Chapter 14 - Ambushing the Ambushers

Chapter 14

Salran Mountains, Starnor Imperial Border Territories

Nearing the village of Klareswasser

"Well well well, what do we have here?" Said the bandit leader as he nonchalantly walked onto the road, and parked himself in the middle of it, swinging his sword lazily. "A couple of villagers, walking alone? My, didn't you know those roads are dangerous?"

The two villagers took a step back, before looking around, terror clear on their faces. They both had weapons, which they promptly drew, but it was clear trying to fight would be suicidal, as a dozen bandits emerged from the woods.

"W-Who are you? Begone, o-or we will be forced to defend ourselves!" Said one of the villagers, his voice cracking at the end.

"Us?" The bandit leader touched his chestplate. "Why, we are but soldiers of misfortune! Forced to scrape up an existence from, ah, generous donations from folks like you."

The other traveler snarled at him.

"Soldiers of fortune my ass." She adjusted her grip on her sword. "My brother and I won't go quietly you bastards!"

"Oh really?" The bandit leader took a step forward menacingly, and both villagers scrambled backwards, causing him to start laughing. "Ah! Such mighty warriors!" He looked at his men, who began laughing as well, before refocusing on the villagers. "But siblings, how interesting! My, my, my, we are going to have some fun with you, and if you're good, we'll even let you have some fun with each other! What about it?"

The brother, now that the shock of the bandits appearing out of nowhere had passed, spat onto the ground.

"Fuck you and all of your ancestors, worm! Over our dead bodies!"

That seemed to anger the bandit leader, who took another step forward, except that the villagers held their ground.

"Is that your final answer you lit-" The bandit leader's sentence ended in a strangled scream as the arrow pierced his throat. He fell to his knees, scratching at the shaft embedded in his throat as he began coughing up blood, each convulsive gesture just making the arrow rip even more of his flesh apart.

The bandits immediately whirled around. A handful, who had been properly trained in a past life as warriors, locked eyes with the bushes where the arrow came from, and charged, while the others held a perimeter around the villagers, keeping them in check.

Three bandits charged the bushes. One dropped, an arrow arriving perfectly between his eyes, dead before he even hit the ground. A second fell, an arrow piercing her shoulder, accompanied by a muffled curse from the bush. Then the third one was upon the shooter, and leapt forward, yelling a warcry.

There was a short scuffle, and the bandit came flying out, his head caved in, trailing blood like a missile's exhaust trail.

The bandits surrounding the villagers, and the one cursing on the ground, froze.

Then Airah emerged from the forest, her bow already drawn taunt, and everything devolved into chaos.

The first bandit to turn towards Airah dropped, the arrow piercing his heart, and the dragon drew another arrow from her quiver with mechanical precision, Stellyra feeding her targeting solutions. The second was similarly spot on, but the third one completely missed as the bandit dodged at the last second, before throwing a knife at Airah.

The knife flew towards her...and pinged off her armor, harmlessly. She'd finally taken the time to put on the armor Lenna had offered her, and although it didn't fit her very well -she'd have to visit Victor and Esmira about it- it wasn't unbearable. She drew her bow back, and shot another bandit down, before dropping the ranged weapon as the knife bandit came into sword range.

He had one dagger in each hand, and he attacked her with a fury of blows. She simply grabbed one of his arms, and let him stab her with the other, before simply breaking it.

The bandit dropped to his knees, screaming in pain, and she kneed him hard enough to send his head back with a resounding crack, and he fell down like a puppet with its string cut, as his neck broke under the impact.

She let go of his limp arm, and leapt to engage the next bandit, who was slowing down, contemplating her comrade's body. The woman was wielding a spear, and Airah used her tried and true method of waiting for her to strike, before grabbing the shaft and-

The bandit let go of her spear, and leapt forward to punch Airah in the face.

The hit connected. And it wasn't a soft one either, as Airah had a very good view of the spiked american fist the bandit had put on.

Unfortunately for her, Airah was made of sterner stuff, and kicked the bandit away, straight into the path of two of her comrades, causing all three to fall down in a heap.

Two bandits remained up, and they were hesitating, looking at each other, when suddenly both came down, shortswords driven through their chests.

Airah smiled at the siblings at they stepped back from the dying bandits, and focused on those on the ground. They were starting to disentangle themselves, and Airah simply raised her hand, and began incanting.

