On Simon’s return trip, he brought his armor with him, even though he kept it packed in a sack. There was no way he was putting on platemail and taking it off by himself, and he wasn’t borrowing a squire he couldn’t trust. Still, he thought it might be necessary, and it was better to have and not need.
Having it packed in his saddlebags did him little good when he encountered the same bandits he’d run into on his return trip. This time, there were a few more than he’d seen last time. They started to break up as he approached until one said, “This is the bloke that sent all of you scurrying. On account of his cloak? I could kill three of him and not even work up an appetite!"
The man let a long laugh out at that, and Simon sighed. He paused and dismounted his horse and tethered it to a branch before approaching the braggart of a gang leader, who sneered at his approach.
“You won’t be getting through for free a second time,” the bandit started. “The first time’s free, but the second. Well, a fine man like you can afford to pay at least half a dozen silver shillings. No, make that…”
He stopped talking when Simon pulled his left hand off of his stump and tossed it aside. “No chance of getting a discount on account of my disability?”
It was meant as a joke, but none of the men standing around them laughed until their leader did. Then the forest road rang with nervous laughter.
“You must not deal with men like me very often, Sir Cripple,” the man in charge declared with a wide smile. “Don’t you know we charge extra at the first sign of weakness? I make widows and orphans pay double, well, unless they want to—”
Simon didn’t wait for him to finish talking; instead, he pulled off his leather glove with his teeth and then slapped the bandit across the face with it. It wasn’t a gentleman’s riding glove. It was a thick hide affair, and it left a red mark, instantly silencing the brigand.
“You think your virtue will save you when you can’t even grip a sword properly?” the bandit leader asked. “I’ll cut you into giblets, and then we can take every last coin you have for that!”
Simon ignored the words. Instead of reacting, he waited until the bandit moved backward and reached to draw his blade. He stepped forward unexpectedly, mirroring the motion, but instead of drawing his own blade, he put his good hand on the bandit’s, preventing him from drawing his sword. Then, before he could do much more than open his eyes wide, Simon brought his forehead down hard against the bandit’s head in a blow that he heard as much as he felt.
Their skulls cracking together rang out through the deathly silence of the forest grove, with a thick, meaty thud. It hurt. It actually hurt quite a lot, but it wasn’t even a tenth of what he’d felt when recovered from the infection that had infested the bone of his missing left arm, and he ignored it completely. Simon hadn’t been bothered too much by pain in many lives, and now he was well beyond it.
The bandit cursed and struggled to free his sword even after that. When Simon’s second blow landed, he stopped and instead tried to turn and flee, but Simon wouldn’t let him go. One of them was bleeding now. He couldn’t say which. By the third blow, the blood was everywhere, but the bandit didn’t go limp until after the fourth.
Simon drew the man’s sword as he collapsed, and stood there trying not to look as woozy as he felt. It had made for an impressive show in front of all of these other miscreants, but he could still feel his brain rattling around in his skull.
“He called me a cripple,” Simon said, looking around at the dozen or so men, evaluating each of them in turn by the brightness of their aura. He was too discombobulated to see details or colors, but it was clear that most of these men were desperate, not evil. “He told me not to show weakness… So I showed him strength instead. Didn’t work out for him did it.”
Everyone was waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Some looked like they wanted to flee, others looked angrily at the limp form of their boss, and those who were still holding their weapons looked like they might fire their crossbows by accident if they got any tenser.
Simon gestured broadly with his borrowed sword, and even though he was still blind in one eye from the dripping blood, he announced. “Relax, everyone. The fight’s over and the toll’s been paid.” As he said those words, he tossed the weapon aside. It wasn’t a show of surrender. He just wanted his good hand free.
“Well, what if we think it ain’t—” one man started to say after he’d mustered up the courage.
“Quiet, Terell,” the man nearest to him hissed. Neither man had an especially dark aura, but Simon could read the fear on everyone’s faces even if he couldn’t see it in their auras.
If we don’t take him altogether, we don’t have a chance. That’s what everyone was thinking. He could practically see the wheels turning.
So before they got any ideas, he said, “It's clear to me that most of you aren’t meant to be bandits. No offence, but unlike your boss, you don’t have the scars or the stomach for it.”
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That statement brought some sullen looks, but it visibly relaxed everyone, which was all he’d been looking for. Simon endured a chorus of mumbled insults and a couple of accusatory statements about how they’d “like to see him try,” as he bent and retrieved his wooden hand. He wanted to avoid using magic, but if this got ugly, his wand of fire would make short work of these men.
Simon didn’t get baited into fighting. It wasn’t even because he was concerned about how outnumbered he was. It was that most of them didn’t deserve to die. There were one or two that had dark auras he could see even with a growing headache, but the rest of them were normal enough.
Instead, after a short speech about how he wanted to help people, not strike them down, they pivoted to stories that sounded familiar enough. Except for a few people who didn’t really see themselves as the bad guy, everyone had a reason for doing what they did.
