“Generally, people try to live their lives staying out of trouble as much as they can. Problem is, said trouble often comes looking for them on its own volition, at which point you got little choice but to actually deal with it, one way or another.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“We’re really doing it… Walking straight towards bandit territory with just the three of us…” muttered Calais listlessly as they walked away from Port Levska eight days later. The port city was the last large city in Gulski territory, having been combined with the nearby former capital city of the Napris Jarldom, which Gulski and its allies had conquered over a century ago.

From there it was a short trip towards Istrian lands, and the trip generally took two days mostly because heading straight west was rendered impossible unless one were to travel by sea, since the former Napris capital sat right at the corner of a sizable bay that cut into the land. As such, the inland route couldn’t help but to loop around the bay’s north side before heading further west.

“Oh, come on, Mister Calais,” said Celia as she sympathetically patted his back with one hand. She was familiar with how Aideen does things, and while Aideen could be truly caring in her own way as well, she was more often than not a harsh teacher. As poor Calais was her junior in every way thinkable, Aideen couldn’t help but to want to toughen up the young elf. “It’s not like you’re going to die or anything. At worst it’ll just hurt a lot for a while before she got to fixing you up.”

“Besides, it’s only some greedy bastards pretending to be bandits so they could rob from the less fortunate anyway,” added Aideen into the mix. “There’s no reason to feel sympathy or pity for people like those. They made the choice knowingly, so if someone were to kill them like the bandits they pretend to be, they have no right to complain about it.”

“Many of them would just be following orders from their superiors,” countered Calais with some trepidation in his voice. He had grown up hearing stories about Aideen’s feats. Unlike in Alcidea where it was songs about the Maiden in Silver that spread first though, those in the Lichdom remembered how Aideen carried herself in battle, during her earlier years. “Do they deserve to die just for such a reason?”

“They could have refused,” she replied curtly. “No, rather, they should have refused, if they had any decency in their bones. To go to war against another, sure, you can spin that off as honorable or necessary or whatever, that’s common to do,” continued Aideen with visible distaste evident in her words. “But to ‘pretend’ to be ‘bandits’ and prey on the weak instead? That’s not an order you can justify as anything other than feeding someone’s greed and jealousy.”

“Maybe they had no choice but to do so? A soldier’s lot is to follow orders,” debated Calais with a more inquisitive tone.

“You could always resign. Quit. Lay down your sword,” replied Aideen in a slightly scathing manner. “Honestly though, if you had sword fealty to such a lord so ruled by their own greed and jealousy, then the blame is on you for being such a poor judge of character in the first place,” she added. “Honestly, I can understand people turning to banditry when forced by lean times and difficult circumstances. It happens.”

“On the other hand, for people to do such things merely to feed their own desires, be it greed or whatever power trip they were on, is far less excusable,” she continued. “We happen to be passing by Istria on our way home anyway. Just consider it as doing them a bit of a favor when we clean out the trash that happened to pile up on their lands.”

“You don’t need to worry yourself too much, Mister Calais,” added Celia rather cheerfully from beside Aideen. Due to her own past, the younger unliving woman never had any qualms about eradicating some bandits from this world. “Unless there’s like hundreds of them, we’re confident in keeping you mostly safe and sound with a practice partner or two. Then again, if they go around in bands that large, the army would’ve taken care of them by now. You can’t hide too many people in foreign land that easily.”

The problem with just about any land in either continent – other than the Lichdom – was the expanse. Most nations possess far more land than what they actually use and inhabit. In most cases, the amount of land that a nation used out of all that they owned was less than half of the total area, in many cases as low as less than one-fifth of the whole.

Uninhabited wilderness, often only cut through with roads that connected villages and towns to each other, dominated the rest. The most “civilized” area of any nation was mostly around the few large cities they possessed, with most of their lands left unoccupied in a state of wilderness. Part of the reason for this was a lack of manpower to make use of the land, as there were only so much land that people could make use of with their own capabilities.

That same issue extended to patrols and security. While larger towns and cities were generally safe places, and most villages had militias that were prepared to defend their homes to the bitter end if needed, the roads themselves were far too long to patrol and guard constantly. The Lichdom managed such a feat, but that was thanks to their heavy use of undead sentries, which the other nations lacked.

As such, it was those very roads that were targeted by most bandits, who typically hid themselves in the uninhabited regions of the nation. The relative lack of patrols, coupled with how merchants were generally forced to take the roads since those were the only ones that they could take their wagons through, meant that those places formed the best spots for such activities.

Of course, most merchants worth their salt brought guards with them, so it often came to a decision on the bandit’s end on whether waylaying them was worth the risks or not. To such people, Aideen’s small party of three travelers naturally looked like far easier prey.

It was a mistake they would not live long enough to rue.