The bandit she'd pushed began to scream in terror, which ended in a scream of pain. Firebolt wasn't an area of effect spell, but when this close, it would cause the target severe burns, or even catch on fire.

She left the screaming, burning bandits for the siblings to finish off, and turned towards the veteran she'd shot in the shoulder, who...

Was running away like all the black holes in the universe were on her tail.

Which was too bad. Because something much, much worse was after her.

It was a matter of a few steps for Airah to grab the bow back off the ground, and shoot the bandit in the back, and this time she went down for good.

She turned back towards the burning bandits, but the siblings had leapt onto them, and were busy hacking their bodies apart with maximum prejudice.

"Hey. Hey!" Yelled out Airah as the siblings ignored her. They startled, and looked up at her with wild eyes. "I'm fairly sure they're dead. You can relax now."

The siblings looked at each other, and the sister was the first to sheathe her weapon again, quickly followed by her brother.

"Thank you." The sister said as she looked at Airah. "I....You're that adventurer, right? The one George won't shut up about?"

Airah chuckled.

"Good to see I'm remembered."

"Yeah, well, he's driving everyone mad with his praise of you. Wasn't helped by the return of the others. To hear them recount it, you butchered a hundred bandits with you bare hands!" She looked at the bodies scattered around the road. "...I'm going to admit that I am vastly less skeptical of that now."

"And I will admit that it was only a handful. If nothing else there were only fifty bandits in that camp to begin with, I could have hardly slaughtered a hundred of them."

The siblings laughed.

"And fairly modest at that!" Continued the sister, before shaking her head. "Thank you, I don't know how to repay you for this. Without you..."

"It wouldn't have been pretty, I know." Airah shrugged. "There's no need to repay me." Mainly because they were unlikely to have enough money to make a noticeable change to what she'd loot from the bandits. "However I won't turn down some help getting their bodies off of the road, and toss them in a hole somewhere. I don't have a problem leaving these scumbags to rot here, but their corpses might attract something that would attack other travelers."

"Right, yes, of course."

It only took half an hour to carry the bodies, one by one, into a nearby ditch, and cover them with stones. It wasn't perfect, but it was far enough from the road that it would hopefully work.

Of course Airah took her time to loot them first. None of the bandits had anything notable, except the leader, who had a pouch filled with some kind of glistening crimson powder.

She showed it to the brother.

"Do you have any idea what this is?"

He looked at it, winced, and nodded.

"Yeah. Rogue's kiss. Most people call it stun powder. If you blow it on someone's face they'll start coughing and crying uncontrollably. Not many people use it because there's a good chance you'll hit yourself with it as well, and it doesn't really affect many people, unless you're willing to just empty it to the wind and pray it doesn't hit you.  Most folk that can afford it use it for self defence. It won't stop a rapist or a thug, but it'll slow them down. Good weapon for these slimy bastards though, probably would have used it on us."

"Probably." Airah looked at the pouch, and sealed it again. It was kind of like tear gas, in a way. Probably not a good idea to use it unless she was desperate, after all so far she'd had an overwhelming advantage in combat power, and risking that in exchange of doing the same to a couple of bandits she could have just smashed to bits anyway didn't sound like a good deal to her. Still, it might turn out to be useful someday.

Once the bodies were disposed of, Airah made her goodbyes...and was promptly turned down.

"What do you mean you're leaving? We're less than an hour from the village! Come on, you have to go. Everyone will be overjoyed to have you over!"

"Well, that's very nice and all, but I have lots of things to do and-"

She might as well have been speaking to bricks for all the good it did her, and both sibling grabbed her hand and lead her towards the village. She could have easily overpowered them of course, and maybe she should have, but she'd just gone through the trouble of rescuing them and she'd rather not damage the good impression they had of her.

She sighed, and begrudgingly followed them. If she was going to do this, she might as well capitalize on it.

Stellyra laughing her ass off wasn't helping however.

*****

The village's welcome was...effusive, to say the least.

As soon as the siblings had finished dragging her to the central square, they immediately went to tell what had happened to the nearest person, and villages being villages, the gossip spread so fast it might have breached the speed of light.

In less than ten minutes she was surrounded by villagers, and by the time George arrived they were well on their way to organizing a literal party in her honor. He looked vastly better than the last time she'd seen him, and if his armor and sword were any indication, he had rejoined the village militia.

