Read Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3 for Free Online Page B

caravan, embarrassed.
    A man in a rich purple cloak jumped off the first of the wagons. “Thank you!” he said heartily. “I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t come along,” with a sharp glance at his knights. “We hadn’t expected to meet bandits in this region—although I myself am only taking this road for the first time, since the lord in the next river valey over started charging tols on his bridges. We have a lot of valuable silks on the way to market. Can I reward you with a few bolts? The color of your choice, for yourselves or your ladies?”—
    The king smiled. “We appreciate your offer, but we don’t need a reward. I’m the king of Yurt.” So much, I thought, for traveling anonymously. “Even when not at home, I feel it part of royal responsibility to keep the roads safe for honest men—and you can tel that my knights feel the same way!”
    “What shal we do with them?” asked Ascelin, stirring the three paralyzed bandits with one toe. They were breathing, but they were stiff and immobile; I doubted they would remember much of this.
    “We should kil them,” said Hugo enthusiasticaly.
    “No,” said the long thoughtfuly. “We may have caught them, but I have no rights of justice outside my kingdom.”
    “And you can’t kil a defenseless man,” said Ascelin to Hugo reprovingly.

    “Look at this, Hugo,” said Dominic pointedly. “The bandit leader has an earring just like yours.”
    “We passed a castle about an hour ago,” said the merchant, pointing along the road in the direction that we were going. “You can just see the turrets beyond that hil. If the castelan there doesn’t have rights of justice, he’l certainly have a dungeon where these malefactors can be kept until they’re turned over to the proper authorities.” He looked at their motionless forms quizzicaly, then at me. “What did you do with them?” he asked with what I hoped was awe.
    “Just a little trick we wizards know,” I said airily, fairly satisfied with my ultimate role in this.
    As we continued south, the bandits tied onto the packhorses, I positioned my horse next to Hugo’s so I could talk to him. Joachim seemed to have the same idea, for I discovered him on Hugo’s other side.
    I spoke up quickly, feeling that the young lord needed to hear good sense before he heard Christian morality. “Hugo,” I said conversationaly, “you could have gotten yourself kiled back there.”
    “But I didn’t,” he said with a grin.
    “You might have had an arrow in the eye if the bandits had been on foot rather than on horseback.”
    “That’s why I yeled, to startle the horses.” I was quite sure he had not thought this through, but I couldn’t very wel contradict him. I had a sudden, very unpleasant vision of Sir Hugo’s party starting happily home from the Holy Land and of bandits leaping out of ambush and putting an arrow through Evrard. But I couldn’t mention this to Hugo because the next arrow would have been for his father.
    I switched tactics. It was no use trying to make him realize the unnecessary danger he had put himself in if he was happy to have been in danger. “Why do you think the king brought his Royal Wizard along?” Hugo shot me a quick look. To deal with dragons or whatever magical creatures we run across.”
    “And also,” I said, giving him a wizardly stare, “to deal with bandits. You saw me paralyze the three of them. If you’d given me fifteen seconds before you attacked, I could have had them al tied up neatly with magical spels.”
    “You wizards take al the fun out of everything,” said Hugo grumpily. “I know perfectly wel why there haven’t been any decent wars in the western kingdoms for close to two centuries, not since the Black Wars. You don’t want to let the aristocracy do what we’re trained to do.”
    “We certainly don’t want you kiling each other,” I said.
    “Our own wizard would never scold me for saving us al from bandits.”
    I