When Alna and I had finished our dance, the dance floor opened to the entire village, and boy was everyone excited. The dogkin couples were there, the cavekin too, the grandmas, and even the domain guard with their onikin wives and fiancées. Those who didn’t dance still had a good time eating and drinking their hearts out and watching the entertainment put on by all the performers.
This was the first time I’d ever seen Iluk put on a banquet so big, and everybody really made the most of it. They partied so hard that by the time the party ended, they practically collapsed into their beds.
The next morning, the sun rose as it always did, and another day began. Everybody was still hovering somewhere near cloud nine thanks to all the revelry, and probably because they’d partied hard enough for the buzz to last more than a couple of days. They were rubbing their sleepy eyes and talking about the banquet and how they couldn’t wait for the next one. I got ready for the day like I always did, and that’s when I heard that there’d been some trouble at the eastern border station during the party. I was pretty shocked, and even though I knew Klaus well enough to know that he’d probably be fine, all the same I hefted our carpet on my shoulder and headed over to check things out.
I was with Aymer and some dogkin pups whose dads worked at the border station. We were all walking along, and I was watching the pups run and jump and play along the main road when a bandit popped up right there out of the grass. He had his eye on the dogkin pups for some reason. This got me real mad, so I tried to catch him, but he took off into the forest... That led to a bit of a game of hide-and-seek, but in the end I caught him.
The bandit seemed to be real knowledgeable when it came to hiding out in the forest, but I had Aymer’s ears and the pups’ noses to help me out, so the bandit didn’t really stand a chance. When we finally caught up to him, he fainted out of sheer exhaustion. I figured if he was that tired then he probably shouldn’t have bothered running in the first place.
Anyway, I hauled the bandit to the border station. When I got there, I discovered that Patrick and his pals had come over the previous night as reinforcements against a raid. They’d worked together with Klaus and now all the bandits were tied up and in custody. By the looks of things, the paladins were using their scepters to teach all the bandits the error of their ways while Klaus and his border station guards discussed what to do with the criminals. I didn’t think I should butt in, what with Klaus being the head of the border station and him having captured them, but Aymer thought otherwise.
“Now that you’re here, you should weigh in on the matter,” she said. “At the very least, you should hear everybody out and then decide whether you’re going to give your opinion or leave things in Klaus’s hands.”
That made sense to me, so I had Klaus and the others tell me about the bandits, some of whom were apparently far too skilled to be your ordinary, run-of-the-mill criminals. Those ones were all beastkin, and they’d put up a pretty good fight even against Klaus. They also boasted some decent armor and weapons.
The bandit I’d captured was part of that same group, and based on the fact that they’d recklessly charged the gates to get a single man through, they’d been scheming something more than just looting and plundering.
But even after the paladins had given a thorough lecture to the bandits—a lecture that seemed an awful lot like an interrogation to me—Klaus still couldn’t get any solid information out of them. That left them with two choices—did they handle the group as Baarbadal would any other bandits, or did they take further action...like, say...a more intensive lecture session?
When Klaus explained it all to me, I thought about it as best I could, and while I was thinking Aymer spoke up.
“Looks like there’s a lot that has to be done, but unfortunately we lack the manpower and authority to handle this ourselves. As far as the kingdom and the continent are concerned, we’re still very small players without much influence, and we don’t want to play our cards wrong or it’ll work against us. With that in mind, let’s ask Duke Mahati to handle things for us.”
Aymer explained that Mahati had a lot of political sway in Sanserife, not to mention connections in the royal capital. That, and they had Juha.
“Juha is very likely to notice something we haven’t,” Aymer continued, “and I’m certain he’ll have something up his sleeve for a situation like this one—certainly enough to lead to a better outcome than we could manage on our own. It’s also not unreasonable for us to go to Eldan with these bandits—after all, they came from the east. With Eldan shouldering some of the responsibility, we’ll both be better equipped to deal with any outside criticism for the incident. It’s a solid plan, if I do say so myself. And besides, the bandits are clearly hiding something—they’re not the type we can expect to turn over a new leaf and become normal citizens.”
And even if we decided to punish them with physical labor, a hundred men was just way too many... We’d have our hands full just building a prison and making sure we had enough guards to watch over them. In that sense, leaving them to Eldan really was the better plan. I thought it was a pretty good idea, but the paladins looked a bit bummed out. Still, outside of them, Klaus and the others thought it was the way to go too.
“Okay, then I’ll run it by Eldan,” I said. “And fortunately, he’s in Iluk at the moment, so I can just talk to him when I go back. I reckon he’ll be fine with things. I’ll run it by the village reps too, but I’m pretty certain they’ll be on board as well.”
We were all in agreement, mostly, and once we finished up our discussion all the dogkin pups that had come with me ran over to their dads, who were watching over the bandits.
“Dad!” cried one. “Whoa! Did you really catch all these guys?!”
“You look so cool in your dragon armor, dad!” gushed another.
“Dad, they said the performers are coming here too! They’re so cool! You won’t believe it!”
The dads all smiled and their tails wagged like crazy, but they had to put work first and made sure they kept their wits about them. Still, seeing their dads like that made all the pups even more proud. It was a real heartwarming sight, but the bandits didn’t think much of it, because some of them clicked their tongues...until the paladins taught them the wonders of silence.
“Hey, Patrick...?” I said. “We’re going to be passing the bandits to Eldan later, and we want to make sure they can all still function when we do, so, uh...maybe go easy on them...a little? They’ll repent for their sins in Mahati, so how about we keep your lectures and lessons purely verbal until then?”
To put it simply, the paladins had been letting their scepters speak for them...and they did a lot of speaking. The paladins all looked a bit disappointed that I’d asked what I had, but they all nodded and then it was their voices filling the air instead of the whoosh of their scepters. Still, they spoke loud and their words were pretty harsh, and I honestly wasn’t sure if it was good to be so rough with kids around... Then again, it was also good for the young ones to learn that crime didn’t pay.
I decided I’d let the kids hang around with their dads for a little longer before I went back to Iluk to talk to Eldan. I had a feeling it was going to be another busy day, so I went over to Klaus and started telling him that he and his crew were going to be well rewarded for all their hard work.