had loosened her bindings ages ago and could escape at any moment, but they didn't need to know that. "Untie my hands," she commanded. The two one-eyed bandits looked at each other, but no one else moved.

Leo sighed. The sun was starting to set. At this rate, she would be here all night and the bandits would not complete any banditry. And she was only here in the first place because she wanted to learn about banditry. It was why she had sought the bandits out to begin with. Leo looked around the clearing and decided: She would give them until the sun had fully set and then she would just do it herself.

And, when the sun set, she did just that. The bandits were quite surprised.

By the time the sun came up, Leo was an adept pickpocket. A fact by which all the bandits were suitably impressed. Admittedly, she had been somewhat proficient at it before leaving the estate in the first place, but one night of learning from seasoned criminals beat out years of casually practicing on drunken nobles. That alone made this whole excursion worth the trouble of scattering her dogs through the forest, just in case. And, thus satisfied, Leo went to sleep.

She woke up in time to eat a squirrel. And then she learned how to sew peasant's garb from dried leathers. The nobility would be mortified. So she hunkered down and got to work.

The next few days passed quickly and still the bandit leader did not come back. The rest of the bandits continued to teach her tricks, but they were obviously growing concerned. Leo didn't understand why they didn't just go looking for him if they were so worried, but she didn't bother to mention it. She was becoming much better at archery and knife throwing - skills the lord of her household had refused to allow her to practice. Besides, her short interaction with the bandit leader had led to her hands being tied behind her back. She didn't mind if they never found him.

On the fourth day, the bandits couldn't wait any longer and set up search parties. Leo was too busy skinning and gutting squirrels to mind their absence. She had already learned quite a lot.

Bandits certainly weren't what she had expected. All the stories made them out to be evil, unpredictable villains. She had thought that she would have to deal with them how she dealt with her pack of dogs. But they were rather more docile than her pets. Every bandit in the group had once held a normal job. Then they had lost that job, so they became criminals. All but three of them were landless farmers. One was a mangled-handed former factory worker. Leo still had no idea what the one-eyed men had been. Most of them had normal families in normal cottages that they took time off from thievery to visit.

Leo was learning a lot, but it was all rather boring. The bandit leader, it seemed, was the most interesting of the group. He had been the cousin of some lowly noble family loosely connected to her own household, had enlisted in the King's service during some war or another, and then decided that mercenary work paid better. At some point, he had developed an antagonistic streak and become a bandit.

Some of her favorite novels had followed highwaymen who absconded with beautiful noblewomen to roam the roads and forests together, robbing the wealthy and giving to the poor, before meeting a tragic end. But that was clearly not the case here. The missing man was nowhere near so altruistic. It seemed that his particular band of men had only been chosen because they were desperate, weak-willed, and easily manipulated.

He was a noble and they were his servants. Just outside and poor. Wasn't that a disappointment?

Leo sighed. She hoped something exciting would happen.

A few minutes later, it did. One of the search parties sent up the signal: They had found him. Leo and the two bandits who had remained at camp raced towards the signal.

When they got there, he was dead.

And that was why they were all standing on the side of the road, staring at a corpse, when the constable happened to pass by.