Mounted bandits

"Mounted bandits. This is trouble."

When Chris saw what was happening two hundred meters away, he sighed from the heart.

Banditry existed everywhere, in every age. It was a remarkably resilient profession.

While trading within the Bohemian Empire, Isaac's Caravan had encountered plenty of bandits, though most traveled on foot and were part-time outlaws, part-time villagers.

The more remote a village was, the more likely its entire population was to take up that sideline. They liked to deceive visiting caravans with a friendly welcome, then attack in the middle of the night.

That was why caravans generally stopped only outside towns and never camped beside villages, avoiding most unnecessary dangers.

Once they entered the sparsely populated border provinces, however, they were in mounted-bandit country.

Just like now.

Isaac, who had been standing behind a wagon, had already led his men outside the wagon formation and lined them up. Raising his Bohemian cavalry saber, he shouted.

"Front rank!"

The five men beside Isaac immediately lowered their upright matchlocks and flintlocks, leveling them straight ahead.

The caravan scout, now just over a hundred meters away on his return, kicked his horse hard in the belly, urging it to run faster.

When the five mounted bandits chasing him saw men lined up ahead with guns raised, they instinctively slowed their horses. They stopped a hundred meters away and watched the scout return to the caravan.

Holding their reins, they circled their horses twice and studied the wagon formation from a distance before turning around and riding back the way they had come.

Throughout the encounter, the bandits remained extremely cautious, giving Isaac no chance to fire.

The lead balls fired by matchlocks and flintlocks could still kill an enemy at around a hundred meters, though their hit rate was low, only about twenty percent.

Still, with five guns firing together, there was a good chance of getting lucky and hitting someone's head.

Yet Isaac never ordered his men to fire. The bandits also knew better than to charge recklessly or make any provocative or threatening gestures.

Only after the bandits had ridden far away did Isaac lead his ten musketeers back inside the wagon formation.

The scout who had escaped jumped off his horse and reported to Isaac.

"Boss, things don't look good. We've run into seasoned bandits. They've tampered with the wooden bridge a kilometer away. The caravan can't cross."

"How many men and horses do they have?"

"Not sure."

The scout pointed to the arrow shaft sticking out of his shoulder, still shaken.

"They were hiding deep in the woods, without a single sign of them. They left a few men outside on lookout. One of them was a damned good shot with a bow. He hit my shoulder from a hundred meters away with a single arrow. I almost didn't make it back."

"All right, I understand. Go find the doctor and have that arrow pulled out and the bleeding stopped."

With that, Isaac turned and walked back to Chris.

"We'll need to stay here for a while and wait these bandits out."

"How long?"

"Two days at the shortest, a week at the longest. We need to wait for more caravans to come from behind us or ahead. Once we have enough people together, we can force our way through."

At that point, Isaac couldn't resist making a grim joke.

"Of course, if a Patrol Unit comes along, we won't have to wait... though that would be bad news in its own right."

Chris understood what he was implying. He didn't take the bait and merely shrugged.

"Then I'll start getting people to dig cooking pits and put the pots on. We should get tonight's dinner started."

"Sorry for the trouble..."

Isaac hesitated, then set the flintlock in his hand beside his left foot and lightly struck his chest with his right fist, giving Chris a fist-to-chest salute.

"Your Highness Chris."

Chris waved a hand, left his hiding place, and went to find a few of Connie's young men. He led them over to the wagons, unloaded five large pots, and began digging fire pits on the spot.

Of the ten wagons, only five actually carried merchandise. The other five held the caravan's everyday supplies and food, including the indispensable coal and dry firewood.

In theory, there was an endless supply of firewood in the wilderness. As long as you had a blade, you could chop wood or gather dry grass to burn whenever you wanted.

In practice, cooking fuel wasn't something you could simply gather at will. The idea that the wilderness was full of things to burn was merely an illusion.

Once you tried cooking outdoors yourself-taking a pot into the wilderness and attempting to boil some water, for instance-you would understand the problem.

