#7 Bertrand the Bandit

#7 Bertrand the bandit

Bertrand is a young man from the western border of the Empire, and was born and spent
most of his childhood on the land of the vastovs. His father was a soldier for the Vastovs
who died in a border skirmish with the Westerlings before General Antonov brokered a peace with those people
His older brother went into professional soldiering just like their father and died during one-on-one combat with a bandit
while he and his regiment were clearing a forest of the outlaws about two months earlier.
Bertrand is cynical and bitter, seeing the sacrifices his family made for the Empire, and the little they got in return.
Abandoning his ageing mother to her fate at the family’s farmstead, Bertrand fled to the capital in hopes of making
his fortune there and took his mother’s savings with him to start a business. Instead, he was rendered destitute and
was forced to flee the city to escape debtors. He has since taken to banditry in order to stay alive. His mother froze
to death the following winter, unable to chop new wood for fire after spraining her wrist.

Mother,

I am leaving this note so you know what happened to me. I am leaving for the city to make my fortune
and I shan’t be returning. I took the bag of gold you kept hidden from me under the floorboards,
you weren’t doing anything with it anyway. Now that Bertold is dead too, the army will come for me
next time there is a war, and I don’t want to die like some pig on a spit like my father and brother.
I don’t know what kind of business I’ll set up yet, but you can be sure it will be a huge succes. I might even repay the money I took when I’m rich.
I know you’ve gotten used to having my help around the house, I can tell because you got a little fat there, Mother.
You’ll do fine on your own, you always ask me to help you because this leg hurts or that joint creaks, but nobody ever died
from a little pain.

Your only remaining son, Bertrand

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