The First Legendary Beast Master novel Chapter 500

Chapter 500 Detour

The best wishes for not too many bandits turned out to be a red flag much faster than any of them could have expected.

By the time that the city was out of sight from the ground, Hawk had already spotted three groups of bandits waiting for travellers along the road.

The first one, all the travellers were going around, as they were set up at a bend in the river with two bridges, and it was simply faster to go through the field in a straight line to where the road came back to their side.

But the second was going to be an issue, Karl could tell already.

There were twenty buffalo type Minotaur, much like the sort that Karl was familiar with, but Hawk said that they were much more heavily built, and their heads were different, with forward curled horns instead of their usual upright ones.

There was a farmer following them who had his two boys as guards, and they all looked nervous. If they were ambushed on the way back to the farm, they wouldn't lose their crops. Instead, they would either lose the money they needed to keep the farm running, or possibly, their lives.

Karl considered just going through the coulee where the Minotaurs were hiding, but there was a chance that they would ignore him to go after an easier target who was guaranteed to have cash on them.

So, he followed the flat lands further east, as he was going to be turning that way when the river forked, which might not be for most of the day.

He didn't have a precisely scaled map, only their reproduction of the one that the Beast Clerics had at the temple, and there was no telling exactly how accurate it was.

If it was right, they should reach the split later that afternoon, but it might be near dark, or even the next day.

The farmers followed them for another hour, then turned off on a small track and pulled into a farmhouse.

After that family had separated from them, the number of bandits began to increase steadily. Whatever was going on in this area had created an influx of desperate bandits, and the situation was disgusting to Hawk.

In his mind, bandits should be predators. Like Rae, they hid in the trees and set traps. They should be dangerous, not a bunch of hobos with rusted weapons, or even just tattered clothes and their own claws.

Their state was embarrassing. Even if they were just monsters, they should have some dignity.

One of the groups of bandits, Minotaurs who had set up a checkpoint of downed trees, was struggling to even make a proper campfire with the fresh green wood that they had collected.

It was so pitiable that even Hawk was moved. Moved enough that he bombarded their campsite a little and lit their cooking fire before flying away.

Thor had decided that the best route wasn't on the road, so they were travelling nearly a kilometre to the east of it, in between farmers' fields. That meant that they were in no danger of bandits along the road, just anything that might be in the fields.

If the farmers were alarmed to see his group travelling between their fields, they didn't say anything about it, and by dark, Hawk had found the split in the river, and they were prepared to set up on the edge of a stand of trees, where they could get firewood and set up camp for the evening.

An empty wagon made a good tent substitute, and with a bit of reorganization, they had everything set so that the whole group would be comfortable and nobody was sleeping in the dirt.

Dana joined Karl in his hammock slung under the wagon, while the other three made a nest of blankets in a net that Rae had created across the wagon bed.

It looked like a cargo securement net, or a fishing net, but it was made of the same stretchy silk that Rae used for hammocks.