Bendoe Investigates the Red Shield Knight and the Red Riders

Bendoe’s investigation into the Red Shield Knight and the Red Riders begins with a murdered rival and a suspect who admits both hostility and a past duel, but denies dishonorable conduct. It yields no simple confession. Instead, Bendoe’s confrontation and a Red Rider’s later testimony reveal how competing accounts—and the pursuit of a ring—turned suspicion toward Tiuri’s son while leaving the masked knight’s conduct troublingly unresolved.

The inquiry and the masked knight

Bendoe explains that the Knight with the White Shield had been found murdered, and that he and the others knew who his enemy was. He went looking for the Red Shield Knight in the King’s Forest, south of the hunting lodge, where the knight was with about six Red Riders. Bendoe asked him to raise his visor and say what he had done to his opponent. The knight removed his helmet, but a black mask still concealed his face. The concealed face is the first obstacle in the inquiry: Bendoe can question the man, but cannot read his expression or establish who he is.

The Red Shield Knight says he had challenged the Knight with the White Shield to a duel and had lost, for the second time. He claims that a third encounter would go differently. When Bendoe tells him that his rival is dead, the knight pauses before replying that he is not grieved, since the dead man was his enemy. That response confirms the depth of their antagonism, but not responsibility for the murder. The distinction matters: the knight admits he would have killed his rival in an honest fight, yet presents that very admission as proof that he would not have killed him treacherously.

Bendoe presses the question of where the Red Riders had been on the night of the murder and what they could report. The masked knight grows angry and insists that the riders with him had remained at his side. Bendoe counters that he believes the knight has more riders than those present. The account establishes neither the whereabouts of every Red Rider nor the truth of the masked knight’s claim; it leaves a gap between his emphatic denial and the possibility that other followers were involved.

A dispute about honor and foreign quarrels

The Red Shield Knight treats Bendoe’s questioning as an accusation that he or his men dishonored their knighthood. He stresses that the Knight with the White Shield was his enemy, but that he would have killed him only in fair combat. Bendoe does not claim to know whether the masked knight committed the murder. Instead, he says that a brave knight has been killed and that friend and enemy alike should mourn the manner of his death. He condemns the masked knight for bringing his feud into the Kingdom of Dagonaut and tells him to return to Eviellan, or fight on his own territory or in the Unauwen Realm.

The reply unsettles Bendoe’s appeal to local boundaries. The masked knight points out that the same objection could have been made against the Knight with the White Shield, who was also a stranger in Dagonaut’s land. He agrees to leave, but warns that the Red Riders should not be the only suspects. The dead knight, he says, knew too much about various matters and had many enemies; danger could approach even in innocent forms. He describes himself as an enemy who nevertheless respected and admired the man he had lost. His words complicate the suspicion against him without resolving it: the admission of enmity is explicit, while the alleged respect remains his own claim.

The Red Shield Knight rides away with his followers. Bendoe cannot stop them: he has only Arwaut and his own squire with him. Although he distrusts the masked man, he does not then believe that the knight murdered his rival treacherously. The encounter therefore ends not with an arrest or proof, but with a suspect gone and a question still open.

The Red Riders’ account and the ring

Ristridin supplies a second strand of the investigation. He has met another group of Red Riders, who firmly deny knowing anything about the murder. Later, one of them follows him and confides a different account. According to this rider, the Red Shield Knight lost the duel and departed after ordering some of his men to keep the enemy under observation. Those riders, the informant says, found the Knight with the White Shield murdered. Afraid of being blamed, they fled.

The informant also describes a young man who had long been watching the Knight with the White Shield and, for some reason, wanted the ring he wore. The young man was nearby on the fatal night. The Red Riders say they saw him and tried to stop him, but he escaped. Their account makes the ring a concrete link between the dead knight and the fugitive, while leaving the riders’ version of the night itself as testimony from a man whose companions had already run away to avoid suspicion.

The report from the inn at Yikarvara then supplies details that appear to match the fugitive: a young man had stolen a horse, behaved strangely, fled, and taken Ardanwen. In the city, Bendoe hears of another young man who had left the chapel. People found this conduct extraordinary, but the young man’s friends, his father, and even the king did not believe him capable of wrongdoing. Bendoe nevertheless considers whether Tiuri’s son could be the same person as the horse thief who fled with the ring. Ristridin resists that conclusion: Tiuri’s son had been judged worthy of becoming a knight after his probation, a judgment that seemed inconsistent with reports casting him as a thief and murderer.

Suspicion redirected

Despite that disagreement, Bendoe and Ristridin agree at this stage that the fugitive young man, whoever he is, must be the murderer. Ristridin later acknowledges that this conclusion formed amid further reasons he does not recount because the story would take too long. He says that the true murderers and their accomplices have skillfully surrounded Tiuri with suspicion. The inquiry thus changes shape: details about the masked knight, his followers, and the ring do not simply identify a culprit; they help make a young fugitive look guilty, while leaving the original rival and his men beyond immediate reach.

As Ristridin explains the reasoning to Tiuri, Tiuri recognizes the Red Riders’ strategy: they had caused others to follow him while freeing themselves from suspicion. He has seen some riders heading west and thinks they may still be lying in wait. The investigation’s account consequently serves as both an explanation of the accusation against him and a warning that the men Bendoe questioned may remain active. Bendoe’s suspicion of the Red Shield Knight survives, but the inquiry’s most immediate consequence is that suspicion has been turned against Tiuri’s son.