— That explains a lot, — seeing the interlocutor's confusion, the vampire chose not to elaborate, — allow me to take my leave.
An hour later, two groups of five were sent to the Daer barony, one to the forests and one to the town, while Alexander, along with two of his guards, remained in the provincial capital. From his stationary position, the triumvir did not expect any results, being fully confident that the bandit gang in the forest would be dealt with by the five sent there. After all, the leader should not be running through thickets and swamps. To avoid wasting time, it was decided to visit the bandit hideouts.
The head of an unkempt-looking man was forcefully pressed against the table by a strong hand. It was clear that he was in pain and was making unsuccessful attempts to break free from the iron grip.
— Who leads the gang in the Daer barony?
— I don't know, — the man rasped and made another attempt to escape.
— And who knows? — Alexander intercepted the hand with which the victim was trying to strike him and applied a painful hold. The man howled, still trapped in the firm grip between the table and the hand of this mad knight.
— Borov! Borov might know!
— And where can I find this remarkable person? He is a person, right? You're not sending me to a pigsty?
— He's a buyer, — squealed the small-time bandit, who was pressed even harder against the table, though it seemed impossible, — He only buys large quantities of stolen goods; he might know!
The man's head was released, and he, not expecting such a sudden removal of the pressing force, took a few steps back and fell on his backside onto the dirty floor.
— Watch yourself. If needed, I won't hesitate to come back! And tell your people, the reward for any information about the fate of Baroness Chart and her escort, who disappeared in the Daer barony, is twenty gold coins.
A similar scene had played out several times that evening. The script was always the same. First, the nearest bandit was captured and interrogated harshly. Right in front of everyone else. Sometimes his comrades tried to intervene, sometimes they just watched the free show. Of course, the vampire received all the information immediately as soon as he reached his victim, but the real "performance" followed.
The bandit was tortured until he gave up someone from his gang, sometimes several. And then the group would head to the named bandits or buyers of stolen goods, and the process would repeat. Again and again. Broken faces, knocked-out teeth, broken bones, bruises, and abrasions. The bandit community suffered irreparable damage to its reputation in just one evening.
By morning, the events of the evening were being discussed by vendors in the markets, growing more detailed with each retelling, and becoming the stuff of legend. The people's gossip at its "finest."
During the day, a ragged man came to the inn and asked to speak with the knight, claiming he had information of interest to the noble gentleman. The innkeeper first tried to lead the boy to the kitchen, planning to lock him in the basement, extract the information, and then present it himself — almost two and a half hundred silver coins was a substantial reward.
However, one of the guards overheard the conversation from the beginning and, inquiring from those trying to shove the boy into the pantry, asked, "What's going on here?" and quickly answered that question by using his fists. The owner of the best inn in Kass found himself on the floor with a broken nose, while the ragged boy stood before the knight.
Still pressing the boy against the wall, Alexander howled with joy, causing an extremely frightening smile to appear on his face, and the boy began to tell everything he knew without waiting for questions or guarantees of a reward. And he knew a lot, being one of the participants in the attack in which the younger sister of the widowed duchess was killed. He was the very village orphan who had joined the bandit gang at the end of spring.
The slaughter that the bandits carried out on the road had never been to the boy's liking, but he saw no other options in life. He didn't want to die of starvation in a ditch, and the bandits at least fed him well. Everything changed with the entertainment his comrades inflicted on the captured noble ladies and their maidservants.
While the rape of the young women was an ordinary and even customary occurrence, the subsequent bloody bacchanal with cruel torture and abuse made the orphan see his comrades in a new light and ultimately decide that he was not meant to be with them.
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