Thankfully George managed to quickly infer to the villagers that he needed to talk to her about the bandits, for the defense of the village. That instantly got the throng of people who had been besieging her to disperse, and Airah smiled thankfully at the man as they moved to a quieter portion of the village to speak in peace.

"Sorry about that, they can be a bit...overwhelming. They did the same for me when I came back, treated me like some damned hero. But they're good people, and they mean well."

Airah chuckled.

"I'd guessed, otherwise I would have been a bit more...forceful."

"Right. Not like they'd have been able to stop you."

"Yeah. So, is this just a rescue operation from the horde, or did you actually want to talk about the bandits?"

"Both, as a matter of fact. I'd like to thank you again, not just for rescuing me, Martha and Emma, but for going back and saving the others as well."

"Yes, well I kind of had a small army at my back. You should really thank the baroness."

"And I did. But she made it quite clear you were responsible for finding the camp and bringing in the information that allowed the attack." He shrugged. "Look, I'm not going to push you on it, I've had some first hand experience on people insisting to thanking me over and over again recently."

"Ah, stopped some attacks of your own?"

"Only by isolated bandits. But yeah, a couple." He tapped his sword. "That bitch's sword has served me well. Poetic justice that her weapon would be used to protect the innocent. But I digress. Regarding the bandits, their activity has been increasing. There was a huge drop after the destruction of the camp, but it's picking up again. More worryingly, we're starting to see solos and small groups, not just large bands."

"How is that worrying? Wouldn't large bands be scarier?"

"Because the large bands are those that survive in here, mostly because they have enough men to attack convoys. If the small fry is here it means either they have far more targets than they should...or something is happening." He shrugged. "I honestly have no idea, but I was wondering if you'd seen anything."

"Not really no." After all, she spotted them from the air, so unless they lit a camp fire she was unlikely to spot any group below a dozen individuals. "I mean, I saw this group, very close to the village, but that's it."

"Mmmhhh...Well, we've sent someone over to Kaisersgrenze to warn the baroness. In the meantime I'm going to institute a convoy system." He winced. "We can't afford to send people alone or in pairs, even if they're armed and ready to fight, we're just losing too many."

Airah was fairly sure they should have done that weeks ago, but held her peace. George was hardly a professional soldiers. Besides, a few weeks ago it wasn't nearly that bad, at least according to Lenna, when she'd asked about the bandit attacks during their carriage trip. After all, there was a reason the baroness had been travelling with such a light escort.

"That's probably for the best. Although you might want to put some kind of training program in place. Bandits do this for easy profit, if they lose people every time they attack, they'll stop launching raids. They're not about to risk their hides for anything short of a gold convoy."

"A good point, although unfortunately, for them some young, strong people are a gold convoy." She raised an eyebrow, and he laughed. "The 'Republic' on the other side of the border is the place with the most free people in the world, everyone knows that! Of course, that's if you're a citizen. If you're not, well, slavery is no issue. After all, you're not part of the Republic then, right?"

Airah winced, but nodded. That kind of mentality wasn't exactly something she was unfamiliar with. Most of the historians and philosophers that gushed all over Athens tended to forget that a noticeable chunk of the population was enslaved after all.

"I see. So they're selling them off there?"

"Probably yes. Although they must have a representative here somewhere, otherwise the bandits would spend all of their time going back and forth."

"I'll have to look for them, and have some...words, with those slavers." She smiled. It wasn't a particularly nice smile, and George answered it in kind.

"That would be wonderful." He looked over his shoulder. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm fairly sure I am going to be strangled in my sleep if I hog you any longer. I believe the party is about to get started!"

"Uh, would it be possible for me to excuse myself?"

"Only if you can run fast enough." He nodded at the group of young villagers making eyes at her, males and females alike. "If you're exceptionally strong willed, you might even be sleeping alone tonight!"

Airah completely ignored Stellyra as the AI began rubbing her hands, and simply nodded, while panicking internally as she walked back towards the center of the village.

This is going to be a long day. A very long day, thought Airah.

And if I do my job well, an even longer night! Interjected Stellyra.

Fuck.You.

Oh no, I'm afraid you'll have to focus that kind of energy on someone else tonight!

Airah debated whether trying to strangle the AI's avatar was worth the villagers thinking she was crazy, before giving up and sighing.