Some spoke of bad harvests or dead families, but mostly, they spoke of being crushed by taxes. For once, though, it didn’t seem to be a corrupt noble or a wicked tax man who was to blame. It was down to simple incompetence.
Apparently, this close to the capital, the lines between which village belonged to which duke could get blurry, and some of the men had been ruined by two or sometimes even three visits from the tax man a year. Each time it was a different collector, of course, but none of them accepted excuses in lieu of coin.
“See, now these are problems that can be fixed,” Simon answered, seizing on the issue.
Eventually, the band retreated to their camp, a little way off the main road. And the conversation continued around the fire, and eventually a meal. Their leader eventually regained consciousness, but when he saw his men speaking with Simon, the man merely scowled and slunk away into the growing shadows to lick his wounds.
At the start of that conversation, no one trusted Simon, but as he insisted time and again that he was there to help everyone, eventually, he won a few of them over, which warmed his heart. Almost no one is beyond redemption, he told himself as he looked around at the men that he might yet help live a productive life.
After hours spent hearing their complaints, he promised to return and try to solve some of them. “Give me a few days to resolve my current mission,” he explained as he cleaned his wooden bowl of the last of the root-heavy stew he’d just finished sharing with them. “Once that’s done, I’ll come back and see what can be done with the landlords of the region.”
“He’s just stallin’ so we don’t—” one man started to complain before the man to his left bopped him on the head.
“So we don’t what? Kill him? Are you daft?” the other man said. That brought a round of laughter, as Simon stood and stretched. Without magic, he had no way to take so many, but he wasn’t afraid. Most of these men wanted a way out of the hard life they’d fallen into, and if Simon gave them that, they were likely as not to become farmers and laborers again.
While the two of them argued, he looked around for the man with the darkest aura that he’d glimpsed earlier. Most of these men deserved a second chance, but a couple did not. “While they fight about whether or not they’re going to fight me, why don’t you show me back to my horse?”
The lank-haired man was surprised by Simon’s choice. He was young, and underfed, and hadn’t said a word to Simon in all this time; really, he’d tried to hide at the back of the crowd and the edge of Simon’s vision, which is why he couldn’t help but notice the young man.
“Me-me?” he stammered, pointing at himself.
Simon nodded, forcing a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Indeed. Come on. The sooner I reach my destination, the sooner I can come back and help the rest of you out.”
There was a chorus of thank yous, or at least gruff replies, then, which was better than the insults they’d started with a few hours before. They followed him into the dark as his guide took them back to the main road.
Of course, Simon didn’t need a guide. He knew exactly where he was and where he had to go. All he required was some privacy. The night cooperated, and as the two moved away from the light, they were soon wrapped in silence.
That obviously made Simon’s guide uncomfortable, because as his horse came into view, he tried to fill it with empty words and introduced himself as Immel. Simon let him talk until they were on the road. He was uncomfortable, too. Away from the light, the bandit’s aura swirled with a dark, oily sheen. He couldn’t see exactly what he’d done, but he was certain it had been ugly.
“I just, I really d-didn’t believe there were knights like you,” the young man managed to say.
“No, not everyone,” Simon said, turning to the man who had led him back to his horse. “You’re not going home when all this is done. I know exactly what you’ve done.”
“What do you mean?” the young man asked. “I didn’t—”
“I can see the blood on your hands, Immel,” Simon sighed. “I know what you did to those girls.” He couldn’t quite see that, actually, and for that he was grateful. His vision was just blurred enough that such details were lost to him. He got close enough to startle the bandit, though, because he stumbled back, mouth opening and closing without words.
“I… Those are just rumors,” he pleaded. “I didn’t… I wouldn’t, I couldn’t… not on purpose.”
Even as he walked backward, his hand moved to the long knife on his belt. Simon made no move to defend himself. Instead, he pushed, stiff-arming the young man and sending him backwards as he tripped over the root of a tree.
That was his last mistake. He probably deserved a painful death, but Simon didn’t have the time or the investment for that. Instead, he stepped forward and crushed the man’s throat with his boot, with a wet crunch. Then he watched him writhe and gasp like a fish.
Simon thought about giving the bandit one last lecture, but instead, he just sighed in annoyance. Death polluted his vision too, which was the last thing he wanted just now. Still, it couldn’t be helped. “If I’m going to help these guys get back on their feet, the last thing I want is scum like this one walking around.”
Simon dragged the body back to his horse and, with some effort, slung it over the rump. Leaving it here would only ensure a chilly welcome when he returned, but if there was no corpse, then there was no crime.
Simon rode off into the night, only a little delayed. This isn’t how he’d planned to spend his day, but it was probably for the best. “I’m not in a hurry,” he reminded himself. “As long as I don’t get in my own way, I’m everywhere, all at once. I’ve got time for this too.”
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