The Biography of Albrecht - Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Translator: Nezu
Editor: Daed

Albrecht travelled for a long time before stopping by a river. Though his own strength was not a problem, his horse needed to rest. He let the horse drink water while he took a break. He saw people from the Kaltern Estate coming from upstream on rafts. When they reached the portage station, they disassembled the rafts and dragged them to the nearest city using wagons.

The people on the raft might have known that Albrecht had been banished, but they were not alarmed. They removed their caps and gave him a simple salute, then continued walking past him downstream.

Did they feel relieved now that he had fallen out of grace and been banished? Or did they have mixed emotions about it? There was no use thinking about those thoughts now, though. Albrecht led the horse to a grassy area to graze.

He rested a little more before he decided to take off. He thought that he shouldn’t travel fast considering the horse’s stamina. However, as he travelled, he became uneasy.

For now, he decided to ask for directions once he got to a transportation station and tag along with people who planned to go to a city. But he didn’t know how long he should travel to reach the transportation station.

Since he had never been outside their territory before, he had no idea if he was getting nearer or still a bit far.

Should I sleep out in the open?

Albrecht often played in the woods when he was still on their territory, but he would always return to the castle for dinner. He had never stayed outdoors overnight.

The distance between the road and the river increased, and a bed of reed settled in between. This field of reed started to grow wider, and there he saw that the path he was on was connected to a ridge.

Just then, he suddenly heard a whispering sound beside him. When he felt the whispers getting closer, a man dressed like a beggar jumped out of the reeds and stood before Albrecht.

“Greetings, Sir Knight.”

Albrecht stared at them without uttering a word. The man gestured towards the reed bed. Albrecht saw two people aiming a bow at him. He realized it was a crude brow at a glance.

“Give us the horse and leave.”

“Why should I?”

“Kuhuum. Well, please listen to me carefully. You see, this is kind of a deal. If His Lordship fights us, then one or two of us may die, but His Lordship will die too. We don’t want to have any casualties, and His Lordship surely doesn’t want to die too, right? So, how about His Lordship turn over the horse to us?”

Though Albrecht asked them, he really wasn’t interested about the deal that the man was talking about.

“Why didn’t you shoot the arrows in the first place then?”

“That-, that’s because we could have missed.”

Albrecht became speechless. He wondered if all the news he heard about the rampant crimes outside their territory were only at this level. Though he felt that the man was very talkative for a beggar, he also thought about how to deal with the two at his back. If he threw the axe at them, it would take a long time to look for it later once it fell in the reed bed.

Albrecht planned to pull out and throw his sword. As soon as he finished considering his options, he quickly picked up his shield, pulled out his sword, and threw the sword like a javelin at the bandit holding the bow.

The sword rammed deep into the bandit’s body. Albrecht’s throwing force was so great that even the sword’s crossguard got stuck.

He moved fast, making the other bandits dazed. It was only when the other man looked to his side and saw that his companion had a sword sticking out of his chest and was vomiting blood that he remembered to use his bow to shoot.

As soon as he turned his head to look at Albrecht, his eyes immediately met the latter’s shield.

Albrecht knocked him down with the shield, pulled out the sword buried in the other man’s chest, and cut off the neck of the man he knocked down.

Unlike that time with Eric, which was his first time killing a person, he didn’t feel any agitation at this moment. It seemed like the past Albrecht’s psychopathic aspect had helped him this time.

“Eh? Eh?”

Albrecht was already in front of the loquacious bandit when the bandit was still confused about what happened. The bandit realized that he should flee.

“You said one or two people would die? If I include you, it’ll be three then.”

Albrecht calmly wiped the blood off his sword on the bandit’s clothes. The loquacious man quickly began to cry.

“P-please spare me! Spare me, please!”

Albrecht continued wiping his sword without looking at the man.

“Tell me why should I spare you.”

“Ah! Ah! Because… Because!”

The man tried to think of a reason to let him live. However, he couldn’t think of anything. Tears streamed down his face at the thought that he would soon die.

“Hic! Hic! Because!”

“Forget it. Do you know some place I could sleep in?”

A flash of light immediately flashed across the man’s head.

“Yes, yes! I’ll tell you where!”

“Lead the way to where that place is.”

“Please follow me! I’ll guide you there right away!”

Albrecht followed the man while holding the reins of his horse. After half a day’s walk, they reached a forest. It was different from the forest on their estate. The sun had completely set and it was starting to become hard to see in the forest.

Albrecht was using his innate sense of perception to check his surroundings but the man walked like it was all familiar to him. He could finally see lights from afar when they walked a little further. The place seemed like a bandit’s den.

Albrecht asked the man, “How many bandits are in there?”

“There are ten of them.”

The loquacious man became more nervous. He had tried to use the night to somehow escape, but the man followed him just fine and didn’t get lost at all. At this rate, everyone was going to die. This fully armed knight could kill as many as 10 or 20 more people like himself.

In the first place, when they decided to ambush him on the reed bed, he had told his companions to just let the knight go. However, the two saw that Albrecht was young and that his gear was new. They wanted to somehow persuade him to give them his horse and so he reluctantly set out to surround him.

It was unfair. He definitely told them to just let him go!

Before the bandit and Albrecht knew it, they had reached the bandit’s den. There were two flimsy huts surrounded by a wooden fence that kind of looked like twigs on a broomstick. No one stood guard outside. Murmurs could be heard inside. The loquacious bandit left Albrecht behind, opening the door and shouting, “Run!”