That was why the caravan always carried half a wagonload of coal. They could use it themselves, and when they didn't need it, it was merchandise that could fetch a good price in villages and towns short on fuel.

Cooking smoke slowly rose. Chris was chopping frozen meat with a cleaver, preparing to blanch it, when a commotion broke out inside the wagon formation. Players and caravan hands shouted as they grabbed blades and guns and ran to the wagons.

Chris realized then that the bandits had arrived.

Sure enough, amid a dense, dull rumble of hooves striking the ground, drawing closer from the distance, thirty-odd mounted bandits trotted into view at the far end of the road.

"Do I need to hide?"

Chris shouted from beside the pots. Isaac, who was peering out from beside a wagon through a spyglass, answered without turning his head.

"Not yet. There won't be a fight just now."

Isaac's judgment proved correct. After arriving, the bandits didn't immediately spur their horses forward. Instead, they stopped beside a small grove two hundred meters away.

Then a man who appeared to be their leader rode a little farther forward and raised his own spyglass to inspect the wagon formation.

After watching for a while, he seemed to realize something. He rode forward with two underlings, stopped a hundred and twenty meters away, and shouted.

"Give us a third of your goods, and we'll let you go..."

The bandit leader had a loud voice, so everyone in the caravan heard his shout.

"We're not asking for much. Don't put up a pointless fight. We have thirty-five men and thirty-five guns. One volley can kill seven or eight of you!"

"Bullshit!"

Isaac shouted angrily back, raising his voice to expose the bandit chief's lie.

"You think I've never served in the army? Thirty guns killing eight men in one volley? Oh, I'm fucking terrified... Tell me, where the hell did you find that many sharpshooters?

"A third of our goods? Dream on! Come over here and let me slap you twice!"

Isaac's hard-line response darkened the bandit chief's expression. Without another word, he turned his horse and rejoined his men. Then the thirty-odd bandits withdrew, soon riding out of sight.

"We're safe now?"

One of Connie's young men asked cheerfully, only for her to smack him on the head.

"No, we're not. Those bandits are going to wait us out. Tonight will be the real test. Go find somewhere to sleep."

"So we won't get to fight until tonight."

A nearby Player sounded disappointed as he dejectedly lowered his spear.

"I was just thinking I'd get to try an anti-cavalry braced spear thrust."

"The bandits aren't idiots either."

Chris had watched the whole exchange. As he put the frozen meat into the boiling pot, he thought back over Isaac's response, learning from the valuable experience.

Isaac had been right to take such a firm stance. Bandits were bullies who preyed on the weak and feared the strong. Their leader's demand for protection money hadn't been genuine. It was merely a probe.

This was Isaac's Caravan's first visit to El Province. They were strangers, and the locals had never seen their banner before. With the caravan already in a wagon formation, the bandits wouldn't attack head-on.

The bandits' shouted demands were a tactic to test the caravan's confidence. If Isaac agreed to pay a third of their goods as protection money, the bandits would know the caravan lacked confidence.

Their leader would then forcefully demand that the caravan hands carry the goods outside. While they were moving the goods, the bandits would approach under the pretext of collecting them, then launch a charge.

Who would settle for a third when they could take the entire caravan and all its goods in one stroke?

Once they broke into the wagon formation, the bandits could ride back and forth, hacking away while the guards and caravan hands fell into chaos, slaughtering the caravan at minimal cost.

In a chaotic melee, the mounted bandits would hold an overwhelming advantage.

Isaac's tough attitude, however, had made the bandit leader sense his confidence. For the moment, they didn't dare charge the formation.

But there was no chance the bandits would simply leave and spare Isaac's Caravan with its ten four-wheeled wagons.

They wouldn't be content to leave empty-handed without first testing the caravan's mettle and finding out whether it was a hard nut to crack or easy prey.

