As the skirmish against some viscounts and barons of Dioral Kingdom was already a forgone conclusion, Lubreo Lambert left the battlefield with his guards. He left Lyla with rest of his army while he led a group of knights along the border towards West Hills.
For that he wasn’t wandering aimlessly, he happened to know something from another set of reports from the merchants guild.
Besides the reports that merchants were tolled by some Dioral noble in the buffer zone, there were separate reports that bandits have been robbing merchants at the West Hills and Abram border.
Seeing the terrain around the highway on his way out his sharp mind could get a rough guess of where they might stick around.
Wide ridges where they can see around the highway as much as possible and can hide a considerable number of people.
Then if possible, a forest with bad visibility where they can camp out safely, preferably ones with thick vegetation.
It’ll be even better for guaranteeing water if there is a small stream nearby, having to carry large quantities of water would weigh them a great deal.
Then the Lambert's party ran onto a high spot that fulfilled those conditions and…. there they were.
They numbered 12 people, taking up a position a bit of a way away from the highway where they could see it in a sweep, lookouts, probably.
“What’s with you!?”
“Don’t surprise us all of a sudden!”
“What are you doing here? Are you bandits?”
Being questioned all of a sudden, the men looked at each other.
“W, what do you mean? we don’t know, we’re hunters, we’re chasing our prey”
On top of being armed, they didn’t seem to be carrying anything so they were probably trying to smooth over it.
“Oh? But that’s weird, if you hide here you’ll be too far to attack the prey below, and I don’t think any prey is going to come if you stand upwind you know?”
Lubreo demolished the men’s logic.
But he wasn’t intending to do long cross-examinations.
From the bag Lubreo took a pouch of gold coins and deliberately showed himself counting them.
“We are going to Abram City to buy thing using these gold coins?”
The men’s atmosphere instantly changed, they took out their weapons and became covered in killing intent.
“You’re saying the impossible”
“Our prey is stupid rich people like you, you see”
“You dumbass! If you had just gone away like that you’d have been safe!”
“Guilty,” this way they save the time spent talking.
An arrow went through the eye of one of the robbers coming our way, he twitched and collapsed.
It was his archer's preemptive strike.
Four more were killed in the same manner.
A knight stabbed one of the men.
Being stunned by that preemptive attacks, three bandits were frozen when three knights jump with their horse and killed them.
The first knight charges at remaining three bandits.
He deflected the first blow by sacrificing his sword, but the second one cut into his throat, spraying blood everywhere, bringing him down.
Not giving them any time to be frightened, the knight swung the bardiche down and it wedged on the next man’s head down to the nose. Now there’s only one man left standing.
The bardiche wielding knight can already see the ending so he took the man by the right hand with the spear and he collapsed.
“It’s over, my Lord.”
“Yeah, looks that way” Lubreo replies nonchalantly.
Silently, one of the men who was shot by an arrow earlier looked over to Lubreo's party who was getting careless while holding down his bleeding right arm and made his way toward the forest making sure his footsteps aren’t heard.
He had to tell the boss that the lookouts were all killed by some dangerous guy.
Most of all, he didn’t want to die.
He ran towards his companions’ hideout.
Without his knowledge, Lubreo pretended to be careless. It is part of his cunning scheme.
He beforehand commanded an archer to let one man alive.
He only wanted to let that guy who avoided a fatal wound go and lead him to their hideout, a band of bandits consider their ‘companions’ as nothing more than throwaway pawns, so in poor land lots of them would gather.
But it can also be said that bandit bands rising up from peasants won’t often have good commanders.
The way Lubreo looked at it, the bandits around these parts have a good leader, which is rare.
Reading the lay of the land for an ambush and performing surveillance was not something a group of broke farmers could do.
To begin with, I’m told that the bandit threat had increased recently, but no matter how many people went broke because of famine, one couldn’t mobilize a great number of people without good leadership abilities.
Without an excellent leadership they’d attack childishly, have internal falling-outs, and so on and not become a big threat.
The bandit’s right hand seemed to be bleeding so heavily, slowing him down and leaving drops of blood here and there, making him easy to pursue.
Lubreo's party went inside the forest chasing the man and after nearly an hour they came upon a place with lots of tents and bonfires that might be their hideout.
There were men in fur and rags holding their weapons and having friendly banter pacing around.
There were over ten of them as far as he could see, there might be over 30 more inside the tents, this could be considered quite a large-scale bandit group. Meanwhile, Lubreo had twenty well trained knights with him now.
The wounded man creepingly entered the largest tent.
“So this is their hideout, huh? What are you going to do? Looks like there’s quite a lot of them, my lord.”
“Once they got news that the lookout’s taken down they should move out or counterattack. We’ll wait until they’re scattered and strike the leader.”
All they had to do is fight when the people surrounding the leader was few.
The tent opened and a big guy came out.
He was wearing leather armor and shouldering a greatsword.
He had good equipment, he’s probably the leader or one of the higher-ups.
But what happened next is unexpected.
A black haired person one head shorter than the other bandits came out next, wearing leather armor, holding an unsheathed sword, and yelling something.
“A woman!?”
Her high-pitched voice was heard well among the bandits’ racket, leaving no doubt that she’s a woman.
A woman among bandits would normally be someone kidnapped to cook or for sex or to be sold as a slave.
But it was clear from how she was holding a sword and giving orders to the other bandits that that was not the case.
“On the contrary, she might be the leader.” Lubreo explained.
The big guy from earlier talked to the woman and shouted out orders to the surrounding bandits.
Looks like he’s the woman’s aide.
Lubreo grins evilly.
They unmounted from their horses.
The knight commander took one step forward from the tree’s shadow, then he felt something caught his foot.
“Sorry, my Lord.!”
"Doesn't matter. Impressive trap. Even I couldn't notice it."
Clang clang clang clang.
There was a piece of very thin string stretched between the trees at his foot and pieces of metal tied to it made sounds.
The bandits’ eyes simultaneously turned to them.
"Change of tactics." Lubreo says.
The bandits reacted quickly. They promptly made a circle around Lubreo's party, cutting off their escape route to the horses. Lookouts ran off one after the other to make sure whether there Lubreo had any reinforcements or not.
Splendid command, Lubreo praised in his heart.
This woman really knows a thing or two.
Not even the mercenaries he hired before could do something like this.
The woman asked the man clutching his arm.
"Are they the ones?"
“Y, yes boss! This is the guy who did Kopi and the guys in!”
Lubreo thought, that settled it, the woman is definitely the leader.
The woman kicked the grimacing man away.
“You idiot! And you still carelessly led them all the way here!”
“But, he’s not on a horse”
“Doesn’t look like there’s any reinforcements”
The bandits reported the state of affairs.
The big guy turned a sword as large as his body at Lubreo.
“Which means there’s only them, what to do, Claire?”
“No way I’m letting someone who killed our guys go. Kill them and leave them on the road as an example.”
The bandits cheered.