“Ah, that surprised me. Diego, what’s the matter?”

Diego kept running without looking back.

“I said, ruuuuun!”

The bandits inside the hut came out wondering what was going on when they heard Diego shouting outside. They all looked like beggars.

“Why? What’s up?”

The bandits were dumbfounded, unaware of what was going on. No one ran away. Just then, they saw a knight come through the fence door holding a shield and a sword.

“Hiiik!”

Some of them freaked out and ran away. Others were flustered and didn’t know what to do.

Albrecht also got flustered. No one was willing to fight him. He didn’t expect this to happen. He clenched his fist to keep himself from feeling awkward.

Just then, a bandit larger than him wearing nothing on his bottom half walked out of the hut with long strides. He seemed to be their leader.

“What’s going on?!”

The leader locked eyes with Albrecht. Albrecht peeked inside their hut and saw naked women. He now had a reason to kill.

The leader turned and tried to flee with nothing on his lower body. Albrecht quickly approached him and slit his neck. The leader touched his neck and staggered before collapsing. The others instantly began to panic. Albrecht killed indiscriminately. Six men were slaughtered at once.

His white surcoat was covered in blood. That put him in a bad mood. He brushed off the blood on the sword and wiped it clean with a dead bandit’s clothes. Then he put the sword in its scabbard and went inside the hut. He saw three women shivering naked.

“Get dressed.”

The women put on their clothes one by one with trembling hands.

They had heard the bandits’ death throes outside. When the noises quieted down, they intuitively realized that the bandits were all dead.

“Were you all captured?”

The women only looked at Albrecht with trembling eyes and kept their mouth shut.

“Are there others who were taken in besides you?”

The women shook their heads. Albrecht felt frustrated as he didn’t understand whether they knew or not.

“Can you at least talk?”

“I can…”

A woman who appeared to be the oldest out of the three spoke.

“Did the people outside die…”

“I killed six of them. The other five ran away. I also killed two before I came here.”

The woman fell silent. Albrecht thought that he should check out things first before he talked to them.

There was an old chest next to where the women were standing. The women were surprised and stepped aside when he strode towards it to open it. The chest was locked with a rusted lock. He unsheathed his sword and hit the lock with the sword’s pommel. The lock broke at once.

Albrecht was surprised to see its contents. It was filled with all kinds of brilliant and dazzling gems and jewel-encrusted ornaments, as well as several gold and silver coins. Although he himself was a noble from their estate, he had never seen this much treasure before. Those thieves were earning this much? He immediately took the coins. He thought to leave the rest in the chest first and then take it tomorrow. He hadn’t expected to obtain such a fortune as soon as he left his home.

He exited the hut and entered another. It smelled so foul that the good mood he was in when he found the treasure instantly soured. It seemed like this was the place where those bastards lived. The hut beside this was probably where their leader lived. It looked better, maybe because that was where the women often cleaned and washed.

He pulled his cloak over his nose and looked inside but there seemed to be nothing useful. He only got three crude daggers.

He came outside again and pulled the horse tied to the fence and retied it to the leader’s hut. The horse was startled at the sight of the dead bodies, but as a well-trained war horse, it quickly calmed down once Albrecht pacified it.

He went back to the hut where the women were and sat down against the wall next to the fire in the middle. The women remained standing.

“There’s no need to be afraid. Please sit down.”

The women sat down and gazed at Albrecht, carefully wrapping their arms around their knees. Albrecht agonized over what to do with them. They would definitely face this kind of scenario again once he left tomorrow and went his own way.

For now, he threw three crude daggers at them.

“Please take that. It’s better than nothing. Also…”

Albrecht, who had been out of the estate since dawn, had eaten nothing all day except some jerky.

“Do you have something to eat?”

When they heard Albrecht’s words, the women took out a pot from the corner of the hut and placed it on the fire in the middle of the hut. They added water as well as wheat dregs and slices of rabbit meat. After letting it boil for a while, they added salt before letting it simmer.

When it looked like it was ready, a woman took a bowl and handed it to Albrecht. Pieces of meat floated in the gruel.

Albrecht looked at the woman.

“What about a spoon?”

The woman shook her head. There wasn’t a reason for them to use a spoon.

Only affluent nobles or wealthy commoners who lived in the city used proper tablewares. Ordinary people just ate with their hands.

Albrecht accepted this reality and took a big sip on the bowl to taste the soup. It could hardly be considered delicious. It even had a stench. But Albrecht gulped down three more bowls, leaving the pot empty.

Albrecht looked at the women and asked, “May I ask for your names?”

The women looked at each other until the oldest one chose to speak.

“I’m Elena, this child’s Martina, and this one’s Anna.”

The women all had long hair that reached until their backs, but Elena’s was black while Martina and Anna’s hair were dark brown. Their faces were slim and their eyes were large and vividly brown.

Albrecht thought that their looks were exotic and that their accent was a bit unusual, but their names were certainly unfamiliar.

“I don’t think those names are familiar around here?”

The woman looked at the floor and hesitated before she answered.

“We came from the south. We were just on our way back from buying gemstones in the Anglia Kingdom in the west.”

“Just the three of you? That far away?”

Elena looked at Albrecht out of the corner of her eyes and said, “The three of us are merchants. The men outside were also workers, and some were hired mercenaries.”

Albrecht was surprised. They were merchants? There should be some story behind how these women turned out like this.