The bandits’ seizure of Ardanwen is a turning point in Tiuri’s journey: although their leader allows him to keep the ring essential to his mission, the encounter strips him of his horse and leaves him alone in the dark forest. The scene makes the cost of continuing tangible. Tiuri protects the object that can carry him toward help, but the means of travel that has borne him there is taken away.

Ambush on the Forest Road

As darkness gathers, the ring on Tiuri’s finger begins to glow again. Its light is too faint to illuminate his way, but it encourages him as he rides through the forest. The horse moves confidently, and Tiuri realizes he has reached a winding path that seems to lead west. The journey has acquired a direction, however uncertain the track itself may be.

Then the quiet gives way to signs of an organized ambush. Tiuri hears whispers that are not the wind and branches breaking for reasons other than passing animals. Men spring out on both sides of the road, one even dropping from a tree. About ten rough, bearded bandits surround the horse. One raises a lantern, revealing their weapons: clubs, swords, and daggers. They order Tiuri to stop and demand his money or his life. The confrontation begins as a robbery, but the ring soon becomes its central stake.

The Ring at Stake

One bandit mocks Tiuri’s poor appearance and urges the others to drag him from the horse. The leader, however, has noticed the ring: despite Tiuri’s apparent poverty, it is valuable enough to him to demand it outright. Tiuri refuses. He knows he must show the ring to the hermit at the spring, who is to guide him over the mountains. Losing it would therefore threaten more than a possession; it would endanger his route to the help he needs.

The bandits seize Tiuri, take his stick, and pull him down from the horse. The horse rears and neighs, and three men have to hold it. The rest press around Tiuri, but the leader pushes them back, insisting that he saw the ring first. When the bandits remain gathered around him, Tiuri takes a deep breath, clasps one hand in the other, and repeats that he will never give it up. His insistence turns the ring from a glint noticed in the dark into the focus of a direct contest of wills.

The leader threatens to cut off one of Tiuri’s fingers instead of taking the ring. Tiuri trembles at the prospect, yet answers that the bandit may do it because he will still have four fingers left. He is surprised by his own words, as though he hears himself speaking from outside his own fear. The threat exposes how far he is willing to go to keep the ring: even mutilation seems preferable to abandoning the mission attached to it.

The Leader’s Reversal

A bandit asks to carry out the threat with his drawn sword. Tiuri closes his eyes, but the leader snatches the weapon away and strikes the man who volunteered. He then orders the others to leave Tiuri alone, declaring that the young man has more courage in one finger than all of them have in their bodies. The leader tells Tiuri to keep the ring and put it away carefully, warning that other bandits may be in the forest.

The turn is limited but decisive. Tiuri has not defeated his attackers, and the leader’s protection does not extend to his horse. The leader tells him to go and says he will keep the horse because he must take something. When Tiuri begins to object, the leader raises his dagger and orders him away before he changes his mind. The other bandits murmur threateningly, while the leader commands them to be silent and obey. Tiuri understands that staying would risk undoing the narrow reprieve he has won.

Loss and Aftermath

Tiuri walks away with unsteady knees. He hears the bandits talking among themselves, then hears the horse neigh. When he looks back, the men are already moving off with the horse in their midst. The lantern remains visible briefly before disappearing too. Their departure closes the encounter without giving Tiuri either a means to pursue them or an opportunity to recover what they have taken.

After stumbling farther along, Tiuri falls to the ground and weeps, both from the fear he has endured and from the loss of the black horse, Ardanwen. The tears register the encounter’s double outcome: he has kept the ring, but keeping it has not protected him from grief or deprivation. Once he has recovered somewhat, he takes the ring from his finger and hangs it around his neck. He then continues through the darkness, having wandered off the path into hilly ground strewn with rocks and stones. Exhausted, he sinks down and falls into a sleep like a stupor.

Significance in the Journey

The episode tests Tiuri’s resolve through a sharply unequal exchange. The ring remains with him because he will not yield it and because the bandit leader intervenes; Ardanwen is lost because the leader chooses to take something else. That distinction preserves the mission’s essential token while removing the practical support that had carried Tiuri along the road. The ring’s faint light first encourages him, then attracts the leader’s attention, and afterward is worn at Tiuri’s neck rather than on his hand. Its importance has become inseparable from the danger of displaying it.

The ending does not present Tiuri’s courage as a clean victory. He has stood firm, but he leaves frightened, bereaved, and physically disoriented. His next progress begins not with a triumphant escape or the recovery of Ardanwen, but with a change in how he carries the ring and a forced continuation on foot. The bandits’ departure thus marks both a loss and a narrow preservation: the horse is gone, while the mission’s crucial object remains.