With the wagon formation and more than a dozen guns, along with a small hill on the left and a patch of scrub woodland on the right that left no room for the bandits to circle, a daytime charge was unlikely.

The bandits weren't an army. They were vicious men who risked their lives for money. They weren't afraid of deaths, but they weren't willing to suffer unnecessary casualties either.

"They'll definitely be back tonight."

Isaac walked over to Chris, who was stirring a pot with a large iron ladle.

"Mm. Do we need to do anything?"

"I'll make the arrangements. We'll set some traps on the hill and dig pits on the slope to trip their horses. Then, over here by the little grove..."

"There's wire fencing. Coiled razor wire."

At Chris's words, Isaac froze for a moment.

"Huh? Wire fencing? What's that?"

"Something you can lay out on open ground to stop animals and people from passing...

"Once the tent is up, go inside and take a look. You'll understand. My men know how to use it."

Isaac said nothing more. After giving Chris a long, searching look, he turned and left without another word.

After nearly two months spent in close company, the others might still know nothing of Chris's wonders, but Isaac had already realized there was something unusual about him.

The ten people following Chris were the biggest anomaly. For starters, their clean, fair appearances and meticulous personal hygiene were hardly things poor people could possess.

Their everyday conversations and displays of assorted talents alone made Isaac feel as though he were traveling with ten renowned scholars on a study tour.

It was truly incredible. Knowledge, after all, wasn't something people were born with.

Then there was Chris's ability to procure food and all sorts of miscellaneous supplies whenever and wherever he wanted.

Every time, he would leave with his followers and spend some time in a city or town, then have people collect goods he claimed to have bought.

But Isaac was a smuggler himself. After one or two occasions, he could tell something was wrong... Finding a bargain once or twice could still be chalked up to good luck.

Yet they were already so far from Inyama, in unfamiliar places where they knew no one, and Chris could still steadily obtain whatever supplies they needed. Coarse cloth, salt, even coal-whatever the caravan lacked, he could get it.

Isaac wasn't a fool. He thought of the smuggled goods back in Inyama.

Chris knew about Isaac's suspicions too. This time, with the bandits attacking, he decided to lay his cards on the table and stop pretending.

Once he had cooked enough pork stew with cabbage and vermicelli to feed fifty people, everyone took turns enjoying a hearty meal. Afterward, Isaac led his men in putting up Chris's tent first. Chris went inside and picked up his phone.

In the industrially advanced twenty-first century, wire fencing had long since ceased to be anything unusual. Chris simply opened an online shopping platform and found a huge selection with a casual search.

There were options ranging from five yuan for ten meters to a hundred yuan for ten meters.

Chris deliberately chose black concertina wire with barbed razor blades, fifty centimeters in diameter, which required little effort to install and use and came with its own nighttime camouflage.

It cost fifty yuan for ten meters. Chris bought two hundred meters in one go, spending a thousand yuan.

With a ding, the money was spent, and twenty bundles wrapped and bound in plastic dropped down, each shaped like a car tire.

Chris went outside and gestured for the Players to come in and collect the items, then sent them off with Isaac to set up the perimeter.

Two hundred meters of wire wasn't enough to create an impassable barrier for the bandits, but it was enough to turn part of the scrub woodland into a thicket of iron thorns.

One of the Players was a devious veteran of hunting games who was particularly skilled at laying traps. He offered some valuable suggestions for using those two hundred meters of wire.

"The wire won't stop enemies from getting in, but it can make getting out a lot harder...

"Put it here, here, and here. Then cut some brush and lay it over the top as camouflage. If they try to pass through, they'll definitely cut their shins.

"The bandits might ride their horses into camp?

"Oh, that's even better. A horse's lower legs are more vulnerable than a person's. If it kicks the wire, the wire will definitely wrap around its leg and trip it.

"Mm, we could consider digging some horse-tripping pits between the wires and sticking sharpened wooden stakes in them. That ought to help... Oh, right, Chris, do you have any animal traps?"