Tiuri Escapes Pursuit from Yikarvara

Tiuri Escapes Pursuit from Yikarvara is an episode in which the secret mission Tiuri must protect collides with an ordinary accusation: the horse beneath him belongs to someone else. At the inn, his battered appearance and hurried explanations invite questions, but the horse’s owner turns the encounter into a threatened arrest. Unable to account openly for his journey, Tiuri chooses flight, and a second climb into a tree briefly puts him beyond the pursuers’ sight.

Arrival at the Inn

Tiuri reaches the inn without further incident, but his appearance carries the marks of the night he has just survived. His white garment is stained and torn, his headband is gone, his hair hangs untidily, and scratches cover him from his flight from the Red Riders. The innkeeper, sweeping the floor in his clothes and sleepcap, reacts with alarm. Two men are eating by an open window; when Tiuri enters, all three look at him in surprise. His condition makes him conspicuous before he has explained anything.

Tiuri asks the men to listen because he has little time and something important to say. One diner instead asks whether anything has happened to the Black Knight who had come to the inn the previous day. Before Tiuri can answer, a loud voice from the doorway demands to know who owns the horse outside. The interruption redirects the room’s attention from Tiuri’s urgent news to the animal that has brought him there.

The Horse and the Accusation

The newcomer is a large, angry-looking man whose voice Tiuri recognizes before he recognizes the man himself. A diner identifies Tiuri as the person who arrived on horseback. Tiuri begins to call the horse his, then stops and admits that it is not. The owner immediately claims both the animal and the right to accuse its rider: he says the horse was stolen during the night and calls Tiuri a thief.

Tiuri denies stealing it, explaining that he had only borrowed it, and begins to apologize. The owner is too angry to hear him out. He seizes Tiuri by the arm and tells the others that he followed the horse’s tracks for half the night, lost them, and then found his horse—and the alleged thief—at the inn. His account explains why he has arrived ready to confront Tiuri, but it leaves no room for Tiuri’s account of how he came to be riding the animal.

When Tiuri tries to explain, the owner dismisses his manner as fine talk and groups him with boys who have plenty to say but are good for nothing. He orders Tiuri to go with him to town and answer to the bailiff. The accusation has therefore become an immediate threat of detention and delay, not merely a dispute over the horse.

A Choice Between Explanation and Flight

Tiuri refuses to go. He knows that a journey to town would cost time, but the deeper obstacle is that explaining himself would expose the mission he has been entrusted with and the events behind it. His insistence that he is no thief and appeal to his word of honor cannot persuade the owner, who answers with contempt and calls him a boy.

The insult strikes at the difference between Tiuri’s actual responsibility and the status others see. Had the preceding events not intervened, he would now have been a knight, treated with respect; instead, he is a young fugitive, accused of theft while carrying a mission he cannot disclose. His anger is therefore bound up with more than wounded pride: he has been chosen for an important task, but cannot use that fact to defend himself without endangering it.

The other people in the room begin to connect his situation with the wider danger. Tiuri identifies the Red Riders as the source of the trap. One of the diners says he saw them pass early that morning, while the innkeeper raises the Black Knight and the possibility of murder. The horse’s owner refuses to be diverted by these claims: whatever else may have happened, he wants Tiuri punished and insists that the young man must not escape. The conversation offers Tiuri the prospect of being heard, but not a safe or timely way to tell the truth.

Flight into the Forest

Rather than wait for the men to decide what to do with him, Tiuri breaks free and runs from the common room. The owner, the innkeeper, and the two diners pursue him, shouting as he heads into the forest. He gains a lead, but his body is already close to its limit: his heart pounds in his throat, black spots appear before his eyes, and he has to slow down. He looks back, gathers his strength, and climbs a tree for the second time.

The expedient works again. His pursuers run underneath him without seeing him, turning their momentum into temporary concealment for the person they are chasing. The success is not a complete escape from danger: Tiuri is exhausted and has to wait until the area is safe before moving on. He also recognizes the risk in repeating a trick, telling himself that using the same device a third time would be tempting the devil. The thought marks his tree-climbing not as a dependable plan but as a desperate resource whose usefulness may not last.

After a while, Tiuri sees the innkeeper and the horse’s owner return, speaking quietly and looking dejected. The innkeeper has lost his sleepcap. Tiuri briefly laughs at this small, incongruous detail despite the seriousness of his predicament. The episode ends not with the accusation resolved or Tiuri’s mission revealed, but with the pursuers no longer immediately below him and Tiuri waiting for a chance to continue unseen. His escape preserves both his time and the secret he cannot afford to explain.