Chapter 32 : Bandits
Evan paid, and they came out with their horses. He noticed the man from the tavern follow them out at a distance and fall into a quiet trail behind them, keeping well back. Tina hadn't spotted it.
The blacksmith's shop was a few streets over. They tied the horses outside and went in. Two men were at work at the forge; the older one set down his hammer when he heard the door.
"Looking for something in particular?"
Evan scanned the wall. Tools, agricultural implements, a few blades — mostly unremarkable. He lifted a saber from its hook and tested the balance, then put it back.
"Have you got anything better than what's on the wall?"
The smith looked them over and allowed a slight smile. "There might be something. The price won't be modest."
"Bring it out. If it's worth the money, that's fine."
The man set his hammer on the floor and went into the back. He returned carrying a sword in a plain scabbard, the only ornament a carved rose on the handle that had faded with age.
Evan took it. The balance was immediately right — he could tell from the first grip. The smith said: "My father made it. Had it for years. Originally commissioned by a knight who fell in battle before it could be delivered. We've kept it since."
Evan drew the blade. It caught the light cleanly, the steel patterned with what the forging process had left in it, beautiful in the way that functional things sometimes are. The smith took a cloth and swept it across the edge; the cloth separated into two pieces. Tina made a small sound.
"Good work," Evan said. "How much?"
The smith's expression was complicated. There was something in the sword's history he hadn't told, and Evan didn't push for it. He named his price: ten gold coins.
Evan paid without negotiating. The smith watched the coins in his hand with the expression of a man wondering if he'd undersold something. He had, but not by as much as he feared.
Tina's face had gone very careful. Ten gold coins was more money than her family had seen in a decade of combined work. She started to say something.
"It's for your protection," Evan said, before she could finish. "The quality of the weapon matters. Don't argue with me about the price." He picked up the sword, walked out, mounted, and handed her the blade when she came through the door.
She caught it with both hands and held it like it might break.
"It's yours," he said. "Listen — you're light and your arms need time to develop. I'll start you on the fundamentals. If your progress continues the way I think it might, we'll find you a proper teacher."
As he said this, his attention moved briefly to the open-air tavern across the road, where the man who had been following them sat with a drink, watching them sideways. Evan noted the direction and said nothing. He flicked his reins and headed for the town's edge.
They rode into open country at an easy pace, Evan talking through the basics of the knight's training framework as they went — posture, weight distribution, how the guard positions related to each other. Tina listened with her head tilted slightly, absorbing it.
Without either of them marking the exact moment, they arrived at the edge of a patch of woodland, and Evan drew up.
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From the trees came several figures. The man at the front was heavily built, wearing boiled leather, on a thin horse with a long-handled war-hammer across his lap. Two mounted men behind him carried spears. Several others on foot spread out to either side.
Evan took in the group with mild disappointment. It wasn't the man who had been following them — it was ordinary bandits. Then he recognized one of them: the tavern boy from the inn. Of course.
"Why are you blocking our road?" he said.
"That's him, boss. The one with the loose purse."
The leader grinned. "Leave the horse and the coin. Leave the girl too. You can go."
"It seems you've been operating here for a while," Evan said. "I'll offer you one chance: put back what you've taken from people and I'll let this go."
Tina covered her mouth. She had seen him fight. The bandits had not.
Her suppressed laugh landed wrong. The leader's expression went from amused to furious in half a breath. He raised the hammer and spurred forward, the weapon coming down with the momentum of the horse behind it and the technique of someone who had actual training in his body, even if he'd lost his way since — the strike carrying six or seven times what a normal man could put behind it.
Evan didn't receive it. He pressed his knees to his horse's sides, moved forward into the attack rather than back, and ducked under the arc. The two horses crossed, and a line of light traced itself across the space between them and found the leader's throat.
He went down without a sound. Evan was already moving — the second mounted man with a spear had it out and aimed, jabbing without much control. Evan slipped his body sideways, let the spear pass under his arm, clamped his elbow down to catch it, and when the man pulled back Evan released it and let the motion carry him forward. The sword found the second throat before the man had registered what was happening.
The third rider had seen enough. He turned his horse and ran, bent low over the neck. The foot soldiers scattered in every direction. Evan didn't pursue any of them.
He turned his attention to a specific point among the trees and waited. After a moment, a presence that had been there withdrew quietly. The man who had been following them had watched the exchange and chosen not to participate. Evan exhaled.
Tina dismounted on her own and crouched over the bodies without being told. She was managing the experience — she had seen the violence up close and the bodies were real and close, but she held it together. She went through their pockets methodically and brought Evan what she found: three gold coins, several dozen silver, a comparable number of copper, and two daggers.
Evan took one of the daggers and waved the rest back to her.
She looked at the two horses standing loose nearby. Evan said: "We should keep moving."
She looked at the horses again. They were worth something. She made a visible decision and swung back into her own saddle. Evan nodded once — she knew the value of things and wasn't ruled by it.
She rode with her hand pressed to her coat where the coins were. Three gold and change — the first real money she'd ever held. It wasn't enough to repay the cost of the sword. She made a private resolution that she would repay it when she could.
Evan was thinking about the man who had followed them and not intervened. The presence in the trees had belonged to someone with better skills than any of the bandits — that much he could tell. He had a half-formed sense of who it was, though nothing certain. Whoever it was had been watching carefully and had decided the situation wasn't the right one for whatever they had in mind.
At dusk they stopped at an open stretch of ground well away from the road. Evan had no tent and didn't need one, but the autumn nights were cold and Tina did. He built a fire, set food to cook, and began teaching her in earnest.
He taught her what Andrea had taught him — not his improvised drilling of a single thrust, but the actual foundational forms: the four guards, the six attacks, the basic vocabulary of the tradition that serious swordspeople in this world shared as their common ground. Each form several times, then again, then again. Tina's learning speed was startling even to him. Twelve repetitions of a form and she had the shape of it; twenty and she was already beginning to integrate it with her movement. He corrected what needed correcting and let the rest run.
He had more to teach her than just the forms, he knew — the knight's tradition had mental and internal components he hadn't touched, and he was aware that his own knowledge was patchwork, assembled from Andrea's instruction, the glimpses he'd absorbed from watching Franklin's training, and his own months of improvised practice. He kept to the foundation and made it solid. The rest would require a proper teacher.
But the foundation, taught thoroughly and repeated until the body knew it without thought — that he could give her.